The car is fixed... wait, it was fixed, hang on...

Yesterday I took the car into the shop before work. It's got a laundry list of problems these days, the most concerning of which was the knocking sound coming from the front wheels when turning. I told the mechanic about all the problems, and he got to work trying to find out what the heck was going on.

I got a call back later that afternoon saying the car would be ready in the afternoon. So, I arranged to have Katie pick me up on the way to her internship so I could pay for the work and pick up the car before 5.

I killed some time before 4:45 or so, then headed back to pick the car up. I paid the damages ($600 or so :( ) and was told the car would be brought around to the front in just a second.

I get up and start pacing around, expecting the car to show up out front. 5 minutes go by and I don't see a thing. The lady who took my payment notices that it's been a bit, and goes to find out what's going on. She comes back and says that 'They had to wash your car, and now the check engine light is on. They're trying to turn it off." Wait, what?

Shortly, the guy at the shop who I'd explained the problems to earlier in the day came out and sat beside me... just like on Grey's anatomy or ER, where the family of a patient is in a waiting room and the doctor comes out all bloody, and sits down right next to you. He said, "We had an oil spill. We're having trouble getting your car to run right." Is she gonna make it, doc? I wasn't sure what in the heck was going on, but as he was talking to me, Katie was calling me for the second time to come get her from her internship. So, I asked him to just take care of it and I'd be back in 10 minutes or so.

I'm still not really sure of what happened in the first place, but when I got back from picking Katie up my car was ready out front. It looked to be in working order and the knocking noise had stopped. Somehow, someone had done something to my car that required a cleanup... and that cleanup messed up the car somehow. I don't really know what to think of the whole experience, since the car is working... but something crazy happened at the end that I'm in the dark about.

To work through my feelings I've resorted to art therapy.

Manual Zoom

XRM Radio - The best shoutcast station around

Photo by: CTaylor

I've been getting tired of my mp3 collection (again)... and also tired of trying to find new music. So, now that I've got my laptop, whenever I'm around the house I'm either listening to Sirius or XRM radio (a shoutcast internet radio station), the latter of which plays the much better collection of music for my tastes.

Have a look at the last few songs they've played :

• Spacehog - In The Meantime played 10 mins ago
• Godsmack - Greed played 13 mins ago
• Silverchair - Pure Massacre played 18 mins ago
• Green Day - Basket Case played 21 mins ago

Dishwalla - Counting Blue Cars is on right now. These are my kinds of songs... from my time. I haven't heard a single mention of a booty or what to do with it. The ying yang twins are nowhere to be found, and I'm thankful for that. Just the music I went through high school and college with.

If you've got player that is shoutcast compatible, then give them a try (click the link and choose open with... winamp or xmms. I think you'll be glad you did.

The real reason you're broke

Photo by: DonCristobal

I found a pretty stinking good article tonight related to personal finance - The real reason you're broke. From the article:

If you're constantly broke and can't figure out why, the answer may be sitting in your driveway.

This hit home with me. I don't know what Katie and I would be doing if we had to make a two to three hundred dollar payment for each of our cars each month. We'd probably be at each other's throat each month when it came time to pay bills. Luckily, neither one of us has a car payment (though tomorrow my car will be in the shop... and I'll soon be making a lump sum payment).

This weekend when we went to Dallas, Katie and I rode with my cousin, Scott, to Wendy's. I didn't know that he'd bought a lexus a year or so ago. After talking to him about it, I found out that he bought his '92 lexus, which is in immaculate condition, for less than what was paid for my car... a '97 honda accord that is shamed in comparison to the lexus. I realize that Dallas is a much better market for used cars, and that it's not a fair comparison, but it goes to show that you can have a nice, used car without breaking yourself in the process.

You eyeballin' me, bird!?

I've been having fun drawing my little stick figure re-creations of days events, real and imagined. Today, I'm presenting an artist's (that would be me <--mouseover) recreation of the first thing I saw this morning when I got to work.

I got out of my car, looked to my left and was met with a mockingbird's stare 3-feet from my face. It was perched (I'm tempted to say menacingly) on top of the truck parked next to me. I don't know how friendly you people are with wildlife, but I tend to not associate with mockingbirds. They're mean little boogers. So, having one this close to my unprotected eye balls was a little discomforting... I'm no traitor, but I know what happened to Judas.

