Dirkus Maximus

Yesterday afternoon we lost Kittywumpus! Someone ran over her in front of a bunch of school kids walking home and didn’t even stop.  By the time I found her she was already dead.   We love you and you will be missed Wumpus!

It seems that once again Albemarle Hospital has had to go out of their way to prove how bad they actually are.  I went up there today because I am having pain in my neck and back for no apparent reason.  I get up to the ER desk and they tell me they won’t treat me because I don’t have anyone with me who can watch my kids.  What kinda crap is that?  So if I had come in and was having a heart attack I can pretty much kiss my butt goodbye cause I didn’t drag a babysitter with me.  I ended up having to drive all the way to Chesapeake and go over to Chesapeake General to get treatment.    Chesapeake General does not seem to have an issue with patients that have children.  They told me that it appears to be a strained muscle and have me on muscle relaxers right now.  This hospital will be one more thing I do not miss after Dj finally gets done with college and we move from here.  Just a word of advice to all the N.C. folks out there, don’t waste your gas coming to Albemarle for anything. You will end up driving to Chesapeake for what you need in the end anyway.  Just go ahead and carry yourself to Chesapeake General, save yourself the trouble.

Well, Dj and I spent Sunday getting Andy’s big gift set up for him.  We decided Andy’s room seriously needed a make over this year.  I spent all day painting and getting new curtains and blinds put up for him. We also went and got him a new bed and mattress. His old one had seen better days many years ago!  We went with a loft bed with a desk under it since his room is so tiny.  I also went with a lighter color in his room so that it doesn’t look like he is living in a dark, walk in closet, anymore.  All and all it’s not too bad now.  He seems to like it too, he came home from school yesterday and passed out!  I’ll post some pic’s of the finished product.

Also I think we have finally decided that we will have his B-day at the place I hate the most on a weekend.  Yes, we are going to brave a Chucky-E-Cheese !  There is nothing I love to do with my weekend more I tell you, and his B-day falls on the weekend that spring break starts!  We will need prayers to make it out alive!  He’s gonna have a couple of friends go with him so it should be a fun time for the kids.  I’ll post pic’s when I get those as well!

Well I had my surgery today, so far everything is good.  I am hurting pretty bad right now but I’m hoping that will let up in the next day or so.  The doctor told me that they didn’t see anything to worry to much about, the tumor they removed was the size of a golf ball.  I should know more in about a week when they get the test results back from the lab about it.  In the meantime I am just trying to stay in one place and not move to much.  Moving hurts a lot right now!  Not an easy thing to do when you have 3 kids running around the house though.

Dj started school on Monday, so far things are going well for him there too.  He was out today at Hampton Roads Executive Airport, they where letting the class taxi airplanes around the strip there.  I am pretty sure Dj is gonna come home asking can he have an airplane now.  I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet, but from his posts on Facebook I would say he probably enjoyed himself.

The kids are doing well also.  It’s hard to believe that we are half way through the 3rd nine weeks already.  Addy and Andy both have some work to do on their grades.  Everyone has been keeping real busy though, the girls have been going to Enrichment Club every Thursday at the YMCA.  They get to swim, learn about healthy eating, climb the rock wall and other fun activities.  We are dropping them off on Saturday for Parents Night out as well.  The sad part is since I have to work tomorrow overnight and Dj probably needs to study, we will spend out parents night out with me sleeping and Dj buried in a book somewhere.  Oh well, gonna get off of here for now.  I need a pain killer and some sleep!  I’ll keep everyone posted on Dj’s schooling.

My ‘07 Yaris turned over it’s 100,000th mile this morning! So far the only failure has been the alternator (back at 80,000), and I think that may have been related to the deer I hit a while back. I’ve read some real horror stories online about this car, but so far she’s been good to me. Now let’s see if it can stand another 100,000 miles of my abuse!

Well technically, today was not her birthday. It was on Feb 3, but since all of us are so busy during the week we decided to celebrate today. Dj the kids and I took mom out to her favorite restaurant, Cracker Barrel. She was fine with the meal until the part where the waitress came out and sang “Happy Birthday” to her with a hot fudge sundae. I thought for a moment there from the look I got that she was gonna beat my tail right there in the restaurant. All around it was not too bad. Leave her a message to say Happy B-Day! (more…)

Ok so besides the update made earlier I figured I would go back a add a post just to let everyone know what’s been up lately.  Dirk has not been keeping up with the posts to well lately.  But considering that both of us are working two jobs right now and he is in the process of getting enrolled to go back to school, I would say that is understandable.  As of right now he is supposed to be starting classes on Feb 22.  However, the enrollment process is being hampered by the fact that we still need our W2’s for 2009 in order to get this process completed and a couple of forms we are waiting on the Coast Guard to cough  up so that we can get the MGIB in place to pay for all this.  Dj is going to school to earn his Associate of Occupational Science in Aviation Maintenance Technology and to get his FAA A&P License, and maybe a private pilot license if he has time.  All this fancy talk basically means he will be able to repair and fly airplanes by the time he gets done.

