Justin hooked me up with the new Daft Punk, and it is sweet as hell. I thought their earlier stuff was just ok, but their new album is damned good--I think I might buy it.

Cool, I could see the Northern Lights from my back yard tonight. I remember seeing them 11 years ago during the last solar maximum, but I had no idea why it was happening back then. According to this CNN article, they might be visible tomorrow night as well. If so, I'll probably head out to 4-Mile Hill and take some pictures.

The rear differential on my truck is leaking oil pretty badly, but I'm scared to take it apart and fix the problem. It's leaking out the front, so I assume it's the pinion seal, but I'm not familiar with how differentials work or are put together, so I don't know what's involved with replacing the seal. My Ford repair manual has instructions, but they're hard to follow (like these), and the diagrams show tons of tiny parts, so I'm afraid I won't be able to keep track of everything once I tear it apart. The thing I'm worried about most is the cost. As far as I can tell, the only parts I need to replace are the pinion seal and the crush sleeve, which should easily come in at under $20. But if something unexpected happens (like if I break something), it could end up costing money (and time) that I don't have.

Utah has to be the shittiest place to live if you're not a member of the Mormon church. The state itself is wonderful, but the people suck. Not only are most people here extremely stupid, they are bigoted and closed-minded toward any people or ideas that are not of LDS origin. Springville recently passed an ordinance that allows the sale of beer on Sunday. This just points out how fucked up most of the rest of the state is by not allowing for beer sales on Sunday, but if you read the sign in the picture in that article, you can see just how illiterate Utahns are--"We Sale Beer on Sunday."

I still don't understand how the state's lawmakers can get away with passing and maintaining laws that prohibit alcohol sales on Sunday, or laws that prohibit premarital sex and other sexual acts between married couples. Those can only be considered religious issues--I don't know any atheists who give a shit about what other people do behind closed doors. There is absolutely no separation between church and state in Utah.

Here are a couple more articles detailing how fucked up Utah is:

•54-year-old single police chief warned about premarital sex by city officials

•BYU suspends gay student for dating

What the fuck? Has Mike lost his mind?

Heh...Tony Stewart got fined and put on probation for his little incident with Jeff Gordon on Sunday. If I made as many millions of dollars as he does, it would be worth $10,000 to hit Jeff Gordon every once in a while. =)

I grew tired of reading Robert Jordan's series recently--I've been a quarter of the way through The Path of Daggers for over a month now--so I decided to stop trying and read something else. I think I just didn't want to read the final few books, only to re-read them when the final book of the series comes out to re-acquaint myself with the endless sub-plots and characters. I got Clive Cussler's The Mediterranean Caper from the library today, a book which I've read once before, but don't remember all that well.

A funny thing happened when I was at the library getting the book. The librarian said my library card had expired, and I had to fill out a new application and give her a photo I.D. I've had the same driver's license since 1997, and though I've changed addresses twice since then, I didn't want to pay the $20 to get a new one. The face of the license has my mom's address, and the back of the license has my Springville address, but the address on file with the motor vehicles office is my current Price address. Anyhow, the librarian was a little overzealous in carrying out library policy: first she asked me if I was over 18 (like she wasn't holding my driver's license in her hand). C'mon, I rarely get carded when I buy alcohol or tobacco anymore. Then she insisted on calling motor vehicles to verify my address. I'd say she went a little too far in doing that, but I thought it was more funny than anything else.

For those of you who missed it, my site was fubar for part of yesterday and all of last night, but I think I've got everything restored now. Solo was installing some security patches to the server, and his backup didn't restore, but he had warned me in advance so I did a backup, and I forgot to backup the /archives folder. Ty had my page cached on his home computer, so I was able to save all the posts except one, but all the comments are gone.

The poll isn't working right now. I added a new question and removed the old one, and it says I've already voted. I might have to hose the entire poll and reinstall, 'cause deleting my cookie didn't help.

I was gonna barbecue some steaks this evening, but the weather was nasty, so I ended up having Grape Nuts for dinner...yum. Then I fixed a whole blenderful of lime daiquiri, but I started getting really bad heartburn, so I only drank half of it. Even though it's Friday night, I'm going to bed earlier tonight than I usually do on weekdays. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to start finishing the baby's room, and my wife has to take him to her mom's while I do it so he's not breathing the paint and polyurethane fumes.

