Part of our fence blew over in the string of storms we had a few weeks back. That was totally replaced via insurance, but after that work was done I noticed at least one other post was rotting out, and the fence was basically falling over in slow motion.

Since we don't have the money to replace the whole fence, and replacing the post would cost about $120, I decided to try a product called FenceMender I had read about while researching fence work a while ago.

FenceMinder before installation

The fence as it was, that wood was put up to reinforce it.

The rotting post

I used tent pegs and some rachet straps to level the fence while I worked.

close up of post with more dirt removed

Neighbor's side of the post

Our side of the post

The FenceMender site said to use a sledgehammer, but I only used a 3 pound baby one since I didn't have a full one handy. Their instructions also said all you need are some 10d nails, but com'n....I used 2 1/2" galvanized deck screws. I also pounded the living hell out of them to get it as deep as I could, that might be why my back is killing me today. It seems to have worked as far as I can tell it's much sturdier and now level as well. For $14 bucks I'm gonna count myself lucky on this one.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thank god for you allergy medicine, you sooth my sleepless nights and offer me respite from the torturous trumpet that is my nose. Alas you reduce my IQ to trailer park levels and render me lazier than normal. You truly are a double edged sword.

However, that was not all that I wished to write about. Although my gaming time has decreased substantually, through perserverance, the baby bjorn, and a very understanding and beautiful wife, I have managed to play a bit. That being said, since my last posts on the subject I have finished Zelda: The Twilight Princess, and am now currently playing Call of Duty 3 and Crackdown.

Zelda was fun for a while, but didn't really feel as deep as I had hoped. Of course it's a no brainer for the Wii and still tons of fun, but I didn't feel bad about selling it back. It must be said though that CoD3 kinda sucks. Now, I enjoyed CoD2 alot when I first got my xbox 360....in fact it was a viceral experience, but I just can't get into CoD3. It's like they phoned this one in or farmed out the development. The added gameplay features over CoD2 feel cheap and don't really work well with the genre.

Really at this point I'm just pushing to finish it so I can trade it back in, which is hard because all I want to do is play Crackdown. Don't get me wrong Crackdown is shallow, but it's also quite fun. Super cop who can jump 20 feet across rooftops and kill gang members....yes please!

Posted by Dennis Judd at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thankfully my course book arrived today, I had bought it off half.com. Sure I saved 1/2 the price, but the stress wasn't really such a deal.

Next time I think ordering more ahead of time would be smarter, wasn't really an option this time.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a really nice Dell latitude D820 laptop for work, but one thing that's annoyed me from day one is what happens to any open windows when I close the lid....they resize to like 640x480.

Probably not a big deal for most people, but with work sometimes I have like 20+ windows open, which means if you close the lid they all get resized and stacked on top of each other like the good old windows 3.1 days.

Anyways I finally found out what was causing it, it was a registry settings for my Nvidia video card.

Go into the registry (regedit.exe). [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video] and find all the keys named “LidBehavior“ anywhere under this folder. (HINT: once I got to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video], I had to drill down 2 or 3 levels in a couple different places. I found 2 LidBehavior keys.) For each LidBehavior, change the value from 11 to 10. Reboot. Problem solved.

The above quote came from this website.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been wondering why I haven't received any packages with course information or syllabus since enrolling, so I called them today (after leaving voicemails to no effect) and finally got a human being.

Turns out for some reason, the computer system gave them my old address to ship stuff to instead of the new one I put in it when I registered. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that it's been 10 years since I was there last.....but still. Somehow the computer displayed the right address for me, but internally the old one.

*sigh*

Oh well it's not like I have all my books yet...not even sure if the seller shipped the stupid thing yet. Half.com might be cheaper than the book store, but just like ebay it's a crap shoot when dealing with customers.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's actually kinda funny, give it a watch

Miracle Beer Diet - The most popular videos are a click away

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

blah

So the roofs done, and now suddenly two cats decide to get sick. Chloe had some issues that we have no clue why they happened. It looks like fancy 40 dollar prescription cat food is the fix for that (more fiber).

