Snarling dogs at 3 o'clock, wingman

3am, I am awake and running down the hall full-speed. Naked. What, you haven’t tried it? No I was not warming up for the naked olympics, I was rushing toward snarling dogs. 

Typing that out, I realize that maybe that’s the opposite of what a normal person would do; run towards snarling dogs with their ‘junk’ flopping around like a treat or something. Ahem. Anyway.

They were our dogs however, and around that time I was awakened simultaneously by their sudden pissy fit over each other and by The Girl’s screech that they were having a hissy fit over each other. So you see, no time to waste here, right? Naked’s the way to go. 

So yes, a little over a week later and there was another fight. It wasn’t very fruitful, there was a little blood from Chase’s ear, but other than that & a scrape by Hunter’s eye, nothing. I think I actually got the worst of it. I came in a-runnin’ and hit the carpet with my knees at damned near full-speed ahead. Been years but MAN! Rug burn still hurts like a bitch. Especially with both knees & an ankle joining in on the fun.

We’ve decided that we are just going to have to deal with this on a as-served basis. They get along fabulously 99% of the time. After I got to them and they stopped fighting, the first thing they did was to start licking each other’s wounds. Like, almost surprised that one another were hurt, you know? “how’d this happen, brother? You OK? I gotta take care of you!” if they were at each other’s throats constantly, didn’t get along, fought every time one of them did XYZ or the other did ABC, then we’d have a different take on the situation. But as it stands, they’re brothers, they get along wonderfully and play together and love each other, but just occasionally, they decide they are just too pissed at the other to let it slide.

This time? I think one got off the couch and the other took all of the space. The other came back, tried to crawl up onto the couch-bound one, and anger ensued. Normally they all share the couch without problems. Last night? Someone didn’t want butt in their face, I guess.

Can’t say as I blame them.

Lifting the Tacoma: going with… ?

So I think that for the most part, the 6” or 3” lift question has been answered, at least in one of two parts. These parts conflict, but I have answers to questions. I’ll explain.

In the initial installment, I posed the query of whether the 6” lift really *is* better. I had been browsing around tacomaworld forums for a while before I made my post and have continued to do so. However, I was much more a lurker than a poster. I was just sort of waiting to find the answer, for someone to post it it plain as day, that yes, this or that is better and here’s definitive proof. Problem was, MOST of the people on the site have 3” lifts, and MOST of the people on that site say a 3” lift is better for off-roading. Coincidence? Probably not. The question for me was, which was cause and what which effect? There was a lot of statements but not a lot of proof. Eventually I really began to question whether it was a case of buyer’s remorse, so-to-speak: everyone with 3” lifts say’s their ‘the tits’ because you’d hate to say you spend $2k and didn’t get what you really wanted, right? Same reason people still use Windows, too; hate to admit the other’s better and you’d been duped for so long.

Recently I saw an opening, and actually posed my questions. I stuck it to them, you could say, giving them my rationale for thinking that perhaps 3” is only half as good as 6” off-road. “If 3-inches is better off-road,” I said, “prove it.” I got a lot of statements, but no actual proof. The reasoning was invalid, and eventually people started to see what I was getting at, the logic behind the problem & the solutions. And then some 6” lifted guys chimed in as well. It seems then, that the question of a) is it really better, is solved: yes, 6” is really better off-road. There’s little doubt about that.

The other half of that debate now takes center stage: b) is it better for our needs? Included in our needs is budgetary concerns, of course. 6” may be/is now hence proven to be better off-road, but that doesn’t mean that it’s automatically better enough to warrant the cost. Example: My bicycle. Yes the Competitive XC Moutain Bikes are “better” bikes than the Hardrock model I actually bought. The thing was, for my needs, the competitive XC models don’t improve my biking experience enough to warrant the extra $2,300 in cost to get into— 3x the price of the bike I actually purchased — and nowhere near the amount better to justify the $8,800 MSRP for the top-tier model. Just no way.

The truck lift is like that. 6” is definitely better than 3” off-road. But for ME, for OUR needs & use, is it enough better to justify an additional $1,500-$2,000 in cost?

I’m just thinking out loud here. More to come.