Also, I had a Dr. appointment the other day. I found out that I have a tumor that they are going to have to remove.  So far they are not too worried about it being cancerous but we will have to wait and see.  They won’t be sure till they can get in there and take a look at it.  I will be having surgery on Feb 25 to get the tumor removed.  I’m really nervous but hoping everything goes ok.  I’ll keep everyone posted when it happens.

We have also manged to make it past another milestone, every year around this time something happens that I dread worse than anything else in the world.  The kids have science fair projects that are due!  This might not seem so bad to some people but I personally hate the science fair and wish it would die.  The only thing I can really see that they are trying to accomplish with these projects is to see how many forests one school can kill by using up a ton of paper.  Both Andrew and Ashley turned in the projects on Friday so I am officially done with science fair for this year.  Andrew decided to build a Mousetrap Powered Car this year and focus his project on Energy.  Ashley decided to go a little more simple this year and do her project on different materials and how they conduct heat.  But I am sure no matter how awesome the project we come up with, as in years past, the kids with the project about the moldy bread will win first prize.  Moldy bread is not first place material people, moldy bread is just gross!  Anyhow, as the moment that’s all we got going on around here.  I’ll be sure to post an update later in the month about the school situation and the Dr. appointment when we get more news on both!

I know that everyone today enjoyed waking up to the bit of global warming that we got overnight. We can all thank Ashley for that.  Ashley has been praying for seven months now that God would please send her some snow, if he’s not too busy that is.  Well, she didn’t get if for Christmas like she was hoping so apparently he must have been saving up for her.  We got about three inches around here and the roads are horrible.  I worked overnight last night and got to drive home this morning in it.  Life was all good until I hit the VA/NC state line, I was able to follow the snow plow all the way up 17 until I hit the state line.  The plow turned around at the line and nothing had been sanded or plowed on the NC side of the line.  Total drive home this morning was about 2 hours so  I was totally over the whole snow thing by the time I got home.  Of course the kids are just getting up at this point and are ready to go out in it.  The kids built a snowman and part of a snow fort and made a brief attempt at a snowball fight before deciding it was too cold to be outside anymore and heading back inside for some hot chocolate.  Got some good pic’s of the kids with their snow fort.

Happy anniversary to us! As of today, Wes and I have been married for 12 years.

I’d like to toss a HUGE thank-you out to Je’aime. He agreed to watch the kids for a little bit while Wes and I ran out to try and enjoy a little “us” time. YOU RULE.

So what did we do? Well, we started with a nice steak dinner at The Marina over on the Camden causeway right across the harbor from our neighborhood. I guess it was just too cold for anyone else to go out, as we pretty much had the entire dining area to ourselves the entire time. The food was good, the view was awesome, and the wait staff was on the ball. Dinner was great.

After that, we checked to see if there were any movies playing in the E-City area worth watching. Seeing as I wasn’t real keen on watching “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeekuel” the answer was “No.”

So what did we do? Well, I gotta tell you, I’m a real ladies man. I know how to really show my wife a good time. We went out to the Wal-Mart!

Seriously though, Wes had been talking about needing a new jacket and her gloves were looking pretty sad, so I got her one of each. We also went hunting for wal-creatures for peopleofwalmart.com, but we didn’t have any luck catching one with my camera. Maybe next time.

Man, where do I begin? Let’s start when I decided to take the plunge and buy an iPhone from AT&T on the morning of Black Friday…

Everything was looking good; the 16GB iPhone 3Gs was on sale at $49 for a refurb, activation was waived, and there was a $50 new customer promotion for accessories when ordering online. I priced out an iPhone for myself and a decent (and free-with-contract) Motorola flip-phone for my wife to replace our aging pay-as-you-go phones from Boost and Virgin, along with $49.97 worth of accessories mostly for my wife’s new phone to take full advantage of the $50 promotion. My total, plus tax, was $52.79. What an awesome deal! I loaded everything into the online shopping cart, asked my wife pretty please, and then pulled the trigger on the order. Seconds later, I had a confirmation email in my inbox, and the world was good.

