This is my third post of the weekend…must be a record I think.   So was today’s NASCAR race a joke or what?  I know it’s not the teams fault, but somebody’s head is going to roll. (pun intended)  Heck, I couldn’t even get my race nap in because they were stopping every 10 minutes.   — Just glad I didn’t get tickets.  Mabye next year they’ll have it figured out.

I’m not the biggest reality show fan, but I found one that I’ve done my best not to miss.  It’s the CBC’s How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?  By far, the performances of the Maria’s have been great.  Since I’m a bloody American, I can’t vote, but I have my money on Janna.  She’s was my pick early on … and not just because she had short hair.

I’ve always been a Sound of Music fan, so this show has been fun to watch.  We’ll have to see who wins tomorrow night.  With any luck gas prices will crash and I can head to Canada this fall to see the show. I’d also like to attend a taping of Air Farce Live before they go off the air this year.

Now I bet it will be a month before I post again…. who knows.

Posted: July 27th, 2008 under Daily Rants, Television.
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I stayed up way too late last night setting up a new template.  Pretty dumb idea when you have to be up before 7 a.m. to cover race day traffic.   Of course, one of the great things I love about this job is that I can update traffic reports on WISHTV.com from the parking lot of Kroger in downtown Noblesville.   This Kroger doesn’t have a Starbucks or other coffee shop inside, so there’s no place to sit. I’m in the Lumina and its air conditioning went out some years ago – so it’s getting a little warm.  Sandy was grocery shopping…

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Posted: July 27th, 2008 under Daily Rants, Just another entry.
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The last few days I’ve been teaching myself the open source CMS Joomla, while helping the OSU Alumni Association build a new Web site.  It’s be a bit challenging at times, but it’s been a good learning experience. 

It looks like Hurricane Dolly put a bigger butt-whipping on South Texas than originally expected.  She made landfall as a Category 2 and really gave South Padre Island a beating. I never would have expected the summer tourist season being so big, but it probably is for Texans.  Hopefully it won’t take too long to get back on their feet. Read more »

Posted: July 26th, 2008 under Just another entry.
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NHC: Dolly Track

If you haven’t heard by now, TS Dolly is put a bull’s-eye on the South Texas Coast.  A year ago, I would probably be on like hour 12 or 13 at work at be prepared to work 24 hours plus on Tuesday into Wednesday.

As of Monday night, the “official” track has it making landfall just north of Brownsville, I’d guess somewhere close to Port Mansfield, Texas.  But several of the models as of this evening have begun to move it closer to Brownsville and the Mexico border.

The South Florida Water Management District has a great graphic of several hurricane model plots.

The good thing is the farther south of Port Mansfield, the less impact a storm would have on Corpus Christi.  I still know a lot of people down there and wouldn’t want anyone I know to be harmed in a storm.  My old web site has gone into “hurricane” mode and is keeping the folks up-to-date on the latest information.  Hurricane preparedness was one of the things we took very seriously. 

One of the benefits of South Texas is there really is nothing between Raymondville and Sarita. (see map below)  If a storm were to make landfall somewhere near Port Mansfield, the worst of the storm would only affect about 500 people and a bunch of cattle.  (Hurricane Allen a Cat 5 hurricane made landfall in this area.)  For those who don’t know most of this area is part of the Armstrong Ranch where Dick Cheney accidentally shot a lawyer a few years back.  We’ll see where Dolly decides to go in the next few days.

Posted: July 21st, 2008 under Just another entry.
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It’s been one of those days where I haven’t felt just “right”.  I woke up this morning like I always do and check to see if there was any new news from overnight on WISHTV.com on my cell phone.  (Ok..I’m a loser I know.) 

So imagine my surprise when I see our breaking news headline that 2 photographers were shot while covering a fire.  Turns one of the photographers was one of my co-workers.  The good news is that he’s ok, he probably be sore for a few days…but will live.   It’s a sobering reminder of the danger even the media faces when covering the news.  

On to other news, last night I went to see Glenn Beck’s Unelectable ‘08 stage show at the local movie house.  It was broadcast to several hundred movie theaters across the country from Dallas.  Pretty cool technology.  Anyway Glenn was great.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  The hard part is he was right.  The boobs we elect to office in Washington aren’t going to fix this country unless we the people start getting a liittle louder and demanding something to happen.  (Not just promise change). 

The problem is everyone is so busy with their daily lives that as long as the lights stay on, most people won’t yell that loud.   Yea, gas prices may be $4.00 a gallon, but I’m still driving to Ohio this weekend for the festival at St. Peter’s. 

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Posted: July 18th, 2008 under Daily Rants.
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So I get into work this morning and happened to catch the headline that Anheuser-Busch accepted a buyout offer from a Belgium Company InBev – makers of Beck, Stella Artois and ironically Labatt Blue (Which I thought was Canadian).

