Kickin’ the New Kuh-nowledge
I’m in Boston this week… working. Fortunately, my nights have been pretty good. Ate some good raw oysters Tuesday night at East Coast Grill in Cambridge. Last night I had a fried platter of fresh local fish, clams, etc. It was a slice of heaven. Top it all off with a few pints and you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m flying back home tonight so I’ll be home with Liz for the holiday weekend. As good as the food has been, I can’t wait to get home. 
–sam
Looks like today the honeymoon is over. The Metra train from Lombard to Chicago was over an hour late. In a moment of wisdom, Metra decided not to charge the angry, waiting riders. Still… that’s a lot of time to waste at a train stop. Can someone say suck.
The worst part is that I was supposed to meet a buddy for dinner to celebrate his new job. Since I didn’t know how long the train would be I called it off. We rescheduled for next week.
Then my very cool bike decided today to have a weird problem. The latch that keeps the folded part together while riding decided to loosen. Fortunately, it stayed together enough for me to get home without much fuss. I was able to fix the problem when I got home tonight (I hope). Fingers crossed for the ride tomorrow.
In other news, my boss is nuts. He’s basically forcing everyone to change offices. I think it’s his way to keep our minds off the recent layoffs. I have news for him… not really working. And joy of joys… I get to move into a windowless office that is half the size of my current one. Yay?
And to leave on a positive note… Here’s some music you might find interesting…
http://www.myspace.com/timfite
http://www.myspace.com/disfear
http://www.myspace.com/sonsanddaughters
Later Gators!
I made it through the second week of the train commute. Yes, the second week. It would have been the third week, but I got the flu right after the first week (probably from someone on the train).
Anyway, I’m learning a lot more about Chicago as a result of taking public transit and riding my bike. In fact, I would say I’ve learned more in the last few weeks than I did in the previous year. Sad, but true.
And now that the bicycle is such an important part of my transportation picture, I’m finding that I’m having to re-learn a lot of what I used to know about bikes when I was a kid. Little known fact… when I was living in Miami between 4th and 5th grade, I used to steal bikes with my cousin Bobby and our friend Joey. We would roll up to some other neighborhood and find bikes that had been left in the yard. Then we would take them back to Joey’s house, take the bikes apart and rebuild them. After that we would spray paint them and then sell them at the flea market. It was like a car chop shop, but for bicycles. I’m not proud of what I did.
I mention that only because today I had to change the tire on my bicycle. It brought back a lot of memories.
Yesterday I went over to Bikeworks, a local bike shop. The owner of the shop, Bruce, is a bit like the Soup Nazi. He’s cantankerous and gruff, and he is highly opinionated when it comes to bicycles. Here’s a video of him…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1m1QIFTtg
Who better to ask about the gear shifting problem I’ve been having? I spent a couple of hours with Bruce yesterday before he agreed to work on my gear problem. While there, I noticed something odd about my rear tire. The rubber was coming off where the tire met the rim. I bought the bike used… therefore the tires were used. I hadn’t noticed the rear tire issue until I was showing another customer how to fold the bike.
At any rate, Bruce, miraculously found the same exact tires (Kenda Kwest 20×1.50 High Pressure) that were on my bike somewhere inside his store (if you watched the video, you’ll know that would be quite a feat). This morning I replaced the offending tire. Got a little dirty in the process. It felt good.
Next up… I need to join the Bike Project… http://thebikeproject.org.
–sam
The e-mail about a mandatory meeting was suspicious. Anytime you have a surprise mandatory meeting, you know it’s not good. Well, the accounting department has been “consolidated” which is company-speak for we’re moving all the jobs to a central location. Which, of course, means that everyone you know is essentially being laid off.
Even though I work in IT, I’m actually part of the accounting department. It’s just one of the weird things about my company. Luckily, the IT focus of my job means that I stay while others had to pack up their belongings and leave.
Spent the day calling a lot of friends in other offices to see who was staying and who was gone. Had a pretty rough conversation with one of my oldest pals in the company. He was given a choice to stay or go. He chose to leave because he was close to retirement anyway. I’ll be drinking a beer for him and the rest of the folks I won’t be interacting with anymore.
