I’m Not a Slacker

Some people might think you’re a bit crazy for putting your 2 month old in the microwave for 20 seconds and telling them that Satan made you do it won’t change their minds.

I’m going to start a new photo segment here called “Leash Kids” Mostly since I don’t understand the thinking behind it at all. Is it really that freakin’ hard to keep an eye out for what your child is doing or HOLD HIS/HER HAND?!

Here is the first few of my new section.

Nothing like taking up 3 times the space you need while walking through a crowded Zoo.

I don’t even know what to say about this one.

I used to be a very dedicated cyclist, I would put 1000 miles on my road bike and 1000 riding singletrack on my mountain bike in a year but all that ended about 10 years ago when I started working 3rd shift. At first I thought I would ride more but it turned out that the last thing I wanted to do after working 8 hours was to ride my bike. Plus I grew weary of riding the same trails over and over so I gradually got more into computers and sitting on my ass and never really thought about the 2 bikes taking up space in my basement. Until a month ago.

Gavin and I were walking a paved trail around a local lake and we kept getting passed by people on bikes towing trailers and all of a sudden I realized how much I missed riding. I decided I would save up my money from my 2 day a month paid job to get a trailer and my bike going. I had to get some pedals with toe-clips since my feet didn’t fit in my clipless shoes and they don’t make onza pedals anymore, but the bike was ready to go (still covered in 10 year old Chubb Trail mud)!

Yesterday I hooked up the trailer($174 at Costco!) and took my first ride and it was FUN! Granted I only rode about 1/2 a mile but it’s nice. It’s a bit difficult since I don’t have gloves and my titanium racing seat isn’t nearly as comfortable as it used to be, but today when I rode to the local grocery and filled the trailer with charcoal and beer for BBQ tonight it felt a little better. It will take time I know and I still haven’t given Gavin a ride since he doesn’t have a helmet yet, but we should have that taken care of this week.

Anyway, enough typing, I’m going to see if I can make 3 miles today!

We just got back from our week long vacation in Chicago. It was pretty fun but not very relaxing when you’re dealing with a 3 year old who needs to nap 2-3 hours a day. It was better than it could have been since he would sleep through a bus-bus-train-bus-3 block stroller walk-two story staircase-bed transfer, and then nap for ANOTHER HOUR! He slept pretty good at night too.

I’d like to think he had fun but I think all he remembers is sitting in buses and trains and restaurants. Luckily there was a public park with playground directly across from where we were staying so he was able to have his own ME time!

I’ll post pictures once I get around to moving them from the fileserver to the webserver.

Boy that Gary Bettman, he sure knows how to run a sports league. First he shuts it down for a year, then he signs a TV agreement to a station that not many people get with a bit of playoff hockey on NBC tossed in during the weekends.

Today I’m finally able to watch a game, since we don’t get Versus, and its an incredible one between Ottawa and Buffalo. It’s a tie game getting ready to go into overtime, you have to understand that if Ottawa wins then they are going to the Cup Finals! It’s a very important game.

So they play out regulation and I’m all excited to see overtime. Overtime in hockey is very exciting since the game can end at any second, it’s whoever scores first. I’m all excited and then I hear that the game IS BEING MOVED TO VERSUS!!!

WHAT. THE. HELL?

And get this, they are moving it so they can show PRERACE footage OF A GAWDDAMN HORSE RACE that won’t even be happening FOR AN HOUR!!!!

Yay for the NHL and it’s Saviour Gary Bettman, you sure are helping hockey.

Anyone know who won?

What an afternoon! For the past month I’ve been working on switching my 10 year old NT Domain controller over to SME Server. I’ve had the files copied for a while and using the new one with the old as backup, everything seemed to be working good so today I took the NT box offline and make SME server the new Domain controller.

None of the windows machines could log in.

Not that they couldn’t log into the domain, they couldn’t log into the local box since the domain was different and I guess I never bothered to allow the users to log in on a local machine. After messing with it for about an hour I got everything (shares, printing, passwords) working again.

SME Server seems to be a nice piece of software and I’d recommend it to anyone looking to have a dedicated fileserver in their network.

I hope this was a Birthday you’ll never forget, I know I already have.

I have no idea what is in the air lately but it is driving my allergies crazy! I usually have a problem with hayfever but it’s normally manageable, this year it has rendered me helpless. I think it might be due to the “Double Spring” we had here. All the flowers and trees sprouted and then a heavy frost hit for two weeks and now everything is sprouting again.

I started off with Claritin which usually works and doesn’t make me sleepy but it didn’t do a thing. I then moved the old standby Actifed, I took one and then 2 hours later I had to take another, because my eyes were watering and the roof of my mouth was itching.

I go to my friends house to help him figure out a way to hang his canoe and kayak and after an hour my eyes were pretty much swollen shut and I was sneezing so hard I couldn’t even hold anything up. I go into the bathroom to try and wash my eyes out (they felt like they were full of sand) and when I look in the mirror my eyes were a deep red with no whites visible at all! I stumble around in his medicine cabinet and find some Benadryl and pop that in my mouth. It seemed to do the trick, my eyes stopped itching and I was a bit more useful.

The next day we went to Grant’s Farm, which probably wasn’t the best idea since the allergies started up again. I was kinda scared driving home since I could barely keep my eyes open they were bothering me so bad. I get home, take an actifed and sleep for the next 4 hours (gotta love 3 year olds that nap in the afternoon!)

That night I was out with family and complaining about my condition and my sister-in-law and my brother both said they use Allegra and she had some I could try. It seems to work better but it puts me in a deep fog, not enough to make me sleep but out of it enough that it would be better if I was. I feel like I’ve been drinking beer all afternoon at a Cardinals game.

Normally I find an interesting story and spend a while trying to come up with a funny lead into it. This time I’m just going to cut and paste from the article’s headline.

“If you put a toddler in a casino’s day care, make sure you save enough of your bankroll to get him out.”

Last night a horrible thing happened, the connection light on my DSL modem started blinking red.
I’ve had my service for 8 years and it’s always been there when I needed it so I called “Tech Support” and after calling 3 different times I finally got someone who would listen to me and understand that it wasn’t my computers (I’m a legacy customer and my connection doesn’t work like they do now) so they set up a repairman to come out and look at it.

It turned out that my modem finally bit the dust after all those years of use so I bought a new one from them and everything is working again!

It was a real rough 12 hours too. I couldn’t know what the weather was going to be or what my playgroup was going to do today. (well actually that’s not true, there is an open wireless router somewhere nearby that I borrowed for a bit)