All About Bentley

If you watch enough TV or movies, and interact with people from the north east, you get the impression that people don't think much about us in the southern most states. Because of this I thought I'd make a list of noteable things about Oklahoma, people from Oklahoma, etc: 1) Sooners Football 2) Carrie Underwood 3) Garth Brooks 4) Vince Gill 5) Reba McEntire 6) University of Oklahoma Gymnastics - Men were national champs in 2002,2003,2005 and 2006 7) Oklahoma State University Wrestling - Four consecutive national titles between 2002-2006 8) Very low cost of living 9) Relocate Americas Best Places to live in 2005 listed 2 Oklahoma towns in the top 5 10) Tied with California for having the most "Miss Americas", including the last 2 years in a row

Hey have you seen those RedBox DVD Rental kiosks at McDonalds? Those things are awesome. They have a decent collection of new releases, and they're only $1 a night. I'm on bachelor week this week (as one might have guessed by the sudden increase in posts) and as always I'm catching up on guy movies. I've already made 2 trips to my nearest RedBox. If you create an account online you get 1 night free, and I don't need any movie for more than a night. So far I've rented 3 movies for a grand total of $2.16 when tax is included. The kiosk asks you for your email address, so we'll see how soon I start getting bombarded with spam, but, its kinda cool because before I even get back to the house, there's an email receipt waiting for me.

My son has had an obsession with getting an electric guitar for quite a while now. What (pre)teen boy doesn't these days. They all want to be rock stars. At first I ignored him when he asked me about the possibility of getting one. But after 2 months of him walking around the house playing this mini child sized acoustic guitar that he got when he was about 5, I started thinking that maybe he was truly interested. I've been looking around for inexpensive starter sets with both guitar and amp, and finally found what I was looking for at Guitar Center . Unfortunately for him, they finally restocked the set yesterday, and he left for spring break today. So, I couldn't let a perfectly good electric guitar sit around untouched. I took it out and started playing with it a little bit, using Guitar Guru as my guide. I'm practicing "More than a Feeling" by Boston. I've just got down the first 7 notes...and my fingers are killing me. I guess I want to be a rock star ...

Well not the deal of the century, but for me its OK I guess. I had a lawn mower that is about 6 years old. From the day I bought it the grass bag was warped and never closed correctly, and when I mowed, grass would fly up in my face. I had to hold it closed with clothes pins. And then last summer, the self propel drive on the mower went out. We (my son and I) pushed mowed the rest of the summer, but it was pretty difficult for my son, so I ended up doing most of it. Looking into buying new parts was a grand total of $175.78. That's a lot of money to spend on an older mower. So I sold it for $75 and bought a new mower. So the cost of the parts I would have had to spend, plus the $75 I got for the old one, paid for a new mower. OK like I said, not the deal of the century...but I'm pretty pleased.

I'm in the middle of one of my all night tests for work. Those of us involved in the testing are communicating with our in-house chat system. Sometimes peoples abbreviations when chatting online seem silly to me. Sometimes for "thanks", which is already a short word, people put "tnks". It reads to me like "tanks". I always want to respond with "grenades" but I know they wont have a clue what I'm talking about. And maybe you don't either. Oh well it makes me laugh, and thats really whats important. Another one that bothers me is when they respond to a question I might have with "yes" but they only type "y". I read that as "why". So I'll respond with a reason. Which confuses them. One of my favorites, and its very common, is "brb" which we all know is "be right back" At first glance I always think they've typed "burp" and I'll want to respond with "excuse you...

I was really hoping to see Eddie Murphy win Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Dream Girls" but Alan Arkin came up the winner. Not that I've seen "Dream Girls", it's just cool to see someone excel outside of there normal element.

Starting a few months back, I had been having some trouble with my cable modem. It would lose connectivity every 5 or 10 minutes, then it would come back online for 5 or 10 more, and so on. I called the cable company and they sent a guy out to fix me up. I thought he'd fixed my problem, but the next day it was back. I was looking online at my cable companys tech support site and saw a place to send in an email for help, so I did that. I even specified something like "please dont send me back generic tech support tips like unplugging the cable modem and plugging it back in because I've done all that, multiple times". And of course when I got there response back it was a big list of things like "try unplugging your cable modem and plugging it back in". Anyway I responded to that email, overflowing with sarcasm and frustration, and got a response back. "We've upgraded our equipment in your area. If you have an older cable modem it might not meet our st...