Today I’m feeling equal parts relief, shock and sadness. Wake me up when the walls stop spinning.
–sam
Today was my big test of the train version of my commute. Here’s what I learned.
Tomorrow I embark on an epic journey. Instead of driving to Chicago, I’ll be taking the train. This is a big deal for me. I’ll be adding a ton of extra time to my commute, but I’ll be saving quite a bit of coin. I’m testing it out this week to see if it will be something I can do regularly.
Here’s what my train commute will look like tomorrow…
Amtrak to Chicago… Depart 6:10 AM
Metra to Lombard… Depart 10:40 AM
Bicycle to the Office… Depart 11:20 AM
Arrive at Office around 11:40 AM
My current car-based commute is a bit shorter. I usually leave around 8:00 AM and arrive around 10:30 AM. So my commute will go from 2.5 hours to 5.5 hours. Yikes! At least I only have to do that once a week. On the way back, the commute will actually be a lot less… more like 3.5 hours. Another positive is that I get to see if my folding bike is good enough for this kind of travel.
Here’s to hoping there are no delays tomorrow.
–sam
As I have hinted at in the past, Liz and I decided to get a roommate/tenant. At first we were hoping to get a grad student, and we had some interest from a few. Unfortunately, none of those really worked out. Grad students can be flaky (my wife excluded, of course). We also learned that the majority of students did not want a rental over the summer, and if they did, they only wanted it for the summer but not the fall.
So instead of waiting for some awesome grad student to contact us, we went on the offensive. We looked for folks that were actively seeking a roommate situation on craigslist, on facebook… wherever we could find. Liz eventually ran across an ad for Tim.
Tim is a local guy. He works at one of the few factories in the area on the 3rd shift. He’s also a fan of hot rods and belongs to an online international metalworkers club that meets once a year for a week of camping. Tim is not a grad student. We’re perfectly happy with that.
Of course, we had some trepidations about offering a room in our house to someone we don’t know. It’s not like we’re a rental company that’s going to go out and do credit checks on people. Do we even need to use a contract? What about reporting this on our taxes next year?
In the end, we decided to use a contract. I found a few examples online and played around with them until I had something that worked for us. I also checked the Illinois Attorney General’s website on info for tenants and landlords. I just wanted to make sure everything we do is legal. Sure, to protect our interests, but also to protect Tim’s interests.
So far things have been good. Tim, as noted above, works the 3rd shift from 6pm to 6am. In generally, I see him just as he gets up and leaves for work. We haven’t had to interact much, but I suspect that this will change once we all fall into a more normal rhythm.
Probably the hardest thing about having Tim as a roommate is that he sleeps during the day… so we really can’t make a ton of noise during the day. No jamming out to that Cult song. No singing at the top of your lungs in the shower. You get the idea. For the most part, though, it’s a non-issue. If I really feel like jamming out, I can put on the headphones. It’s the other stuff that we have to work around.
Here’s to looking forward to a year with Tim. May he become a friend over that time.
–sam
When Carol from our pug playgroup sent an e-mail about a pug that needed rescuing, we had no idea what we were getting into. Sure, there was that video that showed a small black dog spinning like a top and barking like a madman. He was a force of nature, a miniature tornado, but we wanted to help. So, with Carol’s assistance we arranged to take Bentley in.
He was a mess. He was already missing several teeth and our vet noted that he needed a few more pulled out. On top of that, it was obvious he had been abused.
The first few months we had him we had to hand feed him because he wouldn’t eat from his bowl at all. He would stare down at his bowl and start growling as though someone was going to come take his food away. It would take us half an hour or more to feed him kibble after kibble in this manner.
After some time, he was finally able to eat food from a bowl, but it was perhaps several months after that when we noticed a change in Bentley. We think it was because of Kiko, our other dog. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Bentley started playing with toys.
Once he started playing, his real personality came out from under the years of abuse. He greeted us daily with his excited yowl, hopping on his two forepaws, ears flapping up and down.
