You know that old adage about "measure twice, cut once?" Yeah, it’s like that.
Simple Pleasures
Math is so fun! I love days when I am a programmer and not a script monkey.
What home phone number?
Cingular won’t let me upgrade my phone online unless I tell them my home phone number. I guess they don’t get that they are in the middle of the cellular phone revolution and that line lands are dying. Update: Apparently entering my cell phone number as my home phone met their requirement.
Republicans == Fascists?
Will they make it work?
Breast Abuse
Yes, yesterday I selfishly used my wife’s boobies. You know how your SAM’s membership card has a picture on it? (Costco is the same I am sure) And they get a little particularly if you get to the checkout and the person pictured is not standing with you. Our SAM’s card has my wife’s beautiful picture on it. I wanted to do the world’s fastest SAM’s trip to get some ground beef and still make it out in time to pick Noah up from karate. To do this meant leaving Cathy, Amy and Evan in the van so I could run through the store. At the checkout I get quized, "Is she [pointing to Cathy’s picture] in the store?" I respond, "she is breastfeeding the baby in the car." They let me complete the purchase.
I sing the body recess
This morning Noah explained told me he wondered if the school would have another chorus separate from the 5th grade chorus. I proceeded to ask if he liked singing and so forth and what came out was "I am not in fifth grade chorus because they practice during recess [the Friday recess] and we only get like two or three recesses a week." Sigh. He has to walk his own path and make his own choices.
Wanna watch me pull a rabbit from my hat?
So this past weekend we got the Christmas tree up and I actually got all the lights working instead of taking a month to light the tree and finishing on Christmas Eve as has become our tradition. Of course, I had hoped to really impress the wife and kids by getting the lights on the house too. Now last year I bought three extra strands when they went on sale so we could do twice as much of the roof as we did last year but I could not break those open until I found the old lights…you know, on a matter of principle. I tore the garage apart and much of the rest of the house only to find them when I wasn’t looking. Apparently for an entire year, the outside lights have been sitting beside my desk.
I don my headlamp, you know, because it is 10pm at night, and after sweeping the leaves off the front half of the roof, I proceed to string the outside of the house. Half way through I have to start reattaching the clips that I halfway took down last year. After the first 3 strands of lights (3×300=900 lights) are up, the house is looking pretty good but I am not satisfied. A glass of wine later and I am back on the roof.
Now, we live in a split rancher. What that means is that our house is built into a hillside. The front of the house is 1 story tall. The sides and back are two stories tall but the hill continues downward giving the illusion that from the roof you are about 9 meters above the ground. Of course I started taking down the gutters years ago so while we still have gutters on the front of the house, the back has no gutters so the dark roof just blends nicely with the blackness of the night. One big lesson of the night is that as you back up on a roof, even if you are sitting on it, you are not necessarily backing up in a straight line and that vast emptiness you feel under your toes isn’t roof.
Now, running the next 3 strands of lights is a little more heart pounding and shortly after getting over the peak of the roof I hear a disturbing noise as if I were sliding down the roof just before dropping into the great abyss. But I am not moving so I quickly turn my head to see what I might have knocked down the roof. My eyes are just in time to see this gray blur of fur leap from the roof, missing anything resembling a branch, and get absorbed into the blackness. Seconds later I hear a resounding thud and rustling of leaves as the thing hits the ground. Apparently I scared the holy sh*t out of one of the squirrels living in our attic. I have to admit, I almost laughed myself off the roof as I watched it propel itself into nothingness. I have seen squirrels fall from trees, shake their head and run off; I am sure this one will be back in the attic shortly.
Did I mention that I only swept leaves from the front half of the roof. Man leaves are slippery! Being on the roof at night was very enlightening. I was able to listen to something large and not domesticated tromp through our backyard. The crisp air was exhilirating!
Molly does not have cancer
Molly had to go to the pet ER and vet while Noah and I camped in the Smokies. We just heard yesterday that she is ok! The vet feared cancer but it turned out to be an inverted papilloma (that’s a great link!) I am very relieved!
