Dad's in town this week for a visit with family and a Santa class. Had dinner with him, Amanda, Nick, Uncle Steve, Aunt Jane and Grandmother -- Ryan's just about got "granddad" and "G.G" (Great Grandmother), but not quite.

Dad's coming to our house this afternoon to visit and have dinner again; and then we'll be letting dad take him out all day on Thursday for some one-on-one time.



Had CoolRay come check my a/c at the house and clean it/recharge it, since we've noticed that our electricity usage is quite a lot higher than last year at this time. He found it to be dirty, and about a pound low on freon, probably because of a cap that was missing somewhere. Fixed all that, recharged it, and now we'll see how energy usage goes. I just have no idea what else we have added to the house to use so much extra energy this year...

My new/reallocated UPS estimates that I have 209 minutes of battery-time for my AP, Router/Firewall, 2 small servers, my RAID server, Cable Modem, main switch and Phone ATA. So, in theory, we can surf the web via WiFi with the power out longer than our laptop batteries will last :)

Tags: family, fix it, geek

Vortex hurt me, back up to 215 yesterday - held that til today even after having Arby's for dinner.

Day 17 Weigh In: 215

Mounted the bedroom TV on the wall a couple of nights ago, we have a dresser top again, yay!

Tags: fix it, sbd

Day off yesterday. Went to the doc in the AM about my blood pressure, which is says is showing massive improvement on the small dose BP meds, so he's given me a 6 month Rx for it, and told me to lose weight (again) -- I went the wrong way this month (+3 lbs), so I need to get out of the bad habit of eating out so much.

After that I spent many hours in the yard mowing and fixing some of the loose boards in the fence. The new catcher works excellently on the bermuda in the front, but it has a hard time with the fescue in the back.  I guess it's because it gets so tall that the bottoms of the leaves are still wet unless we haven't had rain in a month?   So - I have to cut the tall part twice, effectively, to get it to bag up all the mulched bits - but that doesn't really add too much time to the project since it's really only really bad in about 25% of the back yard.

I went and got a seed spreader, a whole yard weed treatment, and a whole yard insect control - I'll probably get those out on Saturday, weather willing.   I'm a little worried about killing everything even though the weed killer is rated for bermuda and fescue to be safe, so I'll probably take a paranoid route and just do a small area for a week or so.

I need to get motivated to try to repair the gate that's sagging on its hinges, and still need to figure out how exactly to fix the threshold on my back door that's causing it to stick...

Tags: fix it, health, lawn

No posts for April sofar...   So - this is what I missed, I think.

On April 1st, our car got attacked again -- Katie was pulling out of the pediatrician's office parking lot, and was deceived by someone signaling that they were turning, but was not -- so she got hit in the front left fender.   technically our fault, no big deal, nobody was hurt, everyone was going pretty slow, and we have insurance and stuff.   So, I filed 2 claims with the insurance people on 4/2, and had it sent over to Bradley's to have the work done.  Hopefully I'll get that back soon.   We went and bought a new car seat (same Britax that we already had) and threw out the old one (kind of, it's in a trash box in the garage) since you're not supposed to use an car seat after any kind of accident.  Insurance said they'd buy us anything we wanted as long as it was comperable to the old one, so - we got the same one since we like it a lot.

Amazon finally sent me all my refunds.   I'm so lost in the process, that I'm almost sure they sent me $300 too much back, but - I might just be miscalculating.   Those people were so confused by their convoluted process that I'm surprised I actually GOT the refunds.    They sent me 3 checks (in pounds, naturally) - which my bank evidently doesn't have any CLEAR process how to handle.   They have to mail the check to the corp office, who "verifies the funds with the foreign bank" and then deposits the money.  Process takes 7-14 days.  No big deal.   The checks came weeks apart - check 1 took about 10 days to post, check 2 is outstanding 14 days today and still hasn't posted - I guess I need to call about that, check 3 posted 24 hours after I took it in.   Thinking that was wierd, I called the bank, and the lady just couldn't explain the process to me, so I gave up.  

