I just got back from talking to an attorney regarding the insurance claim with Price City, and he said they have 90 days in which to either accept or deny the claim. So I possibly have five weeks until either I get paid or I can sue them. When I last talked to their insurance company, they said they haven't heard from the adjuster yet, and he was here more than three weeks ago. So if they keep this slowness up, I've got an attorney ready to take them to court.

It was cool sitting in the attorney's office, because he had tens of thousands of dollars worth of books that the company I work for publishes. I'm sure they also use the software I use every day, and they may even have some of the products I've worked on.

I'm really starting to get nervous about this baby coming. With luck, my wife will carry him full-term, 'cause if he comes early, we won't be ready. Now that I've got my office moved downstairs, it's time to refinish the floors and wood trim in the baby's room, plus the crib needs refinishing. I'm just sure we're forgetting a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but if we have the full month before the baby is born to get ready, we'll be ok. If he comes early, we're screwed.

I know I've complained about this several times on my site, but NetFlix just keeps getting worse and worse. 40% of the movies in my queue are out of stock, and that's not including a bunch that I removed earlier today because I didn't think they'd ever become available. The price is still great, and their turnaround time is fast enough that it's cheaper than renting from a video store, but their selection is much worse than the shitty-ass Blockbuster here in town.

I had a wisdom tooth start coming in just less than a year ago, but it just broke through the gum and stopped. But now, I think it's pushing out further, and it hurts like a motherfucker. I can only chew with one side of my mouth now. For the longest time, there was just a hole there with a little bit of tooth sticking out, and food would get stuck in it--yeah, it was pretty disgusting. Maybe now the damn thing will grow out fully and I won't have to deal with that anymore.

Ahh, I'd forgotten how quiet my computer can be with the cover on the case. I just got done setting everything up in my new office, except all the knick-knacks and crap that I don't have anywhere to put yet. I really need some shelves, or maybe just another computer desk. And I definitely need a corner lamp, 'cause the light in this room is right above my head, and it glares off my monitor. Or maybe it's just that my monitor is cleaner than it's been in a long time. =)

Hmm, I think it might be time for me to take the xmas lights off the house. I've always been too busy, or it's been too damn cold for me to do it before. Well, it's still too cold, but I don't want to be one of those people who leave them up year-round. =)

Good...BlogVoices will be back up in a couple of days. It was screwing up the javascript on my site for a while today while the DNS transfer was goin' on (it still might be screwing it up for some of you), but it's loading as fast as it oughta now. It totally blows having to rely on third-parties for services like that. :(

I almost killed a man this morning. When my wife was walking out the door to clear all the snow off the car so she could go to work, the Price City Ordinance Enforcement guy pulled up just in front of the car, but when he saw my wife going up to the car, he did a u-turn and pulled up behind a neighbor's car across the street. He then wrote out a warning and stuck it on the neighbor's car because apparently, according to Price City ordinance, it's considered abandoned since the snow wasn't cleared from it. I really really wanted to go over and fuck the guy up, just for being a dick. It's only been snowing since late yesterday evening, and just because somebody doesn't drive their car in the first few hours of the morning shouldn't mean assholes like that guy need to give out warnings. If he had tried to write a warning for my car, I definitely would have beaten him over the head with my snow shovel. People like that, who let their badge go to their heads, should be killed on the spot. After all, he's basically just a dog catcher.

Ugh, I'm lazy. I just got around to running a phone line from the box outside into my new office. It took me a half-hour to drill a hole through the foundation, and it took the full 10" of masonry bit too. I bought a belt sander (mmm, power tools) so I can strip the paint off the cabinet/closet in there, and I'll be breathing tons of lead-based paint dust tomorrow, so look for birth defects in the next child I have. I'm gonna put a second coat of paint on the baseboard right now, then kick back and watch Junkyard Wars for a couple hours.

Today, I found out for sure what that 4-wheel drive problem is that I was having with my truck, and I found out in the worst possible way: my driveline broke. I was 4-wheeling in some snow, and I climbed a hill to turn around when it snapped and beat the hell out of my under-carriage. I got out to see what the hell happened, but there was a cross-beam holding it in place, so I couldn't tell there was anything wrong with it (otherwise it would have been hanging down). I knew something was very wrong, and I knew it was in the front-end, so I disengaged the transfer case and turned the hubs to free, cause I thought I had broken an axle or a gear in the differential. After that, the noise stopped, but I was in a place that took 4-wheel drive to get to and I only had 2-wheel drive. It took me about 20 minutes to get out of there (it was about 75 yards away from a paved road), and when I got home and drove my truck up on ramps, I saw that a part of the driveline that connected to the rear u-joint had broken. The front u-joints were intact, but the bearings and bushing from one end were missing, and it was the one that's been making so much noise for the past couple months.

