Thursday, April 17, 2008

I'm Outa Here

I'm trying out the wonderful world of Microsoft's live.com site and blogs. So this place is gonna get dustier than it ever was before...

http://wellspoked.spaces.live.com/

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Baklava

If The Mommy offers to make baklava for you, take her up on it.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Zen Charger

I've retired the second-to-last item on the half-bakery project list. It turns out that I don't have to build a special USB charger for The Mommy's Zen Micro. Motorola's car chargers for their phones are USB compliant and are cheap and plentiful online. Is this a big deal in the grand scheme of things? No. But it's a nice bonus for The Mommy, who puts up with quite a bit of technology nonsense from my many other projects.

The updated Half Bakery queue:

driveway (in progress)
pergola
rack for trash and recycling bins
attic vent fan
cat box upgrade
Jeep LED interior lighting
built-in benches in dining room
built-in shelves in dining room
built-in shelves and cabinets in living room
built-in bench seat in dining room
built-in shelves and desk for the cloffice
LED kitchen task lighting
LED outdoor lighting
LED bike headlight
ironing board hanger
coat rack upgrade
car computer (MP3, GPS/NAV, DVD)
handmade CPU case
outdoor grill and oven
bike trailer from scrap
trash trailer
straw bale office / granny flat
subwoofer
water feature
rainwater collection system
fireplace upgrade
chimney upgrade
salvage laptop display as computer display
rework kitchen sink plumbing
trailer for trash and recycling
Jeep console upgrade

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Poop!

Modern diapers are amazing. They'll absorb a volume equal Lake Michigan, and you really have to check a kiddo's diaper before you know it's reaching capacity. But that's for wetness. Solid diaper cargo announces itself.

When we smell poo smells, we go straight for the Babyfish's diaper, pull back her waistband, and give her a quick visual check. She knows the drill, and she's learning new words and new skills every day. Lately, she's learned to tell us that she needs a change, which I'll admit is pretty convenient. "Poop?" she says, with an expression that begs for affirmation. She's really proud of her words and what she can do with them. And when she announces poop, we pull back her waitband and give her a quick visual check. She's normally pretty accurate.

Fast forward to New Year's Day. I (The Daddy) was laying on my side on Superkid's bed, playing with both kiddos. I was laughing, and forgot to mind my exhaust, and... out came a little noise and a little smell.

The Babyfish froze, looked at me and announced with wide-eyed earnest: "poop!" I kept laughing, head down. I heard her run behind me, and I felt one little hand in my back and then the other tugging on my waistband. She was giving me the quick visual check that she had learned was customary in such situations!

Superkid, who was still laughing from just the noise of my exhaust ("remember, no matter what anybody says..."), saw the whole thing. "Did you teach her that?" I asked. He didn't answer.

Another Open Letter to The New AT&T

For providing me with the unlock code for my phone, when they really didn't have to:

Cheers.

Open Letter to Howdy Honda

For soiling an otherwise painless buying process with a $50 "Document Preparation Fee":



Bite me.



For remedying that black mark by removing $50 from the selling price of our car:



Cheers.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Christmas Eve

Go to bed babies. Go to bed now!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Friday, December 14, 2007

Pee Eee

The Daddy submitted his application to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers to become a Licensed Professional Engineer, today. With a little luck and a lot of studying, The Daddy will be a licensed practicing Engineer by the middle of next year.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Open Letter to "The New" AT&T

For putting me through two days of phone calls, trips to the AT&T store, and phone tinkering to verify for you that a phone that you sold me will not work as advertised:

... and for lacking the technical resources or customer service will to do do the above yourself:

... and for making the process of replacing the mis-functioning phone as tedious and expensive as possible:

... and for wasting at least 30 minutes of my costomer service experience, distributed between multiple people, explaining to your customer service representatives that "bluetooth" is not an earpiece, but rather a communications protocol:

... and for claiming not to "support" certain features of the phone and hot-potato-ing me to the even more useless Motorola technical support, as soon as you figured out that you didn't know how to solve my problem:

... and for asking me at the end of every single phone call whether or not you had answered all of the questions that I had today, even when the answer was clearly no:

Bite me.

Sincereley,
Tank Thinker