Verizon wireless 411

It is about time that mobile phone companies give us a feature we can use. In the past, when calling 411 from the mobile, they would connect you and that was that. The problem is that you can't always write down those numbers, so, if you are disconnected or need to call back for some reason, you'd have to call 411 again.

Verizon Wireless now has a feature that allows you to get a text message with the number they connect you to. I'm sure they charged me extra, if not only the 10 cents for the text message, but it is worth it.

300

This is my 300th blog entry! :)

Metro Seats

Ok, so, this morning I’m riding the metro sitting down in my nice comfortable seat when an old lady with a cane gets on. I get up so she can sit down, I step back a little so that I can hold on to one of the poles so I don’t fall down. The very next stop, the old lady with the cane gets off and I take a step toward my seat. Instantly, another guy who was standing almost jumps into the seat. I guess it doesn’t pay to be nice to old lady’s with canes.

Superman

We got the original Superman DVD and watched it yesterday. I didn’t expect Andrew to be interested, but he really liked the opening credits. Alex on the other hand, I tried to keep interested in the movie, but he wouldn’t sit still. I can see how the first half of the movie would be a little boring to a four year old. I think I was five when I saw it for the first time, probably in 1983, and on laser disk. Once the action picked up a bit, Alex was sitting on the sofa at attention staring at the screen. Of course, Andrew was no where to be found, IE: in another room watching cartoons.

Cracker Barrel is Good

Yesterday I took Andrew, Alex, and Aidan out for breakfast to Cracker Barrel. As restaurants go, especially franchise types, Cracker Barrel is probably the best when it comes to breakfast, much better than the International House of Pancakes. Andrew and Alex both had a pancake, and Andrew had some bacon with his. I had a big stack of French toast, also with bacon. Aidan, he didn’t get anything because he is only four months old. One thing I forgot, I bought a coke for myself, and after eating the French toast covered in that yummy maple syrup, you can’t taste the sweetness in the coke and drinking coke that isn’t sweet isn’t cool. Before we left, we put in an order for pancakes, bacon, and hash browns for Amy, she stayed home to do some cleaning up, and deserved a good breakfast.

Dimes

I got eight dimes as change the other day. I don’t know why, but I decided to check the dates on each one. Out of eight dimes, two were minted before I was born. The dates are, 2005 Philadelphia, 2003 Philadelphia, 2000 Philadelphia, 1994 Denver, 1983 Philadelphia, 1983 Philadelphia, 1972 Denver, and 1968. I examined the 2005 and 1968 dimes closely, and they are definitely different. For starters, the 1968 dime doesn’t have the P or D to tell you where it was minted. The dime from 1968 has a slightly bigger portrait of Roosevelt and the date, the word “LIBERTY”, and “IN GOD WE TRUST” are closer to the rim of the dime. The reverse looks like it could be exactly the same, although I see some differences, those could be from general wear and tear.

Final Solution

You have to be careful how you use words these days. I sent an e-mail related to some technical work I am doing on a problem, and said "The final solution to this problem would be …" . Someone pointed out to me that "The Final Solution" was the term that Adolph Hitler used when describing the elimination of the Jews. I knew that, but when I'm in geek land, the history of the world isn’t exactly filtering my e-mails. I guess these days you can never be too politically correct. Maybe they should add a political correctness or sensitivity filter to Microsoft Word to go with the spell checker.

Mattresses

Went to Costco today, the plan was to pick up two mattresses for the bunk beds that we are getting for Alex. When I was there yesterday, I walked past the area where the mattresses are, and saw that there were plenty. What I found out today, was that the mattresses I saw were all sets, not the individual mattresses that I wanted for bunk beds like the price tag above described. Yet again, I make another trip out for nothing, well, I did get laundry detergent that I forgot yesterday, but it turns out that I didn’t need it, I had enough for today.

