I had dinner with my friend Greg at about 5PM and had a nice prime rib. But later on, I had to meet Megan, who just got into town. A bunch of us met at Pho Van and I had another dinner at 9PM. Yar.
The picture below is what Megan thinks of my new phone. Well, the picture WILL BE of Megan when I fix a problem I’m having.
I got in a bit of an argument at work, mainly because I’m so tired of what I’m working on. It’s poorly documented and hard to understand. While I was in the middle of that, I got a call from the service department at Pella. He left a long message telling me that the buzzing was probably from an electrical transformer. Well, the nearest transformer is in front of the neighbor’s house. I’ve stood outside trying to hear the window make noise and if it was the transformer, I would have noticed it.
I called the Pella guy back and he repeated his mantra, “In my 19 years at Pella, I’ve never seen this problem.”
I told him that it couldn’t be the transformer and to send someone to try the goofy fix he wanted me to do myself (cutting off some of the weatherstripping). He refused.
I told him that I paid a lot of money for this awful thing and to just take it back and refund my money. I’ll replace it with a sheet of plywood. He refused.
On my side, I promised to call the power company, but I told him that if they laughed at me I’d call him right back.
I honestly have no idea why he even called me today, unless it’s just to remind me what an idiot I was to buy a Pella window.
OK, so I can’t get too worked up about my window. I’ve been trying, but really it works fine except for the waking me up in the middle of the night part. That annoys me for a day, and then it’s back to being an overpriced window. That’s why I might need to hire someone (hence a lawyer) to be annoyed for me. It’s trickle up economics.
I should have known when Dave the trainer said, “You probably ought to lay off the legs for a while,” that my legs were going to get sore tonight. Heck, they were starting to get sore early on in the day. I’ll be limping around tomorrow.
I went to the gym for a very short time today (just under an hour), but I doubt I could have done much more. Dave the trainer had me do exercises with this odd bondage equipment on so he could pull on me while I was trying to do lunges or step up onto a bench. I was tired enough that I had to sit down to catch my breath. We headed over to Joe’s Cellar afterwards and I forced myself to eat a grilled cheese sandwich (with bacon and tomato) with some tomato basil soup. I had one whole Pabst Blue Ribbon and had quite a buzz on. Now I’m just enjoying the endorphin rush.
Oh, and I called Pella Windows again about the noise and I have to tell anyone who is thinking of buying one to avoid them like the plague. The local service guy believes me when I tell him it’s making sound in the wind, but he’s never heard of anyone else with that problem in the 20 years he’s worked at Pella and he wants me to fix it myself. It’s a TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR window. It’s probably like FIVE TIMES what I could have paid for a cheapie, and it MAKES A HIDEOUS NOISE when the wind blows. And the Pella service guy wants me to fix it myself. I finally found the number of the main Pella office in Indiana and they told me that they would NOT talk to me and I had to talk to the local guy. I’m wondering if it would be worth another $2500 to hire a lawyer and have the lawyer get on their case to have the window fixed.
Honestly, anything that regularly wakes me up in the middle of the night like that seriously pisses me off. Now if I could get a good night’s sleep, I probably would feel better.
P.S. I want a new iMac and a MacBook Pro.
It’s only two things so far. First, I found that neither my laptop nor my voice recorder were able to record the sound from the window. I’m guessing the buzzy sound, which was loud enough that I had to sleep with earplugs, is too low in frequency to be picked up by the cheesy little microphones in the voice recorder or my laptop. I asked a guy at work with experience in sound (the head sound guy on the road for Bob Dylan at one point) and he suggested PZM microphones or contact microphones. After researching that, I think I’ve decided to tape the voice recorder directly to the window to see if that works.
The second thing: apparently it takes a lot longer to get gas ON my car than IN my car and I was a little later to work than I usually am. I live in the only state where you can’t legally pump your own gas, and the attendant didn’t see that his pump was broken. It never clicked off and it poured gasoline all over the side of my car. Oh, well.
OK, so it wasn’t so bad. It was just that I kept staring at the same bit of a computer program and it kept doing the wrong thing. I started by reading the documentation, then by looking at the code, then by poking around. What a nightmare.
Speaking of nightmares, tonight is supposed to be the windiest night of the year and I still don’t know if I have a proper recording solution to record the sound of my horrible window. I think I need to get a decent microphone and stick it up near the window. A laptop microphone just isn’t cutting the mustard. Oh, well. We’ll see how it goes.
