Dad, looking at the ChipIn results: "Jesus!"
Evan, 3 years old: "Da, why you say Jesus?"
Dad: "Oops. I was saying a thank you prayer."
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
From the mouths of babes
Dad, to the ice cream truck driver: "You’re like a cat. I feed you and you keep coming back."
Ice cream dude: *blink* *blink*
File under things not to say.
Coder’s High
I’ve got that coder’s high right now. I’m in the zone. Yet the clock still speeds by. I can feel the seconds tick in the pulsing throbbing of my wrists as I type at top speed.
Update: Eek! Technologies merging. I just tried to use JavaScript syntax in PHP and when I went to look it up in the PHP docs I searched for a ColdFusion function. May need to slow down just a bit!
Plumbing Update
Screw it. My family can hike through the prairie and bathe in the stream.
Milestone Rewards
How do you encourage yourself to reach a milestone? I know smoking programmers who give themselves a smoke break (7-15 minutes) when they accomplish a task. I don’t smoke, so I do a chore that doesn’t involve the computer. Today’s milestone breaks are brought to you by "Crack Plumbers, we’re just cheeky!" After Sarah did an art project involving rocks and the bathtub, our drain slower terribly. Now its stopped completely. This could be a coincidence. We have enough longhairs in this household to clog the public waste system so periodically I have to open the drain and pull out the alien creature that grows in there. It will be about 4 feet long, black, sluggy, and psuedo-intelligent. The most frightful thing I ever saw as a child was a Twilight Zone episode that involved a housewife vacuuming a dust ball out of her air ducts that turned out to be an alien creature that ate her. Since then I have never been fond of dust bunnies, air ducts, or alien looking snake-like gooey lengths of beyond description filth. However, I do want to bathe today…
So I just accomplished a very big deal on my current project involving combining functionality of two different parts of the application into a single page. It also involved altering the roles based security. Implementing roles based security on custom apps can be a time consuming pain in the neck. But fun! Time for my 7-15 minute break. Here creature creature!
Update: Pipes-1; Doug-0. Expect @cathymccaughan to report on my highly anticipated trip the emergency room during my next milestone break.
Update: Pipes-2; Doug-0. Done until Saturday.
What’s today?
Today is about coding! I’m sick as a dog and the tub won’t drain and it has to work before this afternoon and all my buckets are at the in-laws house. None of that matters. Today is about showing results to my client!
Our Life
Between coughing up my lungs today, I have been hard at programming on a project. I have some neat things happening but they never seem to happen quickly enough. I took only one break today to return something I borrowed longer than I should have. I am close on my code but it always seems like I need just another half an hour when our evening chaos erupts. This evening’s chaos was complicated by the high school parent night.
What is evening chaos? It starts when a child says he needs the mouse I stole from his computer so he can do his homework. Then Mom dashes out the door explaining the homework Amy has to do after the kids finish cleaning the kitchen table. That’s the table with 3 inches of soapy foam on it and a perplexed middle schooler asking, "uh. How do I clean that up?" Still he manages to leave the table a sticky mess. Evan, who is getting closer to being housebroken, pees on the floor in the girls room. I’m on the phone with the bank trying to get them to fax me a letter that they say they can’t mail to me for 10 days due to federal law. I need it Monday but preferably tomorrow. Dinner has to be made. Go downstairs and sharpen a pencil. Hear Amy and Evan start to fight. Cathy texts to tell me she is going to park illegally. I call to give her a hard time but get voicemail so I text her my approval and then she calls. Evan is screaming just because he has lungs that aren’t filled with gunk. Evan wants to help with Amy’s homework. Oh dinner. Noah has a question on his homework. Code? Sharpen pencil again. And… that’s just the beginning.
From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "Do I look inappropriate?"
Me: "Very slutty dear."
File that under things not to say!
