Doug's Sounding Board


08
Aug

It’s clear I need to start making more definite plans

After the long-hours work week cleaning for the weekend started. Then came the wedding and spending the weekend with Nicole’s family. When they all left errands were run followed by mental collapse. Late Sunday night as I was re-visiting my mail box I saw again that this is the time for Liana and Peter and Vinna to be in town and I was supposed to mail them to say when we could meet up with them. I checked my phone and realized that I only have their home phone number.

In the morning I sent mail hoping they would get it, and went to breakfast where they said they might go Monday morning but with no time set it was goin to have to be a chance meeting. Luck wasn’t with us today though. Breakfast was pretty good though at Gayle’s.

I’m bummed that I really messed up how to see them while they’re in town.


07
Aug

The tiring part is done

Friday night I got home from work and Nicole and I went to Target to get a goft card for her step-sister whose wedding we would attend Saturday. After Target we went to Ross since we needed a new comforter too. When we returned home we applied ourselves to cleaning the house until around 11:30PM. The house needed cleaning because 1) Nicole’s brother and wife were going to stay with us, and 2) her father called earlier and said he’d be stopping by with her aunt and uncle as well. The house had to be in shape for them and because of all the projects it has never been in a worse state.

After cleaning we went to bed so we could wake up at 5:30AM and clean some more! I straightened up the front yard a little and cleaned the bathroom and Nicole concentrated on the floors. The dogs ate late that more morning because we were so budy cleaning right up until Nicole’s brother, Dean, arrived.

When he arrived he informed us that her dad and aunt and uncle would not be coming after all so there was a little relief there. We went to eat since the wedding wasn’t until later. We expressed displeasure with Grover a few times since he was growling at people a few times like maybe he’s developing a fear-based aggression. That makes us a bit nervous.

We get ready to go to the wedding which is casual and at Natural Bridges. All the groomsmen wore dress shorts, dress shirts, and tuxedo vests. I thought it looked a little silly but they all seemed to like it. I walked down to the beach with many of the others to watch the photo session, then we went back to th picnic tables and started eating. Good food!

There was some cake smashing, some toasts, some pinata smashing. We went down to the beach a second time to say goodbye to people and so I could get sunburned. Then we went home with Dean and Marcia I had to clean up Sage’s dog poop. She’s been constipated so I’m glad to see anything coming out but it’s never fun to clean that up. We relaxed a bit and I showed them the A/V setup and they enjoyed that and then we went to bed early.

I would have slept well but it turns out that Sage was still constipated so she woke me up every other hour so she could try and get things moving again. I got up, rebooted my computer about 10 times until I finally disabled autorun (it’s always been a bit flakey), installed “1001 Ultimate Word Games”, made a CD of 10-Speed songs, then people woke up.

Nicole’s dad called to let us know he was on the way and after awhile we finally got him there and showed him around the house (if he didn’t come there would have been some upset happening after all that cleaning). Then we went to breakfast at Tiny’s and everyone seemed to have a good time. We came back to the house and Becky, Nicole’s stepmom wanted a lamb’s ear plant so I dug one up for her. Then she wanted some passion flower vine. I said it should be fine with clippings since most vines are if you stick them in some water. So she took some and them Dean took some since he liked them too. We wrapped them in wet paper towels and foil.

Then they all left and we took the dogs to the school to run around since they hadn’t been since Friday and they were going nuts. Then we got the car washed since it was getting to be unbearable and then we went to costco and the grocery store. When we got back I vegged out playing some word games and then decided it was time for a check up of on-line things so here I am, all done.


05
Aug

What’s the deal with the tank-tops?

I’ve been seeing a lot of women wearing tank-tops over other tops lately with the extreme seen yesterday of one woman wearing three tank-tops. Has this been going on for awhile and I just now noticed it? Is this like the dress with pants thing (which strangely I didn’t think as odd)?


04
Aug

I’m still kind of irritated

As topteddy was sayng and I was agreeing, a lot of it is that I want to know why he thought I was a nazi? Was it how I was dressed? Was it something I did? Am I projecting this to others? What was it?