Anyway, I’d be lying if I were to say I’m not disappointed about the Busch family selling out to a foreign company.   Several years ago, I attended “Budweiser Beer School” when we went to Sea World of San Antonio.   They took extra time to beat into our heads that Budweiser was the only major “American Beer” on the market. 

Coors was owned by Molson 51%, which makes them a Canadian beer and Miller is owned by a South African company.  So a cold Bud was the only “All-American” choice. 

It was the first beer I got drunk on during my parish festival (see last post), and has always been one of my favorites.  That probably ended today.  There are still a bunch of brews that are 100% American … According to Wikipedia, Samuel Adams/Boston Beer Company will now the largest “American Owned Brewery”.

The good thing is as I age, my tastes age as well.  I’ve taken a liking to Maker’s Mark, even becoming an ambassador.   A few weeks ago, Maker’s did a tasting in Indianapolis where I learned that Bourbon Whiskey is a truly American product.  I may just have to stick with that.

I took this from another blog today…it’s appropriate … This Bud’s for EU!

Posted: July 14th, 2008 under Daily Rants.
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One of my long term projects that I finally got around to cleaning up my “My Music” folder and iTunes.  For some reason, when we moved all our music over to the external storage drive iTunes it duplicated just about every song.  So we had about 54 gigs of music.  So after a major clean-up over the weekend we’re down to 30 G.  We still have over 5,000 cuts and some more sorting to do.

This afternoon, I’ve been listing to classic Mike Trivisonno, who’s the afternoon host at WTAM in Cleveland.  Some classic bits.

What I should be doing is sitting outside.  It’s sunny and clear and 79°.   Last night we went to see the Indianapolis Indians take on the Toledo Mud Hens.  It rained and they called the game after 6 inn.  But the Hens were winning when they pulled out the tarp.  So that’s cool…we were rooting for the Hens anyway.

Next weekend is the big St. Peter’s Summer Festival back in Mansfield.  We’re planning on going next week; we haven’t been since we moved to Texas.  I’m looking forward to spending some of my hard earned money at the blackjack tables and the beer tent.   Smiley at WZPL here in Indy calls the Catholic festivals “Beer Fests” He’s close to being right.    I’m also looking forward to the Knight of Columbus BBQ chicken.   It should be fun.

OK… I’m going to go sleep in the sun…

Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Just another entry.
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In the past the first day back from a week off was never any fun. Wasn’t that bad this time around. It’s nice to have a great group of people to make sure things got done while I was off.

I’ve posted photos from William Moeller’s baptism have been posted to the photo gallery along with photos from Red White and Boom 2008. We had a great time in Ohio over the weekend visiting the family. Wish it could happen more often.

I also learned people actually read the blog and my sister-in-law has me in her RSS reader. I was impressed to say the least, I didn’t think anyone cared.

This video was uploaded to IndyTube.tv over the weekend…pretty creative. The videos are getting better we’ll just have to see what happens.

Posted: July 7th, 2008 under Just another entry.
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Well I’ll keep this blog entry short, my lovely wife says I’ve been on her computer too long already.  There’s good reason, yesterday I spent most of the afternoon and evening updating the look of our main site www.crundwell.us.    I moved us over to a Wordpress installation so we can manage it better w/o having to code everything inside Dreamweaver. I also re-worked the template for our photo gallery as well, so now everything has a nice shiny new coat of paint on it.

Today, we’re off to Columbus for Red White & Boom.  A tradition we’re happy to start back up once again.  The fireworks in Columbus are spectacular and worth making the trip to see.  You can also watch them online at NBC4i.com.

So not that we’re traveling the rest of the weekend, the relaxing part of my vacation is now over.  We will be taking the laptop on the road this weekend so maybe we’ll get a post in while we’re gone.   It’s my goal to start blogging more often, as long as it doesn’t get me into trouble.

Everyone have a safe and Happy Fourth of July!

Posted: July 3rd, 2008 under Just another entry.
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Well it’s Day 2 of the vacation and so far it hasn’t been a relaxing as I hoped.  At about 12:30 this morning, my refrigerator decided to start making really loud noises…  The fan motor was on the fritz.  We’ll I didn’t want the damn thing burning up so I had to unplug the fridge and start packing the food into coolers.

The good thing is we still had enough room in our chest freezer to fit all the frozen stuff.  The rest fit into three coolers and are packed with ice … So fun running to Marsh at 1 a.m. for five bags of ice.   So far the coolers are protecting the food from the fridge.

This morning, I took apart the freezer back and started to troubleshoot the problems.  Took awhile to find it was the motor.  Of course, no one kept the part in stock locally, but one will be here tomorrow. 

Yesterday, Sandy and I made a trip to Northwestern Indiana to say goodbye to my Uncle Willie.  His wife, Audrey is my mom’s best friend from college.  Willie died Friday night after a long illness.  Since my mother couldn’t make the trip from Florida, I knew I had to go an pay my respects. 

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Posted: July 1st, 2008 under Just another entry.
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