We finally caught up on Chuck and Life from the DVR, but now NBC's talking about not renewing both of them, which makes us sad.  I think those are our favorite shows on TV right now.   We've started catching up on Heroes, and are still way behind on House...

Crossed Max Payne off my list of movies -- it was pretty much the steaming pile of poo that I expected.

Amanda and Brian announced their pregnancy right before easter, so we're really excited about that.   They're figuring that the baby'll be due in December.   We went out to dinner with them and their families on Saturday night after Easter service (we usually go to the off-peak services around Christmas and Easter since we get so many visitors on Easter Sunday AM service, it gets crowded) - they announced it to their families then, Brian's mom was bawling, it was sweet.   She's had a Willow Creek figurine in her trunk (Pregnany Mommy) for "a long time, waiting for this day" that she was finally able to proudly present to them.   We'd known already for a couple of days, so Katie was semi-prepared to get some candid pictures of their moms getting the news -- it was pretty cool to be a part of that with them.

Then Easter - we had our Moms and my sister over for lunch.   Katie cooked Ham and veggies and devilled eggs and lots of yummy stuff.   This year was pretty fun, Ryan's old enough to understand his easter basket - he got a new firetruck (woo, woo, woo) with lights and sirens - but Ryan really likes making his own noises - a snuggly lamb, Gymboree bubbles (the best bubbles in the world), some new cars and lots of candy.  After lunch, we took Ryan out in the back yard for his first easter egg hunt.   He had a ball!  He did get a little hung up with wanting to OPEN the eggs and eat the candy, rather than finding more, but with a little encouragement, he rounded them all up.  

James and I took a long lunch (just 2 hours) last week and went to see Fast and Furious.   It was about as good as expected, since our expectations weren't high.   I put in on the rung with Tokyo Drift, which I wasn't a big fan of - but I liked the first 2 a lot.  

Went to Jump 4 Joey's on Friday since I was off.   That place is a lot of fun!   It's basically a warehouse that they've converted to a play yard for kids with 7 or 8 big bouncy houses/slides and stuff.   Ryan has a ball in them, and parents are allowed to go with their kids in them (I'm sure crowdedness becomes a factor at some point) but since it was a Friday at 11am, we pretty much had the run of the place.  My abs still hurt.

Saturday we helped Brian paint his upsairs and downstairs hallways and the 2-story staircase hallway.   Manuvering a tall ladder in a staircase to paint way up high...  not fun.    But, over the course of the day we DID end up having fun, though we were exhausted by the end, but I think it turned out pretty nice.   We met up with a couple of other friend of theirs afterwards for dinner and mini-golf at Monster Mini Golf over off Barrett.   It's indoor mini-golf, completely black light lit.   The theme is monsters, of course.  Mostly silly looking ones, but there were a couple that really freaked Ryan out -- notably the one that looked like a normal guy, until it reached up and peeled its face off...   That creeped me out a little too, but Ryan got really clingy after that.   They had good music playing - and Ryan was rocking out with it.   He REALLY likes Aerosmith "Walk this way"...   Too funny.    Arielle and Evan went off to do their own thing after that, but we found out later that night that they got engaged - so that was exciting.

It needs to stop raining on my days off so I can actually cut the lawn, it's starting to get rediculous.   I also want to do some kind of weed treatment - but not really sure what to do yet, trying to get motivated to do research, but I'm just not THAT interested in my lawn - even though I should be.  The Ants invading my kitchen also reminded me that I need to get out the DemonWP and do my spring insect treatment.   That stuff works wonders for a long time, it makes me forget to do it in the spring...

We got a new thermostat that I installed last night - one of those semi fancy $30 5-1-1 programable jobbies, only because I couldn't really justify buying the $100 touchscreen one with the remote, even though it was hotness.   So, we replaced our old manual mercury filled one, and now we need to paint.

