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Wrath of the Flame Sensor

A few years ago I paid a maintenance guy 75 bucks to come out to my house and tell me that the reason the heat wasn’t running was due to a dirty flame sensor. He took the sensor out of the furnace, whipped it on his pants, and put it back in. The problem was solved.

I came home last night to a house freezing at 55 degrees. Our dogs weren’t very happy with me. From the sounds of the furnace I knew it was the same sensor problem. I cursed.

I had two options: call the guy again to have him come out, give me a dirty look, and wipe the sensor on his pants again or just do it myself. I chose the latter.

First off, the flame sensor is not an easy thing to get to. I had to remove a security faceplate, which by definition, is not something I felt qualified to do. Once the plate was moved I had to locate the little bugger. It’s a tiny stick about 2 inches long and the width of a toothpick. It’s also located behind the pilot light (which was off BTW) in a space that was just large enough to get my hand into.  After all the futzing to find it I took a pencil and used the eraser end to “clean” the sensor. I spent 10 minutes or so erasing what I thought was dirt of the sensor. I honestly couldn’t tell if I was actually removing dirt. It was still black when I gave up and put everything back together.

To my astonishment though, when the furnace fired back up the igniting problem had been solved. The furnace now started up in under 10 seconds. At the worst, the furnace would attempt to start for a minute, finally stop, and fall into failure mode.

So by cleaning off this magic toothpick my house is back to a balmy 70 degrees.

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The Lottery

I ran some numbers this weekend and came to the actualization that i could live comfortably for the rest of my life on $48 millon. I came to the number by first taking our current income, then multiplying that by some crazy, unattainable amount, then multiplied that by the assumed number of months left in our lives. $48 million was the number I finally arrived at. This poses a substantial challenge for us. It means that the lottery amount we will have to win will be around $100 million. So our first step into attaining our new found fortune plan is to wait for the Powerball to get over $100 million.

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January 30th: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day

The revolution has begun. I can’t say I’ve been an avid user of Myspace, but I’ve had an account since ‘03. I never really found the chic factor of it. Most people who wanted to find me could find me right here (or here, here, or here). One thing I am completely fed up with, though, is the friend spam from Myspace. That’s why I’m choosing to participate on the 30th.

I’m not giving up on social networking, far from it. But I think Facebook and LinkedIn have succeeded where Myspace failed. Both Facebook and LinkedIn provide me value, whereas I wasn’t able to get much out of Myspace. LinkedIn centralizes my professional contacts and helps me organize by resume information. Facebook provides a clean and contemporary interface, serving up fun little games and time wasters that I can share with friends.

Tags: facebook, linkedin, myspace, nerd, social networking | 2 Comments »

My Mazda Hates Winter

Before I get started you must know that I love my Mazda. Courtney says that I love it because it harkens back to my Honda Civic hatchback from ‘98. She may be right. Ever since day one, though,  the fuel gauge has been broken. You’ll realize that it’s an important point later on.

On with the story.

The Mazda has been prissy in the cold weather. As the temperature has dropped she’s groaned a little bit louder every morning. Saturday morning I decided to tempt fate.  I tried to start ‘er in the -5 degree weather. She fired 4 times before finally moaning to her death. I wasn’t too surprised that the battery had died but I wasn’t really looking forward to jump starting it in the cold.

So instead of fixing it Court and I went to a movie.

Rejuvenated from seeing Cloverfield, I ran outside to jump the car and head off to Sears for a new battery. Luckily the batter charged quickly and within a half hour I was heading down the highway. Half way there, though, the Mazda started lurching and thrusting.  I looked down at my fuel gauge and it was on empty. This is nothing to be surprised about since after driving 50 miles on a new tank of gas the gauge will read empty. I checked the amount of miles on the tank and I was at 289, which in the summer is a safe amount for a tank of gas. But I hadn’t factored in all the idling and engine warming being done for winter.  I drifted off to the side of the road and called Court for some gas.

I sat on the side of the road for about 20 minutes. -5 degrees is cold. Very cold. I didn’t think the car would cool down so fast. By the time Court showed up with gas I was quite chilly. I pumped 2 gallons of gas into the Mazda and started ‘er up…Well, I wanted to start ‘er up. The battery had drained again in the 30 or so minutes it had sat waiting for gas. We jumped it again and I was off to a gas station, then on to Sears.

Luckily I was able to pump gas and start the car again. If I had to jump it a third time I might have just given up and left the car for dead. I waved bye to Courtney (who was following me around just in case) and was FINALLY off to Sears.

I ran into Sears and was helped by a very nice older lady. She asked what I needed and I told her I had a dead car in their parking lot. With regret she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, but we are full up with others. We close in an hour. We can’t help you.”

