Let the Church Campout Begin! at 1:37 PM

As most of you know, the Pilgrim Bible Church is having it's annual church campout... starting today. Anyway, I won't be anywhere near a computor this weekend so, if one of you emails me or something and I don't answer till tuesday... please don't think I hate you or something, because chances are I don't :-)

See y'all later!

Signing off till late Monday night - Graydon L

My Trip to Northwest Trek at 5:27 PM

Here's that post I promised!

Northwest Trek is like a zoo exept just for animals native to the northwest.

Thanks to Matt B for taking these pics and letting me use them!

I'm not sure when Matt took this picture, but it look awsome so I put it up anyway.

Here's some wild animals ;-)

This is a tree that was cut down back in the seventies. They cut a round out of it and put under a little awning thingy with little metal plates marking famous events, the tree's planting being one of them.

If you can't tell, that's an otter.

They've also got this "tour bus" that drives around in a 400+ acher free range area.

-Graydon L

MRM - Vantage point at 1:58 PM

Vantage Point (2008)

Directed by: Pete Travis

Written by: Barry Levy

Starring Cast: Dennis Quaid (Thomas Barnes), Matthew Fox (Kent Taylor)

Supporting Cast: Forrest Whittaker (Howard Lewis), Edgar Ramirez (Javier), Saïd Taghmaoui (Suarez),

What's it Rated?: PG-13 for action violence and strong language

Genre: Action/Thriller/Assassination

Synopsis: Thomas Barnes is an agent working for the American Secret Service. He is assigned to protect the president at a summit meeting in Spain, his first assignment in six months when he took a bullet to save the president. But as he, and 7 other witnesses watch, the President is shot twice. the chaos gets even worse when bombs explode nearby. It is up to Barnes, one of the only agents who knows what's going on, to stop the assassin.

My Take: Do you like action and suspense? this movie is for you.

I was "on the edge of my seat" a couple times, but the movie takes an hour (out of only a hour and 22 minutes) just to show you the same assassination 8 times. after about #5, you get kinda bored. The only thing that kept me watching was the suspenseful "ending" to each perspectives story.

For example: you see Barnes putting on a dress shirt. he goes downstairs, meets up with some other agents and gets in a car. once the arrive at the public square where a speech by the president is going to be made, the President is shot. Barnes runs into the nearby CNN mobile control booth thingy, sees a clip of the assassination, utters a profanity and runs out... but you don't get to see the clip. You are left in complete darkness as to what he is going to do next, and then, the film cuts and starts off with another person, "telling the story" from his vantage point.

Of course, the film would be far better without the swearing in it, but that's Hollywood for you. :-I

Anyway, I guess it was an OK one time see; not really worth the time to watch again.

Story: 6 out of 10

Humor: N/A (I didn't laugh one time during the entire movie)

Action/Suspense: 9 out of 10

Overall: 5.5 out of 10

-Graydon L

Just a little blog Admin at 5:15 PM

OK, so just recently I got some comments on my last post, "My Amazing Blog Readership", and of course, as is my custom, I was going to post a comment to answer the questions in the already posted comments. Well, I had already written my comment and I clicked the "publish comment" button... and it didn't work. So I saved what I had written in my last comment and added it to the comment I was writing ( I thought that maybe you can't post two comments in a row) and I hit the publish button... and nothing happened. So now I've pretty well given up on publishing a comment, and I'm going to put my answers on this post.

this is an answer to the two comment by Melissa and Sarah on the post "My Amazing Blog Readership"

Melissa - I guess the search engines like me because I talk about a semi-wide range of subjects, and search engines also treat each post as a separate web page. The more posts, the more chance of being found in various searches.

Sarah- It is a lot of fun! I get quite a kick out of checking out what countries have seen my blog!

__________________________________________________

As you may have noticed, as well, there is a new sidebar element on my blog labeled "Free Software I Recommend". This list included the name of the software and a snippet of what it does as well as it's upgradeability. All of the softwares listed are free, downloadable programs available on the Internet.

Check it out!

-Graydon :-)

Stay tuned, there's a "My Trip to Northwest Trek" post in the works!

My Amazing Blog Readership at 1:08 PM

A while back, Sarah asked me if I was using an analytics web site to see who came to my blog and when, as well as what country they're from, what web page they came from, that sort of thing. I answered "yeah, but I'm not really using it right now". She then recommended Google Analytics.

When I got back home, I was just about to get rid of my current Analytics System and switch to Google, when I thought, "why not take one last look at StatCounter (what I was using at the time) just to sort of, say goodbye".

It took me a couple tries to remember my password, but when I logged in, I was amazed. This is what I saw:

(These pictures were taken using Wisdom-Soft's ScreenHunter program. Available for free download here.)

