Seth Bienek (Manager of the HOUCFUG) and I decided to save a bit of cash and share a Hotel for the trip. Seth saved us a lot of money by finding a great little apartment a couple blocks from the conference for half of what we were going to pay at the conference hotel. Woot! It turned out really well so far; we are actually closer to the conference than the designated conference hotel!

After arriving and getting settled in yesterday, we spent most of the day walking around downtown. The weather was perfect, and it is a great town for sight-seeing. We couldn’t decide on where to eat lunch, so we ended up in a small little place. I forget the name, but the food was okay. For supper, we found Elephant & Castle pub and restaurant. The fish and chips was pretty good, as was my girly drink. I know, I know… I went to a pub and had a mixed drink instead of a pint, what was I thinking? lol.

We also went to MiniMAX last night, but I wrote about that in a separate post.

Ok, time to leave to get breakfast and head out to the conference.

Its official, Michelle is pregnant! 

Michelle and I have been hoping to have children from early on in our relationship.  We knew we wanted to wait until we were settled and more financially stable before making that leap so we waited to start trying to have kids until we were both in good jobs and at a good place in life.  Had we known how hard it would be and how long it would take, we would have started the process sooner!!!  After many, many disappointing months turned into years… After many, many doctors appointments…  It is finally happening!  We got to see an ultrasound Monday, and then we got to see a heartbeat on Wednesday!!!

Our due date is December 20th and you can expect many more comments from me during the process!

I have never bothered to link to myspace before… but I did put up a few pics here…

By the time we were thru the long line at the restaraunt it was after 11pm, and we were starving! Before the meal could be served, we all devoured the crackers on the table. When our main course finally came out, we had eaten so many crackers, we couldn’t finish our plates!

It was almost midnight by the time we made it to the gaming floor. We were determined to have a good time, though, so we all split up and planned to play for a couple of hours. Mikie is a big fan of blackjack and spent most of her time at a blackjack table… The rest of us seemed happy to just play the slot machines. My mom was a fan of the simple three column machines, with one row in play. My sis and I seemed to gravitate to the more complex slots with many rows and many columns…

This actually ended up costing me when i first sat down to play. See… when you sit down at a nickel machine, you really don’t think about how much you are betting… its only $0.05 right???? well… this one machine I sat at had 20 lines in play, and you could bet up to 15x the credit on each line. In hindsight, it was NOT a good idea to hit the max bet button for three plays! $45 dollars and 15 seconds later, I realized my mistake!!!! Oops! Oh well. I started playing with $100 and I bounced up and down between 50 and 100 for a long time. Eventually, inevitably, the money ran out.

Some time around the money running out, we all realized how late it really was, so we started rounding each other up and cashing out. On the way out of the casino, Mikie decided she wanted to try $5 in a progressive slot machine. So instead of just sitting by her and watching, i fished a couple of dollars from my pocket and put them in the machine next to her. I ended up winning $90 on the second try!!! Woot! I cashed it out immediately, but decided to keep playing for a few minutes on another $20 i found at the bottom of my wallet. Of course I lost it all! So I actually ended up only losing about $33 for the night! not too bad! We didn’t get back to my parent’s house until 3:45am. This was a very long night! It was definately worth it, tho! I had a blast! It also reminded me why I am glad I am not close to a casino in Texas; it would be too easy to go in there at least once a week and spend some cash!

Well… I don’t know why I decided to make this a blog post… I mean a) you don’t care, and b) you don’t care! I get it! lol
It is easier for me to write this down as a blog post than it is to write a journal or something… and I am too forgetful. If I don’t write it all down, I start forgetting things. Guess that is a bad sign for things to come later in life! lol

I kept tabs on the sale ads @ GottaDeal.com. 

My sister Rachel has been in the market for a laptop, and I was checking out the LCD monitors that Best Buy was offering…  So I decided to be one of “those people” and actually camp out @ Best Buy overnight!  I know… crazy right? well… I guess I wasn’t the only one!

I decided that I wasn’t going to inturrupt my Thanksgiving for a sale, so I would try to get to Best Buy around 8pm Thursday, you know, to be really early and get a great spot.  Of course, as always I was running late and didn’t get to the Best Buy in Lafayette, LA until 8:30pm.  OMG!!!!  The store was closed on Turkey Day, but when I pulled up… THE PARKING LOT WAS FULL!  There was a line ALL THE WAY around the building.  There must have been at least 150 people there!  So I was VERY disappointed…  There was no way I was going to stay in a line like that with no garantee of getting what I wanted…  So I drove the hour back to my parents house.

Well… My sis was pretty disappointed, because she really wanted the laptop.  Her and her friend Mikie decided to drive to Houma and see what the line was like at that Best Buy.  When they got there @ 11:15pm there were about 65 people in line.  They chose to stay and see if they could get laptop’s (Mikie wanted a different one).  They made it through the night alright and Best Buy started handing out tickets for the big items around 3am.  Somehow Mikie got a ticket for her laptop but Rachel did not get the one she wanted.

