God Bless Al Gore

No, not for Global Warming. For the other thing he made up. The Internet.

We had a minor tragedy in our house the other day. Our much beloved XBOX died. Well, not dead exactly, but near enough. We use our XBOX for watching movies, listening to music, and playing the occasional video game. The other day it stopped showing video, only giving us audio.

A quick call to the manufacturer left me fuming. The polite woman in Bangladesh (who started off on the wrong foot with me by lying and telling me her name was 'Mia') informed me that the 3 year warranty did not cover this particular failure, that the 1 year warranty was up, and that I could pay them $120 and they'd be happy to fix it. A new one is $200. Of course, she pointed out, they would be happy to pay shipping both ways as a courtesy for me paying to get it fixed. Previous research told me that instead of fixing mine and shipping it back, they'd be shipping me another broken one they had already repaired, then foisting my broken unit off on someone else. Yeah, not so much, thanks. Even the 'Escalation Expert' (who introduced herself as Janet, which I'm pretty sure wasn't her real name either) I was transferred to was unable to help. I guess I got a little fired up on the phone. Go figure. You buy electronics these days, you expect more than 14 months of life out of them. To top it off, this was my 3rd one in 4 years, the first two having been replaced under warranty.

Luckily for me I live in a world where Al Gore singlehandedly jump started the mother of all technological advances. A few hours of research yielded that this was a very common problem, directly resulted to poor design choices and cheap materials. The short version is that when the electronics inside get hot (as they are prone to do)the inferior solder weakens, resulting in loose connections on the microchips. There is a 'clamp' in there that is supposed to keep everything tight. This is the poor design choice. It flat out does not work. It is made of metal. Metal tends to expand when it gets hot. So if metal stretches when hot, how effective is a metal clamp in a hot environment?

For $30 I was able to buy a kit that replaced the clamps with screws. I spent a nerve wracking afternoon gutting the XBOX and performing minor surgery at the kitchen table. I am happy to say that so far so good, it is working. I am actually pretty amazed how easy the whole thing was, and that something as simple as a few screws and washers could have been utilized in the first place to solve this problem.

Al Gore, you're my hero!

Twofer

I feel like Katie, with two blogs in one day!

Mom asked about the floors, they are done with two small exceptions. I still have 1 guest bedroom (about 10X12) and it's closet to floor. It is the room that has been stuffed to the gills with stuff including the remaining boxes of flooring, so we wanted to get the rest of the house put together first. That included installing some custom closets in our bedroom (I need to get some pictures and tell the story of why they were on clearance :-X ) as well as painting the rooms we have not painted yet (our bedroom, which is painted now, and the two other bedrooms).

But the long story short is that we want to get the rest of the house put together before we go any further. We are tripping over stuff and pretty miserable with everything in flux constantly. It has actually slowed us way down having to dodge stuff, and we have put some small (think spider webs) scratches in some places from moving things around. Enough is enough and we'll get the rest of the house painted and situated before tackling the last room.

The other little spot I have missed is the pantry in the kitchen. That won't take long either, and I'll knock it out real fast before finishing the last bedroom.

We are hanging baseboards back up, and I'm waiting to do the quarter round until I finish all the flooring. I'll return some and use that money to pay for it. Most of it has been put up and I need to go back in and caulk it, then it will be done. We are in the home stretch for sure.

Hopefully you are still reading this, because I have some important info to share with anyone wanting to go with me to the TN Classic this year. If you are scratching your head, that was the deal where I went and built my own bow. I had a real blast and would love it is some of you can join me. Consider this an open invitation. We can stay at my house and drive back and forth (it is about an hour or so north of me) or we can try and rent a hotel or something up there. Camping is also an option, but it is notoriously wet and rainy at this thing (last year was so bad I packed it up and came home after the first day and just commuted instead).

