You Learn

Things I've learned over the past few days:

• The problem with the HDDVR and DirecTV wasn't the company at all, it was a simple problem of the last installer putting the wrong switch up. The second guy came out, put in a wideband switch, and all is well.
• I'm not to bad at this T-ball managing thing. We played a team on Mon and he only had 4 kids at gametime. I had 12 out of 13. I asked if he would have more players and he said that "I tell my kids to get here at gametime. It's easier to control them that way." That's horrible.
• Little E at 2 isn't much different so far from Little E at a few days before 2. Of course, she's becoming obsessed with sitting on the potty. So that's encouraging. Maybe the diapers will be able to leave soon.
• The busted differential in the sweetest minivan in the west wasn't quite as big a problem as we'd thought. So the bill went from a proposed $1250 to a mere $780. We saved a ton of money! Also it was done a day early.
• Big T likes bowling. He's never gone, but we're going to have his b-day party there and he's thrilled.
• I'm going to have to replace two out of three fences this summer. This wouldn't be quite as horrible if they both didn't have retaining walls also. That's gonna be rough.
• Lawnmowers have come a long way in 15 years. I don't know how old the mower we had was, but I got it from my dad when he bought a new one about 3 years ago and I used to mow their lawn with it when I lived there. It's old and finally got tired. After rigging the handle after it snapped off, it decided that it would be fun to leak gas. Everywhere. So I now have a new mower with a key that will start it so I don't have to pull the cord, and rear wheel propulsion that's controlled by a hand-brake style throttle. Pull it farther back, and you'll go faster. It's pretty neat-o.
• Having the kids birthday's 5 days apart isn't quite as awesome as I'd initially thought. It's kinda hectic, and I can't imagine what it'll be like when they're both having parties with friends.
• Having the kids birthday's 5 days apart is pretty cool. There's tons of cake. Cake was made on Sunday and it's still here. Another cake will be made on Friday, then cupcakes for the family party on Sunday, then next week, there's T's kid party. Then a mother's day in there somewhere, then a Anniversary in June. Cake, cake, cake. I likes the cake.
• T likes to throw my in-laws pointless toy poodle into the pool. I guess he'll just pick it up and toss it through the air into the pool. I think this is hilarious. The dog, however, isn't as amused.

It's amazing how informative just a few days can be.

The Roof is on Fire

It's very weird being in a building that is used mainly for meetings. Most people don't even know that I work here. I'm in the back of the building behind a couple sets of double doors. Usually it's very nice, nobody bugs me, I can go out and meet the world if I'm so inclined, or I can stay back here, play my tunes and do my work in peace. Of course this wonderful working environment was disrupted this year when they put in a school right next to my area. Literally right next to it. I have nothing but a wall now between me and a school.

Well, not so much a school as a holding pen for kids who have been expelled from other schools and are now in the last phase of their scholastic experience with the district. From this particular school , which has two classrooms for kids from 7th grade to 12th grade, they will either be able to re-enter a regular school site, or be removed from the district forever. Today a genius in this school next door started a fire in the boys bathroom over there, which caused the fire alarms to go off, and I got to stand outside for a bit while four fire engines showed up with their lights a-goin' and their sirens a-blazin' (and yes, I did take a video for my soon to be 5 year old) and moseyed up to the roof and put out the fire through the air vent at the top of the bathroom.

This whole thing took about an hour to complete and the kids were hoping to get to go home, as I heard them talking about it. And also, their administrator mentioned that she was talking to the main district office to see about letting them go home. However, those hopes were squashed when they were told that we had room in our Multi-Use room over here so they wouldn't be going home, but would be all crammed into another room together. To learn. I don't think they learn anything, I think they're getting dumber as the days go by.

I also found out that the two teachers that are normally assigned to the school were over here today for a class on something, so the teachers that were there at this last chance school were actually subs. Most subs have to worry about getting hit with a spitball or chalk in the eraser or something. Here? The kids will burn the school to the ground if you don't pay attention. Fun stuff.

Tommorow Is A Long Time

We finally upgraded our TV to get HD this past weekend. It was supposed to be a simple little procedure. Guy comes over and puts up new dish, hooks up new receiver, he leaves and we watch TV a mere 30 minutes or so later. But of course, it's our house, so it didn't go nearly that smooth.
To make a long, somewhat boring story short, I'll use neat-o style approximate timelineish bullets.

