SSBlog

computers is our friends

2008-10-21T23:42:00.002-04:00

On travel near San Diego this week. Have the wife and IAC with me. We got in at 5 local time, but it was nearly 7 by the time we got near the hotel. We went to Target first, to pick up some diapers and milk for IAC, and decided pizza would be a good, easy, quick dinner, so i looked up a local Domino's Pizza. I called and below is basically how it went down:

Domino's: Hello, this is Stanley, how can I help you?
Me: Hey, I need to order a pizza for delivery.
Stanley: What's your phone number?
M: I'm at the Courtyard Marriott, but don't know the number off the top of my head.
S: I need the number.
M: Hold on a second.
S: You can just call me back when you get the number.
M: ok fucker, click

literally 15 seconds later, I call back.
S: Hello, this is Stanley, how can I help you?
M: Hey, I've got that hotel #.
S: Can I have it?
M: blah blah blah phone number
S: what room are you in?
M: I haven't checked in yet, just wanted to call ahead so you could get my pizza in the oven.
S: I need the room number.
M: you can't bring it to the front desk?
S: I need the room number.
M: FUCK YOU! click

seriously, is that kid so stupid he didn't know what the hell to do if he didn't have a number to put into a space on the computer screen? is it asking too much for the kid to think outside the box a little?

New old cars

2008-09-21T18:08:00.002-04:00

Friday, on the way to Edinburgh, where the wife's cousin was getting married, we looked at some new old cars at various dealerships in Bloomington, but didn't find anything that met my requirements: newer than 2000, >30mpg, <$10k. After the salesman at the Ford dealership showed his ass by questioning my l33t math skillz, we made a quick exit. He told me I wouldn't be able to get a 3 year loan on $8k for $250 a month, because $250/month *36 months was only $4k, and that's not counting interest...

We got to Edinburgh, checked in to the hotel and saw a Toyota dealership a half mile away...noted. Went to the outlet malls, got some clothes for IAC, then went to the rehearsal dinner, where they didn't have a wagon for IAC to rehearse his ring bearer part, had a good meal, some cold beers and back to the hotel for the night.

Next morning, up bright and early at 8am, ate our continental breakfast, then showered and back to the outlet mall for the pants that we didn't buy the night before, because we weren't sure what color to get since nobody had black pants for a 1yo. After the outlet mall, we went to that Toyota dealership and I saw a couple of Corrolas and a couple of Camry's 2002-2004 years. Then, we went to help set up for the wedding, which was outdoors at a really cool old "breeding farm". After that, I went to pick up BIL1 and test drove a 2003 Corrola, 85k miles, $10k, 35 mpg, score. The 04 Corrola was $15k and the 02 Camry's were $8k and $9k. Long story short, after a little back and forth, I bought the Corrola for $9k. Will PNP's at a later date.

dark ages

2008-08-27T16:45:00.001-04:00

my cell phone crapped out Tuesday. First the screen turned green, then scrambled, then nothing at all, so i have no cell phone and no work email access and won't be home until friday. i've been using the hotel phone to check voicemail and using my personal email to communicate. Monday's a holiday, so i won't have a phone until tuesday. this sucks

P3

2008-08-18T18:10:00.005-04:00

Last week was phase 3 of the big LCA house remodel, aka P3. P1 was in 2006, where they (I couldn't make it) tore off the front porch, replaced it with a nice brick patio, did some great landscaping and remodeled the tv room, foyer and chapter room. Last year, for P2, they combined two two-man rooms into one three-man room, bricked the back yard, redid the game room and some other stuff, I can't remember what.

This year was the first year I was able to make it, and it was a good time. I wish I could have been there longer than just during the day on Saturday. It started mid-week with demolition work, and they ate some fried turkey nuts at some point. I arrived on Saturday morning, around 9:30. I had a 10:00 Housing Corp. meeting, so I couldn't really get started on any work. I checked the progress out, took a few pictures and went to the meeting. When we got done 40 minutes later, things were in full swing. The major project was in theme with previous years "the brickyard". We continued the brick patio and sidewalk from the front porch all the way down to the road, put in a new entry way at the road, new doors/windows in the chapter room, which are going to be much nicer during parties, as you could never open enough windows to keep things cool. They were also adding some nice stone accents to the front corners and around the door. They used the same manufactured stone as I put on my house, and it makes the front really pop. In the back, we took out all the gravel where everybody threw their smokes between the house and the parking lot and put some paving bricks down and some nice entries into the doors. They put the old front sidewalk (in chunks) in the back yard to accommodate the snakes walking path to their house. It was a better idea than paying someone to haul off a ton of concrete for sure! They also filled in a trench with concrete, that they dug last year to run power to the back yard bbq pit. up to this point it was just full of gravel.

