Unnecessary Windows Services

A nice website for all you Windows users out there:

http://www.blackviper.com/

I got this from the SecurityNow podcast I listen to...a nice explanation of what all the Windows services are and which ones you can safely disable (he has configurations for "safe", "power user" and "bare bones"). I tried the "safe" configuration this morning on my laptop and freed up 280 meg of active memory usage. Even if you have 2 gig or even 4 gig of memory, that's a lot.

Two years, and shelves, and the boot

I just love blog titles that don't make sense until you read :)

Yesterday marked two years that Erin and I have been together. While we didn't specifically do anything for that, we did go out for our friend Anne's birthday, to Whistle Binkies, and did "Das Boot" and had a server that was obviously very new because the poor guy just couldn't keep anything straight, and we had about 12 of us at the table. But we all managed to enjoy ourselves.

Earlier yesterday, buddy Wayne helped me pick up some shevles that friend Bill graciously gave to us (thanks Bill!) since he had built-in wall shelves put into his office (they are really nice!) So today, after coffee at Panera, we got back and got to work on getting the shelves set up and the books organized. Erin, having previously worked at the library, has them all organized by category and author, with the exception of series which are all together. We also finally hung the picture that my dad sent me for Christmas, that I had framed - it is a beautiful picture of Devil's Tower in Wyoming, at sunset.

Since we were in a cleaning/reorganizing mood, I gathered the growing number of things we have meant to throw out for a while, and got them all out to the garage, where I will load them up and take them to the waste management center this week. I also cleaned out the office, bought a few more plastic tubs, and finished organizing the rest of the computer stuff and all the power and AV cables I have (and again threw some out - they seem to multiply). I also used the old bookshelf to organize what is left of the videotapes I still have. Getting the stuff I want off video tape and onto the computer is a project for another day though...

Lefty

So, I guess if you live long enough you just keep learning more stuff. A couple of weeks ago we had a softball practice during the week we had a bye...since only 4 of us were there, we sort of goofed around and tried some fun things including switch hitting. Well the few hits I took on the left side actually felt pretty good, enough where captain GP said I should try it...so this week I went to the batting cage at the RAC Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (the RAC has nice new batting cages btw). I am a left-handed hitter. Yes. After 11 years of softball, scattered baseball games during gym class, and even back to my tee-ball career when I was 4 and 5, I now figure this out. I didn't know it was so common to be right-handed and bat left-handed or vice-versa, but in just a week of asking around, I have already found 4 people who bat with their opposite hand. So Monday night, it's lefty time.

This makes me wonder if I should be throwing left-handed too, and possibly golfing left-handed too, because it's a similar swing. I haven't found anyone who golfs with their opposite hand though, so maybe I'm just no good at golf :) And I'm not going to all of a sudden be an all-star at softball, but this might make it more fun!

Us against...us

WARNING: Blog entry contains high amounts of opinion, large quantities of politics and scattered sci-fi references...read at your own risk.

One of the great (and free!) podcasts I listen to regularly is "This American Life", a radio show that started on a local Chicago radio station and because of the internet has grown massively in popularity. I recently listened to an episode from back in March, called The Audacity of Government (3.28.08). They describe two specific cases of a much greater trend by the executive branch of our government over the last 7+ years of the Bush administration. Basically, the trend is that the executive branch has the power to do whatever it wants, and can ignore or re-interpret laws as it sees fit. For awhile, they "disguised" some of this in the name of national security - things that we saw in the Patriot Act, and other things that we saw happen after 9/11. Now they aren't even bothering to do that - they've gotten away with it for so long that we are just accepting these things as how it is.

The first instance that was described in the podcast was how the DOJ, under the authority of the president, decided to interfere and "re-interpret" a 100-year-old treaty with Canada on how the border was to be maintained. OK, so a border maintenance issue with Canada sounds pretty minor and insignificant, and it probably is. Which makes it even harder to understand why the DOJ would spend so much time and money fighting against the legally defined commission that is there to enforce this treaty - a treaty our president, Teddy Rosevelt, created 100 years ago, specifically so that this kind of thing didn't happen, so that the border was overseen by an independent, joint commission, and couldn't be interfered with by either government for political gain. The DOJ basically had the commissioner fired and replaced with someone who would do things "their way".

