The answer: I don’t rightly know. Well, the second part of that I don’t. I know where I am. I mean, I have an idea of what we’ll be doing, but until I actually get down there, I won’t know for sure. This is going to read very awkwardly. Oh well.

Ok, so I’m currently on the Western Pacific coast of Nicaragua working with an organization called World Missions Outreach. Their main purpose is feeding children, some 20,000 a day, in the country. So I presume we’ll be doing that. I’ll be splitting time between the coast and the capital city of Managua.

I’m excited and, by the time your read this, will have been to some amazing places that God has laid out. One of the places, the Managua dump town, is a place I think God has been calling me since I first heard about it back in January. It’s going to be an amazing experience and, well, at this point already has been an awesome experience.

I’ll be back on Sunday and, if you guys are extra nice, I might actually show some pictures and give a run down. One thing is for sure, I will not be jumping off any cliffs this year.

This behemoth is made up of eight scoops of ice cream, every topping in the house and “a whole can of whipped cream.” Yes, a whole can. It’s a gluttons dream and a parent’s nightmare but on that day it was our treasure, our triumph, our mountain to conquer. And conquer we did.

You, too, can attempt to tackle this lactose nightmare if you ever visit the Beach Club Resort at Walt Disney World. Find Beaches and Cream and prepare yourself for the fury that will soon be unleashed.

Want to know what bounty lies inside the silver sink’s belly? Watch this video:

Ok, now this is most likely my fault but for the life of me I can’t seem to figure it out. You see, when I first hung the clock in September, the time was correct. Then, at the set date, I took the clock down and adjusted for the end of Daylight Savings Time. I assume I made the correct adjustments and placed the clock back on the wall.

About a month ago I realized that, in fact, the clock is 5 hours slow. I’ve been watching it and it hasn’t changed or gotten any slower which would obviously happen if it was slow enough to loose five hours in a few short months. So that leaves me to blame. But honestly, I don’t think I’m stupid enough to fall back five hours instead of only one. But who knows.

Either way I have a clock on my wall that’s five hours slow and I don’t really want to change it just in case it changes itself. And besides, there’s something to be said for having a clock that is five hours slow. In fact, there’s a lot to be said. Don’t believe me? Well, you just read four paragraphs about a five hour slow clock. So there.

Sweet iPhone picture dude!

It’s not really as gruesome as it looks, I just had a mole removed yesterday. Problem is, the doctor cut deep — how deep? — so deep that I’ve got two layers of stitches. There’s one layer of normal stitches on the skin’s surface, what you see in that sweet picture, and then another layer deeper down that will dissolve out in 60 to 90 days. That’s right, 60 to 90 freaking days.

Now the location of said soon-to-be-scar is such that I can’t lift anything or engage in certain strenuous physical activity for 60 to 90 days for fear the internal stitches will rip. This is one instance where my sedimentary lifestyle will be beneficial, or something like that.

The thing is, it doesn’t hurt at all. In fact, I can’t even feel it — except for the fact it itches like crazy. Twice a day I have to clean it, smear Polysporin all over it, and cover it back up. It’s a 10 minute task, but I guess it’s better than infection.

The moral of this story is this: don’t spend any time in the sun, ever. Especially if you have fair skin.

This all started back in 2004 with Hurricane Charlie. Prior to returning to Tallahassee I caught a flat tire from some of the debris. No big deal. It happens. However, that set off a chain of events that no man should have to go through.

Over the course of the next 18 months I ended up with another four, I kid you not, flat tires. The worst of which was a hole in the sidewall of a tire that was so bad I had to put on a spare in the middle of nowhere on I-10 and spend the night in the exact halfway point between Tallahassee and Lake City (see nowhere). That wasn’t much fun at all.

I thought the streak ended after I bought a new set of tires two or so years back. Surely when I bought a new car last July my luck had changed. But sadly I was wrong. I caught a nice screw, about an inch and a half long, right in the tread this morning. The good news is that I can change a tire using those crappy jacks in under 20 minutes. The bad news is that now I’m going to be absolutely paranoid as to when the next one’s going to go.

Think you have worse luck when it comes to tires than me? Share your horror story in the comments.

We’ve been together since 2005. Our relationship started out so well. You were sending me great movies and coupons which let me rent more movies and video games in store! Then you went and did something even better. You told me I could exchange the movies you sent me in store for even more free movies. It was great. We really had a good thing going.

Then things started to change. I guess you realized your stores were no longer making any money. So before I could exchange a movie for a free rental, you made me weave through a maze of cheep candy and over-priced movie posters. Then, at the counter, you asked if I wanted to take advantage of the great deal on popcorn. Frankly, you were being too pushy and I felt a bit smothered.

Then you changed the rules. You told me I was no longer getting any coupons. In fact, I could now only exchange movies in store twice a month. You became too overbearing. I couldn’t take it any longer.

I hate to tell you this, but last Saturday I cheated on you. Netflix told me to give it a try, so I did. I didn’t want to at first, but their site was so much easier to use and recommended better movies. Sure, I can’t take stuff into a store with Netflix, but honestly Blockbuster, you’re stores are pretty old and disgusting. You really should clean every now and then. Besides, Netflix told me that by the middle of next month I’ll be able to download and watch movies on my XBox instantly and sometime soon I’ll be able to do that on my Mac too.

What I’m trying to say, Blockbuster, is that it’s over between you and me. We had some good times, but it’s time to go our separate ways. I’d like to say it’s not you, it’s me, but this time it really is you. I wish you the best in the future.

