Monday, May 10, 2010
4th Birthday
CP's party this weekend was a blast. Auntie V. and the LW put together a wonderful scavenger hunt, and put away a bottle of wine in the planning of it. The kids loved it and having to actually do something at the party and it seemed to go over well with all of them. Before the hunt, they colored their own bags with stencils, so they'd have a place for the stash of goodies. My brother came over, brought the neices, and ran the brats on the grill. We hired MJ, the owner of Sister Act Face Painting to come and entertain the kids with her exceptional art work. I had to get ready and scoot just as the candle was being blown out, so that I could put my camera to use at a friend's wedding. A link from shutterfly will be in the inboxes soon...I hope.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Garage Sailing
CP and I just sailed through a garage sale up north of here. We left $120 behind for good measure, but came home with restaurant plates, cups, and bowls, plastic tumblers and bowls (just right for a birthday party), coffee cups, carafes, plastic and silver pitchers, salt and parmesan shakers, and silver and aluminum platters. Did I mention that there were 110 dinner plates in the set? Yeah....we'll have plenty for the first major friendsandfamily_leaveyour keysinthebowl_latenighter at our house...and we won't have to do dishes before breakfast..SCORE!
$120? you say, well it does seem like a lot for a garage sale, but I came home with a butt/car-load of matched sets of things that will serve us, and our friends (can you say loaner party set?) well for years.
CP was nice while her father piled stuff up. The seller is a fellow gardener and VW bus fan from down south of here; he'll be selling later this summer at the Spring Hill Farmers Market.
$120? you say, well it does seem like a lot for a garage sale, but I came home with a butt/car-load of matched sets of things that will serve us, and our friends (can you say loaner party set?) well for years.
CP was nice while her father piled stuff up. The seller is a fellow gardener and VW bus fan from down south of here; he'll be selling later this summer at the Spring Hill Farmers Market.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
TV Cold Turkey
Well, we haven't had a tv since moving into the place, so we've been cold turkey with a small portable DVD player and the web to help us along. CP pretty much commandeered the DVD player, so it's off to the web for the LW and I, but it's been good. Tonight they went to see an IMAX 3D movie about training dragons with Uncle Richard and Eli; a good time was had by all.
I got to stay home and enjoy some quiet time. I heard KPR Presents this afternoon as I moved out of one room and passed the living room where the radio was on. A poet was on the radio and I stopped to listen for a minute and was hooked. It was wonderful. Real, easy, rural stories told by, what I considered to be a master within seconds of hearing him speak. I found out after the program that it was Ted Kooser. He evidently read some of his work at the Oread Hotel over in RockChalkJayhawkville not too long ago and I guess this was a recording of some of it. I was bummed to find that we'd missed it. Sometimes I read poetry without sidenotes and it doesn't really connect me with anything or anyone. Mr. Kooser was discussing his poetry and after hearing his thoughts on it, I felt connected to it; as if the grandmother he speaks about in "Dishwater" was my great grandmother. I can almost hear her shoes on that old wood floor in his poem.
I'm thankful that I don't have a TV because I would have surely missed this. My great grandmother was an amazing person. Raising a houseful of kids as a widow in the depression=tough. She always enjoyed my brother and I being around. She got a kick out of seeing how fast we'd dart in to see whether it was sugar cookies or peanut brittle in the dining room. Good stuff, memories and poetry.
I got to stay home and enjoy some quiet time. I heard KPR Presents this afternoon as I moved out of one room and passed the living room where the radio was on. A poet was on the radio and I stopped to listen for a minute and was hooked. It was wonderful. Real, easy, rural stories told by, what I considered to be a master within seconds of hearing him speak. I found out after the program that it was Ted Kooser. He evidently read some of his work at the Oread Hotel over in RockChalkJayhawkville not too long ago and I guess this was a recording of some of it. I was bummed to find that we'd missed it. Sometimes I read poetry without sidenotes and it doesn't really connect me with anything or anyone. Mr. Kooser was discussing his poetry and after hearing his thoughts on it, I felt connected to it; as if the grandmother he speaks about in "Dishwater" was my great grandmother. I can almost hear her shoes on that old wood floor in his poem.