Public Service

Something I haven’t done a whole lot of recently, well, at all in the last few years is any sort of volunteer work. That changed this morning; I had the chance to help with communications for a five K run benefiting meals on wheels. It was a smooth event, I was responsible for monitoring two points on the course, one at the beginning, and one near the end. Although that might sound tricky, those two points were only about a block apart. It was a little cold, in the 20’s with 15 mph winds. I was fine except for my hands, I didn’t wear my thick gloves because it would be hard to use the radio with those gloves, so I wore my leather gloves but they didn’t keep my hands very warm for long. I’m a little over conservative when it comes to preserving my battery life, I tried to use the radio on 50 mw, which worked fine for my first station, but just a block away, I was having trouble being heard, so I moved up 1 watt, and I was loud and clear. I should probably get a second battery and charger for my radio, it is just a good idea to have more than one.

Closed Stores

I can’t seem to win. The other day, I got to the Sears auto shop and it was closed, they had recently changed their hours. Today, I get there 40 minutes before they close, and they say, they can’t take any new customers because they are closing soon. But wait, there’s more, we went out tonight to purchase Alex’s bunk beds, and guess what, that store was closed too, we were there at six forty-five, and they closed at six.

Interestingly enough, we went to Best Buy, since it was in the same shopping center as Furniture for Kids, and we left without buying anything. There were several DVDs that I wouldn’t mind watching if I had time, but DVDs at Best Buy are a bit over priced. After Best Buy, we walked over to the Educational Store, where Amy picked up some educational supplies for Alex.

Discover Cards

A couple of weeks ago, we lost one of our credit cards, so, we thought it would be best to get a new account. A couple of weeks go by, and no cards show up. I finally get around to calling them and it turns out that they didn’t ship them in the first place, but they did change the account. They sent them two us next day, which was actually two days because I called at night.

The cards arrived today and what a surprise, the look like crap! I liked my old silver discover card, it worked for me. Now I have this orange one. But it gets worse, Amy’s has this 1960’s hippy van/bus thing on it!

My Card


Amy's Card


I figure, I’ll keep this one for a few months, then order a replacement.

Alex & Me – Night Out

Amy and the kids haven’t been feeling well, and Amy isn’t getting much sleep because when Aidan goes to sleep, Alex decides it is time to play, and either keeps Amy up, or wakes up Aidan.

The idea was for me to take my car up to the Sears Auto Center / Jiffy Lube and have them change the oil, transmission fluid, and replace a tag light (I pulled over and issued a repair order for the tag light and to have my window tint checked). Since that place is attached to the mall, I’d take Alex in for some fun, dinner, and stop and pick up a new belt for myself.

Well, the shop changed their hours and closed at 6 before I got there, causing me to completely forget about walking through sears and getting a belt. Alex and I did have a lot of fun even though they removed the play area from the mall. We through pennies into the fountain, got on a couple of quarter rides, and had some candy. We also grabbed dinner at McDonalds, I had a double quarter pounder with cheese, and Alex had a cheese burger happy meal. That boy has been eating cheese burgers fairly well. It was funny, I was telling him that my burger was the same as his, but mine had two meats, and he said, “I don’t like meat, but I like cheese burgers.” LOL

Amy, on the other hand, didn’t get much sleep, Aidan decided to be awake the whole time we were gone.

Trip to West Virginia

This Saturday we went to visit my grandparents in Philippi West Virginia. The trip out was interesting, we ran into a pretty heavy snow storm in far Western Maryland and into West Virginia on I-68. It was worth it though, my grandparents hadn’t seen Aidan yet, and it got us out of the house for the weekend and my grandmother really likes babies!

We arrived Saturday afternoon and it was still snowing. My grandmother had a brand new flexible flier sled and told Alex that I would take him out sledding. Even though it was snowing a lot, there was a good wind and the snow was very light so it was all blowing off. Even so, Alex got to go out and play.




On Sunday morning, we made a trip to the nearest Wal-Mart which is about 25 miles away, the trip took more than thirty minutes. The point was to get Alex some gloves, some window washing fluid for the van, and some travel packets of formula for Aidan. Of course, they didn’t have the travel packets, but we left with everything else we wanted, plus a shirt for Alex, and cookies for all of us to enjoy.

Alex got to play in the snow again later Sunday, this time with gloves on his hands. I wore myself out pulling him on the sled (I even took two runs on the sled myself). Somehow I ended up with a headache later in the evening and ended up going to bed at about 7 o’clock Sunday evening.