I froze for a second and stared back at the bird, wondering why in the heck a bird was this close to a human. Turned to lock my car door (yes, I actually have to use the keys like they used to in the stone ages), and when I looked back the bird had run away... from the fight of it's life.

It's my opinion that there's nothing quite as envigorating as a man on beast fight in the morning to start a morning right. That and a white chocolate mocha, with whip... but never together. EVER. On any morning, you're likely to find me picking a fight with a squirrel, or a possum, or even a yorkie if it dare show its hairy behind.

Needless to say this morning I was disappointed to find that the bird had "chickened out" (the pun was very intentional). I'll find out soon enough if we will meet again one morning... until then bird.

Cozi Central, software for the family

Photo by: asifch

I ran across a great solution to a problem a lot of familes have - scheduling and communicating. Cozi Central, a web site and downloadable program aims to fix these problems by allowing familes to schedule events on a shared calendar that's accessible from any PC or mobile phone. Users also have the ability to share photos, notes and even keep a grocery list online. That grocery list business is something I could use. They keep track of the grocery list for you, and you can call the Cozi service and read the items on the list via mobile phone... great idea people.

The deal breaker may be the cost... it's free. Wait? Did I say deal breaker? I meant the best part of Cozi. It's supported by presenting "relevant content to families from a select group of sponsors." I'd be willing to put up with that for the grocery list feature alone.

Anywho, it sounds like a great application for families on the go, so I thought I'd mention it.

The latest work doodle

Today Kristina and I were talking about doctors, since I was considering making an appointment to see one, and she mentioned that her previous doctor was always at a conference or playing golf. She saw the Physician's assistant (PA) most of the time... which brought up the topic of how a PA is different from a doctor.

I knew a little since Taylor considered exploring what it took to be a PA. You have to shadow doctors or other PA's for many hours before you can even apply to the program to become a PA. All that to get to this drawing... my interpretation of what shadowing a PA looks like.

Vista Media Center and MPlayer11 codec crashes

Photo by: Cam in Van

After plenty of struggling with trying to get either windows media player 11 or vista's media center (probably the same video player) to open the latest episode of heroes (in xvid format) I think I've finally fixed it.

I had two different error messages that showed up throughout the process, and I believe both of those errors were due to having codecs installed that don't play well with Vista (though from what I've seen not much plays well with Vista). The first error was a MPlayer.exe error that said the faulting application was WMPlayer.exe and the faulting module was ntdll.dll. I also got an ehshell.exe crash when trying to view the same video in windows media center.

To fix these problems, I uninstalled the codec pack I installed (unfortunately, they were listed individually in Programs and Features). Then, I deleted the ehthumbs_vista.db file in the same folder as the video file I was trying to load (you may have to turn on viewing of protected operating system files) and finally I installed ffdshow to replace the uninstalled codecs.

These steps seemed to have whipped Vista back into shape. Now, I can get back to enjoying all the other little bugs Vista has in store for me.

Dallas trip - back in black...van.

We rented a van and headed to Dallas for the weekend, along with the folks, Taylor and Cosmo. We had a good time... so much of one that I'm bushed. I had enough energy to pick some pictures to upload to flickr, but now I've got to get to bed.

So, check out the pictures on our flickr site.

Valentine's day '07: the bad one

Photo by: SuperCapacity

Nothing really went the way it was supposed to yesterday. I sent Katie flowers, which showed up in a box with only half of the tulips I ordered. 15 short. Thank you 1800Flowers.com, for contributing to the valentine's day that didn't work out.

Playing the biggest role in our valentine's day was Jayne Marie's (formerly Smith's Cross Lake Inn) in Shreveport. We called ahead and made reservations for 7:30, since Valentine's is such a crazy night for dining out.

Throughout the hour and a half we were there, we were told no less than three times that our food was 6-8 minutes "out". We received two different menus with two different sets of prices for identical entrees. Water was spilled on a man at the table next to us. Our magical night with Jayne Marie's was brought to an end when our waiter (after an hour and a half) promised to go into the kitchen and check on our food. When he came back out with four salads for another table, we got up and headed for the door... to which our waiter said "You're food's coming". So is Jesus, buddy. We'd like to see both before we die.

It wasn't the waiter's fault. At one point in the night, shortly after the first promise of food within minutes, I could see him in the Kitchen pointing us out to his manager. However, though the waiter said he talked to his manager 4 times (1 of which I saw), his manager never came and spoke to us. If we were older or grayer, I imagine he would've been at the table groveling.