Books - I finished the New Testament, which was really exciting to go through.  I wasn't going though studying, just reading the words and the stories.   The Gospels are really interesting to read back-to back, comparing how the authors told many of the same stories, but from different perspectives.   Acts is fantastic, it starts slow, but the story is amazing.  After that it goes into Paul's letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Collosians, etc - and Paul kinda drones a bit.   Those books make for good study material.   Katie wants to read Revalation with me, so I skipped that for now.   Started the Old Testament now.   It's really amazing the stuff that I /thought/ I understood, but really just never heard.   Genesis is so much more than JUST the Creation - it accounts for thousands of man-years and lots of stories.   Exodus is more of the same.  At some point, not sure if it's Exodus or Leviticus, God describes in great detail building the Ark of the Covenant, its coverings, the tabernacle, and lots of other stuff.   That kinda drones unless you happen to be skething what they're describing - that could be an intersting place to go back and study a little, or at least look at more research.  Leviticus is pretty dry -- it's laws.   A lot of them.   Hundreds of them.   Not Covenant Law style like on the tablets - but they're laws about clean/unclean animals, sacrificial offerings, how offerings are made, what offerings to make in what cases, different kinds of offerings, how to make oneself "clean" after handling something "unclean", etc.   So, I'm currently in the first chapters of Numbers...   Numbers - is, well, numbers - sofar.   It's an account of a census that Moses took in the land, just how many people are in the tribes.   It's brutal to wade through this part... 

Tags: books, fix it, lawn, movies, ryan, the list, work

Got T-Boned by a deer tonight out on Cartersville Hwy. coming home from small-group.   Saw it at the last second coming in from the right out of the woods, not a thing I could do about it.   Dented up the side doors of the Camry pretty decently...   Same doors that I had fixed after my wreck last February -- so, I guess those doors were looking shabby already?   We weren't hurt, and we were lucky, it was a small deer so it didn't hit high enough to break the windows, but it was running pretty hard headlong into the side of the car to make the dent it made...

We got hit, and both kind of freaked out a little - we stopped at a gas station about 200 yards down the road, regained composure, called the cops, and then went back to investigate.   We didn't get out of the car, but it was still laying there.   Makes me sad...

We waited for the police at the gas station, there was still some light there since 61 has no lights on it.   Paulding county Sheriff showed up first, went to investigate the deer, and came back to report that he removed the carcass from the road - finalizing for us that the deer was not ok.   Wrote up our report, then evidently the GSP had to get involved - we waited about an hour in total from time of incident, to actually getting our case number from the GSP.   Both officers were pretty nice - the guy from PC was definitely cool, GSP is always pretty staunch, but this officer was on the nice end of staunch.

Guess I'll be calling Allstate tomorrow...   Bah.

Tags: fix it

Yesterday I finally went back to the doc for my June '08 followup on my blood pressure.   I was a bit late in doing that...   Invited Clifford to yell at me, so he spoke sternly to me about my health and that I need to not die for the sake of Katie and Ryan.   Though, I've lost about 20lbs since he weighed me last May, so he gave me some encouragement on that front.   My BP is still a little high, so he wants me to try to lose 10 more lbs in the next 3 months.   For some of that, we wants me on a very small dose of BP meds that we're going to experiment with for the next few weeks.

Donnie called. said the car was done, so we went and picked that up.  It sounds good as new - so that seems like money/credit well spent for now.   Hopefully will get my money back from the stupid Amazon UK people so I can replenish the emergency fund (which didn't cover this particular expense completely, but helped significantly to avoid using the CC) - so Dave Ramsay's system DOES work, if you follow it...

Hung out with Brian and Amanda last night - they made us burgers and wieners, got Brewsters, and then drove around Acworth looking at houses in a new neighborhood.   It's always fun going over there and just hanging out.  Ryan likes playing with Brian and Amanda, too - so it's a good time for everyone.