04
Aug

Nazi? NAZI?!

All this week I have been going home around 12:30 PM to let the dogs out and play with them a bit before turning around and coming back to work for a 2PM meeting. It doesn’t matter that ever day I’ve come back to find the 2PM meeting pushed to the next day. On my way back to work I hear a bicyclist across the street say something. I can’t tell what he said or who he was talking to so I ignored it and moved on.

A little while later he gets ahead of me because he runs the red light I’m stopped at. Shortly after the light switches to green I caught up with him and he was going pretty slow so I slowed down. Since I ride in the bike lane most of the time I have to wait for openings in traffic to go around. Traffic opened slightly and he hopped into the traffic lane so I took the opportunity to pass him in the bike lane when he yelled out “Nazi!” to me.

I ignored it and went on because I needed to make it to the meeting but it really pissed me off and I really wanted to ask him :WTF?!” I can’t even figure out why he might have so casually thrown that out there. The best I can come up with is he thinks my scooter helmet looks like a nazi helmet, but even so, WTF?! My helmet only has a brim in front and it’s silver and sparkly. I wish I had the time to stop and confront him. I didn’t even know I had this button waiting to be pressed.


03
Aug

Ready for a break

I’m ready for the current push for out demo to be done at work. I don’t mind a push when I know the end date, but when it keeps getting pushed back it gets to be more draining than if you had been shooting for the late date to begin with. I want have time to do stuff with the house and start exercising again and spend time with the home folk.


02
Aug

Is this thing on?

I’m trying out a WordPress plugin that is supposed to mirror content to LiveJournal. If it is successful then LiveJournal peeps can stop complaining that I’m inconvenient.


01
Aug

Recipe page

I just added a recipe page so I can more easily keep track of recipes I come across and like and that I think others might like.


30
Jul

House of 1000 Corpses

My sister loves horror movies. She can’t get enough of them, and “House of 1000 Corpses” is one of her favorite. She loved it so much that took the day off work to see the sequel (currently in theaters) “The Devil’s Rejects“. Anyway, I decided I shoudl see why she liked it so much and after watching it last night I think I know.

It’s intense. It’s not like your typical horror movie where you have some super-human bad guy that gets vanquished in the end. You have psycho killers who prey on people wandering through and mutilating them for their experiments. They will kill anyone who tries to interfere and it all has a more real feel than most horror movies. The story isn’t the greatest, it’s wrapped in a House of Wax wrapper of kids going to see the freak show and in the end finding out the exhibits are the previous visitors. Most of the movie is the torture and torment of the kids though and it’s certainly more than you get from your average horror flick. It had that I can’t look away from the car accident feel to it.

If horror movies aren’t doing it for you anymore and you want something to push some more of those boundaries, then this is the movie for you.


30
Jul

More on intermittent scooter power

Occasionally when I go over a bump I feel the power cut out on the scooter for a second. I thought it might be where the splice in the line to the motor is from when changing tires on these was an unknown. I just checked that yesterday and all those splices are solid, not even a wiggle. I also thought it might be in the throttle and to test that I had the back wheel off the ground with the throttle on and whacked it. The motor cut out for a split second.

I talked to Ricky at the Volks Cafe about it and he said he didn’t have any others in stock and explained that it is a hall-effect sensor which basically means it’s a magnet and a magnetic field sensor Not likely to have a problem unless the sensor or the magnet is loose. I took it apart and found the sensor a little loose so I bought some epoxy and really glued it in. I also got it positioned better so the final position will be closer to the sensor than before (slightly but we aren’t talking about major distances in any case and the magnetic field drops off as 1 over r squared so every little bit helps). The power in the throttle starts a little earlier now which is good but still there is the drop-out.

I got it home from the test ride and put it back on the center stand. I got the back wheel off the ground and turned it on. Then for some reason I turned the handle bars. When it was at either side it would work perfectly, but when I turned it through the center position sometimes it would cut out. Finally a concrete way to reproduce it without me having to be riding! I’m guessing that something is getting pinched sometimes in the forward position or something. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for but I with the better reproduction I can play around until I find it better.

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