What a difference 2,007 miles makes...

On Sunday evening, after an event that will take too long to blog right now, I found myself driving to the grocery store to replace groceries. When I came out, got into my car and started to drive away, I noticed people flashing their high beams at me. Startled, I checked my headlight dial which was on and chalked it up to my missing headlight. You see, my car had a headlight out and had begun telling me this Monday of last week. But when I turned onto the residential side streets, I noticed that both my headlights must be out. I go to work at 6AM. It is dark then. I knew Monday was about to become a day off.

On Thursday evening (Christmas Eve) of last week, the check engine light came on. On Saturday morning (the day after Christmas), my windshield washer fluid light came on. Now I am all for Holiday lightshows, but this was ridiculous!

Knowing that we have a trip to Boston planned, I decided to try to get the two things fixed at once and managed to schedule an appointment for Monday afternoon when I called on Monday morning.

Why, you might ask, did I not change my light bulbs myself? The answer is part bc you basically have to remove part of the engine to replace them in a Passat. (google it- you get 91,000 results) So $80 for headlights that cost around $8 a pop coupled with the check engine light automatic $98 "finder's fee" for figuring out what was wrong started off the trip to the repair shop. But when they checked the engine light and came up with a PCV Valve problem and the bill went up to $440, I thought great! I have a warranty! ONLY....

My warranty ends at 50K- my car has 52,007. I am almost certain that Karma is out there laughing hysterically right now.

Operation Agua

I began my attempts to install the waterline from my basement to my in-fridge ice and water dispenser about two months ago. By begin, I mean I made my dad hole saw thru the floor and then I randomly purchased accoutrements when I remembered in various trips to the store. Last Thursday, I decided enough is enough and in anticipation of Halloween and potential ice needs, I began anew with a trip to Home Depot. (Normally I am Lowe's but we have a gift card.) Operation Agua commence!


My home has a water manifold system and all I wanted on Thursday was:
1) A plastic connector to make the 1/2" pex pipe ($16) that I bought on one of my previous trips for Halloween supplies in order to attach the pex to the port.
2) A reducer/connector to go from 1/2" pex pipe to 1/4" line on the back of my fridge.

Instead, twenty minutes later, I came home with standard plumbing items of the following:
1) 5/8" compression nut with insert $2.77
2) 1/4" compression nut with insert $1.52
3) 5/8" compression nut x 3/8" compression nut both with inserts $4.70
4) 25' of 1/4" poly pipe $6-something

Now, I blame myself partially for not having rechecked the sizes but when he hands me each package after a detailed discussion of what I needed, I left the store and came home full of vim and vigor. Only 3/8" inserts don't fit in 1/4" tubing.

So, I proceed to spend Sunday with the plumbing apprentice aka BS, my boyfriend and every tool we have in the house. Turns out the standard size 5/8" compression nut doesn't actually screw on to the port when you insert the pex into the compression fitting and as we realized this we proceeded to drop it onto the floor and break the nut so I find myself taking a trip to Home Depot to replace the two headed nut and we take the $2.77 loss plus our time plus more gas from my already low tank.

At Home Depot, I return my 5/8"x 3/8" part for store credit and head back to the plumbing aisle. I stare into the boxes of PEX related parts until the man using the threading station notices my bewilderment and proceeds to come to my rescue. Standing there with hands full of all the appropriate parts, I couldn't figure out how I was going to crimp the pipe back at the house..


And lo and behold, Rich, the Home Depot savior, pulls out the crimper..to "show me how it works in theory" and with a wink, continues to make the above, a 1/2" PEX compression fitting (the one on the left) crimped copper ring, PEX pipe link, crimped copper ring to 1/2" male adaptor... swipe the bags and grab a bag of Sour Patch Kids for my mental stress and I am out $9.30 less the $4.70 credit but am a solid hour ahead in work.
We chisel out the wood to fit our new reducer onto the manifold and turn the water on... LEAK! Guess who forgot pipe tape?? So out to Sears Hardware for $1.05 and back to re-connect the pipes and turn the water on.... LEAK! Turns out the 1/4" compression fitting has some sort of issue in the nut that is allowing water thru coupled with my shrinking patience and I find myself holding three pieces for what is a two piece component. Off I go again, back to Sears for a new compression nut and nylon sleeve with insert ($2.63).
It is now 4:00. I have missed the Steelers game, I have installed a new compression fitting and we turn the water back on....
SUCCESS!

Total Spent:
6 hours including driving time and $39.37 not counting gas but I will never need a Brita again.

