Dear Diary,

In my never-ending quest to better your life and mine, I’ve taken the advice of newfound brother from another mother, J-rad, a.k.a. Jared, a.k.a. Jaref (by Hugo).  What advice was this you ask Diary?  Well, the advice was to watch Red Eye.

For those of you not in the Red Eye Know, Red Eye is the best show on the Fox News Channel (yes, I know this doesn’t say much), however, it is also one of the most entertaining shows on television.  Take 2 parts crude humor, combine with 3 parts current events, pour into an emulsion of  comedians and journalists and you have yourself a recipe for Red Eye Awesomeness.  If its above description and its 3am time slot don’t already tell you, this show is not for the children.

If you are a night owl or own a Tivo, I highly recommend you check it out.  Even Leah approves.

09-24-07 007
Originally uploaded by The Luck Family

Dear Diary,

Behold, the fruits of my labor. Leah did help with the painting, but I claim credit for everything else (which is essentially the crown molding).

Not a great shot there (I couldn’t really back up far enough the room is so small) so there are some more here.

Please keep in mind all of these were taken at like 1:30am, which is when we actually finished this project (having started 14 hours or so earlier).

Dear Diary,

This past weekend I toiled away all day every day putting up crown molding in Brody’s soon to be nursery.  Diary, I must be honest with you (am I ever not?), it was not a lot of fun.  Where should I begin as I tell you about it?   Was it my woefully inadequate tools that made this seemingly simple task so difficult?  My serious lack of any carpentering experience?  My ‘I do it my own self’ attitude?  Perhaps it was all three.

Regardless of WHY, lets just say that I was barely up to the task of getting this job done (and even that remains to be seen once it is painted – Leah is skeptical).  Out of concern for you my dearest Diary I wanted to give you some tips should you ever need to install crown molding.

What to do when your wife asks you to install crown molding:

1. Refuse.
2. Seriously, you do not want to take this on.
3. Divorce is easier than crown molding.

What to do if you cannot convince your wife that you don’t need crown molding:

1. Cutting:
   • If you do not have a power miter saw, RENT one.  If you do have one, its probably not nice enough anyway, rent a more expensive one.  Only the mentally challenged attempt to use a hand saw.  Also, hire someone to operate said power saw.
   • Do not use your child’s changing table as a work bench.  Shockingly, a 3ft wide table doesn’t work well for cutting 8ft long pieces of wood.  Instead, hire someone who has a workbench.
   • Wood?  Yes, do not buy wood ‘composite’ crown molding.  Cheaper?  Sure! Huge headache?  Abso-freaking-lutely!  If you are concerned about cost, stop now.  You will only succeed in taking 10 years off your life expectancy.  Instead, hire someone to buy your wood for you.
2. Attaching to the wall:
   • Do not fit inside corners with 2 45 degree angled pieces.  No corner in your house is angled at 90 degrees.  None.  Instead, fit one piece flush and cope the other fitting piece.  Coping is a very simple process (they would have you believe) sure to only take you 4 hours per corner.  Hire someone.
   • Do not attempt to use a nail set to get your nails below the wood surface.  Instead of holding a tiny nail set and trying to hit the center of a nail head that is < 1/8 of an inch wide, rent or buy a nail gun.   Also, hire someone to use the nail gun.
   • Do not attempt to attach the wood to the wall without someone helping you hold it.  Instead, hire 2 people.  One to hold and one to nail (gun).
3. Fixing your mistakes:
   • If you have taken my advice so far, you won’t have any mistakes.  If you haven’t, hire someone to fix your mistakes.

So my dear diary, in summation, installing crown molding is as simple as hiring 7 men, renting/buying hundreds of $$ of power tools and buying the most expensive material you can find.  But don’t worry, I’m sure it will increase the value of your home by at LEAST $50.

If it’s music and it’s on the Disney channel, chances are about 100% that I am going to love it.

Yes, that includes this guy.

Also following that trend is the Jonas Brothers.  Just acquired their self-titled album and am loving it.  I won’t say that its as good as the HSM 2 soundtrack, but I am having to divide my time between them now.  Same with V from Gabriella V. Hudgens.  Yes it undoubtedly is markets and written for teenagers.  I like to think it just confirms how young at heart I am.

On a related note, I don’t think Leah cares for either of those 2 albums though, thus confirming their greatness.

Those not in the know might not have heard about this new game ‘Rock Band‘ coming out in November.  It’s a video game where you have up to 4 people playing/singing along to music and being scored on your performance.

I was sitting there watching Hugo play the air drums the other day and thought to myself (and to Leah) – we need to get this game.  Leah could sing, I could play guitar, and Hugo could play the drums (all intruments included in the deluxe ($200) version of the game).  That would only leave the bass spot still open.

Luckily – Brody should be here by then, and 2 weeks old is more than enough to back me up on Wheezer’s Say it Ain’t So.