I'm thankful that I don't have a TV because I would have surely missed this. My great grandmother was an amazing person. Raising a houseful of kids as a widow in the depression=tough. She always enjoyed my brother and I being around. She got a kick out of seeing how fast we'd dart in to see whether it was sugar cookies or peanut brittle in the dining room. Good stuff, memories and poetry.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Sprint Treo 700P Picture Mail PMLTPM87
I hope that nobody has to go through what I went through yesterday and today to get their picture mail up and running with sprint. We've had this feature for a while, but never used it. Recently I decided it was time that we learn how. We've changed our plan now and will have web access soon, so now's as good a time as any.
Little did I know that we'd get to spend about 4 hours on the phone with 3 different levels of sprint technical support. At first, we had the option blocked, so I got into a chat with Lapri (maybe from the Phillipines) and unblocked web access so that picture mail would work. I tried several times to get pics sent after that and kept getting nothing, so I decided to dive in and call tech support. I was getting the pmltpm87 error.
The first person I got was Armando in Tulsa. He was a great guy and he worked with me for over an hour, but couldn't get anything going, so he handed me off to Tier 2 support. Right off the bat, Jesse at Tier 2 started hammering away with "have you checked to see if the web works?"...my reply: "whuuhhh?....don't you have a ticket in front of you that you can read?". Yeahhhhh...I can see that this person's going to be boatloads of help. She's going to have me completely nuke/reset the phone as I had done with Armando, but still, I'm game. We start to sync the phone with the desktop and it takes a while since my wife runs lotusnotes. She offers to call me back in 15 minutes and gets off of the phone. 40 minutes later, I call Tier 2 and can't speak with Jesse, so I have to go through all of this again with Alessandra, who is nice, but while we're troubleshooting...you guessed it...the phone I'm using drops the damned call. 20 minutes from the Sprint World Vacant Campus and my phone drops the call while I'm sitting at a desk near a window. Alessandra, who has my number....doesn't call back. I call back and can't talk to Alessandra, so now I have to deal with John. He's a nice chap and works with me until we've exhausted just about everything that you can do to one of these phones and decides to kick this one up the chain to the Tier 3/Engineers. He sets me up with a ticket and MJ calls later to get all of the details right before sending it up the chain. Resolution time estimate 51 hours.
It's Tuesday now. At about 830am I got a call from Sean, who I can only assume was in Tulsa. He's a good guy and he's done his homework on the ticket just like I used to do. He's gone through the ticket to see what we've done already, so I don't have to explain..again...what is going on. We troubleshoot some more and then he went in and completely pulled the phone off of the plan, reinstated it, then had me go into the ##PRI# (web side of the phone) and reset it.
Next thing I know...I'm sending pictures to people. Sean's the man!
Things we tried:
Resets
Battery Pulls
Reprovisioning
Depro/Repro from Tier 2 end
##3282# Update Vision
##3282# Restore
Clear Picture Token
##786# Reset
##Unlock Code# Activate
##PRI#
Little did I know that we'd get to spend about 4 hours on the phone with 3 different levels of sprint technical support. At first, we had the option blocked, so I got into a chat with Lapri (maybe from the Phillipines) and unblocked web access so that picture mail would work. I tried several times to get pics sent after that and kept getting nothing, so I decided to dive in and call tech support. I was getting the pmltpm87 error.
The first person I got was Armando in Tulsa. He was a great guy and he worked with me for over an hour, but couldn't get anything going, so he handed me off to Tier 2 support. Right off the bat, Jesse at Tier 2 started hammering away with "have you checked to see if the web works?"...my reply: "whuuhhh?....don't you have a ticket in front of you that you can read?". Yeahhhhh...I can see that this person's going to be boatloads of help. She's going to have me completely nuke/reset the phone as I had done with Armando, but still, I'm game. We start to sync the phone with the desktop and it takes a while since my wife runs lotusnotes. She offers to call me back in 15 minutes and gets off of the phone. 40 minutes later, I call Tier 2 and can't speak with Jesse, so I have to go through all of this again with Alessandra, who is nice, but while we're troubleshooting...you guessed it...the phone I'm using drops the damned call. 20 minutes from the Sprint World Vacant Campus and my phone drops the call while I'm sitting at a desk near a window. Alessandra, who has my number....doesn't call back. I call back and can't talk to Alessandra, so now I have to deal with John. He's a nice chap and works with me until we've exhausted just about everything that you can do to one of these phones and decides to kick this one up the chain to the Tier 3/Engineers. He sets me up with a ticket and MJ calls later to get all of the details right before sending it up the chain. Resolution time estimate 51 hours.
