Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Windows Annoyance

So Windows Update triggered this morning to fix more problems with Internut Exploder as well as wanting to install some Anti-Virus type software. Well, the update finished (sans AV, which I’ve already got) and now every 10 minutes I get a little popup telling me to restart the computer. What the heck is up with that? Can I please reboot at my convenience? Sure Windows XP takes less time to reboot than Windows 2000 did, but why annoy me? I’m so going to switch over to Mac when I can.

Dental Update

As I know that many of the readers of this blog sit around thinking, “I sure wish Randy would spell check his posts,” or “Do my hands smell like bleu cheese?” I want to let you know that it turns out that my mouth is in much better shape than I had anticipated. Or the people at the dental office I just visited lied to me so that in about 3 years they’ll be able to say, “Randy, we need to replace your face, and we figure that since you don’t have dental insurance, it’s going to cost around $5,000,000,000.00.” However, I think it is better rather than worse there sense the staff is either really friendly or inhaling laughing gas between patients. I have no cavities and they really thought that the only way to get more money from me would be to use this technique called invisiline to straighten out my lower teeth and manipulate my upper teeth. In short the Dr. in charge of invisiline nirvana at the office told me it would be a mere $4,500 for the trays with a $500.00 initial ‘seed’ payment. So, if I want straight teeth I can go to the Orthodontist or the Dentist now, and I can pay a lot or pay a lot. Or, because I don’t care about how my lower teeth look I’ll go in every six months and have them clean them.

Thanks for asking the tough questions 🙂

Lessons in Swimming

Well, we had swimming lessons yesterday and quite the time of it, too. Apparently when you swim there’s this thing called ‘form.’ The idea is to have a consistant motion that propels you through the water. The instructor gave us tips on a swimming stroke called ‘Free Style.’ When it was my turn to show him my free style swim when I surfaced he said, “Good!” Then, in typical teaching fashion he kindly told me that every part of my stroke, movement and activity in the water was slightly to severly off with two exceptions: I didn’t sink and I didn’t drown.

However, I get the sense this morning that swimming is good for me and something I should pursue as a physical activity because I’m really sore in more parts of my body. I’m most likely going to join the Recreational Center so that I can get going and practicing my strokes, build large muscles and generally turn myself into Colorado’s next Gubernator.

In other lessons in swimming Abby had a nightmare last night and so came to be in our bed. We let her sleep in our bed for a bit so that she can rest and relax and fall back to sleep. Stupid. Why? Because Abigail was practicing her free style swim between Jessica and I. Arms flailed, feet flew about kicking both of us and her body writhed against us. The tough part is that she was asleep while all of this happens. I couldn’t be mad at her for intentionally kicking me in the kidney if it was an accident. So at around 3:30 as we started the second round of her swimming practice I carried her into her own bed to practice in a solo session.

Swimming Lessons

I have been able to be buoyant in the water for some time. But when I ‘swim’ it usually involves way more splashing than is necessary. In fact, I wish that I was only wet while in the shower so that I could not embarass myself with my, “Holy Cow! That man must be drowning!” approach to swimming. I’m not drowning, really. I’m just moving through the water with the gracefullness of a cow being eaten by piranas.

However, tomorrow I’ll be starting swimming lessons. My goal, and I’m not making this up, is to be able to swim in the pool and not get noticed. I also hope to get some cow-print speedos. OK, I’m lying about the speedos.

Please, Dear Frontier Not PDF

Dear Frontier Airlines,
I have written several times about your extra-ordinary customer service. Y’all have really done quite a good job. Except I found one thing that makes me scratch my head: Emailing me my receipt as a PDF. What is the reason for that? When I open it up it contains only text and one hyperlink to your web site. Why not HTML, why not just a plain text document? I placed my order online where I used an HTML browser to get the tickets, I opened up the email which could have displayed plain text or HTML email (preferably both for email clients that don’t handle HTML), and lastly, I didn’t want to open up the glut of a program known as Adobe Acrobat. If I was using an Apple I would have without question enjoyed the PDF because of OSX’s great real time rendering of PDF, but I’m not, currently I’m on a Windows machine and I’m terribly frustrated by the slow performance of Adobe on this machine, which has one gigabyte of RAM.