The second instance is recent "re-interpretation" by the immigration department, of the rules that grant citizenship to the spouse of an American citizen. This particular instance involved a woman from Brazil, who married an American man visiting Brazil and moved back to the US with him. They filed all of the necessary immigration paperwork, and waited for the immigration board interview, which had to take place sometime within two years of them being married. Once the interview is conducted, the person is granted citizenship at the end of the two-year period (as long as there is no other evidence that they were married just to get citizenship). During the two-year period, this woman got pregnant and the couple had a son. So there was certainly "evidence" that this was not just a marriage of convenience.

Eighteen months after they were married, the husband died unexpectedly of cancer. The woman and her son moved in with her in-laws, and after the funeral and getting everything in order, she went to the immigration office to explain the situation and have her interview (an interview which the immigration board had not done yet). They told her that since her husband was no longer alive she was no longer married to a US citizen and that her application would be denied and she would have to leave...when she asked about her son, they said "oh he can stay, but you have to leave". So, had the interview (which is done at a time arbitrarily chosen by the immigration department in those two years) been done before her husband died, she would have gotten citizenship, but since they hadn't done it yet, she was out of luck. She found a lawyer who had argued one of these cases before (FYI there are now 134 of these cases that are going forward as part of a class action lawsuit) and they took it to court and won...and then the immigration department told her that they were not going to abide by the ruling. Period.

So the question is, can anyone stop this? What happens when the most powerful branch of government in the most powerful country in the world says they are going to ignore a law or treaty or rule? In 2004, President Bush pulled us out of a ballistic missile treaty that was signed and ratified by congress years before. Seems like the president can't just do that right? Without congress's approval? Apparently he can - because who is going to stop him? When the UN voted not to go to war with Iraq, we went ahead and did it anyway. Why? Because who can stop us?

The effects of the past 7 years are not just the loss of 7 years of progress to our country. In fact, we won't know the effects of the last 7 years until we can put them in the context of history somewhere down the line. And I am sure we are going to feel the effects of the last 7 years for decades to come. This is not about this party or that party. We're regressing civilization back hundreds of years, to the days of whoever is strongest, biggest, has the best weapons, biggest army, etc. gets their way. I am not so stupid to think that the world isn't always going to work this way to some degree. But didn't the World Wars teach us anything? Didn't history, with the rise and fall of all its dictators, teach us anything? Eventually the people "on the outside" will get tired of the big guy, the bully, doing what it wants, and it will fight back. I call this the "Independence Day" syndrome. OK so the movie really wasn't that good, and was full of things that probably couldn't happen (including being able to upload a virus to an alien ship using a Mac laptop running TCP/IP, but I digress...) The movie showed how a giant "enemy" from the outside who was imposing its will on the earth caused the people of the earth to put aside their differences and fight back and win. We see this throughout history. Dictators are always eventually overthrown. That's why our constitution was created the way it was - to try and ensure that our country would never have a dictatorship - that no one person or branch of government had too much power. We were supposed to be smarter - we were supposed to have learned from history.

I'm not trying to advocate any conspiracy theories, or worry about "Big Brother" or anything like that. We, the people, still have the one thing that "the people in power" have to have to be in power - our vote. Our system still puts us, the people, in power IF WE CHOOSE TO USE IT.

I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes pertaining to this subject from science fiction. I love science fiction because it can make commentary on social and political issues in future hypothetical settings (and also show us that history DOES repeat itself if we let it).

First, one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine - Season 4 Episode 12, "Paradise Lost". One of the StarFleet admirals decides that in order to protect Earth from the dominion, he needs to get it under military rule - and he goes to great lengths to scare the federation president and everyone into believing that's the only way Earth will be safe. Sisko sees what's going on and asks him "So you are going to destroy paradise to save it?"

Second, in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The senate chancellor Palpetine, over the course of the first 3 movies, creates a "threat" to the republic and leads the senate to believe that he needs to create a grand army of the republic, and that he is going to reorganize the republic into a Galactic Empire [with him as the leader] to ensure safety and stability. Padme says "So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause" as the senate claps and cheers.

Anne!

Friend Anne has made the news, just in time for her birthday :)

http://www.postbulletin.com/entertainment/photo_gallery/image.asp?id=48&imageid=42957

Softball WIN recap!

