Monday, January 23, 2006

Big Ol’ List o’ Crap!

A lot of bloggers have a “101 things about me!” wherein they go on about how they wear argyle socks to bed or eat pumpernickel ice cream and so on and so on. I think it’s supposed to give insights into their personality. And I think it does achieve that to one degree or another, assuming that people are telling the truth.

Anyway, I was going to do one of those, but on the one hand, it’s kind of too predictable. And Karla already took “100 things wrong with me” which she strung out over a few postings. I’d do that, but I’m afraid the list is too long and I’m not even sure I’m aware of all the things that are wrong with me.

This weekend we went on a bit of cleaning frenzy so herewith I’d like to present “101 things I found under our bed” in essentially the order in which I pulled them out (except the magazines, I grouped those together).

001. Short Phillips head screwdriver (the short stubby kind)

002. The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson

003. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

004. One Black dress shoe (Ellis)

005. Two non-matching black dress shoes (Reha)

006. One black boot (Reha)

007. One almost empty tube of Aquaphor Healing Ointment

008. Finding Nemo DVD insert

009. Cranium game

010. One sandal that has been missing since last summer (Jonah)

011. One black sock (Jonah)

012. MacAddict magazine issues: Feb/06, Jan/06, Aug/05, Dec/04, Nov/03, Apr/05

013. Bottle of generic pink baby lotion (two total)

014. Guest book from Marji’s funeral (Mother in Law)

015. Utah State Bar—Annual Bar Convention Proceedings, July 13-16, 2005

016. Too many crayons to count. Mostly broken.

017. One black sock (Reha)

018. Runner’s World magazine issue: Nov/05, Sep/05, Jun/05, Feb/05, May/05

019. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

020. Year 2000 Sundance Film Festival baseball cap

021. Never Coming to a Theater Near You by Kevin Turan

022. Macworld magazine issues: Mar/04, Apr/05

023. The Office—The Complete First Series (the BBC one, not the NBC one)

024. One wire hanger

025. Food and Wine magazine Oct/05

026. Ben Folds Live: The Complete Sessions at West 54th (Man, they could ROCK!)

027. Friends Season 1 and 4 and the case for Season 5

028. Eleven pencils, not one of them with a sharp point, three broken into pieces

029. One unused size 2 diaper (were any of them ever that small?)

030. Paradise by Toni Morrison

031. Two Rigid product registration/warranty cards (not filled out)

032. The Woman Said Yes: Encounters with Life and Death, Memoirs by Jessamyn West

033. Rush—the DVD Collection (Dork/geek alert!)

034. Trojan Explosives baseball cap

035. Three plastic hangers

036. 2003 Edition of Federal Civil Judicial Procedure and Rules

037. Unknown A/V cable

038. One floppy disk cable

039. Red Hat Fedroa Core 3 (Disks 1, 2 of 4)

040. Linksys 10/100 Base-T ethernet card

041. One Western Digital 30 GB hard drive

042. One Western Digital 10 GB hard drive

043. One SATA cable

044. I, Robot by Issac Asimov

045. The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

046. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

047. The Teeny Tiny Ghost by Kay Winters

048. One half of a Pokemon pokeball (sp?)

049. Hauppauge remote control for PVR-350

050. The Art of Modern Rock by Paul Grushkin and Dennis King

051. One iMac (G3, rev D (the one with FireWire) power cable, plugged into:

052. One surge protector

053. One Lego catalog, Summer 2004

054. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson

055. Plow Matchbox board book

056. Cat 5 ethernet cable (about 6 feet long)

057. The other half of the pokeball from above

058. Knob from the bathroom sink cabinet

059. Two Harry Potter dust jackets, Books Four and Five (no idea where the books are)

060. Printout of a webpage on setting up DNS and BIND on OS X Server 10.3

061. Printout of a webpage on setting up a VPN and L2TP on OS X server 10.3

062. Notes form work on above that I scribbled down while setting that stuff up two years ago

063. Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer

064. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

065.You’ve stopped reading this, haven’t you?

066. Harper’s magazine issues: Sep/05, May/00, Aug/04, May/04, Jun/04, Apr/04

067. Wired magazine issues: Dec/04, Feb/05, Oct/05, Aug/04, Jun/05, Dec/05, Apr/04

068. Canon G6 camera limited warranty card

069. Strabismus surgery post-op instructions

070. Three marbles

071. Aveda Foot Relief lotion

072. 30 Days to a Healthier Family by Peggy Hughes

073. Karate sparring glove

074. Two empty eyeglass cases

075. One earring

076. United Health Care Information Packet

077. Duplo elephant

078. Forty-two thousand legos (not really, but I didn’t want to count them all)

079. Cole-Haan shoe box lid

080. Jonah’s baby book

081. The wool cap I’m currently wearing

082. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

083. Directory from Reha’s freshman year in college

084. One styrofoam cup

085. One picture of Jonah at his day care’s Thanksgiving extravaganza from 2002

086. One rubber ball with these little spiny nubs all over it.

087. One travel box of baby wipes (empty)

088. Tongs that have been missing from the kitchen for over a year

089. Four dryer sheets

090. One hippo and one alligator from Ellis’ Noah’s ark toy

091. One flip flop (Carrie)

092. One frisbee

093. One plastic sippy cup (no lid)

094. Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club) issue Sep-Oct/05

095. Snowman stuffed animal

096. Runner’s World Training Log

097. The Atlantic issue Feb/05

098. One package of Thank You cards

099. A copy of the Bible that the Biker guys gave to Reha after Marji’s funeral in TX

100. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

101. More dust than I’d have thought possible

Apparently we need some bookshelves at our house, because there was a whole library under there. Last time I did this I found food in various states of decay, so at least we’ve cured people of eating in our bed.