• Guy shows up at 11:30, after I woke up at 7:40 on a weekend because the time frame given was between 8am and 12pm.
• 11:32 : Guy starts out by inspecting the side of our house where he claims he's not allowed to put dish. Explains that it's a $70 charge for the underarm roof mount.
• 11:33-11:42 : I think about whether or not I want to pay another $70.
  
• 11:43 : Guy then says that if I cut a small piece of 2x4 to go under eave of house, that'll be fine also.
• 11:45 : I cut 2x4.
• 12:15 : New HDDVR is ready, dish is built and put on roof.
• 12:30 : First reset of HDDVR is complete and the Guy is on the phone with DirecTV to activate new setup
• 12:45 : Activation complete, however, some of the HD channels aren't showing up.
• 1:00 : Reset of HDDVR number 2.
• 1:15 : Inspection of dish installation begins.
• 1:40 : Guy replaces a connector that he claims is bad and won't work with new HDDVR.
• 1:50 : Still not working so Guy Resets HDDVR again.
• 2:15 : After going into the attic to inspect the cabling, comes down and replaces filters on back of new HDDVR
• 2:30 : Tests power of connection to back of HDDVR.
• 2:45 : After discovering that power of signal is 94% all the way to back of HDDVR, concludes that it's possibly the switch outside. (this didn't make sense to me at the time because the switch was between the dish and the HDDVR, so if the signal was strong through the cable, it can't be the switch that's cause the signal loss, but I figure, 'whatever, let him test it.')
• 3:00 : After telling me that it will be $70 for a new switch if that's the problem, he says that he'll test it first.
• 3:25 : Finishes installing new switch, and it's not the problem. (duh!)
• 3:27 : Guy concludes that it must be a bad HDDVR and he has no more in the van, well, actuall he has one more in the van but it's for a customer later that night.
• 3:30 : I show my compassion for other customer by claiming, that if the other box works, then I should be entitled to it because at this point I'm being punished for him grabbing a broken box out of the van. My logic concludes that if he'd grabbed the other box coming into my house, we wouldn't be in this mess.
• 3:35 : Guy is thoroughly confused by my simple logic.
• 3:40 : Guy begins trying to find a new box.
• 4:00 : Guy is unable to find a new box but says that his dispatcher claims that 3 other installers are having the same problem, so it's not their fault, it must be DirecTV.
• 4:15 : Guy puts us on list of people with HDDVR problems and says to give it a couple days to see if it corrects itself and leaves.
• 4:20 : We go run our errands that we wanted to do 3 hours ago

Now all this wouldn't be so much a big deal, but last night it wasn't working still, 21 channels that I'm not getting, and so I called DirecTV. The girl I talked to on the phone says that she's not aware of any satellite problems from this weekend or yesterday. "Hmmmm" I think to myself. She then walks me through a satellite setup to see how my signal is. She claims that based on the information that I'm giving her I shouldn't be able to see anything but snow on my TV. So she sets up service call figuring that it's a bad box and will have a tech bring out a new one to replace the broken one. And there will be no charge for this service.

So I'm going to be going home tonight to see if any of those channels are going yet. Hopefully they're all there and I won't have any other problems. But I have a feeling that it won't be that easy.

But on another note, we found out that Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and My Friends Tigger & Pooh are broadcast in full widescreen HD. That was something unexpected. Also, since you're all so concerned, dear readers, I'll keep you updated as to the resolution of this heinous problem.

Time of Your LIfe

I helped my cousin film three separate 'Every 15 Minutes' demonstrations over the past two weeks. They were all in Solano County and two of them were in what I'd call 'small towns' or 'rural communities'. One was in Rio Vista, which as you can tell by the website, isn't the hippest or largest town in the world. They actually don't have a jail. At all. If you get arrested in the city of Rio Vista, you're going to take a trip up to Fairfield to get put into a cell. This blew my mind, because as you know, even Mayberry had a jail. Most of the people who we were talking to, the Firefighters, cops, local judges, had all grown up there in that small town. They went to school at Rio Vista High, and some had kids who were currently there. The whole school was maybe 350 kids. Maybe. As a comparison, the HS I went to has a current population of around 1900 kids. This will be important later, so please remember that.

