| January 2nd, 2005, 7:03 PM: I went looking for houses with the fiancee' today. She showed me a few houses she saw advertised online. None of them really impressed me. I'm pretty set in my ways when it comes to houses. I prefer a brand-new house that's never been lived in. I hate the thought of buying used anything. I'm not into used cars, used houses, used instruments, used clothes, used food, etc. To me when I think of the word "used", all I can picture are used tampons and toilet paper, and I'm not even about to touch that. I'm really picky about stuff having to remain relatively untouched. I guess it's a primal urge: if you touch my food, I'll kill you. Another reason the houses she showed me failed to impress me is that they had either wood or vinyl siding. This goes back to the days when I was a kid and I had to spend summers at my Grandmother's. She owned a wooden house down in the deep south near the bay. When you live near the water, all houses have to be elevated a little so her house were on these brick "stilts". Anyway, I was a bit of an energetic kid so I did a lot of running and jumping, but since the house wasn't on a solid foundation you could hear the pounding of my feet in every room in the house, and boy was it loud! Walking down the hall I could even hear the wallboards creaking too. My feet were so loud in that house I used to get yelled at for it. And worst of all were the roaches. BIG roaches. About the size of small mice. I was a naive little 7-year-old, so those things scared the heck out of me. In that part of the country, they called them Palmetto bugs. Hogwash, those things were roaches and they were huge, and they weren't scared of little 7-year-old boys. Sometimes my other family members would come to stay with my Grandmother, so that meant that I was sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag or a bedroll. Imagine having to sleep on the floor in a wooden house on brick stilts with roaches that you fear more than they fear you! Since then, whenever I see any wooden house, I immediately flash back to my creaky loud-footed roachtrap nightmares. My rule on houses: if it ain't a brick house on a solid foundation, I don't want it! |
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| A Collection of Mindless Random Thoughts. |
| Joe's Blog |
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| December 30th, 2004, 2:24 AM: I've been thinking long and hard about it, but I've decided it's time for me to part with a few items. I've had a collection of old toys and comic books in storage for years, stuff that I've had since I was a little kid, that I'll be selling to help cover expenses. I don't know if any of it is worth anything, but I'll be checking sources like eBay, etc., to see. I even have some old computer games that I'm sure a few vintage geeks out there would probably want for their collection. Heck, I finished the games years ago so there's no point in me holding on to them. I'll never forget the good ol' days in college when I spent hours trying to crack the latest Quest For Glory or Leisure Suit Larry adventure. In the meantime I think it's time I got rid of those damned Transformers. Kids used to give me hell about those things when I was in the 9th grade. They're probably worth about $0.01 each by now; they're so old and beat up I can't imagine anybody wanting to buy them now. December 29th, 2004, 6:50 AM: The fiancee' and I have just finished configuring our computers with a shared network connection. Now we can share files and printers between computers. All this stemmed from the fact that I needed to print a file from my laptop, only I didn't have a printer. Now I can use her printer through my laptop. I can also peek at all of her files too, heh, heh, heh.... She loves the ring I gave her. She can't stop looking at it or talking about it. One of these days I'll take a picture of it and post it on the blog, but only if YOU request it. If you wanna see the ring, just leave a message in my guestbook. By the way, the donation icon on the right is legit. If you can donate even a dollar or a penny to our wedding/grad school fun, it would be greatly appreciated. I hate to beg, BUT.....please????December 29th, 2004: HELP ME PAY FOR MY WEDDING AND GRAD SCHOOL! I've set up a Paypal account to help cover my wedding expenses and grad school expenses. Click on the Link on the right side of this page to make a donation. Please help out if you can! December 28th, 2004: I've been thinking about going back to grad school, but I need to find a way to pay for it. I kinda wanna go full-time and knock out my Master's in 2 years and my Doctorate in 2 more years, but I don't have the financial stability to take 4 years off to do it. I also just recently got engaged and I need to plan both a wedding and the rest of our financial future. I am considering setting up an account to accept donations towards both my impending wedding and grad school. December 27th, 2004: I finally popped the question, and she said yes! I am officially engaged to be married! |