Mock Shepherd’s Pie
Last night I made a mock shepherd’s pie. Basically, brown a pound of ground beef, add in some drained green beans and a can of tomato soup. Grease a 2 quart casserole and put this mixture into it. Then spoon mashed potatoes over the mixture and bake uncovered for 30 minutes at 350°.
I made my mashed potatoes by hand last night. That was the first time in my life I had cooked mashed potatoes that weren’t instant and I have to say it was easy! And I think the results were quite tasty.
A rule with children: Never mix food. Shepherd’s pie breaks this rule so naturally then only people partaking of it are the adults. This would make a nice dish for a potluck.
From the mouths of babes
Evan, bouncing: "Wake up. Go sleep. Wake up. Go sleep. Wake up!"
Dad: "Yes. Go to sleep and we’ll wake up in the morning."
Evan, with a gasp and loud: "Ah! THANK YOU Da!"
Things that don’t go together
A child, a strong magnet, and a tv.
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterz. Replies.
Update: Unplugging the tv for several hours fixed the problem. And created a nice quiet around the house!
And then she cut them off…
In memory of the curls…
Update: It doesn’t look terrible to me but Mom has declared it a disaster. They’ve gone to get the hair fixed. I am sure we will have before and after pictures.
Update: Cathy has posted the before and after pictures.
It’s not a yard; it’s a prairie.
Why should we cut grass anyway? It’s grows naturally! I say let it go through its full life cycle. After much sweat and many words not appropriate for a Sunday, the nut holding the seat to the frame gave way. Most of it was cut away then after a thorough soaking of WD-40 (as I was too lazy to get my Liquid Wrench), a screw driver and hammer were violently applied until what little piece of aluminum was left began to turn. After that a wrench did quit work of removing the remainder of the nut leaving the bolt in good shape for the replacement nut. The fiberglass body lifted off after unplugging some wires and the fuel line (the tank is attached to the body being removed) but only after puzzling through the proper bizarre twists and turns required to life it off the varies levers. I only almost cracked it once. I am sore, sweaty, and blistered. 
The starter motor remains attached to the engine and the rusted terminals under the key switch make me think it could be the switch (or the rusted terminals and not the starter itself. However I am done for the day.
As I was inspecting the mower, I thought about putting the belt back on. See, last trip out I was in an area that I had not thoroughly policed and I heard this god awful kerthunking noise and the blades quit spinning. I thought I hit a log and threw the belt. I no longer think I hit a log since I was being pretty careful. The mower had a catastrophic failure. The pulley that drives the blades which is turned by the belt connected in a serpentine fashion to the engine broke. I mean the metal of the pulley ripped from the shaft that spins the blades. I suppose I should still check on the starter. This could make a pretty cool go cart…
Update: Looks like I have a melted fuse or other electrical component. So one mechanical and one electrical repair plus maybe the starter motor before I can get my lawn cut again. Ugh.
Lawnmower man update
The computer tries to suck me in but I AM the Lawnmower Man! I have the body ready to be removed but the seat is in the way. The one bolt holding the seat on is so rusted that I think I need to cut it free.
Update: I opened my cordless Dremel and the battery and charger are missing! As a guy who used to have a very specific spot for everything I owned, you know, periodically I’d reorganize my CD collection either alphabetically or by genre and screwdrivers were sorted by type and size, missing tools and a parts drive me up a wall.
Time out on politics
There will be plenty of more opportunity for politics. If you haven’t had your fill, head over to Knoxviews.com. In the meantime, I am going to turn to describing how to get a riding lawn mower working again…the wrong way. The right ways is to roll it up onto a trailer and take it to the shop. But to do that I’d have to either get the Jeep running or install a hitch on the van. Both of those are just as much work as simply fixing the lawn mower myself. After searching the whole house, I found the key was left on the seat of the mower in the shed. So its now been rolled into the yard. To get to the starter, I have to take the entire body off the mower. That involves tools. So the next bit of searching is for the tools. Have I mentioned I really need a workshop/tool shed?
