Occasionally I either really like something or really hate it and this is where I post on it.  Today’s is a spiteful hateful blog directed at ADS Technologies, and their website is www.adstech.com :

Last week my wife came in and yelled at me for watching derogatory TV in front of the kids, or where she could hear it ~snickers~, so I thought I would fix that by buying a TV tuner, now other than “Media sling” and a couple other that are over $100 all the rest are similar.

Mind you that I am an IT professional too, which means this shit is a lot easier for me ~grins~.

I bought the ADS MiniTVUSB and that is where the nightmare begins!

I got the package on a Friday afternoon from UPS.  I opened it and read the direction and followed them.  When I placed the tuner in the USB slot and started up the TV application it says “device not found or being used….”, so I did all the easy fixes first and worked my way up progressively until it would be a pain in the ass to do anything else ~grins~.

I called their “Tech Support” and they didn’t know jack shit as usual.  They gave me another download for a newer version of their Media TV, so I downloaded it and the same thing happened.  I call back and their support is only open Mon-Fri 7AM – 5PM PST, so I would have to wait till Monday ~sighs~.

I did everything a technician could do without reformatting it, including uninstalling conflicting/competing drivers and nothing worked, so I called on Monday and they told me I needed to try it on another computer, well what a pain in the ass this is turning out to be!

I go to my mom and dad’s house and load it onto theirs and it worked flawlessly!  I was so pissed off because I told the guy at the help desk there was nothing wrong with the unit but that asshole argued with me and said I had to comply or they wouldn’t help me!!!

I come home and call them back and say “OK it works, now what”  This asshole helpdesk idiot has the nerve to tell me I need to get a technician?!?!  So now this $50 tuner card is going to cost an extra $110 if it’s easy or $50/hr if it takes longer than two hours ~laughs~.  I told the dumbass I was a technician and he just sluffed me off and told me there wasn’t anything they could, personally they should have been sucking my dick and replacing it with another model instead of treating me like shit!  I drove to my mom and dads for nothing…hahaha…now it works at my mom and dad’s so I am expecting them to have a solution.  Nope they tell me there is nothing they can do, so they made me waste gas for nothing!!!

Well by this time I am furious and obsessed with finding out what the problem is:

I have a Norton back up so I reformatted my computer, unhooked any unneeded USB cable and put in the core drivers to just run what I needed and nothing more!  I got the blue screen of death, do you know what this means?!

It mean that the TV tuner is not compatible with my ASUS motherboard or my AMD processor, and these idiots didn’t even know the shortcomings of their own products, so ASUS and AMD owners BEWARE of ADS and do not buy ADS products.

If you are not computer savvy then you definitely don’t want ADS because their technical support just flat out sucks.  I think they get their helpdesk guys from an alley of drunken winos!

I should have gone with the ATI all in wonder and just doubled up on the graphics memory, while accessing the tuner ability.

For those of you who don’t understand a single word I am saying: DON’T BUY ANYTHING FROM ADS…THEY SUCK!!! 

My old vacuum was broken by my son or wife and they tried to duct tape it back together, needless to say I wasn’t happy ~grins~.

It all worked out though I went to “Best Buy” and got a new Dyson Animal DC15.  It was on sale, so I got it for $60 off the list price ~cheers~.

I can’t believe the difference in suction.  Oh my God!  It runs on a ball too, so it has awesome maneuverability.  I thought that was weird that there were no wheels on it ~chuckles~.

I really liked the story about the man named “Dyson”.  He was tired of poopy vacuums and decided to make one that wouldn’t get robbed of suction over time ~smiles~.  He tried to market it to existing companies and they didn’t want to hear about new technology.  They where happy making their 500 million a year.  Eureka said they wished they had bought the patent because they would have let it sit on the shelf and never used it and made sure no one else could use it.  They wanted people to have disposable stuff.  Anyway Dyson has sold over 15 billion in gear now ~grins~.

