Absoblogginlutely! - IRL

Kristen and I started playing the Rock Band Ultimate set list - all of the standard 58 Rock Band songs 1 after another.  We got to 29 and have paused the game for tea and a rest - we’ll probably continue tomorrow so lets hope the power doesn’t go out overnight.  So far we’ve easily got 5 stars for each song, I’ve had a couple of 100% on the drums and Kristen has had several on the guitar.  My problem is the base pedal on the drum doesn’t always register and on the songs that has a lot of bass pedal action, the kit moves across the floor as I’m playing so I have to keep moving the chair after it in the middle of the game.  Winston thinks that because I am sitting down I am ready to pet him so about 20% of the songs I have another excuse for not getting 100% - after all how easy is it to drum with a cat walking all over you?

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A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to investigate our phantom flushing toilet. As the toilets in the US are nothing like the UK (really they are not!) I looked on youtube for some help. The first answer was to brush the rubber flapper seal to get rid of the crud that had gathered on the seal.  I tried that, but all that happened was that my hands got covered in black stuff due to the rubber disintegrating - so if you try this and get black hands, you might as well stop as it’s not going to work.

So the next stop, two weeks later (today) was to take the old flapper off and get a replacement….Took me a while, but I eventually snapped the flapper attachment off the base unit, wrapped it in a bag and went to Lowes. I’m glad I took the old unit with me as I didn’t realise there were so many different types of flappers. It didn’t help that there were two versions of the American Standard (which is a bit of an oxymoron if there are two standards) flapper - it turned out I had type number 5 - but only by comparing the units shape and size.  However I then found that I could buy just the flapper seal itself. So risking this not solving the issue I purchased it, took it home and pulled the old seal off - note to anyone else looking at doing this - when the seal pops off it will spray water and rubber everywhere….I think I cleaned it all up…

Couple of seconds later the new seal was on and the toilet hasn’t flushed itself since. Saved me a plumbers bill, water and a new toilet - thanks to Kristen for putting up with the tank lid off for so long!

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This morning I got up early (especially for a Saturday) at 6am and headed out to Marysville Airport where there was hopefully going to be an unofficial balloon launch.  I had no idea what time they were going to launch, but as I was driving down the road I was overtaken by a van with a basket on the back so I knew I wouldn’t be that late!  I arrived just as they were ready to leave for another launch site so I joined the trail of vans and headed out to shoot some photos.

I’ve uploaded them to Flickr to my Marysville early morning balloon launch.  I hope to get to their night launch/glow this evening so more photos will be uploaded later too.  In the meantime I’ve created a collection of Balloon photos on flickr.

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I’ve uploaded the photos from the British Invasion concert held in Dublin, Ohio from 27th July. The band plays a mixture of English hits such as the Beatles, Rolling stones etc. They are very good and also played at the Balloon glow last night too which was an added bonus.  For more information see the British Invasion Band website.

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Yesterday I went to Balloons off Broadway 2008 and took loads of photos. Some of them are uploaded to my Balloons off Broadway Flickr set  This was the first time I had been out shooting and filled up my (2gb) memory card. There were several factors to blame. The first was that I still had some old data on the card (oops!), I was shooting in RAW and jpg mode and finally I was taking advantage of the continuous shooting mode for the flames to get just the right effect. All of which meant a lot of space was used on the card and I eventually ran out. Thankfully not before the night glow had almost finished - some of the balloons were actually being deflated as I was finishing up.

The event was good but not as good as last year. It had grown drastically which meant a lot more people and as a result the traffic to get to the site was not fun. I was anxious as the balloons were meant to launch at 6.30 - I eventually got into the carpark at 6.25 and hurried to get to the launch only to find no balloons even remotely setup.  Eventually 4 balloons were inflated, but only for tethered rides AND we were all moved back out of the way of the balloons so were unable to get any good setup photos.  (Some people got away with ignoring the police and staying in the setup arena - next year I joked I’d setup some “official photographer” tshirts and flog them to all the photographers anxious to get in the field to get closeup photos.  I know this restriction is due to health and safety, but last year was so much more personal, informal and fun with some great opportunities to get real close to the balloonists as they setup and we were even able to help them pack up!

Due to the high wind, none of the balloons were launched which was a big disappointment to a lot of people, especially as no tannoy announcement was made, however it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about balloon chasing - trying to get OUT of the car park in a rush to follow the balloons would not have been possible.

Eventually about 8.30 the rest of the balloons were inflated - 2.5 hours after the event had started - ready for the night glow. This was fun and at this point I was able to get onto the field and take some close shots.  The balloonists loved to light up the flames for photographers. I narrowed down my 246 photos to 26 for Flickr.

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I purchased a Dyson DC18 last week on Woot and it has turned out to be the worst vacuum cleaner we’ve had (and the shortest lifetime). It didn’t even make it around one lap of the house before I had had enough and contacted woot for a returns number.  I’m not going to scare you with photos of the carpet after I had vacuumed as it looks awful. Stay away from Dysons, especially if you have (many) hairy cats.

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