DavesJunk.Com

Well, thanx to a tip from my brother in law, I found out that my web site got hacked the other day.  My question is simply “Why?”.  It was hacked by a group called Indonesian Hackers (spelled differently).  Okay, I know my website is must read info and all, but why would some group want to hack a site mainly devoted to my family and motorcycle exploits.  We are just that important to national security or something, right?  Anyway, I opened my site to find a totally black screen and something like an eye looking around the page..

myspace layout

I have to admit it was pretty cool looking except for the ominous message of “You are owned by Indonesian Hackers”.  Owned!!??  Really? 

Anyway, long story short.  I called by brother and he fixed it in no time flat.  Thanx bro.

Have you all ever had anything hacked?  Let me know about it.

Father’s day took on new meaning for me around 4 years ago with the first year that we had our first child in that year.  That was the Father’s Day that I got to buy me a motorcycle.  Oh yeah, good times good times.  Now that we have two and one more coming the gifts cost less but are ever more valuable.  I had a wonderful Father’s Day and the dollar amount was significantly less than that first year.  Oddly enough, I like this one just as well if not more since RaeLynne was here to have on this special day. 

I am not just going to blah blah blah on about the wonderful things that my family did for me this year, but I am also going to inform those that may not know the significance of this year’s Father’s Day. 

Did you know that this is the 100th birthday of Father’s Day.  This is not the “official national” observance, but the time frame of when it was first observed.  In 1910 a woman by the name of Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd realized that Mother’s Day was two years strong and there was not a Father’s Day in the calendar.  She looked back on her life to remember how it was her father that has sacrificed and supported her due to the fact that her mother had died during child birth.  She recalled all that he had done in her raising and decided to suggest that such a holiday be invented.  She approached the ministers and officials of Spokane, Washington and instantly received glowing support.  The Mother’s Day idea was heavily supported throughout the country but Father’s Day did not take hold so quickly.  As a matter of fact the official Father’s Day did not happen until 1972. 

So on to MY Father’s Day!

My Father’s Day started out just the way every dad should get to.  I was allowed to sleep in while Becky and the girls went into the living room.  I slept till a ripe 8:30.  For those of you laughing right now, have a kid and see just how early these little boogers like to awaken.  This was bliss.  I woke up and was given my choice of activities to do.  While thinking about what to do, I kept thinking about what I needed to get done.  I quickly decided to go to the park before I got too close to the lawnmower. 

So we loaded up the van and went to the park with the intention of playing on the playground and doing some fishing.  Upon reaching our destination, we found that there was a car show and VFW event being held there.  COOL!  So we walked around the park in the blazing heat and looked at some really cool old cars and heard some good music.  I avoided the $2 fountain drink stand and did not dare to look at prices of the food they were selling. 

After seeing some cool cars we went on to play at the playground.  Rory quickly climbed the ladder to the big slide, came about a fourth of the way down, and starting screaming “HOT HOT HOT!!!”  She could not get back up and was not about to go on down.  So I climbed up the slide backwards to get her down.  RaeLynne saw all this action and wanted in on it.  NO I did not put her on the big hot slide.  I climbed her up and slid her down on my lap.  She loved it so much I had to do it three more times.  Then I had to do the same with Rory.  Fun stuff.  RaeLynne had some fun chasing some ducks and Rory piddled around a little while longer.  Then we decided to go home to fill up the kiddie pool and let them cool off.  As we were traveling home, my wonderful sister in law invited us to come down and swim in their much larger above ground pool.  How did she know?  We went and the girls all had a blast.

We then made our way on home and had a great supper of country ham, gravy, biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  Yummy southern goodness.  Now the video games have been fired up and it is time to put RaeLynne to bed.  What a wonderful Father’s Day.

To all you father’s out there:

I hope your day went as well as mine.

Father’s Day is not just a day to remember fathers, but a day to appreciate how wonderful it is to be one.  My life has been blessed exponentially with the birth of our children.

To all you first year fathers:

You are sure to be full of excitement and joy.  I mean another day of presents right?  The more Father’s Days that have gone by the better they have been.  Cherish this and all to come.

