Paying Peter Back

What happens when you put something that is cardboard into the washing machine?  Well this is the place to find out!  This is a story of cataclysm.   It is a story of heroism.  It is a story of shock and awe…shit!

It was a lovely day.  The wife decided to wash a shoe rack which looked convincingly plastic/cloth.  She tossed it in the washer and life went on.  The next morning I went to move the clothes over to be dried and was horrified by the fact that our clothes had been attacked by some weird gray substance.  I looked closer and found it was cardboard.  I thought I could wash them again and get rid of it.  This failed.  The pieces were just too big to go out with the rinse cycle.  Everything had a gray haze to it.

Well, something had to be done.  I placed the clothes in the dryer and left it.  I then cleaned what was left of the cardboard out of the washer.  At least that was over with.  But the real fun was about to begin.  I was priming what would become the Mt. St. Helens of our basement.

Fast forward 45 minutes.

I go down to the basement and the dryer smells and sound a little funny.  I stopped it and cautiously pulled the lint filter out.  Holy crumpled carboard batman!  It was so full I almost couldn’t get it out.  So, in my infinite wisdom, turned the dryer back on WITHOUT THE FILTER IN and POOF… the basement air was now saturated in tiny cardboard particles.  There were snowmelts, earthquakes and I think I saw a cow flying by.  My 18 month old son and I were just staring as the little pieces slowly descended upon us.  It was as if fate was gently saying “lol”.

It was like a volcano had erupted and cardboard rubble was burying us.  The climate of our basement changed dramatically and at least 3 species of small primates went extinct.

I pressed on and took each item out of the dryer and shook it off, creating more cardboard ash.  After the last shaking I had placed them all back in the wash and was going to let it roll again.  It was our last hope!

In the end the dust settled, homes were rebuilt and lush wildlife has returned to that part of the basement.  The climate has rebalanced and we can now see daylight.  We’re still cleaning up the clothes from that day but soon it’ll be a distant memory.

I’d like to end with a moral to this story: Make sure you don’t place cardboard in your washing machine.  Ever.

Tags: cardboard, snow, story, volcano

To all the patrons out there with leftover dessert.
It’s easy to do just follow these steps:
1: Cut a hole in a box
2: Put your cake in that box
3: Make her open the box
And that’s the way you do it

Tags: cake, dessert, parody

The kitchen sink drain system is #2.  The toilet flange (the thing that the toilet is bolted to) still being a solid #1.

So, two days ago our kitchen sink clogged or at best was draining very slowly.  After saving the kitchen from an over flowing dishwasher and the like, we had to act.  We tried various things, none of which worked.  Draino, more draino, a pipe snake and even a motorized automatic pipe snake thingy.  Nothing worked!

So, the 3rd trip to Home Depot was going to be the last one.  I’d read about this thing called Kleer Drain but was skeptical.  Simple concept: blow the clog out.  What?  Yes, using a CO2 cartridge you literally blast the clog with high pressure water/gas.  Well, we got one and enough chemicals to be put on a federal watch list too.

First was the Kleer Drain device.

Round 1: Fight!
Blasted the clog with a jolt of compressed air/water.  Made a lot of noise.  Very cool to use.  Nothing doing though.

Round 2: Fight!
Blasted again with another large bang.  All the pipes shook at the force of the shot.  Nothing yet but I hear signs of something going on down below.

Round 3: Fight!
I didn’t relent after the second shot.  I immediately went to work and gave it another kick in the pants.  BOOM! This time, we hear it, wait for it… SLURPY DRAINING NOISES!

VICTORY IS MINE! *crowd goes wild*

So, bottom line? Kleer Drain RULES.  I guess it won’t work in every situation but dang if it didn’t work for us.

Here is the website

Tags: co2, drain, kleer drain, sink

Yeah I’m totally ganking this photo from someone elses site but it has to be done.

Two of the uglieset shoe creation in history have mated and had a ‘Seinfeldian’ ugly baby.  You remember when looking at the baby nearly knocks Kramer down?

Yeah, behold:

OMFG

CRUGGS!

Tags: croc, omg, ugg

I know, I know, the year isn’t exactly over yet.  There is still one more day!  A lot can happen in a day, true, but I want to review the things that are long and slow and generally take a lot of time.  I’ll also throw in whatever else I feel is relevant.

This is my first full year at my new job.  Some days were stressful, others kind of relaxed.  Standard issue stuff.  So I guess it isn’t a new job anymore.  Well, if I use the radio station mentality it is!  Anyone notice that the River 97.1 is STILL NEW.  It’s been out for 4 something years right?  That means our car is still mostly new?

That’s great because we just paid the car AND truck off.  Now we can sell them for near what we bought them for and get new ones? Maybe not but they are officially owned by us.  We have the titles to prove it!  That is probably the largest accomplishment this year.  Now there is extra money to be applied towards our other debt (school, other credit cards, etc).

