pittsfield-jew

The first post says it all Shalom, This is the home of the Pittsfield Jew. Sure its neat to read about Jews in Brooklyn who are very observant but how about a not so observant Jew who lives in the Mid West?

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Debugging

Jonny was debugging a C# program and fell asleep. He woke up listening to soft music on click fm. He already heard the parsha once today. They are playing soft holocaust remembrance day music. The program is finding a registration number with a minus in it. It found a service date with a slash in it. These things aren't supposed to happen. Angelina called. And here is what she said. Alberta is a sneak. She called in sick from school. Angelina caught her watching TV. She sneaks onto the computer and reads Angelina's email. She calls her sister Lorraine unspeakable names. She also does gmail with her friends. They have to put Lorraine's room back together. It will be carpeted with a new carpet soon. Angelina bought some bushes and some straw. She called several times about it. Lea didn't want to do lunch or library. She went to the Y with one of the other girls here at Hollywood. For lunch Jonny had part three of the trilogy of half pound boar's head turkey breast sandwiches. As usual he had the spicy pepper jack cheese while toasting the bread. Then he ate an apple to divide the cheese portion of lunch from the meat portion of lunch. Yesterday Jonny read a few blogs and left some comments. These were Jewish blogs and he reads them to get inspiration. He is on page 338 chapter 41 of The Shadow Roads. They stuffed the rest of the Bat Mitzvah invitations and now they need to be sealed, weighed, stamped and mailed.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Mood hasn't gotten much better

Jonny's mood hasn't gotten much better. But better still is better than worse. Angelina stuffed some invitations. Jonny is up to page 279 of The Shadow Roads. The students are a pain as usual. Today Angelina bought some carpet, an area rug and some granite. What a busy shopper. Yesterday Jonny listened to the last of brachos 64a. Today at Hotel California has been meetings. Right about now he is working on a mini-mental status inventory. He needs straw for the lawn. Lucy the dog looks like she has a urinary tract infection. It was miserable cold this morning. Lorraine and Jonny went out and froze. Angelina is giving up on getting the house ready for the Sunday Bat Mitzvah brunch. Instead she has packed up boxes and put them into storage. The house contains lots of storage space. They no longer have a storage unit. They also no longer have a cleaning lady. She was gone as of January. The urine collection mission this morning was almost completely unsuccessful. So tonight they will try again. Lucy managed to put about 1/3 of a teaspoon of urine into a container. But Angelina said throw it out it isn't enough. Jonny closed his eyes in the lounge for a little bit after lunch. He forgot his chapstick, to do his hair and to bring his lunch. He waited for no one to be around and then he dumpster dove. He ended up with some bread sticks from pizza house.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Sitting here in a bad mood

Jonny is in a bad mood. Passover has ended. Today Jonny is getting carpet for Lorraine's room and the steps. Saturday the front hall was redone with slate. In the garage the plywood was put on the walls. The shed is still going up. Jonny called the company for more parts since they were missing. He bought grass seed and plants at Lowes. Over the weekend he planted with the kids help three fruit trees. Jonny got a peach tree, apple and pear. The pear tree is a Cleveland flowering pear and is supposed to grow to 30 feet high and 40 feet wide. Or maybe it is the other way around. Last week they got the washer and dryer switched around. It took a plumber all afternoon to do. Last week Angelina made some Passover cakes. The roof company came out and cleaned the gutters. Jonny put a new light in the ceiling in Lorraine's room and cleaned the gutters on the garage. They need to get some straw to finish up the lawn. Hopefully Jonny can get some free time and make gefilte fish. Jesse had a soccer game yesterday and the day before. The whole family watched him. Well Jonny has gotta get some work done now. He fell asleep right before lunch in his car. He is listening to Brachos 63a. Almost done with Brachos Talmud. He listened to the parsha earlier today. His parents sent an email again admonishing him to let his kids visit his parents. Jonny is almost finished with The Shadow Roads he is on page 268.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Yesterday

