an ultimatum..
Thursday, August 07, 2003
I had to give my sister an ultimatum.. See, she is a regular pot smoker and doesn't seem to have the will to quit... My fiance & I are discussing having our wedding this fall. I'd like my sister to be my maid of honor, but if she's going to be high on pot, I will not have her in my wedding party, nor will she be invited, period. My youngest brother is already not going to be on the invite list, I really hope I don't have to mark two of my family members as uninvited....
The ultimatum is, she HAS to decide by, and start quitting by, August 15th, if she wants to be in and at my wedding. I chose this date, because while we know it will be in either October or November, we haven't yet decided on a date, and if we decide on a date in the middle of October, she'll need time to clean up. I gave my sister until August 15th to decide, because I will test her twice: four weeks before the wedding, and the night before the wedding. I will also ask someone to keep his eye on her the day of the wedding in case she thinks she's in the clear if she is able to pass both tests, someone who used to smoke it and who I hope may be the best judge to "see" that she's high if she's somehow able to mask that horrible scent of smoked weed.
I told her if she fails the first test, she will be replaced.
I told her if she fails the second test, she will be replaced, and I will ask the replacement right in front of my sister.
I told her if she is caught being high on my wedding day, I will replace her then, and publicly if necessary. Then everyone will know what a flake she is at that moment.
I told her if she deceives me by passing the first and second tests and I have to boot her ass on my wedding day, that it will be a VERY long time before I ever speak to her again. Similar circumstances apply if she fails the second test on the night before the wedding. If she fails the first one, I'll be upset but speaking terms are negotiable.
I did this by e-mail as she's sometimes hard to reach, and since she still occasionally sleeps at my parents house, I asked my mom to tell her she's got two very important e-mails from me when she sees her next. Hopefully it will be before August 15th. And hopefully this will be incentive enough to quit, if she cares anything about wanting to be a part of my big day.
I'll post the two e-mails I sent at a later date, but they'll be linkable only.
That's all, folks...
frustrating..
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
My company has a firewall set up so that many 'questionable' websites are inaccessible. 'Questionable' means anything from pr0n to gambling, and many things inbetween. This firewall will also have issues getting to otherwise legitimate sites, sites that wouldn't make anyone question the content. But for these sites, instead of getting a "denied for blah-blah" reason, it simply spits a TCP error at me. But it works just dandy if I set up my browser to use a public anonymous proxy server.
D's site is one of these, where I get a TCP error but it works via the proxy. Strange stuff.
our saturn VUE
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Ok, I promised I'd explain how our extended warranty that we paid for when we bought our truck has more than paid for itself in the time we've had this VUE. This may end up being long, so if you want to know the details, read on...
We bought our Saturn VUE in March 2002. Black silver in color (which they no longer offer as a color choice), decked out with all the options we wanted. We were trading in our '00 Nissan Xterra, they offered us $16K for it, so we went all out on the VUE. We also decided to try out Saturn's "Car Care" extended warranty package, which also pays for all regular maintenance, for five years or 100K miles (I think.. it may be 80K). About the only things not covered are what are never covered under any warranties--parts that wear out like brakes, etc.
Suffice it to say, we've had to take our truck in so often that the maintenance director knows me by name, and sometimes worries when he sees me come in, wondering what's gone wrong with our truck this time (he was very relieved one time when I was just bringing in our other car, my little green saturn SL1, for its regular service).
Ready for our list of troubles with our truck?
<object, keeps the drive shaft from hitting the ground should it ever break & come loose. Nice, eh?
I think that covers most of it. Josh is gonna read through my list here and let me know if I've forgotten anything.
Basically the liftgate noises made up about a third of our complaints when we took in our truck because often it was rather noisy. The struts are another large portion of our complaints. Our VUE is an AWD vehicle, and we've often joked that we're scared to take it offroad in fear the truck would fall apart. Ok, so maybe we're only half-joking, and half-serious. So far we've never driven it off road, and frankly I don't think we ever will.