We later found out from another couple that had reservations later that night that Jayne Marie's ran out of baked potatoes, all appetizers except for lobster pot pie (yum), and all steak except for ribeye. They also waited an hour and a half... they got there at 8:30 and ate at 10. I hope they don't have an 8:00 rule like I do... eating after 8:00 brings bowel demons that cause windy ruffling sheets.

In the end, Katie had cereal and I had some biscuits (and blackberry jelly) for dinner. What a romantic dinner.

Our thanks go out to those companies and restaurants that made this valentine's day memorable... so memorable that we'll never be using either again. Thank you 1800flowers.com for your overpriced shipping and shabby, half-order flowers and thank you Jayne Marie's (or Smith's Cross Lake Inn) for the broken promises, shabby treatment and lack of skill in running a restaurant.

I can't let the post end on a bad note though... We both appreciated what we tried to do for each other, and ended up laughing at the end of the day about the disaster valentine's day had become this year. We snuggled up in bed and went to sleep just as happy as the night before (though wiser about two businesses to avoid).

The latest - Shiba++ & Houseguest

Tonight I returned Shiba, and returned from that return with Shiba++. I got the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death 10 or so times last night, and again once I got home today. I hadn't installed any drivers, or unsupported software. I could consistently get it to fail if I downloaded a large file from a secure site in firefox, then it would fail randomly during "repair mode". It got old very quickly. Lastly, the hard drive was clicking a bit one night, two or so nights ago. That was enough to scare me into another model of the same machine.

So, after 3 hours (no typo there) of waiting around in best buy, I ended up getting an A135-s4467 (blue and shiny) for $50 more than I paid originally for this one. It was also $150 less than Best Buy was charging for it currently... but I had them price match to Circuit City (those dirty dogs) and just paid the $50 difference between the adjusted price and what I paid.

The same kid that lied to me about the core 2 duo machine last time tried to push the "standard" geek squad work-the-customer over, screw-you-out-of-money-for-simple-things product on me. I still said no, and then no, and then no again, and finally, "I think I'll take my chances. I appreciate it, but no." He rolled his eyes (like last time) in disbelief and acted annoyed that he wouldn't see his commission. That's all the news on the 'puter front.

In a recent development on the home front, Katie's little sister is going to be staying with us for a few months (maybe less, or more... who knows). So, we have a new housemate. I didn't think we'd have a teenager living here before a pup, but these things do happen. I'm glad to have her here... and I know Katie's excited about it too.

Tennis match #2 - Loss

Our team had the second match of the season today, and it turned out that I wasn't going to be playing with my brother, as I originally thought. I heard mid-week from our team captain that Taylor would play singles and that I'd play doubles with Chris (Katie's uncle). Well, by yesterday, another of our members backed out of the match, so Chris volunteered for singles, which left me with another guy I'd never met.

I got there this morning, and I'd been paired with an 83 year-old man. In most other sports that would mean certain defeat, but ... the man was good. I've learned never to doubt older people in racquet sports, after the 80 year old racquetball player at tech that routinely humiliated active 20 something players. He held his own today, but I let my game go (even though I was up a few notches from last week). We won the first set quickly, which I served, and after that your guess is as good as mine as to where that ability to win went.

The whole match (just like the doubles game with Taylor last week) have gone to high numbers in each game, but when it comes down to a deuce (40-40) and our chance to win a game is on the line, we (or more likely, I) don't play consistently.

I think the strategy for a beginner like me is going to be based largely on just getting the ball back over the net. Most of the time, the other team is messing up just as much as we are, hence the close scores. It's just that by trying to place shots perfectly, in addition to getting them over the net, I'm increasing the likelihood that I'll mess up before my opponent. So, new gameplan - play defensively, and get the ball over the net as many times as possible. Make them be consistent.

One last note - I was looking around on the USTA website and found that last week our team didn't win a single match. We were up against the best team in the league supposedly, but we didn't get any. The only set our team won was the set we won in a tie-breaker last week. I'm anxious to see how our guys did this week.

There's a pup on the prowl!

Ted, the lovable lab, is making a stop at our house tonight since Chris and Ann won't be home until tomorrow. He's already visited both the toilets to sample the goods, while Katie tried to follow the 80 pound pup, keeping him out of trouble as he acquainted himself with the digs.

On the way over, even though it was 35 or so outside, he hung his big ol' horse head out of the window and let his ears flap around in the breeze. He's 100% dog, I tell ya.