7 returning visitors? wooooohoooooo!!!!!

Just look at this map!!! just look at it!!!!!

I don't recognize half of those flags! (Oh, yeah. This is funny; I've had more people from Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, than I have had from Canada!!! :-D )

StatCounter.com

Wisdom-Soft.com

Well, That's my amazing blog readership. I highly recommend ScreenHunter, it's a very powerful program, and I thing Wisdom-Soft even has some motion-capture software as well. Check 'em out!

-Graydon L

G's Favorite Pictures at 12:44 PM

My orthodontist (the person who takes care of my braces) sometimes has contests and stuff for various techno gadgets, a Nintendo Wii being the most recent prize in the contest. Basically, all you have to do to enter is take a picture of yourself and your toothbrush, and you get entered in a drawing to win.

Well, I told Jonny about said contest, and he said, "lets take the picture right now"... so I said "Ok", I'm paraphrasing the conversation, but you get the idea :-)

So then I came up with this amazing idea, how about we take a picture of me and a picture of the toothbrush (really close up) so it looks like I'm holding a gigantic toothbrush?

so that's exactly what we did.

but while I was editing my pictures, I remembered all the other pictures I'd edited.

here they are:

This is my prize winning picture for the Orthodontist

This picture was taken at my Sisters wedding... sort of.


Yes, Jonny was a voluntary participant for this picture. No Jonnys were harmed in the taking of this picture.

Aragorn and Grishnakh action figures duking it out. (they're from Lord of the Rings if you don't know)

If anyone needs me to edit a picture for them, maybe take a few pounds off or something, call me :-) (I can also put those few pounds on an unlikable relative if you like :-)

-Graydon L

An Update of my Crazy Summer at 8:42 PM

Well, since I haven't exactly been mister promt over here, this is going to be one monster post.

Here we go.

First off, rasberry picking:

I rained almost the entire time, but we still got almost 80 pounds of berries. Blah :-(

This is Jonny and I doing what we call "processing" the berries. Basically, Mom washes and juices the berries, Jonny puts the juice into small bags, and I label the small bags and put them in larger bags ready for the freezer.

just 3 boxes of the 8 we "havested"

Next up, Brigade:

It actually rained really hard at Brigade, I mean a LOT! here we are dancing just after the rain.

Melissa... being sassy no doubt ;-)

The stupid "whoooooo" dance.

Now let's see, on Sunday the 11th, Matt B came over to our house.

On Monday, we hung out with Matt and attempted to film SPY 2, but we didn't get anywhere close to finishing, so we're kinda letting it drop.

On Tuesday, Jonny and Matt went down to Montesano to help Stephen paint a house. only Matt was going to do that, but Stephen asked if Jonny could come too, and he said "sure".

Anyway, later on in the day, we got a call from the Youngs, and they asked Mom and I if we wanted to come camping with them, so we said "sure". In my book, we had lots of time to get ready to go and any normal family could have done it, but nooooo, we just had to be late, we are ALWAYS late!!!! and it drives me insane!!!!!! >:-(

Anyway, here's the pictures we took camping!:

Everyone piled in the back of the pickup truck.

I can't remember what mountain this is. I think it's Mt. Adams but don't quote me. From our vantage point on top of Burley mountain, we could see Mt. Ranier, Mt. Hood, Mt. st. Helens, and Mt. Adams.



Now I really don't remember what mountain this is, it's probably something I aughta' know too, like Mt. Ranier or something. :-P



Me popping off a couple .22 rounds. I know I'm leaning waaaay to far back, but hey, I was relaxed.






And finally, Mom doing the same thing. She actually shot a .38 and .367 as well as the .22!


Well, thanks for reading, sorry for not updating more often, I'll try and keep you updated more often!

See y'all later!

-Graydon L

Sunday with the Allens at 8:48 PM

Here's the pictures from Sunday when we went bowling with the Allens:


Sarah getting ready to fling that bowling ball out there!

Looking on as the pins are about to be flung all over the place :-)

I got this picture when I was trying to take advantage of Mom's "digital wide" feature on her camera. (you basically take two pictures and the camera pieces them together. It's really cool!)

Jonny and Paul looking tough :-)

I also got a Rubik's cube from a garage sale the other day, here's a video of me solving it:



I actually cheated while solving the Rubik's cube... anyone know how? :-)

-Graydon L

The Slowmobile at 8:51 PM

Well, as you know, I have a lot of LEGO and K'NEX pieces to mess around with. Your probably also know that I like to make useless machines out of my LEGOs and K'NEX sets... well this is one of them.

A motor attached to a series of gears (and the whole thing on a set of wheels) in such a way as to make the machine move as slowly as posible. I call it, the Slowmobile!

Check it out:

-Graydon L