In all fairness to Saturn, their vehicles are pretty solid overall (my SL1 is a '97 and has 125k miles on it, and still going pretty strong). I have a feeling because this was a brand new model (we got ours as soon as the VUEs were available.. we had to wait, what, around a month for ours to be delivered?), that Saturn just needed time to work out the kinks and whatnot. We are seriously considering buying the new VUE that is supposed to be coming out in 2005 that will be a hybrid. Yes, that's right, a hybrid SUV. I can hardly wait! Of course, that being a new 'model', it will probably have it's own kinks to work out, but we'll probably get one all the same.
Despite all the issues we seem to have had with this truck in the short time we've owned it, we still love it.
(see? Told ya this would be long. a pat on the back for you if you stuck around and read it all!)
That's all, folks...
a morning person..
I am so NOT. ugh.
off to the dealership to take the truck in for what could be a lot of work. Thank goodness we get up to $35 in a rental if 'repairs' take a day or more.
bye.
UPDATED: Well, I was rather impressed. It took them less than 2 hrs to do the regular car 'checkup', replace two fuel sending units in the tank (misreporting gas levels), and replace a sway bar in the front right suspension. They would've replaced the left too, if they'd had the part. Yay Saturn! And the cost? $0 Yay extended warranty! (which we shelled out up front when we bought the truck.. let me tell you it has paid for itself in spades, and we've only had the truck for a year & a half. more on that in a new entry)
laundry
i hate my clothes dryer. I have to run it twice to get the clothes dry. We got it when we had our house built, and regret not upgrading it (it was a standard included model). I also hate that the lint trap is on the top of the dryer. Lint everywhere!
bleh.
photoblog
Sunday, August 03, 2003
I've created a
Photoblog for those interested taking a look. So far there are pix of my nieces & nephew, and of my two cats. Thanks to
Quixotic Pixels for the tutorial for putting it together, and the style template. :o)
dragon sculptures
mkay.. So I like dragons, which is probably somewhat obvious by my choice of domain name..
Anyway, within the last year I've discovered polymer clay, and if you poke around on the main index page of my domain, you'll see some examples of some of the dragons I've sculpted (and sold). (I swear I will update that part of my site, honest!) It's a hobby I picked up that nicely fulfills my urges to create artsy things....
I've always liked mythological fantasy creatures in one form or another (unicorns, pegasi, etc). I used to draw them all the time when I was in grade school & high school.. I still do draw them on occasion, but I mostly stick with dragons more than not these days.
My parents started collecting dragon sculptures from the Franklin Mint a few years ago. I think my brother started that when he bought one for himself.. These are the Michael Whelan dragons, and I think they are awesome. I wish I could start my own collection of these... maybe someday.. But, I digress...
My parents are in a bit of a bind and will be moving, probably before August is overwith. Their collection of dragons was some of the first things they packed. Since they don't know when exactly they'll be moving, and because my other brother is a cleptomaniac and they fear he may take advantage of them being all nicely boxed up and make off with them, they've asked me to store these marvelous sculptures at my house until they move.
So, I have about half a dozen boxed Michael Whelan sculptures from the Franklin Mint sitting in a corner of my house. I want to take a few of them out to display, but I have nowhere safe to put them (I have two cats and just
know the sculptures would end up on the floor in millions of pieces if I set them out where the cats freely roam about the house). *sigh*
That's all, folks...
oh boy..
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Verizon workers may be
striking tonight.
That should make my job fun, as a large number of our customers' local loops are provided by Verizon/GTE. That covers most of the east coast (NY, MA, NJ, PA, & DC for Verizon), and a little bit of everywhere else for GTE.
If they do strike, I certainly hope it doesn't last long. Granted they'll still have supervisors and replacement workers, but it'll take much longer to get things fixed, which will piss off our customers (even though it is out of our control).
I can hardly wait to come into the mess that will be my job next week. 😕
yeah, i know
My main site could use some updating done to it. It's a work in progress. If I have time while I'm at work tomorrow I'll try to do some sprucing then. May add some more things to the weblog while I'm at it. Just depends on the workload tomorrow.
Now back to playing Star Wars Galaxies.
still employed
Friday, August 01, 2003
Well, I still have a job. I figured after they asked me to attend a short training class on a type of router we need to interface with on a near daily basis that I was fairly safe from being RIF'd. So it seems they were indeed done with picking off people in our department on Monday. *whew!*
Speaking of work.. I gotta head out for work in about 5 minutes. Oh joy! 😕
Later.
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