My information for Father’s Day history came mostly from HERE!

Well, we decided to take our little girls fishing at the city park the other day.  Rory has been hyped ever since she caught her fish at the lake.  So we loaded them up and joined Daniel and his two boys, Colton and Nick, for some good ole fishing fun.

Colton catches a fish and Rory poses with him.  What a supportive cousin.

Rory shows off her two fish.

Rory and Colton racing off the dock.

This is what my fish looked like.  Yep, I caught nothing…sigh.

As we were getting ready to leave, the Fire Department was doing exercises with their trucks.  We got to watch the world’s biggest sprinkler at work.

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I had a little trouble with my motorcycle.  I am a little disgusted by this but cannot say that I am disappointed with the bike.  I have had relatively little trouble out of it in spite of all the arduous traveling that I have put it through.  The list of mechanical problems are:

Rear light fell off back fender  OOPS (factory flaw fixed with hillbilly ingenuity)

Handle bars get twisted out of straight line when on extremely bumpy roads

and then routine stuff:

Change spark plugs

Several rear tires

I need a front and rear tire

Rear brakes replacement

All in all, for a motorcycle that has traveled 11,500 miles that is very good.  This is including that around 1/3 of its mileage is off-road, snow, mud, and hill climbing travels.  So again I am still satisfied with the motorcycle.  Besides that is a lot of miles on a bike anyway.

Well, now for the matter at hand.  I have sprung an oil leak.  In a car this is a minor annoyance that will cost extra in oil replacement.  ON a motorcycle that problem remains along with the lovely saturation of my pants leg on the guilty side.  Yep, I drove all the way to Dale Hollow with an oil leak that totally ruined a pair of jeans and got my leg nice and oily…yum.  It appears that driving at around 70 MPH will keep the leak off my leg but travels it to the rear brakes.  Hmm, the lesser of two evils?

It appears that the problem is in the jug.  More specifically it is where the cylinder head meets with the block.  So in order to fix this I will have to tear down half of the bike.  More fun for me…yay.  Luckily the replacement gasket only costs around $20.  That is a small consolation for the time without my motorcycle in prime riding season.  Anyway, rest assured that there will be a blog entry as I tear this thing down and run into a multitude of problems.  Until then you will have to content yourself with looking at pix of the leak on the bike, its messy carnage, the bald tires and the beautiful sky I was driving into.

As I discovered the menacing leak, the sky looked ominous in the distance.

The irritating leak in all it’s glory.  What a mess.

And the mess continues all the way up to the rear flares.

As if the oil leak was not enough I have two bald tires that need replacing…sigh.  That will be $200.

So we were given a 10 gallon aquarium and we really liked it.  So in traditional American thought: “More is better”, we found a larger one.  Just a little larger.  We went from 10 gallons to 55 gallons.  Yep that is a lot of water.  We actually had to get the water hose over to the window to fill this thing up.  We got a good deal on the aquarium itself, but there is no such thing as a cheap fish tank.  We soon realized that we needed something to set this thing onto.  55 gallons is close to 550 pounds.  So in order to make sure that the floor suffered minimally, we put the tank in the corner of a room.  Thus having two outside walls for maximum support. 

So after cleaning the very nasty tank, which Becky said was quite the chore.  She even found two old cigarette butts in the film of dust and dirt that layered the tank.  After all the cleaning was done and the water added, she arranged the decorations and rock.  I never knew what level of difficulty that is employed to this kind of operation. 

Now the fun part.  We took our three fish from the ten gallon and introduced them into their new home.  Whereas they seemed to fit their environment quite nicely before, placing them into this new tank was like dropping a grain of sand into the salt flats.  So now we get to buy more fish and more decorations.  Remember what I said, there is no such thing as a cheap fish tank. 

All in all, we are very happy with our new addition.  I live in fear of the possibility of this thing springing a leak onto our hardwood flooring.  Or worse yet, living the event that occurred to my friend, a golf ball thrown into the glass creating a deluge in the house.  But I am still satisfied with it.  I would advise anyone to have one, especially with kids.  Our kids love it and so do their cousins.  It is an instant attraction.

