Saturday I had barely returned home to Indiana (from MI) when Natalie called me. She was leaving Target and Kohls in Goshen and wanted to know what I was up to. About a minute into the conversation she said “crap, gotta go, the car just died…” A few minutes later she called back, the car was dead, in the parking lot.

So like any good husband I suited up and headed that direction. She had gone on to shopping in Target (per my command/request) and it took me a good 15min to find her because her cellphone refuses to work in any department store.

Finally found her, got the keys, and headed out there. Her car (a sky blue 92 Toyota Celica) fired right up (after I checked the obvious stuff, like oil, etc), but as soon as I started to accelerate out of the parking spot it died. I opened the door to hear a loud hissing sound.

I’ll be the first to admit, I know virtually nothing about cars. Ask me almost any computer question and I’ll be able to answer, but ask me about the mechanics of a car and unless google can help me, I’m in trouble.

Well anyways, I gave up, figuring it was something bad like a vacuum hose or fuel pump.

Here is where things get interesting. Later that night I had it towed (thanks Shorty!) and we followed the tow truck to the repair shop he recommended. While driving behind the car Nat said, “doesn’t it look like the exhaust is plugged?” Sure enough, it was stuffed with ice and snow. This is where she fessed up to backing into a snow pile while leaving her parking spot at the shopping center.

I didn’t have a hammer or blow torch handy, so I went ahead and had Shorty leave the car at the shop, and then first thing this morning (Monday) I stopped at the shop and ended up helping the guys push the car into the shop. They had already peeked at it and noticed the exhaust pipe, so when I mentioned it they were like “yup” and figured that was it.

I stopped back by an hour later, and they had used a torch on it, and sure enough it fired right up and ran fine…

Moral of the story: Know the WHOLE story and sometimes the clues will jump right out at ya :-)

Mom tagged me in the Picture Tag game sweeping the nation right now (lol) so I guess I better do it :-)

The rules of the Picture Tag game:

1. Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures.
2. Pick the 4th picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same.

So, I use a macbook, which means i run osx, which means all my photos are stored in a iPhoto archive file, BUT, thankfully I use my Pictures folder for other stuff too, so I had a 4th folder, and a 4th picture, etc. This particular picture isn’t that great, but the stuff I can tell you about the material in the picture could fill a book.

I promise not to write a book here (I’d get exhausted by the end of the second page) but the story I will tell will give you some insights into where I grew to become a man.

Read the Rest

Wow, I must have more friends this year than ever! Several friends called to wish me a happy birthday, I got 10 happy bday text messages, and about 20 emails!

So anyways, thank you everyone, it was a great birthday. I actually took the day off, the first time since before college I remember not working or taking exams on my bday (except for that one time our prof brought us into class for the exam, and then told us all we got an A and to have a nice day).

This morning I went Christmas shopping for my wife and my sister. Then this afternoon/evening I smoked a chicken out in the garage. Tina (my lil’sis) showed up a bit after four and she chilled in the garage with me for a couple hours. At 7pm Nat got home from work and we skyped with mom and dad and had a mini-birthday/Christmas party. Since this was our only chance for all of us to get together (virtually) we opened gifts and just had a wonderful time. After that we had an amazing dinner together and watched a movie. To top it off we had Tiramisu that Natalie made… mmm, good

In the past I haven’t always looked forward to my birthday. From now on, i think I will.

...nuf said

About a year before my parents headed to South America they started getting rid of most of the “stuff” they’d accumulated over the years. One of the last things they gifted to Natalie and I was a meat slicer that looked pretty beat up and rusty, but had promise for anyone willing to take the time to take it apart and restore it.

Its been sitting in my garage for several months now, collecting dust and more rust. But last weekend as part of my meat smoking tradition (started about 6 weeks ago, see older posts for fun smoking adventures) I decided I wanted to thinly slice the meat I smoked, and I’m not very good at thinly slicing meat with a knife, so I needed something more.

Read the Rest

Thanks to Daniel for creating a nifty new jquery plugin for me! Quickselect takes select/option tags in html and turns them into an input box with live search, and can even use the quicksilver.js for more interesting search results.

I needed this for Suite, the software I’m writing to manage my company SabreTech and I could not for the life of me find a jquery plugin that did something nifty like this. I had found this autocomplete plugin, and this live search plugin (which was actually a rewrite of another plugin by a friend of mine, John Nunemaker )...

So I asked Dan to write this up for us yesterday, and this afternoon he found some time and put it together, and guess what, it works PERFECTLY!

Well, I hope others find this useful…