The other really rural community was in the lovely cowtown of Dixon. You know this is a great town because on my way to the Wal-Mart (the best place to buy anything) I saw a Tractor Supply Company. This place was great, all kids of John Deere stuff, but the best thing I saw in the store were three giant metal tubs that had baby ducks and baby chicks. For sale. In the store. I didn't know how cheap chicks were, you could get these guys for $1.29 each! The ducks were only $2.69 and there was one lady who was buying three. I was tempted to get some, let me tell you. I don't know what I'd do with a baby chick, but they were so cheap, it was hard to walk away.

The reason that I talk about this is walking around in these little communities, I felt like I was in the heart of civilization, that I'd grown up in a very suburban area with anything I needed right around me somewhere, lots of nice stores, good restauraunts, happening coffee shops. And then today I got the information about my high school reunion. Now, I graduated in '97, so the 10 year reunion should have been last year. But my school was known as the redneck school when I went there, and apparently not much has changed, because they couldn't get anything together last year, so we're doing an 11 year reunion instead. Neat, huh? So instead of some formal invitation mailed to my house with an RSVP card inside, I got an Evite. And where is this kick-ass spectacular bash happenin? Why, at the local Skipolini's of course. I thought that I'd just put the whole Evite text here, because it speaks a lot as to the inaccuracy of my assumption that I was in a city different than Rio Vista and Dixon:

Join us on June 21st at Skip's in Clayton for some great pizza and memories! We decided against a high-priced, formal affair in favor of something casual so that as many people could attend as possible. And yes, SIGNIFICANT OTHERS AND KIDS ARE WELCOME!

Since we'll be ordering food
in advance, we need $15 per adult and $5 per child under 10. This includes pizza, salad, beer, soda and dessert. What a deal! Please RSVP with your headcount by June 14. Send your money via Paypal or call to mail a check.

Also, we want to know what you've been up to, so please answer the poll questions with your RSVP. Responses will be made available for everyone to see.

We're looking forward to catching up with everyone and hope to see you there!

Kinda makes you understand a bit more about the school I went to, eh? And to my fellow alumni out there, here's the info you wanted, if you didn't get one, e-mail me and I'll send this to you also. And if you didn't go to my school but want some good pizza and beer, I don't think we'll be able to close down the place, so come on! Party with us! We had NASCAR playing during my Senior Ball, I can't wait to see what's going to be happening at the reunion.

Push

I've implimented a new policy for my T-ball team. It's very similar to a 'Time Out' where if they don't listen, they have to sit somewhere and don't get to participate for a specific amount of time. I didn't think that I'd have to resort to this, however there is one kid in particular on my team who is a whiny, pouty, pest. He doesn't listen to either myself or my coach, and at our last practice while doing a very simple drill/game, he led another of my kids on a run across the entire school site. So for not listening the two of them sat down for a few minutes while the rest of the kids got to do the next drill/game.

What are these drill/games you ask? Why, I'll tell you. The first one that caused the problem is a simple one that's meant to get the kids to learn to run through first base instead of stopping on the bag. It consists of two lines. One line runs to first base from home plate, the other line is between third and home and has a kid with a ball. The kid with the ball and the kid from the plate start running at the same time. The goal of the kid at home is to get to first. The goal for the kid with the ball is to tag the kid running before they get to first base. My little troublemaker was the kid at home. This kid also goes to a Montessori school. So you can imagine the type of parents that he has. The 'let him express himself' type. He's got a little sister that's slightly older than my Little E, and according to my lovely wife, at the games, she'll grab Little E and try to drag her around the field. My daughter doesn't appreciate this at all, and when the subject was brought up by my wife that this wasn't a good thing. The mom said, "Oh, she just likes your daughter." Annoying.