My 4-port RAID card came in on Thursday with the Hot-Swap drive bays, so I set that up on Thursday night.
The 8-port came in on Friday - same card, more ports.   I was excited to find out that changing the card didn't break the array so I would have to rebuild it.   It acted like nothing happened.  Cool.   I accidently won 2 cards on e-bay, a 4 and an 8 port.   I really wanted the 8, so the 4-port's back on eBay now.
Spec:
3ware 9550SX-8LP RAID controller with an iStarUSA BPU-350SATA 5x3.5" hot-swap drive cage.
4x750GB Seagate Drives in RAID5, totaling out at just over 2TB.
Windows 2008 server

So now I should be able to retire an assortment of 80 and 100G drives...

Tags: fix it, geek, health

So much for all that debt retirement we just did, now we've got to buy an Engine for the Camry. It's evidently thrown a wrench into a bunghole, or some such blah blah, and now sounds like it wants to climb through the dash into the car with you (while offering a smooth and normal ride at the same time)... In reading about this on the internet, it aligns with the recommendation of my mechanic (who I trust), that a replacement engine was just the best way to handle it. So -- instead of my well over 100k engine, I will now have one with 37k on it. Yay?  The cost is about what I expected it to be...   Back to square one, but hopefully I won't have to go BACK to the credit card to do it...

William, tell me that when you said it'd start to fall apart you meant that this was the worst of it...

Tags: fix it
Current Mood: depressed

Day 1 of my 5-day off streak (My day off this week is Friday, then Monday next week, but since Monday's Prez day and the office is closed, I get Tuesday instead, woohoo)

Let Katie sleep in a little while I got Ryan up and fed him and stuff, then at noon we took him over to Gymboree to play. I swear, he loves the equipment there so much, he just loves climbing on stuff. It's encouraged his climing/bravery at home, which is cute at times, but has potential to just be annoying. His cute new trick is 'scaling Daddy like a tree' - he holds my hands, and then walks up my legs, using my arms to pull himself up. It's neat, but it's awkward when he does it to other people.

After that, Katie went to meet someone for coffee, so she dropped us off at home. I decided to undertake replacing the handle on the camry. I figured - 2 hours, no problem. OMG, it took me 2 hours to freaking get the old handle OFF, only to realize that the new handle's mounting screws were a different size than the old ones. Upon realizing this, I remembered the paper that came in the box that i didn't read -- it said "This handle is a newer model, be aware it takes METRIC screws, please make sure you have these before attempting to replace". Good thing I read that, now I can go get the screws. Except I have a car with the door taken apart, and Katie was out. When she got home, we went out to get screws, and decided to have our Valentine's dinner out at the same time, since tomorrow night would suck, and we'd wait 2 hours everywhere. It was Katie's idea, I wanted to go tomorrow anyway.
When we got home, I resumed reassembling the door. They made it damn near IMPOSSIBLE to get to the mount point for one of the 3 screws that holds the door handle on. There's no access hole for it, and it's behind some framework. So, another 2 hours, lots of cussing, Katie trying to help, and me getting unnecessarily mad at Ryan for no good reason due to my frustration... I finally got the door put back together.
Will never do that again. That sucked.

Off The List:
The Enforcer - eh, Dirty Harry's losing his zing.   And it's just wierdly put together, the ending just kind of happened, and the credits rolled.   It was good, but just not THAT good.

Tags: fix it, ryan

Happy Birthday!  To my mom.  Katie and Ryan are sick right now though, so we didn't venture out to see her today, but hopefully we can next weekend.
The weekend's been kinda long -- with the family sick, we didn't really do anything.  I have been around trying to hold up the fort while trying to let Katie rest.   I think I've dodged the bug sofar, whatever it is...   Katie's hoarse and has a sore throat and a slight fever, lots of coughing.  The Boy is coughing a bit (not as much today as yesterday) and has a snot fountain going most of the time.  We have not observed a fever in him yet, but we're keeping an eye out.  