Meant to get this one done Monday night but got busy...on a beautiful weather night, our softball team won its second game of the season, in grand fashion (10-run in the 5th). Besides a nearly flawless defensive game, the end was actually pretty exciting - I will explain :)

My hitting night was not spectacular - one walk and two FC - so no hits, but I got on base every time. Both the first two times I got in and scored runs. In the bottom of the 5th, I got up to bat and hit a short grounder to the short stop, which got the runner ahead of me out. So I was on base on first - after another hit, I got to second. Then our big power hitter got up to bat. The hit was not as far as some of the deeper ones of the evening, but was on the ground so I headed to 3rd. Hogan was the 3rd base coach, and I sort of looked at her halfway to 3rd and asked whether I should stop or not...she gave me the "go home" sign...but right as I was rounding 3rd she said "BUT HURRY!" OH NO! So I was thinking I might have to actually slide...and then decided against it because we were still up by 9, because I was wearing shorts, and because in my experience, 95 times out of 100 the throw to home is never on target. As it turned out, the ball DID get there before I got there, but it wasn't on target, and I easily scored, putting is up by 10 - which meant that we won (if you're up by 10 at the end of the 5th the game is over - 10-run rule). So...I will claim I scored the winning run...and it wasn't an easy one. OK, so we probably would have won anyway, but who knows?

April

It is with much sadness that I post this one...those of my Nebraska friends may have known Denise Bishop (at least that was her name in high school), a very close friend of mine from high school. I just met up with Denise two weeks ago in Minneapolis when she was there on business. I found out on Monday that her sister, April, died suddenly a few days ago.

http://www.ketv.com/news/16678238/detail.html

I haven't seen April since she was very young, but it sounds like she was looking forward to a great career teaching kids music...very sad indeed.

Marathons and Birthdays

A full weekend for Paul! I took Friday afternoon off and headed up 52 and I-35 to Duluth to meet up with friends Wayne and Andy (actually Andy's whole family was there this year) for Grandma's Marathon and associated festivities. Friday night was the spaghetti feed (yum!) and the William Irvin 5K race. I was really surprised to get there and have the temp be 85 degrees - warmer than when I left Rochester! Most years I get there it's in the 50s down by the lake...after watching the 5K we headed out.

Once again we had the privilege of staying at Ronda's, which is so awesome because, besides Ronda being the greatest host ever, it's less than 10 minutes from the marathon starting line. We've all done this enough now where we have it down to a routine, and so at about five minutes to 7am I drove Wayne and Andy down to the starting line, then headed to Knife River to watch them go by. Andy's family and Ronda were down there already, and had staked out a great spot (it's really busy early in the race to try and get a spot to watch). We watched the first wheelchair racers go by (man they go fast) and the front-runners (man they go fast) and then waited for Andy to go by and then Wayne. I could tell the day was going to be a warmer one already, but there was enough wind going to keep it not too bad and dry.

I was driving around by myself as I was planning on leaving right from the finish line, and I managed to see both Wayne and Andy at 5mi, 12mi, and 20mi, and then Wayne at 25mi and at the finish line. I even got video of him crossing - I joked that I'm becoming a "professional" spectator - and I am getting pretty good at the process, knowing where to be to see all the good stuff. I even knew where to park to be about a block away from the Lake Ave crossing - in other years I parked about a mile away. Met up with a few other friends at the end, and after enjoying the festivities and food for a bit, I dropped Wayne and Andy off at Andy's hotel, and hopped on I-35 (which had just been re-opened at that very moment) and headed down to Isanti.

I didn't quite get to niece Keagann's birthday party on time but most people were still there when I got there, and she showed me all her presents and they saved me some cake (they all insisted on having another piece since I was getting one). The Isanti park is really nice and has plenty of room and things for kids to do. After hanging out there for awhile longer, we headed in out of the wind to Chris & Erin's house for some more birthday fun - 9 kids total still there, and grandma was managing them pretty well :) I also got to meet the new additionto the family - the pet mouse zubumbu or something like that (apparently named after a TV mouse on PBS?) At about 7:00pm the weather was looking kind of ominous so I decided I better head home. No major weather on the way back, and no big traffic problems, other than EVERYTHING is under constructions - I don't know if there's a through route through Minneapolis/St. Paul anywhere right now.

