My wife and kids won’t let me forget this one as I’m always early for everything and never late. I wanted to post about the 4th and what it ment to my family and myself as best as I could describe it but I really didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting/reclining back with a ice bag on my lower back trying to get the numbing feeling deep down to the nerves. That never happened and I went through the day in a lot of pain all day.
I was up all night also just watching TV and updating the OS in a spare Blackberry 8820 that I have laying around in case my 8810 decides that it doesn’t want to work anymore. While I was waiting for the updating as watching TV, I was thinking about the IRAQ war going on and how it’s affected my household. To be honest, the only things that have been affected is the cost of EVERYTHING that we buy. Gas prices are higher then I could’ve ever imagined, food prices are a joke also because the drivers need to raise their prices to get the food to the markets.
So how does that make me feel? PISSED OFF!!!! Robbery’s have gone up as well because people are losing jobs left and right and they need to feed their families. I can’t say I can condone what they are doing but i can also see in a sense where they are coming from if that’s why they are doing it. If it’s for drugs then I say we castrate them so they can’t breed anymore. I know I’d do anything to take care of my family and make sure they have a roof over their head and food on their plates, god only knows I’ve been doing that now since my kids were born. I always make sure they eat first and then I’ll eat what’s left over if I’m feeling up to it.
So what does the future hold for us? Each day that I wake up, (that is if I was able to sleep the night before), I always go in and give my kids a kiss on the cheek or forehead, whisper I love them, do the same to my wife and get on with my day. Today is going to be a great day outside as I look at the weather bar at the top of firefox, it shows that it’ll be 81 and sunny all day. So I’m thinking maybe we’ll take our dog to the dog park in Lake Orion and let her play with the other dogs, I’m sure my wife will go walking in the fields behind it and I’m sure if we go out then I’ll be taking a LOT of pictures. I sometimes wonder if I should have taken photography classes and gone into that field, it seems more stable to me then IT is and I love doing it just as much as I like doing IT work, hell actually more. It’s just so relaxing and there’s always a special moment that you can catch or a certain view of something that you just can’t forget.
I know that I could try to change fields but to be honest, being color blind kinda hurts that option, at least in my eyes. I try to read as much as I can but I was always told that it doesn’t matter how much you read, it’s doing it that actually teaches you and then there’s that gift of being able to capture that special shot that nobody else saw or was able to catch on camera.
So that’s my thoughts for the start of the weekend, it’s time to get a icebag on my back, refill my coffee cup,
go look at the kids and wife sleeping and make sure things are ready for my daughters camp trip next week.
A match made in heaven if I do say so myself. A couple days ago I received a PM from Guess who is the owner of Blackberry forums about a new site that he started called Blackberrynews.com and I saw that they gave a nice shout out to my pet project, dataoutages.com. So I replied back thanking him for it. Then the next PM was a reply from him about partnering up with us. That was a no brainer for me because Blackberryforums.com is the #1 forum on the internet for anything blackberry related.
So yesterday Guess and I spent about an hour on IM talking about what we could do to compliment each other and since this was his idea, I let him run with everything. The next thing I knew, he had setup a dedicated forum for outages. It’s been very well received by the community so far and it just gives Dataoutages.com more credibility.
So now I’m just going to sit back and take this all in for a few days before I start moving forward with starting up a couple more lists. Even though we primarily report on Blackberry outages from carriers or from RIM themselves, we don’t want to limit ourselves to just that. There’s plenty of potential and now it’s up to me to figure out what that is. If you have any idea’s, feel free to reply with them.
Now that’s over with, I saw an article titled, Lose cell phone, get cast away from society. I can relate to that but more with my Blackberry since it’s more or less my little world. I have EVERYTHING on my 8310. I’m horible with birthday’s and I know that I should memorize dates like my kids birthdays and other important things but as I get older and since my TIA’s, my memory hasn’t been as good as it used to be and I find myself looking at my BB for everything. Each day starts off with me waking up to it as my alarm anyhow and I spend at least 10 minutes reading my emails in the morning before I even think about crawling out of bed anyhow.
