Archives 2003

The pool guys didn’t show Monday as they promised but they did show up on Tuesday. We came home to a drained pool. It looks like they drained it, patched the wall and were in the process of filling it all in one day. Too bad we have had to wait 5 weeks + for them to show. Now our pool is filling with brown smelly well water. 🙁 At least it is too cold to use right now.

I’m slowly assembling the 2nd plane I have been accumulating the parts for. It is painted Eagles silver and green. I am getting a hellacious motor for it so it should be a beast in the air. Hopefully I can keep it in the air. 😉

I got a call from the local insurance company about the Buick. He asked if it was just a little fire. I said nope, the interior is bare metal. He said , “Oh….” long pause “we will send out an adjuster” I’ll be glad when it is all behind me. Feels like a graveyard when I pull into my driveway.

I still have our outside Christmas lights going on at night. Is that tacky? It looks nice so I am not in a rush to take them down. I guess this weekend I’ll do it.

Over last weekend I slapped in a 2nd 80 gig hard drive in my home pc, giving me a total of 160 gig. The reason I did it was for video editing, those files eat up drive space FAST.

Last night I pulled out my digital cable box. Time Warner’s rates went up 6 or 7 bucks for the new year. I did some investigating, they charge me 9 bucks a month to “rent” the cable box and then another 20 a month for the digital channels it provides. However, after reviewing those channels I realized that I never view any of them, ever. So out goes the box and into my pocket goes 30 bucks a month. I’ll survive with 78 channels. 🙂

I got automatic profile generation for Exchange to work! I had messed with this off and on for awhile but finally took the time to do it. Who cares, eh?

One TV note. Watched Joe Millionaire. Boy does that guy come off as dumb. The women weren’t overly impressive either. I heard one interesting theory. Someone suggested that maybe Fox is actually pulling the wool over the viewers eyes. Maybe this guy actually is rich? Well we will see. More mindless entertainment! Tonight the Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole. Both look promising.

My gutter project went down this weekend. The weekend prior, Ali and I got all the gutters and hardware in the VINYL flavor. In total it was probably close to 100 different parts we bought. I started on the project bright and early Saturday AM. I ran into multiple issues. The vinyl gutter, due to the method used for hanging it allowed water to run behind it. I tried various “modifications” but none of them were successful. Frustrated, I realized that I needed to bite the bullet and go get the metal gutters. I collected up the dozens of pieces and the associated store receipts for a trip back to Home Depot. The retun process took a good 20 minutes alone until we got all the parts straight. However the Home Depot rep was a very nice lady and didn’t give me any problems. Armed with my store credit I went and picked out the metal equivelant for my gutters. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually would cost me less in material to do it with metal. So much less that I was able to also pick up a new ladder which we desparately needed and have $1.13 left over. 🙂 Installation with the metal gutters was TONS easier. I did about 100 foot of gutter in about 5 hours of time total. It looks better and feels more secure. I can hardly wait for it to rain so I can see my handywork in action.

The rest of the weekend involved a lot of football viewing. I fell asleep during the college championship game unfortunately. Too bad, it sounded like a classic. I did however see all the nfl games. The Sunday games were great. In the first game, Pittsburgh mounted a huge comeback in the last few minutes against Cleveland to squeak out a win. Then, in the late game, the hated Giants blew a huge 24 point second half lead! It was classic.

The pool freaks still didn’t show up on Friday. I called and A&S said they were there, looked at it had to schedule the work. I said THAT WAS WHAT WE WERE WAITING FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE! So after more calls it is supposed to be done tomorrow. Yea, right.

I dug through the remains of my car. I recovered the melted toolcase and found the horncap, intact, melted to the bottom of the case! I have no idea how it got there or how it survived but at least it will be a nice momento for me to hold on to.

Just looked at the before and after shots of my Buick. Now I’m all depressed again. I bought a blue tarp to cover it. I hate having to see it like that. Argh…..

It’s been a month since I called Anthony & Sylvan Pools regarding a crack in the surface of our pool. I’ve called them at least a half dozen times asking when they were coming out. I asked them if they cared at all about customer service. Yesterday I asked the lady if they used any sort of method of tracking problems to ensure they get fixed or do they instead prefer to rely on customers calling in to complain to remind them? Their customer service SUCKS. I have had 3 issues since the pool was done. The quickest I got any resolution has been 2 weeks.

Tentatively I am planning to install gutters along both sides of our house this weekend. I’ve put it off long enough.

I heard back home another round of snow is coming. A bad winter in PA. Florida is sounding better to my mom every week.

A memorable Xmas holiday followed up by an unforgettable New Years Day. 2003 the year my Buick burned. Yep. I took it out for a quick spin. It started to smoke behind the dash, before I knew it I had an all out inferno on my hands. All the horrifying details and pics are here. I certainly hope it isn’t a sign of things to come in 2003. Could be a long year if it is.

One New Years Eve note. We didn’t do anything but get pizza, watch Lord of Rings on DVD and Dick Clark. Why doesn’t Dick get on the rooftops anymore? Just not the same. The broadcast was dumb too recapping the years best of. Dick sounded ridiculous saying the names of all of the rap stars. Moby Blah Blah, Dixie Do Dick, whatever….. blah! His forced laughter at the dumb jokes by the new street casters was corny too. Anyone see Christopher Reeve? OH MY GOD. I know the guy is paralyzed but what made his face get all distorted? Lookin like elephant man almost. Scary shit.

2 negative log entries in a row, hopefully this is not a trend. Am I old and grumpy already? Hope not.