One minor hitch during the purchase process did bug me though, the AT&T website (understandably) assumed that both of the numbers I was porting from the old cell phones were on the same account, and therefore it only asked me for one set of information for porting. That kinda bugged me, so I hit the “Chat with a live agent” button on the AT&T website and asked how that was going to work out. The agent was very friendly, told me that was a good question, and asked me to wait a moment while she checked for me. A minute or so later, she returned and let me know that I would be able to fix that once I received my phones and called to activate them. Since I didn’t know better, I went ahead and thanked her and gave her a glowing review on the little survey that popped up after the chat was finished.

Fast forward to Monday. I had been checking my order status throughout the day to see when my order shipped. It never did. In fact, my order never even came up on the order status system at all. Monday evening, I contacted AT&T to find out what was going on with the awesome deal I had landed. After talking with a customer care agent who had no idea what was going on, I was transferred to the e-commerce department. A young lady named Angela found my order, figured out that the failed porting request had put the whole thing on hold (Gee, thanks Ms. Live-Chat-Lady) and put me through to Emily in the porting department. Emily got the porting requests straightened up in a flash, and I was back with Angela again.

Angela told me that she had resubmitted my order, that the order would be going out Tuesday via FedEx Priority, and would most likely arrive Wednesday. I also asked her to verify the order amount. She said it was still as I ordered it, $52.79.

An hour or so later, I receive an email stating that there was a problem with my order, and that I needed to contact AT&T to provide more information. This is where the trouble began.

I called AT&T to find out what the issue was now. The agent I talked to said there was no apparent issue, and that she would go ahead and mark the order for processing. I was just about to thank her and hang up when something told me to ask one more question: Is the total still $52.79? The answer was no, it was $76.80.

WHAT!?! After talking to the agent for a few more moments, she assured me that my 50% discount on the accessories was still in place. I told her NO, that wasn’t a 50% discount, it was a $50 discount. I asked to speak with a supervisor. She placed me on hold.

40 minutes of crappy hold music with annoying ads later, a supervisor named Debbie Elliot answers, only to place me on hold immediately again. A few moments later, she came back and the FUD was flowing deep. First, she claimed that there was no $50 new customer online discount. I showed her where the page for it was on their site. ( http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-sales/promotion/50off-wired.jsp?PROMO=promo290009 ) Then she claimed that the discount didn’t apply to the iPhone. I agreed, but pointed out that it was not the iPhone I was trying to have discounted, it was the accessories for the Motorola. Then she tried to say that the discount didn’t apply to additional lines on family plans. I pointed out that a) there was no mention of such a restriction anywhere in the huge disclaimer at the bottom of the page and that b) the cart should not have told me I was going to get $50 worth of discounts if that was the case. THEN Debbie tries to tell me that the discount page says “Up to $50″, and that it’s actually a 50% discount. I point out that again, there’s no mention of such a limitation anywhere on that page, and that the cart should have reflected this fact if there was one.

Finally, I brought it down to the bottom line for Debbie. The site said $52.79. I agreed to pay $52.79. I will pay $52.79, and not a cent more. Debbie’s response was, more or less, that I would pay $76.80 and get over it. “It’s only $24. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Yeah, Deb. $24 is a tank of gas in my car. That’s 350+ miles of driving to and from work. (Yes, I drive a rollerskate.)

Finally, out of desperation, I asked Debbie to remove all the accessories from my order in order to drop it back to the original price. She refused, stating that she can’t change the order because AT&T has a “Ship-as-ordered” policy. I reminded her that if it was truly “shipped-as-ordered”, it would only cost $52.79. I then asked Debbie if she had the authority to give customers complimentary accessories to retain a customer who’s about to cancel their service. She said yes. I then asked her to cancel my order and then resubmit it with just the phones, and then comp me the accessories. She refused to do that as well.

In the end Debbie told me that in order to get my phones I would HAVE to pay the $76.80, and that after the phones shipped I would have to call in to the customer care line (1-800-331-0500, then 0, then 0 again) and ask them if they would give me a credit on my first bill. I asked her if she could definitely say they’d give me the $24 back, and she said that she couldn’t guarantee it. I said “FINE.” and hung up on her, after 2 hours of arguing and horrible hold music.

