Impromptu Weekend Projects

I brought home my noise-cancelling headphones on Friday with the intent of using them while I mowed the lawn over the weekend. The earbuds in the iPod are nice and all, but I have to turn the volume up so high, I worry about the damage it’s doing to my ears. I never got around to mowing the lawn. Instead, I got caught up in a series of impromptu home improvement projects. But at least one of them did involve the use of the headphones.
I’m not sure when it started, but at some point while Lisa and Ellie were gone, Max must have started protesting in his own little way: peeing on the floor. I noticed it once or twice and tried to clean it up, but you know that smell just persists. So, project #1: steam clean the carpets. We moved all the furniture out of the living room, and I put on my headphones, which actually did a nice job onf insulating me from the noisy carpet cleaner. The verdict is still out on whether the cleaning was completely successful, but I think it’s at least a little better.
Lisa was cooking on Saturday when suddenly the garbage disposer in the sink just stopped. No noises, no protests, just nothing when you flip the switch. Impromptu project #2: fixing the disposer. I figured out how to take it down, and got it working briefly through no fault, or skill, of my own. But after about 5 seconds, it stopped again. After seriously taking it apart, I believe it was just wet all over, due mostly to just being old. Off to the store to get a new one. Luckily, Sears had the Kenmore we were looking for on sale for $30 off, and we also had $35 left on a gift card, so we got a good deal, and a 5 year warranty. I’m big on the warranties now, with all the things that have been crapping out in our household lately. A couple of hours later, and thankfully, no electrocutions, we have a new, quiet garbage disposer. Plus, it doesn’t leak, which is shocking given my past plumbing forays.
Finally, last night I had some time to sit and watch TV. But for some reason, my two Tivos couldn’t see each other since I installed the new hard drive in one. Impromptu project #3: get the Tivos working. It took some doing, but I finally figured out that they were configured slightly differently, so while one could see the other, it didn’t work the other way. I managed to fix them up, and now I can transfer shows between the two, and Ellie can watch her Wiggles on either TV as well.
And that, combined with the 90+ degree heat this weekend, is why I didn’t mow the lawn.

Doing Their Part

Against the Giants today, Alfonso Soriano hits a leadoff home run, and Livan Hernandez has his second straight quality start, giving up 3 runs in 7 innings (and on only 92 pitches). Jim Bowden is smiling somewhere.

RFK Grand Re-opening

With all the craziness with the Tivo and the fish, and with Lisa and Ellie returning from Michigan last night, I almost forgot to mention that I went to the Nationals game on Saturday, part of the Grand Re-opening of RFK Stadium under the new ownership. They did a pretty decent job of things, adding some menu items, a new food court, and a new kids area.
After walking up to get my $12 premium game ticket (for the Cubs, who like the Nats, suck, but still draw fans wherever they go), I waited in line for a while for them to open the gates. I got there early around 11:30am for the 1:20pm start, to make sure I got a ticket and to watch the pregame festivities. Of course, with them not opening the gates until 11:30, there was no batting practice to watch, so it was pretty boring.
I headed up to find the new Terrace Food Court. Once you figure out where it is, it’s not too hard to find, but there could have been more signs. I got a chili dog from Hard Times, and noted they also had a wings place and a BBQ place, as well as a place selling margaritas (frozen, not on the rocks).
I ate my chili dog while checking out what little activity was going on at field level. Groundskeepers are not exciting to watch. Then I made a tour of the stadium, finding my seat in the first row of Section 543, pretty much straight away centerfield, and two sections over from the Frank Howard seat (one seat in Section 541 is white, supposedly where Howard hit a monster blast back in the day). I continued around, finding the kid’s area, with a batting video game, radar pitching, caricatures, and balloon animals. At this point, my first beer was on its last legs, and I was wondering when Chuck Brown, the Godfather of Go-Go, was going to perform. It was getting on 12:30, and frankly, I was bored watching the kids play video games. Finally, there was some action around the band setup, and I walked down behind the home dugout to watch. He only performed for about 25 minutes, finishing up just after 1pm, but it was pretty awesome, and if I worked up a sweat just sitting there watching him, he and his bandmates must have been sweltering. Good stuff.
Finally, on to the game. Alfonso Soriano had a great game at the plate, but got thrown out trying to go home on two awful baserunning decisions. The Nats won in spite of this, and in spite of pitching to Aramis Ramirez, who lit up Livan Hernandez for his second straight two-homer game. The big-head President’s race was fun, more fun than the video screen version anyway, and the rest of the game was about the same.
And now for my big complaint. After the fifth inning, wanting to avoid the “last call” rush, I went back to the Terrace Food Court to try out the wings. And it was closed! What the hell? Who closes the brand new food court that they’ve been touting for all this time halfway through the damn game? Somebody blew that one, whether it was because they ran out of food (all of the vendors? at the same time?) or a conscious decision, you can’t do that. They lost at least a sale of overpriced wings to me.
I liked the changes, for the most part. In the fifth inning, there was still a long line for ice cream and lemonade, but for the most part the lines were shorter, and the food choices were better. And at least they’re trying now. When MLB owned the team, they could care less about service, just give them your money and shut up. I, for one, welcome the Lerner group. I even bought 3 tickets for the season finale against the Mets, for $3 each! Can’t beat that.