Yellow pages only gets to a few
When I ran my Internet Service Provider business, I spent $12,000 a year on a full page yellow page ad. That ad generated more calls than any other advertising. In the end, all my business came word of mouth.
I learned something yesterday. As I drove out of the neighborhood, many of the houses had their new Yellow Pages directory. But not us. It did not take long to realize that the phone company is mad at us. See, after having the same phone number for 15 years, we decided to cut the umbilical cord and go mobile completely. It was scary because we were so accostumed to having that phone line which would ring throughout the house. We actually had two lines and could conference the calls together. We lost use of our fax machine in the process. Yesterday I would have liked to have received a fax but it was not necessary.
What did we lose in going completely mobile?
- We don’t get a phone book anymore.
- We are not in 411 directory assistance so it is more difficult to track us down.
- Solicitations and bill collection calls dropped significantly (at times Sears would call every 3 days because they are Satan’s spawn).
- We don’t pay $80 per month for a desk ornament.
- The younger children are having different phone experiences/lessons that the older children did. (But our phone lessons/manners/habits are significantly different that of our children…and think about our parents…I remember a party line but could you imagine your children using a party line?!) Oh, and the younger children do understand phones. Even the 17mth old uses the cell phone proficiently.
- It is slightly more difficult to track down a single person and sometimes takes calling multiple numbers to reach someone at the house.
- No more long distance bills!
Now, the publisher of the Yellow Pages and the phone company are not one in the same. They are in cahoots but the publisher of the Yellow Pages makes their money from ads and distribution. I think we are getting ready to witness a paradigm shift in the way phone books are distributed. First and foremost, we don’t use it because we either look online or send google a text message from our phone (Text "Borders, Knoxville, TN" to 46645 and watch the phone number and address pop up in seconds). Secondly, the publisher is going to realize that their distributions are dimensioning as the phone company gives them fewer and fewer land line addresses. Their ad selling point is "we deliver x number of books and your ad will be seen by those people." My bet is that before long we will see stacks of Yellow Pages books at the grocery store entrances being distributed for free to anyone that wants one.
I think another service cell phone companies need to offer (and maybe they do) is one number that rings multiple cell phones. That way we could give away a "family number" and when one cell answers all others stop ringing.
I before E except after C unless of course you are spelling proficiently.
E-mail drudgery
I don’t wanna but I gotta. Time to wade through the spam.
Why do I hate email?
- Spam wastes my life.
- I find important things that got overlooked because of spam.
- There will always be something cranky or negative from somebody.
- Email almost always generates work–often non-billable.
- I hate spam
Gmail: 416 unread; started at 3:16pm; finished 3:24pm
Personal account: 253 unread; started at –interrpted for voicemail and phone calls–
And the fifth one went wii wii wii all the way home empty handed…
Looking for a wii? At the time of this posting, only eBay has them "in stock"
Negotiating with Monday
Monday has held me hostage for the last time! Obviously Monday and I have different agendas. Different goals in life. Different, deeply rooted philosophies. Monday and I simply cannot co-exist. One of us has to change. I have tried to compromise with Monday explaining that Monday would better fit between Friday and Saturday but Monday will hear nothing of it. I tried being compassionate and empathetic and asked Monday what it wanted but all I got in return was a terse, "deal with it like everyone else." I got authoritarian and declared, "this is how it is going to be" only to have Monday laugh in my face and show me that Monday is bigger than me. I tried playing along by starting early and running late but I found out tha Monday does not sleep nor slow down. I can’t beat Monday and we cannot get alone. There is only one thing to do and that is: hate Monday! (and just get as much done as I can and be happy with that…)
Conflicted
My wife is sick today and I feel like I should be working upstairs to help watch Evan and keep him from jumping on her. However, my work today demands that I be on the computer downstairs. I hate this feeling.
From the mouths of babes
Cathy sends text message: "Fighting nausea"
Doug sprints upstairs: "Are you pregnant?!"
From the mouths of babes
This one comes second hand because I was in the store.
Dad: Pulls up to liquor store and goes in. Eggnog sometimes needs rum.
Tommy: "Why are we at a wine store!"
Mom: —I don’t know her reply—
Tommy: "You better keep that stuff downstairs!"