Shot in the Face! And you're to blame! You give…

For those that don’t know — what, you’re not following my every action on my blog, my facebook, twitter, myspace, and SMS messages? — I have been riding my bike to work & back for the better part of a couple of months now, weather permitting (and sometimes not). Don’t start praising me all at once now, I only live like maybe a mile from my work, so… it’s not like it’s a great exercise routine or anything, it just happens to be close enough to be time-wise, I can actually do it faster on bike that in the truck. There’s other pluses too, actually: Being the manager at work means sometimes having to escort angry people out. Angry people don’t care that the situation’s their fault, they just want to get even. Hard to key a truck when it’s not there, right? Right?

Anyway, the bike I bought was a Specialized mountain bike. Nothing too serious, I’m not racing, just having fun. I didn’t want to spend more than $400-$500 and get more than a mid-level bike, BUT I did want to get the most features at that price point. I got it, in the way of Disc Brakes (yeah, on a bicycle) and front tunable suspension forks. It’s great in theory, but just recently I found myself ouching over the suspension.

I was riding to work and hopped up over a curb. When I landed, I heard a ruckus and felt a sharp jolt/pain attack my right shoulder & face. What the hell was that? What the f*ck just happened? I stop the bike and turn around to see a coil spring and accompanying hardware rolling around on the ground behind me. I look down at my front tire and what do I see? A disassembled front tunable suspension fork.

The adjustment mechanism for the suspension is basically a nut you turn on the top of the right fork tube to compress or decompress the spring a little. Well I guess it worked its way loose on the ride to work, and when I came down on top of it full-force, it popped, and my weight + the pressure of the compression sent it all sailing towards me. Towards my face. I mean hell, you sat on a bike recently? The fork tubes point right at your friggin’ face, man. They need a damned safety catch or something. 

I mean, I could have shot my eye out!

Anyway. Don’t worry about me, I got it all back together. It was sort of my fault because I was trying to increase the dampening which means loosening the adjustment mechanism. I guess I adjusted it a little too loose, eh? Looks that way.

Still though: safety catch. Preferrably not with the customer’s face. That’d be my overall recommendation, Specialized… 

To Cell or not to Cell

The reason for the afore-linked Apple vs Windows, Numbers vs Excel showdown was that we’re unhappy with our phone situation. I may have mentioned it before, that we’re looking at a better/cheaper/better way to do it. I don’t have the answer yet, but I have the pricing. It’s this same thing though, I have the lists of pros & cons, but I’m not sure the weight of each point quite yet.

Currently we’re running Vonage for home phone through at&t DSL service, with prepaid, low-rung cell phones through Virgin Mobile. The total cost currently works out to about $85 a month. 

We ended up here to save costs over at&t’s service plans, and it worked out in our favor in every way, because when we dropped at&t’s phone service, they didn’t touch our DSL service cost. In reality though, at&t charges two different prices for the same service; a $45 charge if you’re NOT an at&t phone customer, and a mere $35 if you are. So essentially, if we use at&t as a gateway to VoIP phone service, it tacks on $10 to the total cost of whatever you go with.

Enter our move. There’s another catch with “Dry-Loop DSL,” as they call it. When you move, you can’t “transfer service,” they terminate your current service and start you up again. Awesome, right? I know, totally. It really only mattered to us in that they “corrected” their error, and made our setup $10 more expensive than it used to be. 

What’s $10? It’s a stone’s throw away from where we were, that’s what it is. And there’s the whole pros/cons things to deal with. And honestly, while we’re happy overall with the “phone service” we get from Vonage, we’re not that satisfied with some of the unanticipated, non-cash costs of using them. A Pros/Cons list, you say? Why SURE, I can do that!

Vonage through at&t DSL, Pros

• It IS the cheapest ($86)
• Easy access to phone features from any computer. I can forward calls, change the amount of rings to voicemail, have my voicemail messages sent to my email, all very quickly and easily.

Vonage through at&t DSL, Cons

• Only cheaper by about $10
• Plan is not unlimited, so we have to watch our minutes in order to keep it cheaper.
• Phone must be located by modem. Only ONE phone jack throughout entire house can be used, then
• Phone must be located by modem. Wireless interference makes phone almost useless unless you’re right next to it.

At&t Home phone & DSL service, Pros

• Total cost with discounted DSL service: ~$95.
• All the same features as Vonage
• Unlimited minutes any direction, in the US (all my calls are US)
• Can use ALL phone jacks in house, separate modem from phones, lose most all interference.

At&t Home phone & DSL service, cons

• It’s more expensive
• Features are harder to get to; must access through phone, dialing #’s and whatnot in order to access features. Takes longer, more demanding, less likely to happen.

