Knights (mare) Inn

So yesterday about eight-ish in the evening I noticed that the AC in our house sounded a little funny but didn't really pay attention to it. Around nine-ish I noticed it was getting warm in the house. So I check on the AC and sure enough the Inside fan motor isn't running. I can also smell a strange oil like smell, and cold air coming from the return. Great! we call J.R. Perkins but they can't come out till 10am. I can't sleep if the temperature is above 79. So the choice was go to my moms house (yeah right) or a get a hotel for the night.

I looked up hotels to see what was near by and there wasn't much to choose from, a Motel 6, a Holday inn, and a few others. I figured the Motel 6 would be ok. My wife said lets stay at the Knights inn on 32nd st and earl. Uhmm ok I guess. Called and they said rooms were $45.00 per night, ok we quickly packed up some stuff and off we went.

Well..... The room was rather big, had a fridge and microwave, but.... and that was a BIG BUTT!

It had the following issues:
Decorations... There were 5 count them FIVE of this picture in the suite.
Missing Items.... The Smoke detector, Hair Dryer, and several light bulb were missing.
Damage... There was a large hole in the wall in the bathroom.
The toilet seat was not attached to the toilet (so that was fun).

The Beds were like sleeping directly on a box spring.

Cleanliness.... My pillow looked like a car mechanic had slept on it, and well just pretend that those aren't blood stains on the curtains.
But.... I digress.

SO, we went to bed around 11:00 and everything was fine as there was almost no one in the rooms nearby. Around some time in the middle of the fucking night! I hear a knocking or banging noise, (and it woke me up). I start to go back to sleep and it's happens again! Oh... It's someone banging on the door! "Hey Odie! let me in!" BANG BANG BANG (on the door). WTF! CRACK CRACK CRACK (on the window) Uhm! hmmm! Yeah this isn't funny. LUNGE! (against the door). OK I'm up! "ODIE!" (that ain't Garfield). I sneak up to the windows and see a blurry brown colored person (dammit I sneak back and get my glasses). Yeah there is a guy out front in a wife beater t-shirt and bling (can't see much because I don't want to move the curtains). BANG BANG BANG LUNGE (against the door again). I go back to the phone and call the front desk:

Front desk: "Front desk can I help you?"
Me: "uhm yeah there is some guy banging on my door and yelling"
Front desk: "OK I'll check it out"
Me: "Thanks I'd appreciate that"
Lunatic: "Knock BANG CRACK ODIE! LUNGE"

The one time I didn't bring my gun! Oh look it's one of those fold up suitcase holder thingies.

So while I wait for the front desk guy to come out, I'm waiting by the front door so if this guy breaks in I can smash him in the face with the suitcase holder while screaming "I'm going to eat your eyeballs" in the most demonic voice I can muster.

Finally the front desk guy comes along and I hear an exchange that goes something like this:
Front desk guy: "hey! what are you doing?"
Lunatic: "Uh I'm looking for this girl that's staying in this room here"
Front desk guy: "They left yesterday"
Lunatic: "well I just got here and I'm looking for them, and so now I'm leaving... now"

I waited a minute or so and checked out the window. The guy was gone. I went back to bed but did not get back to sleep for about an hour.

Did I mention my wife slept through the whole thing? Well she did.

She only woke up when I went over and poked her in the leg and said "Next time we stay at the Motel 6!"

I got up the next morning and took a shower where I noticed the tub and ceiling were rather close together and the light fixture in the bathroom (which was right over the tub) was missing it's cover and one socket was broken. So if say a tall guy like me wasn't paying attention and stepped back my wet hair would have touched the broken socket and I would have been electrocuted.
Oh and whats up with this?
all in all I give it a half star for no bed bugs (so far as I could tell) and another half star for no dead hooker under the bed.

Sony Vegas 9 pro freezes when rendering AVHCD

Posting this for anyone searching for a solution or work around for this problem. The problem is that if you are trying to render a video in the AVCHD for burning to Blu-ray, for some odd reasons Sony Vegas Pro 9 (8 and 10 as well) may hang or freeze or crash or give an out of memory error.

I have been researching the problem and trying all the solution (or lack thereof) on the internet. While the problem definitely exist in Sony Vegas and not with your hardware. I do not have a solution. I do have a viable work around.