The trip back was the best, we took the short cut through the back roads since the weather was good on Monday. Like the trip in, Amy was monitoring for wireless networks with her computer, which was pretty entertaining. Around lunch time we wanted to find a diner but ended up stopping in Frostburg at Pizza hut for lunch. We were back on the road in about an hour and stopped at the outlet mall in Hagerstown. I took Alex to the play ground while Amy shopped. Unfortunately (or fortunately) our replacement credit cards have yet to arrive, so she was limited to cash, but for $60 she bought 2 pairs of pants and 3 shirts for both Aidan and Alex. While I was at the play ground with Alex I got on the ham radio for a few minutes, that was fun too.

In all, good trip.

Now that is a long delay!

Surely a typo, but it was a shock seeing this on the blackberry this morning before I got on the train!


-----Original Message-----
From: bormp-request@lists-wmata.com
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 6:37 AM
To: METRO Alerts
Subject: Metrorail eAlert on the Red Line

A 1000-minute delay is in effect between Fort Totten and Tenleytown-AU in the direction of Shady Grove.

Vice President Dick Cheney Shooting

It seems that, at least the media is making a big deal over why the White House or the Vice President’s office did not inform the public that Dick Cheney was involved in a hunting accident. Must they report on every aspect of the Mr. Cheney’s day to day activities that have nothing to do with his duties as Vice President?

Breaking news: this just in from the White House Press office “Dick Cheney was taking a leak yesterday and his aim was off, and some landed on his shoe.”

I think they did exactly what they should have done, accidentally shooting someone while hunting is embarrassing enough, nobody would go around advertising it if they didn’t have to, and the last time I read the constitution, I didn’t see the part about informing the media of the most embarrassing moments of our elected officials. The mainstream media is just ticked off about a small town Texas paper getting the story from a local before it was aired on CNN and the rest. The Vice President’s office and White House did exactly the correct thing, when the story broke; they confirmed it and that was that.

The late night talk show hosts sure had fun with this one. Jay Leno said, “That's the big story over the weekend. ... Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter, a 78-year-old lawyer. In fact, when people found out he shot a lawyer, his popularity is now at 92 percent.”

Myspace

Why is myspace so slow?

oh yeah - I have a myspace - I don't know why

http://www.myspace.com/josephdurnal

Snow, What Snow?

Ok, so it snowed Saturday night and Sunday morning. By seven thirty in the morning it was reduced to flurries in my area. The governor was on TV telling everyone to stay off the roads and the media was making such a big deal out of dangerous roads. We had planned to go to my sister’s house in Dover for Aaron’s birthday party. After shouveling out and getting ready, the sun was out, so, we decided to go. I had thought about taking the long way, around Interstate 95 to Delaware route 1, but after seeing that the road conditions were much better than had been described on the news, I decided to go the normal route, across the bay bridge. That was a good choice because there were only a couple of isolated spots on the road where there was slush, even on the state routes on the eastern shore. The worst travel we experienced was a slushy Delaware route 8, I’m sure it didn’t snow that much more on that side of the state line, I guess it says something about Delaware’s snow removal capabilities. Anyway, I didn’t think the snow was all that bad in the Maryland area.

Alex’s Generosity

While I was out shopping, Alex had some M&M’s after eating his lunch. When I returned, I asked Alex if he saved any M&M’s to share with me and he said yes. So I asked him, “Where are the M&M’s you saved for me?” and he replied “In my mouth!” his term for what happens when you eat something.

Aidan the Smiling Boy

I was up early with Aidan today and he sure was in a good mood. I was on the ham radio for a little bit and I put Aidan in his bouncy chair. Took a break from what I was doing and Aidan was so happy and smiley. Again, I had enough time to grab the camera and take a some good pictures.

More PBEM CIV

I had a great night playing Civilization IV with Amy and Brandon in our play by e-mail game. I have a whopping three cities, and I’m still spending more than I make and don’t have much of a military. Amy is still killing all of us, I’ve never done so poorly in a game of CIV before.