Posted by Richard on Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
People will often come up with all sorts of reasons to avoid spending money. There are probably folks right now putting off calling the garage door repairman to fix the off track garage door or get a new battery for the automatic garage door opener because they are not sure whether to believe that the supposed end of the 36,000 year Mayan calendar in 2012 of the Christian Era calendar might really be the end of the world.
But apparently, from recent news reports about an upcoming book, it looks as if there has been an error discovered and the supposed end of the Mayan calendar as originally calculated may be off as much as one hundred years. In fact, it may have already passed.
The thing is, there are always apocalyptic visions and predictions where someone somewhere is reading the tea leaves or the heavens and stars or the Tarot or Runes or maybe even the Magic 8 Ball to determine that the end of the world is right there around the corner no wait it’s the next corner or the next corner after that.
Now, there are always going to be events that happen around the world that someone will interpret as the end of the world. One example was the focus on the Year 2000 potential computer programming problems. After the calendar flipped to 2000, there were not may problems but that is most likely due to the emphasis on fixing potential problems prior to the calendar flip.
But because there are always going to be problems and there are always going to be omens and portends there really are no excuses to put off getting those garage door repairs completed. Delaying necessary maintenance, whether for the garage door, the rooftop, the plumbing or anything else is usually a recipe for further and greater problems later on. People will always come up with the reasons to avoid spending money but the avoidance is the genesis of the saying “penny wise and pound foolish.” By not investing a little bit when a problem is first discovered and putting it off again and again, the problems will only grow and grow.
So folks just need to go ahead and relax. The world is not likely to be ending in just over two years (December 20, 2012 was the calculated end of the Mayan calendar compared to the modern era calendar). Life will go on. Oh the world will eventually end, just probably not quite that soon and when it does, oh well. As the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy put it, “Don’t Panic.”
Posted by Maggie on Sunday, 07 November 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
Shaquille O'Neal joined the Boston Celtics this season and for their opening game, the team traveled to New Hampshire to the Verizon Arena in Manchester to play the Philadelphia 76ers. It was Shaq's first ever visit to the Granite State and the local sports writers were thrilled. On local sports page editor, wanting to show a marked contrast with the 7-foot-1 325-pound center featured a full photo of Shaq next to...the world's smallest horse.
Einstein, a miniature pony, was born in New Hampshire last spring amid much fanfare. And the newest star of the legendary Boston Celtics, the man who has won four NBA championships, has his own reality television show and has been known to perform rap in front of live audiences, fell in love.
“How much I like dat horse," O'Neal said in a Twitter message to New Hampshire Union Leader sports writer Kevin Gray.
Matching up the two was a brilliant move. It also became a media firestorm that threw open the garage doors and everything came pouring out, except Einstein. It seems Einstein's owners, Charlie Cantrell and wife Dr. Rachel Wagner of Tiz A Miniature Horse Farm in Barnstead, N.H., have no intention of selling the little fellow to anyone. That includes Paris Hilton, who had apparently also expressed an interest in owning the 47-pound 1-foot-8-inch tall pinto pony. Both those garage doors got closed quickly.
That didn't stop the story from going viral, as stories such as these are wont to do. News of the wishes of both celebrity greats hit the sports blogs right away, despite the fact they were slamming up against the Brett Favre sexting scandal. Which would you rather read about...Favre's rants or the Celtics center with size 23 shoes looking to take home the 20-inch pony as a bet? At one point, someone even incorrectly blogged that Hilton and O'Neal were in a bidding war for the pony! Not so. Never happened.
Einstein is far from alone or lonely on his little farm. Cantrell recently brought in two new friends: two dwarf Nigerian goats named Eleanor and Isabel. Reports are the three get along famously. And as for Shaq's longings for a little one, Cantrell has re-opened the garage door on that one and offered to introduce the “Big Shamrock” - Shaq's newest nickname as the newest Boston Celtic – to a breeder of other miniature horses in hopes he'll find one that he is as drawn to as he was to Einstein.
Posted by Richard on Sunday, 07 November 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
The other day there was an earthquake in Oklahoma that was initially set at 4.5 on the Richter scale but was later upgraded to a 5.1. Folks might have missed the news of this earthquake however as it occurred the same day as the Chilean miners were rescued after 69 days below the ground after the mine they were working in had a cave-in.
While Oklahoma is not the first state a person thinks about when the term earthquake comes up, apparently, the fault lines in Oklahoma are fairly active although usually not of this high a magnitude. As far as that goes, many people are not aware that occurred one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in what is now the United States was on the New Madrid Fault line near St Louis in the early 1800s (it caused the Mississippi River to run backwards for a period of time).
