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The Black One: Abby aka. “The Tubb” (Yorkie-Poo)
The Tan One: Gracie aka. “The Muff” (Yorkie .. Sorta .. More of a ‘Forkie’ [Fake Yorkie])
The Gold One: Shelby aka. “Ma-Ma” (Golden Retriever)

Gracie and Abby are Jaimes and I’s dogs. Shelby is Sir Kyle Platt’s dog whom we are always willing to take in whenever needed. The three of them pretty much grew up together, and get along really well. Our dogs make Shelby think she is a lap dog, and Shelby makes our dogs think they are six feet tall and bullet proof.

When these dogs get together, they know what they want, and they get it. They are a force to reckon with… I let them have the couch… They just looked too comfortable to be moved. ;)

This Picture is only a week or so old.. So, for everyone that heard about Abby’s Misfortune at the Vet back in December, You can see she is recovering well… She Still has a limp, and the side of her that is not showing is completely shaved… The Poor dog looks like a mixture between a poodle and Mr T.. It’s a sad sight for such a sweet dog.

Anyways, Just clearing off my digital camera, thought I’d share..

Lets start by saying — I got super lucky with how I got my Wii. My Advice to people still looking? Goto the closest Target / Walmart / BestBuy in a retirement town. The fewer Kids / Families in a community, the better chance you have…

Now that that is out of the way, let me tell you why the Wii is Brilliant.

Wii OS — The Wii Interface is stupid simple. The Setup literally took me less than 10 mins to go from the box to the TV to the Internet to having a Wii Mii.

Wii Weather Channel — Silly right? Why use your Wii to check the weather… But we all tried it… Now Nintendo has all of our City/Country/ZipCodes and can get all sorts of crazy statistics. Technically speaking, right now (if they wanted to), they could be extremely accurately comparing the playing habits of Asia vs. US vs. UK and be planning titles and features based around that.

Wii Store — There is not a single person I have showed the Wii store to yet that hasn’t seen a game that made them say “Oh man! I loved that Game! Oh I wanna play it so badly….” :: Exactly, They are making money off of Nostalgia… And you don’t need to go to GamStop and buy some lame compilation. You do it all from your couch…

Simple Details — When you are on the main menu, you have a hand with a pointy finger as your ‘Mouse Pointer’ if you will… If you twist your wrist/wii remote, The Angle of the hand changes with it.

Wii Mii’s — You can store 10 of them on a Wii Controller. So Nintendo is saying to everyone — “Go Play with your friends! — Just take your Wii remote…” — I Also have a feeling we’ll see more and more games using the Mii’s and I’ll guarantee they make an updateable Widget to display your Mii’s stats/details online.. ie. Blogs/Sigs/Social Sites ….Or even they could create a Nintendo MySpace if you will… Crazy possibilities..

Now Why is the Wii not Brilliant? (Right Now)

Standing/Moving — As much as I love the Wii remote, sometimes I wanna just lay down and veg for a while… Common, Give us some cool new games that lets you relax.. Even Zelda needs you to have an epileptic fit every once in a while to slice someone up… I just wanna veg on occasion…

Power Maximums — In Wii Golf, if you swing too hard, you slice / hook / etc. So When people play it, they are forced to have a delicate touch.. In Baseball, Tennis, and Bowling — Every person who play them tries to throw as hard as they possibly can… This is why remotes are flying through TV’s and killing pets. Every Game (demo or release) needs to have velocity maximums where you are punished for playing like an asshat…

Launch Titles — They really needed something that took advantage to the Internet on the Wii. I have a feeling that a SIMS / Animal Crossing / WOW ish title at launch could of been the killer app of the year. I’m just hoping they have enough release titles to keep interest up… Sports Is tiring, People are beating Zelda, You can only deal with rabbits for so long… But Virtual Worlds… People get addicted to those.. They will be Console Crack for whomever can be the first one to market… The reason the Wii is the best platform for that? Because Lonely crazy cat lady down the street will dump $250 for a Wii before she dumps $500+ on a 360/PS3. In fact, just adding a Virtual Wii Mii world for people to walk around and play in with others could corner the crazy cat lady market overnight… That’s free money in my opinion…

Many people kinda wonder what I do in my free time. Jaime and I keep pretty private lives — So people hear rumors of me working on cars or building stuff, but unless you’re one of my unfortunate neighbors, stuff just “Happens” and people rarely see me actually do it… (Same goes for seeing me in shorts…)

So after busting ass for the last, 2-3.. err.. 9 Months, I was granted a little time off for good behavior. So I figured I’d finally build some shelving in our garage that Jaime sorta hinted at, but in the grand scheme of things, was just an excuse for me to get out of the house. In the end, it turned out to be Spring Cleaning + Complete Landscaping Redesign + TSOD (The Shelves of Doom) all in one. In other words, we got a crap load done, but ultimately Jaime is not letting me go to Lowes alone anymore… “.. Honestly Jaime, These Ferns Followed Me Home… Can we Keep em? ..” [Edit: Jaime Added Home Depot to that List as well… ]

All That aside, lets focus mainly on the “TSOD” — The Shelves of Doom! right now.

Goals
1. Take advantage of as much of the wall space as I can.
2. Make them crazy ass strong. ie. Strong enough to support Gavin since he is morbidly obese.
3. Make them Shallow enough so we can still pull cars into the garage. and still walk around them
4. Make a lockable cabinet for all my tools.
5. Keep the Washer / Dryer for our ‘Bonus Room’ Functional and useable.
6. Imitate as much crap as I could from the ‘New Yankee Workshop’ from PBS so that I can justify forcing Jaime to watch it.

Obstacles
1. Floor not level. Not even close.
2. Wall not straight or level. Not even close…
3. Fucking Norm Abrams.

The project actually went really smoothly, and looks really good. If fact, I really impressed myself. I really thank my father for all the time he made me spend with him building stuff growing up. However, I curse Norm Abrams for putting thoughts in my head that certain tasks like Gluing smaller boards together to make plywood was simple. It’s not. And if you don’t have supporting tools (ie. an expensive planer) You will never have satisfactory results. In fact, I challenge Ol’ Normy to do a project with the tools that most ‘Normal’ work shops will have. I didn’t fail (see my nice hand made doors in the picture) but I’m not 100% satisfied with the techniques I duplicated from the show.

Ok, enough yabbering, here are some pictures.

I really wish I had before pictures, so that you could truly appreciate what was done. Surprisingly, most people are really impressed by the crazy 1×2 bracing I made for all the shelves. It’s overkill, but I wanted to practice angles for when I do a massive crown molding project in a few weeks. My favorite part? The doors. They started as seven 6ft $.75 pine 1×4’s. I wanted to practice making sheet’s from smaller cheaper pieces of wood for some oak shelves I’m working on. But, It’s not worth it. I’ve decided to just buy pre-made sheets. I don’t care how easy Norm Abrams makes it look, it’s not worth saving 10%… It really isn’t..

There you have it… The infamous TSOD I have been talking about… What? Over Hyped? Me? Never…. ;)