All posts by Duf

The bug bit me again. I bought a keyless entry kit for my mom’s RAV4 and decided to install it last night. My mom was nervous about me ripping into it, especially after the fiery fate my Buick met. I reassured her that it would be fine, and it was for the most part. The car has(had) an aftermarket alarm in it that was disconnected because it used to go off inadvertently all the time. As a result there was a big mess behind the dash already from the installation of the alarm. Even so I was able to disassemble and figure out a game plan rather quickly. I had to pull the car into the garage because it was getting dark. When I went to put in in DRIVE the shifter was locked in park. Odd I thought, I hit the interlock bypass and figured I just knocked something loose, no big deal, I’m sure I can fix that easily. I was able to make the connections and had the locks working in about an hour. GREAT. Now all I have to do is figure out that shift interlock problem. I check all the connections, no dice, I double check them, I push them all in, I triple verify everything is in, no dice. I’m getting frustrated at this point. I am sweaty, the mosquitos are attacking me since I have the garage open and the light is attracting them like bees to honey and I’m tired. I decide that all the old alarm wiring has to go. I rip it all out. I had to cut a wire or two to remove it but they didn’t look like they did anything. 🙂 After it’s all gone I try the interlock, nothin. Still doesn’t work! Damn it!!!!! Dejected, I put the stuff back together and pull out the RAV4 and park it. I look on the internet for interlock information, I think about how I am going to have to take it to an electrical shop to have them figure it out. For some reason I go back out, wondering if the brake lights work. I step on them, no light. Hmmmmmmm. I check the fuse box, the fuse is popped to the brake lights! I borrow one from my truck, and POW it works, evidently a popped brake light fuse also disables the brake interlock! I’m not going mad! But wait, why do all of the door locks work except the driver door one??? NO!!!!!! I am so close to completion I have to figure out what happened, it’s 11pm. So I am out in the driveway with a flashlight looking at the wires. The one wire I cut looks suspicious. I touch it to what looks like a logical connection, the lock works! I splice it in and it all works!! Time of completion, approximately 11:45 pm. Another bug up the ass successfully removed.

This morning I saw Johnny Cash died, not very surprising, he was in bad shape. I never really followed his music much but I did see that recent song and video he did, HURT. Man that stuff goes through me. Getting old scares the hell out of me. Then I read that John Ritter DIED. That is really shocking. I was a Three’s Company junkie and to see him drop dead is really sad. As Rich mentioned to me, it’s really disturbing to have people dying that were our age 20 years ago. I guess in some ways it’s better to go as John Ritter did. No prolonged suffering, loss of memory, motor skills or bladder control, just boom you check out. Still shakes me up.

It’s been 2 years already? Wow. …. I can remember that day very clearly. I remember someone telling me to flip on the tv, the world trade center was burning. I flipped it on and remembered thinking, damn a plane hit it. What a terrible accident. I thought it was a small plane. Then as I am watching, another plane hit and I was shocked. It clicked that this wasn’t an accident. Then a half hour later the news of explosions in Washington. What chaos. When the towers fell, women in the office were crying, everyone else was in shock. I remember wondering if things would ever be the same again. How could things ever be back to normal after such an unthinkable tragedy. Things weren’t the same for a long time. Everyone was somber, respectful, considerate and thoughtful. It didn’t last forever however and things swung back into gear quicker than I would have imagined. (Except for the family and friends that had a direct loss in the tragedy) It certainly changed my outlook on the world forever. No matter how much we try to bury it from view and/or not think about it, the world is a dangerous place filled with evil in every corner. So much strife in the world is in the name of religion, very ironic since most associate religion with peace, love and caring. The world is f’d up, it is unlikely to ever be fixed and in the end we will more than likely be the cause of our own destruction. Have a nice day. 🙁

All the build up, all the anticipation, all the feelings of revenge, all for nothing. The Eagles opened up their beautiful new stadium with a PATHETIC effort. It was almost an instant replay of the NFC championship game, only a little worse. I can’t imagine a less desirable way to open a season, all my optimism for the season is a burning pile of trash now. Donovan looked terrible, despite all of the glowing reports of his newfound accuracy. He is still inaccurate, still gets skittish when his first option is unavailable and still throws mostly passes under 5 yards. If they don’t show a major reversal in playing level asap there is going to be a mob mentality up in Philly. The best part of the game was the MNF intro with Stallone, it was cool. Looks like Sly is back in shape again, good for him.

