Family visit

Friday, October 14, 2005

A couple months back my Grandpa and his wife drove to VA from CA to visit. It was pretty awesome. In the almost 10 years I have been here this is the first time he has come back to visit. We got to show them all around. We took him out to dinner for his Birthday. We also took him and his wife down to the ocean front to let them check out the beach and board-walk.

They stayed with us about 3 days. It wasn't very long but it was well worth it. I am glad that I had the opportunity to see them. I only get to CA about once a year now.

 langdon: 12:02 PM, October 15, 2005 
Your wifey takes great pics!

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Uncontrollable laughter

Remember when you were a kid and you had moments of uncontrollable laughter. For example, I was tickling my 4 year old son Gauge the other day. He was laughing so hard I am surprised he didn't wet his pants. But it wasn't just the tickling that made him laugh; it was also the anticipation. I would make silly faces and fake with the left hand, then tickle him with the right. It is amazing how some of the simple things can bring about such excitement and joy.

It seems like as we grow up, we lose some of that silliness, some of the innocent adolescence of our youth. I mean sometimes we are still kids at heart(to a degree), but life's responsibilities takes away some of the shear exhilaration of being a kid.

My goal for this weekend is to be a kid; or at least behave like one. Who's up for some video game playing, parent disobeying, responsibility ignoring fun?

Here's to kids.

 Anonymous: 3:06 PM, October 14, 2005 
I know that I am dealing with teenagers here at school, but even they have a youthful exuberance that I envy. Their shoulders don't roll toward the ground with the weight of the world like ours do. So when you are game playing and parent disobeying....hold your head up and your shoulders back Noah. -Candice


 Anonymous: 9:10 PM, October 14, 2005 
You pegged it, brother! It's at least as much about anticipation as it is anything else. When I come home from work, I don't just pop my head around the corner and surprise Meridian: I whistle a bit or hum a tune, so she hears my voice first. She literally drops whatever she has in her hands and starts dancing around, looking for me. When we see each other ... that's magic.

David Stiller


 langdon: 12:01 PM, October 15, 2005 
I'm proud to say I still laugh uncontrollably. The trick: Skyping with Cameron and Chris and staying late at work or at NH95 and just doing silly stuff. It's great becoming absolutely delirious at work dealing with the most ridiculous problems, to the point where anything and everything is funny.


 AYeager: 5:45 PM, October 18, 2005 
I practice weekly. It's part of my anti-aging program (OK it's the WHOLE program). Trouble is, I usually end up hurt (See "trampoline" blog post). Again, it's ALWAYS worth it. Great pic, BTW.

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The number of the beast

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Recently, I have experienced a great deal of frustration with my transportation. Over the past few months I have put a considerable amount of money into service and repair of my vehicle; Over $2000.

The Beginning:
Immediately after returning from California a few months back, my A/C died in my SUV. The first day back on my way to work, there was nothing but warm air blowing from the vents. I thought, "this sucks, it will probably cost a couple hundred bucks". Wrong! It cost $1300. It was the heater core and required removal of the whole dash to access it.

And then..:
I had actually been planning to take my truck in anyway for 60,000 mile tune-up. I also figured that would be about $200. Wrong again! that was $700. It required transmission flush, spark plug/wire change, fuel injection clean, etc...

Last, but not least:
I had also put some cash away to replace my speakers. Why? Because they have been blown for about 6 months. Okay, that one is my fault, but I dealt with it for as long as I could.

So, some $2300 later I should have a nice fully operational vehicle with great sounding tunes. Well, the great sounding tunes part is right. However, ever since the tune-up, the transmission has been shifting incorrectly. I took it back; they reflushed it and didn't solve the problem. Additionally, now there is some ridiculous noise coming from the blower fan from the A/C.

You can imagine my frustration. Thousand of dollars for what, a busted up vehicle? I looked up the blower fan in my repair manual. Guess what? It also requires removal of the dash to replace. That is wonderful. I guess I wont be doing that myself.

