bluh

Neglected this thing for too long. Tired of putting stuff up on Gesichtbuch, where they get to make money from it.

Up “soon” – the worst washing machine I have ever used and updates to Rental Cars I Have Driven.

Still here. Still alive. Moving soon.

The Doctor got her dream job. Congratulations!

Spent 2 weeks in Slovakia for work. I liked it there.

Found out work won’t have a position for me where we’re going.

Had a fast roadtrip down to see the fam over the holidays. Everybody seems to be doing good. Found out what “PDM” stands for.

Turned in my resignation notice at work. Looking for a J-O-B in the Baltimore area. No offers or interviews yet.

Slowly panicking.

Not as much packing, mostly throwing junk away.

Trying to get the house repaired good & on the market fast.

Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease.

Wound up using Automotive Goop (not Household, as I initially thought) on the Maytag. About to go try a new load to make sure it held. It went on pretty well and smoothed out well overnight, despite how sticky it was when being applied with gloved hands.

My $15 Zenni Optical glasses also came apart. Again. For the third time. Disassembled all the threaded connectors, applied high strength (red) threadlock compound and reassembled. We’ll see how well they hold up.

Woke up early this morning to torrential rain, the interwebs tells me about 1.6″ in under 2 hours. Po’bucker was very scared (as usual, when there are Big Loud Noises) and had to be invited up onto the bed before he’d calm down. The two of us plus Coltrane plus Po’bucker made for a mighty crowded bed.
But now he’s fine.

And it’s time to get back to paining the livingroom.

More later.

I hit my first goal last weekend. I’m down 10% and less than what I weighed at the start of 2007. Progress continues to be made and at this rate I’m on track for hitting my goal weight on or before my birthday.

The raw numbers for you are irrelevant, suffice to say after a relatively short period of feeling hungry all the time – maybe a month at most – I’m not having any problem losing weight simply by paying attention to what I eat. Fitday helps admirably in this regard, and I am sticking to approximately 2200 kcal/day. I’m fitting easily into pants that just 3 months ago were far too tight to comfortably wear, if indeed I was able to get them fastened.

Much like quitting smoking, I’m finding that losing weight is incredibly simple and easy. I just don’t want to do the latter 7 or 8 times like I’ve done the former.

Saturday was hard. We made the decision to euthanize one of our greyhounds, Mingus.

He had been acting a bit out of sorts for a week or so but the noticeable weight loss and not eating really got our attention. I took him to the vet Saturday morning, expecting some costly diagnostics and overpriced medicine, then to bring him home and a few days later have him back to his normal, happy self. But the prognosis was not good – quite bad, in fact. Infected fluid and blood was filling his abdomen. He would either need to be hospitalized over the weekend with intravenous fluids and antibiotics or sent up to a distant animal hospital for an ultrasound and surgery. Even with option #2, the doctor gave him a 50% chance at best, assuming they were able to diagnose correctly from the ultrasound. Waiting and seeing would just put him through more misery and the surgical option even moreso, not to mention his odds of survival were slim.

He’d just been to the vet in December and everything was stellar – his blood work, temprement and vitals were all exemplary. Then one day he just stopped being as active, as happy. One day he’d be better and the next day worse.

The vet told us there was nothing that could be done, that even if it was detected earlier, It was clear how much of this he was hiding from us, how much pain he was going through. The vet also told me it was terribly difficult to do, but it was the right decision. I petted him as he slowly drifted away, finally getting relief from the pain.

Mingus came to us through USA Defenders of Greyhounds group from the track in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he raced as Mc Ten Yard Pin. He had an awful kennel name – Gangy – and having just re-read “Beneath the Underdog”, I thought Mingus a fitting name at the adoption. He was funny, quiet, loving and very relaxed, spending most of his time laying around on his bed, the couch, our bed or any other comfy flat surface he could find just as you’d expect a retired racer to do. I’ve never met a dog so large and polite – he wouldn’t step over an extension cord laying on the floor unless you told him it was OK, but he would hop up on the couch and curl up right next to you without a second thought. One minute you’d think he was the meekest dog on the planet, the next he’d be trying to climb into your lap or casually tasting your drink on the coffee table. We took him on thousands of miles of road trips, many of those rolled by with his head stuck out the car window, slowly painting the side of the car with slobber. He was the first dog we could call our own. And we miss him terribly.

