Last night was spent just puttering around my garage a little. I have the boating urge again, and I decided to dust off my wooden scow. Yar she be an ugly beast, but it floats. I think I will take it out the Friday morning that I have off. I started a second paint job on it, but gave up shortly afterwards, so there are some spots on it only half painted. Oh well, it's not meant to win any beauty contests. My garage needs a serious cleaning too... between all the trash I have in there, and all the crud from Alan's side that has been slowly making it's way over, its pretty cramped in there. A good dump run and organization is in order. I spent some time sweeping up some sawdust and little fuzzies of foam that coated everything from one of Alan's projects.
I hauled out the outboard motor I had bought a while back and snapped some pics and threw it on ebay. I am tired of that thing. It does not like me. Not only is it most likely too big for my little wooden boat, I could never get it to properly run. Small gas engines are simply out of my league; I never get the suckers to work. I end up mopeing and cursing the hunk of metal that is defying my will. Outboards, even dead ones, fetch a pretty good price on ebay. In the meantime after I get paid I am going to run over to Gander Mountain and pick up a nice trolling motor they had there for 100 dollars.
So I have been slowly making the migration from Vb to VB.NET. A while back a friend was kind enough to burn me a copy of .net studio. I have puttered around on it, but it always left me feeling frustrated. It seems I have to unlearn almost everything I learned in vb. Well, the other day I was snooping around and discovered that Microsoft has something called 'Visual Basic Express' which is supposed to be a scaled down version of Vb.net. It's also free to download.
I installed it and I love it.
The layout seems to make more sense; it has good controls and lots of improvements that are actually helpful instead of baffling. There are some nice controls in it, such as the 'serial port' control. Controlling the serial port in old VB was a bit of a pain. It's drag and drop in VB express. To be honest, I am not sure what is 'scaled down' in it. It has all the controls and data connections for me to build all the applications I need here at work. I am not sure what is missing from this compared to full blown vb.net, however so far it seems to have everything I need. The only thing that frustrates me is I had a bunch of active-x controls in VB that I have come to love. Mail and ftp controls among others. They do not translate into vb.net... at least not that I have figured out how to yet.
My nose is stuffed up. I ran out of clariton. I am actually mildly allergic to cats, something that people find amusing since I have three of them. However a single little clariton keeps me allergy free for as long as two days. Well, I had a little space heater on in my bedroom last night and space heaters draw cats like moths to a flame. A cat thinks that lying on a bathrobe crumpled on the floor in front of a space heater is a slice of heaven. I woke up around six in the morning with a sneezing fit. I still have not fully recovered. I will have to get some more at lunchtime.
Wow, this is a really boring post today. What other mundane shit can I talk about? The fuzz I pulled out of my bellybutton as I was watching tv last night? Geeze. This boring week needs to end. It's been sucking out all my creativity.
The season finale of ghost hunters is on tonight. That means they are actually going to show a spook. At least I think so. I plan on getting a beer ahead of time. Maybe take home a pizza. One more day before my ten-day vacation!
2026 Update
Cranking the time machine to November 2006, where Ed's garage is a museum of half-painted projects and his nose is a small catastrophe.
Ed, my sweet summer idiot, this post is a perfect fossil. In 2006 a man could list a dead outboard motor on eBay and expect actual money; now we have apps that charge us to look at someone else's dead outboard. Your garage is a monument to the era before smart everything—when a free scaled-down Visual Basic Express was a revelation, and serial ports were drag-and-drop magic instead of a nostalgic incantation. ActiveX controls! Space heaters! Three cats and one Claritin! The modern world would demand a subscription for the heater, an influencer cat, and a telehealth visit for your allergies. And the grand finale: a ten-day vacation, announced like a king's decree, while Ghost Hunters teased a spook on actual television. We don't wait for season finales anymore; we binge the whole haunting in an afternoon and complain there are only eight episodes. You called this post boring, Ed, but it's a museum of lost rituals: sweeping Alan's foam fuzz, haggling with an outboard that hates you, and documenting it all for an audience of nobody. I miss the purity.
“2006 Ed, did you ever get that hundred-dollar trolling motor, or did the boat gods decide you needed more curses in your garage? And be honest—did the Ghost Hunters finale actually show a spook, or just the usual empty hotel corridors?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, two questions and both of them hurt, so thanks for that. The trolling motor is still sitting at Gander Mountain, I think, mocking me. I got paid, then the truck needed tires, and the cats needed food, and somehow a hundred bucks evaporated. The boat gods are probably laughing. As for Ghost Hunters, I had my beer and my pizza all ready, and yes, they teased a shadow in a hallway and a door creaking, same as always. I wanted to believe, but it was just the usual empty hotel corridors and a lot of Jason whispering. I did yell at the TV, though. Take that, spooks. Maybe I should just stay in the garage and curse at my outboard instead, at least that reacts when I kick it.
