Lotsa changes, finally posted, road trip, RCI Sucks once again

Well as you can tell, I really dug into changing things up with the blog yesterday after I installed WordPress 2.5.  I found a way to incorporate my random image header with a newer theme that supports “widgets”.   These widgets allow me to plug in all sorts of extras into the blog.  I added a NASA image of the day, a traffic analyzer that shows information about the traffic coming to the blog, a link to a post one year ago, weather, how many spam comments were blocked, a cleaner drop down menu for browsing prior posts, a new “popular” posts widget and more!  I also signed up for Google ad-sense and installed a WP mod to easily incorporate it into the blog.  I figure if I can make a few bucks while blogging, why not do it? You will notice that some of the Google ads relate to the blog post you are looking at, kinda cool.  It’s a whole lot of change but I like it, a lot.

Small side note, the site crossed 30,000 unique hits.  The accuracy of the hit counter  is questionable since I have had to reset the count from memory quite a few times due to issues with my web host.  Speaking of my host, I requested for my content to get moved to a different box due to the issues I have been having.  When the change happens the site may be unavailable for a day or so while net DNS servers are updated.

Last night I finished up sinking line posts in the ground.  After I scooped out my last bit of dirt with the post hole digger I lifted it high and drove the digger into the ground deep in celebration.  It felt good to be close to the end of the nearly month long project.  All that is left to do is string about 600 feet of wire which I plan to get done Saturday afternoon/evening.  

Ali got home last night just after I finished up with the last line post.  I had Nicki out with me on her leash.  Even though the fence is not totally enclosed, I let her off leash even though I’m sure Ali cringed when I did it.  Nicki immediately started sprinting around in circles, thrilled to be able to run around without a 16 foot restraint attached to her neck.  Ali and I both laughed as we watched her run and run.  We left her off leash until we went back inside.  She was just fine and didn’t try to sprint away from us as Ali has always feared.  As daylight was fading I loaded up the 3 big heavy rolls of fence wire into the back of the truck and dropped them off where they would be installed, saving me from pushing each roll several hundred feet.

This afternoon I am leaving work early so we can head up to Tampa.  Ali is running a 5k up there tomorrow called the Iron Girl.  The race is all women.  She is very excited about competing in an out of town race.  We are taking the pooch along.  I am bringing a laptop with that is loaded with the Slingbox client.  I am hoping we can watch some of our normal Friday night Tivo stuff at the LaQuinta we are staying at via the net.

The cat is still at the vet, we are still in no rush to get her.  I came up with a plan to set up the automatic litter box AND the manual litter box in the utility room once Spook returns.  Then the stupid cats will have a choice.

I received yet ANOTHER Roomba yesterday.  This time it was a jet black scheduler model with “intellibin”.  Intellibin sounds really high tech huh?  All it does is flash a little red led if the dust bin is full.  Since I empty the bin after every run it really is just fluff for me.  I currently have NINE robots at my house, well TEN if I count the Scooba.  It’s time for me to get busy, parting them out to sell on Ebay.  I am going to give one to my mom to try and I plan to keep three for my cleaning crew. (and maybe one more for hacking) All the rest will be finding homes elsewhere either intact or as organ(part) donors.   

I can’t wait to see how Ali’s Wheel of Fortune tryout goes.

I started Tivo’ing Battlestar Galactica.  I keep hearing how awesome it is.  I love sci-fi, I think I will wind up being sorry I got in on it so late.

Oh I forgot, we had another bad experience with RCI last night, what a surprise.  Ali’s friend Sue is going to be driving down to visit us next week.  Her car has some problems so we suggested that she rent a car for the trip.  We offered to help her out.  We had about 30,000 unused RCI points that are expiring at the end of May.  I f we don’t use them, we lose them.  One of the things we can use them for is stuff like rental cars, perfect!  We at least can get some use out of them.  So Ali calls up RCI and explains that we want to rent a car for a friend using our points.  Ok no problem, we can do that.  Oh by the way, there is a $49 fee to do so, another f’ing fee.  When Ali told me about the fee I grumbled but it is to be expected at this point, RCI is all about fees.  So she gives the rep all the info and is told she would be transferred to Budget to complete the reservation.  It will cost us 33,000 points PLUS the $49 fee. Oh and there COULD be additional charges by the rental company but we need to find that out our self.  So Ali gets on with the Budget rep and again gives all the information.  Then I see Ali’s face turn to concern/disbelief.  The rep is telling Ali that they have NO cars available at that location to rent with points but they would happily rent us a car if we wanted to pay for it conventionally.  What a crock of shit.  The rep said that they normally only allocate cars for points at airports.   Ali asked for a supervisor, the guy said he was a supervisor.  Ali hung up, disgusted.  She spent close to a half hour going through this circus only to be told that our points were no good.  By the end of the ordeal she was chiming in on my chant of “RCI sucks”.