Inside, we were putting up new doors on some of the rooms, and upstairs doing some major remodeling and masonry work. Jim "P-Nut" Benzing was the driving force behind the design and put together some really well laid out rooms. I have a few pics of it in progress, but hopefully they were able to get done Sunday and get it ready for the actives to move in. Of note, they combined the SAC closet with 250 to make it bigger. Not sure where all the bid-tuesday beer will be kept now... Other rooms remodeled were the slug room and geek room, and the other 2 rooms on that side of the hall. I helped hang some trim in there before I had to get back home. There was still quite a bit of work to do when I left, but I'm sure they pulled together and got the hard stuff done, with mostly cleanup left for the actives when they returned, which is no worse than we ever had it moving in.

Hopefully someone else will post some better/more recent pictures, as they had another day and a quarter to work after I left.

Next year, they're not asking for donations, just sweat equity, and the year after that is the big professional remodel. We're tearing that stupid Mansard roof off and putting a peaked roof and HVAC in! I wish all these assholes would have been around BEFORE I joined!

Property Taxes

2008-08-06T08:53:00.003-04:00

So we built our house last year. It was started in March, completed in August. I figured our property tax bill wouldn't go up until 2008, which won't be payable until next July. Apparently, I was wrong.

We got a letter from the bank yesterday to notify us that they paid our property taxes out of escrow, and that it would take our escrow account $1700 into the red by the end of the year...shit. They did tell us we could pay into escrow to keep this from increasing our payment too substantially next year (to make up for the deficit AND the increase in taxes, from $100 pre-house to $1700 post-house). It came a year early, but it was about what I expected for taxes.

I decided to call the assessors office this morning to ask why the house was on our 2007 taxes when the house wasn't completed until 2/3 into the year. They told me that the house wasn't added to our taxes until February 2008, so they'll be on our taxes for next year. This year's tax bill should have just been for the property, but the lady didn't have the tax numbers, just the property assessments. She'd transfer me to the Treasurers office for that.

The lady at the treasurers office was not helpful. she simply told me if the bank paid my tax bill that they could send me a copy of it, even though they were supposed to send all tax bills to homeowners at the same time as they sent them to the banks.

currently waiting to hear back from the bank on this whole debacle. i'm going to be PISSED if my taxes went up 20-fold WITHOUT even having my house on the assessment.

UPDATE: I talked to the bank and the Treasurer's office, and got a fax of my tax statement from the Treasurer's office. It showed the house on the taxes. I called the assessor and she assured me that "the house wasn't added until 2/22/08...oh, it was before March 1st. Our tax year goes from March 1st to February 28th"

Those cocksuckers got me by 7 days (leap year)...that's no coincidence.

The good news is that they assessed the house at a reasonable value and i do have my homestead and mortgage exemptions on it.

Seriously???

2008-06-13T11:53:00.002-04:00

During the bad storms last weekend, our landline went out. I sent a trouble ticket the next morning via the tubes. They called me Sunday morning (what?) to come out and look at it, but the guy got stopped at the distribution box before he got to my house. Surprise surprise, that's where the problem was. The repair garauntee was moved from 8pm Tuesday to 8pm Wednesday. Well, the wife called and it finally got fixed at 11:40am Friday. I called AT&T customer service to try and get a 25% reduction in my bill. I FINALLY get through to a customer service rep. To get there, i had to enter my phone number in the phone. The lady proceeds to ask my phone number(2st time), name and last 4 of my SSN. She then tells me she needs to transfer me to repair to get this taken care of. Before she transfers me, she tries to upsell me on some long distance plan for $10/month, pass. Then, she tries to upsell me on one that costs $30/month...what? yeah, give me the more expensive one. that's what i was looking for.

