Right now the computer is in disarray and the second bedroom is covered with drop cloths. I am posting from the laptop and using the next door neighbors unsecured wireless.

Yesterday my father-in-law helped me move the computer desk into our bedroom, and with that we were ready to start painting the baby’s room. I spent the whole day today painting, and I’m only about half done. If it weren’t for stupid paint we would be all done. We tried to do green/brown to match the baby bedding, but the “brown” didn’t look brown at all. It looked peach….or sometimes white…on rare occasion tan, but never brown. We went back to All-American and bought a smaller can of another brown color to try, but when I got home it looked even worse. I’ve decide to do 2 or 3 walls green, and the remaining will go back to Swiss Coffee. Moral of the story is that coordinating paint colors via paint swatches is a pain in the butt. Everything in our house is basically a color and “white.” If I ever want to do two colors in one room, I’ll stick to some of the pre-made color combos they have. None of this “do these two go together?” nonsense.

Tomorrow I plan to paint more and finish what I started, and we’re also getting a 3D baby ultrasound thing done where you can see the alien baby in all it’s glory. More on that later.

No, this post has nothing to do with Al Gore winning a peace prize for something that has nothing to do with peace. I have two new commercials to complain about.

The first is a Disney commercial. It’s advertising the Halloween decorations, and features a young girl flying around on her broomstick. At one point she flies by a man and steals his candy apple! What the crap? Just because you’re at Disneyland and everything is magical, it’s OK for you to fly by on your broom and steal a man’s dessert? Pathetic.

The second is a Hometown Buffet commercial. Apparently the man has to clean up the leaves on his front lawn before they can go to dinner. To accomplish this task he blows the leaves onto his neighbors lawn. Unethical, but I could live with this. On a second viewing of the same stupid commercial, he blows something through his neighbors window and breaks it! Again, what the crap? Is Hometown Buffet suggesting it’s OK to damage your neighbors property as long as it means you eat at their restaurant?

The ethical state of affairs within the advertising industry is frightening.

There are yard sales and garage sales, but it seems the "ebay sale" has not become a part of our lingo yet. If it does, it will come to mean what a yard sale or garage sale does, except all done on ebay. I’m not one of those people that is constantly selling on ebay, but instead I sell a bunch of stuff all at once very rarely. Since now is one of those times, I thought I’d share my listing with you and the stories attached to each item.

1) 90 Used Tennis Balls in Great Condition

You may wonder why we have this many tennis balls to begin with. Originally we bought them on ebay for Stacie’s classroom to put on her chair legs so they would slide around nice and quietly. Literally a day or two after we got them, someone went through all the classrooms and put sliders on the feet of everyone’s chair. That’s nice of them, but now we had a box of tennis balls and no use for them.

2) Winegard Squareshooter HDTV Antenna SS-2000 Amplified

Originally when we moved into the townhouse I didn’t realize there was an antenna in the attic, so I got this guy and had it put up outside. About 6 months ago though they started to redo the roofs, and our antenna was "illegally" mounted. I knew it would have to come down, but "how" I wasn’t sure. I was hoping the roof guys would just take it off for me. One day though the next door neighbors were having their satellite dish moved, so I paid the guy $20 to just take ours off (because by then I’d put a new antenna in the attic).

3) Nintendo GameCube Console Indigo w/Controller/Component

I know, selling videogames can be quite shocking! The reason I’m selling it though is because I have a ton of AMEX reward points, and one of the best ways to renew them is for giftcards to Toys R Us. I did that today, and plan on using the money to buy a Nintendo Wii. The nice thing about the Wii is that it plays gamecube games, so everything in that listing I will no longer need. The only downside of this plan is that Toys R Us is the only place I can get the system, and who knows when they’ll have them in stock.

4) Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP Classic NES w/Case

What Nathan, two videogame sales in one post? Yup. I decided to sell this system and get Stacie a pink DS Lite. The DS can play old game boy games, so that makes this system unneeded. I’m hoping it fetches a premium for being a "limited edition" version. The DS can also talk to the WIi…for what reason I’m not sure, but it could come in handy.

