learning about new cars – the hard way

When we bought our car, it came with two keys. One was a key with a keyless entry system. The other was just a valet key. Being that Kelly will be driving the vehicle on an everyday basis, she got the former. After driving it home last, night, she decided to lock the door with the keyless entry system.

Today I was supposed to take the new car to get its license and registration taken care of (and also to show it to my co-workers, since they’ll most likely never get a chance otherwise to see it). So using my valet key, I unlocked the driver-side door…and was treated to an ear-piercing wail of an alarm.

I’m becoming a bit of an alarm connoisseur. I have had our alarm in the house go off a couple of times (some even intentionally, during testing), I’ve had fire alarms go off in the apartment while we were trying to cook…I’ve gotten used to having my eardrums rattled. This one was a bit of a change of pace alarm – fairly loud, but pulsating for just that extra touch of annoyance.

Naturally, I did not expect this to have happened. So I backed away from the car, and sure enough after about 20 seconds or so it died down. Now, my key had actually unlocked the car door; I knew that much. But could I drive it now? I placed my hand on the door to open it…

The ringing of the alarm told me, no, I guess not.

Well, I got the license taken care of anyway, so now it’s out of my hands. It’s officially Kelly’s car now, which makes my ears happy.

day of news

A lot of my day was spent waiting. A lot of it was also spent writing checks.

The waiting mainly came due to my garage door opener repairman being late. I ended up at home for the vast majority of the afternoon. He got there and set up our new opener, complete with sensor (it should give you an idea of how old our old ones are/were that they didn’t include sensors on them). Seems to work pretty well. It’s just not the sexiest thing to buy.

That’s reserved for things like cars. Yep, we finally got our new vehicle tonight as well. Kelly drove it home, and it will become her primary vehicle. I’ll drive her old Civic until we save up enough to get my truck. (Did “Somewhere Out There” start playing softly in the background?) I’ll throw a picture up when I get the chance. I’m going to go register it and get the license tomorrow.

After finishing all the paperwork on the car, we went and saw Katelyn, Ricky and Tammy’s daughter. They’re all doing well (if a bit tired, I’m sure)…they will be able to come home either tomorrow or Thursday; they weren’t sure when we talked to them.

(I realize that by writing the previous paragraph, I’ve gotten two different women rarin’ again for their own grandchild. All in due time…)

kte

If you read this site, you certainly know about the other half of 1122 Productions, Ricky and Tammy Eanes. Their baby girl was born today!

You can go to his site for more information on the big day and their new bundle of joy.

Congratulations, Ricky and Tammy!

a shock coming from me

With everything else that’s going on in my life right now, I just can’t find the desire to watch tonight’s championship game.

Or maybe that’s because a team that I support isn’t in it this time. It’s been so long since that was the case… 😉

takin’ it easy

We haven’t left the house today. Kelly is recovering from a virus, so it’s been a lazy Saturday. We had originally planned on going grocery shopping, but she hasn’t felt up to it. Yes, I know that I could go by myself, but I don’t wanna. 🙂

So she’s been reading, and I’ve been on the computer, and we’ve both had turns at the TV. Our lives are exciting!

it’s so dark

It’s so sad after all the houses in the neighborhood have taken down their Christmas lights. Just another reminder that the holidays are over…

Not to mention that our house is the only one on the block that doesn’t have much outdoor lighting. In a way, it’s kind of nice…you can actually look up and see stars. It’s one of many ways in which the place where we live feels like we’re out in the country when we’re really not.

Not that I’m going out and looking at stars tonight. It’s so cold, too.

Christmas came late

I got a new computer at work today. It’s got a quad-core processor and 4GB of RAM…me likee.

I know that it’s a bit geeky (okay, it’s a lot geeky), but I really like breaking in a new computer. I was able to get a lot of it done today, so if the need comes tomorrow morning I can work on it. But I still have some other things that I have to load and install on it before it’s really prepped and ready to go.

Of course, it really makes me want a new machine at home too. But that will happen in due time…

tired of comment spam

It took me over an hour to clear the site of all its comment spam. There were over 4,000 messages to delete, and unfortunately I had to click on a check box beside every single one of them in order to get rid of them all. So it was an undertaking to say the least.

Given that I’m trying to put something out on the site daily now, I’ve got to come up with a means of limiting spam. Unfortunately, the software that powers this blog is pretty old, and I don’t want to pay the fees to update it right now. That means that I’m basically stuck with what I have, for now. Because the software is old, spammers have figured out the ways that they can spam on the site pretty well unless I close entries to comments.

So here’s the plan. I’m adding at least one entry a day. Each entry will be open for comments for three days. On the fourth day, I close that entry off for comments. If I get a spam on the entry before the fourth day, I close that entry immediately.

We’ll see how it goes. I know that right now there probably aren’t many of you actually checking up on the site, so there might be quite a few entries that go without comment, but that’s okay. Hopefully soon I’ll hear from some of you again…

2008 Resolution

Happy New Year!

For those of you who still like to check this page from time to time, and are used to seeing nothing here, here’s a surprise for ya…not nothing!

However, I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know that pressing on… is making a comeback this year. Far too long I have been more of a consumer of the web than a producer. I have many fond memories of working on this website and adding the content that now sits gathering cobwebs in the archives. Hey, even I still go back every now and then and read what my former self wrote. Some of it still cracks me up.

Kelly and I talked about resolutions once before the new year, and I said that I hadn’t really planned on doing any. Well, Sunday at church that changed. The pastor preached an excellent sermon on change, and I was convicted of needing to make a few in my own life. Did God tell me to start up pressing on… again? No, but he did reveal to me that I’ve been pretty lazy about keeping up with people in the past, and this site is a great way that I have had to do so. He also showed me that I don’t take advantage of free time very well. This gets back to being a consumer of the web. It’s really easy in today’s Internet to get lost in countless blogs, Youtube clips, and news aggregators and just keeping taking it all in. It’s really easy to convince myself that my life isn’t really all that special, and who would care to read about it? Both are wrong. The former leads to a glazed-over mind and also invites temptation. The latter both tells God that essentially I’m pointless and denies my friends and family the opportunity to commune with me (in the modern way). I’m just enough of a curmudgeon to not want to join MySpace or Facebook…this is my interface to the Internet world. So I need to take care of it better.

So I’m making a resolution (it’s one of five that I’m making) for this year to include at least one post every day. All 366 days. For days that I know that I will not be able to access the blog, I will inform the general public about it beforehand (so no cheating) and then write my entry down during the day, so that when I can get back online I can add it and back-date it appropriately.

What are the other four resolutions, you might ask? Oh, the usual. Lose weight, read my Bible every day, better organization and tidiness in the house/yard, and some financial goals that I won’t get into here.

All right. One day of 366 done. Now to go erase all the spam that’s appeared on some of my other entries.