Men's Night

I went with a few guys from work up to Blue Mountain Monday night for Men's Night. On Monday night men ski/snowboard for $19.

It was pretty nice and conditions were good. I surprised myself after not snowboarding for two years and not falling.

I overdressed and found myself in a locker room tying my long-johns and an extra shirt around my waste as I was too far from the car to make the change. I spent the rest of the night worried my jacket would ride up and some punk-ass kids would make fun my ingenuity.

They didn't.

There was another guy there that was all Whistler this and Whistler that.

This was a shot of me riding the two person lift with him going out of my mind. Luckily the "bra tree" fascinated him enough to stop with the Whistler crap for a little while.

Though I've never been there, I suspect they have one too.

So Monday night was snowboarding and last night was the bar with the boys. Almost sounds like a nice week if I hadn't spent 11 hours at work Tuesday and 12 hours yesterday.

Maybe one day I'll get to see my wife again and use all this money I'm making to buy her dinner.

Woohoo!

- b

Who's Scamming Who?

We received a warning today at work about the following email scam. I'm not sure what's worse - people actually falling for this crap or my company thinking its employees would?

From: KIII [mailto:deadlykillers60@yahoo.es]
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 3:41 PM
Subject:

Hello,

I am very sorry for you , is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don't comply. As you can see there is no need of introducing myself to you because I don't have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that. Someone you call a friend wants you Dead by all means, and this person have spent a lot of money in this venture, This person came to us and told me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name ,picture and other necessary information's we needed about you. So I sent my boys to track you down and they have carried out the necessary investigation needed for the operation on you, and they have done that but I told them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see if your life is important to you.I called my client back and ask him of your email

The end is missing, but really - is this necessary?

- b

Dog Booties

CJ's old and has problems with his paws in the snow. My guess is the circulation in his paws isn't enough to keep them warm enough and the snow from freezing on them. Once they start to freeze, he spends more time stopped and licking his paws then happily trotting down the trail.

The solution was dog booties. There are all kinds and I've tried most of them. The majority of them suck, the rest don't fit. CJ has skinny ankles and paws, so booties tend to slip off of him. We've had this pair for a while

Their concept was nice - little leather insulated sacks for his paws with a leveraged velcro strap to keep them on, but the materials are crap. They're falling apart and they fall off of him. So much for that $45. Yesterday we found a pair that looked like they'd really work and only cost $15, so we got them.

Their concept is a little different. These look and fit more like socks, but have rubber soles. They were long, so we were hoping to use more of his leg to hold them up over his skinny ankles. The problem was they were double layered. They had an inside layer of material and an outside. When you tried sliding his paws in, his claws caught the inside layer independent of the outside and got stuck. Even if you rolled them all the way down to the rubber sole and put them on, they slid around enough to catch the inner layer on his claws and come off in a matter of minutes. He didn't even make it to the car.

So back to the relatively less crappy ones.

It's funny. People see him and say "Look at those. I need to get those for my dog!" at which point I cringe. They say this with their dog next to them and mine next to me - in the snow. The only difference is mine wouldn't be there if he didn't have the booties. If their dog is there without the booties, then how bad can it be? Is it bad enough to fight with these stupid things?

Then again if CJ didn't have such skinny paws and ankles, maybe the booties wouldn't be such a pain and I wouldn't be so sour about them.

Maybe I wouldn't be so sour about a lot of things.

Not likely.

We had a good two hour hike around French Creek.

Just to prove me wrong, the booties worked flawlessly.

They're still crap.

- b

Dog Training

Saturday Gretchen and CJ started Intermediate Dog training at Petsmart with Albert.

It's easier to train her if he's on board, so we enrolled them both. Class was mostly uneventful with only one other student. His name is Rex (Roxy in the first class now Rex?). He's a really cute four and a half month old English Black Lab. The biggest thing we learned was the dogs need a longer hike before class. A walk around the park used to be adequate for Gretchen when she was in puppy class, but the hike we did before yesterdays class was not.

Rest of the day was domestic chores with grocery shopping, dinner and dishes. For not having done a whole lot, I was exhausted. Recovering from the work week sucks.

Jen's NYC pictures are up. You can find them here.

- b

Snow Day!

It's not like I had off work, but I did play a little...

Current Front

Future Front
Current Back
Future Back

Without the icky siding of course.

- b

Bad Dreams

Last night I dreamt I was in some kind of club or bar that had dog fights on a regular basis. The pieces and parts of dogs that lost were lying about the floor all dried up and rotten with tufts of fur collecting around them in piles.

What the hell is that all about?

- b

A Day Alone

These back to back 9 - 5 design meetings are killing me.

I need a day alone - working from home to recharge my introverted sensibilities.

Better yet, I need a vacation.

- b

Upon Further Review

The new bumper is only scuffed. Considering the headaches we're experiencing over the first incident, we'll count ourselves lucky on this one and leave it at that.

- b

Lunar

At least the eclipse is pretty.

- b

They Come in Threes

People were joking when I got in two accidents within a week that a third was coming.

It came.

Not to me, but the same car.

Jen got rear-ended in a hit-and-run in the Subaru tonight.

She's fine - so far.

