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So I finally got around to getting my locks re-keyed. I thought about having a locksmith do it for me, but it would cost me a couple hundred dollars to have a guy come out and get my 6 locks re-keyed. Instead I bought a kit from Change-A-Lock online on Monday and today it arrived. The kit consists of a couple sets of colored pins, some tools, and the new keys. It took me about 10 minutes to get the first one apart and I learned an important lesson to follow instructions carefully as I pulled the cylinder out instead of pushing it out with the tool and the springs and the upper pins and springs came falling out. I took me a while to get those back in, and I was able to change all the knobs and deadbolts in just a few minutes each. I was really surprised at how fast it actually went and how easy it was. It took me longer to get the locks in and out of the doors then it took to re-key them. Now I just have to get some extra keys made and put the originals in a safe place. 5:50 PM | Comments [0]

We had a great first thanksgiving in our new house. Ryan and Jessica came over and we had quite the feast. I cooked a 20 pound turkey for the four of us and some mashed potatoes while Jen made stuffing, pop-overs, and opened the can of cranberry sauce. Jessica made her chestnut pie while Ryan entertained all of us with his witty banter. The Turkey turned out pretty well. I stitched up the bottom of the bird after stuffing it with cornbread stuffing and it ended up looking like the backend exploded with stuffing. I guess by stitches didn't hold but it turned out very nicely. We watched Christmas movies for the rest of the night and Fred Claus sucked. I got up at the crack of dawn for black friday at Home Depot to get a miter saw for $60 which is usually $99. It is not the best saw made, but you can't beat the price. The next one up was $199, so I figure I can almost replace it 3 times and still come in around the same price. There was a good crowd at 6AM at Home Depot, and I was able to get in and out in just a few minutes. Jen found a small Canon camera on Amazon on sale and I got her that for Christmas so she can take it to Disney. I did a search on the model and found an article on Engadget saying that you can get a free memory card with it, so I ended up getting a free 8GB memory card. That should be enough for Jen to take a few thousand pictures! After making some pancakes, and later turkey clubs, and saying goodby to Ryan and Jessica, Jen and I went back to Home Depot so that she could get me a shop vac for Christmas that was on sale for $25, and sure enough there were still a bunch of the miter saws left. I could have slept in and still gotten the deal. 8:20 PM | Comments [0]

So after being in the new house for a few months, I finally have gotten around to making some work benches for the garage. In the back of garage there were four shelves made of 2x4s attached to the wall. Not really in the best of places and they were barely held up with just three drywall screws per shelf in the wall and a mix of nails and screws in horizontal 2x4s. They really didn't fit my vision of a workshop so I pulled them down, but did save all of the shelves. I took two of the shelves and removed the OSB boards leaving just the 2x4 frame. I got a few 4x4s and cut them for the 6 legs and bolted everything together with some gorilla glue. Everything was going well until I hit a nail with my spade bit and pretty much had to burn my way through all the holes with a very dull bit. The longest part of the whole project was cutting the 4x4s. Since I don't yet have a electric saw, I had to use my ancient hand miter box. I had to start the sawing with a hand saw for about half an inch just so that I could get it into the miter box to saw the rest of the way. Everything turned out pretty well and the table is very solid. With the two remaining shelves I will be making another workbench but this one will be a little lower.

5:23 PM | Comments [0]

Finally I got the New Xbox Experience after work today. I have been waiting for it forever it seems, but just as scheduled, I got to download it. I tried to get into the early preview program, but was too late. The NXE is a redesigned interface for the Xbox 360 to deal with the huge amount of content available and it seems to make things more modular. The best feature that was added is the Netflix movie streaming natively on the 360. So now I can watch movies from the Xbox without going through a hacked Media Center and it works great. The interface only shows movies that you have added to your "Instant Queue" and they start up pretty quickly. Jen and I watched a few 30 Rock episodes from Season 1 and after a bit of buffering, it worked great. Their were some annoying stops when it was playing, but is probably due to the shitty Time Warner cable internet or just too many people trying things out. Another feature is the Avatar creator much like the Wii's. It lets you create a person that can join groups of other friends online and play games. Pretty nice. Overall, the design is really growing on me, and I think it is the best interface for a game console yet. 11:20 PM | Comments [0]

So tonight Jen and I , Julie and Moseley, Ryan and Jessica went to see a movie. We stopped off at CVS and grabbed some candy for 99 cents a box rather then 3-4 dollars and headed off. We wanted to see Role Models, but we just missed that showing so we went to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It was a pretty good movie. It had some really funny laugh-out-loud parts. Seth Rogen is one of my favorite actors from being in Knocked Up, Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin, and the short Freaks and Geeks, and he was great in this movie. Surprisingly there was a lot of hockey in the movie and with it taking place in Pittsburgh their were some Penguins jerseys and the igloo was featured. Overall it was a good movie and I will probably watch it again on Netflix. 10:20 PM | Comments [0]