Well, it's after midnight, so I want to wish a happy birthday to Zeth. =)

Ugh...I've been inundated with tons of medical bills lately. I always thought I had pretty decent insurance, but even 10% is a lot to pay for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills we racked up with the baby's birth. There are still several bills that I am disputing, though. We paid in full for a regular delivery before he was born, and since my wife had a c-section, we should only have to pay the difference between the regular birth and a c-section, but we got billed for the entire c-section amount. We also got a bill for something (I'm not sure exactly what) pertaining to the c-section from a doctor that I've never heard of, and I don't have any intention of paying until I find out what it's for.

Luckily, I have an out-of-pocket maximum of $1,000 per person and $2,000 for the entire family, both of which I am quickly approaching. And since it's early in the year, any subsequent coverage should be completely free. Maybe we should just hurry and try to have another baby before the end of the year...not only will it be a freebie, it would greatly help me when income taxes come due. =)

I met with my attorney today, and he is going to write a letter to Price City, detailing the circumstances and threatening legal action. It's not really going to be any different than the letter I wrote, but hopefully, coming from an attorney, it will have a bigger impact. And it only cost me $100. What a bargain...

I used to refill my 34 oz. mug with Dr. Pepper at Gas-N-Go about twice a day before Michael was born, but lately I've been spending much more time at home, so I only go a couple of times a week. In addition to having the best-tasting Dr. Pepper, they were also the cheapest place in town at 30?. I still don't understand how other places can serve the same drink from their fountains, and have it taste totally different from other places (Walker's is the absolute worst). Anyhow, Gas-N-Go's Dr. Pepper tastes completely different than it did a month ago, and I can't stand to drink it as often as I used to. I bought several cases of Pepsi when it was on sale at K-Mart, and I think I'll continue to do so as long as Gas-N-Blow's drinks taste like crap.

Michael is more than a month old now, and my mother-in-law has been at my house at least once every day to see him since he got home from the hospital, with the exception of one day when we were gone the entire day. In comparison, my mom has only been over five or six times. I'm getting really fucking sick of it, too. My wife seems to think her mom will stop coming over so often once Michael gets a little older, but I have no such delusions. I think the woman is a fucking psycho. My wife's sister comes over at least once every other day, and she's just as psycho, if not more. I just don't like the fact that my child is going to be heavily influenced by a bunch of back-country redneck psychos.

So I suppose one of my primary goals as a father is to spread the propaganda, and try to undo any damage caused by them. My wife agrees with me that her parents are fucked up and Michael shouldn't spend much time with them alone, but she doesn't seem to care that we have almost no privacy right now. Her mom will come over when we're in the middle of dinner, or when we're watching a movie, and she doesn't give a shit that she's interrupting us. My wife doesn't want to tell her flat out to leave us alone, but I'm almost to the point where I'm going to snap one day and physically remove her from my property and make it clear that I don't ever want to see her again. Someday...

Hmm...Michael's birth was announced in today's Salt Lake Tribune Birth Announcements (it's buried on that page with 270 other births). I guess either the hospital reports births to the newspaper, or the newspaper gets them from the hospital. I always thought the parents had to let the newspaper know or something.

I finally got some pictures of the baby scanned in.

I did a new layout for the Nutty Putty Cave section of my site. I also scanned some pictures of my son today, but I doubt I'll have time to create a layout and put the pictures online tonight. We're watching a movie tonight, then probably another episode of Stargate, so I'll probably get around to it tomorrow.

I've been watching Stargate SG-1 lately on TV, and I think I'm hooked. Ty has all the episodes of SG-1 on tape, so I borrowed several of them just a couple days ago, and I've already watched six episodes. I love shows like this (and Star Trek) where there's room to make endless story lines, because they're traveling to different worlds where anything is possible.

Greymatter is a little more complicated than News Publisher to set up, but it's so damn configurable that it's well worth it. I didn't really have any problems, but it took me a while to get the hang of how everything works.

I really gotta thank Solo for the hosting. I owe him big time.

I'm not certain that everything works on the site yet, but I'll be working on it over the weekend, tweaking Greymatter a little more, and working on the subsections. I'm thinking about putting up a section for my family (even the relatives I don't know), like some sort of genealogy thing (maybe), but I don't know if it would be worth it. As it is, I'm going to try to give any Udink who wants one their own @udink.org email address (not like there'll be too many). It's pretty cool to have an uncommon last name and be able to have firstname@lastname.org as your email address. If people know your name, they won't ever forget your email address. =)

Leave any questions or comments about my Nutty Putty Cave site, or the cave in general, here. Your email address is not required, but if you would prefer a reply via email, please indicate so in your question.