I remember back when only the VERY RICH had cell phones and they were built into the cars themselves, not something so small now that you can fit them in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans. Has technology made us dumber and lazier? I say yes it has and anyone that says no should really try to go without their cell phone, computer, PDA, cable or satellite TV for a month or even a solid week and see how it affects them. This includes dealing with family/personal/work emergencies or anything else that your device does.
For me, I’m shutting my 8310 down for the rest of the day and putting it in a drawer and listening to the radio while I enjoy this special day with my wife and kids.
Well today we turned our 3 cats into the animal shelter because they were just getting 2 expensive to have, wouldn’t really come around, kids refused to take care of the cat litter and a few other reasons. We’re still keeping our dog because she’s a great little dog that’s loves to be around us and is very protective. She loves being around my wife more then anything and really never leaves her side, I guess that’s because Karen’s home all the time so she’s more protective over her.
Now on to the car. It seems reverse is going out in the car and that’s NOT a good thing. As a matter of fact, it really pisses me off so I called the guy that I purchased it from this morning and he told me to get the fluid flushed out on it and if that doesn’t fix it then wait a couple weeks and he’ll backdate the warranty that he offered at the time of purchase for $420 and then they will take care of fixing that and my damn SRS light that won’t go off as well as go over the car with a fine tooth comb to make sure nothing else is wrong with it. I wanted to get the warranty but I was scrapping just to come up with the $ to get the car. So now I have to raise $420 for the warranty so if the fluid flush and change doesn’t work, which I doubt it will then I can take it to his shop and let them fix everything on it with me sitting right there making sure everything is done perfect.
My wife thinks that it’ll be a lot easier now that we won’t have 3 cats to buy food and litter for but she doesn’t realize that it was only about $30 month to take care of them, one of the main reason’s she wanted them gone is because they were tearing up our furniture and neither one of us believe in declawing them. After this weekend, I’ll have a better perspective as far as where we’re at $ wise and what med’s I can skip so I can get this car repaired.
On a good note, it looks like the weather is going to start getting better sooner then I expected but that means yard work again for spring cleanup, (IE: Cleaning all the dog crap from the yard, garbage that got buried under the snow storms, cleaning out the shed which is going to cost me about $75 for someone to come take away 90% of the stuff that’s in there. I’m slowly trying to get away from being a pack rat and that means cleaning all my computer stuff in the den also. But I’ll have my shed back which was my get away place in the summer to just sit back and relax. Over the last couple years it’s filled up with more and more stuff that Karen and the kids put in there. So once I get that area back then my son and I can get back to father son time again just sitting back and talking about different things.
Well now that I have the car cleaned up as far as the outside goes, all that’s left is for the weather to warm up to the 60’s - 70’s so I can get the buffer out and start cleaning the paint and then 2 different coats of wax. All glass is coated in RainX now as well as RainX wipers on the car. I still need to coat the inside windows with the RainX wipes though but that’s nothing that can’t wait a couple weeks as I believe I went over my budget by about $50 for things to clean it up for me for my daily driver.
I’m hoping this week or 2 we can get some rain to melt all this damn snow we’re getting here and what’s built up. 400lbs of salt still hasn’t cleared it up and it’s aggravating. I’m still having a issue with the airbag light staying on in the car but I’m slowly getting used to it. It’s not a fuse as I haven’t found anything in the manual to see that a fuse controls that.
So this week will be the first full week driving it back and forth to work so I’ll get a better idea of what kind of gas mileage I’ll be getting which will help.
I’ll be posting more as I do more things to fix it up. My son wants me to get a body kit for it and a kick ass sound system but that’s not me, not at 39 at least. Maybe 20 years ago it was but this is turning into more of a family car more or less. I’m still not sure if this is something we’ll be using for our Christmas vacation next year to Floriday or not, as much as I’d like to because of the mileage, I’m not sure If I can trust it. I’ll know more this summer as I do more driving and get used to it.
