Corcoran Brothers

Aight, fuckers, answer me this: why would someone pay $240 to go to a certain location via train when there is airfare available for $280-320?

Situation: I have a 4-day weekend this weekend, immediately following my 3-day last weekend. I am sick of driving 600 miles with traffic in Bodymore, Murdaland and Connectthedots - pushing the travel time to 11 hours each way - so I thought I’d research other modes of travel. Trains are quaint and relaxing, allowing geeks like me to catch up on my sci-fi and art history reading, but $240 fucking dollars?

I’ma bin the whole idea. If it was Super Bowl weekend that gave me the four days, I’d brave I-95, but two weekends in a row is too much. I just want to know why in the name of Buddha’s blue balls I should pay $240 for round-trip tickets on a mode of locomotion that takes 10+ hours for me to reach my destination.

so, for the last two weeks the family and i’ve been stricken by a mystery virus. it started off all headcold-like in Maggie, then Colleen.

a week ago, it smacked me pretty good. full on coughing, stuffed sinuses, no appetite (i mean, c’mon, you KNOW i’m ill), chills, fever, etc.

the best part for me was the angioedema. welts. hives. loads of them and at inconvenient times, like 3 or 4 am. i wanted to rip my skin off. oh, yeah, plus my lips, hands and feet swole up like sherman klump. i wound up in the ER for 4.5 hrs of a sunday. the proscribed course of 4 days of prednizone and a 14 day supply of benedryl just about has it knocked out, although the cough, dopiness and fear of “leakage” (don’t let your mind wander too far) remain.

i have never hated the writer’s strike so much, although i’ve been forced to try a few new shows.

• watched the first two episodes of CBS’ “moonlight”. pretty decent. intriguing. good to see jason dohring doing the same exact Vmars thing. also, two Vmars references in the first show. nice tribute.
• watched first two Fox’ “sarah connor chronicles”. great to see old friend summer glau. she totally kicks ass in a completely different way than river tam. decent show.
• lost fiends. find815.com, the new lost game. easy. good. nice teaser.
• knocked up was funny enough. i think seth rogen, and i know i’m out here on a limb, likes to a-smoke-a-da-weed.
• munster rugby, the patriots, the celts. what else to say ?

alright. back to gettin’ better. if i drink another glass of oj i might just puke.

First off, big Happy Birthday shout outs to Couhtnee, beloved bride of da kine.

We are also saddened by the loss of Margie Corcoran. God Speed Margie.

Preparing for school, we decided to clean out Bri’s room. I can not believe how much shit was shoved into a 10×12 bedroom. Once she brought it all out, we did the TLC Whatevah Home Improvement Show piles of Need, Want and Donate.Knowing she would have to haul everything she wanted to keep back into the room and put away helped motivate Bri to choose wisely. She retained about 15% of the stuff.

Anyone need some toys?

(more…)

Show me what your working with. Were Y’all wondering were lil miss cate got her dance moves? Here ya go:

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Rachel’s (and my) cousins, Josh, Jenna and Michael, who lost their mother this past week.

_{(Kaddish image taken from wikipedia)}

My my my, it has been a while.

What happened? Where did we go? WTF was with all the boring ass pictures? Not one drunken post in 9 months….

Well, kin-step-daughter has a bio-dad who is schizo. Like on heavy meds schizo. He called here one night in September drunk off his ass stating how the mob was out to get him cause they think he caused 9/11, and the garbage trucks are run by the Italians who tried to run him off the road, etc. etc. Kin-girl called him back 2 days later to see what he was like sober, and he was still off his rocker. We decided then that it was not safe for kin-step-daughter to drive with him. I’ll skip the long story and say this, I knew if we were going to court, and we were, no need to have all the goodness here be an impedus to our cause. (Note I also cut the monster womb broom down to a business like #3, So you know I was serious. I still have the braids in a drawer.)

