Blogrilla

My goodness, how busy things have been over the last two days! On
Sunday we drove down to Plymouth to play “tourist” for a few hours. We
saw the Mayflower II reproduction and Plymouth Rock (again) and went to
a couple of gift shops. We got to eat at one of my favorite Mexican
restaurants (Sam Diego’s) and stayed over at The John Carver Inn. We
brought our in-laws and their two kids with us. Everyone had a good
time playing in the swimming pool — they have a long water slide and a
replica of the Mayflower. There’s a hot tub and all the kids love
climbing on Daddy.

On Monday morning we met for a good
breakfast at the hotel before everyone headed off in their own
directions. We hit a lot more traffic than we expected and didn’t get
home until about 11am. I changed and ran off to work to help with a
project that was going live on that day. It turned out that they were
still missing some of their users and I needed to get 610 of them
created ASAP. Fortunately it wasn’t completely unexpected and I had all
the scripts and source files ready to go.

Nonetheless, things
were crazy all day long getting all the repairs made and managing
expectations and results. I got home an hour-and-a-half late. I think I
wrote something about my good fortune regarding the DVD/RW drive last
night.

Today has been more stabilization of the project. I also
got confirmation from the Melrose school system that Gabriel would
receive his speech and learning evaluations that will be the first step
in determining whether or not he will get any speech therapy from the
schools. We’ll find out the results by January 10th, 2004. Also, my car
needed to be inspected — I was nearly two months late!

My
buddy, Ken was here for a couple of hours today! I was very happy about
that. He’s a good guy who decided to spend two years studying computer
science in Freiburg, Germany and he’s having a rough time of it.

I
have to get on my Christmas-related duties. I’m supposed to write the
Christmas newsletter this year and I have to go through all my photos
from past Christmases that Liz wants to use for a project she’s working
on.

FYI: The kids are all doing well. Nothing special to report.

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Minutes before we were due to depart Rodney and I were furiously trying
to get my new DVD-writer to work.  The NEC ND-2510A wouldn’t treat
any of my 100 brand new DVD+R discs as if they could take data. 
Seconds before we left he finally got a couple of files written, but it
was being done as an Audio CD.

Fiinally this evening I got Nero to burn 2.6GB of data to a disc! 
I downloaded the latest drivers, but the regular Windows utilities
wouldn’t do the trick.  It took something like Nero to do it.

Why?

I don’t  know.  I’d love for someone to tell me why.

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I’ve been very busy for the last few days. On Wednesday our
in-laws arrived and we’ve been busy enjoying their visit. On
Thanksgiving we went geocaching in the morning. My brother-in-law had
no trouble at all finding the first cache. It was clear however that
Gracie wouldn’t make it walking to the second cache. So me and Grace
drove to the second one at the south end of the Middlesex Fells.
Rodney, Ben, Gabriel and Joshua hoofed it over some difficult terrain.

We all had a good time.

We got home in time to eat a quick lunch of left-overs before getting
off to the movie theater to watch “The Incredibles”. I have to confess,
it was a very good movie. All the kids and adults enjoyed it.

When we got back the most delighful aromas were coming from the house!
Liz had been busy at home whipping up a wonderful dinner! It was
outstanding!

And accoording to custom Rodney and I went shopping early on Friday. At
5:30am we were outside Best Buy and there were only three hundred people
in front of us! Needless to say we couldn’t put up with that so we
moved on to CompUSA where we were about 40th in line when they opened at
6am.

I bought 100 DVD discs for only $20! And 90 writable CD’s for only
$10! Finally I got Ben and Gabe “Rogue Squadron” and “Star Wars:
Battlefront Saga” — both dated games but I got them together for only $10!

We visited a couple of places on the way home and brought Krispy Kremes
to the family when we got home at abou 8:30am. Liz and her sister spent
the morning painting the boys’ room a nice bright yellow color. It
really brightens up the room and everyone seems happy with it.

Last night we watched “Love Actually”. Liz and I had already seen it
but Rodney and Marianne seemed to like it too. Although its a classic
“Chick Flick” I have to admit that it was a really good movie! No really!

Today we went over to Jordan’s because we thought the kids would like to
try taking a swing on the Trapeze rig they have set up there. It turned
out we were incorrect — only Ben was interested in giving it a go.
Rodney and I spent an unhealthy amount of time in the Bose store. Wow,
there are some EXCELLENT pieces of audio equipment there. They’re
pricey, but they sure sound good!

Marianne is starting to feel lousy so we took the day off and rested
this afternoon. We watched a bad movie on TV called “The Arrival” and
had Papa John’s pizza for dinner. Again, more good food. I think this
evening is shaping up to be a game-night. I think they’re talking about
a game called “Taboo”.

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   http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20041118-1402-iraq.html

Then either read the article (go on, its good for you. It will build
character!) or alternatively search for this text: “According to CNN’s
footage” and read that paragraph.

They can’t be for real. Seriously, they’ve got to be kidding.

I saw this first at Wonkette’s weblog:
    http://www.wonkette.com/politics//crafty-islamofascists-026120.php

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Can you believe that stupid grilled cheese sandwich went for $28,000?! I’m shocked! And Appalled!

The
casino that bought it said that they purchased it because its a pop
icon now and will help them raise money for charity. I don’t think I
believe it.

And the fact that people the Virgin Mary appeared on
a piece of toast is ABSURD!! Why on earth (or heaven) would she do
this? That’s what troubles me about the image of the virgin Mary
appearing in ridiculous places. Furthermore, how do these people know
its the virgin Mary?! I knew someone in high school who looked JUST
like that damn toast. Furthermore, isn’t Satan supposed to be trying to
distract well intentioned people from the “true” path? What better way
than to set up false idols?!

