Tag: computer

Weekend Geeking

College work is exhausting – just ask the two sleeping kitties on my lap. We did college stuff before supper, and they slept on my lap the whole time. Then after supper, they’ve been sleeping again while I worked on college stuff. Just takes it out of ’em, I tell ya.

Been doing heavy-duty geeking of late. I managed to clear out 50GB of crap from my main PC yesterday. I’m trying to get my photos more organized in preparation for the Plustek 7200 that dad & I are buying. I’m going to scan all my old slides into my PC and need to get things more organized before I double (or triple) the quantity of photos. I’ve installed Picasa (for now) to see if the tagging feature is what I’m needing to help with organization. Not sure if this is the program I’ll want, though. I certainly don’t want/need the online features. If I want to put photos online, I have Coppermine Galleries for that. I was disappointed to find that their “name tag” feature is only available with their online portion.

So, photo folks – what do you use for photo organization on your PCs? Is Picasa the one? Or is there something else out there? I do have Jasc’s Media Center Plus available to me, which has “keywords” rather than “tags.” (Well, it’s pretty ancient as far as software goes, but it’s already paid for as part of Paint Shop Pro 7.5.)

Another geeky thing I did was upgrade phpbb from 3.03 to 3.04. It’s the software that my family cookbook uses. And I broke my cookbook. 3 times, in fact. I got better at uploading the backup with each upgrade attempt. But I finally got it upgraded properly. Heh.

With my 50GB extra free space on my PC, I did my third major geeky thing – I installed Virtual Box and Winders 7. I must say, I like Virtual Box a lot better than VMWare. And Winders 7 installed just fine (albeit SLOWLY) as a virtual machine. It’s shiny like Vista. And the taskbar looks more like Linux than it has a right to. Heh. (Probably looks different with Aero fully implemented, but I haven’t given it enough graphics power for Aero.) I hope Micro$oft doesn’t bloat it up before release. It might be the OS to upgrade to (unless I finally discover that I can do everything I want with Linux). I might create another Virtual Box for an Ubuntu install, too. 🙂

Horror of Horrors!

No, my house hasn’t been invaded by ghoulies & ghosties in honor of Halloween – instead my main PC’s power supply went kaput yesterday. And college is overwhelming me this week.

But before I go there, I shall post a photo of me in my Halloween costume this year. (Yesterday was dress up day at school.)


The Good Grade Fairy (she’s on strike, so earn your own good grades!)

I had fun making that costume (the shirt says “The Good Grade Fairy”). Most people got it, too. Heh. The A-wand was something dad & I made together. He soldered the A and drilled the hole into the wood dowel that was the wand. I wrapped the A in red yarn and glued it into the wand. Then covered the wand base with purple duct tape. Basically, I wanted an excuse to buy fairy wings and The Good Grade Fairy was that excuse. 🙂

So, yesterday I get home from work and when I get into my den, I notice my main PC wasn’t on. In fact, my music server isn’t on either. I power up the music server and it starts just fine, however powering up my main PC gets nada. I did all the tricks I could think of, but no go on the PSU. Well, bummer.

I headed next door & asked the parentals if the power was off at our end of town today (it wasn’t off at the school any). Dad said that they had replaced a telephone pole and the power was indeed out for an hour & a half. That’s when my PCs went off unexpectedly. “So, anyone up for an emergency run to Staples?” I asked. (No nearby PC repair shops, but thankfully the Staples in Troy has PSUs and some other useful computer parts.)

Dad thought that sounded like a good idea. He said he should look at PC prices and maybe laptops for mom. Mom of course perked up and asked to come along too. We didn’t have long to be out & about however since it was after 4pm and Beggar’s Night began at 6pm.

I found a 500W Antec PSU that’s supposedly “cooler, quieter, greener” (than what, I dunno – it didn’t say). After I bought it, mom was standing in the aisle looking dejected. Didn’t we come to look at laptops for her? Heh. So we returned to the laptop area where she saw a purty HP for $700. It’s a 17″ widescreen which has a proper number pad on it. She also found a case that would fit it. (It’s probably no heavier than the 6 year old Dell she’s been using.)

We returned home where I straightened up the house a bit before my vast numbers of Trick or Treaters would start showing up. Then I nuked some soup and put Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on while I waited for the hordes.

