me in 20 years

Time travel made possible by Herb Chambers Honda:

an even better story

I told my minivan story to the intern, and he said "Yeah, that sucks, but I have one even better." And he did.

He was driving an old Subaru Legacy, and was having electrical troubles with it. One day, he took it to the mechanics, and they determined that he needed new spark plug wires. They ordered a set, tried it, and said it didn't fit. They ordered another one, and tried fitting that.

At that point, the intern got a call, "We have the right wires, but you have the wrong engine!" Turns out, some time back, he had the car serviced at a dealership. They replaced his entire engine with one from a Forester, and didn't even tell him!

driving a minivan??

This is a long story, but it's good.

So last week I had my car at the dealership, and asked them to take a look at a leak under the engine. They said it was one of the axle seals, and ordered a part for me. Very well - I waited until last Monday, and dropped my car off in the morning.

Later that day, I get a call. The seal that they ordered is not the right size, so they're overniting another in. OK, fine. Susan gave me a ride to work, and everything was good.

Next day - Tuesday - I can't wait to get my car. My coworker gives me a ride, I run into the dealership... and guess what: wrong seal. Again. They appologized profusely, and promised to give me a rental - BUT they only had one car available, a big-ass minivan. I almost choked when I saw it, you could fit a family of 20 in there.

Oh yeah, the minivan had carbon fiber trim on the console. Kill me now.

I said to myself, no biggie, nothing I can't handle for a day. The minivan drives like Noah's Arc, by the way.

Wednesday, I get another call - wrong seal, third one, WTF!

Finally, yesterday I got my baby back. I never want to let it go again.

So, what do a walrus and a Honda dealership have in common? They both like a tight seal. Har har har.

baby next door

Our next-door neighbors just had the cutest baby girl - awww. She's tiny, but very active. The funniest thing is, it looks like she's got a receeding hair line - just like her dad Jimmy. I'll take pictures at some point, but I don't want to blind her with a flash just yet.

cape cooooood!

Wow, what a blast! It was totally worth it to take the Friday off and spend a fun-filled weekend with close friends. If my memory serves me right, this was the first couples-only retreat I've been to... a sign of things to come? Perhaps. In any case, the weather was perfect, the ocean totally sweet, and the beer plentiful. See for yourself on Flickr.

happy bday, blog!

It's been a year since this blog started the revolution. Happy birthday, I am Stan!

potato blight

We bought some potatoes last week, and I kept on meaning to make something out of them. Mash them up, maybe, or fry 'em? So I had them sitting in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for me to make my move. It seriously hadn't been all that long.

Today, I was cleaning, and I went to check on my 'taters. I pick up the bag, and all of the sudden liquid pours out all over the floor. Before I wondered what it was, I took a breath...

OOOOOOOOOH WORD! That was the worst smell EVER. I've smelled some smells, but this smell SMELLED!

It took me a couple more seconds to figure out what has happened. Apparently, a few of the potatoes liquefied, and then proceeded to explode all over the kitchen floor, which then took forever to clean.

No good.

from Dr. Evil's labs...

Laser weapons? On aircraft? Star Wars, here we come!

flow

Imagine if your name was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? You'd be calling your credit card company: "Hi, this is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi... that's C-S-I-K-S-Z... ah, fuggetaboutit!"

Well, despite (or, maybe, because?) of all the call center problems, Mihaly wrote quite a book: "Flow". The message is simple: in the modern, Western world, we've solved most of the day-to-day problems. When they wake up in the morning, most Americans don't have to worry about going hungry or being attacked by wild boars. Yet we as a nation are still not happy. So what gives? Well, Mihaly claims that once the problems of daily existence are solved, we need another challenge to make life worthwhile. His solution: find a pursuit that will make you forget everything else, at least for a few moments. It's this state of intense concentration on something rewarding that he calls "flow".

Anyhoo, good book, go read it.

ie7

Installing IE7 Beta on my home computer. Yes, it's that good... and this is coming from me, a sworn Luddite.

picnic

Ahhh, a perfect day in Boston! Susan and I were planning to go walk around on the Common, but at the last minute decided to divert to Tufts. It was a good decision, since we could take in a great view of all of Boston from the Tisch roof.

