Archives 2004

Finally we have a face to put with the annoying gnome who enjoys disecting my blog entries on a regular basis!!

I got a replacement hood emblem for my Vette yesterday. The one that is on the car is badly sun faded. I figured I would take 5 minutes last night and throw on the new one. Of course it couldn’t be simple. The studs on the back of the emblem are buried in 2 holes on the back of the hood that requires a deep socket to reach. It’s also positioned so I need to remove the air filter and more or less lay across the engine to get to it. Well it was more than I felt like tackling last night so the emblem went back in the box waiting for another day. Sigh…

Thanks to Joe for this one. Go to this site, and then punch in my blog address in, https://blog.duf.net/weblog . Presto, instant funny blog. 🙂

Haven’t felt much like bloggin. Every night this week is full, last night we got home at 6:45, ate dinner, then cleaned the birdcages up so we wouldn’t have to do it when company is down, watched the 2 hour American Idol (sans commercials thanks to Tivo) and called it a night. Tonight I have to get my groceries for the next week and a half and then we need to do some more cleaning at home. Our guests fly in tomorrow night, leave Monday morning and then all next week I will be away at Windows Server 2003 training.

Our dog is very odd. She has some very odd elements to her personality. She is very scared of anything new whether it be people, other dogs, the venetian blinds, anything. She refuses to drink water out of a bowl. She only wants to drink out of the bottle mounted on her crate or lick water off the shower floor. Every night we have to play these silly games so she will eat her supper. Normally dogs are bottomless pits and will eat everything you throw at them. Sometimes Nicki will skip a day with eating, and often she won’t eat until 10 or 10:30 at night. We have to use tricks like jamming dog treats into her supper, covering it with dog gravy or picking up the plate and acting like we are eating it ourselves. (oh yea she won’t eat out of bowl either, has to be a plate) She has some sort of compulsion to find rabbit turds in the lawn and attempt to eat them. She doesn’t think I should be allowed to sleep past 6am in the morning. Most of the time she will follow us around like a shadow, always having to be in whatever room we happen to be in at the time. Even with all of her quirks she is the star of the house. We both love her a lot. I feel badly for the other pets, they are lucky if they receive 5% of the attention the dog does.

It’s odd how things come to mind. Yesterday we took a break from the labor and took the Vette to a pizza joint for lunch. As we were sitting there I was doing some people watching. I noticed a big bunch of people, a bunch of what seemed outwardly happy people. Lot of laughing, joking around etc. I generally don’t act like that, unless I’m drunk. I don’t laugh a ton but not because I am miserable. I began to analyze why that is. I often have people that don’t know me well tell me how serious I seem. It’s ironic because that is about 180 degrees from how I actually am. I think what it comes down to is I am a naturally shy person. Plus I suck at making small talk which makes me steer away from starting up spontaneous conversations. I also have some sort of issue with my brain that at times will make me mumble, talk too fast or just be plain hard to understand. It frustrates the hell out of me. After a few drinks, all those reservations seem to evaporate. So I guess I need to either drink more or try to act like I have been. Easier said than done.

Here is an uplifting story regarding Reading, my old stomping grounds. Yea, right.

Aren’t weekends supposed to be relaxing? I hear they are. Mine was crazy busy. We have company coming down this weekend so I feel obligated to make everything spic and span, top notch. Can’t have people see our “grounds” in anything less than prisitine shape. Of course I can never have it as good as I like it but I sure tried. Last weekend I spent 3 hours cleaning up the outside lanai area. This weekend was worse. A week or two ago it struck me how crappy the entrance to our lanai doors were. I had a patio stone half assed thrown in front of each door. Looked like crap. I rectified this on Saturday by building steps for each door. It looks better. I also ripped out the plastic border in one of our areas that kept getting overrun by dirt when heavy rain washes dirt down the bank. Those projects took a good part of the day. The rest of the weekend was filled with more projects like cleaning up the outside, getting the pool in top shape, washing down the floors, shampooing the carpet and more cleaning, picking up and arranging than I care to describe. Both days were non-stop more or less. I had a run in with yet another new snake, never saw this kind before. I trapped and relocated him across the trench. I also had a tiny pencil thin snake in the pool and a small scorpion scurry by my feet this weekend, our own wild kingdom.

Part of the weekend time was used doing more work on the Vette. I had several projects to tackle on it. The rear hatch did not open with the electric release. The only way to open it was to reach back from the inside, stretch to the back, grab a keychain that was attached to the manual release and give it a yank. Not exactly convenient. The one power window switch was done half assed and replaced with a door switch that didnt fit right and looked dumb. (you can see the switch on the right side of console) I also had to replace the power mirror joystick that worked in every direction except down. Finally I needed to install my italian leather shifter boot cover to replace the nasty dry rotted original. All in all in went relatively well. I was thrilled to get the rear hatch release working. Everything else was installed and is working. Here is the console after the surgery. To replace the stuff I had to take the console all the way out of the car. One new problem cropped up. The power seats don’t work now, oh well just another thing for the list.

I just saw the video of the Vet getting imploded. Made me a bit sad to see it go. Yea it was a dump as far as stadiums go, but it was our dump. Visiting teams HATED to play there which was a huge home field advantage for us. As a youngster, the Vet held many memories for me. It seemed like a magical place when I was 12 years old and in the 700 level watching the Phillies play. It was also a part of one of my worst memories when my grandfather dropped with a heart attack as we were waiting to get into a game. Being the sentimental type I am, it hurts to see it go, but it was time.

I have been in group policy, file replication, windows update hell the past week. I have been trying to get our win2k and newer workstations to accept updates internally and automatically from our SUS server. It has been one roadblock after another. I FINALLY have all the issues ironed out. (I think) It’s fun to fix problems. Now I am working on using Wake On Lan technology to have our systems turn on automatically overnight and apply the updates, then turn themselves off afterwards. That is another less important battle.

Wow the Eagles managed to get Terrel Owens somehow! The post season grade just jumped to an A+. This is the most free agent activity I can ever recall the Eagles participating in. It is very exciting, too bad there is such a long wait to see how it all comes together. Terrell’s personality against Fat Andy’s stoic demeanor will be a great dynamic to watch. They didn’t even draft yet which should bring some more exciting young talent to the team! On a down note, Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent both officially joined new teams. However I believe both are on the downside of their careers so it’s up to the new guys to step in. Football season can’t get here soon enough.

One the way home last night, I was behind a full size Dodge pickup truck. I noticed something hanging from the trailer hitch. Upon closer inspection I saw that this freak had a set of reproduction testicles attached to the hitch. I can’t even describe how disturbing this looked. How someone could hang this on their truck and think it was somehow cool is beyond me. Maybe the FCC could censor this as well.

The Spanish reaction to the train bombings is quite different than I would expect. Terrorists bomb your country and you respond by pulling troops? Basically saying to the terrorists we will do what you want just don’t bomb us anymore…

My (and most Americans) attitude would be “Let’s nail them to the wall”