Yesterday Jonny went to a retreat at the Michigan Union for part of the day and that is why he didn't blog. Today he is listening to the chanting of the Kedoshim parsha. His hand is hurting so he went to employee health today. Yesterday the asbestos company came and removed all the asbestos. The roof company is still MIA. The employee health here in Hotel California gave Jonny a cool ice pack. This thing is like an ace bandage and has water in it. You freeze it and then you can reuse. Angelina is scheduling an appointment for him to see his own doctor. It has been two weeks and this bicycle injury isn't healed yet. He rode his bike and got lost on the way to work. So he was late and all sweaty. He was supposed to go along Gallop park and then he went on the wrong side of the river. He is on page 258 of The Shadow Roads. Jonny also watched another episode of Scrubs. This weekend the temple is interviewing a Rabbi's assistant. She will be running the service tonight and attending Saturday. She is also leading a study session tomorrow. Jonny talked to his brother last night.Richard Ziman is thinking about leaving his job. So he interviewed for a company and for his old company. And he is setting up an interview with a company where the job will be in Hong Kong. Jonny is still working on his shed. He also has a bunch of other work to do. The semester is almost over and a new starts soon. He wants to learn how to teach the class as an over the internet class.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Passover part 2

As promised here is the rest of the Passover story. Also as promised it is pretty boring. All day Sunday Jonny worked on building his shed. Later in the afternoon he walked the dogs. Next they all got in the car and went to the neighbor's house. From Jonny's family was his wife Angelina Jolie and daughters Alberta Watson and Lorraine Bracco. Also there was his son Jesse Bradford. Of course Jonny Lee Miller himself was there. They went back to their old neighborhood. Their old neighbor used to carpool with them to Sunday school and Monday and Wednesday religious school. They had four people in their family Bill Maul and his wife Jennifer Badger. In addition, there were their two children Margo Winkler and William De Meo. The meal was strictly kosher dairy. They play pieces of a boom box of a passover tape. The CD has the jazzed up version of who knows Hashem. It has the frog song and deiyaneou. They went around the table and read portions of the haggadah out load in English. They did several prayers over the wine. They had many kinds of wine. Angelina brought a tray of chopped up vegetables. The kids watched the Prince of Egypt on DVD or VHS? Lorraine found the Afikoman. They were out of there by 9:15 PM. It was after all a school night. They served baked salmon.

Jonny has turned the help desk around in a tizzy. He is trying to get Oracle SQL*Loader installed. He is up to chapter 29 page 246 of The Shadow Roads. He listened to half of Kedishim again today. The tape is bad so he can't hear the second half. Jonny is up to Brachos 60a.

Angelina called. They got no mail today. The asbestos company was there and had the door blocked. She needs the house fixed up now because it is sticky and gouged up in the garage and basement. Also she has no phone service.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Pretty boring

This blog must be terribly boring for anyone else to read. As is a tradition, this will describe the seders that Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Lorraine Bracco, Alberta Watson and Jesse Bradford attended. Good friends of Michael Rapaport, and Janeane Garofalo were the hosts. Michael and Janeane moved to Israel a few years ago but come back in the summers. The hostess and their family don't have a pseudo name. The mom had her mom and dad and the dad had his mom and dad there as well. There two kids were the same age as Lorraine and Alberta. There were 5 girls for Jesse to play with. There were 3 other couples as well. There was a long t shaped table. Angelina and Jonny sat way on the end with Jesse and Alberta. They basically sat in the kids section. Jonny got about 3 cups of wine. Their house is fairly cleaned up for Passover. In other years they had put paper down on the counters. This year there was a huge Passover cleaning list on the refridgerator that everyone was admiring. Later in the evening there was chocolate sugar covered matza AKA Passover crack, because it was addicting. The kids got to bed well past 10 PM. There was all kinds of food. One child read the simple son section in Hebrew to get on his parents nerve. Jesse won a clay set. All the kids got prizes for the Afikoman. They hid and rehid the Afikoman. Later one of the moms did Mad Libs. All the answers had to come from the seder. There was also an official 1 cup of wine, if you chose to use it. Jonny missed most of what was happening since he was in the kid section.