Oh yeah, and we snuck some red wine into the campus. Just like the old times!

now that's a mess-up!

Uh. Have you ever done something at work, then looked back to see nuclear plants exploding and people running for their lives? Well, I pulled something similar off.

So we're working in a pre-development environment, trying to figure out all the things we need to do to move our corporate portal from Sun to Oracle. I need to find a way to make the portlet repository easier to use. The portlet repository is where people need to go to add portlets to their portal page: say, if they want to show an RSS feed.

In theory, the portlet repository is just a collection of links to portlets, organized into folders. I copy one of the folders and start customizin'. I delete some, rename others, and in general go to town. I then check the result of my work, and my heart skips several beats - the original folder was changed too! I guess in the Oracle world, "copy" means "create a reference that looks like a copy". Crap.

Well, not the end of the world - the portlets that we already placed on the pages are still there, right? Um, NO. All gone. On all the pages. WTF.

Good thing the developer did a backup on Friday. Some things got restored, others are still messed up Katrina-style. In retrospect, this is environment doesn't matter all that much, but still... if something like this happened in production, it would be a interesting scene indeed.

take that, Exxon Mobil!

Today, I did not use a drop of gas (well, not in my car, at least). I telecommuted, which also allowed me to take a walk down to the City Hall for voting registration, and took a bus.

Yes, you read that correctly. I took a bus, and it was totally sweet! I didn't have to wait, it was fast, and it dropped me off feet away from my apartment. I'm totally gonna do that again ;)

frisbee in the rain

So the tournament was moved to this past Saturday morning. I guess the torrential rain was moved along with it. The rain was bad, really bad. Everybody was soaked to the bone and covered in mud. On top of it, we lost both of our games. And now the new season starts Monday.

conclusion concluded

Like I mentioned, I had one Sue-less date in Florida. So, with the girlfriend gone, I did the most natural thing - hit up the casino. My choices were few: there was only one casino that I could find on the map, Seneca-owned Hard Rock. Hard Rock? Owned by Indians? In the middle of Florida? I should have started asking questions before I arrived.

The casino wasn't the flashiest I've ever seen. The highest limit game that I could find was $1/$2, the felt on the tables was covered in cigarette burns, and the cocktail waitresses looked like stripper washouts. The highlight of the evening took place when a cockroach climbed up on the table and took a nonchalant walk between the stacks of chips, only to be swept back onto the floor.

It took me over 4 hours to lose 17 dollars. Some action, all right.

Next morning, I woke up for a run at the beach, which was everything I hoped for. That moment, when I splashed into the water after a good 3-mile jog, officially moved the vacation from the "awesome" category into "totally sweet". Don't go to Florida for the gambling, don't go to Florida for the scenery, but do come for a niiice time on the beach!

florida - the conclusion

Ah yes, we're back! Well, first Susan got back, and then me, a day later - my work don't care if I miss it. So, what did we do in Florida?

- Walked everywhere in Ft. Lauderdale. The waterfront is nice, the canals, all that, but still... a bit tacky.
- Visited the Vizcaya castle in Miami. Certainly no comparison to the palaces of St. Petersburg, but we still enjoyed taking lots and lots of pictures in the garden.
- Mixed in with the orthodox Jews in Miami Beach, then strutted it on the beach itself. As the day wore on, the proportion of Jews decreased, and we realized that we were in the middle of a hip-hop convention. Sorry to break it to you, but all the stereotypes about the hip-hop crowd are true - it's all about getting cruuunked, the ho's, and the rims. Seriously, the wheels we saw on some of the Impalas were well south of 40"!
- Went to the Versailles Cuban restaurant - twice! It was that good.
- Shopped in Miami, in Ft. Lauderdale, in outlet malls, pretty much everywhere we could. Yes, did I tell you how much I *love* shopping?
- Hit up the beach pretty much any chance we got. Susan and I got a nice tan out of it - with Sue (and not me!) receiving a touch of sunburn.

The pictures are up on Flickr.