I have been spending a lot of time helping people on www.help.com

It is actually a cool community of people just trying to help each other, sure you got your teeny bopper moronic grievers and the few miscreants, but the vast majority of people are there to help with their experience, anyway it has been helping me get out of myself, which is a good thing.

I should be able to post some pictures on the 1^st.  I will take come pictures of my cool vacuum and show you all some of the marine pictures I took of fishes in the lake ~grins~.

I hope you are all well ~smiles~… 

Hi all,

We only get one or two months of good summer here if we are lucky, so I have been getting in as much Sun and playtime as possible ~smiles~.  I will come on here and there to let you know what is up with me, because I know some of you worry ~smiles~.

I guess we have decided not to buy a house this year.  The market is starting to waver and interest is starting to go up.  One-tenth of a point can mean the difference between thousands of dollars over 30 years.

The main reason is because this is first time that my wife and I can remember a time where we haven’t been struggling every single damn day.  We have a bit of leeway that could give us a much needed rest from the fight!  If we get a house right now we will just be struggling again, and who knows for how long.  We don’t have enough money to move into a house right now and live without strife.  We have been living with strife for so long it is nice to take a break ~smiles~.

It is hard to find a decent house in a good neighborhood with the money Julie makes right now, if it wasn’t for my mom and dad we wouldn’t even be able to think of buying a house right now, so I guess patience is a virtue.  One that I do not prescribe to usually ~grins~.

We didn’t want to have to send Mariah to school then jerk her out next year but the options are getting thinner and thinner, not too mention the summers don’t last long here and I sure as hell don’t want to move in the winter! ~grins~.

I want to buy an “Extreme Bowflex” but we have no place to put it in our apartment.  We have very little room as it is and have to store stuff at Julie’s mom and dad’s house in their basement.  I know I got 20 minutes a day 3X a week.  I have read the reviews and the military uses them in Iraq as a total gym.  Hell if it’s good enough for the military to work out it’s good enough for me!

Another downside is it will take that much longer until I can grow my medicine/ Marijuana, which means my family and I must continue to pay the ludicrous rip off prices of the black market commercial scene.  Even the dispensaries are nice, but they rip you off too.  I have heard in California there is a couple of dispensaries that work on a sliding scale and a couple where you can get it real cheap, but the majority of them are just a scam like the pharmecutical companies.  They are making money off sick people!  And that is wrong!

You want to know the real pot scam?  It is the doctors who prescribe it, most of them are retired now and don’t care about losing their licenses.  They will prescribe it for anything now including headaches.  It is $200 a pop every year for that prescription.  I know what the potheads are trying to do.  They are trying to get so many on the medical premise that the government and the people of the country are swayed to their form of propaganda!  I prefer SAFER’s model for legalization even though I am very ill ~smiles~.  It is just a safer alternative to alcohol…the problem is a lot of people who like to smoke pot love to drink too, so you have people who are stoned and drunk now ~snickers~.  However as an American whose forefathers fought the facists governments of then England, we now find ourselves in the same situation, yet we have no place to run this time, so what do we do?

The truth is I am a fucking AMERICAN and what I do on my property in the private boundaries of my castle is my own fucking business!!!  I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone around me!!!  American’s are pussies’ nowadays and have given up right after right, freedom after freedom to special interest groups while they sit on their ass more concerned about Paris the slut Hilton and American Idol than what is truly important!  Saving our great nation before all these assholes run it into the ground!

Since I am not working part time anymore we can’t afford $600/month which is what my doctor ( I have a real prescription unlike dispensary prescriptions) and psychologist recommend.  2 grams a day is not that much, people with bone disease, cancer, etc. smoke upwards to 7 grams or more a day.  I don’t need that much nor would I ever want to smoke that much in a day, if I had to ruin my lungs like (or spend that kind of money!)  that I might as well just get on Oxycontin and overdose! ~sighs~  We spend around $240 - $260 a month and that is still too much as far as I am concerned, if I grew my own that could be some of the savings money we have yet to accrue.

