Since very early in his 1st term of office I have said I fear that the president will not wish to relinquish office upon the end of his term.   You can debate to the end of time the idea that the elections this last time were fixed.  (One day you hear they were , then the next day you hear they weren’t depending upon the news source.  Until I have hard proof I can’t really say, but I’ll confess I do feel the Diebold corporation sure had a lot of suspicious code, and statements)  My feelings on the next election have always been that there will be some other major disaster or event a month or so before the elections.   This event will cause the president to enact martial law to “save” us.  Of course during Martial law it will be to dangerous to hold elections and his reign will continue.   Many people I have told this idea to laughed and informed me that he doesn’t have the power to do such a thing.  “There are laws to prevent that!”  My retort to that statement was always, yes there are, for now…
This brings us to the current news.  On October 17, 2006 the president, backed by a bill introduced by the House of Representatives, signed into law a bill that contains a section buried 3/4 of the way down, that grants him the ability to declare martial law during cases of  “Major public emergencies; interference with State and
Federal law”.

Read that closely people.  “Major public emergencies”    So,  say there is some attack on our soil , or the appearance of one.   The president, and all future presidents, have the ability to declare martial law!!!    WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!

Read that closely people.   “Interference with State and Federal Law”

So… If there is any interference with a federal or state law the president has the right to declare martial law.   So if that were to be interpreted a bit loosely…  Lets look up the definition of the word Interfere shall we:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Definition #2, B:

“Of persons and things: To come into non-physical collision or contact, to clash in opinions, tendencies, etc. ”

So basically, the president, and all future presidents have the right to declare martial law if anyone has a difference of opinion with the president.

EXCUSE ME!!!
“Oh John, stop being paranoid”

READ THE BILL!  There are even provisions in section 1076 to SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION!!!  READ IT!!! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!
(more…)

This year I have taken a bigger step in my Halloween haunting.   In the past I’ve had a number of effects but they were all manually operated.   Last year when I added the 9ft skeleton puppet, I was no longer able to operate my effects.   I left the controls with Palley but she was often to busy to trigger things.   I had mentioned this problem to Dave shortly afterwards and he of course laughed and told me not to worry, he would be here to run things for me this year.   That of course won’t be happening.   So, I have decided to go high tech…

Back in February I had went in on a group buy for a basic stamp based micro controller, I was going to use this to create some other prob yet to be decided upon, but now it seemed to be the easiest solution to my problem.  Over the past month or so, I have been learning to program the controller, and wiring it to run a number of effects.   This includes the crow, the pop up jumper, and the buzzer.  Now because of the extra outputs on the controller I added LED based spotlights, and pulsating eyes on my popup jumper.    That still left me with a few outputs on the controller board though.   Not being one to waste a perfectly good event controller output, I decided I should think of some other prop to trigger.

Last Friday, while out with some friends, we went into the “Spirit” Halloween store.   While there I of course drooled over a number of things there.  I had made up my mind to NOT buy anything though and be good.   That was until I saw a Flying grim reaper that contained blue L.E.D.s to illuminate its face…  must not pass up blue L.E.D.s…  ….  So I broke down and bought it.     I noticed also when I bought it, it had a “try me” button.  I was hoping the try me button would actually trigger the entire unit.  It seemed at 1st like it would.  So I set about figuring out a way to remotly press the button.  While wandering through Wal-Mart Sunday I discovered a really cheap R/C car on clearance for $5.   Perfect.   A few minutes later in the parking lot I had removed the screws holding the car together and found it contained a tiny receiver board hosting a single chip receiver, that has at least 4 channels possibly 5 or 6.    After mapping out the circuit, I inserted my own resistor/transistor pair on one of the outputs, and wired it to the try me button on the flying ghoul.  Sure enough the remote triggered the try me.   I was elated.  I then hung the ghoul up, and triggered it.   The lights and audio triggered, but no motor.  I should have realized that in a demo mode you wouldn’t want to run to motor and burn it out.  Ooops…  That leaves the built in sound sensor.
Sound operated props are only slightly more reliable than those activated by a photo resistor in my opinion, and they certainly don’t lend themselves to easy control.
I didn’t want to dismantle the prop so I had to figure out way to trigger it remotely.   What I essentially came up with was an audio relay.  I stopped at radio shack and bought a small buzzer and wired it into the receiver form the R/C car.  Sure enough it triggers the ghoul just fine.  So now I will wire the remote to the prop controller and it will only take a short  burst of the buzzer to set off the flying grim reaper. 

Wooohooo…

Happy Birthday Wishes to imbri!!! Sorry for the late wishes, work was hectic…

Do I have no credibility at all? At least with Palley…

I wlak in the door tonight… and she and Sonja ask “So what town is the bears training camp in?”

“I have no idea”

“It’s the same town as Olivet”

“Ok, still don’t know…”

I then get settled and look it up.

“Bourbonnais”, I inform them.

“No, that doesn’t sound right”

“I’m looking at their website right now, it’s Bourbonnais”

“Uh huh… Ok.. well… if you say so…”

Don’t ask me a question, have me look up the answer, and then tell me that the answer is wrong when you didn’t even know the answer in the 1st place.

Sheeesh…

Ok, I am liking clubhouse games.   I got to play a number of games against a friend tonight.  Gotta love the DS…

Bad Baade.. Bad Baade…

Friend code: 0086 7064 4415

Happy Anniversary Karl and Gabbi!!!

Well it has been a while since I wrote anything on here.  There’s a number of reasons for that.   Honestly, they are not likely the reasons you are thinking.

Anyway, this weekend was a great weekend.  I really had a good time at Stronghold both days.  Saturday’s highlights included shows such as “Who’s time is it anyway”, and Shakespeare on the fly”.  They really put together some good shows, and it was really good to see some of the former regular cast of Bristol again.

While wandering the ground early on, I ran into Paul and Denisa and Bob, then a few of the rest of the crew showed up too.  We wandered for a bit then later met up in the back by the big fire pit.  There we all ran through a few sea shanties.  I had a great time with that.  I’d been missing doing that.
Then there was the time spent with Karl and Gabbi, Chris, and Ray.  It was really nice being able to hang out with all my friends again.  In the afternoon, Chris, Ray, Kirk, and I all played Bocce. We played one game every man for himself, and then a game with teams.  I was channeling Lady Ettie and won the solo match with a come from behind victory.  5-4-4-0.  The team game went for quite a while and ended up with Kirk and I winning 15 to 13.
After faire we went for dinner at the Roadhouse.   Funny thing some of the waitstaff rememberd me, and so did the cook!

Sunday later…