Bonus, Rachel was able to pick up the 22″ and 19″ widescreen LCDs for me.  I actually bought the 19 inch for my parents for Christmas.  Of course I am too impatient to wait, and I know they could use it, so I gave it to them and hooked it up.  My mom LOVED it!

I can’t wait to get home and try out the 22″!  Now I need to find Rachel a good deal on a descent laptop!!!

See ya later!

I bought Michelle Caesar IV for her birthday.  I thought it would be an excellent gift…

Since I gave her my old work laptop when I upgraded, I thought she should be able to play her new game when we were on trips, or any time she was stuck somewhere with nothing better to do for a couple of hours. 

Problem #1:  Caesar IV uses the *latest* in graphics technology, and has no support for older video cards.  In a desktop, that’s not that big of a problem theoretically all you need to do is change the vid card.  In a laptop, specifically, in *her* laptop, the vid card is not replacable!  So Michelle cannot use her game in that laptop.  We did find out that the game will work in my newer laptop, but I don’t plan to upgrade for at least another year, so she is SOL on that one.

We loaded the game on Michelle’s desktop, but had to turn the graphics *WAY* down to make it playable.  The vid card I had in that machine was $130 2 years ago…  I don’t expect things to stay the same forever, but… C’MON!!! 2 years??!??!?!!?!?!?!????  Well… Like I said before… No biggie, right? Just need to plop down another $150 on a new vid card, right?  After a week of searching I found THE card that I wanted.  It was perfect! not quite bleeding edge, but definately top notch!  Unfortunately it was $220 with a $20 MIR.  I did catch a break though, right after I bought it, I was able to price match when I found it for sale for $150 @ Best Buy… so if I get the MIR back (fat chance), it will have only cost me $130.  That’s Great!

Problem #2: The “Perfect Card” turns out was PCI-E… My desktop only had AGP!!!  I did some searching and my perfect vid card’s AGP cousin is $250!  no way am I paying that much for a vid card!!! and the cheaper cards were not nearly as good!  So… being me… I had to buy a new Mobo and Processor! lol  The new mobo and processor were about $200 @ Fry’s…  So I get home and guess what?!?!????  My memory in the old machine was DDR, the new machine requires DDR2! 

Ok, so I go and do some searching and find out thru bestbuy.com that my BestBuy has a 1GB stick of DDR2 4200 ram in stock for cheap.  I decide to just drive over and pick it up, instead of buying it online for instore pickup… what a mistake!!!! I get there and the incompetent blue shirt can’t help me.  They can’t find the Ram and he claims it isn’t even in his system.  So I pulled up the BestBuy website and show the guy that it says its available in his store.  He proceeds to ramble some random words that don’t really make sense together and I get the impression that he is attempting to explain that he has no idea how the systme works or if it is even real-time. sheesh!

So… after pulling my hair out on that one, I end up just buying a 512MB stick that was almost as much as the cheap 1GB stick!  When I get home, I go back to the best buy website and order the ram for instore pickup.  Guess what?>!?!??!? I get an email FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER indicating that the item is ready for pickup!!!!! WTF?!?!?!??????

Anyway… So I put the machine together with the 512MB stick and got it back up and running. (after re-activation of windows… Thanks Microsoft for making sure that innocent users are pained by your stupid process, while illegal copies have NO PROBLEM installing without activation!) I turn on Michelle’s new game and the graphics are AWESOME! I start playing with settings and bump everything up to make use of the new hardware… then…

Problem #3: The machine restarts!  I tried lowering the settings, but the machine kept restarting!!!!!!! Ok, so I figure that a) I need more ram (which I have to pick up anyway) and b) my power supply is lacking (only 350W).  So I pick up a new 500W power supply @ Fry’s ($40, with a $40 MIR, so it may be free, bonus!).  I go to BestBuy to pick up the Ram… you know… the ram that I got an email indicatiing was sitting at the desk WAITING for me to pick it up…  Well… 30 minutes later, the blue shirt FINALLY finds my ram.  in the back. LAME!!!!

So I get home with my brand new Ram and Power Supply.  I am excited.  Just to recap, the only things left from the old system are the case and the DVD burner (which is only a year old).  I install the PS and the new ram and decide to leave in the other 512MB stick, intending to give my wife a great machine with 1.5 GB.  Well… I turn it on and it posts! WOOT! but then…

Problem #4:  It gets to the loading windows machine and restarts!  Many, many reboots later, I can’t even get it past the Ram check screen! ARG!!!! So I start playing Musical Ram, moving the 2 sticks of ram between the 4 slots on the mobo…  Nothing works!!!!!  I eventually figure out that the 512 mb and 1 gig aren’t playing well together, so I remove the 512 and reboot.  Success!!!!

I now have a fully functional computer for michelle to play her new game on!  We were able to put the graphics all the way to the very max, without a single hiccup from the PC.  good news!  and it only took a week!

See below for pics!  I am donating the hair to a great organization: Locks of Love.

