I'm a sucker for great customer service

I believe his name is Mike. He owns / manages the sunglass hut in the mall in Olympia. For years (since I was 18 and first spent an ungodly amount of money on sunglasses) as I've lost either lost, destroyed or had my sunglasses stolen, I've gone back to Mike to buy another pair. Also, when I worked at Software Etc., right across from the Sunglass Hut, we would occasionally have some neat conversations.

Anyways, just a couple days ago I took my old Revo's to him (they are probably 3, maybe 4 years old) because a screw had popped out. Gladly, he went to work on them, without a thought of charging me a single cent. Once they were back together he noticed my frame was slightly bent and wanted to attempt to bend it back just a bit so the lens would pop out again. Unfortunately at this point, my already compromised Revo lens completely cracked in his hands.

Without missing a beat he just looked up and said, "oh well, go grab yourself a new pair". Of course, I wasn't sure if I wanted to drop another $250 on a pair a revo's minus however much he was going to give me for my old damaged ones. Though Mike had no intentions of ever charging me a cent.

So, I have to say, as I sit here enjoying my Revo's (pictured above), I am totally a sucker for great customer service, and will continue to go back to Mike.

I know I promised..

I know I promised you all no new pictures of the house until after the house warming, but I lied. What I meant to say was no new full pictures of the house. I think its completely in the spirit of my comment if I say, post pictures that'll just tease you a bit.

Enjoy




The double vanity in the master bath.




Can faucets be sexy? I sure hope so, or I'm just very weird.




The entry way. As seen if you're my mom without her glasses.




The downstairs bathroom pedestal sink




Stainless Steel (inside and out) dishwasher. Was one of my guilty pleasure purchases.

As promised, drag pictures...

---Pictures are clickable for larger sizes, just incase you actually wanted a closer look. I don't question your sanity. You're here; you're already insane---

Nothing like the hardcore stare-down of the defense. Be afraid, be very afraid.




Serious baseball I tell you. SERIOUS!




My *official* "Oh darn, I think that ball is going foul" face. Again, drag, kids bat, and gratuitous pointing at my own ass, bonus points.




Nothing like a one handed, drag clad, hit!




I declare this the end of the best "Photo Monday", ever.

Interesting...

The real story starts on the 5th paragraph. A man, at JFK airport was ask to cover up his shirt that said, "We will not be silent".

Because it was written in Arabic.

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2006/08/back-from-mideast.html

I'm appauled.


"you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank". I said "but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says "we will not be silent". I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at wewillnotbesilent@gmail.com . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc."

Slacker!

I really can't believe its been a week since I posted anything. I seriously thought my last blog was Thursday, maybe even Friday of last week. I would first like to shed blame on this travesty by laying culpability to both Bozo softball weekend (company softball tournament) and Nicole. And to answer your most recent question, Yes, google is now running all their blogs through an auto-thesaurus in an attempt to slowly educate the world. ;-)

For those that don't know, Bozo is a little get together put on by a lot of the energy specialist in the state. Its really just a reason to have a great time, laugh, and play some softball. Some of the rules are, "If you happen to get a hit, and it nocks over someone's beer, you're out", or, "If you have too many men in your lineup, some men will have to wear drag and bat one handed".

Yes, there are pictures of me in drag.

No, I don't have them yes.

Yes, I will actually post them (hey, I looked damn good in a full length floral orange skirt).

Oh, yeah. We won the tournament.


The house is looking great; though I'm done posting pictures of it for now. Why? Because I want you all to actually show up for my house warming. =) I know, its slightly evil of me, and for those of you that are too far away, I will have plenty of pictures post house warming of my new humble abode.

Some nerd

I don't think I've had enough Nerd on this blog lately, so time to nerd it up a bit today. =)

Lets start with Project Offset. Its a new game design / engine that is going to be set in an "epic fantasy world" (okay, not very unique, think Lord of the Rings), rendered at movie quality (fairly unique, but we'll see), and played as a First Person Shoot (think Doom - very unique for this genre).

