I saw this a while back and I’ve been too lazy to post it. Check it out!

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/travel/07surfacing.html

I used to live on Jarvis and I walked through Jarvis Square almost every day. Now I’m a block from the Glenwood Avenue arts district. Even though I’m not into theater, it’s nice to know it’s there.

I’ve always thought Rogers Park was special. We live a block from the lake, a block from the L. There’s all kinds of ethnicity and great food. The neighborhood is relatively quiet, it’s not noisy and full of commotion like other north side neighborhoods. And yet, it’s still Chicago, I can see the the Hancock Bldg and Wrigley Field from my balcony. And in 20 minutes I can be downtown

While I haven’t owned / lived with these guys in a long while. I decided I would re-post some videos and pictures of all the strange creatures I used to care for. Today’s post is for my Leaf-Tail Geckos.

All leaf-tails are from Madagascar. These guys of the Henkeli variety, which is the second largest. They require warm surroundings as they are cold blooded, as well as frequent misting as they are used to rain forest climes. They eat primarily insects, but might also sip on nectar if provided. I used to roll live crickets around in vitamin dust before feeding them.

Here’s a video of my pair of Leaf-tail Geckos feeding at night. They like to rear up on their hind legs and pounce on their prey. Their feet are covered in fine hair, which makes them able to stick to just about any surface (they liked to sleep in the top corner of the aquarium).

And while these isn’t technically my gecko, this one is of a similar gecko, and it’s really funny. Remember that these guys are completely harmless!

I spent a weekend in New Orleans due to some airline miles I had that were expiring. Stayed in the French Quarter and took in most of the touristy things. Ate crawfish, walked Bourbon Street, went to Cafe Du Monde and rode the St. Charles Ave streetcar. Also visited the WWII museum and Audobon Aquarium. For only being 2 days, I certainly packed a lot in and had a great trip!

I just listened to a great fresh air segment with Bob Sullivan who wrote a book called “Stop Getting Ripped Off: Why Consumers Get Screwed And How You Can Always Get A Fair Deal.”  If you have a checking account, want to buy a car, or want to be a better informed consumer, run over to the fresh air website and give this a listen ASAP! It’s a bit long at 39 minutes, but I found it well worth the time.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122212229

In fact, a couple days before hearing this story, I had just found out that my Citibank checking account, which was a free checking account for 9 years is now going to start charging me $15 a month if I don’t keep a minimum balance of $1500 (just like he mentions in the segment). Needless to say, I’m going to start shopping for a new checking account. I was also the angry recipient of a new overdraft protection charge last month. I have one of the line-of-credit types of overdraft protection. I used it more when I was younger and lived paycheck to paycheck, but now they’ve started charging me $10, on top of the double digit credit card interest rates every time I use it.

This fee-based economy is something I’ve noticed for a while. And it’s not just banks and credit cards. Cruise lines, hotels, rental car companies, and even our governments with their red-light cameras and bottled water and grocery bag taxes. One of my personal favorites was the fee I had to pay for sub-prime mortgage education, even when I wasn’t taking one out on my condo! It feels like consumers are being bled dry by a million tiny paper cuts. Good luck holding on to your wealth!

I’ve also been meaning for a while to post about some of my stained glass. I took a class near the end of 2006 and made these pieces…

Almost a year later, I took a walking tour of the Pullman District here in Chicago. In one of the houses, I spotted the Cardinal sun catcher (below left). I took a picture at the time as I thought it was awesome, and that it was a piece I could replicate fairly easily. It took a few months for me to actually sit down and recreate it from nothing more than the picture, but I think I pulled off a pretty close approximation (lower right). I gave it as an x-mas gift in 2007.

For a long time I’ve wanted to make a post about an arcade machine conversion I made years ago for my frat house.

It started as an old Arch-rivals video game that a former alumni donated. It worked fairly well for a few years, but finally succumbed to age (being 16 years old). The monitor was snowy, the controls barely worked, etc. So I decided to scrap it and make it a MAME arcade machine.

I ripped out all of the guts, put in an old computer and monitor, speakers, a marquis light. I created graphics for the marquis and new control panel.  I built the control panel with buttons and joysticks from Groovy Game Gear, and hooked it to the computer with a device called a keywiz.

The computer had Windows XP installed, the MAME program and a program called MameWAH for the graphical interface. It allows users to work the game selection via the joysticks. There are more than 4000 games that people can play. But most stick to the more popular games, like Marvel vs. Capcom.

I did the machine conversion in December of 2005 and it still works to this day four years later. Surprisingly the already ancient computer inside and my hack job with MDF and contact paper has held up!

Check it out here…

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/home/dangercrane/9201014/

Check out the pictures from my trip to florida for the DSG Holiday Party

This is a video of the first time I ever shot a gun/rifle!

Just thought I’d throw up this cute video of my cat Clark…

My first 10k (6.2 mi) started out pretty poorly. The first half of the race was interrupted with frequent walk breaks and I wasn’t sure what was going on. Then I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before due to a migraine, and even though I had walked for a couple minutes, I was still on a decent pace (just over 10 min/mi). I sucked it up, switched from a podcast over to metal and stomped out the last three miles. By the end of the race my competitive side came out and I started to pick out runners up ahead of me and would adjust my pace to gradually overtake them. I finished in 1 hour and 50 seconds (9:47 min/mi). I finished 130th of 204, or in the bottom half of the results.

Results: here

Here’s the only picture of me from the race. I’m in the green shirt, half out of the picture on the left. I’m too fast to be captured on digital media.