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Michelle’s aunt moved this weekend, so we offered to take Mary off their hands for the weekend.  This gave them the ability to pack/unpack without having to entertain 10 yr old Mary, and gave us the opportunity to entertain Mary for the weekend.  We really like her, and she really likes to come over, so it worked out great!  She has had a good time.  I found a used eyeToy for the PS2 at gamestop and she has had a lot of fun being part of the video game.  I figure it is almost as much exercise as going out and playing or something, so… good enough!  She goes home tomorrow .  It has been fun having her around!

My weekend has been very productive in the garage as well!  I built a table on wheels.  It is a little over 3 ft by 5 ft.  The table top is about 3’6″ off the ground, which is a perfect height for me to work at.  The original goal was to build something that could store plastic tote bins.  Michelle has 10 of them with school materials in them, and they are taking up quite a bit of room in the garage.  I want to get everything off the floor.  So anyway… after I started building this, I realized that i didn’t just want some small shelf, I wanted a nice workbench to use for other stuff after we get rid of Michelle’s boxes…  So this table is solid. Very solid.  The only part I cheaped out on is the table top, which is made from scraps I had laying around.  When it falls apart, I will but a good piece of plywood for the top.  I also covered the top in vinyl to protect it and keep it clean(ish).  The legs are 4×4′s.  The frame for the top is 2×4′s.  I am very happy with how this came out.  I added a thinner shelf about 8 inches off the floor and used a 1/4 inch piece of plywood as it’s top.  I have already put half of michelle’s boxes on that shelf.  I am still using the top as a workbench.  I figure I will be done with most of my projects at the end of the weekend, so I will put the rest of michelles boxes on top of it then.

Speaking of other projects… I also finished hanging my other shelf over the garage door.  I spent a good bit of time organizing things and am pretty impressed with how things are going.  I am so sore! lol.  My neighbor has been a good inspiration for a lot of this.  We seem to push each other to work on our projects…  This weekend, he helped me by going with me to Lowes since I don’t have a truck for the lumber.  He also helped me hang the shelf over the garage door.  It was a lot easer with two tall people.  We also loaned each other a couple of tools and I helped him shovel some sand that he got for one of his landscaping projects in the backyard.  I will spend a few hours tomorrow organizing and cleaning the garage.  Then all I will have on the floor will be our to garbage cans!

I might post pics later…

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We use our Terminix pest contract quite a bit to take care of ant problems in and around the house.  Our lot is next to an undeveloped lot at the moment, so we will continue to have a pest problem for the forseeable future.  Let me stress right from the start that I am happy with this contract.  The peace of mind is well worth the cost.  Anyway… on with the reason for the blog post.

Since we built a house, we decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and get the house treated and enter into a contract for termite protection as well.  Michelle planned to be home all afternoon, and we were told that hey would be out between 12 and 2 to treat around the foundation of the house.  This seemed like a good plan!

From a customer service standpoint, if you say you are going to be somewhere between x and y, it is a good idea to show up at that time!  If you get an idea that there may be a delay, give the customer a call and explain the current situation and work out the schedule.  If you can’t handle that, then do like the cable  company and just tell the customer that you will be there between noon on Monday and midnight on Friday.  I mean… Really… Have you ever heard anyone complain that a company scheduled to come by the their house had given them too many informative calls about the scheduled visit? I know I haven’t!

So back to our particular case; Michelle gives up waiting around 4 pm and calls our local Terminix office.  They call Michelle back at 4:30 and tell her that the guy will show up within an hour.  Sometime around six, Michelle gets impatient again and calls to see what is taking so long.  The guy has to call her back a few minutes later and tells her that the guy is on his way in from Baytown and would show up sometime that night!  So, in hindsight, this is the point in the story that Michelle should have said no and rescheduled… I mean… this is getting a bit rediculous!  But that’s not what happened. 

The guy showed up in the twilight just before 8 pm.  I had no idea the amount of work involved for this job.   I really thought it was just inserting a hose into the ground at specified intervals… but noooooo… It involved this guy digging a 6 inch wide trench all the way around the foundation.  I believe he said that the chemical is poured into the trench directly, but I am not to sure.  I was working in the garage, so I was hot and not really paying much attention to him.  All I know is that he had a motorized pump on the tank in the back of his truck, and he had that thing on from 9 pm until at least 10:30 pm.  This piece of equipment would fit right in our neighborhood during the day… We are on a street with many houses still being built, so noise is not an unusual event.  But I was really frustrated that this guy was making this racket at night!  Our neighboors have 2 young children that were probably trying to sleep before nine.  I know that if I was in their position and my neighbor was making that kind of noise that late at night when my kids were trying to seep… I would be peeved about it.

Now, this is not the guy’s fault… He is just doing his job.  Actually, from what I could tell, he did a good job, and he was a very nice guy.  I blame this incompetence on the scheduling and dispatch system this local office has in place.  If you are scheduling work that will take 3 hours, then you should not be allowing scheduled events to start any later than say, 5:30 pm.