Broncos vs Chargers in San Diego

At the game right now. Broncos just scored!

What a Great Day!

Wow, today has been good. It started off a little slow. The whole morning was anticipation. I was waiting for the 4 day weekend and awaiting news on the closing of the loft I have been trying to purchase since August 2003. So finally at 1:30 I find out we have funded and are going to be recorded around 4:30. Excitedly I called to find out if I can get the keys today. So while I'm waiting for the call that it's been recorded so I can go get my keys my boss calls me in for the yearly reviews. I have been working there for less than 3 months but to my suprise my boss gave me a $500 bonus, a sparkling review and a raise! Total unexpected icing on my cake today!

Here's a couple pics of the new loft:

It's similar to a duplex.


Kitchen area, yup those are 12 foot ceilings, great for tall people.


Master bath with double shower room.


This is a picture of the stained concrete floor from the second floor.


So if anyone knows someone looking for a styling $800,000 loft. Let me know we could work out a deal!

-Brad

Test site enuendos

I worked out at the test site this week and got to sit in on a meeting for setting off an undergound sub-critical nuclear explosion. I kept hearing statements that sounded like sexual enuendos, so I started jotting them down. Here's a few of them:

"i want clair to crank it 10 times in & out"
"activities down hole"
"activities up hole"
"probe insertion"
"shot system"

Larry the cable guy

At the show. So far pretty funny!

Xmas tree still up.

it Got a white frost overnight but held up well. Decided to give rob a game set I had around the house. Its still new in box.

Office christmas

here's my office christmas tree. I grew it today. It's carboard with crystal leaves. Kind of neat to watch grow through the day. We'll see how it lasts overnight.

Today we picked for secret santa at the office. I got my office buddy Rob as my giftee. I don't know what to get him. Supposed to be somthing around $15-$20. any ideas?

-brad

Nellis AFB

donovan loves airplanes. He's excited about these infront of nellis. He does the sign for airplane and says "paayne".

We're going to the BX and the comissary. The BX is cool. Its cheaper than wallmart and you don't pay any sales tax.

Made in the USA (not!)

I recently had a debate on shannons blog reguarding the productivity of the usa. The other person claimed that we had the largest GDP (gross domestic product) and therefore the US was more productive than lesser poor nations. My argument is that the productive people in society are usually the poor working class and so is the case on a country to country relationship. That is the poor countries perfrom the productivity that the US reaps the benefits. When looking into GDP I found that services count in the GDP. So while it may appear we have a large GDP, its really only so big because we perform _highly_ overpriced services for one anther here in the us. So that bellagio valet attendant who parked cars contributed an unrealistic $100,000 to our GDP. Same with the pimply teenagers who charge you $7.99 for your upsized combo meal at Jack in the box. A similar meal would cost you pennies in India and probably be more labor intensive to prepare.

I support my argument by identifying where the various belongings I use everyday are laborously created. Here's my list of what I have today.

Cell phone - taiwan
cell phne battery - korea
watch - japan
blue tooth headset - malaysia
ball point pen - japan
shirt - el salvador
shoes - brazil
jeans - bangledesh
underwear - el salvador
pocket knife - USA (ironic only my weapon is USA)
laptop cmputer - malaysia
scisors - china
coffe mug - china
desk fan - china
even my house was created largely by illegal immigrant labor.

how does your list come out? I would bet that 95% of everything you own was produced outside of our country.

its not that americans are productive it's the fact that americans are in control which makes our country rich.

-brad

Poker table poker table

Vanessa's in the final round of a 16 player game of hold'um. I brought my poker table over to bruce's house to assist in the tourney. Hope vanessa wins.

Ka tour

So we spent sunday afternoon taking a behind the scenes tour of MGM's Ka stage offered by our local chapter ASME (american society of mechanical engineers). Donovan had quite a bit of energy wanting to play with everything and get vocal. It was quite a chore between vanessa and I to keep him safe and quiet. The stage is quite impressive having a 130 ton movable/rotatable cantilevered platform. Now I want to go see the show. I hear from others that its pretty good. behind me in the photo are the acrobats wheel machines.

after the tour we stopped and had starbucks with marty and sara.