Cell phone as main phone, Pros

• Always-on status (where’s Random bob? Call him! You have HIS PERSONAL NUMBER! HE’S THERE).
• No wireless network interference, freedom to move about anywhere while having a conversation. Want to talk while out in the shed? Not with our wireless house phone, you cannot.
• I won’t keep forgetting to charge my phone (that I never use so I forget about it all the freakin’ time).
• “Call Features” of the home phone are lost, but become pointless anyway, so who cares?

Cell phone as main phone, Cons

• Most expensive option ($105, before taxes & surcharges)
• Limited minutes still
• Really, do I want to be contactable all the time?
• No “unified” phone number for our family. Who you gonna call? If you need to talk to “us”?
• Did I mention it’s the most expensive option?

There IS a dark-horse option I haven’t mentioned yet: Getting our internet connection through the local cable company. It’s the same cost as through at&t without phone service, so the same cost, and most of the same pros/cons as we currently have. Except that we would possibly be able to separate the at&t line-in from our box, and shove the phone line out of the modem into a jack in our house and push the dial tone to ALL the rest of the jacks, thereby eliminating probably our most annoying con: having essentially one interference-ridden phone for the house.

…of course, this would require that a phone jack be near a cable outlet. Which currently I do not see being the case at our house. Which would mean far more work than I would ever do to rectify what is essentially a very small issue. Which would mean changing things for the sake of keeping them the same.

I don’t know. What do you guys think? Give me holler, let me know. What am I missing?

Round 4: Chase vs Hunter

Yesterday when I got home, I was greeted by a limping dog, and a blood-soaked dog. Yes, again. This marks the fourth time we’ve had to deal with this, since about mid-August. This was also the worst thus far.

Chase got a good hold on Hunter’s left arm and left some pretty deep & long lacerations, and it looks like Hunter came down on top of Chase’s head & neck in return, and pretty much swallowed his whole head, rather ferociously I might add. Chase’s face looks like crap to match Hunter’s arm. He’s got what looks like a blood-filled swell under his right eye, and I will be keeping an eye on it (no pun intended) because I’m worried it’s not going to drain itself and will need to be lanced. But we’ll see.

Now the fight didn’t just consist of those wounds, however. Hunter also has scrapes & teeth marks on his head & ears, and we found some good-sized puncture wounds on chase’s elbow, so it seems at some point they traded spots to see who could do the most damage.

Turns out it was a tie. Who knew? Two 90lb brothers of the same age, same basic build & strength… when they fight it gets ugly fast. I mean, we doctored them up for an hour or so, to cleanse wounds that took maybe 20 seconds to make. They’re so damned equal that there’s not really an “alpha” when it comes down to the wire, ya know?

I wish this was an easy problem to solve. We love them both, and what’s more, they love each other. They’ve done nothing but lick each other’s wounds clean in the time since. It’s not like there’s some known trigger, it’s not like they don’t get along, it’s not like there’s something they just can’t stand but to fight over. They love each other and protect & defend each other! It seems that occasionally, they start to play a little rough, someone gets a little rougher than the other thinks they should, and it escalates, fast, and with weeks-long consequences.

I don’t want to have to crate them when we go. Seems cruel. Plus, how are they gonna defend the property from inside a box? No I don't think that's the solution. They love each other too much to be separated like that. We'll just have to make do I suppose, and hope the figure it out before they really do some damage. Here's to hoping that this one hurt them both enough that avoidance sounds like a good plan in the future.

Microsoft Office 2008: The Best?

So. Since I had to call “no joy” with Numbers, where at the same time Excel — from Microsoft, I remind you — actually lived up to its name, and Excelled, I decided to see if maybe I had jumped on the Apple/iWork bandwagon with a little too much haste; maybe the latest & greatest MS office was indeed the all-around champ. To the bat cave!

The, uh, bat cave is where I do all my side-by-side testing. Bat cave.I stole the term. From Batman.

I downloaded the trial version and installed. Strike one. I don’t know why Microsoft cannot create a more streamlined, intuitive process for installing their apps. I will say to their credit, that this was better than the Office 2004 install that loaded so many items that rhymed with “crap” to bother recalling, but still: near the end, they throw a dialog box at you telling you that the installer will now search for and destroy older versions of office you have installed.

But, I don’ wanna trash my actual, fully-functional version of Office for this trial.