The number of the beast:
I happened to notice that my odometer read 66600 earlier this week. well, now it all makes sense. My frickin vehicle is cursed. Enough is enough. I decided that I really wanted a new car. Ohh, BTW - I just paid the other one off. I was convinced that I was going to go down to the local BMW dealer and find something nice to replace my POS.

A change of heart:
Two wonderful things happened this weekend. The first was Friday afternoon on my way home from work. Amazingly what ever was stuck in the blower fan came loose and blew out. The noise went away. There is still a slight vibration but it is tolerable. The second is that I decided to take my truck to the dealership and see if they could give me an estimate on the transmission shifting problem.

The service department called me back and said, "the charge is $85 dollars to fix and was caused when you had the other place flush your transmission". Apparently, they had tightenend one of the lines up against a cable that was now being restricted. This caused the transmission to shift at the wrong times. So , I actually went back to place A and said, "this is what you did when you tried to fix my vehicle so I had to take it to the dealership and pay them $85 to fix it". They said, "no problem we will reimburse you for your trouble".

Of course, now my vehicle has moved beyond the 66600 mile mark and is performing much better. I hope it was just a phase.

 Boriqua: 12:36 AM, October 14, 2005 
Last time I bought McDonald's, the total came to $6.66. I took that as a sign to never eat there again.


 luke: 10:20 AM, October 15, 2005 
65k-70k seems to be the point where you vehicle proves itself. The transmission in GMC vehicles has a nasty reputation of dying at 67k. I heard a lot about it from co-workers when I worked construction and it also happened to my brother and sister in their latest vehicles. My truck's odometer just turned 166k and I was at 75k miles when I moved to VA Beach with it. It has its problems (A/C is out, vacuum pump, front speakers are loose etc) but the engine/transmission have been strong. I've had this truck since I was 17 (dad bought it used for me) and it is one of the best feelings to not have a car payment. I'm hoping it can last me another several years. It would be nice to turn 30 with it.

I am simply shocked at how hard it is to get to stuff in your truck. I mean its a freakin dodge. They look like they have sooo much room under the hood. Two mechanics should easily be able to crawl under there and sleep.


 langdon: 11:58 AM, October 15, 2005 
I was excited about your new car buying, because I also want to buy a new (used) car (Lexus IS300)... we could've been car buying buddies. =[


 Anonymous: 12:37 PM, December 08, 2005 
WHATS UP DUDE THATS COOL IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHATS UP WITH YOU AND YOUR FAMILY JUST GO TO THE WEB SITE. WELL GOT TO RUN BUT IT SEEMS AS IF NOT ONLY CARS CAN BE POSSESSED, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE HAD A EXORSIST COME OUT. LATE.
CHRIS O

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Welcome, Tabor-tot

Monday, October 10, 2005

Congratulations to Cameron and Jennifer Tabor on the birth of their little girl. Her name is Annelise Erin Tabor. He has posted a summary of the birth details here. We expect a full entry as time permits.

Cameron and his wife decided not to know the gender of their little Tabor-tot until birth. That would be really tough for me. I told Cameron I can't wait until he has to come to work with puke on his shirt.

Congratulations from the DiCenso family.

 Cameron: 12:25 AM, October 11, 2005 
Thanks Noah, and Family. We are very happy and she is definitely a cutie.

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Updated comments

I made some changes to the way comments are viewed. They used to take you to the archive for that entry and scroll you to the comments section. Comments can now be expanded and collapsed directly in the page. Also, just for readability and style purposes I added numbering to the comments.

The first set of changes included scrolling you to the top of the comments section on expand and back to the top of the corresponding blog entry on collapse. Everybody hated that. So... I got rid of the scrolIntoView() functionality.

How annoying is the blogger pop-up for adding a comment? do you think it would be better if I just made it display underneath the comments?

 Cameron: 12:27 AM, October 11, 2005 
I like the end result of your comment improvements, the popup isn't very annoying to me. But if you implement the underneath way, I will definitely steal it if I like it too.

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