Well we finally got a second car again and I’ve done something I said I’d never do and that’s buy something non American. We purchased a 2000 Honda Accord LX with 115k miles on it last night but it’s fully loaded, get’s GREAT gas mileage and Honda’s are known to last forever if taken care of properly. This one has been taken care of and the interior looks brand new more or less and after we get some warm weather, I’ll be outside with the buffer and cleaning the paint and then a couple coats of good wax.
It has a bigger tank then the 2006 G6 that we’ve had as our only car so it costs more to fill up but from what research I did and the person we purchased it from, the thing averages over 32MPG on the freeway which is where I spend the majority of the time driving. He said he was getting close to 28MPG in the city also. With gas prices rising each week it seems, I can see this thing saving me a small fortune in gas and we won’t be going as far over the lease miles on the G6 as we were heading. At the rate we were going, we were looking at being around 12k miles over so now that it can just sit in the driveway 95% of the week, it’s going to be nice.
I still have some small work to do on the Honda as far as an oil change, replacing a couple burned out fuses and replacing the battery in the remote but that’s minor work. The only thing that’s bugged me so far is the burned CD’s that I have won’t play in the factory CD player, I’ll be checking tonight when I get home if a store bought CD will play and if that works then I need to figure out a way to trick the CD player into playing my burned ones or find a format that it’ll play. I’m also thinking about putting my XM radio in it but taking it somewhere to have done. So in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy not watching the gas needle move as I drive home each day from work and turn this into the family car.
My TIA’s that is. A TIA is Transient Ischemic Attack or Mini-stroke and I’ve been suffering from them for over a year now. They seemed to go away for awhile but over the last month have really come back strong again and each one does more damage to the brain. Last night while we were at our church orientation, I had another one but there was one difference, another lady in the class suffers from them also and saw the attack start. My wife started getting really upset because of the attack again but she was relieved to find out that this lady also suffers from them also and like me, had a hard time finding a Dr to tell her what was wrong.
We ended up leaving our orientation class early last night and Karen drove us home because I obviously wasn’t able to because of the shaking that comes along with it and the blurry vision that comes along with these attacks. I still am having one hell of a time speaking today and still have the shakes but my vision has cleared up some. At least it was good enough for me to take back roads into work all the way in this morning where I didn’t need to worry about traffic or worse yet, kids waiting for a school bus.
So today I need to get through work again and do it without talking which isn’t much of a problem considering where I work at and then try to get home again. We have another winter storm watch for tonight again which really sucks since I can barely get in our driveway as it is now with all the ice/snow buildup at the end of it now without scraping the bottom of the car.
Life goes on and I will continue to do so. I don’t give up easy and this is a fight that I refuse to lose. I may not have control over my brain and these attacks but I sure as hell can do my best to continue to work and provide for my family. I can’t take the time off work to get my back fixed right so I know they won’t give me the time off to get this issue fixed. It’s just not the way the company is.
Well today is my 39th Birthday and yesterday my wife and I celebrated our 12 year anniversary. I told my wife and kids that next year they get to buy all those over the hill birthday cards/hats/banners/etc that we see at the stores. My body still feels like it’s twice it’s age easily but that’s due to all the health issues. My back is, well back to being messed up again. I’m eating pain pills like they are m&m’s. A few friends of mine have a running bet as to when my body’s going to break down for the count. It’s not a cruel bet/joke/etc as it’s something that we started about 15 years ago when we really heavy into sports and playing with some severe injury’s. Think cast on leg and playing softball, bowling, basketball, etc.
So I guess I’ll be back to blogging more often again. Not sure what or when yet though.
So I decided to move my main blog back over here and have a mobile blog up at http://mobile.c2wifi.org where I can post to when I’m out and about with the family since I can post to that a LOT easier from my Blackberry then I can to wordpress.
I may be double posting but who knows. It’s up to what mood I’m in I guess.
