I pretty much get up every morning wondering how I'm going to pay bills this month. We're making it, and if it wasn't for all the snow we've had the last couple months, and my friend Brian calling me every time it does, I don't know if we ever would have made the bills.

Us at CGS are trying to crack down on onwe of our clients this month. They are subcontracting us for their website work, I came on board because they siad they could keep me busy 24/7 for quite some time. Well to date, they have given us a grand total of 9 job to propose, and of those 9, one went though, and of that one, they decided, after it was done, they didn't want it live until like summer.

Oh well, it's finished, they'll get a bill anyways.

I just spent the last 2.5 hours in the dentist office getting my tooth pulled, or cut out rather. Turns out you can split a tooth with gingerbread. Not crack, split. The dentist told me I couldn't have done it any better if I tried, right down the middle. And when he tried to take it out, it cracked in half....

A little history. I have a tooth decay probem. My teeth jsut literally suck. I have a filling in every one. I don't even flich at the words root canal anymore. In fact, I have such a high tolerance to pain in my gums, that if I can feel my tooth hurting, it's already going to be a root canal. I practically know how to put the novacane in my self. This is the third tooth I've had removed. The other two, at different times mind you. And both of them were a sinch for the doc. Literally out in like two minutes. I didn't use the vicodin prescription I got. In fact, my last root canal, which was in November, I told him not even to write me a prescription. He didn't.

This one....this one he said I'm gonna hurt. My wife was there this time, she saw it. He was digging and digging and ripping my gums apart trying to get that tooth out. Every time he grabbed a piece, it broke off. Lots of tools, three nurses, and alot of blood. Christina said she could see the gum was ripped up. I've never had stitches before. I have three of them right now in my gums. The Dr. said to one nurse, get me the sutures. the other nurse asked, "what are you going to attach it too?" "He says, I'll find something, I want to get this closed."
BTW, I'm in alot of pain and I'm totally freaking out by this point. They get done, finally. He sit's back and says, "You're gonna have a hole for quite along time."

And you probably think my story ends here. Well it does not! Then, then, it wouldn't stop bleeding! I sat there for an hour and it didn't stop. They changed gauze after gause, and nothing. The Dr. came back in, tightened up the sutures. No help. He stood there with his finger in my mouth pressing a gauze against the one area that wouldn't stop bleeding for 20 minutes! Do you have any idea how uncomfortable that is??

So yeah, I'm home now, I just took a Vicodin. It usually doesn't knock me out, but I have a feeling I am not going to be a very happy person tomorrow.

Thanks for all that helped and voted to get us here!

Now they are sending people to look at the top 5 finalists houses in person, and will announce the winner on Dec 24th!

I will keep you all informed!

We started out with 16 channels and three songs.

Over the past year, I've collected parts and pieces and turned our wussy little 16 channel show into a 93 channels monster!

We got a new house, new equipment, and new lights! 93 channels controlling 10,500 lights pushing just over 5,000 watts of power! ARR ARR ARR!!! (Tim Allen)

Still have the same three songs, but ALOT cooler show. And at about 5 hours of programming time per minute of
song, it better be!

Also, we entered our house in a local radio stations Griswold Contest this year, and we need your help! We have to make the finals (the top 5) to get the judges to come out to judge the house. So please, everyonego and vote for us! They track IP numbers, so one vote per computer. Get your family and friends involved, and vote from as many computers as possible!

Go here to vote, we are House #18

http://indiana105.com/griswoldhomes2.php

I'm pretty sure there's only like three people (if that) from this area that read this but if there's more then, I highly suggest you make your way here to see this show, and I do really think it's incredible!

2008 Black Hawk Road

Valparaiso, IN 46383

Tune your radio to 90.5FM to hear the lights!

If you can't make it, or if you want to convince friends or family who can't make it to vote for us,

I've included links to the videos!

Wizards in Winter v2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvH77Vgv9nY

Jungle Bell Rock v2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSeL9BN3Crs

Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy v2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VcWQmHK8b4

So go vote! Do it! Do it now!!

So let's see, what have I done over the past month and a half I have not been working. Well, my dad and I built a shed. He's retired now, so he doesn't work so fast, took us three weeks. He'd show up at my place at 9ish, we'd go out to breakfast, get materials, then start working about 11ish or so. But I'd work him until dark, which at that time was 6 or after. Mom thought I was slave driving him, I don't think so.

We removed the old shingles and re-shingled the roof. Had a few extra people helping with that one, which took us two weekends.

Halloween Decorations! You cannot forget those! I made Hell's Mailbox, hurray! It was cool. And I redid Mr. Pumpkinhead. Before he looked kinda childish, now he looks mean and scarey! I have pics but have not put them online yet. Plus we did the inside of the house this year too. It was pretty killer.

Rewired the computer room. There are no grounds for any of the electric sockets in this house, so I am switching out the non-grounded sockets with grounded ones, and putting in a ground wire as well. Whoever did the electrical in this house needs to be shot, seriously. It sucks. I want to redo the whole thing. But for now, it's one room at a time, when I get to it. But I actually got all of my computer stuff in the computer room too. I had to take one computer desk apart to fit it in here (it's been sitting in the living room since we moved in), and I had to take the other one apart and rebuild it to a right hand configuration. As before it was on the left side of me, now, due to room space/requirements, it's on the right. So whenever I get a job that i can work from home, I am all set!