The issue STILL isn’t resolved, as now apparently all orders from Black Friday are shipping and emptying out the warehouses. Since my order was canceled and resubmitted by Angela on the following Monday, I’m now locked solidly in backorder hell, with no ETA on when my phones will ship. It’s been a week since my order, and I’ve been informed by the AT&T website, the automated telephone order status system and at least one phone rep at various times that my order will “definitely ship tomorrow.”

So, for those keeping tabs, AT&T’s site lied to me about the price, Ms. Live-Chat-Lady gave me misinformation that held up my order, Angela gave me misinformation about the cost of my purchase and got it locked in backorder hell, everyone and everything has lied about when it’ll ship, and Debbie Elliot tried a zillion different ways to lie to me and worked very hard at being exactly unhelpful.

In case this gets read by an AT&T employee, and in case AT&T actually cares, keeping me as a customer at this point means not only giving me $24 back, but also giving me my first month of service free to compensate me for all my wasted time, the misinformation, and aggravation. Otherwise, I’m just going to go to Verizon or T-Mobile instead.

Also, if anyone at Apple takes notice of this, please consider dropping your exclusivity with AT&T as soon as the current agreement ends; do NOT extend it again. I like your products well enough, but your choice of partners has me pretty pissed off right now. While it’s not your fault, and has nothing to do with your device, it reflects badly on the whole customer experience for a product that’s supposed to “Just Work.” Besides, competition in the marketplace will be a winning proposition for you, the carriers, and the consumers.

A quick observation; I thought using a touch of motor oil on my woodstove’s hinges was a good idea, as opposed to lighter oils like WD-40 or my normal stanby Singer sewing machine oil, because it’s thicker and formulated for higher temperatures, so it won’t vaporize and the hinges will work without squeeking and sticking longer.

This is false. It still vaporizes, only now my livingroom stinks of burnt motor oil. Honest to God, my first thought when I walked in there was “It smells like a Plymouth K car in here.”

Friday was Adriana’s 8th birthday, and we’ve been busy all weekend long. It started Friday afternoon with a little cookout at my house, with cake and presents. My mom gave Addy a DS Lite and a game for her birthday, and that was pretty much all she wrote. She was nose-down in that for the rest of the evening. To see pics from that, and the rest of the things we’ve done this weekend, click on through… (more…)

Cake and ice cream at Dirks house! I’ll update with pics later.

I took a week off a little while ago to decompress from work stress and come back to attack things anew (Can I have a new manager? Please?) so I had some time to play with the kids. I tried to get Andy to work with me to solve a simple challenge; build a bridge from the coffee table to the wood stove using K’Nex that would support Ashley’s barbie car. He of course tried to turn it into a competition, so he lost and Adriana and I won. After we stomped him in the initial challenge, Ashley then decided to help see just how long we could make the bridge. The final result was a bridge 11 feet. four inches long, that could span across my entire bedroom. It was actually pretty impressive. Of course, we then had to test it to see how much weight it could hold before shattering into a million pieces. (not a lot) Read on to see pics and video… (more…)

The kids and I finally visited a place we’ve driven past a zillion times and had always been curious about. The Recycled Reader is freakin’ awesome. If you’re looking for a good used book store, this is the place. It’s dirt cheap too.

Happy 4th everyone! I hope everybody made it through another year with all 10 digits intact!

We went up to my parents house for dinner this year. We had some pork ribs and some fresh corn on the cob, good stuff! After that, we headed on home to catch the fireworks. We didn’t really do anything in the way of explosives this year ourselves, due to low funds, but the show down at the waterfront made up for it. We trespassed just a tiny bit and watched the show at the waterfront from right ON the water, a couple hundred yards from the barge they were using. The show was right over top of us, and they barely set the barge on fire at all this year!

After the show, we walked home while people in the neighborhood shot off their own slightly illegal fireworks and the guys on the bage fired off the few mortars that were too stubborn to fire off during the show and needed the “encouragement” of getting hit with a road flare. When we got home, we lit off a few dozen sparklers, and I tried to get everyone to write their names in the air with them on long exposure pictures. You can see pics of everything after the jump! (more…)

Since the fourth of July falls on a Saturday this year, Canon gave me a floating holiday to make up for having a “day off” when I would normally be off anyway. I took it today to get some things done around the house. I changed the oil in my car, pulled a nail out of one of my tires and patched it, gave Wes’ car a once-over, cleaned out our fish pond, and took care of a few other things around here. Then Wes and I stopped by some old fella selling fresh produce from the back of his pickup truck on the side of the road and got some fresh sweet corn (a baker’s dozen for $3, can’t beat that!) and had some steaks on the grill.