I'm hoping to find another driveline at the junkyard, and I'll get two u-joint rebuild kits and new straps and bolts from a parts store, and hopefully fix it for under $50. This is pathetic...it's the third driveline I've broken in the past two years. Hopefully that's enough for one lifetime, 'cause I don't want to ever deal with this again.

Racquetball kicked my ass yesterday. I went to bed before midnight yesterday, and slept for a full twelve hours before waking up, and I'm damn sore right now. We played at UVSC, and it cost $5 (per person) for a court, so we didn't feel like we had gotten our money's worth until we had played three games, though I was dead tired after just one. I lost all three games--I think Mike won two and Jaysen the other. If we'd had an even number of players, I would rather have played singles, 'cause it's so much easier to score against one person. =)

Fucking cocksucking cops. On my way home tonight, as I was driving through Helper, I passed a cop going the opposite direction, and he had his radar on, but I wasn't speeding so I knew I was ok. Just as I was leaving Helper, another cop was parked in the median facing the opposite direction, but as soon as I was even with him, he started moving forward, and when I had passed him, he flipped around and got behind me. I really thought he was going after one of the cars in front of me, 'cause I knew I was going the speed limit. After trailing me for about ½ mile, he turned his lights on, so my wife immediately took the radar detector off the windshield. So I stopped, and when he came up and asked for my license and stuff, I just asked him what he pulled me over for. He said it was because I didn't have license plate lights in the rear, and I said, "You could see it from the front?" And he said, "No, I saw it after you passed me." I told him I saw him moving to get me before he could possibly have seen the back of my car, but he still claimed that he had seen it from behind.

Not that any of that mattered, really, 'cause after calling dispatch to check for warrants and shit, he gave me back my stuff and explained that they were pulling people over for stupid fucking reasons like not having license plate lights, then checking to see if any drivers were drunk. So I didn't get a ticket, but it gave me one more reason to dislike the police--just the fact that his buddy that I passed earlier was the one who saw that I didn't have license plate lights, and he called ahead on the radio, while that fucker lied about seeing it after I had passed him. It's not wrong for another cop to report to another something he saw, so I don't know why this guy felt the need to lie about it.

I guess I'm making a bigger deal out of this than it really is, but hey, any reason to complain about the police is a good one.

Yup, that was my problem. I don't know who is using my computer here at work, but they left it on over the weekend, so ICQ just kept trying to reconnect here when I started it up at home. Oh well, that problem is fixed now. =) I already went to the Tinder Box, got me two packs of clove cigarillos, a huge "pipe aroma" cigar, and a bunch of other small flavored cigars. Yummy.

Bleh...I gotta drive to Provo tomorrow, 'cause my wife's having a baby shower up there. But I'm gonna make a quick trip to Salt Lake to get some cigars & stuff at the Tinder Box, then we'll head back to Provo where I'm gonna drop her off and pick up my bro-in-law and another friend, and we're gonna play some racquetball. Then we're all bringing our wives out to dinner and a movie. It should be fun.

I think I just figured out what's going on with ICQ. I had waited over an hour and tried connecting, and it worked! But I immediately got disconnected, and the error message said something like "Your ICQ number is in use on another computer." Then it hit me, somebody used my computer at work and left it on. Yahoo Messenger kicked me off the past two days for the same reason. I always thought if you tried connecting when your number was already in use on another computer, you were just shit outta luck, but maybe they changed it recently. Anyhow, I'm glad I'm going up there tomorrow, so I can stop by work and make sure ICQ doesn't load on startup anymore.

Fuckin' ICQ. I installed 2000b to see if it would fix my problem, 'cause it only wouldn't connect when I used a certain uin. If I used my work number, or my wife's, I could connect just fine. Now, instead of getting the error "Disconnection detected," I get "Rate limit exceeded." From what I've read on the web, it oughta let me connect if I wait for an hour or so, but I'm an impatient bastard. I guess I'll just try again tomorrow morning.