Julie has a nice 401k plan at work but we would like to save some extra cash too, however with my buying pot that just isn’t possible right now ~sighs~.

This is the first time that I can remember that we have had food in our house ~smiles~.  I always make sure my kids eat but there wasn’t always food for me to eat.  Sometimes we had to borrow money or go to the food bank just to buy a few pounds of nasty hamburger so that we could survive.  I am not saying a lot of it wasn’t my fault because of the way I was in my youth…I am just telling you how it was not the reasons for it, other than we have been dirt poor ~chuckles~ financially, not so much spiritually and family-wise.

Julie’s birthday is in a few days.  I have been getting her a lot of jewelry on holidays lately, so I decided to go with something practical that would make her life easier ~smiles~.  We got her a kitchen aid attachment that is a food processor – grater, slicer, etc.  We had a Black & Decker food processor but it was a pain in the ass.  This one just mounts on and drops the stuff in the bowl.  There is no waste either.  A lot of cheap processors leave big chunks of vegetables and cheese in the processor.  All that was left in the kitchen aid was a few little crumbs that I gladly nibbled on ~snickers~.  No big wasted chunks ~cheers~.

I fell in love with Ice Creamed drinks when I was on the cruise ship.  I have of course made my ghetto versions because I am not rich and cant afford 12 different types of alcohol ~snickers~.  Someday I will, oh yes!  We bought a big huge thing of Blue Bunny Vanilla, so as a nightcap before I go to bed I make my raspberry chocolate shake.  I also make a Raspberry – Cranberry vodka tonic, even without the tonic sometimes ~snickers~.  I thought I would pass on the recipes for all us poor rednecks ~smiles~.

Adam’s Raspberry Coffee

3 oz.                 Kahlua

2 oz.                 Red Raspberry Vodka (Smirnoff)

8                 Ice Cubes

3 scoops                 Vanilla Ice Cream (or whatever you like)

First put ice cubes in blender and pulse until slushed, then add other ingredients until smooth and shaky ~smiles~.

Adam’s Raspberry Spritzer

Fill glass half full of “Red Raspberry Vodka”

Then fill glass full with “Cranberry – Raspberry” juice, if you want tonic water or fizz leave a bit of space at top and poor in fizzy tonic or spritzer water.  It is really good without it though ~smiles~.

My buddy David and I got bored in the winter so we would go to “Webtender.com” and would find a drink we wanted to make then we would go buy the alcohol and mixers and get smashed that night on those particular drinks ~chuckles~.

I can’t drink to party that much anymore, but I hardly got sick at all on my cruise which was nice ~smiles~, but I do love to have a alcoholic shake or chocolate drink at the end of the day ~smiles~.  I stopped getting sick when I stopped taking a certain medication.  Sheesh doctors scare the shit out of me…these dumbasses don’t even know who you are or what is wrong with you they just keep slapping ya with pills ~sighs~.  The medication they were giving me was messing with my kidneys and the alcohol amplified it ~sighs~.

I would show you all the great pictures I have been taking, but Microsoft is stupid it only lets you download 500 pictures a month ~sighs~.  I tried to see if you could buy more space but I couldn’t find anyplace that lets you have more picture space for MSN…go figure.  I went on MSN today it was all messed up, so I will look at everyone’s sites tonight or tomorrow.

Love ya all, be safe xoxoxox… 

Well, we put a bid in on a house.  It is an old farmhouse from 1902.  It has a nice porch, lots of basement room and a huge lot/yard.  Hopefully, if it works out right we will sell part of the lot and make about $25K on it which will help offset the extra money we will have to pay out.

These things take time, so we have plenty of time to deal and think about it.

I put some new pictures up, mostly of insects and stuff.  I am really getting into this amateur photography thing.   Well I guess MSN won't let me put no more pictures up.