Repair has one of those damn automated voice recognition menus, where you have to say what you want, it doesn't understand you, and you repeat it, it does understand, but asks to verify that's what you said, you say yes, and it doesn't understand that, etc. It also asks me to put in my phone number (3rd time) At one point, it says if you want to speak to an agent, say "Agent". After fighting with the thing for five minutes, I tell it I want an agent, and it puts me on hold for 5 more minutes.

the agent answers the phone, and asks my number (4th time) , name and SSN. i'm real frustrated. he looks at my "file" for a minute, and tells me he's going to have to transfer me to repair to get this resolved...

what

the

fuck?

I'm at a loss for words...I stammer about how they already did that, and it sent me back to him, and then I hung up and blogged this blog. It's worth $5 to not have to go back and forth between repair and customer service eleventy times in a row.

Update! I called back, entered my number, told the lady my number again, and she tried to transfer me to repair AGAIN. I told her no, i just wanted her to take money off my bill. I ended up getting a whopping $1.92 taken off my bill...well worth the hassle and 5 years taken off my life from my head wanting to explode.

Construction Lady

2008-05-09T08:00:00.002-04:00

I almost forgot the funniest part about our trip to Attica.

We were headed home on Wednesday, and there was road construction on 41, a few miles south of Attica. There was a woman holding the stop sign for our lane, letting the other lane come through. First off, Gary was rolling pretty hard before he came to a stop, about 5 feet from the lady, so she was nervous about that. Then, she turns away from us, towards oncoming traffic, standing about 18" or so from the yellow line.

A big semi rolls through, and the wind off of it catches her sign, blows it over her shoulder, and she damn near fell flat on her ass. After that, she moved, ever so nonchalantly, a few more feet away from the yellow line, and refused to turn around and look at our car. Lucky for her, because we were laughing our asses off.

Good Tims!

4-wheelin'

2008-05-05T13:14:00.002-04:00

Last Wednesday, I went with a group of guys from work to a place called the Badlands Off Road Park, in Attica, IN. We took our 4-wheelers, for a day of mud slinging, hill climbing fun.

We left Bloomfield around 7:45 am, after breakfast at the local DQ. We had six guys going, and we had just enough room for all six quads, two Polaris Sportsmans (400 and 700), a Yamaha Kodiak 450, two Suzuki 400 sportquads and a Yamaha Raptor 700. We got to the park around 9:30 or so, attached our $5 bicycle flags to our 4-wheelers and got riding.

I've not done a whole lot of riding, but this place seemed like it had it all: mudholes, hills, jumps, rocks, sand dunes, and even a jeep sized culvert.

It was pretty cool in the morning, and we took it relatively easy for an hour or so, until we started getting hot, went back and took our heavy gear off and got back to riding. I took a donut kind of hard, and my quad threw me. I was able to kick it back onto its wheels before it rolled over on top of me, but my pride, my back and my arm were hurt. I went back to the truck, dressed the wound and got back to riding. I almost got thrown again later going off a jump, nearly went over the handlebars.

I got hung up in the mud in the morning, and had to be winched out. Later that day, Gary decided to go through a big puddle, that turned out to be deeper than he thought. His quad was up to the seat in muddy water, and when he jumped off of it after it died, it was floating. We pulled it out, turned it on end to drain the water and towed it back to the truck. After changing the oil (the old stuff looked like chocolate milk), he was back on the trail.

One of the sport quad guys went up about an 75 degree hill and got thrown off his bike at the top. The bike started back down the hill, but luckily didn't tumble. He must have had a golden horseshoe up his butt.

Towards the end of the day, we were looking for that big culvert and my belt started slipping. Waterlogged, right? nope, not a drop of water came out when i took the drain plug out. It just gave up the ghost. I had enough to make it through in low gear, but no more big hills for me. We found the culvert and Gary rode his quad through it and jumped out the end into about 18" of water.

In the end, the only real damage was to my elbow and Brian's leg got scraped up. He's lucky it didn't break though. My belt was probably going to go anyway, and after 3 oil changes, Gary's good to go. We rode about 6 hours, and had about 5 hours of drive time. It'd be more worth it if we'd have camped out and ridden for 2 days, but i'm not sure i could have handled a second day!

Sonsabitches!

2008-05-02T08:26:00.003-04:00

if you're my mom or my wife, excuse my language, but i'm really pissed about work today.

Tuesday after lunch, I got a call from my customer, asking me to be in VA today, Friday, to answer technical questions in a brief. For some dumbass reason, I said yes, if my travel arrangements would go through. I submitted my request, selected the only flight for the return home that would get me in at a decent hour tonight (before 9pm), and it cost $800 (one way). I advised the customer of this, and she said that was fine. I was off on Wednesday 4-wheeler riding (it was hella fun, will blog a blog about it later), and secretly hoping my request would get denied due to the price of the flight or the short fuse on getting 'r' dun.