I changed the oil in my truck today, but it took me way too long. Everything went smoothly (so I thought), and I finished and started the engine. I revved it up a bit, then shut it down and started to pick up all the oil bottles and stuff I had laying around the driveway. I looked under my truck, and there was a huge puddle of oil, and it was leaking out right at the oil filter. I thought maybe I had tightened the filter too much and twisted the rubber seal or something, so I backed it off and screwed it back on a little looser. I started the engine again, and oil just gushed out again. I really didn't want to remove the oil filter and let oil drain out of my engine, but I didn't have a choice. When I got it off, an o-ring seal fell off, and I thought it was the seal from the new oil filter, but it turned out to be the seal from the old filter. It had stuck to the engine, and when I screwed the new filter on, it crimped and let oil out. I had to add another quart to make up for what had drained out, but it ended up taking me an hour to do the whole thing. :(

I also rotated the tires on my truck today...for some reason that I can't fathom, the rear tires were getting worn much faster than the front. =)

Leave your comments about the poll right here, folks.

I always thought there were too many attorneys in the world, but I recently found out that there are too few. My wife called all the reputable attorneys in town, and the soonest we could consult with one in regards to suing Price City is next Wednesday. Most attorneys were booked for a month or more. It's going to cost somewhere near $3000 for the retainer fee, but if our attorney is unsure about our chances of winning, we may just file for bankruptcy. Oh boy, being a grown-up is fun.

Last night, my mom called me and told me about a bright light in the western sky. She thought it was the MIR space station, but I wasn't sure...it turns out she was right. She found this site that tells when certain areas of the country will be able to see MIR. It won't be visible from Utah again, but several other parts of the country might see it the next two nights.

I let my wife attempt to cut my hair last night, but now I'm bald as a monkey's ass (the kind of monkeys with no hair on their asses, anyway). I wanted the sides cut short and blended into the top (sorta like you'd get in the Marines), but it just didn't work, so I shaved it all off. Ah well, low maintenance is good.

Yesterday, I began wondering if Justin was ok, and it turns out that he actually wasn't quite ok. He had a perforated bowel and had surgery a while ago, and hasn't posted since. But he posted today, and things are going well, it seems. I wish you well, Justin...get better, damnit. =)

Ooohh yeaaaahhh...Stu is back, baby.

I really want to do a new layout for the site. I've tried a couple times recently, but I always end up getting distracted, usually because of my son. I've got a fairly decent layout done for udink.org, which Solo assures me will be up soon. I hope so...I'm getting really sick of this slash-tilde shit.

I drank enough alcohol last night that I was afraid if I breathed on my son, he'd get drunk. And all day today I've had really bad heartburn, which I always get after drinking a lot. I also puked earlier today, but only because changing diapers makes me sick...I'm sure it'll be worse when he starts eating solid food.

I started using kc7feq as my new AIM screen name. Although I hate AIM, I do occasionally talk to people using it, so add me and maybe I'll talk to you...

Michael's pediatrician called, his PKU test came back normal. Phew. =)

Since I quit using NetFlix, I'm going to start buying DVDs. The only one I own now is The Shawshank Redemption, my favorite movie of all-time, which I bought even before I bought my DVD player. I got The Princess Bride yesterday, which is one of those movies I can watch over and over again and not get sick of (like Groundhog Day, which will be the next DVD I buy). I figure I'll buy one or two movies a month, and I guess I better start stocking up on Disney movies now.

When the fuck are anti-gun people going to realize that more strict gun laws aren't going to make a bit of difference? People that commit crimes using firearms don't buy their weapons from licensed dealers, and they don't rush out and get a carry/conceal permit before they pull a hand-gun out of a backpack and blow away their classmates. It is completely unreasonable to believe that depriving me of the privilege of owning firearms is going to prevent some other stupid fuck from obtaining them illegally.