Those are not smudges, those are our little fish in a whole new world.

So it is time for camping at Dale Hollow.  Man it was hot and muggy.  But there was little rain so the weather cooperated fairly well for us.  As a matter of fact, I got home with just 10 minutes before the rain started on me.  Since I was riding home on a motorcycle this was a close call.  Nothing like the problems that I came across on the way down (which I will tell about in a future blog entry).

The fishing was pretty good.  Rory had a really good time catching her fish and I am afraid this has spurred an addiction.  There was also a lot of lounging and general good ole camping fun.  Thus all the fun that camping is supposed to be.  This year was especially interesting as this was the first year that RaeLynne could walk on a camping trip.  Yep there was a lot of “ hey come back here little girl!”

We all had a good time and look forward to the next one.

It is sorta a tradition and just plain fun.  I did it as a kid and so did my wife.  I am sure that all of you have if you lived out somewhere that you saw them.  Catching lightening bugs is a whole lot of fun and a good way to get kids to not be afraid of ALL bugs.  My daughter has been aching to get some, so last night Rory, Becky, Kristi, and myself began our hunt.  It was quite clear that we had waited too late as most were high in the trees.  So tonight Rory, Becky, and I tried it again.  Poor RaeLynne misses out on these adventures for now.  We started half an hour earlier and yielded much better success.  How many did we catch?  Not many.  But it was fun to see Rory running with her butterfly net to capture the luminescent bug.  She might have caught more had she not been so worried with dirt getting into her flip flops, but it was fun for all anyway.  Even our dog, Blanco, seemed to enjoy our activities so late at night. 

The picture is not great but hey it was dark and all I had was a cell phone.

These two kids fighting are too cute.  And from the title you can tell that I love the part where the boy tells the girl “You disrespectin’”. 

They go at it like a married couple and then he just sends her on her merry little way.  Too funny.

One of my friends put a comic up by the Oatmeal about the angler fish.  I had heard of the angler fish but never had gone into much depth.  This is one weird animal.  I have included the Animal Planet’s documentary about it in the YouTube video below and then a link to the comic that I originally read.  Warning:

The video is Animal Planet but still PG 13’ ish.  The comic is that also (mainly due to a few curse words, but still funny)

And here is the link to the comic:

Oatmeal's Angler fish comic

Again, so weird.  But now I can say that I have learned something thanks to Twitter.  That in of itself is weird.

Well, maybe it is not Barna and Bailey Circus, but there was nowhere else that I wanted to be this evening.  Rory’s school had a variety show in which each grade level performed some kind of act or skit.  Thus every parent was obligated to brave sweltering humidity, walk half a mile (due to near no parking lots), and pay a dollar to watch their child (children) perform.  I was quite taken with the fact that most of the music was stuff that I listened to when I was in high school.  Yup, I am getting old.  Soon this stuff will be elevator music. 

The kids all did well.  I saw very few that just bucked up and refused to participate.  Pretty good considering you are dealing with ages 3-13 respectively.  It was hot but entertaining.  So being the proud father I am, I have got pictures to show.  Here we go……

Here are the stars of the show…well as far as Becky, Ben, Melanie and myself are concerned.  Thanks to Melanie for taking this picture that only someone on the “inside” could get.

Rory is anxiously looking for Becky and I.  To her right is her teacher and to her left is Rachel and that is Toby with the cool hat and glasses.  Rock on Toby.

And then she finds us…

Ok, here is a basic breakdown of the skit.  In the background is “When the Sun Goes Down”, the kids are all lined up, and then they are off.

First to the left…

…Then to the right…

…Then shake it this way…

…and shake it that way.  And then the boys react with a …

They look aghast don’t they?

While the girls were shaking it, Toby spent much of his time looking too cool for words.

Not just anyone can pull that outfit off.

The whole skit was wonderful and cute.  Thus it was just what it was supposed to be.  I took sadistic pleasure in watching the teachers on the side lines having to act out the actions to be sure that the kids did the same.  Where else can you watch grown adults voluntarily behave that way?