Thank you for your time and consideration of bandwidth, end user friendliness and customer service.

Regards,

Randy Peterman

Gas

Happy Thirtieth Birthday Dave! You old fart. There’s nothing like getting older to remind us of eternity. I know that turning 27 was hard for me, mostly because my wife started telling me I was past my prime 😉 Now I have to work out at the gym, drink Ensure and I get really interested in certain commercials 😉 But enough about me.

I hope that your birthday is especially bright because your little one is relaxed, your wife is smiling as beautifully as ever and your car doesn’t get stuck in a snow drift. Oh, that’s not too likely there, but the snow is really coming down here.

Tax SoftWhere?

Last night I spent some time on the phone with one of my favorite tax specialists, my dad. He’s got lots of experience in accounting, finances and way too many other things. “Why?,” you ask yourself. Thanks for asking, it makes it easier for me to answer. The reason for my call was the fact that the tax software I bought to use for my 2004 tax return pointed to what appeared to be the wrong line in my previous year’s return filing papers. What’s really weird is that I think that there’s an error. So, I’ve got to contact the (hopefully) nice people at H & R Block and raise some Cain so that I can get an answer. The issue is that the software says to look at line 56 in one place, line 55 in another [referring to the same information] and the wording is ambiguous as to what information they’re definitely looking for. I’m pretty sure they want line 55 since line 56 is self employment tax and they ask for it on the next page of their ‘interview.’

I know as a software developer myself that there’s a fine line between testing your software and doing quality control. I know that I’ve been responsible for a bug or a whole pack of bugs, however, I don’t think that my bugs had any legal ramifications. If I screw up my tax return I could be liable for those mistakes, not H & R Block. So, word to the wise: just because tax software is easy, doesn’t mean it’s right, double check the software.

File Under Double Speak

Piracy hits Hollywood in the wallet
OR
Record Profit from Movies

You pick. I doubt that the internet is undercutting the movie industry, the fidelity of the movies you can get online comes no where close to the giant screen that I saw Meet the Fokkers on last Sunday. And if Hollywood was producing outstanding films with regularity maybe people would be going to the movies more often rather than waiting to see them on DVD. Speaking of which, Mark Cuban has a good idea (again) along this line.

Loan Ranger

So we’re getting ready to meet the load arranger to start the (scary as heck) process of buying a house. There are several fears I deal with in all of this:

  • Lack of knowledge about what’s going on
  • Lack of control
  • Lack of resale value

I like control, I like knowing that I’m doing something the right way, and preferrably the best way. However, in this process I know it’s not going to be the best way, but it will be the way we can do it (I don’t have 20%+ down). However, I don’t understand how the whole process goes, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to ‘get it’ quickly.

Because I don’t have a complete knowledge of the process and all of the terms involved I feel like I lack control.

Since the housing market is in constant flux I fear that the value of any home I may purchase will suddenly plummet because of any various change that may strike us, our neighborhood or the market in general. For instance, what if our Jerry Springer neighbors that live above us move into our neighborhood and bring the value of the homes down? I can’t imagine that driving by and hearing a young male scream, “You [words I wouldn’t type on my blog]! I’m going to [other words I won’t type] kill you!” I’m pretty sure that will cause some neighbors to want to move, and others to just call the police. Any regularity of either of those will bring the property value down. Also, what if Satan moves into our neighborhood and makes the Jerry Springer neighbors look good? This too is guaranteed to make the prices of the homes in the area go to hell [gosh that one liner amuses me]. And, lastly, what if the housing bubble that some have described us being in pops and I find myself paying the mortgage for a $230,000 house that is actually only worth $150,00 since Microsoft declared bankruptcy, WalMart bought out Target and Bill Clinton won a third term? Think of the catastophes!

So, as usual, I just need to trust God and seek His wisdom while all of this goes down. Pray for us in this as it’s going to be a bumpy ride and I’m going to have to go to the dentist in a week.