I thought that I might actually get a few more kids this year than last because one of the main streets in town was torn up due to road work. However, I only got about 15 kids! I usually get 40-some kids (though one year got over 70 kids). I asked around at work today (only a teacher work-day, so no kids) and I wasn’t the only one getting few kids last night.

After 8pm, I returned to mom & dad’s to help them with a few Vista issues. I wound up staying past 10pm working on the thing. It’s very purty and the only thing it’s being truly stubborn on is in installing the Minolta printers. That particular printer is a few years old now so dad’s thinking maybe getting the $100 Brother wireless laser one of these days.

So I never got around to installing my power supply last night. Work today, as I mentioned already, was just us teachers. I had two groups of chemistry kids in my lab filming their Periodic Table Videos (one group putting alkali metals into water and the other group using the lab to be a mad scientists lair. They got every beaker, flask, and test tube out of their chemistry drawers, put colored water in all, then added dry ice that they’d brought with ’em. I think these videos are going to be a blast this year). I went to Indian’s Pizza for lunch and tried their spaghetti & meatball. Tasty! I didn’t get the quarter exams graded, but I got a lot of other stuff accomplished.

Our teacher’s association has a social committee this year and they have come up with several social events. Today we had such an event – after work, going to Applebee’s for half-price appetizers (and booze) and fellowship. It was quite fun – we were there a good two hours.

When I got home, I FINALLY put my new PSU into my PC. It wasn’t easy at first, but when I finally got it jiggled in properly, it worked just fine. Indeed, I am typing this from my main PC. Yay!

After I finished that, I returned to mom & dad’s to work more on mom’s laptop. And now I’m home to play on my own computer. 🙂

In other news, this weekend I’m going to have to batten down the hatches on my college work. What I really need this week is a “spring break.” I haven’t worked one jot on one course this week (the one which requires near daily output) and haven’t read any of the material for the other course. With the quarter exams to grade this weekend as well, I’m going to be a very busy trina. Blech. Still, it will start out nice cuz it’s pancake day at the UCC tomorrow and the folks are buying my pancakes. Here’s hoping that gets me nicely productive for the weekend.

Gracious Hostesses

Amy & Rachel have been wonderful hostesses. And excellent slave drivers. 🙂

Friday night, their friend Melissa joined us (it was her 33rd birthday) and Rachel drove us to the Craftsman Restaurant. This restaurant focuses on using only local ingredients and then making superb dishes with them. A&R and I had surfed their site looking through their menu (and looking terms up on Google and Wikipedia) and had pretty much decided what we wanted. We met seven other people at the restaurant for our birthday gathering.

I decided to start with an amaretto sour and ordered the pork rillettes with crostini, mustard, and pickles as an appetizer, which I shared with A&R and anyone else interested in trying it. It was very yummy! For my entree, I had picked the confit of rabbit leg with creamy polenta and a sauté of greens garnished with a honey gastrique. It was heavenly. And Amy wanted to marry it. The sautéed greens were kale and very yummy. I tasted Amy’s order too, braised beef short ribs with spaghetti squash and braised root vegetable. Also yummy and with the best spaghetti squash I’d had. (Amy suspected it was simply seasoned with salt and pepper.) For dessert, I ordered the chocolate boca negra (which came with creme fresh, which I had to scrape off. Blech.) I also had a bite of one of Rachel’s cinnamon beignets.

We were at the restaurant for two and a half hours, enjoying the food and the company. I think Melissa had a very nice birthday indeed. I know I enjoyed her birthday! Heh.

Just as we were heading home, Melissa realized she couldn’t find her phone. So Rachel pulled over, Amy called the phone – no ringtone in the car. So Rachel drove back to the restaurant. Melissa checked inside all the while Amy dialed and redialed the number. Then Melissa walked down the sidewalk toward where we’d parked earlier in the evening. Sure enough, when we got to where the car had been, there was her cell phone ringing away on the sidewalk. Crisis averted.

We returned to the house and got ready for bed. I worked a bit on coursework and finally went to sleep on the futon in their “den” on the second floor.