In my industry, a popular term is “paper” MCSE. What this represents is a person who has passed Microsoft’s certification exams but has no real world experience in the computer industry. These people typically fail miserably when placed in an actual job because all they know is how to pass the tests and little more. Yesterday I thought how there is a lot of paper patriotism. I saw a truck with flag seat covers, the cars with the flag stickers, the infamous tattered flags that attach to the window, flag hats, flag pencils, the list is endless. I got my window flag after 911. I still have a patriotic sign in my window at home. Does that make me a patriot? Nope, not at all. It’s the lemming mentality. Look at me I have a flag, I’m a patriot. Actions always mean more than words and the vast majority of us in reality do nothing that is truly patriotic. It isn’t a major inconvenience and requires little work for people to adorn themselves with something patriotic so they do it. It’s easy. The soldiers that defend our country are patriotic. Most of the rest of us are hypocrites.

You know you are a person that is addicted to coffee when you order a super size Dunkin Donuts coffee that is half decaf, half regular with 5 creams, everyday.

My moms car is in our driveway. After work last night, I quickly gave it a much needed bath. I think the prior owners NEVER washed it. It looks much better after a little elbow grease.

Our home phone is basically unuseable right now. Any attempted phone conversations are filled with clicks to a non-existant incoming call, disconnects and line noise. I called Sprint yesterday AGAIN complaining bitterly. While on the call I got clicked over 10 times at least. The representative on the other side had an attitude with me so of course I asked for the supervisor. She was nicer but basically gave me the same song and dance. The local repair manager will call me (never happens) a technician will come out again to check the problem (never finds anything wrong) and she apologizes for the inconvenience. I’m at my wit’s end with them. I have passed the torch to Alison, to see if she has any better luck. I am just sick of it. SPRINT BLOWS!

Being the sentimental type that I am, I wrapped up Fishy in a wet paper towel, put him in my empty cookie snack bag and took him home to give him proper burial. However, due to tropical storm Henri, the entrance to the shed where my shovels are was blocked by standing water. So I wound up putting him in the freezer until I could give him proper burial. Silly huh?

The weekend was fine, we did a lot of house stuff, went to the mall and most importantly, we found a replacement vehicle for my mom. It’s a 96 Toyota RAV 4 with 53,000 miles. A nice little vehicle that should work out real well for my mom’s needs.

I watched a lot of football. My cliff notes:

Florida had one of the worst chokes/collapses I have ever seen against Miami, they had no excuse for losing that game.

Kurt Warner still looked like crap. 4 fumbles? Come on! He looked like an amateur out there not protecting the football. How the mighty have fallen.

The Dolphins lose to the Texans AT HOME????? How the hell does that happen? The Fins have won their last 11 season openers and lose to the TEXANS? Unreal.

A good opening weekend but it’s all warm up for the Eagles Bucs tonight. It’s going to be a late night, I hope the Birds have revenge on their mind. I still sting from the championship game.

I had some interesting thoughts that I remember thinking “Got to blog it…” Sadly, my early alzheimers has prevented me from remembering what the hell they were exactly… I’ll try to recall them later.

Yesterday I was actually investigating humane ways to euthanize a fish. Fishy, one of my 2 beta’s had not eaten in over 3 weeks and basically just sat at the bottom looking miserable. Yesterday afternoon I set up his original bowl and put him into it hoping for 1 last attempt at reviving him. I came in this morning and he was dead. It makes me sad to see him go but it was time, he had no enjoyment in being immobile. He was a good fish.