We went to see the Arcadia Round Barn yesterday. I guess there are quite a few round barns in the United States, but this was a first for me. I expected it to be out in a pasture, with a little farm house nearby. It's actually right next to Route 66 , and there are a bunch of crappy old houses surrounding it. It was a little disappointing. But, if you live close, and you have absolutely nothing else to do, then go see it. Down the road a little bit is where construction is underway for Pops . It's supposed to be a futuristic soda fountain/rest stop/gas station. The big thing about Pops is this big crazy 80 foot soda pop bottle that sits out in front. I had read about it in a local magazine about 6 months ago, but never given it anouther thought, so it was pretty cool to all of a sudden see this big bottle looming in the distance.

Last week we were expecting a huge snow storm. It gave us the cold shoulder. We just got a bunch of rain. But this morning, when we have about a 40% chance for rain, it's snowing like crazy. This is insane. And of course we have plans this morning. We never do much on Saturday, usually just sit around the house being bored. So today we made plans to go to the movies...and it's snowing. Not that a little snow will keep us from the movies, but Deborah and I, since college, have found ourselves out in the snow just about everytime we see a flake. And its not on purpose, just works out that way. But I would love to sit here on the couch and just watch the snow. Instead we're running around getting the kids fed so we can hit the movies. Deborah, Shelbie and Zane are going to see "Happily Never After". Tanner and I are going to see "Epic Movie". They start around the same time and end 10 minutes apart. The movie starts at 10:30, so I'm guessing with the...

I recently got a new laptop at work and am supposed to be returning the old one some time. But before I did I thought I'd play with Ubuntu. Last night i took the Ubuntu installation CD that I created about 3 weeks ago, threw it in the old laptop, started it up, and bam, it's done. Now I'm sitting on my couch, connected wirelessly to the internet, and I did virtually no configuration. The only thing I had to do was go to the network settings, select that I had a wireless network, and put its name in. Bam, I'm online. It was awesome. I use RedHat Linux at work for about 99% of what I do, but it's all at the server level, not from a true end-user standpoint, so I'm not real familiar with the user side of things....surfing the web, checking email, word processing, that sort of thing. I'm anxious to see what all I can do with this. Another thing I found interesting was that for about the last year, my laptop, running XP, would not keep the system date and time ...

About once or twice a month I get to stay up late doing some testing for work. Tonight/this morning is just such an occasion. For the most part I stay busy getting things setup, monitoring the test, stopping and restarting things, but eventually, once everything is running, I'm free to sit back and simply watch my computer screen and make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary. It can be quite boring. So, what I often do is swivel 90 degrees counter-clockwise to my desktop PC and watch a movie. This morning I didn't feel like going the movie route and opted to fire up the WinTV. Its a gamble at this time of day to find anything worth watching on TV. It's mostly just news and infomercials. But TVLand has rescued me this morning. I'm watching "Green Acres". That silly Mr. Douglas farming in his suit and tie just cracks me up.

Today is my birthday. My day started off great, with my wife and kids hoping up in bed with me with home-made cards and signs and a hostess Ding Dong with a candle in it. I don't have any big plans today even though I took the day off of work. I was planning on just puttering around the house alone but with the recent ice storm, school is out today so my wife and kids are home which is very cool. But, last night, not knowing school was going to be out yet, I rescheduled a date with the life insurance man for today thinking I wouldn't have anything better to do. So now instead of making plans with my wife and kids I have to wait for him to come over. I could reschedule but he's a close family friend and I don't want to keep rescheduling him, he might think I'm just putting him off. We'll be having big meal out somewhere today, but I haven't decided when or where. But it won't be The Cracker Barrel . This year, if I have any memories of my birthday meal, I...

Ok this is a little late. This is us on Christmas Eve. Our Christmas Eve is about as big as Christmas day at our house. It's just the 5 of on Christmas Eve us but we already have quite a bit of tradition, and a lot of food. Deborahs parents and sister came on Christmas day to help ward off the post Christmas blues. Worked pretty well. The kids got lots of fun stuff from Santa.

Well kids, I have a very special Christmas gift for you this year. I'm going to take my many years of experience in peaking at my Christmas presents, and share it with you. Today's lesson is how to unwrap and re-wrap a present without getting caught. Before we start lets go over some good tips: It's best to do this kind of work at night, when everyone is asleep. It's also a good rule to only do one or two presents a night. You will also need to have some supplies: 1. A knife or pair of scissors that can make a fine cut. And since kids aren't supposed to handle knives, I take no responsibility for the outcome of any actions that were a result of reading this document. 2. You need some scotch tape. Preferably tape matching whats on your present Ok now on to the sneakiness: Pick out the present(s) you want to snoop and move them near the front of the tree before you go to bed. After everyone is asleep, get up and take the present to another room, like the bathroom, wh...

Well after 7 years of the Dodge Grand Caravan, we decided it was having too many problems so we bought a Toyota Sienna