This morning I got in a round of golf with former mentee from work Jared, out at Maple Valley Golf course - the golfing was rough but the day was nice :)

Oh, I'm writing this today because the internet connection has been down most of the time since Thursday - fortunately good buddy Nate, who works at Charter, and happened to be on call today, came by this morning and fixed it. Thanks Nate! I'm not sure what all was wrong but I ended up getting a new cable modem too, the old one being 5+ years old.

Notochords

We had our final concert of the season on a beautiful night in the park in Chatfield, MN last night. Chatfield has the nicest setup for outdoor concerts, having built a permanent concert shell in their city park. And of course DQ afterwards! Erin and cousin Andy came down with me to watch.

There are two seasons in Minnesota...

winter and construction! And this year the construction is hitting close to home - VERY close as a matter of fact - like in my yard!

Yes, after 4 years they are finally putting in the trail between my house and the neighbor's house, which will run to the park and to other parts of the neighborhood (part of the neighborhood trail system in this part of town). I didn't realize how much they were going to do though...including completely taking out the pond and digging a chasm between my house and the neighbors...but on the up side, they leveled the hill by the pond which was really hard to mow.

Another LONG-awaited construction project that is finally going to happen (about 5 years overdue) is the section of 50th Avenue between 51st Street NW and Valley High Drive - for the past 4 years they have sort of semi-paved the road, but not enough to hold up against massive potholes and water flooding over the tiny bridge at the bottom of the hill. Well starting July 1st, no more - when it's done it will be 4 lanes and mostly flattened out. It will be an inconvenient few months but well worth it.

More Shameless Self-Promotion :)

Not really...but my jazz band does play tonight in Chatfield outside in the park - Chatfield has a great outdoor concert shell and setup, if anyone is looking for a nice outdoor summer activity tonight! And DQ is just blocks away :)

Thursday, June 19th, 7:30pm-8:30pm - Chatfield "Concert In The Park" series (Chatfield Community Park, Main Street (Hwy 52), Chatfield, MN - in case of rain, will be held at the auditorium)

Firefox 3

OK so I know I'm a geek and this is probably more exciting to me than most...but Firefox 3 was released yesterday, and I just installed it. I had read about a lot of memory and speed enhancements, and I have to say there is a NOTICEABLE speedup. Anyone running Windows (either IE or Firefox 2.x) should really try out FF 3:

http://www.mozilla.com/

I have not used Safari on the Mac OS so I can't compare , but Firefox also has a Mac version which would be worth trying, as I read they made some major enhancements to the Mac version.

The LOOOONG week...

I guess I did post last on Wednesday, but it sure seems like it's been a long time....this seemed like one of the longest, busiest weeks I've ever had. Not in a bad way, but...well I was glad to see Saturday morning and a chance to just breathe!

Wednesday was another very long work day, followed by dinner with friends Eric and Bill, and then the monthly poker night with guys from work (one of them anyway - I actually have 2 "mostly" monthly games). By about 11:30pm it was storming really bad, so we all decided to quit early - which was fine because I was just dead tired. More rain Wednesday night although not nearly as bad as it could have been (and I'm not complaining at all when I see how bad Cedar Rapids and other parts of Iowa have gotten hit).

Thursday was yet another packed day at work - including two different hours where I had 3 meetings (each) to attend...I can't remember that ever happening in 11 years. On top of that, my new work laptop arrived (we get a new one every 3-4 years) - normally a cause for celebration, but the amount of time it takes to set up, well, I just didn't have that day. I did manage to squeeze in enough time to start the long set of automatic updates running. Thursday night was salsa band practice, and by 9 I was dead tired again.