Wednesday afternoon, I got an email on my blackberry saying it was approved...shit.

Thursday morning, I get up, get ready, and leave for the airport, sore as shit. I get to the airport and check my email to make sure who my flight was with because I couldn't remember. I scroll through the email and see "Detroit" on the return flight...what? Sure enough, without asking, they put me on a flight that has a connection through detroit, puts me in Indy 3 hours later, saves a whopping $200 (at the cost of an additional 3 hours of OT for me) and basically just pisses me off. If they would have just denied my request, I would have been fine.

Anyway, I call and see if they can put me back on the original flight I requested, but they can't. it's not a contracted carrier. The best they can do for me, out of 4 semi-local airports is a flight that gets in at the same time, but is direct and doesn't leave until 6:30 tonight. at least i won't spend all evening on a damn airplane.

To top it off, I'm not here to "answer technical questions". I'm here to "give most of the brief".

In the words of Aaron Karo, "fuck me"

*changed title to make it more SFW, sorry Bean

quick trip to chicago

2008-04-14T08:21:00.003-04:00

A few months ago, the wife started selling Usborne books, and had an opportunity for a training conference this past weekend in Rolling Meadows, IL (Chicago suburb). We decided to make a short famiry vacation out of it, and invited her brother and his gf along for the trip.

Since BIL is in working full time and taking night classes, we decided to leave Thursday night after he got out of class. We drove up to Btown, met him for dinner after class, and left his truck at his dads for the weekend. We ended up leaving btown around 10ish, and drove through a damn monsoon between Indy and Lafayette. I let BIL drive from Lafayette to our final destination, because I felt like I was going to pass out...but I didn't fall asleep the rest of the ride. I navigated through a detour through the heart of "the region", due to I65 being closed between I94 and I90, and we hit the hotel around 2am. IAC slept through about 90% of the drive up, so that was good.

We all crashed, and woke up at 6am, because the previous jackass to have the room left the alarm set on some mexican radio station. I finally got the alarm shut off after nearly yanking it out of the wall, and went back to sleep until 8:30 or 9, and we got up, showered, and headed to downtown Chicago. Since I haven't been to Chicago since I was a kid, and didn't know what driving downtown or the parking situation would be like, we decided to park and ride the CTA (Chicago's mass transit system) from Rosemont (near O'Hare airport) downtown. It was a pretty long ride, but we all got to see the ghetto areas as we made our way to downtown.

We got off the train near the Sears Tower, and walked over there for the ride up to the top. The weather was pretty clear when we got there, and it was a great view from the top. I'm not sure if it was worth the $13 admission fee, but wif, BIL and BIL-GF had never been before.

We ate lunch in a cafe on the 2nd floor of the tower, and from there walked back towards the CTA stop that we got off of. We decided to go to the Navy Pier, even though the tempurature was dropping and it was clouding up. We went inside, walked through the greenhouse type thing, and some of the shops, and then headed back downtown for a carriage ride. By then it was raining, but they had the carriages covered. it was a nice little ride. with the wife, IAC and I in one carriage, and BIL and BIL-GF in another.

After that, we made our way back to the CTA, the car, dinner at Steak and Shake and back to the hotel. It was a long day, but pretty fun.

The next day, the wife went to her training, and BIL and BIL-GF went to the hottub and he proposed to her. He was going to during the carriage ride, but forgot the ring at the hotel, oops :D After that, IAC, BIL, BIL-GF and I went to a late breakfast at Denny's, then back to the hotel to take IAC swimming for the first time. He was pretty tired though, and congested so he wasn't digging it. After that, we lazed around the room until the wife got done at her training. That night, we went to Gino's East for some Chicago Style pizza with a couple buddies from college and their significant others. The place is pretty cool, and you can sign your name to anything in the place. The pizza was good, and was an experience, but I wasn't a huge fan of the corn meal based crust, and the toppings were relatively sparse. It was a cheap meal though, for the 8 of us only $75, and that included 2 beers each for me and BIL. I'm not sure what happened to the guys I knew from college, but apparently imposters showed up, because they were drinking cherry cokes... In their defense, it had started to snow a bit, and they had to drive back home.