Waffle House.  My love affair with Waffle House began during the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college.  Previously I had actually avoided them as they are admittedly somewhat seedy in appearance (I think its contractually required by the franchise).

It was the summer and I was down visiting some friends at Virginia Tech (my alma mater).  We had a particularly hard night of partying and were in need of some recuperation the next morning.  Enter Waffle House, stage left.  Whatever, I wasn’t in any condition to argue, so off we went.  And let me tell you, it was fabulous.  Not the world’s greatest SELECTION mind you, but not bad either, and mighty tasty; quick service and cheap to boot.

As fate would have it that was one of my ONLY Waffle House experiences, I later met my future wife and she wasn’t too keen on them (I haven’t really figured on why yet).  I think I have been back maybe 3-4 times, but every time we see one around breakfast time, I always suggest it.

I only bring this up because some friends of mine are planning a weekend breakfast at the Evans (Bob Evans that is).  Bob is also excellent for breakfast, but he’s no Waffle House.  So if you have been avoiding the House that Waffles built, go out and give it a shot.

You’re gonna love it.

You all probably read Hugo’s blog (http://hugo.thelucks.org). You also all probably realize that sometimes it can take Hugo… a while… to get new photos uploaded to it. What you may NOT know, is that occasionally there is a somewhat not bad (I refuse to acknowledge it as good) reason for this.

Multiple laptops and locally stored photos.

You see, Hugo takes the photos from the camera and puts them on Leah’s home laptop and imports them into Picasa (http://google.com/picasa/). Once in Picasa they are stored locally on the laptop and must be uploaded to his blog for each post. The problem is that Hugo very rarely uses that laptop EXCEPT to export the photos from the camera into Picasa. Additionally once in Picasa, it is a fairly tedious process to find the right photo and get it uploaded to the blog and into a post. I’m actually pretty impressed a 2 year old can do it.

I’ve gotten pretty tired of waiting so long for his updates so this weekend I took it upon myself to find a better solution. One that will allow Hugo to post from any computer as well as make it an easier process.

The fruits of my labor have uncovered Flickr (http://flickr.com). Of course this is nothing new and most of you are probably familiar with it already. I hadn’t really investigated it however until yesterday.

Some key features:

• Unlimited storage
• Keeps Full-sized Images
• Community Features
• Easy Organization
• Easy Blog Integration

The above is for the ‘Pro’ plan, but at $25 a year, I’ve already found it to be well worth it.  The free service is a little more limited and good for getting your photos onto the web, but not as a full sharing/backup solution.

Google has a similar service (although it wasn’t as nice in my opinion) for Picasa, however $20 a year only got you 6GB of photo storage, and I already have over 6GB of photos, so the choice was pretty easy to make.

Google also only integrates with their own blog software (Blogger), but Flicker works with most popular blogging software (including those that you install on your own server, like Hugo has).

Hugo can now browse all his photos (once I finish uploading them) from any computer and can easily select any photo and send it to his blog with a few mouse clicks. He can also take a local photo and send it in an email and it will automatically be posted to the blog. Pretty fancy stuff Flickr.

So if you are looking for a place to not only backup your photos but to also have them easily accessible from the web, Flickr comes highly recommended.

So I’ve just been informed by the wife that the HSM Marathon will commence tomorrow night (8/24/07) promptly at 5:30pm. Be there or be lame.

Parting Question: How awesome would it be if your high school spontaneously broke out into song and choreographed dance?
Parting Answer: Very.

The Colin McRae DiRT demo came out somewhat recently for the PS3 and I downloaded it to check it out. I’m only mildly into racing games, and while this was a pretty one it didn’t really do much for me. Two things from the demo DID strike me however.

The first was the awesome menu system they have implemented (see below). It really is first class.

The second (you can see at the end of the above video) is that during level loading they display current stats on your racing like how many races you have one, max speed, average speeds, etc. It actually gives you something to do while your level loads.This got me thinking… Why don’t more game designers do something along these lines? I grow tired on the ‘loading’ splash screen pretty quickly, even if it has a little tip or something. These just don’t stand up to the replayability of many games. Instead, how about a mini-game that loads very quickly and we can waste time on while the level loads. Another idea is to pull in some sort of news feed so I can read up on current events as I wait for the level to load. I don’t really read current events but this would be a good way to get kids today into reading the news etc. Its something I think the upcoming generation needs in lieu of getting all their news from say digg.com or something.

Anyways, just an idea I am tossing out there for you developers (who aren’t reading this surely).

Hello adoring fans! With the coming addition to the family (brody.thelucks.org soon to be added) we’ve decided to make a whole new family. OF BLOGS! Leah wanted a blog of her own (she currently posts on restonbaby.com), I’ve always felt that my creative juices were going completely untapped, Hugo already had a blog, and Brody is practically typing from the womb. I think our blogging powers combined might even form a giant robot (mental note: add that to version 2.0).

Eventually thelucks.org will be the hub from which all this will sprout, but for now you can access the blogs at http://<firstname>.thelucks.org.

That is all.