Anyhow, here are the preliminaries:

*******************************************************************

Twin Oaks Bowhunters
13th annual
***Tennessee Classic***
Clarksville,TN.
Traditional Archery shoot
April 30th May 1st 2nd 2010
41 Targets--Entry Fee $20.00

Custom Trophies awarded

Shoot Classes
Recurve Bow * Long Bow * Self Bow * Ultimate Self Bow Challenge (Make a Self Bow with Gary Davis and shoot it for score Thursday-Sunday. Contact Mark Baggett
931-362-3717 for more info.)
markbaggett@detdist.com

Vendors

* Primitive Camping available onsite *

Practice range open to all who register for the main shoot

*Pot luck Supper on Saturday Night*

For additional information, contact Mark Baggett @931-362-3717/615-313-4639
markbaggett@detdist.com [Pappy]

directions: from Nashville Take I-24 west towards Clarksville, exit onto maxey rd. (exit 19), turn left, go to the end of maxey road, and turn right onto 41-a (north), go approximately 5 miles, turn left onto oak plains road (look for twin oaks sign and smith auto salvage sign), turn left onto Knox road, turn right on Ashley road. Watch for the twin oaks signs!!!
It is between Nashville and Clarksville/Fort Campbell off I 24 w at exit 19. The address if you want to map quest it is
1079 Ashley Rd. Chapmansboro,TN.37035.
Hope you can make it,I feel sure you will have a good time.It is 3 days,and yes it is a shoot with much more going on.
Pappy


************************************************************************

I went last year with 0 experience or knowledge of making or even shooting a bow, and I came away with a hickory longbow that is definitely shootable. I also got a steal on a recurve, so if this is something you think you may be interested in, this is a great place to go to learn more about it and get a start. It runs from Friday - Sunday, and last year by the time I got up there Friday afternoon it was slim pickings on the bow staves (for making a bow) but I would be happy to try and get up there a few days early to put names on some for anyone interested. Don't worry if you can't make it up on Friday, you'll be able to finish it on Saturday and Sunday easily. It really is a ton of fun and you get a great sense of accomplishment from completing it.

Anyhow, let me know what you guys think...

EDIT: Well shoot, I just realized I agreed to work for someone on Friday April 30th, and my normal shift is Sat. If anyone is interested in coming up Friday, let me know, and I'll see if the guy will let me off the hook. I'll definitely be trying to get Saturday off though, so I should be available then.

Here we snow again...

Ok, you know you were all thinking it, I was just the bravest to write it down haha.

We've been getting snow all day here again, but nothing like the last time. April and I had a busy weekend working on getting the house straightened out, but that didn't leave much time for valentine's day. Oh well, there's always next year!

Not much to report just now, but I wanted to apologize to all the bloggers I didn't get to comment on. I did read them, but I didn't have time to comment.

Here's a funny little note to end on:

Yesterday morning April slept in a little, and I got up about 0730. It had snowed a little overnight, but not too much. It was still drifting some little tiny flakes when I got up. By the time she woke up, it had upgraded to big fat flakes and was coming down pretty good! We already had planned to go grocery shopping for the week yesterday, so we accelerated our plans. I felt silly running out to the store like everyone else, but we literally had nothing to eat; the cupboard was bare! Everyone was still at church so the store wasn't too crowded. To make me feel even sillier, it stopped snowing altogether while we were in the store. I am happy to report, however, that we saved the French Toast ingredients for when it snows again haha.

Take care and keep warm. I think ya'll are gonna get it worse than us this go round.

Not much of an update

If you've seen April's blog, then you know what we've been up to. The snow really put a damper on the flooring activities. It was just too plain cold and wet to be outside running the saws, so we have finished the kitchen and laundry room, but not put much more down. To top it off I hurt my knee a little at work (I was working out and didn't keep good form, so it's totally my fault) which has slowed me down considerably. I actually had to take a few days off from flooring to let it rest. It isn't hurt bad, just strained or sprained, but the getting up and down is just hard on it.

Next week (Monday through Thursday) I'll be at pump school learning to operate and maintain the fire engine pump. It's the first step towards getting promoted to Engineer (driver) at my department. That will slow things down too, since it is a 9-5 type gig for the week and I'll have to do some studying when I get home at night. The course is 3 weeks long, but it is 1 week a month for 3 weeks. I'm looking forward to it though, so I suppose the delay will be worth it.

Anyhow, that's about all that's been going on here. Hope everyone else is doing as well as we are. The snow has pretty much all melted here now. I enjoyed it while we had it, but the ice was sure making life tough for a while there!