If you're against abortion, don't have one. If you're against drugs, don't use them. And if you're against firearms, don't own them, but leave me the fuck out of your delusional dream-world. (Nothing personal, Paul. =)

Both of Michael's doctor's appointments went well yesterday. The first was just for a hearing test, during which he had to be asleep (luckily, he cooperated), and his hearing was just fine. The second was just a 2-week check-up, and while they didn't have the results of his PKU test yet, his doctor said he is doing damn good. He weighs 6 lbs. 11 oz., so he's gained 1 lb. 6 oz. in only 18 days, and he's grown 1½ inches.

We also did some shopping while we were up in Provo. We spent $130 at Sam's Club, where I got two cases of motor oil, a shitload of food, and some stuff for the baby. I also got a couple new pairs of shoes, because I've only owned one pair since the rest got destroyed when my basement flooded. We stopped by the Hostess outlet store, where they have bread and donuts and all kinds of other stuff really cheap, and we bought a lot of stuff that will make us really fat. Ah well, I was never inclined to try to stay in shape, so why bother trying to eat right, too? =)

I finally cancelled my NetFlix account. Their recent price increase is bullshit because the availability of their DVDs has been steadily decreasing. Besides, I hardly ever watch movies anymore...there's too much going on in my life to relax for even a little while.

According to this article (you gotta scroll way down) in the shitty local newspaper, the FCC has given approval for my ISP to take over all the phone services that are now offered by Qwest. The article states that they plan on offering DSL sometime soon. But even if they're serious about trying to offer DSL, I'm sure they don't have the resources to actually implement it within the next 5 years. Somebody has been laying what appears to be fiber-optic cable between here and Provo, and though I have no idea where it's going, I'm sure it's not Emery Telcom that's doing it. The strange thing about it is that the crew laying the fiber has been criss-crossing the road with it, digging trenches across four lanes of highway only to go back to the other side. It crosses the road about 8 times or so in a 6-mile stretch. The existing fiber runs in a straight line on the east side of the road for most of the distance between Price and Provo, so I don't know why they don't just bury the new cable alongside the old. Who knows...maybe they just don't want to risk cutting the old cable...

People are stupid. I've been trying to download all of Metallica's black album from Audiogalaxy, but I keep getting live versions of many of the songs. If people are going to share their mp3s over the internet, they should at least name them in such a manner as to allow others to differentiate between different versions. If I had a fast internet connection, it wouldn't be as big a deal for me, but it sucks wasting 10 minutes or more (usually much more) downloading something only to find out it's not what I wanted.

My company's Albany and Binghamton offices are closing today and tomorrow because of the nasty weather they're supposed to be getting. Each city is supposed to get 2 feet or more of snow in the next couple days. I wish we'd get something like that here...it's been a long time since we got more than a foot of snow (I think I was in jr. high school then).

Here is the letter I sent to the Price City Mayor today. I really should have added a big, "P.S. FUCK YOU!" but then again, I'm actually hoping the letter will do some good.

Michael's pediatrician called today and said his PKU (phenylketonurics) test came back a little abnormal, and he wanted us to drive up to Provo and get the test taken again, because apparently they're very succeptible to errors. The hospital here in Price doesn't accept my medical insurance, so we pretty much have to go to Provo to get anything done unless it's an emergency. But my wife decided to call the health department here to see if they could do it, and they said they could, except I had to go to the hospital here and buy a test kit from them for $37. It was better than spending $25 on gas and wasting 4 or 5 hours of my time, so we went ahead and did it here. Poor Michael has so many scabs on his heels from being pricked to draw blood, and now he has two more. But hopefully the results of the test will turn out ok, and even if not, it's something that's easily corrected permanently with a special diet for a short period of time.

I heard back from my homeowner's insurance company yesterday, and they said they can't cover the damages to my basement because the sewer back-up occurred off my property. So I'm writing a letter to the mayor, basically trying to bully him into settling this without involving the courts, but I'm only giving him 3 or 4 days to settle it, then I'll file a civil suit against Price City for not only the damages, but attorney fees, lost wages, and possibly emotional damages (hey, I'm going for the balls this time).

I've downloaded a lot of good mp3s lately. In the past two days, I've gotten some Doobie Brothers, Kiss, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Ratt. I'm glad I decided it was worth my time to download music even on a very slow connection, but I'm running out of ideas of which bands to look for. Anybody have some ideas?

Man, am I tired. I asked my manager for half the day off, but haven't heard back from him yet. I'm probably going to take another half-day off on Tuesday, 'cause my wife has one doctor's appointment and my son has two, so between that and the three hours of driving time, I won't possibly have time to work eight hours.