Baby down

My boy is starting to be a real kid. He's starting to get upset when he doesn't get what he wants. This morning he wanted vanessa's new phone and didn't get it so he threw himself into high speed wobbles, crying up a storm. After a bit of crying and never getting the phone he has decided to take a big nap. Grandma had fed him a big breakfast. So he should be ready to go this afternoon as we are taking a behind the scenes tour of th Ka theatres at MGM.

Lonnie hammargrin

We were at lonnie hammargrin's house last weekend. Man that place is huge and a huge mess. Thought this lightswitch was funny.

Hey, kat, jay and myself at the corn maze. Man that maze could have been so much better if they made it really spooky. Lots of other people came, probably everybody who reads my blog is here.

NOTE: Image upload failed; please try again later.

Andy... An unknown reader of my blog.

My desk

Now that I have my new phone i'll be able to post better pictures on my blog. Here is one of my desk at work.

Bradley Ward COME ON DOWN!!!

Alright set your VCR's/DVR's to 10am Monday morning. That's when you'll be able to see the largest man ever on the price is right. That's right, This is the broadcast from when I went on the show last august. You should be able to see Vanessa and my sister Celestia right behind me when I'm bidding on items. We're sitting about 5 rows back from the front center. We're all wearing the same Barb Barker white T-shirts with black short sleeves. Very nice artwork done by my sister on the shirts and I tried to show it off when I got called up.

Coming home

That's me and dick's pumping gas behind me. We just got done with a two day long training session in los alamos national laboratories. Man that training was long and lecturous. Plus I got sick the first day here. By the end of todays trainimg I was feverish and delerious. Hope I passed the test. It did seem overly simple training, so I prorba ly did pass. Can't wait to get back home.

Fat Man Cycling

So one of my half-brothers randomly contacted my sister about getting some artwork done for him. Turns out he's planning to cycle across the country in an effort to lose weight. It's weird to see the videos on his website fatmancycling . He looks like a mix between my full brother Aaron and myself. I think it's great he's going for this ride. Hopefully he succeeds and gets some kind of recognition. I think i'm going to buy one of his Tee-shirts from his website.

6 Months at home

Well today I'm starting a job for the first time in 6 months. I've been lucky enough to be a stay at home dad for the past 6 months seeing my boy Donovan grow from the top picture to the bottom picture.

last night in mississippi

From left to right vanessas dad jack, his wife glenda, vanessa and myself. Were standing on his slab at dusk. We got through about forty percent of his house in the time we were there. Now we are heading into oklahoma to see vanessas grandma before comming back to dallas for our flight late tonight.

repost bigger pic

37 year cycle

This sign was still standing amongst the rubble here in waveland. Once again this place has been wiped out.

whole neigborhood gone

This street was full of houses on both sides. Now just slabs and debris. The camera doesn't really do a good job of showing the whole picture. I think an arial photo might. We are able to drive around for miles on streets that look like this.

a house wiped clean

Don't know whose place but this ones gone.

jack's house

Vanessa, her dad Jack on his house. We tarped the gap between his cracked roof in an attempt to keep out tonights rain.

update

Well the moisture got to my phone last night and messed up all the keys. I managed to dry it out overnight. Luckly we're now holed up in a house with air conditioning. The electricity is wacky however and most things don't work. We tarped up vanessa's dads house of rubble since we will be getting about a foot of rain tonight thanks to gods little angel named rita which is coming to slay thousands more tomorrow night.

vanessa, myself and another lady judy (who is a volunteer postal woman) are keeping updated on the new hurricaine and thinking about leaving if it comes much closer. As it is we will definately be getting tropical storm winds and a small chance of hurricaine winds.

we've taken lots of pictures of the destruction with my camera. If I get more time ill try to shrink and post them using my treo. The devistation is massive here in bay st. Louis and in waveland. We have traveled into LA and over to gulfport where the damage doesn't seem as bad. ... Ok well more to come later...

more disaster pics

pretty messed up pics

Home sweet home

Here's the place we're staying. It was so damn hot all night. I woke up with pools of sweat over my eye balls and went out in our rental car to sleep. Turns out god's a real bitch, he not only sent in a massive hurricaine to take out the power. But now he's got record high temperatures here. I watched all night on the cars temp guage, never dipped below 94 deg.

mississippi wind

In mississippi now, about 40 miles from our destination. The woods along the freeway are getting more and more knocked down trees... Its kinda creepy. Its also getting dark now so I can't get a good pic.

