Pipes Network Clog "Look up, Get up, but don't ever give up."

Over already?

Can you believe the first round of the holiday season is already over? In 3 days it will already be December? Seems like it was just september a couple days ago.

Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday, its back to the grind today.

Its finally happening

Gas prices are finally beginning to fall. I filled up for under $2 this morning for the first time that I can remember in a long time. Looking at sites such as "MichiganGasPrices.com", gas prices are about the same as they were 1 year ago. Its funny how at the time we thought it was high, but not having seen gas well over $3 several months ago, $2 or just under looks pretty darn good.

Great place to live

Great. According to a study recently done, Detroit is the second most dangerous place in America to Live. St. Louis is third. Check out the list here.

CAMDEN, New Jersey (AP) -- For the second year in a row this destitute city of Camden, New Jersey, has been named the nation's most dangerous, according to a company's annual ranking based on crime statistics.....Listed as the most dangerous cities are: Camden, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Flint, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; Baltimore, Maryland; Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Gary, Indiana; Birmingham, Alabama.

At the other end of the scale, the safest are named as: Newton, Massachusetts; Clarkstown, New York; Amherst, New York; Mission Viejo, California; Brick Township, New Jersey; Troy, Michigan; Thousand Oaks, California; Round Rock, Texas; Lake Forest, California; Cary, North Carolina.

Some automakers finally understand it

Finally, some automakers figured it out. All you have to do is add an auxillery input in the form of a stereo mini plug jack on the factory receivers and you can connect anything with a headphone out. A few cars have it already (such as the mini Cooper, HHR, Impala, Scion), and starting next model year, it looks like lots more will. It only took them 3 years to figure it out.

Nothing to Complain About

Sometimes it takes seeing what things could be like to realize things aren't so bad in our own lives. The other day, I was complaining about school, work and not having any (enough) time to do what I want to do. I don't feel so bad about it now. Yesterday I stumbled across a website I had bookmarked over a year ago that I had seen in an article I read, http://www.leahsjourney.com/ . It was sad enough at the time, because its basically a blog written by this little 4 year old girl's mother about her daughters battle with a brain tumor. Except now the battle is over, and the first page is a tribute to Leah, who apparently passed away about 3 months ago at the age of 5.

Things don't seem so bad anymore.

Give someone the moon

Who says you can't give someone the moon?

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- For sale: acre plots, great Earth views, low gravity, moonrock-bottom prices, about as away from it all as you can get.

A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of profiteering and lunacy.

Check out the full story here

The sad thing is 34 people were stupid enough to buy it. How do you decide who holds the rights to the moon? Americans were first to walk on it, so wouldn't that give us the right to it?

This is just scary

SEATTLE (Reuters) - For beverage connoisseurs tired of turkey-and-gravy or green-beans-and-casserole-flavored sodas, there's a new choice being offered this year by specialty U.S. soda manufacturer Jones Soda Co.: salmon.

Is this really weird to anyone else?

Check it out here.

People are funny

I can understand wanting your kids friends to think you're "cool" I guess, but this lady went a little extreme:

Authorities said Johnson held parties for the boys almost weekly between October 2003 and October 2004. They said Johnson provided drugs and alcohol to eight boys and had sex with five of them.

Check it out here

How do people do it?

I have to wonder how some people do it. Have a full time job, going to grad school, and trying to do the things you want to do like working out, spending time with friends, fiance', etc without going nuts.

My advice: Don't go to school.

Uncle Adam

Well I'm finally (unofficially) an Uncle! Congratulations to Jon & Angel on their new little baby boy!

Farewell Grandma

At 12:30 am this morning my 78 year old Grandma finally passed away. While its more of a blessing because she had gone so far down hill with Alzhiemer's over the last few years, its still hard to swallow. She had been married for over 58 years. At least now she can rest.

bad news for home owners?

This is stupid. The Government is now toying with the idea of changing the deduction of Mortgage interest on income taxes. That could be a huge blow to a lot of people who expect those returns...

...the panel, which released its final report on Tuesday, concluded that it had no choice but to significantly trim the home mortgage deduction and eliminate state and local tax deductions if it wanted to find a way to simplify the income tax.

Check out the article here.

Audiophilles

I like music just as much as the next guy, if not more. There's nothing like a decent stereo and some good tunes to get me through traffic on the way home from work.

These guys take it a little to far though...