We took him outside for a walk just after we got in, so he could water the yard, and maybe fertilize it a bit. He drug me around like a rag doll through the neighborhood, practically choking himself for the first two or three minutes or so. When I couldn't feel my hands or ears anymore, we came back inside and Ted managed to sneak another drink from the toilet where Katie had forgotten to put the lid down.

The best part of the visit so far has to be the big toilet water soaked smooch he gave me on the mouth right as I sat down in my man chair to get on the computer. Lovely. Regardless of the negatives, the more I have Ted around the more I want to have a big dog like him around, as my own... and conversely, the more Katie is determined to get a constipated, hairless chihuahua.

Katie, the gainfully employed

The wife accepted a job today - her first job in her field, so if you know how to reach her, give her a congratulatory call. She'll start at the beginning of March, and will be working with troubled kids. I hope she'll be safe, and that she'll be able to help these kids get straightened out.

Within the next few days, she'll hand in notice at the bank... and I'm sure she'll miss the people there... but we're both excited about the new job. Congratulations, Katie.

Tennis: Night one

Taylor, Chris (Katie's uncle) and I signed up for a USTA (US Tennis Association) team, playing for one of the local country clubs here in town. Tonight was our first night of play. Somehow it ended up that they only needed one more team of doubles to play, so Taylor and I volunteered. I'm not sure whether the tennis pro at the country club called Chris to let him know... or if the night was full or what. I tried to get a hold of him to let him know we started tonight, and that he might not be playing, but I couldn't reach him.

Anywho, Taylor and I played against another team from a country club in town, though I don't know which one. Randy and Charles... they put up a good match and ended up beating us in two back to back tie-breakers - one for the second set and then another for the match (the whole she-bang).

My poor little legs were wobbling after the beginning of the second set, and at one point I jumped to hit a lob and my leg buckled a bit. Next time, I'll be sure to prepare and fix myself a meal in the morning, or at least have something around that I can grab and eat on the way to the match. Tonight I only had a biscuit when I got home, then changed clothes and left. We played for about an hour and a half.

Most of the time I don't mind losing... if I knew that we were just outclassed, or if it was something I didn't think I had a shot at. Tonight, though, I thought we should have won. I just played terribly. I played well at the beginning of the game, but my game fell slowly apart and that bugs me. I think the guys we played against were good - I have to give them credit - but I played like Rex Grossman at the super bowl.

I'm looking forward to next week. Maybe I'll do better. One thing's for sure, I'll be practicing up over the next few weeks.

Movable Type Comment Spam - easy solution

Yesterday, after talking to my brother, who said he still wasn't able to post a comment on my site, I decided to try to resolve this problem once and for all. Not only the problem of the comments just plain not working, but also the comment spam that immediately became overwhelming after disabling the spam script that was preventing most viewers from commenting.

So, I checked the first problem - Taylor not being able to comment - by having Taylor post a comment while I waited. It worked, so we can only assume that in deleting the 200 comments worth of spam from I also managed to delete Taylor's comment.

The second problem, the dreaded comment spam... I tried to implement some sort of CAPTCHA program, which generates an image with a few letters that you must re-type in a textbox to be able to post a comment. However, my webserver doesn't have a perl module (piece of software) necessary to use it.

After a bit of searching, I came across a pretty darn good solution from StefanGeens.com. I would add another text field to the comment spam, which would have to contain a certain word... I'd then add that word to the comment script and require that the word a commenter types into the text field matches that word. Since comment spammers don't actually look at the site they're trying to spam (unless they're really determined) they won't know the word and their comment spamming will fail that word check.

It's worked so far. I haven't had a single comment of the spam type since I made that change.

I think the problems with the comments have finally been resolved.

Laptop? Yes, I'll take one...and name her Shiba.

I'm sitting in bed right now. Yes, sitting in bed. Posting. I admit it feels a little bit dirty, but I can get over that.

Yep, over it now.

Katie and I went out shopping for Randi and Bill's wedding presents tonight, and since we were on the Shreveport side, we figured we'd go to a restaurant on the Youree drive side of town. We tried Olive Garden, but the crowd and the wait were insane. So, I suggested IHOP, since Katie had been craving it for the last few weeks.

