I felt so alone

First off, I freely admit that I'm the world's worst blogger. I checked the date on my last post and saw that its been almost a month since I updated this thing. I have no excuse. Time passes and I just fail to notice it....

That said...my dog likes to dig and chew. She has a name, but for this post let's just call her Destructo the Wonder Dog. After we adopted her last year, she chewed some of the siding off our house, dug holes in the backyard and chewed some of the molding in our house. She had been relatively good for most of the winter, leading us to think that maybe she had grown out of this behavior.

Unfortunately, Destructo had other ideas. Last Friday night, the all the TVs in our house abruptly went silent and we had no Internet connectivity. Upon closer inspection I discovered that Destructo had dug up and chewed through the trunk line connecting our house to Cox's cable network. After yelling at her for a good 5 minutes, I was lucky enough to not only get a Cox CSR on the phone, but she was also nice enough to send a technician to my house the next morning.

The cable got repaired and life was good...until Monday morning when the damn dog chewed the damn line up again!!!!!! I work from home so the idea of no Internet first thing Monday morning scared the hell out of me. I called Cox back and this time they couldn't get anyone to the house until Wednesday. Wednesday!!!!! That's two whole days without TV or the Internet. I felt so cut off from the world and alone. To top off the Karmic smack-down, the data connection on my cell phone that would normally provide a slow Internet connection was down, too.

Unable to live with that I carried my happy ass to Lowe's, bought some cable splicing supplies and chicken wire, and managed to patch the cable back into working order. I strung the makeshift chicken wire fence around the cable terminal and prayed that Destructo would leave it alone until Wednesday.

The cable guys have since replaced the line and buried it outside the backyard fence. Life is good, but I'm always on alert for Destructo's next victim.

I drank the Kool-Aid...and I liked it!

So I dropped the kids off at day care the other day just like I do every other day. I had meeting scheduled all day so I was going from there to drop the dog off at doggie day-care (yes, we treat our dog pretty much as well as we treat our kids).

I wasn't in an NPR kind of mood and couldn't stomach the usual morning radio schlock. I started rifling around in the CD pile for a suitable alternative when I remembered to what the kids had been listening beforehand.

I pushed Play and .... wait for it ... voluntarily listened to the High School Musical soundtrack. The kidlets have played that damn thing so much my ears have in fact bled at times. Despite that, those peppy on-screen teens and twenty-somethings pretending to be teens can put out some pretty good show-tune level songs. So I kept the windows up tight despite the moderately warm morning and Katie and I rocked out to Get Your Head in the Game and Stick With What You Know. For all the car next to me knew, I was banging to AC/DC or the Beasties. :)

Don't Assume Your Computer Can Tell Time

Thanks to Congress, Daylight Savings Time begins sooner and ends later this year. Your computer probably didn't get the memo, so if you run Windows XP or Outlook, visit this page (via Lifehacker) to ensure your friendly little box o'chips can make the transition.

Flicka

We discovered yesterday that our 3-year-old son's preschool teacher has been "flicking" him and other kids in the class when she has to put them in time-out. What the fuck is up with that? If I'm not going to use corporal punishment on my child, no one else gets to lay a finger on him.

We talked with the school's director today, who said it would be stopped immediately. The school has a no corporal punishment policy, so I know they will take care of it. I really do like the teacher otherwise. She was instrumental in helping Finn potty train. That's why I was so shocked to hear about this happening.

I might even be OK with her staying in the class as long as her misbehavior stopped. I think the school will probably fire her, though. If I owned that business, I'm not sure I would take the risk of keeping her on. I'll feel bad for her if she loses her job, but nobody comes before my kids' well being.

FineTune is the shiznit!!!

I found out about FineTune yesterday via my favorite source for all that is new and uber-geeky-cool, Lifehacker. I decided to try it out today, and I'm hooked. I've tried other streaming music services before and found them less than impressive. They either dropped songs in mid-play, lost the connection all together, or had generally crappy sound quality.

Not FineTune. To get around federal law and recording industry regulations, you have to set up a playlist with at list 45 songs on it. After selecting you're first 3 songs, however, you can simply press the I'm Lazy button and FT will fill in the rest for you, guessing how to pick based on your first three choices. You can make as many playlists as you want and the sound quality is excellent for streaming over the Internet.

Best of all, you can embed the playlist on other web pages. Just check out my first play list in the sidebar to the left. Just click play, sit back and enjoy...or go to FineTune and create your own playlist now.

Coming soon to Northewest Arkansas,..a Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shop

You heard it right, folks. My partners (Brent and Brandon) and I just sent a big old honkin' franchise fee check to Ben & Jerry's today to secure our rights to open a Ben & Jerry's in Northwest Arkansas.

That means, with luck, you'll have a plethora of yummy Ben & Jerry's flavors (in sundaes, cones, and let's not forget the Vermonster) within the next 2-4 months.

More details to come...

One of the best bumper sticker slogans I've seen in quite some time...

Remember Who You Were Supposed to Be