The matter has finally been settled, and I fear no longer about my views being used against me and mine. As such, da kine insisted the original Corcoran Brothers go back up. I seem to have misplaced the original files, so the style sheet is gone, and any files/pictures that were loaded onto the server instead of flickr are gone as well. But the content and the comments are fully there, and thats the important part. It was surprisingly easy to do. I restored the ~wp 2.0 database to a new database. I then wiped out my www root, uploaded wp 2.2, pointed the config to the new db, then ran upgrade.php instead of install. It all fired right up.

So friends and visitors, welcome back to the original Corcoran Brothers.

UPDATE - Using some cool 2.2 functionality, we have sucked plonkster.com into corcoranbrothers.com and redirected traffic here.

Princess Cate had her first dance recital today, it was wonderful. Well, no. It was horribly produced and they overbooked our table, but Cate did a kickass job.

Way fun was sitting next to Kin Yah while we busted on how bad the production/setup et al was. Plus thier was a guy behind us with a mullet. He was sporting maybe #3 on the top, with the straight down to his shoulders on the back. To top it off he had his sunglasses propped up on his head at the demarcation line.

I got to use my new camera which exceeded my expectations. Way cool was I got to Yah’s, ripped the disc in 5 minutes and burned two copies in another 10 minutes. Compared to the horror stories I have heard about downloading, transcoding, etc… I am glad I went with DVD. (Way cool bonus … during the daddy daughter dance whilst Sean and Cate were looking the other way, I taped Mullet dancing.)
Three phrases that need to be remembered:

There is a bit of humor in every joke. 

Nipple-biter 

The fucking gate is closed

Two of those phrase were muttered by a youngster, guess which ones.

Courtney and I were talking about professions we wouldn’t want our future children to have.  On the list were actor, athlete, and crackwhore.  We agreed that if the child truly loves the sport and is getting into it for the right reason, then they should feel free to pursue their dreams, but being an athlete does not necessarily lead to a life of normalcy.

That brought up the beef.  Somehow, she asked me if our son became a baseball player, would I root for the team our son played for even if it weren’t the Red Sox.  I answered, “Of course not, unless it is the Nationals.”  You see, I am a Red Sox fan.  That’s it.  If my son becomes a Los Angeles Angel of Alabaster County and Areas Around It, then I’d want him to be successful, but I’d still be rocking a Papi tee when he showed up in Fenway.  Somehow that made me an asshole. She couldn’t believe that I’d be that unloving.
I flipped the script, though.  I said, “Fine, you’d become a fan of whatever team our son joined.  What if it were the Spankees?”

She gritted her teeth and walked away.  Of course she could never be a Stankees fan. Game, set, match.

First, the bad.  Dell sucks donkey balls.  I had a program installed on my new Dell, but the powers that be never sent me the backup disc.  It started fucking up but good, so I tried to repair it and Add/Remove Programs decided to remove it.  Che serra serra.  But without the backup disc, I was screwed.  I called Dell and got a mad runaround.  “You deleted it by accident, so it wasn’t our fault.” “Let me transfer you to…[click]“. Et Cetera.  Whatevs. I got what I needed elsewhere, and am filing this away for future computer purchases.

Next, the good. Courtney’s 97 Accord started having a hell of a time getting into gear.  My (not so) expert opinion figured it was a bit of air in the hydraulic lines of the clutch based on the symptoms.  Without the proper tools, I brought it to 2 garages, who told me there was no problem with it.  It was fine.  I told them that the clutch was mad spongy until I drove it for 30-40 minutes, and they looked at me like I wasn’t an ordnance officer.

This morning, it wouldn’t shift at’all at’all, so I had to do all manner of double clutching and what have you just to move it out of the driveway, so I drove it to Tony Honda and dropped it off.

They gave me a rental car, without charge; performed 3 services, without charge; and gave me the respec I need to make me happy. Even better, the rental they gave me was the shizznit: a brand new Nissan Pathfinder.  If anyone is looking for something to lug the kids around while looking cool, I highly recommend it.

Mad props to Tony Honda for providing top-notch service.  They are, indeed, the shit.

BTW, I was wrong.  There was no air in the lines.  The cylinder that holds the fluid was leaking.  Close, but no cigar.