Friday things were starting to slow down - only one meeting that day, but I spent much of the day setting up the new laptop and copying over everything from the old one. This SHOULD be easier - seems like the faster and better computers get, the bigger and slower programs and data get. Oh well...by 5:00 I had it done enough where I didn't need the old one anymore, and was excited to run Darik's Boot And Nuke, a program that pretty much zeros out the hard drive (actually it does a lot more than that if you want it to). It boots off of a CD and is free, so anyone with an Intel machine can use it (Mac users now too!). I would STRONGLY recommend running this before you ever get rid of a hard drive or a machine with a hard drive, if it's going to a stranger. It has options to write/re-write up to 6 passes of pseudo-random data so that any trace of anything you ever had on there is gone (yes I'm a computer security-chondriac, probably stemming from knowing how computers actually work...I guess ignorance sometimes is bliss). Friday night was grilling, drinks, and the half-season finale of Battlestar Galactica - I have to say, without giving anything away, that it was quite puzzling, not the drop-your-jaw cliffhangers they usually have. Only 10 more episodes left in the series, and then it's done *sniff*

Saturday...finally some rest! I spent two hours at Starbucks outside just reading...my friend Dave in Arizona loaned me his copy of "The Watson Dynasty", a book on the history of IBM - probably only interesting if you work there, but I am liking it. Saturday afternoon, Shelley picked up her wedding dress and brought it over to store at my house (so Ryan wouldn't see it) and we stared at it for awhile and tried on her tiara :) I can't post pictures of the dress because Ryan might see them, but here are some of the tiara. Saturday night Erin and I headed over to Ryan & Shelley's because I had some spare hard drives from the Tivo that had died, and Ryan was looking to upgrade. Two hours later, Ryan's Tivo had 3x the space it started with (hooray! - Shelley is quoted as saying "Now I can record all the CSI I ever wanted!") R & S took us out to dinner at one of our old favorites, Mr. Pizza south.

Which brings us to today...another nice day out. Breakfast at Panera, then watched the movie Jumper (don't waste your time). I went downstairs to check on the sump basket (I discovered it was full Saturday morning with all the rain - no overflowing though thank goodness). It hasn't gone down though, so I will need to buy a sump pump just in case. Ah the joys of home ownership....

Old Friends...

Not that she's old...but I was very excited yesterday to get the opportunity to see my friend Denise from high school. We figured it had been 15 years since we had actually seen each other in person...a lot happens in 15 years! She is in Minneapolis on business this week, so it was easy enough for me to drive up there Tuesday night and meet her for dinner.

It was non-stop talking from the minute I got there (6:30) to the minute I left (~9:30) and I think we could have kept going for many more hours (and would have if I hadn't had the 1.5 hour drive home). I took the opportunity to go with her to Brit's Pub & Eating Establishment, which is on 11th and Nicollet, conveniently located a block away from her hotel. I love sitting out on the second floor patio, and the rain held off and we took full advantage. Fun! I'm hoping to get the chance to see her and her husband (whom I've never met) this fall when I go to Nebraska.

The drive home was fairly uneventful - there was some ominous looking lightning and rain but nothing big, and I had plenty of podcasts loaded up on my old 40GB iPod (yes, old by iPod standards, as it was like a 2nd generation, and they don't even list it as an "iPod Classic" anymore on the website). It will not even hold a charge now for more than about 5 minutes, but plugged into the car it runs just fine. So I'll probably keep it until it just gives up.

Miscellany

Has been a very stress-filled week - not all bad stress but definitely full (I did the Diversity/EO presentation for my department this year, I'll save that story for another day). One of our favorite characters made a brief return to Battlestar Galactica last week, in Laura Roslin's imagination anyway. I'm behind on one movie I want to see (Prince Caspian) and I see the Incredible Hulk is coming out this week (let's hope it's better than the last one!) The biggie though is going to be Batman: The Dark Knight which opens July 18th. I have paid no attention to the NBA finals besides the brief glimpses I see at restaurants and my friend Wayne telling me about it. Maybe I'll tune in at the end :)

Softball!

Yesterday - wow, what a beautiful day - even more so because of all the not-so-beautiful days we've had in-between! By the time 5:30 rolled around, I was more than ready to get outside and play some softball. The weather was just perfect - the wind died down and the sun was just enough behind the clouds to not bother anyone. Hooray! Afterwards I enjoyed the beautiful night and hung out with some friends at the field, and then I stopped by the VFW to say hi to the rest of the softball gang (the VFW is our sponsor and we're trying to frequent them after games) before heading home to try and get a few things done.