I don’t really have that much to say right no, so just posting pics and visiting sights ~smiles~…

Alien Hunter was right about Tax-Duty Free stuff.  When I got back home I priced my stuff I bought.

My watch is a $425 and I got it for $239, however they lied on the camera.  I saw my camera in a PCMagazine review yesterday and it was the same price I bought it for on the ship, so you were right Hunter.  You gotta keep an eye on it because some stuff is a killer deal and other stuff not so much ~smiles~.

Anyway, since I have gotten a new camera I decided that I should take up immature photography.

All the pictures you see today are from the Dishman Mica Hills, which is about 6 blocks from my house.  In Spokane you can go 15 minutes in any direction and be in wilderness ~grins~.  That’s the way I like it.

You’ll notice on one of the pictures there is a sign that says beware for your children and pets because cougars live in this sanctuary, so I keep my daughter close.  Cougar attacks happen here occasionally and people underestimate the massive strength of these 130-pound creatures.  A female cougar needs 20 square miles of habitat, while a male cougar needs 100 square miles.  You can see why attacks happen in the city!

I have been on the hunt to photograph this elusive cat.  I spend most the time following his tracks while he follows me in the distance unseeable ~grins~.  It’s nothing new I have been hunting mountain lions since I lived in San Diego.  We used dogs back then.  Dogs are illegal now, so the cougar population has gotten out of control, hence the reason people’s pets and children have been getting eaten.

I did however catch some wildlife.  I am finding that birds and insects are very hard to take pictures of because they just won’t stay still for you ~chuckles~.  I did get a pictures of a Quail, Rabbit, Chipmunk, and Old World Swallowtail (butterfly).

The deer pictures are from across the street from my house.  There is a mommy dear with her cute little fawn and its little wobbly knees.  They bed down in the tall grass in my neighbor’s back yard.  We see her and her fawn all the time.

She was snorting and stomping on the ground.  All my neighbors were laughing because they thought I was going to get my ass kicked by a little 120-pound whitetail.  I don’t see that happening anytime soon.  She probably thought I was a big ole Black Bear and she was protecting that cute little fawn of hers, as I approached her though she came to her senses and ran off, but being an angry mother allowed me to get very close to take some nice shots.

There is so much wildlife within a couple square miles of my house.  Coyotes, Moose, Elk, Cougars, Bobcats, Rabbits, Chipmunks, Squirrels, Owls, Hawks, Black Bear, so expect some more wildlife shots in future.

I know where a Black Bear mother and her cub are.  I would love to get some shots of that but you have to be extremely careful around any kind of momma bear.  They will shred you in a second if they are in protective mode.  I will enjoy that because of the sheer rush and inherent danger involved.

My camera can also take underwater shots, so I will be getting a mask and snorkel to take pictures of the local underwater wildlife as well, of which we have Trout, Bass, Pike, Muskies, Crawfish, etc.  I wish I still lived in Guam then I could take some amazing Ocean life pictures!

Enjoy the new photos…I enjoyed taking them and editing them!

I am officially hooked on cruises!  Now I understand why my mom and dad do it all the time ~snickers~.  Talk about being pampered!  Not too mention I was on vacation, so I drank well over $350 in alcohol ~grins~, but I am back to only drinking on special occasions since I am home again ~smiles~.

The first two pictures are of the “Masquerade Room”.  This is the area where we watched “Comedy Central” comedians and other live entertainers.  The best comedian by far was “Troy Thirdgill.”  He had me laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face! ~snickers~.  I was also the heckler, which had my mom laughing too ~grins~.

The next 3 pics are of the Centrium, which you guessed it, is the middle of the ship.  It had 11 decks that ended up at the “Viking Crown Lounge”, which was a disco/observation platform.  There on the 5^th deck was the champagne lounge where I met Oscar the bartender.  He rocked!