We got up Sunday morning, went swimming, and left around noon after a quick lunch at Panera. The drive home was way better than the drive up, and we got to Btown around 6pm, hung out with FIL and SMIL for a while, and got home around 8pm, ate a quick dinner, watched some tv and went to bed.

All in all, I would suggest a short vacation to Chicago, but do it later in the year, when you don't have to worry about the weather turning to snow, and definitely stay closer to downtown if you can help it. Also, take your walking shoes. A day pass on the CTA is $5, and you can ride as much as you want, but you'll still do a lot of walking. From what I can remember from 20 years ago, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry are pretty awesome to go to as well.

Cottage Cheese

2008-04-08T07:06:00.003-04:00

I made some cottage cheese last night. unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures as I was doing it, maybe next time loyal readers.

Here's the recipe:

1 gallon pasteurized skim milk
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons
kosher salt
1/2 cup half-and half-or heavy cream

Pour the skim milk into a large saucepan and place over medium heat. Heat to 120
degrees F. Remove from the heat and gently pour in the vinegar. Stir slowly for
1 to 2 minutes. The curd will separate from the whey. Cover and allow to sit at
room temperature for 30 minutes.
Pour the mixture into a colander lined with
a tea towel and allow to sit and drain for 5 minutes. Gather up the edges of the
cloth and rinse under cold water for 3 to 5 minutes or until the curd is
completely cooled, squeezing and moving the mixture the whole time. Once cooled,
squeeze as dry as possible and transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the salt and stir
to combine, breaking up the curd into bite-size pieces as you go. If ready to
serve immediately, stir in the half-and-half or heavy cream. If not, transfer to
a sealable container and place in the refrigerator. Add the half and half or
heavy cream just prior to serving.

I ended up using about 3/4 - 1 full cup of half-and-half because it was pretty dry. I thought it turned out pretty good, a little "cheesier" And chewier than store-bought cottage cheese, but all in all, a good approximation, and worth trying, if nothing else for the novelty of it.

warning, when you get to the adding vinegar part, it looks pretty disgusting in big globs floating in the whey.

Louie the Cottage Cheese Guy

2008-04-07T13:53:00.003-04:00

Was watching Good Eats the other night, and AB was making cottage cheese out of skim milk and vinegar. It just so happens that I have almost a gallon of skim milk that is going to go bad in the next couple days, so i'm going to convert it to 2 cups of cottage cheese tonight.

This made me think of a story I heard in hike school.

One of my favorite teachers from JH/HS was Mr. Jones. He was an interesting guy, painted for a living during summers, had a ZZ Topish beard, studied martial arts, and coached track and cross country. at some point, he and his wife got divorced, and he lived in a camper. He oversaw the weight room in the mornings, because he was there early anyway, due to living in a camper and needing to shower at teh school. he also drove a bigtim shaggin' wagon van with shag carpet, and was known to throw a few back from time to time.

Anyway, one time, he was telling us about a job he had at a large scale dairy. Periodically, he'd take a carton of ice cream off the line, open it, stick his finger in it, close it back up and put it back on the line, just to mess with whoever got that ice cream. The high point of the story was Louie. Louie was a large man, who stirred the vats of cottage cheese as they were being made. He also used a large cutter, to cut it into curds. The cutter for large curds had fewer tines, spread apart for larger curds of course. Sometimes, instead of using the big wooden paddle or whatever, to stir the cottage cheese, Louie would just jump in the vat and walk around to stir it up, and would often have curds stuck in his armpit hair.

The end.

The good news is...

2008-03-13T20:18:00.002-04:00

Tuesday morning, before I left for travel, the ground was frozen and I got my bike out. It was pretty soft under the permafrost, but i didn't leave too bad of a rut, and there was no mud. I can't believe it started right up, because i didn't put it on a battery tender or put any sta-bil in the tank, bully for me.

altso, i got a wii on sunday with some Best Buy GC's that the wife and I had, still cost me $175 after buying the extra controller/wiiplay, progressive scan connector and nunchuck, but it's been fun to play. can't wait to try out some of the games for it. it may lose its appeal after a while, but who knows, i've always been a nintendo fan.

thirdly, i had the spicy baconator for dinner tonight, decent, but not groin grabbingly good. like dirtass, i thought the jalaps were a bit undercooked. also, the bacon was pretty fatty. it wasn't nearly as good as the Sonny's BBQ that we had for lunch. I would kill someone for that peach cobbler or cornbread if i had to...

oh yeah, almost forgot

2008-03-08T16:18:00.002-05:00

In a moment of pure genius, a couple months ago, i moved my motorcycle down to the basement. It just barely fit through the walkout door, but i got it in there. I put the 4-wheeler in front of Stacey's car, and had room to park my truck in the garage. It's been nice not having to warm it up or scrape ice off the windows.