I'm bored.

The past two days I've been having problems with ICQ. When I get on the computer in the morning, it connects just fine, but sometime around 9:00, I get disconnected. Yesterday it took me 'til after 1:00 to reconnect, and I don't doubt it will take that long today.

I bought the baseboard yesterday to finish what is going to be my new computer room. It was a pain in the ass to cut. I don't have a miter saw or know anybody who does, so I bought a miter box and borrowed my mom's hand-saw. When I got finished cutting all the boards, my hands were both cramping up pretty badly. It still hurts when I form a fist and squeeze at all. I rolled a coat of paint on the baseboard last night, and I'm gonna finish them up today. Then I gotta run some phone line before I glue the baseboard on ('cause the walls are concrete), and I'll be finished.

I've finally settled on the Asus A7V board, but it doesn't have any ISA slots, so I'm gonna have to replace my modem and soundcard. I'm also going to have to get a new case if I want to keep everything cool, 'cause my current case only has one fan in front, and I'd rather have one in front and at least one in back. I'll probably end up spending about $600 on the new system, but that will leave me with enough old components for my old computer to run also. The only other things I'll need for the old system are a network card and a video card, which I oughta be able to buy used fairly cheap.

Here's a lovely voicemail I received this morning (105K). Thank god whoever left it lives all the way across the country from me. =) I suppose if I get many more voicemail messages, I'll throw links to 'em up on the right.

Well shit. uReach is going to start charging for most of their services, including their toll-free voicemail. So my number (877-606-8601, call it!) will be deactivated on March 15th. =(

Ty pointed out a nice mobo/cpu/ram combo that was mentioned on Ars: Abit KT7 board, Athlon 1ghz cpu, and 256 megs of ram, all for about $430. I'm still not sure about the board...I've read some bad reviews about it. I'm running an Asus P2L97 now, and I haven't had a single problem with it. But then again, I'm sure there are a lot of people running the Abit who haven't had any problems. I'm also not sure about running an AMD, but the price factor is a huge one. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with it all and see how it works out, though.

My one big complaint about Photoshop 6 so far: when you have the zoom tool set to resize windows, it often moves the window behind all the tools. It sucks having most of the tools in new locations or grouped differently (took me forever to find the line tool), but at least they're organized in a much better manner. I think it's going to take me a long time to familiarize myself with everything again, and learn all the new features--Liquify and Extract are pretty badass, though!

It's way past time for me to upgrade my computer. I acquired Photoshop 6 today, and it kills my system. As it is, lately I've had a lot of crashes and other problems that are due to having almost 3-year-old hardware. I'm hoping to put something together for under $400, but I don't know shit about hardware anymore. Anybody have any ideas on what mobo/cpu/ram to go with?

Looks like it isn't as big as everybody has been speculating.

That was a shitty, shitty game. Just like I knew the Giants were gonna win their game after watching the first three minutes, I knew the Raiders were gonna lose their game after the first three minutes. And I hope the Giants walk all over the Ravens in the Superbowl like they did the Vikings today.

It's more of a let-down when your team gets this far before losing than if they had not even made the playoffs. But if they make the Superbowl then lose, it's not quite as bad as the other two. Maybe they'll get their shot next year.

Jeez, I must have looked at over a hundred chili recipes on the 'net, and the best one I've found is in this old, battered Betty Crocker cookbook my wife's grandma gave us a couple years ago. And by the best recipe, I mean it has all the same ingredients that I have in my kitchen. Well, except for tomato paste or sauce. I'm going to have to go to the store tomorrow before the Vikings-Giants game comes on.

Just got back from some 4-wheeling with my wife. We went out near Airport Road again, and there were some places that had more than a foot of snow. We tried to build a snowman, but the snow had a hard crust on it, so it wouldn't compact at all. I got some cool pictures, though, mostly of my truck truly off-roading through 3-foot high sagebrush. There were several places where I couldn't tell exactly where the road was because the snow was so thick, so I just went where I wanted to. =) Next time it snows, we're going out again, and hopefully we'll be able to build a huge-ass snowman this time.

Ahh, it's so nice to sleep in 'til noon. I was going to install a couple of phone jacks in my new office today, but with the weather so cold and wet, I don't want to stand around in the snow hiding phone line under the siding, or drilling holes in the foundation. So instead, I think I'm gonna make some chili. I've never made it before, and there are thousands of recipes on the 'net. Bleh, but now I gotta go shopping.