Spilled plants

Today, each time I type in my number keypad, my phone keypad or move my mouse, something goes crunch. When I lift my radio to call someone in the field, tiny rocks fall out. I just took a sip of water out of my mug and got a gritty feeling in my mouth. I guess that is the price you pay when you try to save a little green space by keeping a plant in your office and trying to open your window one handed. It makes the plant take a nosedive onto your desk and cover everything with a fine layer of green roof dirt.

I got stuck in an elevator- at Christmas time

So I found this started blog post that I apparently got distracted and never finished (surprised anyone?)... and thought, "Why not share this doozy with the world?" Merry Christmas in April, folks.




This is not a big deal. I kind of like the thought of wasting a day or two in an elevator. But the elevator at our downtown office has never broken on me before. I am not personally claustrophobic so when the woman approached myself and MC, my co-worker, our reaction to her seemingly crazy question of "Does this elevator get stuck often?" was one of almost incredulous, "No... never happened to either of us and we ride it all the time."


**Please note that this was our company's Operation Santa Claus day and that MC was dressed as Santa and I as a too-tall elf (If I can find the picture, I will attach it..)

No sooner did we pack Santa, myself and our new claustrophobic friend into our elevator, than four more ladies joined us. Now, this elevator is rather large and while I run the risk of sounding prejuidiced against the jolly, I have seen many large men pack into this elevator at closing time having apparently eaten their desks before entering. Note that I had not been stuck during these trips with the un-famished. So the 7 of us, ladies chattering away about the luncheon they were heading to, MC and I trying to not sweat to death and our claustrophobic friend headed upward. But between P1 (parking level one) and L (lobby for office), we skipped S (Store level). Dramatically panicking because it had skipped her level, our new friend pounded the buttons as the elevator came to a stop and the doors did not open.

MC has recently been in charge of an elevator contract and tried to begin to explain that it was not a big deal, that we deal with elevators all the time (althought I can see after our first incorrect statement that the elevator never gets stuck, why she might not believe us) and BAM! Claustrophia starts slamming buttons and pounding the door and shouting.

In true time elapse, we might have been stopped for three and a half whole minutes. The ladies all tried to calm her down while MC stood watch over the buttons so she couldn't do anymore damage and I spoke into the speaker. Thirty-five percieved minutes later, we were returning to the parking level where we explained to everyone to follow us and wandered out and around and up the stairs from P1 to S and then where they could find (insert place they were planning to go here).

Lesson learned: Don't allow the claustrophobic lady in the elevator with the bad-luck elf.

ET, Phone Home

Today I expect to receive my replacement phone. Replacement because two days ago my phone (bought 8/21/08) turned on and got stuck on the verizon logo. It flashed it actually, as if taunting my every attempt to reset and restart. I am not super abusive to my phones... ok this is sort of a lie. I once threw a phone off the roof I was standing on to the lower roof about 14 feet below in an arching dramatic toss of aggravation but this was after it malfunctioned in the middle of an irate call to a missing contractor. I am abusive but have good intentions and treat phones relatively nicely until they start to malfunction. This is when the throwing kicks in.
This makes the first LG chocolate 3 I have replaced but brought to mind my other cellular devices and the way in which they were replaced....

LG Chocolate Version 1.0:

I have owned three of these bad boys, one getting stuck in the open position...because there is nothing better than buying a phone for its small stylish design and then carrying a double sized bulge in your pocket. "Is that a banana in your....." You get the idea.


One got caught spinning randomly when the wheel was touched or not touched thru any number of screens, options, numbers, messages, pictures.. you name it, it scrolled... Made it awful hard to text or call or answer or well, in general use the phone at all.

And then there was the last straw. The one that pushed me to the Chocolate 3.
I had a demon phone that called people. It called people when it was shut. It called people upon opening it. When you tried to answer an incoming call, it became normal for people to wait up to 15 seconds to listen for answer because I would be maniacally hitting clear in order to stop the new call that was happening over the incoming call. I learned quickly that hitting end hung up both calls. It took over calling people about a month or so before I could update my phone for "free". About one week before the update, it also learned how to text. I owned "The Turk" of cellphones and gave it all away for functionality. Plus, I was worried about Sarah Connor coming after me to destroy it before it could become Skynet....

I don't remember much about the specific name of the phone before the Chocolate Escapades but I do remember it almost breaking in half, causing me to believe a slider phone was much more resilient. This was from overuse, claimed the insurance people. (This was a replacement I received only a month prior.) I dropped one of these in a parking lot. I left one on a train I was riding from Philadelphia to NYC that was headed on to Boston. I lost one in a bar one night. (i love the insurance program Verizon puts out. I always max out. Always.)