It’s like a strange archeological dig, where you try to decipher what was happening from the crap that you’ve found. I tried not to editorialize too much, but I would like to add that I have NO idea what the tongs were doing under there (they are not some kind of weird “marital aid” I assure you) and that I loathe the Stephen R. Donaldson books with a white hot “white gold” passion.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/23/06 at 06:52 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Friday, January 20, 2006

The Poop-Meister!

The day has finally arrived! Let the heavens rejoice and all the heavenly host sing hosannas!

Ellis pooped in the potty. Wore big girl panties all evening and didn’t have an accident. Which is more than I can say for myself, frankly. (I’ll clean it up later, OK! Geez, not like I was going to leave the couch that way, doy!)

Potty training our children is always tricky business. Our kids are notoriously hard pig-headed and they don’t like to be told what to do. They don’t even like to hear suggestions on behavior modification. So we’ve bribed and cajoled and psychologically tortured and praised until they get it and are able to pretty much take care of business on their own. Carrie got Polly Pockets when she was successful, Lucas got a really cool outside car and Jonah was infatuated with those toy cars you can get at Chevron. Best $50/child we ever spent, let me tell you.

Ellis likes clothes so she gets to go shopping. Luckily she doesn’t know the difference between bargain bin and high end yet.

I’d post a picture, but no one wants to see that. And if you do, then you’ve obviously come to the wrong place.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/20/06 at 06:58 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Log 012

Ran 2.83 miles
27 minutes
Walked 20 minutes

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/19/06 at 11:34 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Running Log. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Feeling the Heat

We have heat now. Barely. Something was yea, verily broken on the furnace, though not the thermostat as I suspected.

And I’m an idiot.

Though my idiocy has been well documented on occasion and it’s always lurking there under the surface, I took away all doubt, at least in the mind of the Furnace Guy who came to visit yesterday afternoon and “tsk-tsk’ed” and clucked about the sorry state of affairs he found in our utility room.

When I began the demolition downstairs, one of the first things I did was dismantle a part of the return air duct, so I could properly tear out the wall. This left a gaping hole, not only in the wall, which was my intended purpose, but it also left a large UNFILTERED hole leading directly into the furnace. I then proceeded to kick out the jams and go to town on the old drywall in the ceiling.

Was I wearing a mask? Hell, yeah, I was. I’m an idiot, not a moron. That dust is nasty!

But I really, REALLY should have replaced the filter on the furnace. According to Furnace Guy, that should have been done every day while construction/demolition was in progress. Let me repeat that, EVERY day. Seems like a bit of overkill, but then I’m an idiot, remember? I didn’t even think about the poor furnace which has been sucking all that dust into itself and now basically has a case of Black Lung, as if I’d sent it to work in the coal mines just as it reached puberty.

Now we also have a bit of a fire hazard in the HVAC system, what with all the possibly flammable dust, in addition to screwing up some part who’s name I can’t recall. I started making reservations at the Holiday Inn, but Furnace Guy said he was being overly dramatic and that fire wasn’t actually imminent.  Just what I need, a thespian instead of a qualified HVAC guy. He probably really just wants to direct, anyway.

He replaced the damaged part and said that we should have the thing torn apart and cleaned and put back together.

“How much will that run us?”

“Well, we bid by the job, not the hour, but this here’s about the worst I ever seen.”

“Is this something that someone marginally handy and clever with a screwdriver and duct tape could handle?”

“I wouldn’t think so, sir, but you know on the side of our truck, we have a sign painted on there that says, ‘We fix do-it-yourself jobs!’”

“Wonderful. Well, I’ll take a swing and see what I can do with a Shop-Vac and call you in the morning.”

So I’m going to call the guy in the A.M. first thing. Because, though I am marginally handy and am freaking GENIUS with duct tape and I’ve been slightly clever on occasion, taking apart the furnace and putting it back together again just wasn’t in the cards last night. Plus, Ellis is sick and she’s gotten Reha sick as well. And if those two aren’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/19/06 at 07:04 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Geek Planet

We are all getting 23” Cinema Display flat panels!

Flat Panels! Huge Flat Panels! Flat Panels!
(insert sound of geek hyperventilation here)

*faints*

THUD.

And I can’t wait to get my grubby paws on Tiger server. And we’ll be putting 2 gig of RAM in each of those dual G5s workstations.

*faints again*

Ow.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/18/06 at 12:34 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Photos Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link
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