With a magnitude of 5.1, there can be property damage from the earthquake. For example, it can cause garage doors to go off track. It may not even be easily noticeable that a problem has occurred until the homeowner attempts to open the garage door and is unable to do so.
People in Oklahoma are probably more aware and used to garage doors being damaged by a tornado, or super thunder boomer of some sort. That’s the type of damage where tree limbs can be thrown up against the garage door, visibly damaging the garage door and obviously causing it to need to be repaired by the local garage door repairman. But the earthquake damage, where the door just might be off track also requires a call to the local garage door repairman but not quite as easily noted until the door jams or doesn’t open at all. That would be the final level of frustration for some people, to have the garage door jam as the owner is attempting to go somewhere and unable to get the car out of the garage.
So even as 33 men saw the light of day for the first time in 69 days of mostly darkness, the world continued on its path with other problems and news stories. Newer news stories will come along in the next few days and weeks. Maybe even further earthquakes in Oklahoma that will wind up being the top news story of the day the next time it happens. Of course, the news stories most likely won’t say anything about the homeowners who have to call the garage door repairman.
Posted by Richard on Thursday, 04 November 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
Is Google trying to take over the world? With the recent news that they are testing “driver less” cars, they may well succeed. It seems they have been programming some cars to be able to “self drive,” as a means for more safety, possibly fewer cars on the road, and just to be able to say to the world that they could and did do this.
As current technology and laws stand, there does have to be a licensed driver actually in the car but the driving program is actually doing the driving. In the early tests, there has only been one reported accident that happened when the Google car was re-ended by another vehicle.
But think of the almost endless possibilities. People can go to the party, drink all the alcohol they want and make it home without having to worry about getting stopped for driving under the influence. They won’t have to worry about little things like crashing into the garage door by forgetting to open it before starting to drive or trying to enter it too soon when they get home. Of course, a down side to this is the garage door repairmen will no longer be collecting the tales of how the garage door was really damaged. And the insurance companies will lose some of their advertising tales for the same reason. But the Google cars will be able to have the automatic garage door opener programmed in so that the car can’t start out of the garage or attempt to enter until the garage door is opened correctly.
Self driving cars may make it possible at some point in the future to send the car to the school to pick up the children at school and deliver them to soccer practice or piano practice while the parents go on with their everyday work. Google cars programmed to follow a route on Google maps to go to the school, then to the soccer practice field then to the music teacher’s home. Depending on which child would finish the after school activity first, the car can be set to wait or return to the other then come back. Why, the Google car could even be set to allow some customization that would allow the parents to set a “bickering trigger” that would tell the children to stop their bickering after “hearing” some pre-determined level of back seat whines with the appropriate parent voice.
Posted by Maggie on Wednesday, 03 November 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
Johnny Knoxville has a new movie out. It's a saga that continues where Knoxville began, with the original television show on MTV. The premise is simple: Grown men doing foolishly dangerous and often crude tricks and pranks. One of the trailers shows two guys wearing a pair of shorts each and playing tether ball...with a bee hive!
Even the advertisements for the new movie suggests, “neither you nor your little buddies should attempt anything from this movie.” Sage advice, indeed. The whole idea behind the Jackass shows began when Knoxville (whose real name is Philip John Clapp...really...you can't make some things up), unable to break into the movie world in California, began to test self-defense equipment on himself and ended up being filmed doing it by Jeff Tremaine. The situation then morphed into Big Brother magazine's Number Two video. By the time the Jackass idea had been sold to MTV, film director Spike Jonze was part of the project.
To his credit, Knoxville doesn't just ask his friends to perform stupid tricks or dangerous stunts, he puts himself right out front. Like the time, before Jackass became a phenomena when he shot himself in the chest with a .38 handgun. He was wearing body armor, but he has admitted it was pretty cheap body armor. He obviously survived.
Surely, if you saw this guy coming up the driveway, you'd slam the garage door shut and disable the mechanism that allows someone to use a remote garage door opener (oh, 'cause you know Knoxville has a garage door opener in his back pocket!)
But he has a legion of friends and fans (and maybe fiends) of all ages who love him and laugh hysterically at the stunts he and his friends pull through thick and thin. He has kept his apparently most loyal and laughable friends in his TV show and movies, faces most of us recognize instantly even if we don't recall their names right away.
Admittedly, there is a good belly-laugh in the movie when the huge spring-loaded papier-mache hand slams into people and knocks them down. But the cautionary tale, nonetheless, is “Don't try this at home...or anywhere else, for that matter.”
