they sell real fireworks here and jasmine couldn’t be less interested in them. she doesn’t appreciate the freedoms she has.

i remember when i was back in california, walmart was a place i would have been embarrassed to be seen in. i think the only times i ever went there was with eric on weekends to get random fishing and other cheap stuff.

here in north texas, walmart doesn’t have the same stigma, and it really is the cheapest place to get just about everything. i had bought 2 new rear tires from tirerack.com for my s2000, and had to get them installed. i called NTB: $65 for install/balance. discount tire: $51. pepboys: $42. walmart? 14 freaking dollars. they’ve got the same mounting and balancing machine at the other places and do the same job for a fraction of the price. they also didn’t require an appointment, i was in an out in about 15 minutes, and got to buy other cheap stuff at walmart while i was waiting.

save money. live better.

a lot of time has passed since i last posted on this blog. we’re still here in north texas, jasmine is growing up so fast, we bought a house and everything is going well. i realize how much free time i used to have when i would constantly blog about everything. i’ve been so busy doing things these days that i haven’t had any time to post about it, but i’m going to try to at least put up some of the bigger things that happen around here.

other than work, and setting up the house (you californians would be sick to hear the price i paid for a custom built 4 bedroom house here) i’ve been playing a lot of golf. i started playing golf quite a few years ago, but it hasn’t been until recently that i’ve found my swing. golf here in texas is pretty cheap and there’s lots of beautiful courses. i play just about every weekend, and CAN NOT break 100. i’ve had lots of 100, 101, 102 games, but that 99 continues to elude me. i’ve been playing at some pretty difficult courses lately though, so i think if i go back to one of the easier courses i started at, i should be able to do it.

anyway, here’s to a resurgence of blogging. hope all my readers are doing well and haven’t forgotten about me.

this was our first halloween in texas and jasmine’s first halloween anywhere. we went to a pretty fancy party at a friend’s house which had dinner catered and had professional baby sitters; so it was our first chance (other than when my mom has been here) to be out without the wamburger. even with the baby sitters, we probably only were without her for about 30 minutes, but it was a good step in what i’m sure will be a long time before we can actually leave her with a baby sitter for any considerable amount of time.

we bought candy but didn’t get any trick-or-treaters and driving around i really didn’t see any kids dressed up. a friend had mentioned that most kids do trick-or-treating at malls, or of course aren’t allowed to celebrate the pagan holiday and go to church.

this weekend taka and i carved halloween pumpkins and bought a tiny one for jas just to be cute.

i love my flash : )

there’s a lot more open space out here in dallas than there was back in los angeles. the only fixed wing aircraft that i ever flew back in california were slope gliders off of the redondo avenue bluffs in long beach. now that i have endless fields within walking distance to my place i decided to put together a park flyer.

the gws slow stick comes in an arf kit form that includes the 400 motor power system. it took a few hours for final assembly and i was off flying. i have a spektrum dx6i radio system for my helicopters so i just bought an ar6100e receiver to use in the plane. with the gws 20amp esc and a 1250mah 3-cell lipo i get more than 15 minutes of continuous flying time and the system never gets more than warm. with my setup the plane is light enough that it can fly very slow, or at wot can climb and loop with ease.

a few notes about assembly: the pushrods that came with the kit are terrible. they’re too wide in diameter to fit in the servo horns and don’t include the proper hardware to mate with the rudder/elevator linkage. i instead used a mini pushrod set that i bought from my local hobby shop for about $7 that included all of the proper hardware. for the plastic spars that run along the leading and tail edges of the wing, i glued them using the supplied foam-safe glue instead of taping them since the tape would come off and flap mid-flight. i also used a motor heat sink from an old helicopter that i had for the motor, more for balance than for heat dissipation.

last weekend i went to chicago to see my junior high/ high school/ texas buddy roumany get married to his long time girlfriend and fiance wendy. i hadn’t seen roumany in like 8 or 9 years since his job had transferred him to texas. now we live less than an hour away from each other, however in the months that i’ve been here he’s been busy with the wedding planning, and seeing him chicago was the first time we’d hung out in a really long time.

it was a bit of high school reunion weekend since eva lives in chicago, pavnit was in indiana and dan flew out from california. i didn’t really do much other than drink and party all weekend, the only site seeing experience was the adler planetarium which i hadn’t seen the last time taka and i were in chicago a couple of years ago. i was also going to try to go to the sears tower to try those glass boxes that you can walk out on but never made it.

it’s weird how lately different cities and states don’t seem that different anymore. being in dallas or la or chicago all kinda feel the same, especially when you’re hanging out with friends and family. it’s also sorta strange how much dallas feels like home now, particularly after a weekend away from it.

i really did want the 3gs as soon as it came out and did my best to convince myself that i didn’t have any need for any of the new features. since i had bought my 3g only 6 months prior i wasn’t eligible for an upgrade, and there was no way i could justify $600 for a phone that wasn’t *that* much different than the one i currently had.

then last week, my wife’s mio gps stopped working and living here in an entirely new area, a gps is pretty much a requirement, especially for her. i realized that she hadn’t upgraded her phone in a while (she took my 2g when i got my 3g), so i upgraded to the 3gs on her number and just swapped sim cards, so now she’s rockin’ the 3g and i got my 3gs for $200. an unlocked/jailbroken iphone 2g is going for almost $200 on ebay so it’ll end up being a wash.

the speed of the iphone 3gs is much improved over the 3g. the internet is faster and every app (especially when compared side-by-side with a 3g) opens almost twice as fast. the new screen coating really does help with smudges, and prevents that “sticky” feeling that my old phone would get. i haven’t really had a chance to use the still or video camera, but i was impressed with ben’s a couple of months ago, and with a kid having a good camera always at the ready is key.

while the upgrade seems to be more worthwhile than i expected, i still couldn’t've done it for $600, but for the $200 contract-subsidized price, it’s completely worth it.