| December 30th 2004, 9:54 PM: I've updated my sounds page for the first time in 11 months. I've decided to experiment with the Windows Media Format (.wma) to see if the darned songs actually download this time. I'm not using Real Audio anymore; it's too dadgummed unreliable with this webpage. I had a bunch of Real audio files up about 4 years ago, and after a year, they all stopped working. Here's to better luck with Windows. By the way, if you like what you hear, there's a place for you to make a $1.00 donation in order to offset the bandwidth costs and motivate me to post some more files for your listening pleasure, if you enjoyed what you heard.. In other news, I've considered telling a few stories about my musical treks over the past 11 or so years, but I'm afraid people wouldn't believe me if I told them where I went, who I met, what I did, etc. I've tried talking about it before and ticked some non-believers off, mostly Journey fans. Anyway, if I feel like opening up that can of worms again, I'll tell you the story of my ill-fated trek to meet the one-and-only Steve Perry, if I don't get any more death threats for telling the story :-/ |
| January 1st, 2005, 8:40 PM: Happy New Year! After letting this website gather dust for about 5 or so years, I've decided to sit down and make a few improvements to it. They're gonna be slow and gradual, but by the time I'm done, the viewing and listening experience should be greatly enhanced. For all of you audiophiles out there, I'm considering offering more music samples for your listening enjoyment. I don't know what style I'll put up. I may do a survey to see what you guys like out there. If there's a market, I may even consider [shudder] selling my music online! Here's to new Enterprises in 2005! |
| January 5th 2005, 11:46 AM: Apparently tomorrow when both houses of Congress meet to officially certify the Presidential Electoral Vote, there will be challenges by Representative John Conyers and at least six Senators. All it takes to delay the Electoral vote is one Representative and one Senator. Four years ago when Congress met to certify the 2000 vote, there were plenty of Representatives but no Senators who had the 'nads to challenge the vote. Apparently this time things are different; mostly stuff about voter suppression in Ohio, disenfranchised voters, rigged voting machines supplied by companies who were known Bush supporters, yada yada yada...... Oh, and by the way, Scott Peterson is innocent. His wife was murdered by one of his girlfriends in retaliation for Scott lying about not being married......he just happened to develop an interest in boating the same time his wife disappeared. Don't drink and drive on Viagra.... |
| January 7th, 2005, 10:14 PM: Starring Janice Jostle and Cheryl Shimmy. I feel I need to say a few things. The Republicans are corrupt and the Democrats are weak, and while they're busy bickering and fighting for power, the American people are too stupid to figure out that both sides have been playing them since day one. But don't worry, we'll figure it all out by the time the next big disaster hits the Western Hemisphere. |
| January 9th, 2005, 9:17 PM: I think I'll start a new church. In this new church, the female shall be revered as the holiest of holies. The female will be showered with love, respect and gifts. Every evening before going to bed, men shall kiss and massage the feet of their women, then massage their women's weary backs. And every man shall deliver no less than seven percent of his income to his woman for safe keeping towards their future..... ....on second thought, I'll just go to bed instead....Goodnight.... |
| January 17th, 2005, 9:15 PM: Power. Everybody wants it, but not everybody has it. If I had a choice between having more power and having more money, which would I choose? Money can get you more power, but power can get you more money too! Which is better? Personally, I'd rather have the power. Power doesn't rise or fall in value like money does... |
| January 19th, 2005, 4:58 PM: Boy, I'd sure like TOTO to play at my wedding. It'd cost an arm and a leg just to get them in the U.S. though, probably in excess of $50,000. I guess it's time to sharpen my fund-raising skills. I'll tell you folks what, help me raise the funds, and I'll send each of you out there an invite to the big event! Click on the icon on the right to donate... By the way, I've got some old issues of the Amazing Spider-Man for sale on ebay. Check out issue #39 here. |
| January 27th, 2005, 8:15 PM: Steve Perry, if you're reading this, PLEASE put out another album! PLEEEASE!!!!!!!!!! Journey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last Friday, and the last person anyone expected to show up showed up. That's right, the elusive Steve Perry himself came out of hiding to appear with the rest of the band on this special day. He looked pretty healthy, even gained a few pounds. I kinda wished he would have sang. I'm curious to hear how he sounds nowadays.... |