This is too stupid for words. Its frustrating to see so many people duped by TOAST!

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We were trying to understand a guinnea pig’s place in the food chain and more specifically how they might defend themselves from predators.  They have some distinct disadvantages:

• They’re slow
• They’re fat
• They’re harmless
• They don’t even have any sharp quills or anything

The only thing I could come up with was that they’re naturally very high in cholesterol.  They tend to cause heart disease and cardiovascular problems in their predators.

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Saturday was mostly quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I don’t remember most of it. I know that I spent some time in the afternoon watching football and napping a little. Liz took Chloe to do some shopping. While she was gone Grace would come over to where I was stretched out on the sofa and she would use her little fingers to close my eyelids. She whispered “shhh… fweep!” That’s Grace-lish for “sleep”. A short time later she would come back and user her little fingers to pry my eyelids open and say “wake up!”.

Oh, I know. We got another Guinnea Pig! Clearly this is not my pig. Which is fine. Neither is the other one. The old one is called “cupcake” and the new one is named “cookie”. I don’t know what’s with all the sweets — maybe that’s the connection? That they’re both sweet?

In any case, I didn’t really care if we got the pig or not. I didn’t think it would introduce more work for me and I don’t do much with them now. So, if it makes the little woman and the kids happy, why not?

In the evening our baby sitter came over and Liz and I went to see “National Treasure” starring Nicholas Cage. It was fun. It was a decent enough movie. It won’t make anyone’s top ten or anything, but it was a fine way to spend 110 minutes. We had some good Mexican food before-hand at “On The Border”. The place was PACKED! By 5:15pm there was a 30 minute line! We finagled a table at the bar and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We were home and the babysitter was gone by 10pm. I think I’m getting old.

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Only one thing happened on Sunday. I replaced our bathroom’s faucet. that’s it. That’s everything. At about 10am I started work on it by shutting off the water to the bathroom. Then I had to clean everything out from under the sink. When I got to removing the existing faucet I realized I would probably want my basin wrench but I couldn’t find it. I spent some time trying to get along without it. Eventually I decided to start looking for it. 15 minutes later I threw in the towel and announced I was going to the hardware store to buy a new one. 45 minutes later I returned with a (crappy) basin wrench, “goof-off”, 50lb of salt and a new flashlight.

With the new (crappy) basin wrench I was able to remove the bolts under the sunk and pull out the existing ugly faucet. It was in lousy shape and virtually disintegrated in my hands. Because of how the drain had been installed I couldn’t UN-install it without a hack-saw. So I had to find my hack-saw. That didn’t go badly and in short order I had the drain in several pieces.

I installed the new faucet and screwed on the braided pipe that connects the cut-off valves with the sink. I spent a while trying to get the drain right and I wound up having to pull off the drain-trap assembly from the wall. HOLY COW WAS THERE SOME FOUL SMELLING GUNK IN THERE!! I nearly vomited. In fact I gagged several times. It was only my excellent constitution that kept my lunch down.

Eventually I got everything connected and it was time to test it out. Liz was starting to get a little frustrated because all this had taken so long. I ran downstairs and turned the cold water on.

DISASTER! Water sprayed everywhere underneath the basin! Same thing with the hot water. Oh, and the shut-off valves didn’t work — they were stuck, so I had to do all the starting/stopping from two floors below. I spent the next few hours trying different things but nothing seemed to work. We started to suspect the workmanship of the faucet. By 3pm I was VERY frustrated and took Chloe with me to Home Depot to get a new faucet. While we were there I grabbed another pair of braided pipe-tube-things — just in case I damaged my existing ones while I was trying to tighten the bolts on it.

By 4pm I was home again and Liz and I got the new faucet installed in short order — it was only about 15 minutes. We tried it out and fired up the water and … DISASTER! It sprayed water all over again! I was dismayed but hauled my very sore butt back upstairs to take another look. I decided that we would try putting the new braided pipe-tubes-things in. Liz asked if they were supposed to have washers in them. I think I said “well, duh! of course!” She pointed out to Mr. Smarty-Pants (me) that the old braided pipe-tube-things were lacking washers!! We got a look at the crappy old faucet and discovered that the washers had seamlessly welded themselves to the faucet!!

Outstanding!! We had discovered the problem!! And I had replacement parts!!

But the replacement parts were 20″ and the distance to be covered was 22″.

<*sigh*>

So I hoofed it back to Home Depot and found some parts that would do the trick. By 6:30pm I had returned home and put the new parts in and everything worked great!

My only regret is that I wasted ALL of a perfectly good Sunday on this. It was all day. Awful.

But we have a pretty new faucet!

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Just a short comment.  Today was long and painful because I had to
devote the afternoon to repairing someone else’s mistakes.  I
hadn’t planned on it and had to put off some of my own plans to be a
“team player” and take one for the team.  It wasn’t my job to
repair this stuff, but the guy whose job it was keeps disappearing and
not performing his duties.  Its pissing me off.

Now the kids’ elementary school is having a dance and I have to
go.  I’m taking Chloe and Ben and Gabriel.  I’ll let you know
how it turns out.        

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Nothing interesting happened at work today.  I returned the second
copy of Half Life 2.  Ate at Kelly’s Roast Beef for lunch. 
Its good roast beef, but its a little pricey.  While I would like
to spend the rest of the evening playing Half Life 2, Chloe would like
to play one of her math games.  I think I can’t, in all good
conscience keep her from actually improving her education just because
I want to play a game.   That’s ok… I’ll have plenty of
time (some day) to play.        

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