Today Angelina called, since most people think since she doesn't work she sits home and eats Kosher for Passover bon bons this is what she said. The garbage disposal is in. She picked it up at Lowes. She was complaining about the workers charging too much money for the handy man work. Hard to explain this one. She would prefer a fixed price for the cabinets instead of $50 per hour or $100 per hour when they both work. She got the slate for the front hallway, about 5 feet by 3 feet. Jonny's car was worked on. It has an oil leak and needed belts, all total $300. Including cleaning and free oil change. She wants to work on getting Jesse a suit for the Bat Mitzvah. On Friday she got the AC taken care of, $3500 installed all day and they finished at 5 PM. So she wants to get a ceiling fan installed in Jesse's room. She picked that up today too. She mailed in the paperwork for the Jewish camp. She said to walk and feed the dogs when Jonny gets home.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Lots of News

There is lots of news to report. Jonny was hit by a car today. He is all right. He was parking his bicycle in the Hotel California parking lot. Jonny was in a very deserted parking lot where people come to get radiation treatments. Normally when his kids are walking through a parking lot he is always telling them watch out for cars backing up that aren't looking. Jonny was looking down up left, right, all around except where he was walking. Next thing he knows a gaurd yells sir watch out. He feels a bump against his leg. A big boat like car had backed into him. Jonny told the guard he was fine, just another accident he said. Later other people came up to him and asked him what had happened. Apparently several people had witnessed this from the waiting room. They were all waiting to run out and help. But Jonny just got up and kept walking. He didn't actually go down just stopped in his tracks for a second.

The bike ride here was quite nice to trouble at all. Yesterday he did in fact go to the library. Now he is reading Shadow Roads and is trying to find his place. At this point he is on page 210. Jonny feels kinda weird today. Before lunch he went up to talk to Rob. On the way he got a headache. It seems to come and go. After lunch he got sleepy while listening to the parsha for the third time. More good news the website bible.ort.org is alive again. So Jonny did listen to the chanting today.

The AC was installed today. Angelina called and confirmed Jonny has his car keys. She wants him to put the DVD into categories. She plans to remove some VHS and donate to salvation army. She will be picking up Lorraine from 4th grade camp today.

Other things happened that got Jonny mad but why dwell on the bad, there were two things, one today and one Wednesday. Yesterday Jonny talked to his brother on his cell phone.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Sleepy big time

Today Jonny was tired again. He met with Lea to discuss VAX. They did a little with Vb. He then went to his car 1t 9:30 and was so tired. He slept until the cell rang. Angelina was telling Jonny that her handyman was going to help finish the shed. Jonny rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour. He really wanted to go to the library today too. Jonny wanted to pick back up that book his wife returned. Today Lorraine is in 4th grade camp. Jesse got up late. At 5:30 AM he and Jonny switched beds. Jonny felt as though he didn't sleep at all from 12 to 5:30. Then from 5:30 to 7 he dreamt about missing a flight while hanging around on board a cruise ship. Later in the car from 10:30 to 11:30 he dreamt about teaching some employees C#. Then they quit early around 4:50 PM. And Rob Schneider, Jonny Lee Miller's boss was in the dream. The boss was explaining that the LAN goes down every Tuesday and Thursday at 3:30 PM. Actually he meant to say the third Tuesday and Thursday. But Jonny didn't believe him. Rob said it was on the calendar. He finally got a big flip on the wall calendar. It had two red dots on the appropriate days marked LAN goes down for back ups early those days.

No more siteing summarys of what Jonny reads in other blogs. Instead he'll just say he read the blogs of. His usual blogs are erica, bec, aiedal and styx. There is a neighborhood dog named styx. He didn't read any blogs today. Angelina got her car back from the dealership. $600. For oil change, dirt cleaning and wheel alignment. Next is Jonny's car for $99. Free oil change and dirt cleaning. What a waste. There is three auto repair places two blocks from their new house. Angelina had a rental car for two days.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Wednesday

Today Jonny fell asleep again. He was to meet with Lea to discuss VAX work. The room wouldn't be free until 3PM so he slept at his desk from 2 PM to 3PM, kinda on and off. Angelina called and he sorta slept through the call. This morning Angelina was in a foul mood. She still is. Tonight they are cooking fish on the grill.