| January 31st, 2005: 3:05 PM: Rumor has it that Steve Perry has taken his hand at writing some movie scores lately, mostly independent films and such. I kinda figured he'd get into that lately. There are plenty of filmmakers out there who would kill to have him write their soundtrack. Just having the words "Music by Steve Perry" would sell more movie tickets. Now, if you're wondering where I got this info from, let's just say that word gets around ;-) |
| April 7th, 2005: 9:15 PM: Well folks, I figure the old blog is due for an update. Dennise and I have just secured financing on our first home together. It ain't gonna be a cheap one, that's for sure. We're in the process of raising money to pay off the closing costs, somewhere in the vicinity of $4000.00. For those of you with money burning holes in your pockets please feel free to donate. you can click on the Paypal Button to the left, or e-mail me at the address on my homepage if you're interested. As soon as I find some pictures of the house, I'll post them, if you're interested in seeing it. |
| June 8th, 2005: 5:41 PM: Our wedding is this Saturday, June 11th! If you're interested in the details, e-mail me for an invitation. It's gonna be a "budget" wedding; rather than spending gobs of cash on a whole catered affair, we're going to put all of our money into the house we're building. However, if you're interested in funding a full-fledged wedding and reception, there's still time! Just click on that "donate" button on the right of your screen..... |
| June 18th, 2005: 9:08 PM: WE'RE MARRIED!!!!!! That's right, ladies! You're too late! My beautiful bride and I were married on Saturday June 11th at 8:30 AM. With that said, here are some pictures of the house we're building. This is the back view of the foundation over the past 2 weeks. You might notice that the house across the street is being built a LOT faster than ours! WTF?!?!?! |
| Footing: Week 1 Foundation: Week 2, Day 1 Foundation: Week 2, Day 2 Foundation: Week 2, Day 3 Foundation: Week 2, Day 4 |
| June 29th, 2005: 5:59 PM: I'm sitting here listening to some song samples from the upcoming Journey album, and I must say this album is going to be HOT! It has something past and present Journey fans will enjoy. I wish they were playing in my neck of the woods this summer. I've seen the current lineup twice and they rocked the house both times. In other news, my wife and I have been busy making modifications to the house we're having built. Nothing too big, mostly adding windows, decorative design over a few front windows, adding a second sidelight around the front door, etc. My favorite mod of all: adding rounded columns to the front porch instead of the stock square ones. Actually the house itself is one big modification. There's another house with the same floor plan a couple of houses down, only it has siding instead of brick. We loved the inside of the house, but we didn't buy it because I HATE siding! I told the realtors that if they built it in brick, we'd buy it, so they did, and we did! If you want to see the current status of our house construction, click here. |
| July 11th, 2005: MY RETIREMENT PLAN Here's my step-by-step process on how to generate enough income to retire: 1. Save or generate $500,000.00 2. Place the money in a savings account that yields a minimum of 1% interest each month 3. Transfer the interest earned into a checking account each month 4. Use the interest to live each month. Easy as pie. If you don't believe it's that easy, then click on the link on the right side of the page, and leave a donation. Every time you do, you're contribuiting to my retirement account. Once you finish making a donation, then go start a website and start collecting donations too. Pretty soon, you'll make enough to retire and move next door to me ;-) |
| July 13th, 2005: MONOPOLOSTEIN I have created a Monopoly monster. My wife and I have been playing an ongoing game of Monopoly since Saturday. We just keep the game board set up and play on whenever we had time. Apparently my wife's sister taught her some "wrong" rules of playing, such as: when you run out of money, you have to sell your property (she didn't know she could mortgage), and you can't collect rent until you own all properties of one color. Since I've taught her the correct rules, she's put hotels on EVERYTHING and forced me to mortgage all of my properties every other turn! I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight >:-( |
| October 24th, 2005: My wife and I finally moved into our new house. I never realized how expensive moving into a new house could be. Sod, blinds, gutters, fence, etc. It's almost as expensive as the house itself. Lately I've developed a rather large dislike of debt. I don't really like using credit cards and financing anymore, and I hope not to have any revolving debt of any kind anymore within the next 2 years. I'd rather pay for things in straight cash. Just because you have credit available doesn't mean that you use it. |
| December 27, 2006: My blog page has moved over to Myspace! Check it out over here! |