At the same time, I had a durable Nextel for work. At a fitness expo we were working to give Keystone Rugby a little greater Philadelphia exposure, I accidentally snapped my phone into its holster a little too strongly. It skittered across the parking lot and slide under a car, falling into the only storm water sewer basin in the entire parking lot. One hour later, a soaked KM, a non-wet RH (who had gone for help or supplies but had found kittens if I remember correctly and sort of forgot to come back for a while) and myself had rescued the phone mostly thru KM's genius, a coat hanger, some string, a pair of plyers and a couple of sticks. It never turned back on and I was told I should have just reported it stolen. The sim card was bad too.

Ah, the memories of phones gone past....

Underwear

We have a friend, DB, who occassionally befalls bad luck. Only to us, instead of it being horrific and tragic, it always seems to lean towards the comedic.

On Monday, at work, DB visited the bathroom only to learn that her underwear had broke. That's right, folks. Broke.

The above represents the type of underwear I think she was wearing. Apparently, these being her favorite brand and style, she had worn them to the point of becoming brittle and when she pulled on them, the side piece tore.

Knowing she had little options, sitting there as she was, she proceeded to tie the broken pieces together. I think the resulting scenario would look something like this MS Paint sketch:

As you can see in the repaired sketch, it appears that approximately 1/2 of one buttcheek would be "free" for the rest of the day. Also, due to the quantity of material needed to "tie" them back together, the resultant panties were a little bit small. In fact, fearing she would never be able to get them back down or up, this trip was the last to the bathroom for the entire day until she returned home.

Obviously, feeling uncomfortable, sure that someone could tell and needing some resolve from outside herself, she emailed her sister to get some feedback. The response:

"Sometimes things happen. I just saw a cow mounting an alpaca and the alpaca looked very uncomfortable."

So ladies and gentleman, I guess that your mom was right. Always wear a good clean pair of underwear when you leave the house.

Crashing down around me...

"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." -Robert X Cringely

I really like this quote because it represents a common issue: the desire of the computer to blow up. I am not saying I am alone in this, just that I have been subjected to it often.

I will be the first to admit that computers don't make a whole lot of sense to me. My dad's computer, if you sign in as him, won't let him view anything with flash or embedded files but sign-in under guest and it works just fine. (??!!??)

But it seems odd that something we pay what would be 198 hours at minimum wage to purchase (aka a whole month's work) is allowed to blow up every few years and we don't throw a conniption about it.

For example, my friend KM to whom the laptop comprises one of her top five most cherished possessions is experiencing the implosion of yet another plastic box of microchips. This is at least her second to go since graduating college. Is she mad? Yes. But does she have any recourse? Not really. Computers aren't expected to live that long....

Take my computer experiences. In college, the server at school crashed, corrupting my ipod on which I was storing my thesis as I had stopped trusting computers and refused to save all of my thesis on any computer due to their propensity to crashing. The previous year I had spent many hours at the forensic lab, trying to coerce the tech team to extract the last four years of my life off the now oversized coaster formerly known as my ibook. The tech team told me I was lucky to have gotten four years out of it.

But even my distrust worked against me, as I found myself piecing my thesis together from various files on three different computer hard drives and back-up cds. I have still not finished my thesis book (I also had a broken hand at the time which is a whole separate post) and still have various pieces of thesis floating about my house in the form of zip disks (obsolete), cd's (scratchable), flash drives (very easy to lose) and a monster hard drive (most likely under-utilized because it kind of intimidates me).

My work computer, a hand me down from my boss because my old one was literally older than the amount of time I have been out of college, has suffered from a new hard drive, had two keys replaced, and about once every two months choosing to show me the blue screen of death followed by the black screen of non-commitance. "Maybe I'll turn back on, maybe I won't", the black screen taunts. "Maybe all your files will be gone or maybe I will work fine again for two more months."

This is an upgrade from the previous who was missing three keys, had had its hard drive replaced twice (once after a week of vacation where I didn't use it because I wasn't even there yet I was blamed for its demise), and who wouldn't allow you to use two office applications at the same time without requiring a restart to save what you had done. *General Note: restarts don't actually save the work you have done. You only luck out if it does that back-up save thing. It only took me twice to catch on to this little quirk...*

And now, with two keys missing (do we see a theme?), my personal laptop which I love, is starting to go. I have replaced the hard drive once. I have reformatted. I have even stopped asking it to edit photoshop files and have admitted that using imovie for a little seven minute movie will take days. I only pray that work and home don't go at the same time....I think I am addicted.