5 hour energy drink

Yet another attempt at affiliate marketing. I’m not on the up-all-night schedule anymore, and never want to do that again.

Monday, May 26th, 2008

I work part-time as a late night delivery driver for a local pizza shop, and have tried all kinds of things to stay alert and productive until 3 or 4 a.m. Usually I drink lots of Mountain Dew (free and full of calories) or an energy drink. I like the serious ones with about 200 mg of caffeine + the herbs etc.

But, all that caffeine meant that I was up and wired when I got home and couldn’t sleep well, even though I had to be up in 2-3 hours with the kids. Skipping a night’s sleep is o.k. now and then, but I sure get grumpy and short-fused.

Last night I decided to try one of those 5-Hour Energy [that was an amazon affiliate link] for the first time. I’m not real sure how much I paid for it, I was reeling from filling the gas tank and didn’t pay close attention.

When describing the 5-Hour Energy feeling, some people say it’s “like the sun coming up in my head.” That’s because when you’re feeling groggy and lethargic, 5-Hour Energy wakes up your brain and gets you back to feeling the way you want to feel bright, alert, focused and energetic. What you won’t feel is jittery, or crash. That’s because, unlike other energy drinks, 5-Hour Energy doesn’t jack you up with sugar, caffeine and herbal stimulants. Instead, it’s packed with stuff that’s good for you B-vitamins, amino acids and enzymes. To get anything out of those canned energy drinks you have to force down a lot of liquid up to 24 ounces for some of them. It takes just seconds to slam down a 2-ounce 5-Hour Energy …

The rest of this post is lost

Hellraiser movie series

Back then, Netflix was all by mail. Also I have no memory of any of the movies after the first one. Maybe there was one in space with a mirror box? Time for a rewatching.

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

I get on theme kicks with Netflix. Recently I’ve added all the “Hellraiser” series to watch after the family goes to bed. The first one is a classic horror movie. Clive Barker created characters and monsters and a story that just stay with you.

Spoiler Warning…..

If you’ve never seen it, Hellraiser is based around a little puzzle box that opens the gates of hell to the person who solves the puzzle. Demons – disfigured and tortured humans, come for you and “tear your soul apart!!” Usually with sharp hooks on the end of chains that sprout from the darkness beyond.

In the first movie. a few drops of blood on the floor re-animate a body devoured by these demons. His lover lures men and bashes their brains in so the zombie thing can eat them to regain his flesh … supposedly to finish escaping hell once and for all. Lots of gore, good creature effects and, of course, Doug Bradley as the “Pinhead” demon who becomes iconic of the series. (non affiliate link)

The second and third pretty closely follow the first, but suck. #4 took the story line into the future and past at the same time, trying to explain and end the story and failing in both tasks.

Episode 5 gets interesting again. It follows a bad cop’s nightmare life, which turns out to be his own personal hell because he opened the box and is now totally screwed. This one is much more of a character film than just gore and screwed-up sidekick monsters. Actual actors and a story made for an enjoyable night of psychological horror, rather than gore and screaming.

Episode 6 was even better. Good actors again, a story that twist and turns, jumps and screams and reveals the ending (which we kinda figured knowing the history of these films). Here’s a hint… the hero isn’t really good and gets what he asked for.

VII kicked much ass. More gore (and a little old-school nudity) and still phsyco-thriller. We get glimpses into the heroine’s dark past, and she manages to foil the plot of two different bad guys. But it still sucks to be her.

There’s still one more episode to go, but I thought I’d kick this review out while I was thinking about it. One of the features showed an interview with Doug Bradley (The guy under the pins) and he said something like “you find a formula for movies like this that work. Then you repeat it again and again and again and again.” Then he says that they managed not to do that. if you subtract episodes 2 and 3, He’s right. The “pinhead” character plays a minor role in each of the films. Much less than your “typical” horror-movie-monster. Pretty much pinhead comes in flashes to spook you, then shows up at the end to let someone know the show’s over. Your in hell now. The story’s have been pretty varied and kept me interested. Although saying “I was watching Hellraiser 7 before coming in to work” does raise eyebrows, I’m enjoying the trip through the box and looking forward to the next one.

Posted in Fun | No Comments »

Sansa C250

April 21st, 2008

I picked up a new mp3 player the other day. It had good reviews at newegg, 2gig flash memory and a 1 gig microSD all for under $30.

To sum up the review so you can get on with life … it’s a piece of crap. Don’t get it.

First of all, it seems to be of a new generation of media device that is recognized as a media device and only lets you transfer music through Napster or the Microsoft player .. whatever it’s called. I don’t use either and could not figure how to just drag music over on the the player, unplug and play.

Ubuntu recognized the device and let me move files over. Then when I unplugged it would get stuck (as it is now) on a screen that says “Refresh Database” and stay there. Tech support had me connect the device by

  1. Power down device
  2. Slide “hold” button to right (on)
  3. Hold left search key (previous)
  4. Connect to USB

Now windows recognizes it as a USB device. Then he tells me to reformat the drive in FAT32 (it was FAT16). Now it works. great. I’m happy.