At this same last practice, before the above took place, he was in line with my boy waiting to run. This little kid pushed my boy, and he stumbled a bit. Then my T took a big step towards this kid, who is taller and a year older, said "Don't push me!" and with both hands, pushed the annoying kid and knocked him back onto his butt. I was at once very proud of my boy for standing up to this kid, and for knocking down someone who was bigger than him. On the other hand, it was an awkward position for me to try to tell him not to push back and to 'use his words'. Even though while he pushed the kid, he did say "Don't push me." So he was kinda using his words. In talking to my coach about this, I learned that this kid doesn't have many fans in the stands, if you know what I mean.

So all in all it was a pretty eventful practice. I don't know if they learned anything about baseball, but they did learn that if they screw around, they won't get to play. So that's something. We've got a game tomorrow morning, so we'll see how that goes. It's our first Saturday game, we've been playing for a month now and we're finally playing on a weekend.

Story Book Children

What an adventure for an almost 5-year-old. His first trip to the library to get some books. I had planned to get him his own library card, but apparently, he's not allowed to have that until he can write his first and last name on the tiny space on the back of the card. When I asked the librarian why he needed to be able to do that, she said it was so he could identify himself. I asked him if he wanted to write his name, and he spelled it for me. So that was close.

I decided that I'd just use my own library card and we went to pick out a few books for him. He seemed only extremely overwhelmed by the amount of books that he could pick from. Wandering from section to section I asked him what kind of book he wanted, I pulled one out about trains, asked him if he wanted to look at it, and he just took it, sat at the little kid table and said, "Yup, I'll take this one." We meandered through for a bit and came out with a book about a frog that plays T-ball, a Curious George book, and one about a stroller adventure that he just grabbed and felt would do nicely.

When we got back up to check out the books, I found that I still had a late charge on my card from 2003. Pre birth of my son. There were a few others on there from '05, and the total damage was $20. I said fine and offered my debit card to take care of the offense. But apparently, the library doesn't have the technology to support that. So I had to take T out of the library without his books, explaining that we'd be right back to get them because Daddy forgot something that the library needs. We found a local B of A and I paid a $3 fee to get out my $20. Drove back to the library and started up on the checkout process again.

Now since I haven't used my card in over 2 years, they needed to reactivate it and confirm my address and other information. The address they had for me was my parents old address, where I haven't lived for a long time. I informed the nice lady librarian that this information wasn't current, and she asked for my ID. Which was cool. So I handed her that and she asked if that was my current information, and it's not. It had the address from our condo that we haven't lived in since mid '05ish. She asked if I had anything on me with my current address, and since I didn't she wasn't supposed to let me check out the books. But since I had a little boy with me who was very patiently waiting to show his new books to his Papa (my dad) she let me leave with the information stating that I still lived at my parents house.

T was thrilled to get these new books and understands the process of borrowing and returning. Of course, the knowledge that when he takes them back, he gets to take different ones home again helps a lot. So he had my dad read him all four books, and my dad realized that Curious George books are very long. And it's true, they are. They're like 3 stories in one. And it appeared that T noticed that they were long as well, because he had his mommy read him that one last night and it took her about 10 minutes to get through it. Though that may be because he's trying to learn to read and it can take a while if he's really trying to get the words right.

So visit and support your local library! It's good for your economy if you can remember to take the books back on time. I have a hard time with that. Maybe that's why I love Netflix so much.

Dream On

I'm looking for a dream interpreter. It's a somewhat unusual dream for me, and hopefully for everyone else out there. I've been having some weird ones lately, but this one warrants public scrutiny.

I don't remember all of it as I was asleep at the time, but what I remember is me at ACE Hardware, at like 3 in the morning, when who should arrive but Ted Danson! Yes, that one, from Cheers. A show I haven't watched in years, though there have been a lot of commercials for Three Men and a Baby on lately. Anyway, he's buying fishing gear. Fishing gear at a hardware store. He is going to go fishing on the pier on the Delta, but I convince him not to go there, but to fish at another spot that's less crowded down by a park. He does and is very happy with his catch. And that's about all I remember.

Now I don't fish ever, really. The only time I've gone lately was up at that horrible campground, but that was just letting T throw his line in for a while. If you have any theories, lay them on me. Mine is that I've been watching to much Andy Griffith on TV Land where those commercials of Three Men and a Baby have been airing. But I could be wrong. Maybe there's some deep rooted subconscious emotional thing going on. Or maybe I shouldn't eat any more cake past 9.