Been getting ready for Christmas too. I love Christmas! The animated lighting is getting an all new, more high tech setup! If everything goes right this year, we'll be able to add dimming to the lights, and I will have a 10' tall Mega Tree! WOO HOO!! last year the total amount of channels we had for the light setup was 16. Just to put things into perspective, the Mega Tree I designs will use 48 channels itself. It will be a three color tree. It will be AWESOME!!! So yeah, i am about to finish up the circuitry on that and hopefully get it all tested this weekend, then I can start hanging lights!

The garage. The garage was the storage pit. It's odd shaped, funky, and sucks. I totally hate it, not enough room for a good work flow. So I did what i could and started putting things away. Once I was almost done, I realized the L-shaped workbench i was going to build wasn't going to be enough work space, so I moved some shelves and redesigned it. I'm on day 5 of the garage, and I should finish up today.

I bought a new computer for the Christmas lights, well a bare bones kit anyways. So I need to get that together and get XP loaded onto it. The motherboard in the DVR computer is bad as well. It likes to randomly freeze up, restart, or just plain 'ol shut off. And when it looses power, the CMOS resets itself (it's not the battery, I've replaced that). So my Friend Russ' friend gave me a new motherboard to use. I put it in tonight, and it doesn't seem to recognize my chip. The chip I have is an AMD Athalon 300+ XP, the one that came with the motherboard is an AMD Athalon 1500 XP. I think there is an upgrade issue there, like the used board I got is not compatible with the chip I have. So not fun. But the new computer, well the new computer is an AMD Athalon 3500+ 64! With a 1000Mhz FSB! WOO HOO can you say FAST! I don't have it running yet though. I need a chip fan first. But I do have computer parts and pieces all over the living room floor! Christina will be happy to see that, I am sure.

Well, if you have read this far, then i congratulate you. I didn't even want to keep typing about 3/4's of the way through, but I didn't see a need to waste all this useless information.

So now I have 11 weeks of severence pay, and 3 weeks of vacation comming to me. I am pretty much good until next year really. The problem is, what do I do with my life now? I don't really want to get back in the corporate world. Although I fit there, I've done that. I feel I have been given some time and a new beginning. i want to start my own business. I want to work from home. I don't know what fits me yet.

Someone said "When one door closes, another one opens." Now I just have to find that other door. Preferably within 11 weeks!

I've ven deleated all of last months posts, because the problem stemmed from somewhere last month, but it didn't help...

It was a good and relazing time, other then the over 100 degree days and high humidity. It was like insta sweat when you walked outside.

Back home though, apparently it rained for 10 straight days. The whole area was flooded. They blocked off interstates and whole areas of towns. Many trees and powerlines down. And 23 high tension towers fell over too. Some of this stuff you may have seen on TV. I did from there. But we were lucky enough to miss it all. And not a lot of water problems at home either.

Good times.

Friday

Friday was spent washing and scrubbing the engine bay. It was well over piled with goop and grease. Ucky!

Now THAT is the cleanest I've ever seen this engine bay! My neighbor's power washer, some scrub brushes, and 6 cans of degreaser later:

And THAT is the dirtiest this driveway has ever been! :P

Saturday

For some reason much of Saturday seems to be a blur. I put the engine together the rest of the way. That is not the charger I rebuilt, that is the one off the old engine. I'm waiting for a bearing for the rebuilt one. It probably won't get put in the car until after the move. Anyways I know I did some painting and powder coating as well.

Purdy

Sunday
Today was a day of large accomplishments. I had to get the motor dropped in today because I had rented the hoist and it had to be returned 8AM Monday. I started by removing the old cat and putting in the new. Flanges were rusted together, had to call my friend Scott who was a former exhaust specialist. He brought over his air hammer and we went to town and had that sucker apart in no time. Placed in the new without problems. Then it was onto the brakes.

Powder coated calipers and new SS braided brake line:

Money (no minds the wheels, keep the comments to yourself!):

OGF LOLRZ! WTF happened to the ABS??
Tee hee hee:

At approximately 12:39AM Monday Morning, my Corrado received something that hasn't been in it in over two years...an engine!

Now if I can only figure out where all these wires go....
I know where like two of them go, the rest I am clueless!

Then I moved onto practicing my porting on my supercharger. I used what I thought was a good one, turned out to be a trashed one. So it made a great practice piece! I also think I did a great job at it too: (just now I realized that I probably should have taken some before pictures, so you knew what the differences were. Sorry.)

Turns out that porting and sanding makes one heck of a mess.

Took me over an hour to clean it up.
Then I did it again yesterday. Only this time it was with the real charger. Didn't turn out as good. Seems like I did a lot better job when I wasn't worried about screwing things up as when I was. I still have to send everything smooth though, that will be tonight. Don't know if I am going to take pics of it.

Ported and polished throttle body:

Then I powdercoated them, along with the front calipers:

I ported my throttle body last night. That was some nerve-racking work. I've never ported anything, so it was a learning expereience. Plus, if I goof it up too much, I have a spare to use. Hurray!!