Two Weeks with Amazon’s Ring 2 Doorbell

Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. These are the people I have captured on video after owning a Ring video doorbell for two weeks. Just kidding. So far I’ve captured video of trucks driving past my house, three visitors, construction workers across the street using the Porta-Potty, two Amazon deliveries, and several videos of Susan and I trying out the doorbell. Like most gadgets, I bought a Ring doorbell not because I needed one, but because I thought it would be neat. If reporters are to be believed, our homes (and cars) are constantly being probed by scary criminals, checking to see if… (read more)

RobOHara

I’ll Pass on Motley Crue’s Reunion

Beginning in 2014, 80s hair metal rockers Motley Crue went on their final tour, which lasted two years. The band went to great lengths to convince journalists and fans that this would in fact be the last time the four members of Motley Crue toured together. To drive home the fact that this would be Motley Crue’s final tour, the name of the tour was Motley Crue’s Final Tour. For those who still weren’t convinced, the band kicked off the tour with a press conference, at which the four members signed a “binding legal document” (referred to as a “cessation… (read more)

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An Evening with Joe Bob Briggs: How Rednecks Saved Hollywood

Joe Bob Briggs with Rob O'Hara at Rodeo Cinema in Oklahoma City

I was in high school when I discovered Joe Bob Briggs, the then host of TMC’s Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater. Beginning in 1986, Joe Bob Briggs — dressed as a cowboy right off the screen — introduced viewers to films running the gamut from bad to worse. There were b-movies, cult classics, horror films, exploitation films, and movies that were just plain bad, but regardless of how terrible the movie might be, Briggs simultaneously praised and playfully poked them. After a ten year run, Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater was cancelled and morphed into MonsterVision, which ran an additional four years… (read more)

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Guns N’ Roses Live: Five Times a Charm

Two weeks ago, I saw Guns N’ Roses live in concert for the fifth (and perhaps final time). I had some strong thoughts about the band’s performance immediately after the show, and wanted to give myself a little bit of time to see if my opinion would soften at all. Of the five times I’ve seen Guns N’ Roses perform live, four have been with our friends Tim and Dawn Novosad. The four of us first saw the band perform live back in 2011 in Norman, OK. In 2012, we all went to Vegas (for the Novosad’s anniversary) and saw… (read more)

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Bloody Pride

There are many kinds of pride. You can be proud of your country, the things you own, or the things you’ve done, but there’s nothing quite like the pride you feel when your kid does something super awesome. Since turning sixteen, Mason has been donating blood and platelets at school each time the Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI) visits. Last week, Mason was contacted by the OBI and informed that his blood was used to save a man’s life during a liver transplant. The man, Ronald Black, was scheduled to speak at OBI over the weekend, and the staff wanted to… (read more)

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Putting a Computer Keyboard in the Dishwasher

The longer you work on computers, the more weird tricks you learn. Over the years I’ve straightened the pins on IDE hard drives, made temporary jumpers out of paperclips, bypassed BIOS passwords by removing the CMOS battery, and used rubber bands to remove screws with stripped heads. And then there are the really weird ones, like sticking a failing hard drive inside your freezer as a last ditch attempt to save it. While a lot of people (myself included) seemingly had success with this trick, more recent analysis has determined that there’s a much greater chance of this making the… (read more)

RobOHara

Dirt

Dump truck delivering dirt

When you have a shop built, the following things happen in the following order: the build site is prepared, dirt is brought in, concrete is poured, the building is assembled, and then the building is finished. After a few months of coordination, the first stage — the preparation of the site — is over. I think. This stage involved having all the utilities that ran underneath the future home of the shop to be relocated — specifically, electric, cable, and water (sprinkler system). OG&E moved our electric and cut the main water line that runs to the sprinkler system in… (read more)

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Area 51 Raid a Bust

Last June, an event titled Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us was created. Area 51 is, of course, the secretive military base located in the middle of the Nevada desert where, according to legend, the government stores its stash of crashed UFOs and aliens corpses. The theory behind the Facebook event (which started out as a joke) was that if enough people gathered outside the military base and stormed the gates at the same time, the government would be unable to prevent all of them from gaining access. I wonder if all these people believe that dead… (read more)

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A Wednesday without Power, Water, or Apologies

“Mr. O’Hara, could you please give me a call back? We’ve had an incident in your backyard.” I don’t know that I’ve mentioned it before on the blog, but we’re having a shop built in the backyard at our new home. This was a decision we made before we ever bought the new house. I’ve wanted one for a long time, and Susan has wanted a garage she can park inside for a long time. So, win/win. We found the perfect builder, a local man who actually lives in our old neighborhood. “The minute our old house sells,” we told… (read more)

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Charles G. Hill (1953-2019)

Charles G. Hill was known as Dustbury to some and Chaz to others, but almost everyone who knew him knew Charles as a prolific writer who ran one of the longest running blogs in Oklahoma. Charles began blogging on Dustbury.com back in 1996. That’s three years before the word “blog” had even been coined. I first met Charles through a computer bulletin board the two of us frequented back in the 1980s, “Midnight at the Oasis.” The BBS was run by Jessica Stults, a red-headed firecracker in her early thirties; Charles was Jessica’s co-sysop, the guy who worked mostly behind… (read more)

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