5) Firefly PC Remote Snapstream Media Beyond TV USB

The least exciting of the listings, but oh well. Part of my HD recording solution was to buy Beyond TV to schedule and record my shows. For whatever reason they had to bundle this remote with it. Because I use the Snazio box downstairs to watch the shows Beyond TV records, I don’t need this remote. Not very exciting, but there it is.

This all reminds me of great ebay buying and selling of the past. Hopefully other people will be motivated to start this new trend of having an Ebay Sale.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I called the cops last night on our annoying neighbors. In our complex the backyard/patio areas are very close to one another. If you stand in your backyard and speak in a regular voice, it can be heard with the windows closed in a neighboring unit.

What happens is people aren’t courteous and don’t even bother to think about how their actions might be affecting those around them. I’ve been documenting their behavior for about a month now and this is the fourth time they’ve been outside past 11 pm making a bunch of noise. And I’m not talking about a few minutes here and there, but HOURS of them congregating when other people are trying to sleep. When you’re lying in bed trying to sleep you can withstand the random conversation or accidental noise, but the continuous talking and disruption is unbearable.

Last night I was fed up and called the cops. About 15 mins later they’d gone inside (11:30 pm), and by the time the cops came it was an hour after I called (12:15 am). Hopefully now they realize that they annoyed a neighbor enough to have them call the cops.

I thought the light in the kitchen was burnt out.
We go to All-American and purchase new lights.
I come back home and plugin the light.
Stacie flips the switch, it does not work.
I try a bulb that I know works.
Stacie flips the switch, it does not work again.
I go back to All-American and buy a new ballast.
I put in said ballast.
Miraculously it works! I feel so proud.

In a totally unrelated case….

Idiot neighbors won’t shut up.
I call police.
An hour later they show up.

Since dogs and annoying neighbors was the focus of my last post  , I decided to post about the anti-barking device that we purchased.

Originally we started with a collar device that emits a piercing sound each time the dog barks. It worked, and the dog stopped barking. The problem is, because she wears it around her neck, it was often set off by her movements. The microphone had only one level of sensitivity, and because it was going off when it shouldn’t, the dog started to fear going outside (where that sound always occurred).

After this we tried a device that simply sits out in the backyard, and it has been much better. It’s called the Bark Smart (deluxe version has a counter and timer, we went for the cheaper one). Because she doesn’t wear this device there are very few erroneous triggers. It also has three levels of sensitivity which is nice. It also can run off batteries, so we can keep it outside all the time, even in the rain (AC adapter can’t be used outside which is dumb).

Overall a really great product, and definitly worth the $25 for the cheaper one.

Today is Windows Movie Maker and PowerPoint day! Luckily he gave us headphones so we could edit movies, but I’m using them to listen to www.christianrock.net.

My teacher says lots of silly things everyday, but something he said today was by far his greatest quote to date. We were practicing recording using the "sound recorder" with mics, but not everyone had mics. When someone asked about this my teacher responded as follows:

"You can use your headphone as a microphone, you just have to talk louder."

I am not lying, he really said that. As soon as I heard it I started laughing and wrote it down. He probably misspoke, but it is a heck of a lot funnier to think that is what he really meant.

I haven’t had anything of a political nature on here in a few days, but I have something good for you. A big lie pushed by some crazy liberals is that government run healthcare would be super! This is something the Green Party believes in, and I pointed that out to Mike a couple months back. Our nutty neighbors to the north, Canada, have a government run healthcare system in place. It is ILLEGAL for a citizen to pay for medical procedures or health care, and the system is a disaster. Out of all things crazy and liberal, this is one thing I fear the most.

A site called On the Fence Films has a video about how crazy this would be called Dead Meat. It discusses how people wait months, even YEARS for medical procedures we can have done in the states within days. People from Canada are coming here for medical needs, what does that tell you?

If you’ve looked at the photo blog you’ll notice that one of my neighbors has decided to block off the public street in front of their house with cones. I have a new hypothesis for their illegal activity: to show off their Christmas lights.