The next morning, I got up when Amy & Rachel were getting ready for Rachel to get to work. (Amy had to drive her there). Meanwhile, I decided to get online to check the weather in order to know what to wear. Unfortunately, the USI modem (really an antenna, receiver, amplifier, router) wasn’t working. I tried rebooting it a couple of times, but still no go. I found a weather channel on Amy’s TV and saw it was going to be a nice day, so picked out my long-sleeve t-shirt instead of one of my sweat shirts.

After my shower, Amy was back so I told her about the tech troubles. She agreed that I should call tech support, so I did. After awhile on hold, I talked with a really nice tech who listened to what I’d told him and didn’t have me do all the stuff I’d already done. During some of the tests that I ran on the modem, we had time to chat, so I mentioned it was Amy’s new house we were in. He said he had just bought a new house as well – just a month ago. When he needed to talk to Amy to schedule a time for a tech geek to come by, he congratulated her on her new home. Best of all, he was able to schedule a tech guy to come on Sunday between 4 and 8pm. Hooray!

Amy and I then headed off to Trotters Cafe again, this time for breakfast. I ordered the cornmeal pancake that’s one of their specialties and a link of sausage, plus milk to drink. Amy ordered their special scramble which had kale and shrooms and thyme. Breakfast was good – I thought the cornmeal pancake was an interesting flavor and even more fun texture. And they have real maple syrup too. I still had milk left after breafast, so I went back to the counter and picked out one of their chocolate mint cookies. Yummy! Rachel finally got her breakfast break and joined us as Amy had a third cup of coffee and I had a bit more water. But eventually we had to stop procrastinating and head off to A&R’s old apartment. Amy and I had some cleanin’ to do.

Nearly everything was out of the apartment, but it hadn’t been cleaned yet. I packed up the router and DSL modem and then began vacuuming the floors. After Amy finished cleaning the bathroom, I mopped the floor of it. Then I took several recyclables out to the various tubs and threw some trash away. After two hours of working, Amy took me out to lunch to Brit’s Pub. It was a pleasant day and the walk there was very nice.

At Brit’s, I ordered the fish & chips while Amy ordered a fish sandwich and cole slaw. I shared some of my chips with her (they were very tasty but also very plentiful). We had water to drink. I enjoy having beer batter fish and unfortunately there aren’t many places where I live that have it. So yay Brit’s Pub!

Back at the apartment, we continued cleaning and were nearly done when Rachel joined us, having already worked the morning and bussed home. She thought it would be a good idea if she rode her bike home and maybe we could fit the other bike in the car. Amy and I were pretty sure we couldn’t fit it with all the stuff going in, but I offered to ride Amy’s bike home with Rachel leading the way. So we packed up Amy’s car and I followed Rachel home on Amy’s bike.

It was a 2 mile (or so) ride back to the house, and though I’m not in the greatest shape and probably should have put Amy’s sit down a smidgen, I managed the ride and didn’t feel sore at all today. There was only one time when Rachel got across an intersection while I got stopped, so she waited until I got a green light and we continued on home. It was a nice day to bike ride (though I’m glad I wore my jacket).

The girls napped some while I worked some more on my coursework. Amy told me what her password was to get on the metro wi-fi so I was able to read the class discussions. I got some stuff done for the classes and eventually the girls were ready for me to treat them to supper. I suggested they pick a place they either haven’t been to or they liked but don’t usually think to go to. They chose a Malaysian place they’d been to once before and really liked.

Peninsula Malaysian Cuisine is a nice restaurant. We started with golden crab meat balls and chicken satay with peanut sauce. Then we shared three entrees: mango tofu (tofu and mango in a sweet sauce), kari sayur (spicy mixed veggies), and the one the girls were most excited about, a Buddhist yam pot (“crisp fried taro nest filled with shrimp, chicken, mushrooms, snow peas, baby corn, & cashews”). Although I didn’t care much for the yam pot of the Buddhist yam pot, I enjoyed the pickings a lot. I also had a mango smoothie with black tapioca pearls. There was even some leftover kari sayur for the girls. And the whole meal for the three of us was only slightly more than my solo supper the night before. Heh.

We headed off to Ikea next so the girls could look at curtains and other items. Although we didn’t find what they wanted there, we had fun looking at all the cool stuff. I need to take a trip to the Hamilton Ikea with mom one of these days. We then headed to Target for some essentials (and it turns out curtains) and then to a liquor store for a few more essentials.

