Ok, I've been working on this for a while, and I'm proud to formally announce "Surfrock66 Gallery." There's already links to it all over the website which you may have seen, but I have finished enough to formally announce it. This system links my website to my home server computer where the photos are stored, meaning space isn't really a reasonable limitation. This gallery is a place for me to manage my photos and make them public, while if I choose making albums visible only to certain people. To reach the site, there's four methods: Under the home menu at the top, click on "SR66 Gallery," under the Photos menu at the top click on "Joe's Photo Archive," type the formal address I've created at http://gallery.surfrock66.com or finally, click the eye at the lower right. I hope you enjoy this brand new feature, I've certainly enjoyed putting it together!

  Seems this is the time of short, quick updates. Today, it's about a turtle visitor we had around, and you can read the story here.

  So, I have a strange habit of making a gum wrapper foil ball, I have now documented it here. It's one of the more interesting things I've ever done.

I have achieved the greatest feat of my project life. A family had a big screen tv, a 1997 Hitachi, and their house got hit by lightning. They got the tv appraised to be fixed for 500 bucks, so they just got it replaced with a plasma. They put the old one on craigslist, and I picked it up and proceeded to repair it. I actually only spent 50 cents on replacement fuses. The feeling of achievement is awesome, I know that not even my biggest supporters believed I could do it; people recognize I have lots of talent and experience but still think I'm an amateur. A tv must be far too complicated. Well, I figured it out and now it works so BOO YA.

This is the TV so you can see it, it's 52 inches and all put back together.

Here you can see us playing Wii on it. The yellow bar on the top is a normal progressive scan, take a photo of any big screen tv or tube tv and you'll see something similar. Like how we have 2 huge TV's right next to each other, one for games and one for tv.

This is a diagram from the service manual which explains the diagnostic LED system, I had to understand about 60 pages of this.

Here, you can see the 2 main fuses, both fine. S901 is a relay switch for the power, it's ok. T901 is the transformer, it gets warm. Also, I901 is the mystery part all of my functional diagnosis flow charts point to, so for a while I thought that was the problem.

Here's what was strange. The protect LED was on, but leading to this circuit is F903, a fuse, which is circled on the left. I've never seen a fuse like this, how do I know if it's blown? It has no continuity across it, so I think that's it, and I'm gonna replace it with a socket and real fuse as my next step.

More pics of the board, I had to replace those 2 fuses and that did the trick. Hardly a 500 dollar fix, wouldn't you say?

This is another view of the board, as a reference. It's the whole power circuit.

  If someone who didn't know me ever heard me talk about little people, they may think I harbor some terrible ill will towards them. I hope to clear up any misconceptions with this story, and possibly inform everyone I know on one of my many strange Tallahassee experiences. Even Jenn is willing to admit now that an uncanny amount of strange things happen to me here, and I have earned the nickname "The Vortex of Weird." I don't usually prefer to use the non-preffered terminology for little people and the mentally challenged, but it adds to the impact of the story so I'm leaving them.
  This story usually begins with "A retarded midget punched me in the head once." We were at Andrew's sports bar in downtown tallahassee on a Friday night, there were maybe 16 of us at a long table eating dinner. I believe I had the chicken quesadillas. I was sitting with my back towards the wall, and the only thing behind me was the pathway to the kitchen and the bathrooms. If I remember correctly, I was wearing a t-shirt, cargos and a backwards hat. We were chatting about our weeks, eating, laughing, generally having an innocent good time. Suddenly, I feel something hit the back of my head, hard. My head actually flew forward, almost hitting the table. I look up to see the 2 people sitting in front of me with looks on their faces that screamed amazement and speechlessness. I turn around in my seat, still dazed from the blow to my head, to see a little person standing behind me! He was wearing a black shirt, a backwards black baseball cap and thick, thick glasses in front of cross-eyed eyes. As I looked at im, he thrusted his shoulders forward in such a way I would describe as "thuggish." He loudly said "What's UP! What's UP!" In my confusion, I said "not much, what's up with you?" This threw him off, he began looking to the side, and stopped shrugging his shoulders, and after a second said "nothing." I said "ok" and he said "ok" and then he walked off. The whole thing lasted about 20 seconds, and to this day I almost would think I hallucinated it if there hadn't been a whole table full of witnesses to back it up. When I turned back to the table, my friend Jillian (who was on vicodin for an injury at the time) said somethign to the effect of "dude, this vicodin is crazy, I think I just saw a midget punch you in the head." Lucas, across from me, said something like "Wow, that just happened."
  I actually saw that little person again. At Dance Marathon that year, we had gone to visit halfway through the event, and he was there walking around! I've been told by many people since I shouldn't have let him get away with hitting me, how could a 6'3, 275 lb guy get beat up by a little person, I should have drop kicked him, but to be honest the whole thing scared the crap out of me! I saw him at DM and bolted the other direction, and to be honest it's part of the reason I didn't go back to DM this year!
  Additionally, since then, whenever a little person is in my presence, people all over will bring it up and say "watch out, he's gonna get you!" An AWESOMELY IRONIC example was at the haunted house at the union this year. It was the second night and no one was really at the haunted house, I was just there to support Ryan who had done a lot of work to put the event on. He told me to wait for a group to show up and then we could go in. I waited around for a while, knowing the house wouldn't be that scary (compared to Universal's Halloween Horror Nights from the day before) so I wasn't anxious. Out of nowhere, 2 people come up to join the tour, one of them is an extremely small little person! While at the time I didn't have a problem, Ryan immediately pointed out afterwards "I bet the scariest part of that haunted house was the little person in your group!" which I of course agreed in, I can't let ironly like my most famous "fear" joining my in a haunted house go to waste!
  So there you have it, add that to the stories of the homeless guy smoking the joint in wendys, the porn in the back of the car in front of me, predicting lightning, getting screwed 7 times in a row by the airlines, and everything else, I am truly the vortex of weird and proud of it.