I sighed and tried not to go apeshit. I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes. She watched me and said, “Can you get it home?”

“I dunno. But I’ll figure it out…” I let out another sigh.

“Well, let me talk with my manager.” She walked away. 5 minutes later she waved me into the garage. “We’ll help you out, but you’re jumping in line in front of some other people. So please don’t say anything.” I was quite relieved that something had finally gone my way with this car today. I thanked her profusely.

So the Mazda got a top of the line winter battery. She starts like a champ now. Remind me to tell you the story next time about the first snow and how the Mazda’s windshield wipers hate ice.

Tags: battery, cars, mazda, sears, winter | No Comments »

The Case of the Missing Shoe

Riley happens to have big feet. I don’t know which side of the family he got it from, but his feet are extra wide (which is one step above wide, even). Since it started getting cold out we could no longer just take him around in his socks. We dropped 50 bucks on Stride Rite shoes for him since it seems Stride Rite are the only makers of extra wide shoes for 1 year olds. I wasn’t happy about dropping that kind of dough on kid shoes but after a frustrating day of trying to find something that would fit him, I gave in and he got a fancy pair of shoes.

We’ve considered those shoes gold. We don’t ever want the day to come that we have to replace them. He wears them everywhere we go just so we’re certain to get our money’s worth. On Friday Riles and I went to the mall to do a little holiday shopping. We hiked the mall for 3 hours, had some food, and came home.

While packing Riley up on Saturday for an overnight stay with the grandfolk one of his shoes went missing. I knew the shoe had to have been in the house because I remembered putting him down for a nap right after the mall. I had to remove his shoes before the nap. In fact, we had one of the shoes. He had carried it around and dropped it in the family room. In a hurry, we ran out the door without finding the second shoe. In their place were a set of fancy moon boots straight from Target.

Last night, fed up with missing a $25 shoe Courtney set out on a mission to find it. We tore apart every nook and cranny of the house. Bedrooms, bathrooms, play rooms were all flipped upside down. The shoe was gone and the finality of it all started to sink in. We both muttered curse words and sat down on the couch.

In a light-bulb moment Courtney checked Riley’s ride-on bulldozer. It had a compartment under the seat. To our amazement Riley had put his shoe away in the bulldozer. There it sat, exactly where he thought it should be. With happy sighs we enjoyed the moment and wondered what else he had stashed in other places.

Tags: Riley, shoes, toys | No Comments »

Love Affair with Google Apps Grows

I’ve made no secret about my love of all things Google lately. Recently I began to keep our budget on Google Docs. I gave up on Quicken and MS Money awhile ago. While they provided an easy way to balance my checkbook, what I really wanted was the ability to track spending against our budget. So last week I stretched my spreadsheet skills a bit and updated the Google Docs budget version with some summing and grouping that helps me balance our spending against our budgeted spending. I was so impressed with my color coded document that I showed Courtney. She was mildly impressed if just for the fact that I was so excited to show her.

Then, came the revelation. I loaded the Google Docs spreadsheet on my iPhone. I expected the spreadsheet to load full page, just like any other website on the iPhone. But to my surprise the spreadsheet loaded beautifully in a stripped down mobile phone read-only mode. While many sites give you an ugly mobile experience, Google’s iPhone interface for their Docs was simply astounding. Granted, I couldn’t edit the spreadsheet, it was enough to just view it. It’s the closest I could come to carrying the doc around with me at all times.

Tags: docs, google, iphone, mobile | 1 Comment »

iGot an iPhone

Courtney broke the story first, I recently bought an iPhone. After months of listening to podcasts that ranted and raved about the phone my gadget-aquiring-sensors freaked out and I couldn’t live without it. I bought it a week ago today and I can say that it’s worth every penny I paid for it.

Here’s what I got for my money:

1. Courtney can actually use the phone. I’ve had some crazy phones over the years. With the iPhone being more than just a dedicated phone, Courtney had her reservations about how well it worked as an actual phone. Within 5 minutes she was comfortable with the interface.  I don’t think either of us knew exactly how to dial on my MDA.

2. A new, working iPod. My old 4th generation iPod has been dying a slow death. It’s hard drive developed the “click-of-death”, which could be fixed with a swift whack on any hard surface. While I am grateful that there is a fix for the “click-of-death” I don’t believe it was extending my iPod’s life much longer. The new interface is slick and fun. It’s quicker too, when navigating to shuffle songs.

3. A GPS-esque map system. Google Maps I think is the killer app on the iPhone. While not quite a GPS, as long as I have a data connection through the cell provider I can find where I’m at and where I’m going to. This weekend we were out and about in Green Bay, WI visiting friends and family. Google Maps came in handy when navigating the streets of Kaukauna, WI.

4. A 80% normal web browser. Safari is awesome on the phone. But it’s still short of a full web browser. it chokes a bit when it comes to AJAX. Also, the touch interface gets in the way a little bit when trying to navigate the actual http://maps.google.com . But all in all, it’s the best mobile browser I have used.

Courtney was well aware of my intentions with the iPhone. I wasn’t about to pony up for AT&T service. I’m a very happy T-Mobile customer.  Courtney knew what it was going to take for me to use the iPhone. We were standing in the mall and I was damn-near pleading to get one. She looked at me and said, “You’re sure you can hack it?” “Oh yeah,” I assured her. When we got home I went to town and started researching how to get the phone unlocked and onto T-Mobile.

After an hour I wasn’t having much luck. Court asked me how it was going and I gave her the straight scoop. “You didn’t know how to hack itbefore you bought the phone?” “uh, no.” She called my bluff, I hadn’t done my appropriate research before I bought the phone. I wasn’t sure how easy or hard it was to actually unlock it. It took some time and some alternate instructions but at the end of the day I got it fully working.

So Christmas came early for me. I’m 400 bones down but at least I have traffic conditions in my pocket now.

Tags: cellphones, hacking, iphone, Jason | 3 Comments »

The Crazy Train Slows for No One

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. From the week before Riles birthday up until today I’m not quite sure what’s happened. I’ll try to recap:

Riley’s birthday came and went. It was a two day food fest that was just a riot. Riley was a good sport through it all. As with all 1 year olds, he didn’t really know that he was getting gifts. It was more of a second birthday party for me, the gift opener, if I were 1 years old. He enjoyed the cake. We have pictures somewhere but I’m not sure which camera they’re on. I think even Chad and Tina have our pictures somehow on their camera.

We spent Riley’s actual birthday (a.k.a. Halloween) buying ourselves Anti-Riley furniture. We replaced our Ikea television stand with something from Slumberland that was taller and contained doors. Riley’s favorite past-time is banging stuff on the television and digging through the poorly managed stereo wires. So we thought it was time to finally pony up and get some real furniture.

After Riley’s birthday weekend we spent last weekend cleaning up leaves. We had ignored them for most of October which meant we had to spend a fair amount of our Saturday catching up. We had shipped Riley off for the weekend to Camp Motylinski so we enjoyed some time to ourselves. We even caught a movie at the theater, something we hadn’t done in well over a year.

The next few weeks hold a ton of work for me. At the client site we’re trying to get the final release of the Q3 software out the door (if you hadn’t noticed, it’s Q4 now which tells you the urgency). Every day I am lectured about needing to put in extra hours. In the very short time I’ve been here the team has shrunk by 50% so some days it feels like almost a Herculean task that we are still on pace to launch on time. Regardless, by Thanksgiving all should be settled down.

Oh yeah, and in any free time I may have I play Guitar Hero 3. Courtney has already grown sick of my flying couch dives and my back-on-the-floor killer solos.

Tags: birthday, furniture, guitar hero, Riley, weekend | No Comments »

7th Grade Poem

I wrote this poem in 7th grade and never forgot it. My friend Peter thought I was a god for a semester for writing it:

Shit shot cosmonaut,

Itching sqeezing burning hot,

With ease,

release.

Tags: education, genius, Jason, poetry | No Comments »

First Birthday Gifts

Riles will be 1 year old next week on Halloween. Courtney and I have spent the last week reminiscing about last year at this time. The nerves, the excitement, and the fateful night two weeks before. Riley never really made many “shifts” during the pregnancy to indicate that he was going to pop out. It began quite nerve racking, actually. But one evening in mid October Courtney got up and paced around for most of night. Looking back on it, it was Riles only sign that he wanted out.

As we get closer to his birthday he’s starting the “new trick” phase again. Right before major milestones he seems to pull out some new trick. Within the last week he’s been saying “uh-oh!”, which sometimes comes out as a painful “oh-uh!” Try to say it backwards, it’s not easy or graceful to do.

On top of that he’s finally waving. We’ve been waving at him for 6 months now. Just this week he seems to have finally gotten the point. When Courtney and I pass him back and forth between us he immediately spins around and waves to the person he just left.

The best new trick, though, has been the hugs. He just started hugging us all of the sudden. It was like one day he just really, really missed us. And ever since he’s been throwing his arms around us.

So, his birthday will be fun. I look forward to it. Pictures next week.

P.S. - I taught Riley the “Pile-Driver” this week too. I told Courtney that he’ll need to know that sort of stuff for when he has a younger sibling.

Tags: baby, birthday, Riley | 1 Comment »