David Ruppert

*Nerd alert: this post concerns only the slightest percentage of dorks out there. If your eyes start to glaze over at terms like charset, move along. There’s nothing for you to see here.  Heavy nerdery is about to ensue.

I was having the toughest time simply copy and pasting international characters from an existing live site to my new locally run site. No matter what I did, the characters would not display correctly . . in my text editor, or browser.

My charset for the page was already set to utf-8:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Finally, I came across a site that will convert those tricky characters in to their numerical values, solving my problem.

View original post on Pinyin.info

I’m saving it here for future use.

Shortly after we got the property, Chris bought an EZ-Go Workhorse gas golf cart to get around.  Cause, lets face it, walking blows and coolers are heavy.

A couple of months in to it, it became apparent that the little golf cart that could . . . couldn’t.  The ‘golf cart of lifted golf carts’ became a larger, more difficult-to-store Barbie Jeep.

So the search for a new mode of transportation began.  We wanted something that could carry the family around . . and that meant either two rows of seats, or two carts.  As luck would have it, two rows of seats is cheaper.

The Mule.  TA-DAAAA!

It’s a ‘07 Kawasaki Mule Camo 3010 Trans 4×4.  The ‘Trans’ is because it will convert from a two seater with a large bed to a four seater with a smaller . . cuter bed.  We opted for 4wd because it’s cool.  We opted out of the diesel because we’re cheap.

Sooo, we gassed it up, strapped on some Top Gun Ray Bans and headed out to show off what had to be the manliest of all glorified golf carts.

Within a few minutes we got stuck.  Damn.

Tires were in ruts, carts were on their sides, egos were sufficiently urinated on.

Within a day I was busy Googling things like “hell yeah utv” and “largest lift kit for girlie Mule”.

We started by some basic ‘pimping’ in the form of a gun case [to hold the bolt action 20ga snake charmer], hatchet and shovel.  All necessities should Red Dawn ever come to fruition.

We decided on a 2″ lift, the largest they . . . uhh . . make? I know, that’s what I said too.

Yeah, he’s reading instructions. Yeah . . . we’re in trouble.

We also decided on a Viper 4500lb winch.  We eyed up some nice Warns and the like, then saw the price, laughed and moved on.

The winch came with a mounted switch we put just under the steering wheel along with a remote that we mounted just off the front fender.

Lastly we opted to add a Hi-Lift to the front of this bad boy. Notice the crushed empty beer can. Everyone knows Mule altercation can’t happen without a nice can of go-go juice.

It required welding some bolts on to the front bumper for storage.

It took a couple of nights, but all in all things went fairly smoothly.

The result, a more expensive glorified golf cart.  Brilliant.

A couple of months ago Anne and I planned a weekend trip to San Antonio for poopies and giggles. More recently, those plans got harpooned by a workshop that Anne needed to attend in Austin on Thursday and Friday of that vacation weekend.

So, our first option was for me to take two full vacation days simply hanging out in the hotel room without a car. Meh . . I’ve got some vacation time, but that’s now how I’d imagined spending it.

The next option involved me driving down to Austin Friday night after work. That leaves us in Austin Friday night with two cars. Soooo . . do we drive separately to San Antonio . . and back home on Sunday? Do we leave one vehicle in Austin, a town neither one of us live in?

Do I fly down there Friday night, make her pick me up at the airport only to have to drive back by Love Field on the way home Sunday to pick up my truck?

You’re getting the picture. Solid beating.

So, the compromise? Thankfully my work is lenient enough to allow employees to work from home. So, whats the difference in working from a hotel room? Nothing . . that’s what.

So, here I am . . finishing up a productive work day in a downtown Austin hotel room.

My glamorous workspace:

My magnificent view of Darrell K Royal Stadium:

And last but not least, what better time to show off my pink bedazzled cat5 cable.

My buddy thought it would be hee-LARIOUS to bring me this cable when I called him asking for a favor. I needed a long cat5 cable this is what he produced.

You can pretend you’re not impressed, but I know better.

With the Superbowl just around the corner, I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite advertising campaigns to date. It started during Superbowl XXXVIII between the Patriots and Panthers.

I’m sure it was more widely remembered as the ‘wardrobe malfunction‘ Superbowl, but this is my lasting memory from it.

Reebok’s Terry Tate - Office Linebacker.

Out . . . standing.

I hate to simply post links, but this is epic.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it)

We see some cool stuff out at the property. Cottonmouths, rattlers and copperheads unfortunately make the list. As of the past few weeks, there’s been a number of large hogs tearing up the trails.

Several weeks ago we ran into this snapping turtle waddling down the road.

I inched a small stick in front of him. He snapped. I tinkled ever so slightly. We left.

A few weeks ago, we were packing up and I started to clean out the Mule. This caterpillar was crawling around some folding chairs we had sitting in the back.