The videos are what are really amazing. They are huge in size; but if you're a huge nerd its worth the time. =)

Item #2. Snowflakes

You remember them. It was kindergarten, and you did all these pretty cuts and mangled the paper - yet somehow you opened it up and it was magically a snowflake.
Well, no longer do you have to make the mess! You can make your own online. And show of your snowflake skills to your friends.

Item #3. High Resolution Desktop images.

This one is simple. Its sometimes very hard to find pictures that are extremely high quality, good composition, and work well as backgrounds for your computer. Specially if you have a large monitor. Well, for those of you that care - check out this site

Okay, I feel sufficiently nerdified.

Photo Monday (8/14)

(All shots are clickable for larger size)



Okay, so that's not the view from my house, but that is Tacoma. Not bad in my opinion


I think I'm really starting to like my kitchen



Kitchen flooring color



Loft and master bedroom



I think I need more plugs in my kitchen



Kitchen to Garage.

More.... Please

I could say a ton of things on how cool rally racing is, how its one of the best motersports, how we need more of it in the states; but at least its now part of the X Games, and I don't think its going away.

/ Cheer

Tweek your brain a litte

UFOs. Yes. UFOs. I know what you're thinking. Wow, Bryce has gone a bit crazy today.

Very true. If I were to sit here and talk to you about UFOs, you could call me crazy, and I'd agree. But how about Buzz Aldrin (you might remember him from Apollo 11).




Interesting enough in my opinion.

And the second item to tweek your brain. A game. There is a timer on the left side, and a timer on the right side. Answer a question on each side to reset the timer to full. One side you'll be doing basic math. The other side you'll be adding colors together. Either one is fairly easy, but when your brain has to jump back and forth between left and right side functions - its really tough.

My best score is 60 (though, honestly, I normally can barely break 40). Post your scores. =)

Tweek your brain

Photo Monday (8/7)

Okay, I know its kind of cheating if all I do it post pictures on Monday. The problem is I was out of town from basically Thursday on. Up at the cabin finally getting the server online (I think this was supposed to be my Dad's 2004 Christmas present... Seriously), then helping a friend move in Spanaway to South hill, then finish my Grandpa's computer and getting it boxed up, then to cap the weekend both of my softball teams played double headers on Sunday (yes, that would make 4 games in 1 day; I hurt).


For all the pictures of the extended weekend, go here: Easy Click There are both pictures from the cabin, and some of my house (Textured, painted, and light fixtures in!).

Proof!:


Subject change! There's a show called Top Gear in the UK that does a number of very good car reviews, and occasionally a car challenge. I recently watch one where the host of the show attempts to drive an Audi, with a twin turbo V8, with its stock 19.6 gallon tank, 800 miles. I'm not going to tell you how it ends (I'll like the videos below, if you really want to watch), but I was inspired to see what type of gas mileage I could get in my car. I notoriously get barely 20 mpg. With the trip up to the cabin I did everything I could (following a lot of Clarkston's examples from the show), and in my STi I managed 26.4 mpg.

Now, being the numbers guy I am, I just had to figure it out. I have 30,000 miles on my car. As I said, a very modest 20mpg has been my normal average, and since I have to put premium in the car, $3 bucks a gallon is again, very modest.

All that being said, driving my car the way I have wanted to over nearly the last two years has cost me $1,090.91. Sometimes I really wish I wasn't so big into numbers.

But wait! Lets say my average trip was 20 miles. Let also say that the different driving styles the slightly more "fun" one would have got me to my location on average 3 minutes quicker. So, 1500 trips, 3 minutes each, 4500 minutes saved (75 hours). So, 75 hours, into 1090 bucks..... Is my time worth $14.54 per hour?

You bet your bacon. I'm really glad I'm big into numbers.


And as promised, 800 Mile challenge (part 1, total time ~16 mintues, very worth it imo):



Part 2: