At Ginny’s request, I’ve started looking into some of the features & enhancements that we can use with this blogging software.
One of those features I’ve found is a amazon.com linker. It automagically creates a link to a book on amazon.com (including the right associate id.
For instance: Right now I’m reading
Cool, huh?
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I woke up this morning around 6am and went downstairs to get my normal bowl of cereal (Grape Nuts, if you must know) … and heard a hissing noise.
A little investigation revealed that it was coming from the pipe that had been ‘fixed’ the previous day. There was a very fine spray of water coming out of the joint the plumber had soldered.
Oh joy.
I ran downstairs and shut off the water to the house, but I figured that if any damage was going to happen, it already did.
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Oh, I just love owning a house. I really really do.
It’s just sometimes the downsides are darn close to outweighing the upsides.
Today I’m working from home because last night we found some frozen pipes.
Last july we had some sill-pipes replaced because the old ones were leeking badly.
The pipe in the back of the house was replaced with a standard frost proof valve and doesn’t seem to have any problems.
The pipe in the garage, however, was replaced with a cheap standard valve, because it’s “Inside the house” and shouldn’t have problems with freezing.
Yeah, right.
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Earlier in the week I had decided that the port replicator for my laptop had died. It would power on, start to boot the laptop, and then power off.
Today I decided to try and make it work again … I had already assumed it was a lost cause, so I figured I couldn’t break it any worse.
Now, however, it’s working.
It didn’t at first … exhibited the same behavior as before.
However, this time I tried to boot the laptop in the APR with the laptop lid open … lo and behold, it boots normally.
So I start plugging devices in … and they are all working. I plug the monitor in and close the lid, and the monitor springs to life.
I’m confused.
I think computers were placed on this world just to screw with my brain.
Last week I noticed some flags & spray painted markers on the median between the sidewalk and street (and some on our back yard) near the house.
I was very curious as to what they were for … but I constantly forgot to actually call the village about it.
Well, I finally called today … Hoffman Estates Public Works didn’t know anything about it (they were very nice, btw, something I’ve been becoming more and more appreciative of … I try to thank the person who’s been helpful whenever possible). They suggested I call J.U.L.I.E. about it.
I called the 800 number and there was no way to inquire about it … but voice reponse system told me to call another number (in a/c 815).
So I called the number and talked to another nice person who looked up the information (had to go back a few weeks to find it)
It turns out that ComEd is fixing a “Primary Cable Fault”.
Ok, issue resolved. I noticed they actually started digging and saw the ComEd truck out there today.
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… for computers!
New drive arrived from Dell today … Airborne was supposed to get an “Adult Signature” before delivering it.
I guess the driver is an adult … as he must have been the one who signed for it. The drive was shoved between the storm and front door.
Oh well, good thing for Airborne I’m an honest person. I could have just as easily pocked the drive and claimed I didn’t receive it.
The drive installed easy enough, and passed diagnostics … but that’s when things got very interesting…
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Ok, everyone’s gone back home and the breakfast was a success!
As before, we bought way more food than we needed. Funny thing though … some of the same stuff we had left over last time, we have left over this time.
Ginny has these ideas for dishes that we don’t have time for and/or nobody is really interested in. Oh well.
On another note, according to Airborne, my new hard drive should be here tomorrow by noon.
I’m gonna go take a nap now.
Well, it’s christmas morning.
My folks came over tonight … they spent the evening with my brother Mitch and his wife Gloria (Ginny and I were supposed to go too, but there was far too much to do here).
We’re having the family over for xmas breakfast … not that we actually celebrate xmas … well, parts of us do. Ginny and Gloria officially celebarete xmas. Mitch & I don’t. It’s confusing.
We gave my folks a framed print of last years holiday card … because the original 8×10 I orderef for them from Shutterfly was so lousy. I wanted to give them a proper picture.
They really liked it.
What a day it was today …
Around 6:30 this morning I THOUGHT I heard the phone ringing … but it wasn’t ringing upstairs, so I figured it was on our 2nd line (which happens to be a Vonage Voice over IP line), so I knew it was probably a wrong number (only Steve knows the VoIP number anyway).
Well, woke up to get my coffee and noticed that we had a message on the answering machine … I listened to it and it was indeed Steve calling to tell me that he my system was totally inaccessable.
I hadn’t done anything to the Covad DSL service I figured something was wrong with the Dell server.
Went downstairs and didn’t see anything wrong with the server … but I did notice my Dell laptop was reporting that it couldn’t find a hard drive.
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Bloody database got corrupted in the blog the other day!
Unforunately, there is no repair tool for the blog database (Berkeley database, if you must know).
I’ve switched it to use MySQL … at least that I can probably go in and repair it if something gets screwed up.
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