Once we were home, Amy attached rabbit ears (bought at Target) to their TV so we could get NBC good enough to walk Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. The hook up went smoothly and they now receive several channels quite well thanks to the antenna. (Only the ABC channel was worse after the hookup. Go figure.) Then we watched SNL and the girls finally headed off to bed.

I stayed up for another hour or so working more on college stuff. But then I, too, returned to the world of sleep.

This morning, I slept in a bit. Amy and I had bagels for breakfast, along with regular and strawberry creme cheese. Rachel was, once again, working at Trotters. I got a lot more work done on my college stuff after breakfast. Then Amy and I made potato & leek soup for lunch. With the bread that Rachel had brought home from work on Friday, it was a very tasty combo. We then spent the day working in the house getting the kitchen sorted out.

When Rachel returned, she also had some soup and declared it good. She also had some cookies from the restaurant – including the mint chocolate ones. Yay! While finishing mine up, the tech from USI arrived, so Amy and I went with him to the den to see things get fixed.

Jeremy was his name, and he started by trying to reset the old modem. It didn’t do anything once again, so he swapped it for a new one. He also tested the antenna and was getting 5 bars from it. Considering there are two nodes on either side of Amy’s street, that’s no surprise. Once he got their modem installed, he also put Amy’s router in place and got that set up for her home network. So now we can all geek at once in Amy’s house. Yay!

I’ve been working on this post for most of the afternoon with many distractions. But now I’m nearly done. Yay! We have ordered pizzas from Jakeeno’s Pizza, a pizzaria near here, and they’ll be delivering soon. Amy and Rachel are sorting out drawer items for the kitchen and I’m getting the occasional “we don’t need this anymore” things. Good thing I had plenty of room in my luggage.

This has been a fun visit. It’s always lovely to see Amy & Rachel and little Fruvous. And it’s especially nice to see their new home.

Oh, and yay, the pizza’s just arrived!

“Why would an Eskimo need an air conditioner?” “SUMMAH!”

For those of you lucky enough to never see a Rex commercial, the title of this post will make no sense. Heh.

Anyhoo, today was my second day of Summer Vacation. Yay! It’s nice not having to work. Of course, today I was at the school, but that was mostly for a Design Team meeting about the new school (and the architects provided lunch for us – woohoo). Yesterday, however, I spent a nice day hanging out with Linus. He basically sat down beside me or on me no matter where I was in the house. I even got my first assignment done for my summer course.

Now that summer is here and I can breath again, I’ve been working on B-WISER preparations. I found 1GB USB drives for $5.99 a piece and bought the store out (45 bought – and I’ll need to get a few more because we’re up to 49 girls now as of my last correspondence with the camp coordinator). The drives arrived today and they’re just what we need for the computer class. And they’re very cute. (Oh, and I’d tell you where I bought the USB drives from, but I’ll wait until I get the others ordered – don’t want you folks buying out my second choice, also $5.99 a piece!)

One thing that I worked on yesterday and today was an image gallery for my website. OK, so it uses up my last database on my webhost, but it’ll be very helpful for getting B-WISER photos out to the girls. (I used to just bung ’em into folders on my website – this way the girls can actually SEE what’s there.) I’m using Coppermine Photo Gallery (one of the photo galleries that Fantastico can automatically install) and I like it. Especially now that I have it working. Heh.

I already had 2005, 2006 and 2007 photos from B-WISER on a folder on my webhost, so I wanted to use the Batch Add Files option that the program provides. Only every time I tried to use it, I’d get a couple of different warnings. One was a permissions warning, the other a warning from either ImageMagick or GD version 2.x (the programs used by Coppermine to make thumbnails etc). I posted a question about stuff to the InMotionHosting support forum, and one of the techs asked me to PM her with more details. However, before she got back to me, I slogged through things today and found out the problem. Coppermine *said* that either permission levels 777 or 755 would suffice (which all of the folders were). But the program worked only when I set all of the folders to the more permissive 777 setting.

So now I’m fixing and tweaking and making the place look more inviting. I don’t, for the moment, want to have user accounts for the site, so I’ve disabled that, I think. I’m playing with the morpheusXgreen theme, though if I later find it’s not standards compliant, I may switch to one of the default themes. (One of my summer goals is to update my website and go to XHTML 1.0 transitional and be as standards compliant as I can.) Check out the B-WISER photo gallery thus far.

