Some recent thoughts I have had - Including an endorsement of one company, and mockery of another...

Some recent thoughts:

• I think it's finally Spring. I hope it's finally Spring.
  
• Early this month, we found that the latch on our bedroom door had frozen. Fortunately, the door was open when this happened. I had an extra latch because I bought an extra knob two years ago when we remodeled. I took the doorknob apart, and replaced the latch. Then I thought it was kind of silly to have a two year old latch that was frozen. I bought the thing from Kwikset, which is a Black and Decker company. I got on their website, and sent them a message asking how to unfreeze the latch for the lock. The next day, they emailed me to say that a new latch was in the mail. It came a few days later, no other questions asked. Not bad. I will certainly look to buy a Kwikset lock the next time I buy one, even if it means I might someday get locked inside my bedroom because the lock has frozen...
• Several times this month, I have gotten in the shower, turned on the water, and my body has registered surprise at getting wet. Then my head says "Of course it's wet. It's water." I don't know what that means. Maybe my body has gotten dumber than the rest of me. I explained it to Tara, she thinks maybe I wasn't fully awake yet on the days that it happened. Either way it's weird.
• I've been a "manager" for over a year now. This can really take a good chunk of my time sometimes. My team is now 9 full timers, and 4 student employees, with another full timer coming soon. More than half of us have trips coming up in the next few weeks. I'm not sure we thought that through properly... Our bosses boss like to call me a manager. I like to call myself an engineer. When he calls me a manager, I think "Smile when you call me that." Turns out I've got the phrase backwards in my head. I haven't said it out loud to him yet.
  
• I've been working on a large wood project this week. I burned out a belt sander early this week. (sparks and flame) Drew hooked me up with a chainsaw and a grinder, which is helping a lot. Today I got through a chunk I've been working on for several days, but the thing cracked in a bad place. Grrr..... Maybe Gorilla Glue?
• I've set a goal to walk 200 miles this year. I've only walked 21. My office is only a mile and a half from here, but I can't seem to try to walk that far. (And it's not that far, really.) I think I just need to suck it up and do it, but lots of mornings are just hard. Lately I've been peeling myself off the bed. Lots of pain right now, but I suppose the pain is there whether I walk or not, so maybe I should just try it Maybe I'm just lazy.
• The people behind us have chickens now. On Sunday, the kids all had their noses pressed against the back window. "Dad! There's a chicken in the yard!" I've got a bunch of city kids. The chicken must have dug under the fence and squeezed in. While I don't mind having a chicken eat the bugs in our yard, chickens are messy. I caught it and tossed it back over the fence. The kids were impressed.
• Every time I see the following commercial, I think about buying a Mustang. But then I think about all the other things the same amount of money could do around here. I need to start walking to work.
  
  
  
  
• I had the batteries in a UPS in our campus bookstore go bad recently. We bought it about three years ago, and didn't have it on a maintainance contract. Turns out it was still under warranty, which I give HP credit for. They overnighted me new batteries (50 pounds). We scheduled to replace the thing tonight. The bookstore had a power flicker this afternoon, which took the servers down. Timing it everything. I went over there at 9pm, it took them about 40 minutes to get BYU Hawaii off the system. We shut the servers down, and took the UPS apart, and couldn't get the batteries out. It turned out that the batteries wouldn't come out because one of them had nearly burst, and was swollen. I finally got the thing out, and we found that HP had sent the wrong battery pack. (Now here's the mockery) HP - If you are going to spent the money and effort to overnight large items to people, maybe you should consider making sure you are sending the correct part...

• I'm definitely in the mood for a sugar free donut. Is "sugar free donut" an oxymoron? My sister has been posting these deserts online that sound really good, but I can't touch them...
• Still here? I'm going to Atlanta next month for Microsoft Tech Ed. Anyone going? I'm going to an Atlanta Braves game while I'm there, and have an extra ticket...