Now magically Moxie has a 3rd hole on her rear. No idea what happened, or how she got wounded, but the real pain in the butt (har har) is that she has to wear an elizabethan collar.

She is miserable with it on, but what can you do. Generally letting a cat lick an open gaping wound of unknown origin is ill advised. Of course taking it off every 4 hours to let her eat and hopefully relieve herself in the litter box is pure fun.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So today the roof finished up, everything is pretty much done now. So here's the final pictures. If you want you can check out the pictures I took on Day 1 and Day 2.

All of the work was done by Scott and Justin from
Moisture Protection Systems Inc.
Fox River Grove, IL 60021
(847) 639-1719

Now that everything's said and done I have to say I was happy with the quality of the work and attention to detail. I don't think those are things I would have found elsewhere, at least not to this level.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just some more pics on the progress today:

Picure of the new skylight, tried to take it from the same angle as this one

Just a shot of the second story

close up of another skylight, Velux brand

Tomorrow I expect much more pounding over my office...good thing the weather is nice, although they made sure everything was waterproof before they left.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 02:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Starting yesterday, we've been having the roof replaced on our house. I'm trying to keep out of their hair and let them work but here's a few pictures I took.

Close up of the old roof

Second story with old shingles on it still

Old skylights

Long shot of the second story

Very large crane they used to unload the stuff right onto the roof

First story they finished yesterday

The shingles we picked are GAF Royal Sovereign Nickel Gray, and we're getting two new fixed skylights.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's 1 2 3 4 by Feist...you can see the video from the commercial here

here is her doing it on Letterman

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I am officially a college student. So weird to go back to the same school that I attended over 10 years ago.
Hopefully this telecourse thing will work for me, I can ace the class and then gain some momentum towards getting a BS. As someobody on another board said "a degree can't hurt".

Well time for bed, although travelling down randell road doing 70+ on a motorcycle isn't the worst way to spend an evening. Did you know ECC had motorcycle parking up close? Neither did I....

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every now and then I get a geeky burst of creativity.....today that came to form in an mp3 ringtone for my cell phone from Final Fantasy 7.

I thought about doing one winged angel, but decided that 25 seconds wasn't enough to convey the real meat of the song, so I choose to use the victory fanfare, which is well known to just about anyone who has ever played a final fantasy game (even 12 to a lesser degree).

Now I hate ringtone sites....with a passion. Most of them are out to nickel and dime you to death. Which is why I make my own, so that way at least all I get hit with are the data transfer fees from surfing the web. Which is also why I'm being nice enough to share it with people who want it

Final Fantasy 7 Victory ringtone (25 seconds, 160kbps, 44kHz, stereo) 401kb

Posted by Dennis Judd at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So I'm looking at going back to college.

Scary eh? Finally hit a point in my life where not having a degree is hurting me. Of course even if I had finished college 10+ years ago it wouldn't have mattered, since the courses I'd take now didn't exist back then.

I kept thinking somebody was going to stop me when I was walking through the halls and tell me I was to old to be there :)

Posted by Dennis Judd at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Dennis Judd at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

go to your "mt-static" folder and edit the styles.css file. Find this part inside of it at line 15:

textarea { font-family: "Lucida Grande", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; }

default is 11.....finally a way to make an entry without my eye's bleeding!

Posted by Dennis Judd at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Someone asked, with good reason, for pictures of what the difference was between a basic x10 low light camera, and one using the IR Illuminator I built.

They're not the best, but I took some pictures last night. I don't have a video capture card, so you'll have to deal with the CRT refresh line.

So here's a picture of the room illuminated with only 2 7w night lights:

And here's the same picture, but this time ONLY the IR Illuminator is turned on. The room is 100% dark to the human eye:

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)