Public Announcement for those of you who have $2500 bucks to kick around.

Citibank announced January 29, 2005

Citibank has a free iPod mini for opening a $2500 checking account and using billpay for a year. Use offer code: CD19

http://offer.citibank.com

Go for it!!

I did some ab exercises at the physical therapist's office today...

Ummm... Wow- I hurt!

Over here at the house of projects we have 3 different projects going.

1) The coffee table. I was able to get two new lights put on the car so I put the old ones on the coffee table. Looks sweet, no? The trim piece that goes above the license plate is on its way over and I'll probably check out some lighting options this weekend. Should be fun.



2) The poker table. This is the 8x4 foot poker table that Brian and I made last weekend. It's such a long table that it's almost hard to see what cards are being shown when you sit at the ends.




3) The homemade projector project. Here is a photo of the LCD ripped out and mounted into a frame for the project. I picked up a few parts online and they should arrive this week. I'm so stoked!

Why it's cool to be a geek:

Gates spends $1.5 billion on children vaccinations

Bill Gates increases his contribution to the charity foundation that will supply basic childhood vaccinations to poor nations. The commitment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been doubled to hit $1.5 billion.

Mrs. Gates reported that the number of children vaccinated against hepatitis B exceeded 42 million, and the effort helped to prevent over 670,000 premature deaths from 2001 through 2003. The use of 991 million syringes was crucial in maintaining safety of the vaccinations.

The success of the venture will also depend on the amount the alliance will be able to raise from private donors.

Gordon Brown, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, is expected to offer a contribution that will match Bill Gates’ donation and urge other affluent nations to contribute another $1billion. Other nations that are expected to offer donations are Sweden and France. Norway pledged $290 million on Monday

Do you understand how this is so awesome? One married couple pledges more than 5 TIMES the amount an entire country pledges.

Now, understandably it's not all in one lump sum however still- there are so many people who dislike Microsoft and think Bill Gates is a terrible guy. When was the last time you heard one person saving over a half million people?

Bill rocks.

I called the shop that took care of my car... asked if they could replace the inner tail lights on the trunk lid. They said they'd contact the insurance company and the insurance company said "yes".

Sweet.

I get my lights in a few days for my coffee table trunk lid and I found a trim piece for the trunk lid too. This is going to be the coolest coffee table ever.

Just gotta wait for my projector pieces to come in the mail now. Once they get here - oof- I'll be a little Jupetto in the garage tooling around with wood all day.

Weekend went well. I stripped my brand new Samsung LCD panel down to just the screen on Friday. Saturday I built up the frame to hold it in my tv projector project (that was almost redundant). Brian and I also built a poker table with the green felt and everything. Way cool.

Played poker from 8pm-2:30am.

Went to sleep shortly thereafter. What a long day!

Sunday- woke up all sore... amazingly that accident I was in about a month ago still haunts me through sore muscles that really relax when I'm in a deep sleep and it just hurts to get out of bed.

Well, it also haunts me because I have no radio since the insurance company has opted to try to repair it over the course of 4-6 weeks as opposed to replacing it and getting my car back to the condition it was in prior to the accident... all in all the car repair took 3 weeks and the radio repair will take an additional 4-6 weeks.

Thanks to my neighbor.

Picked up the car today...
The weight of the world hasn't crushed my spirits yet...

I made my coffee table!

I built up the rear end and now all I need are the tail lights and a trim piece that goes over the license plate.

anyone? anyone?



big pic

Interesting things this weekend.
So I was supposed to go to Prescott this weekend but I changed my plans so I could spend more time with the family.

It was a good decision because Friday I picked up 2 Lexus trunk lids. One from my car and one from an IS300 and I plan on making a coffee table with mine. It's gonna be sweet.

I also printed off a 50 percent off coupon from Best Buy and picked up a 23" tv for $65! woooo!

Saturday didn't turn out to be such an eventful day. I woke up- got a call from Tim and we went to the city dump to throw out some trash. Ummm... the city dump is GROSS! I then went to pick up some parts for my coffee table from Home Depot.

Mike and Jackie also bought a property up near Tramonto. And we all went to check it out. Congrats!