Lemmings – the Next Generation

So, did any of you folks ever play Lemmings? I loved that game and, though I never finished it, I got pretty high up. I even got several of the sequels, though I never liked them as much as the original.

Well, I decided to look to see if there’s a Windows Mobile version out there, but was sad to see only Palm OS versions. However, I did discover a couple of neat-o things:

  • A Dynamic HTML version of Lemmings: I’ll definitely return here to get my Lemmings fix from time to time.

  • Pingus: an Open Source clone of Lemmings, but with Penguins! It’s still in development, but what they have so far is really cute. I love the “chalk” drawings they use to describe the story of the Pingus so far.

Anyhoo, I’ll just get back to looking for Winders Mobile games (preferably freebies, heh).

PS: Check out the new icon. From today’s Sluggy Freelance. Heh heh heh.

Chili Contest ’08

Tonight was the annual Chili Competition that the Fishers put on each year.  There were half the number of folks this year as last, which wound up giving us half the number of chilies as last year.  We had a few out due to conflicting commitments and several out due to illness.  (Mom and dad were in California, for example.)  But despite the smaller numbers, there was plenty of food and fun conversation.

There were only 4 chili soups to try and all of them were good.  I’ve only been to three of these, and in the first two I managed to vote for the chili that won.  This was not the case this year. Indeed, I couldn’t decide between two, but neither of them were the winning chili.  Each year Gary brags that he’ll be the one to win (and often recommends that people just not bring any chili, heh).  And to his surprise and delight, he won!  You go guy!  He even posed for a picture with the trophy (and mock applause in the background.)

As is usually the case when I go to one of the gatherings that they put on, I ate too much.  But I don’t mind – it was all very good food.  And there was bread and salad and brownies and cookies.  Yummy stuff!  I have a happy (though stuffed) tummy.

Today was spent switching my e-mail over from Pegasus to Thunderbird.  *sniff* I’m going to miss Pegasus, but I need Thunderbird for my upcoming PDA purchase.  If I want to avoid having to install Outlook on my PC, I’m going to need Thunderbird and Lightning along with Birdiesync.  And I like what I see in Thunderbird thus far.  (Well, Firefox is my preferred browser, so no surprise there.)

I’m Back! Yay for new Modems!

Well, the Time Warner repairman has been & gone.  He was very friendly and quite knowledgeable. 

The modem, of course, tried to make a liar out of me.  At 4:05pm today, it was STILL not showing the lights for online or computer.  But as soon as he walked in half an hour later, it had all its lights going.  Grrrr.  But no matter, he had a magic box that he hooked it up to, then he contacted the modem directly, and its values didn’t agree between the two.  And when he examined the history, it showed it had been offline a LOT lately.  He went out & got the new modem.  And he also got a new splitter which should help my ‘net connection even better (and yet still enable me to watch telly on my PC if I should desire to do so).

Anyhoo, things seem to be working okie dokie now.  And it feels good to have my body whole again. 😉  (I now know how Sweeney Todd felt when he picked up his barber knives again.)

I can has Internets? No, I cannot has!

Well, my home modem is apparently borked. It happened last night and I called Time Warner Ripoff for tech support. The national folks were as helpful as they could be, but when they sent me back to the local folks, I waited on hold for 20+ minutes only to be sent back to national before I’d gotten a full sentence out. The second time around to the local folks was only a 10+ minute hold, but as usual, they couldn’t book a specific time to actually come (“any time” during Wednesday, “any time” during Thursday, or set time spans on Friday – I chose 3:30-6PM). I had to go with the set time spans what with having a career and all that jazz. (Though it was tempting to call in “sick” for Wednesday to get it back faster. Still, there’s that whole “substitute teacher planning” which would have been necessary. Blech.)

So I decided to spend an evening at Panera at Miller Lane in Dayton (well, not really in Dayton. Or in Vandalia. Or Huber Heights – this is sort of a no man’s land). Mmm, Jones cream soda! Broccoli cheddar soup! Some sort of turkey foccacia sammich. I’ll see about getting some of my coursework done, getting caught up on my friends’ list, and reading my daily webcomics. Tomorrow night? Maybe Night Sky cafe in Troy? Maybe conscript dad’s modem to my evil purposes. I haven’t decided yet.