The best part of the day was earlier though - you may have read about my lawn mower woes last week, and it's still in the shop. So I was going to borrow a mower from my friends Jay & Eric, and sent a text message to Jay to ask if I could stop by and get it. I didn't really know when I'd actually get to mow because I have something every night this week. But when I got home, the lawn had been mowed. Jay is a SAINT! After a fairly stressful day at work and staring into a full (and probably rainy week) it was such a relief....THANK YOU THANK YOU Jay!

Tonight I'm looking forward to seeing a friend from high school, who is in Minneapolis for work this week, and who I haven't seen since about a year after high school graduation. It should be fun to catch up on old times!

Coffee, circuit breakers, and dehumidifiers

These 3 topics are only unrelated if you're not me :) But those are the 3 things on my agenda for this rainy and humid Saturday.

Coffee, of course, is on the agenda every morning, but today was Dunn Brothers with Shelley, as we solved all the world's problems (and some of our own).

On the way home, I stopped at Menards and then Home Depot to pick up an arc-fault circuit breaker to replace what I suspect is one that had gone bad. Menards was out, fortunately Home Depot had them (and I got to see my friend Jay while I was there!). However, when I got home, I did some more detective work, and I now realize the problem isn't the breaker (which is good because they're expensive) but somewhere between 3 different outlets in the basement. Fortunately I ran the wiring for the whole basement and have the diagram, so it was a bit easier to determine. I believe now that there's a problem with the outlet itself, which is ok because those are about $1 to replace. Heading back downstairs to give that a try....

And while I was downstairs, cleaning up the utility room and getting out my electrical tools, I noticed how humid it was everywhere downstairs. Then I noticed my dehumidifier was running but there was nothing coming out of the hose. The dehumidifier is 9 years old, so I am not too surprised that it doesn't work anymore. So in a bit I'm off to go find a new one. I'll probably stop by Linens & Things too, as Shelley told me they were going out of business and might have some deals.

Hopefully it will COOL OFF and/or dry out so I can actually mow the lawn too.

Once in a Blue Moon...

which, when you read what a blue moon actually is, is more often than you'd think.

But in this case, I'm referring to the Blue Moon Ballroom, where my band played on Friday night. A great time! I always like to see how these dances draw people from all ages, lifestyles, groups, etc. - everyone has a good time and dances. I don't dance of course, that's why I'm in the band :)

immigration

My friend Shelley posted this in her blog...I know everyone seems to have an opinion on the immigration issue, but this one seems excessive:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/05/armenian.valedictorian/index.html

It's one thing to punish and deport the parents, but deporting a kid for something he had no control over? I fail to see the logic...

HP and the Adventure of the Craftsman Lawn Mower

Some days you just can't win....

So, on Sunday, I decided to mow the lawn. The previous time we had mowed the lawn, we mowed it and then put on a special de-thatching blade (thanks for the recommendation Jay!) to rake up all the dead grass that was building up. That worked pretty well, and after raking and bagging that up, the lawn looked better. So this time, I had to remove the de-thatching blade and put the old blade back on. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not...I got the old blade back on (it is slotted in such a way that you really can't put it on wrong), tightened the bolt, and tried to start the mower. Nothing. Tried the gas primer and pulled again several times. Nothing (and it sorta sounded like something was wrong). The mower is 9 years old, and I probably don't take as good care of it as I should, but still, I didn't think replacing the blade would cause it not to start.

But, after messing with it some more, I decided I should just take it somewhere and have them check it out and tune it up, and hopefully fix whatever was wrong - after 9 years it probably needed a tune-up anyway. Since it was a Craftsman mower, my first thought was to just take it to Sears, as they should have all the necessary parts and (hopefully) someone familiar with the mowers they sell. I went to their website - I had actually had good luck with their website before when I needed to order a couple of new parts for the mower - very easy to navigate, find the replacement parts you need, and order. It took a little longer to find the repair services, but I did find them, and they directed me to a store locater page, which showed me the Apache Mall store (which I expected) and a phone number. I called the number, and immediately got into an automated answering system - that by itself isn't a big deal as some of them are good these days. But this one wasn't - it was a voice-response one, but not very well done (I've used good ones too, so I know it's possible - Amtrak is one of the best ones in existence if you ever have to check on a train schedule...but I digress).