Here is that postcard. =)

This snow may be fun to drive in, but it's not fun to shovel. When I woke up this morning, it was snowing as hard as it was when I went to bed, and there were about six inches on the ground. I'm gonna have to drive my wife to work, otherwise I'm sure she'll end up sliding through an intersection and killing somebody. Besides, I don't want to shovel the foot of snow that got piled up around my car by the snowplow.

Oh, and I got the postcard Zeth sent me from Amsterdam. I'm gonna scan it in later and put it up here.

Oh baby, I love this snowy weather. It took me three tries to get out of Ty's driveway, even though it's pretty level. I almost hit a parked van as I drove off, so I had to get out and turn my hubs in so I could make the couple blocks to my house in one piece.

I have a strange right-click disorder: whenever I'm at the computer, whether it's reading websites or just working, I often right-click things for no particular reason. But I only do it on things that will bring up a context menu. It doesn't really bug me that I have a weird thing, but at least I know it's strange. Anyway, whenever I'm over at m.o, they've disabled the context menu, and I get all annoyed when I can't bring it up. Yeah, I'm a freak.

Ever since November when TLC showed Junkyard Wars all day one day I called in to work sick, I've become addicted to the show. It's one of the few tv shows I tune in regularly for, but tonight it doesn't look like it's gonna be on. TV Guide says it's supposed to be on right now, and the commercials they've been playing on TLC all night say it's supposed to be on now, but it's not on now. :(

Fucking hell...never again will I get keys made at Wal-Mart without closely comparing them to the original before leaving the store. I got four copies of my house key made, and the key blank the jackass used is just a little bit too long.

Hey Solo, I think this site is supposed to be a joke. I don't think anybody can be stupid enough to believe a natural birth leads to a S&M lifestyle, or that breast-feeding leads to homosexuality and addiction to cybersex. But hey, I guess I'll find out soon enough, eh? =)

I am getting so sick of driving to Provo. For more than 4 years, I've been making the drive about once a week. At first, I was going to college in Provo, so I drove to Price every weekend to see my girlfriend. After I got married, we drove home almost every weekend to see our families. And now that I live in Price, I drive to Provo once a week for work. Lately, I've been going up about twice a week, for work, doctor's appointments, and just to hang out with friends. Tomorrow, I've got to go up for work, and I'm going to lunch with a friend, then my wife has a doctor's appointment. It won't be until March that I won't have to go up for a while, 'cause the baby will be born, and I just plain refuse to go into the office to work for that entire month. Hell, if we stock up on diapers and baby formula, I might not have to leave the house for a month. =)

This weekend will probably be the only one in the next couple months that I don't have major plans, so I am going to sit on my ass the entire weekend, watching football (go Raiders) and maybe doing some work around the house. It's funny how much my definition of recreation has changed since getting married. It used to be that I had to get out of the house and do something on weekends to have fun, and now if I get even a few hours to myself and sit around doing nothing, I'm happy.

After several days of looking for the manual to my printer, I finally got the bright idea to check HP's site to see if I could figure out what is wrong with my printer. I've got a DeskJet 694C, which came with one black and one color ink cartridge. As of late, my color cartridge has been printing mostly in pink, so I figured it was time to replace it, so I threw it away. My black cartridge was printing strangely too, but it still had some ink left, so I was just gonna use it 'til I could replace both of them. The first time I tried to print something after getting rid of the color cartridge, the paper feed light just blinked, and it wouldn't print. I made sure the black cartridge was installed properly, and checked to make sure nothing was broken, but it still wouldn't print, or even suck in a piece of paper.

It turns out the geniuses at HP require both the black and color cartridges to be installed for the printer to print anything, even plain black text. So I've got an almost empty black ink cartridge, and a brand-new color photo cartridge, but neither will work without the regular color cartridge.

I was going to print out an application for personalized license plates, but I'll just have to go into the Motor Vehicles office tomorrow and pick one up there. I'm going to get "F34R M3" on the plates. Since I already have amateur radio plates on my truck, I'm gonna put the other plates on my car, which my wife primarily drives. And lemme tell you, if you see her driving, heed the warning on the license plate. More than likely she'll run you over, or at least do some damage to your vehicle. =) She added to the already extensive damage to my car the other day by hitting a tall curb at the drive-through at the bank, scratching the hell out of one wheel cover.

