new slippers

I just whipped out another pair of fuzzy feet slippers. They were designed by this neat lady Theresa I rather like her blog. Anyhow some friends were in town over the holidays and somehow I got to knitting one of them a pair of slippers. They're knitted. They need a tiny bit of end weaving and they'll be done.





The colors are closest in the first picture.

Thanksgiving itself was good. It was nice to see my freinds. Also it was nice to have George and Tina and their dogs visit. But from a work perspective my days off sucked. I was in 8 hours Friday night, working on a failed tape library. I was also up early Sunday and at work by 6:45AM and didn't get done there til 4:30. Sure I got out for a bit in the middle but not long enough to do anything.

I'm actually thinking of installing my basement flooring this weekend. Maybe rip out stuff on Saturday, reinstall on Sunday. Anybody want to help?

secret santa is back

Thinkblank has brought back their secret santa. THis has to be the third or fourth year I've signed up. It works just like every other secret santa thing on earth except that it's over the internet, with complete strangers, and uses your amazon wish list. You do have one don't you? I do. Anyhow there's a little button at the top of the side bar. Like this:

So if you've asked in the past how it is I sign up. There you go. Try it. It's refreshing , sort of proves the whole world doesn't suck. My gift giver did though the bitch had a post up on her website within like 12hrs of the secret santa reveal that I hadn't sent her a thank you email yet. Apparently it's a sin not to check your email every 20 minutes. She took it down after I sent a thank you note. Which I had done before I saw her post anyhow.

secret project revealed. Many of you wanted to know what I was knitting last month. Ok at least two people asked... and when a person has a readership of 5 two is many. There you go!

down with advair! up with pulmicort! I'm off the advair for good. three days of hyper followed by crashing into tears wasn't worth the improved breathing. It was like clockwork each of the cycles after I took the stuff. NO GOOD! pulmicort is a different inhaled steriod with no bronchodialator which means no hyperactivity, no shakes, no heart racing. I think this is overall a plus.

More trapshooting today. We had a big herd of people from the office. Erik and Betsy and Deanna and Carolyn and I plus DeNae. It was a bit cold but not too windy and not the sleet we were fearing. Erik shot his first 25 straight. He doesn't beleive it but I never saw him miss and the scorer swears he saw a chip. "If he starts saying it wasn't a 25 you just don't believe him. I seen it." Was the first thing the kid said to me when we finished our 2nd round.

I finally got the hang of looking only at the clay and not the gun. That's not to say it's automatic, but I finally understand what it looks like. I hit a lot better because of it too. I suspect Deanna will be coming back out with us too. Yay! Maybe we'll have enough people for a league team next fall or summer. Some of the guys from client services are interested in coming.


23: 10/25
24: 13/25

My doctor just gave me a perscription for Advair. The miracle drug... or not. Sure I can breathe now, but I'm a hyper freak. I talk too much and too fast. It's a bit odd. Sort of like being speeded up about 50%. Also I can feel my pulse racing along a bit. The resting pulse of 90BMP also a bit um... exciting. On the other hand I'm super productive in this hyper state.

Best use of DNS ever!

www.illegalmonopoly.com Somebody, and I'm near certain I know who, I'll as him later, regstered a domain name just to point it at this website. I love it!

tinker gnome or redneck?

Well today I went in to work because it was Change Management Sunday. I got to work a bit after 7am and left a bit after 1pm. This is especially sad we were supposed to go trap shooting after we got done at 11am. Note we didn't get done. Something didn't work with a MSSQL Server Service Pack, and a dependent set of servers couldn't come back up til it was fixed. Probably just as well we didn't go with the high wind advisories and all, the clays are hard enough to hit when the wind gusts aren't pushing them around.

So I get home to discover Ed's been a puke machine while I was gone. So.. after hanging a new shelf and clothing rod for toad in the laundry room. I went to cleaning
the carpets. I got this rug shampooer vacuum machine from Heidi when she moved out west. It works great except it has a tremendous leak, so if you put the tank of solution on you have to keep it moving until you're done, or if you stop you have to pull the tank out. Well after cleaning all of my room, except the one corner that will have to be done by hand I decided to try fixing the machine. I dismantled it so I could see where most of the tubing went and feel where it went when I couldn't see it. I dagnosed the problem as being related to the secondary tube out of the tank. The primary tube supplies the bit that sprays the floor when you push the lever on the handle.

The leak turns out to have been in the supply valve for the upholstry attachments. I don't know if Heidi ever had them, but I don't. The tubing all the way down from the tank appeared not to leak, but the valve wasn't shutting so solution (or water in my test case just poured out of it). I went looking around the hosue for something to plug the secondary outlet on the valve plate. Well I guess I must have been disappointed about not going shooting cause I sacrificed an ear plug. I have a handful of these coated plastic foam ones rather than the regular foam ones. Well now I have a handful minus one. Plugged it up and TA DA! I couldn't blow air out of the valve with my mouth. Then I test fit it to the water... still dry. So now the whole thing is reassembled with some dye in the water and sitting in the tub so we can look for leaks. It had held the water for 15 minutes last I checked. Which is like 13 minutes longer than when it was leaking.

So? does this make me a tinker gnome? or a redneck (who else would do appliance repair with shooting supplies?) or both?

Adjusters and adjustments

It's been a heck of a week at work. Long days, confusing problems with no apparent resolution. Hopefully next week will be better.

The insurance adjuster came today. That was an experience. I liked his assistant much better than him. Supposedly I'll get mail from him soon.

After the adjuster left Chilly and I went out shooting again. I switched to #7-1/5 shot today because there was no #8 available when I was at the store. I hit ok with it. Double digit scores for the first time in a long time. I'm getting much more consistent at stations 2, 3 and 4. One and 5 I'm also consistent at but it's consistent misses 0 from those stations both times today. I need to write a little app or a spreadsheet that calculates averages and whatnot. I wonder if somebody has. Hmm... google away!

21: 7/25
22: 11/25