I especially like the forecast icon the NWS uses. You can almost hear it thinking “FUUUUUUCK I’M COLD“.

At least we’re getting into nonzero positive integers Foreignheit today.

I sort-of like shoveling snow. Sorta. However on this cold and grey Chicago morning, I can’t say I do.

According to the WGN Weather “Blog”, we’ve already received a normal winter”s full snowfall… and we typically get 60% of our snow after January 13th. We may be in for another record-setting year of snow.

Though it is not even mid-January, the city has already surpassed the 124 year long-term
seasonal snow average of 36.6 inches with 37.9 inches on the books. Typically 60 percent
of the season’s snow is yet to fall, so the city could be looking at its second straight
60 inch-plus snow season.

Fortunately we are getting a break from the snow… in order to get some hard cold weather. Wind chills today of down to -40. Actual air temperatures tomorrow will get up to a balmy -18C (-1F) and we’re expected to have a solid 60-hour streak of subzero temperatures. The last time Chicago had a day which didn’t officially break into nonzero positive interger degrees Foreignheit was back in 1996.

I’ve had Sirius satellite radio in my 2006 Golf now for two years and an in-dash touchscreen GPS for a year – the best two upgrades I’ve done to it. Probably. Unfortunately, a bit messy. I had the Sirius S50 on a Panavise mount to the right of the HVAC controls and the iPod cable strung out under the dash. Add in a RADAR detector and I had 2 items pulling power from the cigarette lighter, an antenna cable & audio cable to the S50 and the iPod cable dangling out. It was messy and frankly looked like poop.

My lovely wife gifted me with my headunit-specific Sirius tuner & bluetooth module for this year’s presentmas and I took the opportunity last weekend to put them in place and greatly neaten up this mess of cabling. It also didn’t hurt that it was almost 21C and I had my in-laws’ garage to work in.

So, first things last – a list.

• Pull existing iPod cable into glovebox.
• Install Bluetooth module.
• Install & activate new Sirius module.
• Run key sense power to headunit & all accessories.

So here’s what I did.

1. Purchased a generic 12V automotive relay, heat shrink tubing and ancillaries. I brought my butane-powered soldering iron & silver bearing solder. Found the key sense power cable exiting the steering column, stripped off about 1cm of insulation with my pocketknife. Wrap new bare wire around this joint, solder in place, wrap with electrical tape. Make leads for positive 30x terminal (fused), ground point under dash & 12V out to units. Crip on spade connectors, fit everything up, shrink on tubing, test with multimeter.
2. Discover that removing the glovebox requires removing the entire center console. Curse VW. Find directions, discover it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. And it makes cleaning the center consoles MUCH easier when they’re out of the car.
3. Remove entirety of center console & glovebox, run iPod cable into glovebox.
4. Replace entirety of center console & glovebox. Clean each part before replacing.
5. Wire up everything and see if it works. Discover why Pioneer color-coded the IPBus connectors.
6. Shorten all wire runs wherever possible, stuff under driver’s side kick panel.
7. Put everything back together.
8. Drink lots of Canadien Club & Coke Zero. LOTS.

I did the above across two leisurely days, including family socializing, eating huge meals and the usual holiday stuff.

So my car went from how it looked above (functional, but messy) to this, mid-installation:

To looking like this: a much, much cleaner installation. And everything works perfectly, as it should.

The car itself is mighty dirty still, and letting my bastard red greyhound loose inside it with muddy paws didn’t help anything. I still have nothing but good things to say about the Pioneer AVIC-D3 but with the addition of the Pioneer-specific Sirius, iPod & Bluetooth modules, it’s a much nicer package. It makes my little Golf TDI a much nicer place to spend 5 hours in ultra-dense fog on I-65, but that’s another story.

Chillin’ at home today, having a lovely morning. We made monkey bread last night and it was absolutely freakin’ delicious. Heading out in a while to go see a movie, but you should get to enjoy some of my favorite Christmasy songs, so I have put together this playlist for just such an occasion. My wife is enjoying a bit of a Christmas miracle herself, as her advisor has actually emailed her letting her know that he is working on his notes for her dissertation draft and she’ll have them in a couple days.

IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! “BOB” BLESS US EVERY ONE!