Doug's Sounding Board

He was wearing a t-shirt that read “I Told You So!“

It’s frozen, but better than nothing. Time to search for microbes!

Rip out the old dryer vent and run a new one to the outside
Patch the wall where the new dryer vent is
Put a restraint on the new drain pipe for the washing machine so it won’t try to push against the wall patch I need to put in.
Patch the wall where all the washing mahcine work was done.
Patch the hole in the ceiline in the tv room
Patch the hole in the ceiling in the office
Cut the hole larger in the living room so I can use large pieces of dry wall to patch the holes left by the old floor heater
Get large pieces of dry wall and a fresh bucket of dry wall compound
Laundry (I can even do that while wall stuff is being done
Install the new fan in Dar’s bathroom
Hang up the curtain rod in the office
Wash poof chair covers
Dishes
Weed wack
Track down scooter electrical connection flakiness and fix it – At lunch I took off the electrical tape that hid the splicing job done at the show early on (it was their first tire thing and they didn’t know a better way yet). The splice was in great shape and no loose wires there. Now I think it’s the throttle handle.
Post stuff more interesting than to do lists
Put up Dar’s curtains

We just bought a new king-sized bed. We picked out the new bed frame and the nice foam (not body molding so you can still roll over) mattress and to get over thinking about how much it was I started thinking of how long the mattress is supposed to last and how much bedding like pillows and sheets we’d ahve to buy of the years and figured that it works out to like 40 cents a day per person to have a good night’s sleep for the life of the bed. It doesn’t seem so bad that way.

My company, in celebration of their 10th anniversary, decided to make a trading card contest where you would have to socialize with people around you to get certain sub-sets which in-turn qualify for you to maybe win some prizes based on which sub-sets you collect. The sets are corporate logos (5 cards), the 10-year employees (8 cards), a set of 5 random people (I haven’t read these but they are things like student and grandmother), technology buzzwords (5 cards), branding (5 cards), and the set that let me here, corporate virtues (11 cards) with things like Integrity, Passion, Drive, etc.

You’re probably wondering buy this point how this is funny at all. Well, it’s trading cards, so there has been a lot of time with people saying things like:
“Do you have any Purpose?”
“No, but I have lots of Passion.”

Or “Do you have any Integrity?”
“Yes, if you can give me Respect.”

Or, “I have Drive now, but I’ve lost my Goals.”

I’ve had a great deal of entertainment with this and I felt I had to share. Thanks for listening.

It’s been awhile since I did that. I made some good fixes and helped others fix or diagnose problems. I had to call the allergy clinic and ask them to put my shots in the refrigerator for tomorrow morning and they did which is good so I don’t get charged for wasted shots.

I also took a walk to the library to look at their videos. They had an extensive collection of non-fiction VHS tapes, including a number on local history like a ten tape set on the oral history of Davenport and another 10 tapes from the discussion about rebuilding Santa Cruz after the earthquake or 1989 (still two holes in the ground (am I rambling too much here?)). Anyway, their total number of DVDs is maybe 50 tops. They didn’t have any current VHS movies either which makes me think it’s 100% donation. Maybe I should start giving them movies I don’t care for. Or since I just bought this 20 kung-fu movie collection for $15 (on 6 discs) and if I don’t really want to own them after that (but $0.75/movie is worth buying initially) I’ll hand them over and then 1/3 of their movies will be kung-fu movies.

I really dislike the Bic-knockoff pens we have in our office. “Value Plus” Medium Pt. India, because Bic pens are too expensive? These pens go dry if you set them down for 10 minutes and you have to write a little for the ink to start flowing again. They also seem to be high friction and require a considerable writing force to move it across the writing surface. Are pens really the biggest expense around here? Instead, as my co-worker Paul pointed out, they paid for me to go across the street and shop for pens for 10 minutes at probably a much greater expense.

Anyway, I picked up two pens: the Sarasa 0.7 ball-point by Zebra, and the Energel 0.5 gel needle-tip by Pentel. The Sarasa has click-top action and writes smoothly and evenly and has a rubber grip. The Energel has a removable cap which reveals a rubber grip, and it also writes smoothly and evenly without feeling like you are engraving the paper which is good for a pen with a tip that small. Both rubber grips are not overly grippy which is good because on some of them you can grab it and then have a hard time adjusting to get settled in a comfortable grip.

When we left to go to the store last night the dogs wanted to go. We didn’t want them to go so they stayed home, but they decided they would eat something to show their displeasure. When this happens they generally don’t greet us when we come home because they know they did something they shouldn’t have.

In this case they ate the lump of chicken fat and chicken neck from the chicken we just roasted (in a plastic bad in the kitchen sink ready to throw away). I think Grover ate this because he has the more sensitive nose and he could reach it more easily. Also eaten was a wooden spoon; the kind you cook with. It was on the counter because we just got some new ones and the old ones were set out to give/throw away. Not much was left with it and we think Sage ate it because she’ll eat pretty much anything (she once ate couch foam). Also she was acting more hungry than Grover.

We didn’t feed them last night so we could keep an eye on them but they both seem ok this morning even after feeding.

I finally got to see “Eulogy” and I laughed pretty much all the way through it. I still haven’t been to the library to check out their selection, and we just checked for Eulogy because we were returning “Saw” (still haven’t seen).

Anyway, “Eulogy” is a darkish comedy about a messed up family coming home for their father’s funeral. If you like movies like say “Home For The Holidays” I think you’ll like this one.