Your options? “Continue.” Yes. Now when you get the the next screen, in small print buried at the bottom of like the 3^rd paragraph, they mention that just don’t check the ones you want to keep and then hit continue and it won’t delete anything. But, uh, how about — for the sakes of logic and customer stress relief — we just put an option to “Skip” on the first window? Yeah! Let’s try that, maybe? That might work! Might make sense!? Unless you’re Microsoft!?

OK we’re installed. Whew! What a journey. But now we have to test out Word & Excel. So let’s open up some old documents and let’s see what we can’t do with these bad boys, eh?

I open up word, and drop in an image. Quite immediately, and of course wrongly, it puts the image inline with the text. Which honestly I just about always hate, but OK some people like to do it that way (because they were born without a left hemisphere where it counts, but that’s neither here nor there), let’s just fix it. Hey, uh, where do I fix this? Is it in the formatting menu? Can’t find it. In the image elements at the top? No. In the clip art/photos toolbox (editor’s note: Freudian slip I should probably left in: I typed “Foolbox” first time out)? Doesn’t seem to be. OK fine, I remember that I can just right-click it and change it to not be inline… wait, where’s that option gone to? What the f*ck? They? What? How the hell?

Strike three. Geezus, Microsoft. Didn’t you used to do this for a living? The only thing worse, is the cluttered interface. There’s a toolbox, there’s a toolbar, there’s a ribbon (?) that takes up like 500,000 pixels of your screen real estate… it’s pretty gaudy all considered. I thought that the concept sounded kinda cool, but in practice, it’s annoying; you end up with but a corner of the window dedicated to your actual content. You know, that most important part? It gets kicked to the side rather fast. Take a closer look, click the picture at the title of this post.

Peace.

Apple Fails Against Microsoft. Really.

A week ago I had frustration with an Apple product, at which time I discovered that the Microsoft Equivalent was actually a better choice to use.

Scary, I know, right? 

It was a Numbers vs Excel debate. I was trying to load up our invoice from Vonage, and whittle down how many long distance calls we actually make (I used our highest-billed month in order to have a safe margin). The problem stemmed when I tried to copy & then paste the information from the table on Vonage.com into Numbers. For whatever reason, it was reading the Duration column values as time/date values. After being dumb and pretending that Numbers was a Microsoft product and hence looking in the strangest places to find the simplest value modifier, I located the correct place to change the “cell type,” if you will. It imported it as a date/time value, I just switched it to numbers, should be easy enough, right?

Yeah, except no.

It — for whatever reason — decided that the duration of the calls had a start date. OK fine, turns out there’s actually a whole option for Duration. Fine, I’ll fix this up real quick, I’ll just choose to tag these cells as “Duration” values.

Yeah. Except, no.

Try as I might, no matter what I did, that column (formatted 00:00:02) would inherit a DATE, and I couldn’t total up my minutes, because Numbers would not SUM the total time since it was a date/duration mucky mess of a pot of values.

Then, I said “what the hell Russian Roulette is kinda fun” and loaded up Excel. From Microsuck. I waited, and waited, and waited some more, and eventually it came to pass that the program loaded, and it only took long enough for me to have a child and enter mid-life-crisis. OK strike one, Microsoft.

But here’s where the story gets confusing. I pasted the same information in… and it didn’t add in the date. What’s more, I didn’t have to even fuss with whether the column was a “duration” or a “number,” I just hit SUM and it totaled the value for me. Nice. 241 minutes of actual long-distance calling.

I wanted to do a test though. I figured, I would take the data out of Excel, since it was formatted “correctly,” and paste it into Numbers again, see if everything jived. Maybe Numbers just can’t handle 00:00:00 formatting properly when you paste it in, who knows. So I did it. The numbers pasted over, but STILL, the SUM value box showed an error, saying you CAN’T total a bunch of durations or dates.

Strike one, Apple.

We're not fat we're double portions of healthy!

I read an article on the New York Times about fat people pushing back on the Healthcare Debate. Saying that it’s a stereotype and that you can be fit at any size and/or weight.

Apparently a movement started by a lady in San Francisco:

Marilyn Wann is an author and weight diversity speaker in Northern California who has a message for anyone making judgments about her health based on her large physique. “The only thing anyone can accurately diagnose by looking at a fat person is their own level of stereotype and prejudice about fat,” said Ms. Wann, a 43-year-old San Franciscan whose motto in life is also the title of her book: “Fat! So?”