Lots of Stuff

Lots of times this week I’ve wanted to write about things in my LJ, but never did. I’ll see if I can remember them all now.

  • Windows XP on a Windows NT4 network with Clean Slate running has proven to be a real PAIN IN THE ASS. I’ve been working my butt off at work getting student accounts out to them, and finally on Friday, most kids had their accounts. The business lab was returned to Windows XP (we’d put Win98 on it last year because I wasn’t ready for the transition. We’re only going to XP because the newest machines cannot run Win98 at all. Blech) this summer. And when the students logged on Friday? Microsoft Word didn’t work (wasn’t “installed”), they couldn’t get out to the Internet, their Quick Launch bar didn’t display, and load of other issues popped up. I had removed all of these problems with my test account before I set up the student accounts. So of course, they didn’t work as planned. When I thought I finally had the fix, it worked with one student but not another. I left on Friday angry with Windows XP (and Clean Slate, but for another XP-related issue that still isn’t resolved). So today I popped into the school to try again. I discovered that Clean Slate had prevented Windows from clearing out the local profiles (copied from their network profiles) and that second student had originally logged on with the bad profile. Once I deleted the profiles, they worked! So I pointed all of the students to that profile folder and tested another random student. It worked – yay!

  • Clean Slate is a program by Fortres Grand Corporation that erases any changes made to a computer when someone logs off or restarts. It’s been a godsend for preventing spyware & adware and viruses from filling up our PCs. I don’t have to reinstall Winders part-way through the school year anymore. However, it still has issues. We’ve cleared up most of the Win98 issues (except for the Daylight Savings Time bug – so I’m now telling Win98 machines to not change at DST – they get their time from our server anyhoo). But now with version 4, we’re experiencing all the bugs with WinXP. The main problem? When students log off, it locks up. Sits at the “saving settings” portion. Why it’s even hanging up then, I’ve no idea. I’ve already told XP to NOT save settings back to the remote profile folder. I’ve got the developers working on the problem – we’ve still got some testing to do. Until then, students will have to hold the power button in 10 seconds until it turns off. Thanks Clean Slate.

  • The kitties are growing. They’re so damn cute! I don’t have any recent photos of them, however. But now when I sit to watch Lovejoy (currently in season 3), Linus climbs onto my chest or shoulders and Lucy sits at my feet. They love to play with each other and with me (sometimes when I’m trying to play City of Heroes/Villains – often to judiang‘s dismay. They’re last check up had them both still healthy (fewer ear mites) and growing nicely. Linus was 2.2lb and Lucy was 2.3lb. Considering Linus always tries to prevent Lucy from eating, it’s good to see she’s holding her own and then some. 🙂

  • It looks like it’s going to be a good year with my students. I’ve been having fun so far (and I hope they have too). I hope I don’t keep channeling Monty Python while I’m teaching physics, however. Thankfully a few of them knew what I was alluding to. I hope I can get a handle on the tech job so that I can work on improving my science curriculum. I wanna do some new stuff and want to find out where I can speed up some topics (or maybe even cut some) in order to cover more material.

  • With regards to the tech job in general… Each year, I get a little more behind. There just isn’t enough time for me to do the job in 3 periods a day and 200 hours in the summer. And as such, I’ve been getting more behind each year. This year is the year I’ve hit the wall. I’m just so frustrated with being behind and getting behinder. I love doing the tech work, but the frustration is disguising that fact from me far too often lately.

  • Yesterday I helped mom’s cousin with her laptop and printer. Using some floppies and a USB floppy drive (from school – heh) I was able to transfer her fonts from her old machine (Win95) to her new laptop (no floppy drive). She has a brother printer, which I’ve never worked with before. After finding the Quick Setup Guide (on the disc, not on paper) I was finally able to get it working with her laptop. I didn’t get to stay there as long as I needed to (she had some more questions that I need to help her with), but I needed to get home. After all, the folks and I had two weddings to go to.

  • The first wedding was a cousin on my mom’s side. His second attempt. She’s Catholic, so the wedding was held at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Chapel at Lehman Catholic High School. Definitely the first time I’ve been to a wedding in a high school. It was a very pretty chapel and the service was only 25 minutes long, which was greatly appreciated. I hope Gregg and his wife have many happy years together. L’chaim!