My car is still sporadically making that whirring, not-quite-grinding noise from the area of the alternator and idler pulley. I took it to toyota yesterday morning, and of course it stopped making the noise the second I headed in that direction. Seeing as there’s no way to diagnose a funny noise when there IS no funny noise, I had to turn around and go on to work with it anyway. And of course, it started making the damned noise again the moment I headed home. The really messed up part about this is that the only reliable source for parts is Toyota directly. Autozone et al don’t have the parts yet because the vehicle is fairly new and it isn’t being made in large numbers. This means I get shafted by Toyota for parts. Care to guess how much they want for an alternator? How about SIX HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS. I’m not sure how much an idler pulley is, but if the alternator is any indication, that wouldn’t be cheap either. Plus the bastages want an $85 diagnostic fee just to stand around point and grunt at my engine and isolate which of the two is failing, or if I’m completely off and it’s something else entirely. I have no idea where I’m gonna pull that money from, but I suppose I’ll just have to make it work. Wish me luck!

What a great day for a race! The water was a bit choppy, but the clouds kept the sun off us and the light breeze kept it cool. The choppy water definitely made for some interesting racing, slowing down some of the faster boats and keeping the heats tight. A couple boats had separate minor incidents because of the chop. They each spiked a sponson into the water at low-ish speeds during warm up laps, and proceeded to make a rather hasty and unplanned 180 degree turn. In both cases it shook up the driver a bit and managed to knock something in the boat out of whack, but neither the drivers nor the boats were badly damaged, and they were both in later heats.

Here’s a slideshow of some of my pics from today, you can also check these out on my Flickr account.

Created with flickrSLiDR.

I also decided to try a little HD video with the Rebel T1i I was using. This was shot at 720P, 30fps. It’s a bit shaky becuase 1) I was on a rickety dock that swayed in the wake of the boats, 2) I forgot to flip the IS in the lens to mode 2 for panning, and 3) I can’t hold a camera steady for shit. If you’ve got a decent Internet connection, make sure you hit the “HD” button in the Youtube player below to get the full resolution video!

I’m just about to head on out to the Carolin Cup International Regatta right now. I was going to do an embedded Stickam broadcast of the radio coverage, but… umm… there isn’t any. If I find out differently, I’ll spin back by the house and try to find the channel they’re broadcasting on, but I scanned the whole AM band and all the local FM stations and got nothin’.

I’m taking my laptop with me, so I may, possibly, perhaps, if I’m really really lucky, attempt to do a live webcast from the race, but I’m not real sure how well that’ll work on the craptastic “harbornet” free public access wifi down there. We’ll just have to see.

OK, so I *did* try to post some last week, mainly about the stuff I got done on my Honey-Do-List holiday, but the iPod ate my posts. Honest. I think the wordpress app pooped itself and isn’t posting any more. I’ll try futzing with it again later.

Anyhow, in unrelated news, the Carolina Cup International Regatta is this weekend. I didn’t plan a cookout this time around because 1) I failed miserably at it last time and 2) I’m dead broke and can’t afford the delicious grilled goodness for this weekend AND next weekend for the XBox party. Hell, I’m hoping I can host the XBox party at this point!

I’m going to be out at the waterside again this year, taking pictures. This time I went with a lightweight entry-level kit just to prove that it can be done. Seriously, you don’t have to have the top of the line to shoot an event like this. The extra weight around your neck is more often a burden instead of a bonus I’ll be shooting a Rebel T1i, mainly with an EF-S 18-55 and an EF-S 55-250. I also brought along a couple of the pro lenses, a 14mm and the venerable 100-400mm shotgun-style “nosebreaker” telephoto zoom. You never know when you’re going to have to shoot in tight quarters or pull in the action from across the harbor, right?

Just for grins, I also brought home the Powershot D10 waterproof/drop-proof/freezeproof camera (again). I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but I FREAKING LOVE THAT CAMERA. Honestly, once you become a parent (especially a parent of 3 grade school aged kids) you realize that you gradually start rating gadgets less by the awesome cutting-edge new features they have, and more by the durability and fuckup-resistance qualities of the product.  The D10 can do everything my trustworthy old SD300 can do, plus a little more on the bells and whistles side of things, but the real selling point for me was the water and drop resistance. Seriously, I’d sell a few pints of blood for one of these. Luckily, we got two for the training inventory at work, so I think I’ll be borrowing one frequently.

Keep an eye on this page tomorrow, I may well set up the Dirk Cam with an old AM radio and live webcast the local radio coverage of the event.