A week or so ago, Katie gave Ryan a Hot Wheels car of mine that she found on my desk or something -- he's fallen in love with the little metal cars now, and now somewhat snobs his chunkier baby-safe Tonka cars...   He's since convinced us to buy him another Hot Wheels car (He picked out a pretty Red '84 Ferrari) earlier this week.   While they're Age 3+ toys, he really plays well with them, doesn't try to eat them, etc - so we just keep a closer eye on him when he's playing with them...   He likes to take a toy to bed with him nowadays, and it's usually a fight not to let him take the metal chunks to bed, we have to trade them out for something a little more baby-friendly.   Today, I needed to go pick up a few groceries, so Ryan and I went down to Walmart.  After picking up our needed supplies and a new headlight bulb for the Camry - It's been one-eyed for a week now - we went over to hang out in the Toy Section.   I love the toy section...   Ryan's a car fiend, and there's an aisle basically dedicated to cars - how convenient.   He went nutso!   He was reaching for everything, chanting "Car!  Car!  Car!" and shreiking a little in I think just sheer overload.   I love watching him get excited, it's so much fun.   He immediatly adopted 3 new Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars.   I let him pick out a few, and I have to say I liked his choices, given that evidently at some point in time hotwheels decided making normal cars was boring, and they needed to make them "pimped out" or just cartooney with giant wheels, or painted with bizarre prints.   He pickout a blue Aston Marton, a Blue Evo X, and a Black Porsche GT3.   He also wanted a big noisey police car that he managed to snag off the shelves, but fortunately it was broken enough that it wasn't too hard to get away from him without a scene.
I really want some breed of big remote control car now...

One of the VP's in my office sold me a Logitech G25 Racing steering wheel for $100, brand new in the sealed box.   He bought one for him and one for his brother for Christmas., Bro sold his PS3 before opening it on Christmas, so he couldn't use it.   He got his brother something else, and was stuck with an extra G25 that he "just wanted to get rid of".  I'll take that.   I wanted one of these for a while, but wasn't about to pay $300-400 for it.   They're down to about $250 now, but I think Logitech's about to disco it.    It's really freaking nice, leather wheel, 6-speed H-pattern stickshift, gas/brake/clutch pedals.   Tried playing GTR Evolution (anyone know any good driving simulators out there currently) since it seemed to be a pretty realistic sim.   Even with the wheel, it's dang hard.   Played some NFS Undercover with it too, but I'm getting bored with that game at this point.   I also hope I can use the pedals with my flight yoke.   Who says I can't have a cockpit with a wheel, yoke, and a 6-speed?

Got the first DLC pack for Fallout 3, need to find time to play that.

Darn it all!

Yesterday I went to open it just like I always do, and it snapped right off...  Now there's miniscule piece that I can use to open the door.  Evidently, after reading around on the interweb, this seems to be not too uncommon a problem for the 97-01 Camrys, so replacement door handles are not hard to find, even pre-painted, for about $30 shipped.  I got mine ordered, hope it ships tomorrow.   Looks like a reasonabe effort to replace, but should only take a couple of hours I think.

Katie and I watched Slumdog Millionaire this weekend - me for the second time.  I still like it a lot, but it's just not Earth shattering to me.   I do really hope it takes some Oscars, but is it Best picture worthy?  We'll see.

Moveis off the list:
Beverly Hills Cop 1, 2 and 3 - I like Eddie Murphy.  I think they could have skipped making the 3rd one, but the first two were fun 80's movies.
Bolt - Meh.  It was cute, and well done, and pretty, but the story just didn't really have enough 'adult' stuff to it.   Other Pixar movies have a little something for the whole family which make them enjoyable to watch with everyone.   Ryan loved watching "Puppy, Kitty!", but there just wasn't enough to hold my attention.

Tags: fix it, geek, ryan, the list