I got tired of that old layout, and I know this one isn't much better, but at least it's different. I've completely lost any talent I once had at making layouts. I told Solo that I'd do a layout for a site he's doing, but I totally let him down. I couldn't come up with any ideas that looked good, and even the ideas I had that seemed like they'd look good turned out like shit when I set them to work in Photoshop.

Since our basement got flooded, my wife and I have kept our bedroom upstairs, so that means we are going to have our baby's room upstairs too. Which means I have to move my office from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs bedroom. I've already painted the room downstairs, and I am putting in some new base moulding this week, so I should begin the move near the end of the week. The thing that sucks about it is I have a lot of little things to move (like shot-glasses, model cars, figurines, stuff like that), so it's gonna be a tedious task. And I'm still not sure if my desk is going to fit down the stairwell, so I might have to take it apart.

Then the baby's room will need to be painted, and the hardwood floor and trim need to be refinished as well. That's the one thing that sucks about owning a house--having to fix everything yourself.

I completely despise having to get up early on a weekend. I'm yet again leaving town today, and coming back tomorrow. Even though I've been getting more than 8 hours of sleep the past few days, I still don't feel "caught up" on my sleep. Eh...I guess there's no use in complaining about it--I might as well hit the shower and get my day started. :(

Jeez, Blogger has been sucking it up lately. I've decided to start copying the text of each post before I post it, because I keep getting script timeout errors, and all my form data is lost.

Anyway, as I just got done writing about before Blogger screwed it up, an adjuster from Price City's insurance just called me, and he's going to come here Friday to check everything out. I don't know what good it will do, since all the damage has been fixed, but at least I'm one step closer to getting the money to pay for it all. =) Although now, I expect him to dispute the value of the repairs and my personal belongings, since that's what insurance adjusters get paid to do. I'm already preparing myself for a huge dispute, because it's nearly inevitable that they'll try to screw me over.

Insurance companies have got to be the most corrupt organizations in the country, with maybe the government as the only exception. Almost a year ago when I bought my house, my mortgage company paid in full for my homeowner's insurance. A couple months later, I received a bill from my insurance company claiming that I owed $28. I called my agent and explained the situation to him, and he said not to worry about it, and that he'd take care of it. Since then, I've received two more bills, and each time my local agent said he'd take care of it. Finally, I got a cancellation notice, saying that if I don't pay up by the 10th of this month, they're gonna cancel my insurance.

Since I knew calling my local agent wouldn't help, I called the MetLife 800 number, and the representative I talked to said she couldn't help me. Even though I was being billed for more than my mortgage company was quoted, she seemed to think that was perfectly ok, and told me I should either pay it or have my insurance cancelled. So I talked to her supervisor, and she said she would write-off the $28. I'm actually surprised it was that easy, considering some of the horror stories I've heard about insurance companies.

I still feel like beating the shit out of the agent that I talked to here in Price. He's the owner of the agency, so there's nobody else I can complain to about him, except the maybe MetLife national office, to whom I did complain today, though they didn't seem to care about it.

I just poked my wife's belly with my finger, and got kicked by my son in return. =) Can't wait 'til he's out of there.

I'm usually a little more patient when it comes to slow people in the passing lane--I often just tailgate them until they get out of my way. But today when the passing lane by Scofield opened up, the traffic was spaced just perfectly, and I actually slalomed through traffic. It was kind of fun, 'cause I managed to pass a large group of cars, then had clear sailing for quite a while until I hit the next big bunch of pansies.

Last night was definitely the most fun new year celebration I've ever had. Ty had us over, along with several other couples, and we ate and drank and played board games all night long. We turned the TV on for two minutes to watch the ball drop, then immediately went back to the game we were playing. I was planning getting drunk if the opportunity presented itself, but for some reason I held back and only had a couple beers, while Ty was the one who got sloshed. :)

I went to bed at 2:00 last night, and got up at 10:30 this morning. After breakfast, I went rabbit hunting again with some friends, and also shot some clay pigeons.

I'm debating whether or not I'm going to work tomorrow. I'm out of stuff to do here, so it would be easier just to go into the office and get something to do, rather than waiting for somebody to respond to an email and send me something back, which could take 'til pretty late in the day. Even if I don't go in tomorrow, I'd have to go in someday this week. Maybe I'll just get it over with now.