Last Sunday was an awesome day, and a great day to ride, but I didn't. Why? because the back yard is all muddy and i have no way to get the bike from the basement to the driveway without going through mud...dumbass.

I'm probably going to try and get some boards that i can ride it around the house on. Otherwise, it will easily be stuck in the basement through May.

Also, thinking about getting another tattoo sometime soon, from a local guy that opened up a shop here in town...I can't imagine a tattoo shop in a town of 3k people is very lucrative, but the guy is really good, so I want to get something done before he decides to go back to Vincennes to work.

scuses trach and whatnot

2008-03-08T14:52:00.003-05:00

haven't had anything worth blogging about in a while. Continuing to try and get the house in "home" mode. Been hanging some stuff on the walls slowly, but surely, and stopping air leaks around door and window frames and outlets with spray foam and silicone.

Had a guy come out today, to give me a quote on doing some excavating in the yard and seeding it and blowing straw over it. i could do it myself with a seeding cart and bales of straw, but i think it will be worth the money to have this kid do it...we'll see. He said he'd call me early next week. After that, we need to build a deck off the back door, a patio off the basement door, bring in a few more loads of gravel for the driveway and build a barn. Those will probably be spread out over the next couple of years, as I haven't planted the money tree in the back yard yet.

Also, I think the SFIL and I are going to run all of my gutters down to the ditch that the basement footer drain goes to. This will really help keep water away from the house and keep erosion to a minimum.

That's about it for my exciting life.

hola amigos

2008-02-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

been a while since i rapped at ya.

ok, that's enough channeling Jim Anchower.

Nothing too exciting going on. Just got back from a work trip/vacation on Friday. Went to the San Diego area for work two weeks ago, then drove over to the Tucson, AZ area the following week (had the fam with me) for vacation, visiting with the grandparents-in-law. They hadn't had the chance to meet Ian yet, so a good time was had by all. Went to a Titan II Missile Silo, which is just around the corner from their house...pretty effing awesome site. It was a lot of money spent on a program that lasted only 20 years and never *really* got used. Peace through deterrance... I think that works about like the deer whistles on your car. you put them on there, and hope it keeps the deer away. If you never hit a deer, you assume it worked.

Anyway, there were 54 of these Titan II missile silos built in the late 50's/early 60's, and they were decommissioned in the early 80's. 53 of them were imploded and filled in. This one was left intact, and is used as a museum. It has a real missile in it still, but it's not the original. they took the training dummy from their schoolhouse, which has never had fuel or a warhead in it, and put it in there. The volunteers that do the tours are pretty good, and really know their stuff. It would be a nervewracking job working in one of those silos during the cold war, 24 hour shifts, constantly having to be in the presence of another person for security, etc.

interference

2008-01-17T09:21:00.000-05:00

Was on the phone and using the tubes last night at the same time. Tubes stopped working. My ISP is via wireless, as I think I've mentioned before. The ISP has a x-mitter on top of a water tower a couple miles from my house, and i have a small antenna on my roof to receive it. Apparently, this works at 2.4GHz, which happens to be the same frequency as my cordless, and has been known to get interference from the cordless. It's the first time the web has stopped working while i was on the phone, but the tech support guy indicated that was probably the issue.

Sure enough, i reset everything, got off the phone and it worked. when i called back to tell the guy that, it stopped working again. got off the phone and it was fine. shit, guess i need to get a new cordless, (higher or lower frequency) or just live with it.

it's a miracle

2008-01-16T16:13:00.000-05:00

We've got both of our vehicles parked in the garage. It took some work, but with the 4-wheeler in front of the car, the motorcycle, bicycle and wheelbarrow in the basement and other crap stacked around the edge, i made room for my truck. Now, if we get a big snow that requires me to plow, that will be a total PITA to get the 4-wheeler out, but at least i don't have to clean the truck off or warm it up in the morning.