First the issue seems to be caused by the AVCHD encoder not being able to handle certain scenario's. In one case I was rendering a video that included panning over still pictures and cross fades. at certain points the program would always freeze at exactly the same place. My fix at the time was to replace several of the stills with smaller images, and less complicated pans. I then rendered the video in short blocks on several computers at one time and joined them together re-rendering in AVCHD. Other scenario's are multiple clips in different video formats like AVCHD and quicktime H.264. The ACS Encoder does not like certain aspects of the H.264 quicktime files.

My workaround is thus. I can render the video just fine in any other format. So what I did was render the video in full 1080p using the Windows WMV codec at a bit rate of 16 megabits per second. Then reloaded the clip and rendered it in AVCHD. IT rendered easily and the video quality seems to be just fine.

What have I been up to lately

I have been really busy lately and most everything I do is posted on my Youtube channel.

For Everything Else There's Mastercard

So my Heater stopped working last Friday 12-24-2010. I went up to see why and could not tell. Called Goettl to look at it. seemed some kind of overheat sensor tripped because one of the pipes on my heat exchanger popped loose from it's mount. The pipes are press fit in place no welding.
Goettl no longer is owned by Goettl but by ARS (whoever they are). Apparently 2 years ago they sold out leaving everyone high and dry. The "Goettl" repair man told us that the part is no longer available and that we would have to buy a new unit for only $9000.00 minus a $1500.00 government rebate (rebate ends 1-1-2011). Yeah right, I am still paying for a new sewer line and not about to get a new AC unit until I absolutely have to.

This morning we removed the heat exchanger, and took it to Cliff's welding in Mesa. Went and had lunch, walked around a Goodwill for awhile and picked it up again.
I had them weld all the pipes so the exchanger will last longer.
We re-installed it, installed new screws wherever we could, cause the old ones were stripped or rusted. Turned it on and she fired right up.

     Half a tank of Gas for my Brother $20.00
Lunch while we waited for the repair $35.27
                                      Welding job $62.48
                Box of self tapping screws $4.50
        Labor for my 2 brothers help $120.00
                                                Total $242.25
                                                         ------------
                                           Saving $8757.75 PRICELESS!

Home Video of our Dream Vacation

Good times....
Good times....
My favorite was when my lawn was ground to a pulp.

Our Dream Vacation.

Hey everyone, Check out these pictures of our dream vacation, and it will only cost us $6800.00.

Yup... That's right, Kathi and I get an all expenses paid vacation to...

A NEW SEWER LINE!
Thank you Orangeburg pipe!

I WIN!

Me: Tank you have to go!
Tank: No way I like it here, it's comfy.
Me: Well, your going, but first you have to loose some weight!
Tank: What do you mean?
Me: We're going to have a talk. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!
Tank: Wait! What are you doing with that SAW!?!?
Me: Muhuhuhahahaha!!!!
Tank: AAAaaaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!!! what a world... what a world....

And so I cut him up in to little pieces.


He begged and pleaded for his life, but I would have none of it. I made one concession, I removed the door to haul his carcass out. Never give up! Never Surrender!

My Stock Pics

Recently found where 2 more of my pictures have been published. I found this site. Here is a pdf preview with one of my pictures on the cover. The book can be purchased much cheaper at Amazon.com.

This picture is on the cover.

This picture is on page 17.

Making Progress

Taking advantage of the unusually cool weather this last week. I expanded the hole in the front of the tank and cut out a large section of the rear of the tank.

Never Give up! Never Surrender!

That Damn Tank

Previous owners of our house had installed a solar hot water system. When we got the house it wasn't working. I had long since removed the panels from the roof as their weight was damaging it. However, the hot water holding tank that was part of the system, was installed on the side yard, near the actual hot water heater. For some STUPID reason they had built a "closet" around it. Apparently they figured this tank would never break or need to be replaced because there is absolutely no EASY way to remove the tank without destroying the closet or the tank.

SO for the 14 years we have lived here I have been trying to remove the tank with out destroying the closet. A couple of years ago I bought a pair of pneumatic shears to cut away the outer covering of the tank, but had nothing to cut the tank up with. The tank cannot be rotated as there are pipes coming out the top of it in to the closet containing the hot water heater. The pipes cannot be removed because I cannot reach the solder joint without removing the roof. It cannot be tilted as the tank extends all the way up into the top of the closet. Nope, I will have to cut a large hole in it and then cut the tank up from the inside and remove it piece meal. Cutting torches and grinders are out of the question as I do not want to burn the house down.

I recently borrowed a reciprocating saw, and picked up some VERY expensive metal cutting blades from Lowe's. I managed to cut a decent sized hole in the tank. Hopefully over the next few weekends I will have this damn tank gone. NEVER give up! NEVER surrender!