No bid contract?

almost at hurricain central

We are about 25 miles west of baton rouge. Just went over this funky tall bridge. Should be at vanessa's dad's area in 2 hours. So far we have been seeing lots of FEMA trucks driving in portable home/shelters. There have also been several lumber trucks carrying small tree truncks piled up. Other than that there's plenty of bugs here (96F 90% humidity)

mississippi here we come..

So we left poor d-man with his grandma. We will be in dallas in 2 hours. From there we will be picked up by uncle yogi and get ready for the drive to mississippi.

more tiling...

Kitchen almost done tiling. Gonna have to wait for my trip to mississippi to get done.

hmm..

Nat and I after a long night sweating hard together.

Master bath completed

welcom to Nat's master bathroom in his condo. Just got done tiling this bathroom. Im getting good at this tiling thing. Maybe I should reconsider my career. I like being cheap immigrant labor.

I'm on Price is Right

Well my sparkling personality won me a spot on contestants row just a few minutes ago! Unfortunately I only had the chance to bid twice and didn't get past contestants row. I'll be on TV november 4th when the show airs.

More Car Tests on 95?

I saw some more "Test" cars on Highway 95 today. Again there was some kind of air flow sensor on the roof. There are two people per car. This time instead of sedans there were two SUVs. you can see the matt black concealment tarp more clearly in these pictures. So now I want to know more about this testing going on in Vegas and how I get in on this. Looks to me like they are testing new cars for fuel performance.

took my bike out for a ride on saturday with J. The bike rode great but is running rich. I think I'll have to adjust the carbs to run a little leaner. I also test drove J's 600 sport bike. Man the 600's have come a long way since I owned my 90's kawasaki 600. His bike had the power of my '96 kawasakin ninja 900. Perhaps even more power. Anyhow we rode up to Mount charleston all the way up to the helecopter pad where we took the photo from a passerby. Cant way to ride again.

Car testing?

As I was on highway 95 I passed a series of cars (about 5 sedans) which had some type of metal cylinder located on the rear of the roof hooked up to some electrical equipment and possibly other sensers. Now I assume the tube was somekind of Venturi air flow sensor. Most of the cars like the one in this photo had black matt tape around much of the car.

Anybody know what kind of testing they might have been doing?

What a Hamhock!

Got my cast off today. Well also had it put on today. It's a sizing cast of my knee area for a custom ACL brace. I should get the brace in a couple of weeks. This way I can get back to playing B-ball without juking my knee again.

Balloon grabber

Im just waiting for my sons doctor. Donovan climbed up on the chair and trying to reach what he thinks is a balloon. He even has a word for balloon but it sounds more like "mooon". Anyhow now he's discovered its not a real "mooon". He was also all over the elevator buttons here.

DMV sucks balls

Holy cow, I came here just before 5pm and im still waiting 2 hours later. These bastards shut down half the windows at 6 pm so the last 50 of us have to wait twice as long. I think I am the very last person to be served here today.

At least now i'll be ready to ride on the streets.

Back on the Saddle

Here's some pics of my new RoadStar. I found the ad in the Cycletrader.com website and called the owner. Turns out he was a Corrections officer for Metro. I fell in love with the bike right away. He was asking $8,000 for the bike. The next morning I called him up and offered him $7,500 for the bike as I did really like it. He accepted the $7,500 right away which really burned me up. I hate it when my first offer in negotiations is accepted. Anyrate I got the bike I wanted at what I think is a good price. The sound on this machine is wonderful, and it has torque for days. I can't wait to really break this thing open on the highway. I'll be insuring and registering it this week.

birthday eve present to myself

So I just bought this bike today. Its a yamaha road star. I'll post better pics later. This is just one I took with my phone so I could identify the intake filter.

hope J's ready for a ride.