Our cabin was nice.  They are a lot smaller than I thought they would be.  It is funny because the ship itself is magnificent with marble pillars, floors and some walls with brass and silver everywhere!  It looked like the glorious fox theaters and architecture of period long past.  It was beautiful.  The rooms were adequate and were some of the nicer cabins on the ship.  We even had a window which I took a picture out of to show everyone how close our cabin was to the sea ~smiles~.

Deck 9 & 10 is where I spent a lot of time taking the scenery pictures you see.  I also spent a bit of time in the hot tubs and pool on deck 9.  There was an outdoor pool with 4 hot tubs, and then on the same deck there was an indoor pool with 2 hot tubs.  I did quite a bit of hot tubing and drinking at the same time ~winks~.  The only thing that sucked is the hot tubs were closed for half the trip because of Alaska’s environmental laws.

One of the cruise directors looked just like Ben Affleck, so I had to take his picture because who would believe me? ~chuckles~

What can I say about the scenery other than it was devastatingly beautiful!  From uncut old growth rain forest to sheared off mountain cut short by glacier ice.  Waterfalls abounded every step of our inside passage with wildlife galore from Orca and Humpback Whales to Sea Lions, Otters, Bald Eagles and a plethora of other life forms coming out of the astounding beauty that is Canada and Alaska!

I took a picture of our ship tendered in the harbor.  The “Vision of the Seas” was anchored in Juneau for a whole day.  The picture of the guy named Bruce is part of a very funny running gag.  You see my wife Julie can’t go anywhere without knowing someone.  I swear I could take her to Singapore and she would know someone there ~chuckles~.  So we are getting off the tender and walking up the ramp and this guy on a fork lift unloading Dungeness Crabs from a boat recognizers Julie ~slaps himself~.  We are 1600 miles away from home and someone still recognizes her ~laughs~.  Sheesh!

The first set of whale pictures you see are from our excursion in Juneau.  They guaranteed a whale sighting or your money back.  We also saw some Stellar Sea Lions.  I didn’t much care about them though they always use to piss me off when I was fishing in the ocean ~grins~.  The whales at some point were no more than 25 feet away from us and even closer on one or two occasions.  Alaskan laws prohibit advancing on whales, however some of the whales were quite friendly and came to us ~smiles~.

Everyday we would come back to our room from dinner and our room attendant would have placed some origami towel work on our bed.  They were very cute.  We had a doggy, monkey, duck and a dinosaur.  I don’t think I got the monkey because I broke him before I could get the picture ~chuckles~.

The next stop was Skagway and we went on a train excursion on that stop.  It was called the White Pass Railroad and has been around since the cowboy days.  The conductors were dressed in the old style garb and the train was an old clacker tram.  I took lots of train pictures!

We then went up the Tracey Arm of the Fjord Glacier.  We rode right up into the arm.  I was amazed the ship could get in there with all the icebergs and narrow passages.  We did hit an iceberg and took a little damage, but nothing that caused any alarm.  I saw them working on the ship in St. Rupert.  I am sure they don’t tell you anything unless it is a dire emergency.  People have a tendency to freak out.

I made lots of new friends on the cruise, most of them rich ~chuckles~.  Go figure!  Bob and Josette was a cute old couple.  Bob had fought in WWII on a destroyer tender.  Josette’s daughter was responsible for the special effects in “Wild Hogs”, “Titanic”, and “Narnia”.  They were very sweet and a blast to talk to ~smiles~.

Seth is a college football player.  Hopefully we’ll be seeing him in the pros!

Abi & Bimmini (her real name is too hard for me) were a very sweet couple.  They were Muslims, but that didn’t stop us from partying and enjoying each other’s company, even though my wife is a Christian…I wish we could all get along like that ~smiles~.