Signed,

Justin Cox

PAX is a three day conference created by the one and only Penny Arcade, an awesome web comic. It’s going to feature bands, video games, speakers, video games, movies, video games, geeks, and video games. I’m excited.

It's Penny Arcade Expo or Bust!

The official schedule is available on the PAX website and it’s almost mind numbing to try and decipher it all. One session I’ve been looking forward to for awhile, however, is the screening of The Guld with creator and star Felicia Day. That should be pretty cool. Other things that caught my eye were sessions on the history of Harmonix, a screening of the movie The Wizard, and the keynote with the creator of BioShock. One thing’s for sure, the deal will be a lot of fun.

While I’m there I hope to explore a bit of Seattle as well. Considering I’ve never been west of Texas this should be an adventure. I’ll be making PAX updates on Twitter, so follow me if you haven’t already. There probably won’t be a PAX specific post here until sometime next week. We’ll see.

Are you going to PAX? Have you been to Seattle? Leave some “must see and do” things in the comments below.

iMac
This screen is a whopping 24″ and might possibly have a hand in causing me to go blind. Even at it’s lowest brightness setting it’s too bright. The good news is I can code and design like a fiend on there.

MacBook
This screen, compared to the iMac, is a tiny 13″. Unfortunately those 13″ are what I spend almost all day looking at as the MacBook is what I use in the office — and everywhere else. This one will probably cause me to go blind but not because of the brightness.

iPhone
This screen is an even smaller 3.5″. Since OS 2.0 came out I find myself staring at this screen more and more. The Twitterriffic and Facebook apps don’t really help. Oddly I don’t think this one will cause me any future blindness.

TV
This screen is a very nice 32″. If you spend any time reading this blog then you know I spend way to much time watching TV. It’s really hard not to watch it when it’s on a beautiful Aquos HDTV. Let me tell you, there is nothing like the Olympics in HD. But that’s the story for another day (probably not because that’s really all I have to say on that subject).

There you have it. The collection of my typical daily screens. It seems like the bottom line is I spend too much time in a stationary position and will more than likely drive myself blind.

Do you stare at too many screens? Let me know about them in the comments section below.

Not to long ago Publix decided to make a packaging change on their yogurt containers. They got rid of the useless plastic lid, opting for the single foil cover. This is good, more environmentally friendly. Though they decided to also shrink the size from 8oz down to 6oz. This is crap. Granted, all the other yogurt manufacturers on the planet do so in 6oz packages but I liked my 8oz size. It offered more deliciousness. Ok, that sounds dumb. In fact what’s crap about the size change is not the size change at all.

Pre- and post- yogurt shrinkage. Photo taken by Listener42

You see Publix changed the size but they kept the same price. Oh yes, they didn’t change the price. Way to pull a fast one there Publix. One day I’m paying $5.50 for 80 oz of delicious fruit on the bottom yogurt and the next day I’m paying $5.50 for only 60 oz. That’s a 25% decrease in product for the same price. Foul! Foul! I’m crying foul! Of course it’s not like I’m going to boycott or anything, I like the yogurt too much.

Amy I overreacting or right on? Let me know in the comments.

After a few minutes in Central City I realized that the devastation of the Lower Ninth made popular on CNN isn’t the whole story. Sure, thousands of houses were destroyed and now created a modern American ghost town, but there is devastation much bigger that the news media didn’t cover. The area we were working didn’t see the famous water damage, in fact, there was little damage on the whole in the Upper Ninth. The devastation that Katrina left in this area is with the people who live there.

We spent two days at a woman’s house who had worked hard her whole life to provide for her and her family. She worked two jobs to put her kids through private school and college and had even attained 90 college credit hours herself. She had worked her way up from a temp to $40,000 a year salary job. Then Katrina came rolling through. Her company relocated her to Arkansas where she knew no one, had no transportation, and wasn’t at home. Because of this she lost her job and went back to her home in New Orleans where she tried to start over. She hired three different contractors to fix the little damage she had (FEMA deemed she didn’t have enough damage to merit any aid and her insurance company determined she had $3,800 worth of damage and cut her a check for that amount) and all three contractors essentially screwed her. All in all she spent nearly $25,000 on repairs with jobs that weren’t done right or not even at all. What all this did to her, as she put it, sapped her of all her energy. She was back to working part time, depending on her sister to help support them both. She owns a nice piece of property (a duplex with an apartment above where she lives) but no longer has the means or desire to fix it up so that she can rent them out. Her story is the same one you will hear talking to everyone in Central City, a devastation the media will never cover.

Our group did an essentially simple project for this woman: we tore out a broken concrete path from the from of her house to the rear and replaced it with circular pavers and red “lava rocks.” The project cost roughly $100 and a days work for two adults and five teenagers. The result, however was priceless. The homeowner gained back a bit of her energy, her “pep” as she called it. She wanted to continue the project (we miss-estimated and didn’t buy enough rocks to fill in around the pavers) and seemed to be truly thankful for the difference we helped make in her life.

There are a lot of incredible things happening in New Orleans. The media likes to talk about the various celebrities building houses in the Lower Ninth Ward and about the constant work being done to strengthen the levees so something like Katrina can never happen again. All of this is important and needed, but there are other incredible things happening that the general public will never know about. Things like restoring hope by laying a few pavers and mowing a few lawns. It’s going to take years to fully restore New Orleans, to fully restore the people there but after spending a week there I am encouraged to know that someday it will happen.