But what stupidity on one of the items. I went to the Apple store and bought a microphone because I had a gift card I wanted to kill. Otherwise it was getting to the 1 year mark and a lot of gift cards start stealing $5 from you each month. I bought a microphone for my iPod, but it’s pretty darn weak. I can record the whirring of the iPod’s hard disk but it can’t hear me talking to it from a foot away. I’m thinking that it might go back to the store.
I tried to buy my sister a print server so both of her computers could use the same printer but OfficeMax lied and the store didn’t have any in stock. And the price for the stilly things have gone up $30 since last week.
The other thing I did was to try on some Blundstone boots. There was a guy in the store (another customer) talking about how they were the standard work boot in Australia and how they just plain felt funny when you wore them. At least they don’t feel like regular boots. The best part was the woman who worked at the shoe store was rather attractive, not that it made me any more likely to buy funny-feeling boots. I think I I need to get out more.
Well, it was a boringly exciting day. It started out when Earl the plumber came by. He was just going to fix the plumbing that was rusted through (the laundry room sewer line) but as long as he was here I had him replace part of the constantly clogging line from the tub to the sewer, and the always leaking pipe under the kitchen sink. It’s a good thing I had him do the pipe from the tub, because it was all full of hair (eww).
IÂ also went to see the acupuncturist, and I think the pins put me to sleep. (He said it was common due to a release of endorphins.) I was having a hard time staying awake the rest of the day. Good thing it’s the weekend. I had no back pain at all any more until he started poking around again. It’s all supposed to be readjusting itself so I’ll have to see how it feels tomorrow.
So, I had a short list for today. I’ve been staying at work a little late this week so I figured I could get home a little early today. So my list was in chronological order:
It was a simple list since I didn’t get all that much sleep last night because of a stomach ache. I even woke up wondering where all the dripping sounds were coming from. (Torrential rainfall is the answer to that question.)
Well, the plan was torn asunder when I blew #1. I just sat around home instead. I even had an invitation to a birthday party for someone I don’t know, from a woman who everyone is trying to get me to ask out. But heck, even my horoscope told me to take it easy. I think I’m coming down with the same head cold that my ma and pa have, so I think I wasn’t just being lame. I was also being lame.
I noticed that other people on other blogs are making lists but I think I may just avoid making my own lists. So far this year I’ve completed most of my lists but they’re not exactly that hard. One was work tasks and not finishing those would mean that I don’t get paid. Another was just the list of exercises I was planning to do at the gym yesterday. Oh, I suppose I also had a short list of people I had to call like my doctor, acupuncturist, and car insurance guy.
But people seem to be making harder lists. Like where they want to go this year or even career goals. I guess my lists are more along the lines of what TV shows I want to watch and how many times I want to leave the house in a week.
I also have a list of things that need fixing around the house, but after paying $1200 for a door that doesn’t latch properly and $2500 for a window that also operates as a wind-driven alarm, I’m not sure what I want to do. The plumber’s coming on Saturday and I hope he doesn’t find some other way to make my life a delight.
OK, so I suppose my blanket rejection of anyone from Stanford or Reed is kind of misplaced (though I still think Stanford should remain on the list) I wonder what else should be on the list? Should adulterers be on the list? It seems to me that all the single women I know in their 30’s are either current or former adulterers, or are going out with guys who are anywhere from 10 to 20 years their junior.
Somehow this makes my past girlfriends look very good in comparison, but I’m not going down that path. In fact, I think I’ll just keep doing what I was doing, which is complaining about work. A guy at the gym said I had insurmountable problems, but I said no, I think I have myriad problems.
Did I mention that someone broke into my closet and stole all my pants and replaced them with identical pants of a smaller size? Here comes the weight loss resolution….
My first day of work at Megacorp in the year 2006 and I’m behind already. Plus, they moved the Thursday meeting to Tuesday and that threw me completely off. It runs from 5-6PM and it’s one of those tedious status meetings when your team works all over the globe. OK, so mostly Asia, but you get the idea. It went on and on and on.
I did make it to the gym (late) after avoiding the place for two weeks because of a bum back. Sounds like the change from Mavericks Fitness to Gold’s Gym is a change for the worse. The gym appears to be more full, but I’m hearing the membership is down and they’re charging the trainers more in rent. Oh, well, I suppose I can do my thing while I can.
Oh, and somehow I lost a bunch of mail (and I know there were checks in the envelopes) on the way from the kitchen to the computer room. Well, they have to be in the house somewhere, but where?