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.

This is a pic I took from Grandma's cell phone and moblogged it for posterity.

We Got a Climber!

These are just some pics I've taken over the past couple of days. Donovan's become a real inquisitive climbing boy. He's suprising me daily with what he can do.

The Journey concert was about 3.5 hours long with an intermission. They played a lot of their new stuff which wasn't nearly as thrilling as the 30 minutes of classic Journey songs they played. Vanessa and I think that the band must have a sore spot for the Steve Perry classics and didn't seem to want to let the "Perry Imitator" out to use his great voice except for their obligatory classic Journey songs. The music was VERY loud at the Aladdin both times I've been there. Journey did sound pretty good, way better than the Spellbinder we saw there a couple of weeks prior.

I think im getting better at this concert thing. I didn't have the usual testosteroneal urge to jump on-stage and savagely beat the performers to death. Maybe it was because we were up on the balcony and couldn't make out the performers faces. That and the lead singer had dance moves that were very akward and effeminate, reduced the urge.

Re: Blogger Mobile Post

Vanessa and I are at the journey concert at the alladin. Waiting for the show to start. Oh its starting now.. They're raffling off a motorcycle designed by arlen ness. Nice bike except all the journey airbrushing on it.

My first real Moblog

So I'm at meadows mall and Donovan is enjoying the gymboree playground here. This is the first time he's climbed the airplane. He's getting very mobile. He loves to play here but I need to constantly watchout for him. There are so many big kids (well over the under 42" max height) that jump around wildly. I've also noticed a lot of other kids like to hit and push. It must be learned from siblings and/or parents. Maybe Donovan is just too young.

A Mural is Born!

Yay! Donovan's Mural is finally completed. Celestia came over this morning and back again tonight. As of 10:30pm the mural is completed. She put in a LOT of work. Vanessa and I both are very impressed. Even Donovan has been admiring the mural yelling "CAUURRR! CAUURR!" and pointing.
This wall is my new favorite of the mural. It includes a pack of beavers building a damn, a school of fish taking the bus to school, and a frog in a helicopter. The darker green portion of the mural on the lower half is a spray on chalk board for Donovan to draw on. It's nice and fresh in the photo. I'll be breaking it in tomorrow by rubbing chalk all over it, so I thought I'd get a nice crisp photo before then.
This photo shows the closet side of his room including the Pig policeman holding his Starbucks and donut. We got some wood letters from wall-mart to spell his name out as seen in the second photo. We'll probably be adding somthing to each side of his name like his hand-print and foot-print.

My friend and business partner, Martin had his wedding last night. It was done in a traditional Pakistani way according to his wife's family traditions. Most of the reception was Martin and Sara sitting up on stage on a couch while everyone went up and took photo's with them and talked. The food was middle eastern and good as long as you could get work through all the bones in the meats.

My favorite part was the montage of both groom and brides life up to this point. Another part which was tradition was for the kids to steal Martin's shoe and force him to haggle over a price to buy it back. Then the kids used the shoe money to haggle Martin into drinking some sour milk.

Anyhow, my first muslim wedding experience.

Nothing too new

Yesterday I turned in my application to metro for Dispatch Specialist Trainee. That's basically a 911 operator that also uses the police radio. I'm not sure how much I'd like working there but at least it would be a drastic change from the world of engineering. In a couple of weeks i'll be taking the tests to rank for the position. Time to start studying.
Celeste came over and continued on the mural. she now has just one big wall left to blackline. its also the wall I need to finish sanding and get the chalkboard paint on. I should be able to get that done today.

Another Day of My Life

Today was a typical day for me of late. My sister came over this morning and continued on Donovan's Bedroom mural. It's looking real nice and Donovan really seems to notice the characters on the wall. The mural should be done by the end of this weekend as long as I can find some green chalkboard paint. Seems like all the paint stores have only the Black chalkboard in stock.

After my sister left, and Vanessa came home, I was off to my last day of therapy. I wonder how much therapy sessions cost if you don't have insurance? A normal session consists of high school kids doing an ultrasound and massage and then a physical therapist oversees me doing some excersizes. Seems like somthing that "should" cost around $15.99 but is probably much more.

Shooting Past Apex

Finally got to go shooting up past apex this morning. Tried out my new guns and do really like my colt .357 magnum. The area where "we" go shooting has changed. They put up a fence around the pond-like backdrop you see in the photo above. The fence was easy to bypass and didn't say anything about tresspassing. There were a couple of signs for "no dumping" and "no woodcutting bird sanctuary". The pond was also completely empty. There were some birds and a few jackrabbits around the area.

My little sister Jolene was in town and just started to shoot this past month so she wanted to go out into the desert and shoot because in virginia she's unable to do outdoor shooting. The temperature was a pleasant 90 degrees with a breeze and cloudy shade until about 9am when the sun came out and it got hot-muggy.

-Brad

Wynn's Rip-off Hotel

Thought I would get another post up since it's been nearly 10 days. I finally got to go see the Wynn hotel on my brother's last night here in vegas. I was dissapointed. It was not so grand or amazing like I had been lead to believe by the hype. Everything was overpriced ($24 for a ferrari ceramic mug, $8 for a rum&coke) for just okay quality and service. None of the employees seemed to smile. Nothing really seemed new or ground breaking to me. The ferrarri's were the best part. However, the showroom was roped off from the gift shop, and the lights shut off.. WTF, can't they at least turn the freak'n lights on so we can see the damn cars?

We watched the water display, while content with the soft-core presentation of the spanish dancer in her thong, the giant bulbous head that sprung forth from the water was greatly out of place and distracted from the overall presentation (sorry fisher). Plus in order to go outside to see the show there was a rip-off 1 drink minimum of Way over-priced alcohol.

We stopped at an overpriced store called Gizmos which had varios techno geek stuff. The store did have a lot of Ipod fad-ware stuff, but otherwise they had a small selection of crappy digicams and novelty junk one would normally get through a mail-order catalogue.

Even the landscaping was dissapointing. The large water wasting waterfalls were built very cubic to give a very non-natural look. The Wynn's real trees were planted in a very repeatable pattern that was very un-natural and made the whole place look hokey. They also had Astroturf out front. Can you fucking believe it, Astroturf? Not even the nice looking synthetic grass that is widely available. The mirage did a way better job landscape wise.

Overall I had the feeling I just watched a very hyped up movie that turned out to be very mediocre, which made it that more dissapointing. I give the Wynn hotel a C- rating.

New Legware

Got my Robocop leg hooked up. Physical therapy was good today except for using their whirlpool tub where they had me precariously positioned on a highchair with one leg dunked in a tank. It really didn't work that well and the therapist suggested we just use heat packs in the future. I'm impressed by the comfort and functionality of the knee brace.

In other news, my brother Aaron is comming into town tonight and will be staying at my place for a week.