My 200th entry, how exciting.

Sprint blows. I have had a horrible time dealing with them sice moving to SW Florida. They are the one and only local phone carrier in this area and have demonstrated time and again how terrible of a customer service company they are. They pissed me off so much that I registered the domain name sprintblows.com and made up a quick site. My latest issue with them is with my home phone service. For 3 months we have had intermittent problems with the phone being noisy and disconnecting at random. Our neighbors have the same problem so it isn’t just us. I’ve called at least a dozen times with no resolution. Today a tech was there while my mom was home. He said he found some issues and corrected them, should be fine. My mom calls me to tell me he was done. 15 seconds into the call, CLICK! Disconnected. 3 more attempts, same thing. It’s worse than before! Idiots. Can’t stand them.

A 255 bench after work at the gym. The first time I was able to do that since the Wernersville, work out in the basement with Rich, creatine taking days. I’m only 20lbs off my all time max. YAY!

Paradise Hotel was a royal rumble last night. They brought back the kicked off guests and all sorts of fireworks ensued. There are 3 weeks left in the show and they STILL have not revealed what the prize is for the winners. Strange.

Yesterday, my mom was off from work and decided to go crazy in meal preparation. A thanksgiving style feast that featured, turkey with stuffing, sweet potatoes, vegetables and an apple pie. Certainly a stark contrast to the healthy choice meal we would probably wind up having otherwise. 🙂

It looks we have another celebrity that talks crap about the US and loves France yet is happy to reap the rewards of working here. Hypocrite. F him. Johnny Depp.

I picked up the license plate of my mom’s now totalled car. The body shop guy said it is repairable but the nearly 3000 dollar expense of replacing the airbags pushed it over the edge. 3000 bucks to replace the airbags???? Incredibly overpriced.

All of this virus/worm activity is really getting to be a pain in the ass. Even though we are firewalled and have extensive virus screening/detection/removal in place at work, we still are getting hammered indirectly by SOBIG. Morons who opened the infected email attachment have been sending out mails with our email addresses as the REPLY TO address. This is probably because they visited one of our web sites and the virus grabbed the email address from there. As a result, we get hundreds of bounce messages from other email systems about how they detected a virus from us. (even though we never sent it) It is such a pain in the ass and our ISP broke our outgoing mail in an attempt to limit the problem.

2003 has been a bad year for cars in my family. My classic Buick burned up on New Years day and now this weekend my mom’s car was totalled when she was hit by a drunk, high school kid. My mom was ok, but her car is wrecked. This kid, did a high speed u-turn in front of her, fishtailed, came into her lane, got hit on the side, rolled his car and then tried to DRIVE AWAY. He didn’t get very far and was caught by the police. Evidently he had a night of heavy drinking and was in a rush to get home. I hope they really throw the book at the punk. Yea young kids are stupid but when their stupidity puts the lives of others at risk, they need to get smacked in the face with reality, hard. Now we have to find my mom new wheels.

The holiday weekend didn’t live up to the anticipation. (they rarely do) We finally got the kitchen totally back in place after the tile work and did various routine maintenance stuff outside. I mowed the back of the property which took 2-3 hours. I finished the last half hour in a driving thunderstorm. Horizontal rain was smacking me in the face. I was so close to finishing I wasn’t coming off that tractor no way, no how. I trudged into the house dripping wet and covered with grass. I spent a lot of time on the puter playing online. I know it annoyed the wife somewhat but when I asked her if there was anything she wanted to do she said no, so I figure, why not do what I want to do then? The 3 days went by very quickly as they always do. It’s a catch 22, when we have a super busy weekend we wish we had time to lay around and do nothing. If we lay around and do nothing, we feel stir crazy and look for something to do.

We had our first full weekend with the aligners on our teeth. It was fine. I can hardly tell I have them on except for my mouth drying out more than normal. It definitely affects your eating. You want to be sure to eat enough to last awhile so you don’t have to go through the pop out, eat, brush, reinsert, routine too often.