So I load up almost 3gigs worth of songs and take it to work for an 8 hour shift driving around. And hear “Crisis” and “Corruption Inc.” over and over and over again. It looks like the device only recognized 86 songs to play. (they both have myspace pages I refuse to link to)

Feck.

So I take it home, reformat the device and the microSD. Great it boots again. Load music. great it’s happy still. Load up the device, disconnect … “Refresh Database.”

DAMMIT

I’m just going to call Sansa and tell them to send me something better, or the version 1 of the device so at least I can load Rockbox on it (oh yeah. I tried that too. turns out V2 is incompatible at the moment.)

At least my ipod is handy as a paperweight. This one is complete crap. OH! and the screen got scratched before I even took it out of the house to listen to it. Just sitting around on my desk it got scratched!

Like I said at the beginning. Don’t get it, it’s a waste of time.

Why I’m vegetarian

April 16th, 2008

When people ask me why I’m a vegetarian, I usually say “for a variety of reasons. It’s a better ecological choice, but mostly I’m trying to bring more peace into my life, and killing animals is just not peaceful” or something to that effect.

This article makes me really glad that I’ve stuck to my decision … no matter how good steak smells.

Sickened pork workers have new nerve disorder
By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Eighteen pork plant workers in Minnesota, at least five in Indiana and one in Nebraska have come down with a mysterious neurological condition they appear to have contracted while removing brains from slaughtered pigs, U.S. researchers and health officials said on Wednesday.

…

He said tests showed patients had damage to the nerves at the root level near the spinal cord, and at the far reaches of their motor nerves, where the nerves connect with muscle

….

Lachance said it is possible that bits of pig brain stimulated an immune response in the bodies of the workers, causing their immune systems to improperly attack their own nerve tissue.

There are strong arguments to support local, small farming and

[the rest of this post got eaten by the webmonster]

[also, I’m not a vegetarian as of 2020 or so]

Eddy’s first post

I tried for a while to save the domain names for our kids, and run a blog about each of them. This is from Eddy’s

Eddy Glen
April 7th, 2008 at 12:47 pm (Uncategorized)

Eddy wanted to write a story with my squishy, yellow, silicone keyboard. So here it is.
-pb

HI IAM EDDY WO IS 5/. I DSIDED THAT IM GOWG TO HAVE A STARWARS SHOW TOMORO!

Comments

A lightsaber story
September 16th, 2007 at 5:11 pm (Uncategorized)

A lightsaber is a weapon only for Jedis and Darth Vader uses it. And Luke Skywalker uses it. It’s nickname is a “Lazer Sword.”

Han used Luke’s lightsaber on Hoth to cut open a Taun-tan. A Taun

Ruth says

Friday, March 28th, 2008

We all sat down to figure out what Ruth can say.

At 19 months, Ruth can say (pretty closely anyhow) the following:

Mom, Dad, Eddy, “Owie”, stuck, butt, asleep, red, fish, eat, “B” (for Ernie), “B” (for bird), mine, please, thank you, me, no shoes, toes, down, help, woof-woof, meow, wet, poop, hop, oops, wow, ear, noes, eyes, soup, shirt, juice, bottle, book, read, hi, bye-bye, moo, ball, hello, push, pull, hot, “ah-ah” (for count), fall, snow, nope, teeth, beautiful, back pack, pea, bite, food, stop, go, share, Here you go, hat, baby, frog, swing, uh-huh, boy, “elephant noise”, “rooster noise”, duck, “peek a boo”, peekaboo, doll, tickle, boo boo, up, choo choo, sit, outside, feet, sick, …

She can sign:
Owie (hurt), asleep, red, fish, eat, bird, Please, thank you, shoes, food, stop, share, hat, baby, frog, boy, blanket, sorry, blocks, more, build, bear, car, paper, draw, bunny, cracker, potty, brush teeth, sad, awake, grumpy, bath, “StarWars (made up sign), “bottle” (her own sign), cheese, apple, candy, cold, milk, cookie, caterpillar, monkey, gorilla, tiger, train, popcorn, dirty, pig, surprised, all-done, school, play, penguin, stinky, cereal, owl, thirsty,

that we can remember.

Posted in Ruth | 2 Comments »

Let’s take a walk in the snow

Eddy convinced me to go for a picnic on a beautiful sunny day in the park. There was still snow on the ground, but it was definitely getting soggy.
The boy and the dog took a walkabout while Ruth sat in the snow and ate fistfuls of it. Then, to get moving, I put her on my shoulders …

As you can see, she alternates from cutesy wootsy to “DOWN! DOWN!!” demanding.

I need to remember to take vid in higher resolution….

Eddy reads to Ruth

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

“BOOO”

“Ruth, do you want me to read that book?”
“mm hmm.” [nods]
“I’m cooking right now. Can Eddy read it?”
“mm hmm.” [trots off]
“Eddy, could you read that book to your sister?”
“Why should I?!”
“‘Cause that’s what good big brothers do.”
“Oh… OK.”

the mic on the camera’s not so good, so turn up your volume a little to hear them.

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