The one thing we did not do so well on this year was health/exercise stuff.  We will prevail.  A lot of that, with me, had to do with one of the major downsides of 2008.  I spent nearly half the  year with an injured shoulder.  Of all things, from getting into a push-up position the wrong way.  It happened in May and probably end of November was the last time I had any sort of trouble from it.  So, take care of your shoulders.  When they hurt, everything hurts!

The oldest kid turned 5 and the youngest turned 1.  I turned 30 and she 28.  I lost my wallet twice but found it one of those times.  Didn’t play as much golf as I wanted, again, thanks to the shoulder.

I did not attempt a shuttle launch viewing this year mostly because I had zero vacation time or any PTO for that matter.  This year has to be the year.  They retire in 2010.

We started and stopped another blog, coupondiva.net.  While it was fun to save tons of money (and even get stuff for free) we found it was sometimes excessive and a lot of work.  Hats off to the people that walk out of CVS with 1200 dollars worth of stuff after having the store pay THEM 50 dollars on top of it.  What would you do with 100 bottles of shampoo, hmm?!  Build a slip n’ slide of course.  Ladies only please.

I spent the first three months of the year with pharyngitis, the flu and then a nasty cold.

I stopped and started WoW twice I think.  I should probably stop again /sigh.  I did try Age of Conan and destroyed the DVD out of pure disgust two days later.  Horrible game!  On that note I also desrtoyed the latest WoW disk too… after a little in-game-rage.  Yeah, stupid video games! [post will not be viewable now from work due to mention of games, way to go!]

And that’s all I can think of right now.  Maybe I’ll do another one called “The last day of the year in review”.

Tags: day, etc, new years, review

Ok, if you go to lm3design.com you’ll see a sign that says “Sorry, we’re closed”.  Is business slow or bad?  No!  It’s too much!  I get asked about once a week it seems to build a website.   I am flattered that I get asked but I do that and more all day long.  I want to go home and do stuff for myself/family.  Lately that hasn’t been the case.  I swore I’d kick the habit after the last couple of projects but I went back for more.

Well my New Years Resolution is:

No more work on the side for people.  Not for a long time.  I have to get my life more in order.  Then I can revisit it.

Tags: health, sidework, stress

I’m wearing a blue shirt with khakis today.  I go to Wal-Mart and I got asked to get a TV down for someone.  I politely laughed and told him I didn’t work there.

Went to the camera aisle where and older gentleman asked me about digital cameras.  I actually know a thing or two about that stuff so I helped  him out.  He never asked me to get one out of the case thankfully.  I ended up shoving my nametag in my pocket.  Lets see where else I can do and get mistaken as an employee!

Tags: cameras, no, tv, walmart

I’m going to leave all of the super-freaky details out of the this post, regarding my dream.  I’ll sum up and say; it was weird.  But more than weird, there was one super scary part!  Lets dive in!

So I get a call from a friend and he says “Hey man, I saw that nice little car sitting in your yard.”  I reply back “Oh yeah I figured, hey since I don’t have a car payment, I might as well get something new.”  Then I thought to myself “Wait, you did what?  You FINANCED ANOTHER CAR?!”

How could this happen?  Was I drunk?  Had I eaten some holiday brownies that were in fact ‘magical’?  Did I make a deal with the devil?  Who cares?! I had gone out and gotten a loan for a car!

So I spent most of the dream figuring out ways to get out of it.  I recall that I didn’t sign any documents in the dream and that was my way out.  The sheer terror of that feeling actually eventually woke me up and I remember saying “Thank God!” out loud.

So  yes, I had a nightmare about financing a vehicle.  Dave Ramsey, do I make you proud?

Tags: Car, finance, nightmare

When you tell a client:

“Yes, here’s the rough design.  I still need to make a few changes and some tweaks but this is basically what it will look like”

And the client responds with:

“Yeah, well we need to change this and that and this and oh that too and this isn’t finished and these links don’t work.”

Then I restate myself.

Then they say:

“Oh…”

Moral of the story?

If I’m still working on it.  It isn’t done!

Tags: annoy, design, web

Lately the strangest thing has been happening. We’ve been seeing umbrellas laying around here and there. It used to be shoes that were laying around then again they still do. So, is it a coincidence that we’ve seem them laying around? I think not! I shall explain.

Umbrellas, what do we use them for? We use them when it rains and that’s about it. The functional purpose is to keep small lightweight forms of precipitation from hitting our bodies. There ARE sun umbrellas but they’re a different technology adapted from smaller umbrellas. Technology, you say? Yes, do you think that Mary Poppins was magical? Flip no! She was a frappin’ alien! That was NOT a spoon full of sugar either but that investigation is being blocked by a bit of red tape. Not to worry about, we’ll… I’ll get to the bottom of it.

So, these “umbrellas” that are laying around are obviously travel devices that are spent. The technology is so advanced that they appear to take on a form of being built by human engineering. I’m onto it though! Just like Tang and Velcro and those other things we “developed”.

Oh crap, I hear helicopters again. Time to retreat to the basement.

-out!