But it wasn't all good news because Zach had to get an emergency appendectomy on Tuesday... He's ok though. :)

An ooooooooooooooooold photo...


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I'm at the title company...
Signing papers! wooooooo!

I will never use State Farm as my insurance company because they treated me like crap.

Scenario: My shit-for-driving-skills neighbor crashes into my car. Breaks my car. Breaks my stereo. I take it to the shop. The shop repairs the damage to the car but not to the radio... The insurance company sends someone to look at the radio and they claim it can be fixed. So they opt to fix it as opposed to replace it and are forcing me to drive the car while the radio is in the shop.

There is a major problem with this...

1) If the radio sustained enough of a hit to break the motorized screen, how do I know nothing else internally is also broken?

2) If they send the radio out to fix and I have to drive while it is in the shop, I have no tunes for 3-6 weeks. This is a major problem because I tend to fall asleep if I don't have music in the car.

I wish I could be Chief Double-Down.

Fun stuff in the snow.


bigger pic.

What do these four things have in common?

-the shelter
-coffee x change
-trident
-bobo's

They're all in Tucson. And last night, so was I from 10pm-3am. Tucson is an interesting place but it's kind of a slow town.

Snow and Snuffy
I heard it snowed on The Strip in Vegas today. That would be really cool to see the Bellagio fountain during a snowfall.

A thought popped into my head about Snuffaluffagus today. I wonder what he would smell like if he were real.

The cheapest set of wheels around!

The ladies LOVE this kinda car...

So last night I made myself dinner. I think the eggs were bad again. Either that or the rice was. I dunno. Whatever it was, although I often share how fun it is to be a bachelor, if I had been cooking in the presence of a woman I most likely wouldn't have made myself sick.

And that's a good argument for having a significant other!

(note to self: date a gal in culinary school.)

Congratulations!!

Jen and Mike got engaged!

Hmmmmm, something tells me the top photo was taken after the first glass of champagne.


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The last bachelors/bachelorettes standing:

Tim
Mark
Brian D.
Erin R.
Clifford

I don't know what's worse...

Ashlee Simpson or William Hung.

If I had to buy a CD, I guess I'd rather buy William Hung's... that way I can give it to a friend and it would be funny. If I gave a friend an Ashlee Simpson CD, I wouldn't have that friend anymore.

I was thinking today about a feeling I had in church yesterday. I had this feeling that if I were independently wealthy and didn't have to worry about work, I would probably become a pastor. I don't know why I had this feeling but I believe it's because I've grown tired of attending sermons where the same message is repeated over and over for the entire hour. Not only that but when I've participated in conversations at bible studies in the career group for church, I've somehow been able to look past the things that people would normally extrapolate from the verses under discussion and come up with different viewpoints.

Maybe I'm supposed to be a pastor in my life? Perhaps I'm supposed to be more active in church? I think I'm going to shop around at a few different churches in the area though and see what else is out there.

Another thing I was thinking about was forgiveness. What do you do about the people in your life that have cheated you and lied to you? I'm not talking about anything really major here so don't worry, I'm still the baggage free Clifford you all know and love. I'm talking about when people sell you things and over-promise when the product/service will undoubtedly under-deliver.

What do you do if the person that cheated/lied to you isn't even sorry. How do you forgive someone if they don't ask for it? Do you merely assume that 'ok- in the perfect world, that person that just screwed me over with this piece of poo product/service would normally admit that it's a piece of poo and that they are sorry for selling it to me'?

Hahaha - like that would ever EVER happen right?

But I guess you do assume it. I mean- you'd have to if you wanted to take that anger off your chest and make it a non-issue in your life so you can go forward unhindered.

I guess what I'm getting at is this... learn from your mistakes and don't let anger bridle your thoughts to the point where you can't move forward without being bothered by those who have wronged you.

Some interesting stuff pops into my mind at 1am... I'm probably going to drive my future wife bonkers.

I was using my brother's computer today. When you're in college, you come across the funniest photos.



Click here for a big image.

Veronica...
One interesting chick. Tim and Mark agree.