Fishie Update

I haven’t given a fish update in a while, which is a good thing. They’re happy as fish can be, assuming you don’t try to turn on the lamp in the tank. Whoo boy, you do not want to do that. Those fish freak the heck out when you turn the light on. I think they must be deep sea fish.
Anyway, last night, in the midst of my Tivo exploits, I was walking past Ellie’s room, where the fish tank is, and it seemed quiet. Too quiet. It’s one of those things, you get used to the white noise of the filter when you walk by, but when it’s not on, the silence is deafening.
Sure enough, the filter was kaput. I took it off the tank, plugged it into different outlets, nothing worked. It was dead. Just my luck this week. I ran out to the pet store, got there ten minutes before it closed, and picked up a new one, virtually identical to the existing one, only 20 years younger. I cleaned out the tank and changed the water, and the fish were their usual frisky selves when I fed them this morning.

Fishie Update

I haven’t given a fish update in a while, which is a good thing. They’re happy as fish can be, assuming you don’t try to turn on the lamp in the tank. Whoo boy, you do not want to do that. Those fish freak the heck out when you turn the light on. I think they must be deep sea fish.
Anyway, last night, in the midst of my Tivo exploits, I was walking past Ellie’s room, where the fish tank is, and it seemed quiet. Too quiet. It’s one of those things, you get used to the white noise of the filter when you walk by, but when it’s not on, the silence is deafening.
Sure enough, the filter was kaput. I took it off the tank, plugged it into different outlets, nothing worked. It was dead. Just my luck this week. I ran out to the pet store, got there ten minutes before it closed, and picked up a new one, virtually identical to the existing one, only 20 years younger. I cleaned out the tank and changed the water, and the fish were their usual frisky selves when I fed them this morning.

Never Buy Maxtor!

It was almost exactly one year ago when my Tivo’s hard drive crapped out, taking with it all the shows we had not yet caught up on. You would think we would have learned. But no, this weekend, it happened again. The drive that I had been so excited to get because of my rebate prowess went bad last Thursday, as I was trying to watch Floyd Landis’ amazing comeback in the Tour de France.
That makes two Maxtor drives to go bad on me in a row. Previously, I had soured on Western Digital, because all their good deals come with rebates attached to refurbished drives. My current computer’s drive is a WD, and it is noisier than all get out. But Maxtor takes the cake.
After pulling the drive from the Tivo, I put it into the computer to see if I could salvage it. The BIOS detected it, and using the Tivo hacking tools, I could view some files from the drive. At this point, my hopes for retrieving some shows were up. But then came the fatal mistake. I decided to run Maxtor’s “PowerMax” software, a utility that is supposed to tell you if your drive is failing, and how bad. I ran the utility, and my hard drive started clunking and squealing. What the hell is this program doing??? In the Tivo, the drive made no noises, it just wouldn’t boot up. In the computer, no noises. Run the Maxtor diagnostic utility, clunking and squealing. Nice. You can hear a close approximation of the noise by listening to “Head Damage 1” from Hitachi’s page.
At this point, I decided to try retrieving the data. I should have made this step #1. Booting the computer up with the hard drive in yielded only clunking again. Hard drives are not supposed to make that sound, and the BIOS gave up trying to detect it after a while. I even put the hard drive in the freezer, an old trick I read about. But it could not be saved. The same horrible clunking noises kept emanating from its bowels.
After giving up on this drive, I bought a new 250GB drive (Seagate this time, who has better quality and a five year warranty on their drives; they supposedly bought Maxtor, so maybe Maxtor will get better, or at least write utilities that won’t trash your drive!) from CompUSA. I restored my saved Tivo image to the drive, and ran the Zipper hacking tool, and the drive is now happily chugging away. Unfortunately, the old data could not be saved, and Ellie is going to be pissed. We lost her favorite movie, “Chicken Run,” as well as “Finding Nemo” and some other shows.
So heed my warning: stay away from Maxtor! You’ll be a better parent for it.

More Ulnar Collateral

More ulnar collateral ligaments in the news, this time, it’s Jose Guillen. His torn ligament is in his elbow, meaning that he will probably have to undergo “Tommy John surgery.” I had no idea that was the ligament they fixed in that surgery. Learn something new every day.
At any rate, Guillen is gone for the year. So much for the idea of trading him. Suddenly it looks like a good thing the Nats picked up Austin Kearns. Maybe they’ll be able to sign Guillen to a one-year deal, cheap, next year, and put him in left once Soriano gets traded. The rumors on the Soriano front are flying fast and furious. Right now, it sounds like the White Sox, but they don’t seem willing to part with the pitcher the Nats want. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bowden botch this trade. He’s waiting an awfully long time to make a deal, and I think the other GMs are getting frustrated with him. I think it’s 50/50 he actually trades Soriano, and 50/50 whether he gets a good return for him. For those doing the math at home, that means I give him a 25% chance of making a good deal.

Troegs Dreamweaver Wheat

You gotta love a beer that tells you how to pour it on the box. This one recommended to pour 3/4 of the bottle, then swirl the yeast with the rest of the bottle before pouring it into the glass.
The result is a cloudy light orange color with a small white head on top. Very fragrant, a bit of banana and maybe bubblegum? Extremely easy drinking, goes does smooth and light. A bit of extra spiciness in the flavor, maybe cloves? A good summer beer on a hot day.

Amateur Diagnosis

Sounds to me like Paul LoDuca may have an ulnar collateral ligament tear. He’s a better man than me though, not only is he playing through it, but he’s catching, which has to hurt like a sonuvabitch. Seriously, I still can’t bend my thumb all the way, although the range of motion is getting a little bit better. I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to hold a bat, or catch a 90 mph fastball. Ouch!

Proud to be a Spartan

This weekend found yet another reason to be proud (ahem) to be a Spartan. Cincinnati Bengals DT Matthias Askew, a 2004 fourth round draft pick from MSU, was charged with resisting arrest. Apparently, he was parked illegally, refused to move his car, and the officers had to TASER him to subdue him. That’s right, MSU Spartans: you’re gonna have to Taser us if you want to take us down.