Anyway, after 3 frustrating tries of trying to get through this voice-response system, I finally did get to an actual human person, but NOT someone at the Apache Mall store. After some vague questions and giving them my address and phone number, she asked what type of mower it was, and I said it was a Craftsman push mower...and she then informed me that all I needed to do for those was to take it into the closest repair center. Now on the web page, the Apache Mall store was listed as an authorized repair center, but I asked anyway to make sure where the closest repair center was, and she told me it was the Apache Mall store. I then asked if there was a way I could talk to someone to get an estimate of how much it would cost, and to see how much time it generally took to repair something like this, and she sort of freaked out and then told me I should call the number for the Apache Mall store, which was the exact same number that had gotten me to her in the first place (obviously no one actually answers the phone at the Apache Mall store). So she was less than helpful...but I decided to try and take it in anyway if it was the fastest way to get it fixed.

So today I loaded up the mower into my Vue and drove down to the mall. As I was driving around Sears, I didn't actually see anywhere labeled "Service Center" besides the automotive repair center, which was different. So I went into the store to the lawn & garden center (the place I originally bought the mower 9 years ago) and asked the first employee I could find if they did lawn mower repairs. He got this glazed look and then said something like "oh, I don't think we do anything like that". I told him this was where I was told to bring my lawn mower by the customer service rep I talked to. He sorta blanked again, but then went to find someone who might know something more (this guy was apparently new, or not too bright, or both). The other guy sort of got the same weird look and asked if it was under warranty. I said no, it was 9 years old - he then was like "Oh, whoa, well it's going to cost you to have it fixed then" (duh). I told him I expected that, but that I wanted to know where I should take it to get repaired. He said, "well you can take to the repair center in the cities", so I asked if that was my only choice, and he said "well you can take it over to the repair center on 16th street but they'll just ship it up to the cities to the repair center" (so there is obviously no repair place here in town like the website said). So I said thank you and left (thanks for nothing!). SO, I'm officially done with Sears now.

Since I already had the mower and was a few miles away, I headed over to the place Jay recommended, "Wright's Small Engine" who has a pretty good reputation in town. The guy there was nice and friendly, but told me they only service the brands they sell now, and that they can barely keep up with that (their ad in the yellow pages says otherwise, but the ad might have been old as the phone book I have might be like 2003). But he did give me the business card of a guy they send overflow to, and I guess he works on all types of small engines. OK, so at least that's something (and this guy will probably take it). I'm going to call tomorrow...

I didn't think finding someone to take my money and fix my mower would be so hard - usually when it comes to any service industry they're more than happy to get business!

Upcoming Jazz Band performances

Just some shameless self-promotion....my jazz band, the "Notochords" will be performing twice in June:

Friday, June 6th, 8:00pm-11:00pm (dance lessons at 7:30) - Blue Moon Ballroom, Rochester, MN

Thursday, June 19th, 7:00pm-8:00pm - Chatfield "Concert In The Park" series (Chatfield Community Park, Main Street (Hwy 52), Chatfield, MN - in case of rain, will be held at the auditorium)

The Chatfield concert setup is really nice - it's a beautiful park right in downtown Chatfield with a sound shell. And DQ is just up the road :)

Grandma's Marathon Text Msg update signup

OK this is probably cooler to me than to most people, but I thought I'd post it anyway:

http://results.marathonguide.com/runnertracking/grandmas2008/index.cfm

Last year I was discussing this idea with my friend Wayne - one of the most difficult things for marathon spectators to do is to try and guess where in the race someone is, and try to get to spots where you can see them on the route. It's hard enough if you're watching one person, but if you want to try and see more, even more difficult as the race goes on (because people usually run at different speeds). This is a big step in the right direction toward helping that - since all runners wear a chip which records their time at various spots in the race, and transmits this information to a server somewhere, all that was needed was a notification system - which is now in place for e-mail and text messages. NEAT! I bet in the next 10 years we'll have GPS in the picture somewhere to have even more real-time tracking....

Sportmanship is NOT dead (yet)

THIS is how it should be...

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/03/dany-daly-sportsmanship-exists-when-money-doesnt/

Bill O'Reilley funny interview

This is even funnier because it's Bill O'Reilley...

http://www.mrsardonic.com/2008/05/gay-marriage-op.html