I don’t understand the debate. Why are we “pushing back” against the healthcare debate? You’re fat. You’re at higher risk of about every known condition because of it. The expenses to keep you “healthy” — or rather, “alive” — are astronomical compared to “thin” people. It’s not a question, it’s a fact. There’s no debate.

Here's from the same article, a few paragraphs down:

Extra weight brings with it an increased risk of chronic disease, medical experts say, and heavier people tend to have medical costs that are substantially higher than their leaner counterparts.

Come clean, lady: we’re “starting” this debate so you can feel better about yourself, right? Because you’re not fat, you’re big-boned!

I’d say “get over it” but that’s quite a task for a fatty. I mean, seriously: just take ownership here. You're excessively overweight and it affects your health. You're having trouble with the self-control required to avoid being that way. I get it. We all have our flaws. But don't blame ME for your fatness, lady. It's not a false stereotype, it happens to be factually backed-up and has severe consequences.

I hate this, I hate it when people are in the wrong but "start a debate" or something, essentially blaming EVERYONE ELSE for their shortcomings; "it's not MY fault, I don't lack self-control, I'm NOT FAT, YOU ARE ALL TOO SKINNY AND YOU'RE THE UNHEALTHY ONES! SO THERE! NANANANA!!"

Whatever. Grow… Nevermind. Don't grow. Shrink.

Lifting the Tacoma: going with 3-inches (or 6)

So I’ve had the truck a little more than a year now. It’s a nice truck! But to be honest, I didn’t expect it would stay stock forever. It’s our expedition vehicle. When we go out into the nature around us, it’s the one we take. I want it to be superior at that, you know? The question wasn’t ever “are we going to lift it,” the question has always been “how much do we lift it?”

This question remains unanswered as of yet.

There’s a slew of options out there for the Tacomas, but a lot of them are sh!t and really, the way I see it there’s really only TWO options: a 3-inch or a 6-inch. There’s pros & cons to both I guess, cost is a slight factor but not completely prohibitive. The problem I’ve had in deciding is whether or not the 6-inch lift is worth the extra cost, and whether I’d make use of it. You know, is it actually a) better, and b) better for our needs? Does it justify the added cons for the pro of an addition 3-inches of ground clearance? That’s really the only question in the matter, but it’s not an easy one to answer.

A 3-incher costs, let’s say $2k by the time all’s said & done. What do I get? 3 extra inches of ground clearance for the frame, and with a little finagling I can put on 33” tires and gain an extra ½-inch clearance over my current 32” tires as well. A 6-incher however costs twice this amount. I gain 6 inches of clearance at the frame, minus a couple of inches just after the front tires for the subframes that support this lift. So at points I get 6-inches of additional lift, at others I get just 3- or 4-inches (though I’ve been assured that I can use those as sliders and just pretend they’re not there in that respect). I also have the option of running 35” tires which would give me an additional 1-½” of lift on top of that, and a most-important 1-½ inches at the axle & front suspension. But there’s a chance I’d stay at 33” anyway, as I hear that 35” requires “trimming” of the frame. I refuse to trim my frame.

A pro & con list, you say? Yeah, I can do that. Here you go:

3-inch pros

• More affordable
• Gain at least 3” of lift at all points (no subframe rails)
• More accessible entry
• Won’t void warranty locally

3-inch cons

• Can’t run bigger than 33” tires (little added ground clearance for axles)
• Extends suspension for lift (less “flex” for the suspension; it’s already extended)
• ONLY 3” of lift

6-inch pros

• Additional 3” of lift provides better obstacle clearance through middle of truck, better approach & departure angles
• Can run 35” tires (?)

6-inch cons

• Probably can’t run 35” tires, have to stick with 33” anyway (frame trimming)
• Costs at least twice as much (parts, additional necessary parts, etc)
• Actually only gain 3” of ground clearance after the front tires for about 1-½ foot of length
• Possibly void warranty (local dealership frowns upon 6-inch lifts)

Clearly then, the 3” is the better option, right? Not so sure. That’s the problem with pro/con lists for me, they don’t take into account the weight of particular points, they just assign a point for each. There’s a chance that actually, that additional 3” of lift — the one true Pro of the 6-incher — is weighted so heavily that it bests the laundry list of its cons & the 3-incher’s Pros. Which is why the argument still unfolds.

I’ve yet to find the weighted scale for these points yet.

To be continued…