Gonna have to get a move on building the barn I'm wanting, because I don't think next winter will be so easy to make room in the garage, as I'm always accumulating garage-type crap. I was going to wait a couple years on the barn, but may see if we can swing building it this year...

Christmas is over!

2008-01-08T17:31:00.000-05:00

finally, my backordered Christmas gift from Stacey was delivered, an 18V DeWalt drill. I've been needing/wanting a new drill for a year or so, because my 18V Crapsman batteries won't hold a charge and have to stay on the charger if i want to ever be able to use the damn thing. I'm pretty stoked because DeWalts are good gear, too bad i didn't have it BEFORE i wired the house though :D I'm sure i'll have plenty projects in the not to distant future to use it on though!

Thanks!

Question

2008-01-08T09:29:00.000-05:00

Does anyone use a U.S. help desk anymore?

It's not that I don't appreciate the fact that these outsourced folks need jobs, and it's not that I can't understand them. Usually, they speak pretty clear English. It just bothers me, the sheer number of companies that are outsourcing all of this stuff...maybe it's our own fault for demanding such high pay for jobs that don't really require any skills but enunciation...

Not much to report

2008-01-06T08:40:00.000-05:00

I'll give a quick breakdown of Christmas. Had some good times, way too much to eat and way to much stuff. I got some new tools, a remote control AMC Pacer, a coffee maker, thermos, some movies, a couple of gamecube games, a coffee mug with IAC's picture on it, an IAC picture book, a few various gift cards and some other stuff i can't remember right now. Still haven't got a gift from the wife, hooray for backorder!

IAC got sick the friday after Christmas, and is fighting it off still. We took him to the doc on the 31st and he has RSV. It pretty much sucks, but we caught it before it got real bad, so no hospital time, but some inhalers he has to take. he's not a fan of those.

Also, SBIL gave me an old Nintendo DS that didn't work. The top screen wasn't doing anything. I've been troubleshooting it for 2 weeks and buying parts off ebay. Nothing I've bought so far has fixed it, but I've got one last part coming in the mail, and if it's not the fix, then it's the motherboard or processor that's shot, and I'll part it out on ebay. Hopefully I can get enough out of the parts that didn't fix it to make up for most of the money I spent...

that's all i can think of for now...pretty boring.

Merry Christmas, etc.

2007-12-25T07:50:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanza, New Year, Winter Solstice, Hajj, early Lunar New Year and whatever other holiday you might be celebrating over the next couple of months.

Bonehead of the month club

2007-12-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

I'm the newest member.

Today, I took some summer sausage to work for a goody day. I took a steak knife with me, to cut it. I made it through the whole day with no issues...until I got home.

When I got out of the truck, I stuck the knife in my pocket for some reason. Then, I got in the house, and was doing something, and ran my hand right across it, cutting the shit out of the outside of my thumb, right above the knuckle where it joins your hand. It bled through a couple of bandages, and the wife wants me to get stitches, but it pretty well quit bleeding and doesn't really hurt. It just looks bad because it was cut at an angle, and when i move my hand just right, it spreads open. The real bitch of it is that i can't keep a bandaid on it for anything. I told her if it breaks open tonight and bleeds everywhere, I'll go get stitches in the morning.

Hunting & Guns

2007-11-28T12:33:00.000-05:00

Went deer hunting this past weekend for the first time in a few years. Even though I didn't see anything, it was fairly enjoyable. Dad went with and shot a nice size doe. I took my muzzleloader, but still haven't killed anything with it yet. I've got a Knight, American Knight inline with a BSA Optics Scope on it. I like the gun and scope, but the plunger can be a bitch to pull back with that scope in the way, even with the raised "shoot through" style scope rings that allow you to use the iron sights if you want. It would be nice if there was some sort of modification to put a bolt action style lever on the end of the plunger, but I haven't been able to find anything like that online.

Anyway, i may start getting back into hunting a bit more, much to my wife's chagrin. I'm not going to go nutso like my dad and a lot of my buddies, but I enjoy going out behind the house (doesn't require a tag on my own land), and I enjoy deer meat from time to time, especially when it's cooked in stuff, not so much a fan of a deer hamburger or steak though...

An open letter to nose-pickers everywhere

2007-11-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

To the guy that's wiping his boogers on the wall above the urinal: You are a disgusting fuck! Grow up and use a damn kleenex.

Thanks
The Mgmt