Well, something in the food must've hit Katie funny. I think it may have been the syrup, coming to my aid after being the cause of such contempt in my dinner table experiences. Katie decided she was ok with me getting a laptop tonight. She was on a sugar high, and I was just sneaky enough to take advantage of it. My momma didn't raise no fool!

So, after visiting Office Depot and Best Buy, I ended up with a Toshiba A135-S4427. I would check the stickers to make sure that's the right model, but Katie's asleep and it's dark in here... oh, the wonders of mobile computing.... Anywho, I'll probably shop around for another gig of memory to make photoshop stomachable (haven't even loaded it yet), but other than that it's pretty responsive. The screen is great, the keys are just right, and the build quality seems pretty good. I think it's a well made little laptop.

I almost bought a Gateway MT6821, but was turned off by some things I read. Anywho, the Best Buy kid tried to tell me this Toshiba had a core 2 duo and that the spec sheet was a misprint. I asked him a few times and he kept to his story... even though I got the salepaper and saw the core duo... I knew it was core duo. Oh well, it was $200 cheaper than the core 2 duo version with 2 hard drive that I initially wanted at Office Depot, but this one had an instant rebate (hugs and kissed, best buy, manly hugs and kisses). So, Office Depot people, if you're reading this... that's why you lost a sale.

Oh, and last thing here... the kid who told me (repeatedly) that this was a core 2 duo machine also rolled his eyes when I told him I didn't want the free Geek Squad 30 minute check-up. He commented to one of the real geek squad guys "Hey, these people don't want the geek squad thing"... and rolled his eyes. The geek said "...and that's ok" and kept on with what he was doing. Bad customer experience there, but I knew what I wanted... so everything worked out.

I need a dog

Now that Katie and I know that we can have a fence, getting a dog is inevitable. We have to wait until the spring for sod and the fence though, so it'll be at least a few months... and probably even after our April vacation (Colorado condo for a week, more to come soon).

Anywho, until then I'm left clicking on any stray dog images I see. Today I found a photo set on flickr of a family of dogs (mostly just a golden retreiver named Sconey). He's a beautiful dog...

Movable Type Comments - fixed

So, I've fixed most of the problems with the comments on the blog - this after realizing that I couldn't even post a comment to my own blog. I was originally just trying to save myself some time by finding a commenting plugin which would let me reply to comments directly from within the administration page. After trying to get regular ol' comments to work, I was dumbfounded. Johnny and Chuck have been able to post comments... but I can't even post one to my own site.

Well, here I am three hours later and now I can post a comment to my own blog. Apparently, an old script called MTKeystrokes, or something similar, that I used at one point to prevent comment spam decided that my comments weren't going to go through. So, I disabled that, and worked a little bit to make the commenting part look a little better and now I think the comment system is working... though it's still moderated. So, I'll have to approve comments before they go public.

I've already gotten about 10 spam comments, in the 15-20 minutes that the comment script has been up and running properly. It's amazing the lengths these spammers will go to.

So, let me celebrate my new found commentdom by advertising two recent comments that I've just now been able to respond to. Johnny, I posted a comment to the FJ Cruiser blog entry. Chuck, I responded to your wii comments.

Lastly, to anyone who tried to comment, but never got a response... I'm not ignoring you. Even my comments looked like they went through (without error or notice) but just never showed up. So, people, keep posting when you've got something to say. I'm not ignoring you.

Home early today

I'm home early today. This morning I went back to the dentist to get a crown put on (after my root canal two weeks ago). While the dentist was fooling around in there, I went ahead and told them to get the cavity in the tooth next to the crown. So, I got some more anesthetic, more drilling, and more spit on my face.

At around noon the anesthetic started to wear off, and shortly after I realized that my new crown and the filling weren't going to be easy on my nerves like it was two weeks ago... and that's odd since the root canal actually goes directly into the nerve, mashes it up and takes it out. Anywho, I couldn't concentrate at work with the throbbing and the pain, so here I am at home.

Eventually, I got on the computer here and took a look at the comments on the blog and realized that it's way too hard to reply to comments here. I see the comments, and approve them all before they go out. There's just no direct way to say, "Hey, thanks for the comment." Or even just a reply button. So, I'm downloading a plugin... which requires an update to movable type (my blogging client)... that should help with this.

So far, because of the trouble, I've avoided commenting too heavily since it requires more work than I'm willing to put in just to reply... even when being taunted about selling the wii. So, hopefully this will address the comment issue, because I know I'm not going to be addressing my laziness issue anytime soon.