Slow Summer

It's been a slow summer. That which I do to make money is taking up most of my time. Anything New that I have been doing is on Youtube.

Eric's and Coleen's wedding

For those that do not know Eric Zanovitch got married last weekend 6-12-2010 (isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?). Here is a link to the pics Kathi and I took, And here is the video of the actual wedding.

On the way up to Las Vegas we rode a helicopter at Hoover Dam.

I was going to stop and maybe go on a tour but the place was a zoo, traffic was slow, etc. As we got to the other side I saw a sign that said "Helicopter rides $29", So I pulled over.

The $29 ride was only 2 minutes long, but they had a 5 minute ride for $59 that takes you over the lake and the dam, as well as the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge being constructed. The third option was a $99 dollar 10 minute ride. We chose the middle one, I grabbed my Sony bloggie, and my Sony HDR-XR150 handycam and started filming with both as soon as I could. You will note that towards the end Kathi and I are wearing what look like fanny packs, but they are not, they are flotation devices. We surmised their purpose was to make the recovery of our mangled bodies easier in the event of a horrific crash in the lake (I digress).

Kathi sat up front as I was too fat for the weight and balance. I did my best to film whatever was interesting with 2 cameras, and try to see the sites.

Kathi later said "Everyone should get to ride in a limousine that isn't taking you to a funeral, and a helicopter that isn't air-evacing you to a hospital." Well I haven't rode in a limousine yet.

To make the video, I synced up the 2 video streams in Sony Vegas Pro 7. and then chose the more interesting parts of the 2 streams. I chose the music for obvious reasons (we're in a helicopter what else would we use).

The helicopter is a Bell 206 Jetranger (thank you Daniel). If you think the ride is expensive, understand that they cost around $500 per hour to operate. The company is Dam helicopter, inc. The helicopter was very small inside. There were 4 passenger seats and it was about as roomy as my wife's Ford Focus. There were no other passengers.

Learning To Fly

More Video's

There are more videos on my Youtube site. I have uploaded some HD Videos as well.

First Music Video

For those that don't know, I have a channel on Youtube. Where I have been uploading some of my video's. Here is my most recent one.

Sanity

I will now take from you, your Sanity.

Electropolis

Electropolis from Kevin McCullough on Vimeo.

How to Crash Airplanes 101

So... a week ago I bought a Parkzone Radian from the Hobby Bench on 19th ave and Northern, and Daniel bought an upgraded Guan Li A-10 from nitroplanes.com. We were both chomping at the bit to fly them this weekend.

Self - "No don't do it, it's too windy!"
Me - "Shut up self!"
Self - "Maybe Daniel will talk some sense in to him".
Daniel - "FLY AIRPLANES!"
Self - "I'll be over here if anyone needs me...."

So my plane is totaled, There were pieces missing and I can't glue the nose back together. I am trying to locate a replacement, but no one has the fuselage in stock right now. Instead I took the receiver out of the Radian and put it into the Hawk sky, so I can fly it on 2.4ghz. That almost ended up bad as I had the elevator servo reversed on my first take off attempt today, and the plane was tail heavy because I didn't have the battery far enough forward. I would have flow again today but just after I landed the wind kicked up again...

Self - "Oooooh, Now you listen to me!"
Me - "Whatever."

Daniel tried flying again today and was doing a pretty good job until his transmitter or receiver cutout and the plane dropped out of the sky like a rock.
The above image was taken seconds after his A-10 crashed (trips over).
So then we had to repair it.



So after much epoxy and tape we got it back together.
Daniel reports later in the day that there is a problem with one of the motors.
We also worked on his old Cessna, which has 2 bad servos and now a broken propeller, This is what happens when a propeller walks up your arm, when it comes on unexpectedly.

Two words "NAZI Spiderpanzer"

Daniel's First Flight

Yesterday my nephew Daniel stopped by with Karen his mother, he found out I had an RC simulator. So he stayed overnight playing on the simulator. Since he was real good at it (and he had sort of flown an RC plane before), the next day (today) we got up somewhat early and went to the vacant lot and, I flew the plane once, then let Daniel fly. Here is that Flight.

Here is another Flight Daniel did with the camera facing to the rear.

And this flight I flew with the camera mounted on the belly of the plane.

Finally here is Daniels flight with the camera pointed to the right. Watch for the loop.

Total flights for today was 5 for me and 5 for Daniel.