It's Tuesday now. At about 830am I got a call from Sean, who I can only assume was in Tulsa. He's a good guy and he's done his homework on the ticket just like I used to do. He's gone through the ticket to see what we've done already, so I don't have to explain..again...what is going on. We troubleshoot some more and then he went in and completely pulled the phone off of the plan, reinstated it, then had me go into the ##PRI# (web side of the phone) and reset it.
Next thing I know...I'm sending pictures to people. Sean's the man!
Things we tried:
Resets
Battery Pulls
Reprovisioning
Depro/Repro from Tier 2 end
##3282# Update Vision
##3282# Restore
Clear Picture Token
##786# Reset
##Unlock Code# Activate
##PRI#
Sunday, April 11, 2010
1st Nap
CP is in her freshly-painted purple bedroom napping for the first time in this old/new house. Her bunk bed seems to suit her fine and soon it will be rigged for its full compliment of three mattresses (top, main, & trundle)
The cable guy was here this morning and hooked up the internet service and the LW is down the street loading up the little things. We still have two dressers, some food things, and a mattress to haul before it rains today, but once that's done, we'll be officially living in G-Town.
It's quiet here when the trains aren't passing by. The hum of my worn out power supply fan is all that I can hear in this house.
Pollen covers everything right now. It was so thick on the windshield this morning that I had to use the wipers to see. I got in the Subie (that was left unlocked with the windows down all night without concern) and shut the door, only to be met with a cloud of pollen inside the car.
Green grass and trees that don't need watering are pretty cool.
The cable guy was here this morning and hooked up the internet service and the LW is down the street loading up the little things. We still have two dressers, some food things, and a mattress to haul before it rains today, but once that's done, we'll be officially living in G-Town.
It's quiet here when the trains aren't passing by. The hum of my worn out power supply fan is all that I can hear in this house.
Pollen covers everything right now. It was so thick on the windshield this morning that I had to use the wipers to see. I got in the Subie (that was left unlocked with the windows down all night without concern) and shut the door, only to be met with a cloud of pollen inside the car.
Green grass and trees that don't need watering are pretty cool.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Oh, The Horror
There's plenty of crying foul today in light of the latest government push to cover some folks with health care. It seems odd to me though that the party of personal responsibility is also the party of telling women what they can't do with their bodies, and the party of giving my tax money to churches. Oh, and lest I forget, they're the party of bomb-the-shit-out-of-the-wrong country....and get stuck up to our nuts there.
A guy I know spoke today of how this was akin to selling our kids' souls down the rabbit hole. I would argue that they were sold down with the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, the placation of oil companies tied to Saudi Arabia, and with the appointment of Alito and Roberts to the supreme court. All of the grand decisions made by the collective genious of the last 10 years of government will haunt the grandchildren of our kids just as we're still cleaning up after the decisions of the "greatest generation" with a war of some sort every 15-20 years.
A guy I know spoke today of how this was akin to selling our kids' souls down the rabbit hole. I would argue that they were sold down with the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, the placation of oil companies tied to Saudi Arabia, and with the appointment of Alito and Roberts to the supreme court. All of the grand decisions made by the collective genious of the last 10 years of government will haunt the grandchildren of our kids just as we're still cleaning up after the decisions of the "greatest generation" with a war of some sort every 15-20 years.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Buying Foreclosures
If anyone wonders what is wrong with the housing market or why that foreclosure on the block won't go away, just ask someone who is trying to buy one. You'll almost certainly hear about appraisal management companies and scared or completely inept appraisers, lenders who couldn't find their ass with a road map, and heaps of FHA/HUD paperwork. The only bright spot on this scene is our realtor, while just as frustrated as we are at the craziness that it take to buy a vacant house that's not in perfect shape, knew what we were in for and told us what to expect. The advice that I can give someone out there who wants to buy a property that isn't perfect is this: get a realtor who has worked in investment property for a while, expect rotten hang-ups with the deal from "da gubment" or their local sub-par lackeys, and be prepared for a long wait.
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