He’s been with us for nearly six years now. When he first entered into our lives, the vet estimated that Bentley was between eight and 10 years old. So, he was already an older dog, with older dog problems. Those problems were compounded a couple of years ago when Bentley slipped a disc in his back.
It didn’t seem to hinder Bentley much, if at all. Sure, his gait was a little more wobbly, but he was still playing and bounding around as if nothing had happened. Then, the first episode occurred. His hind legs wouldn’t move as if he were paralyzed. Steroid shots seemed to do the trick, and he was back again, bounding around the house as if he owned it.
Unfortunately, as Bentley got older, steroids and anti-inflammatories were no longer enough to stave off the pain. Over the last couple of months, his quality of life deteriorated to the point that we had to keep him in his crate except during meals and bathroom breaks for fear that he would hurt himself trying to run around.
More recently, his pain became even more obvious as he started to scream when his back would spasm suddenly. These screaming sessions could last for quite a while. Finally, last night, as Liz sat with Bentley in the wee hours of the morning working through his latest spasm, the decision was made.
Bentley, Mr. Bentley Fartbottom, Mr. B, B-Dog, Bobo, Bent, Pug2… These were the names we knew him by. We will remember his woo-woo-woo yowl. We will remember his impossibly long tongue that barely fit in his mouth and would often slip out when he was sleeping. We will remember his huge eyes that looked as though he understood our every word. We will remember his wagging tail that greeted us every day. We will remember his barking at anything and everything that moved just as long as it was on the other side of the fence or window, whatever the case may be. We will remember his energetic fetching. We will remember his love of plush toys. We will remember his ear-flapping hop when it was time to eat. We will remember his skittishness around other animals. We will remember his old man noises. We will remember his extremely sharp dew claw. We will remember the clickety-clack noises his claws made on the wood and tile floors. We will remember him sunning himself in the backyard. We will remember his disdain for snow. We will remember his “accidents” on the kitchen floor. We will remember him humping his “brother”, Kiko. We will remember The Spin.
–sam and liz
This is the original video that Carol sent us of Bentley featuring… The Spin.
In honor of the tremor we just felt here in Urbana. Yes, we actually had an earthquake… right here in the middle of Illinois. I bring you… Housequake (by Prince, of course). Enjoy.
–sam
p.s. It was a minor tremor and I don’t think anything was damaged. We’re all OK.
Received a letter from the powers that be at work. They will be doing an audit of health insurance beneficiaries to verify that the people employees list as dependents are actually… well… you know… dependents. It’s a way to save money, and I totally get that.
However, they’ve hired an outside auditing firm to do the checking for them. Where it gets really interesting is the part where we receive a letter in the mail that basically says. Send proof of your status or we will turn off your health insurance. If you’re married, you need to send a copy of your marriage certificate. If you have kids, you need to send copies of birth certificates.
It was at that point that I said… Whu???? You want me to send a copy of my marriage cert to some unknown third party? Wouldn’t it make better sense for me to bring in a copy of the cert… show it to my boss and sign an affidavit of some sort? Why on earth would I send it to some company I have no prior relationship with (heck, I doubt I would even send it to companies that I “trust”).
The response from my HR department is that these things are public records and readily obtainable by anyone. My response, is, of course, if they are readily obtainable by anyone then why are you asking me to send them to this third party? Shouldn’t the third party be able to… well… you know… obtain them without me being involved.
The reason why this argument falls flat on its face is that even though these records are obtainable, they aren’t readily obtainable. It costs money to have the state send you a copy of some public record. That is the check that state agencies put on just anybody asking for these things. The idea being that forcing people to pay for these things is enough of a deterrent on just anybody grabbing these things up. It’s not perfect, but there you have it.
Let’s be clear… it’s not like I have a choice in the matter. It’s not like I’m going to fight it on principle while they pull the plug on my wife’s health insurance. The funniest part of this whole thing for me was when they told me, “We’ve hired this third party for YOUR privacy.” Say what? Laughable, I know.
As I told my HR folks… I’m sure we’ll all have a laugh when the cost of this auditing firm is added to the list of reasons our health insurance goes up next year.
–sam