I didn’t get a picture of Keegan, but his dad is sick so he had to take over the family business.  He is head contractor in charge of the construction that goes on with Ruby Tuesdays, TGIF, etc.  He was a blast.  I got into trouble with him one night when I never came back to the cabin ~snickers~.  I didn’t get any sleep that night or day ~laughs~.

The other whale pictures were taken from the cruise ship itself.  Some of the whales get very close to the shipping lanes.  It was amazing!  We had one completely breach the water, but we were all looking at his mother and no one got a shot of the flying whale ~frowns~.  That would have been awesome!

The jerseys you see are from the onboard art auction.  They had a Rembrandt and a Pablo Picasso as well, I personally don’t care about art but I thought Joe Namath’s jersey was pretty damn sweet!

Prince Rupert is full of Bald Eagles!  I have never seen so many Bald Eagles in my life.  They were like 30 feet away in the trees, and there were probably 25 of them or more hanging around in the trees by the wharf.

They had an onboard mall that was “Duty-Tax Free” and I’ll tell ya what I got and how much I saved ~drools~.  The first thing I got was a new watch.  My “Swiss Army” watch has finally took the big poop and died on me.  I had it for over 10 years though, so it was a very good watch.

I bought a Citizen Eco-Drive Dive Watch for $239.  The retail price on shore is $425!  I wouldn’t even be able to get one for that price on EBay!  The watch is their newest model and just came out.  It never needs a battery and can run for up to 9 months  without light once fully charged.  Any light will work, but some light is better i.e. sunlight/outdoor light as opposed to incandescent/indoor lighting.  I didn’t take a picture of it but I should have.  I didn’t have a watch and never came home one morning, so my wife bought me a watch to ensure I could tell what time it was ~snaps his fingers~.  Oh well it was a nice try!

The next thing I bought on the last leg of the trip was a Olympus Stylus 770 SW digital camera.  It is a 7.1-mega pixel with a hyperactive LCD display screen that is almost 3” in size.  The camera does everything inside itself, including editing, slideshows, etc.  I can run a cable from the camera to a TV and do a slideshow right there on the spot ~grins~.  I can print directly to a printer.  I wish I had gotten at the beginning of the trip now, because you will notice a difference in pictures once you see the title “1^st shot with new camera” in my picture album on this blog.  I got a Gig of memory too.  The damn memory card is about 1” x 1” and can do an hour of video, and anywhere from 600 to 1300 pictures depending on the settings, of course I only use elite high quality settings ~grins~.

We got lots of souvenirs and stuff too as well as tax-duty free alcohol.  They had a bottle of “King Louis VIII” for $1300, but that was a bit too rich for my blood.  I did get some Kahlua, Raspberry Vodka, and Bombay Sapphire Gin.  I got two bottles of each and they were less for two bottles of each than it would be to buy just a single bottle in a liquor store!  So I stocked up and refilled the liquor cabinet ~grins~.  It almost makes me wish I drank more when not on vacation ~snickers~.

The food was of the highest quality and created by renowned chefs who make their living working on these floating cities.  There was 10 pieces of silverware on the table.  I used 3 ~snickers~.  I ate Shrimp Scampi, Lobster, Lamb, etc.  The buffet sucked, but hey, it’s a buffet and the food is always sub par from real cuisine.  We did eat in the buffet a couple times for breakfast because I wasn’t waking up at no 7 fucking AM to eat ~grins~.  But we ate most lunches and all dinners in the exquisite Aquarius Dinning Room.  The buffet room was called the “Windjammer”.

My camera is so cool.  It is waterproof, shockproof, & crushproof, so I took a shot of myself underwater just to play with my new toy.  The water was salty too, hence the reason my eye looks bloodshot ~laughs~.

I took some pictures on the way home too for those who have never seen a couple of the things that make Washington famous. ~smiles~.

I am back home now doing 85 loads of laundry and back to reality ~sighs~.  Reality sucks!  I like being pampered and active all the time!  Well that is it in a nutshell.  I didn’t want to bore anyone too much.  Until next time…