The Treehouse Blog

I’ve finally given in and switched my blog over to a third-party package.  It was probably 4 years ago when I converted from a few flat-file entries to a custom blog interface.  At that point the third-party options weren’t that great, but things have changed a lot since then.

So, at work today we received two boxes from Vendor C shipped via Vendor U that contained identical parts. It was immediately observed that the one box was far heavier than it should have been. Perhaps they shipped both of the items in the one box, and manuals and such in the other? Stranger things have happened. And, well, had. Both boxes contained what they were meant to. The heavier one had a plastic-wrapped white object in the bottom that looked like shrink-wrapped documentation – at least, until you tried to move it. It had a Vendor U shipping label indicating a weight of 37lbs and was about a foot square and an inch thick. Apparently this piece of solid steel encountered the Vendor C box and penetrated it during shipment (judging from the correctly sized hole in the side of the box, noticed afterwards). Vendor U is sending someone to pick up the stowaway package, and the Vendor C gear looks to be undamaged. Still. Weird.

Apparently I haven’t written anything for a long time. I haven’t been doing anything amazing, but here are some events possibly worth mentioning.

I had my four wisdom teeth removed at the end of September. I chose to be Xanex’d instead of having general anesthesia. I’m not a big fan of the idea of being put under, but I liked the idea of not caring what was happening. It’s hard to gauge how effective it was, though. I was fairly tense at the start of the operation, but was a bit happier than I maybe should have been for some time afterwards. One notable part of the operation was that I could smell the tooth being drilled apart. I recognized it as the scent of ground bone. I thought it was kind of unique that I recognized it, but I guess a lot of people know that smell. There was less pain and less bleeding afterwards than I was expecting. The 800mg motrin horsepills combined with ice were good for the first two days, and then more typical does of motrin for the next few days kept things mostly painless. I did get the hydrocodone-based prescription filled, but didn’t end up using it. Eating was fairly constrained for the first few days but was back to normal shortly thereafter. But at least my dentist doesn’t have anything to complain about now.

I bought a truck this past weekend. I had been looking since the beginning of September. A truck has been on the radar for awhile, but finally became actionable. The justification was to get up my driveway in the winter (even after my drive is plowed, it generally takes a few days before the car is able to traverse it) and to haul things (I’m tremendously annoyed that my bike has to be laboriously coaxed into my car even with its front wheel removed). I had been looking at used Ford Rangers and Chevy S10s. The other makes of small pickups seemed far less common. I really didn’t like the interior of the S10s. I finally bought a white 2005 Ranger with a good many miles (93k) but at a decent price. Chris had the misfortune of volunteering to drive me to Ephrata to test drive and eventually buy one of two Rangers at a used car dealer. I had decided to keep my car for the time being, and of course during its inspection on Monday, it got new front brakes and needed new tires and is also due for a tune-up. Right now it looks like the truck will be in the garage, and the car will be available for squirrel target practice outside, until the snow comes and they switch places. My current annoyance is that the radio in the truck is almost but not quite 2 DINs in height. I’m not sure that amateur radios are DIN-able anyway, but it would have been nice, if I can ever justify buying a mobile rig.

My sister and I went down to Chincoteague, VA for a few days last week, staying with our grandparents, since they had rented a condo for the week. The weather was decent (only raining Tuesday evening), but the mosquitoes were oppressive on Wednesday morning while we were biking the trails on southern Assateague. There was good food, and a brief break from pace of work.

Although the remnants of hurricane Ernesto changed things a bit, this still wasn’t a bad weekend. There was food and talk of HTPCs and home automation (instead of a camping) with Doug, Tiff, Dennis, and Michele (OK, yes, the geek talk was limited to the guys). There was birthday party for my sister on the beautiful day that was Sunday, and Chris and I found another coax hut west of Breezewood today (after failing a third or fourth time to find the one we were looking for). So, a good weekend. I wouldn’t say it was relaxing though… need to work on that.