  • After the wedding, we tried to find the reception at the Sidney Airport (no, that’s not a typo – Sidney in Ohio), but couldn’t find the road the airport was on. Well, I couldn’t find it on the map. Would have been interesting going to a wedding reception in an airplane hangar, I must admit. A short trip to Kohl’s so I could get a wedding gift for the next wedding (the one I was actually invited to), and then the folks and I had supper at Applebee’s. Very tasty meal. And I had an amaretto sour.

  • The next wedding was a cousin on my dad’s side. His second attempt too. This wedding took place at her sister’s house in the spacious backyard. Dad was disappointed no one fell in the pool the whole time we were there (he’s such an optimist). The ceremony was shorter here, but I was actually able to hear it (Gregg’s was harder to hear). We stayed for the reception there and had some yummy food (Greek pastries with cheese, meatballs, chicken salad, Pepsi). Then we hung around for the cake, but they kept putting it off to have people dance. Well, watching the hokey pokey and some of the Greek dancing (she’s from a Greek family, aparently) was entertaining, but I wanted cake! The cake was yummy and full of wonderful sugar. With the 2 cans of Pepsi that sugar kept me awake until after 3am. Heh. I hope Mick and his wife have many happy years together. Nozdrovye!

Well, that’s the stuff that I can remember that I wanted to say. Hopefully I’ll not store stuff up for the next time. 🙂

The Package is GONE!

Back in May, I told the story about ordering a computer restore DVD and getting a TV picture tube instead. Well, Sony had wanted the picture tube back, so they put out a call tag (whatever that is) to FedEx to pick up the box the next day. I taped it up and took it to work (because school was still in session then) and explained it to the high school secretaries. All the Sony lady said was to tell them to mark it FedEx 2-day economy. So that’s what I told the secretaries.

That night was when I received the call from the lady at Sony telling me that someone else had the same issue. So I was afraid I’d have to send another picture tube back. Well, that ended happily, but when I arrived at school the next day, the package was still in the office. Apparently, when the FedEx guy arrived, he needed paperwork filled out on it. Paperwork? The Sony lady said nothing of paperwork. Well, I brought my Sony invoice in the next day and filled out the paperwork that the FedEx guy wanted. Only he never came back for it. I guess call tags are one time only. Bah, it was May and in May, no teacher has time for this sort of shit. So the box just sat in the office until school was finally out.

Wednesday I called Sony again and talked to someone different. I explained the situation and they said they’d get in touch with the Sony lady I talked to. I went to work and while there, the Sony lady called back. So the message was waiting for me when I got home. Anyhoo, the short story is, she put in for another call tag. Unfortunately, FedEx arrives between noon and five PM. This is the summer, the office shuts at 2pm for the most part. No matter, MJ and I had an emergency we had to deal with Thursday afternoon, so we were there until 4:30 (and actually, MJ was there til 5pm – blech!) So I figured the box would be gone when I came in the next day.

Well, when I got home, there were two messages on the phone. The first was from the Sony lady saying that the call tag would be for Friday. Bugger – we stayed late and they never did arrive. The next message was another lady at FedEx who left me a number & her extension & said to call the next morning.

Friday morning, I called Sony, again. The fellow who answered was nice, but didn’t know what to do about me wanting to contact someone by their extension. However, he dialed it and it was busy. So he found out who the extension belonged to and popped her off an e-mail telling her to call me ASAP. I then grabbed Leo’s brush & attempted to brush him while I waited. Luckily for Leo, I didn’t have a long wait.

It turns out, she was on another line to FedEx and was double checking the call tag details. I asked when they’d deliver and she said between noon and four. I explained that, with it being summer, folks bug out by 2pm. So she talked with FedEx and they assured her and me that it would be picked up before two.

At 11am, while I was helping a student burn a DVD of prom videos (he was lucky I hadn’t yet deleted the student accounts!) there was an announcement for MJ to get down to the superintendent’s office cuz FedEx was there. And yay – they took the package when they left! No more picture tubes!

You know, if there is a Hell, I’ll bet it’s just this. Red tape & bureaucracy, phone calls & missed appointments. Phooey!