Anyone have experience with this sort of thing? The cops didn't seem to care. They wouldn't/didn't come out for an accident report. How do I report this to insurance?

- b

Back Again

Got the car back from the body shop.

It's still not fixed.

- b

Usability Issues

Apparently my navigation buttons

in the recent picture pages weren't obvious enough, so I made new ones.

They're not pretty and they don't depress like buttons should, but hopefully users get the point.

- b

The Deer Trap

My mom has a deer problem. Actually she has a neighbor problem, but the deer are the only thing you can legally take action on. Her neighbor feeds the deer. They're all over the place. Her entire yard is covered in deer poop. All her plants have been trampled or eaten.

Now there's my dad - a retired crafty type with nothing better to do then F with stuff, so he rigged up a deer trap.

Ingredients for said deer trap:

• Rat trap screwed to log in yard
• String tied to rat trap trigger then strung across yard to a tree with pressure relief located roughly 18" from trap - without pressure relief device (a brick), the string was heavy enough to set off trap by itself
  
• Trap contact area (i.e. death zone) wrapped in metal
• Metal death zone area attached to a wire attached to positive post on tractor battery
• Rat Trap spring attached to a wire attached to negative post on tractor battery
• One attached wire has a "fuse area" - a much lighter wire coiled like a filament in a light bulb
• Black Cat firecrackers intertwined in "fuse area"

When the trap is set, the metal contact area is contacted by the spring and the battery is shorted through the "fuse area" causing the thinner wire to burn and catch the fire cracker fuses.

BAM! POW! CRACK!

The deer scatter.

- b

The Ten Hour Party

We hit the World Cafe's Beats, Brews & BBQ beer festival yesterday. We got VIP tickets so it started at noon for us.

It was a good show. There weren't any lines for the beer, the food was ok and the bands were entertaining. As far as the beer goes, the only thing I remember really liking was Heavy Seas Loose Cannon. It was a tasty IPA.

After the brew fest, we grabbed a bite to eat, then headed over to Jay and Aileen's for Aileen's surprise 30th birthday party. Somehow she figured it out, so it wasn't much of a surprise for her.

It was fun anyway. Long day of drinking, but fun.

- b

Some Old Friends

Stopped by the other night
They'll be around a few weeks, before I get some new ones.

- b

Report Card

Makes it sound like I didn't wait my turn.

- b

Damage Done

Got the car back. Total bill was $5500. KBB value is around $8000.

Hmmmmm.

It's not fixed. It has to go back.

- b

Sorry IE Users

Besides the fact you should be using Firefox, I didn't code the Jeep page alternatives in a way that IE should have interpreted them.

I've fixed the issue, so Let's try this again.

Original new format - use your arrow keys for navigation: Jeep 1
Like the old, but slightly different - not the entire album: Jeep 2
Most likely to use in future - use arrow keys for navigation: Jeep 3

- b

Forgot What Winter Was Like

I had the weekend from hell that included, but was not limited to, an emergency visit to the vet. Jen's weekend, on the other hand, was quite nice. More on both of those later.

Got the Jeep pictures up. I played around with a new format. I started out with one, then based on some preliminary feedback came up with some alternatives. Check 'em out and let me know what you think.

Original new format - use your arrow keys for navigation: Jeep 1
Like the old, but slightly different - not the entire album: Jeep 2
Most likely to use in future - use arrow keys for navigation: Jeep 3

- b

My Day

dreams, anxiety, anxiety-driven dreams

5:30am alarm

take dog out into foggy pre-dawn morning

feed dogs and cat

feed myself eggs I was supposed to eat earlier in the week

call Sprint about lost phone

call voicemail of lost phone

call Sprint about voicemail of lost phone

call body shop. Find out they're being perfectionists

call Sprint again about voicemail of lost phone

take dog for humid-windy morning walk

leave for work

watch crows vainly attack hawk

stop at police station and pay for copy of accident report I didn't cause

get to work

Manufacturing Cost Accounting, Outlook, HR, LTD, IM, hierarchies, command chains, state machines, fortresses, message dispatchers, UML, class diagrams, process flows, MVC, actual costing, gl posting, SSO, CAS, permission checks, javax, VO, data trees, rearchitecting the architecture

talk to the nice people at AT&T. get a new phone and plan

get lunch

talk to nice people at AT&T to get people at Sprint to give me my number

screw work, play with new phone

back to work, C-level demo practice-runs, ajax, web 2.0, debug, config, code, model, QA, business analyst, product manager, design clarification, accounting principles = software logic

leave work and go home

feed animals, water plants, play with phone more

beers with friends. realize how much more fun friends are then work. play ultimate Frisbee. Miss beard. Get beat and knocked down.

drive home with halloween head and fog-light jets.

clean up dog pee after three weeks of no "accidents".

ruin an almost ok day.

go to bed too late. tomorrow already more difficult then it will need to be.

- b

Lost

If you happen to get a call from my cell phone over the next couple of days, it's probably not me.

I lost my phone.

I hope it's gone for good. I'm pretty sure I can deal with not having a phone for a little bit and I'm pretty sure I can deal with having to re-enter all my contacts, but having someone else find it and access all that would suck.

- b