Last night Jonny finished his 3rd home made book shelf. Work on the shed is progressing slowly. He screwed down the floor. This was step 5a. As in if you have a floor now is the time to put it in and then move on to step 6. Step 6 says the rest of the directions take a long time. Don't start unless you can finish in one day. There are 18 steps total. So he only had 3 hours left so he couldn't finish.

This morning was the ode to an hour. Jonny had a meeting at Hotel California at 9:30 and another at Hotel California at 11:30. He was supposed to be at Hollywood this morning at 8:30. Instead at 8:30 he biked to Burns Park to see Jesse off to school and to see Lorraine off to 4th grade camp. Then he biked to the hospital and got there around 9:10. It didn't take more than ten minutes to get to the elementary school. It also didn't take more than 10 minutes to get to Hotel California either from Burns Park.

Then Jonny went to the lounge and waited until 9:30. The people who were supposed to be in the meeting weren't there. So the six of them talked about other stuff. Rob Schneider was there and so was Penny Fuller. Next he killed the hour waiting for the 11:30 lunch meeting. Then he rode his bike over to Hollywood. Lea wanted to meet. Jonny said in about 10 or 20 minutes. Then they found out the conference room wasn't available.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Trying to get something done

He didn't have much luck. Today at 11AM Jonny went out to his car and took a nap. He listened to this week's parsha first thing in the morning. It was all about Yom Kippur. All about the high priest changing his gowns four times. He also listened to Brachos 56a. This was about dreams. Joseph had a dream and it took 22 years for it to come true. The weather is nice making for a decent car nap. Angelina woke him up with a cell phone call. Later in the afternoon he met with Lea at Hollywood. Rob wants the two of them to get together so Jonny can learn more about the VAX. Jonny has the car today partly because of the weather, bad bicycle accident and because he has to pick up Lorraine and Alberta at religious school. This XML code is running so slow. Tomorrow Jonny is going to try and ride his bike to Hotel California for a meeting in the cafeteria. Over the weekend the whole family went to Saturday morning services. They arrived by car around 10:30 which is their usual 1.5 hours late. Child care starts around 10 any way. Jesse and Lorraine went to that. Alberta and Jonny waited for Angelina to insert the children into their respective areas. There was a little boy who had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony that day too. He gave a brilliant speech about the parsha. He said the lepers were like the prisoner of modern society. You see where that is all going. Jonny went into the back room and had Schnapps with the Rabbi and his friends. Mainly that is Scotch Whiskey. On the way home Alberta, Jonny and Jesse walked. They went via Brockman. They were underdressed for the weather too. They caught up with the Rabbi and his daughter who is also having a Bat Mitzvah within the next year. As they crossed Stadium the groups caught up and then simultaneous split up again. All the while Jonny, and Alberta were talking to Wendell and Kristina on Jonny's cell phone. They are trying to set up a trip with Alberta. Ha good luck with that. Jonny met with Lea today and then went back to his XML. Over the weekend he went to a soccer game in Wixom. He also got lost on the way back missing the US 23 South exit and not turning around until 7 miles later in Howell. Earlier he went to the hardware store for wood for the shed. The moving has been endless. The half pint of Jack Daniels is gone. There is some Winter Beer and some Black Toad beer. Now that Jonny is conscious he (wow got that one right on the first try) he spend a few hours playing in ancestry dot com. Lunch was a chicken chinese salad. Not very Chinese though. Over the weekend they went to a Chinese restaurant with one of Alberta's friends and her mother. They don't have a character yet sorry. Jonny was also playing with linked.com a lot today. Lorraine had a sleep over at Annabella Sciorra's house since they live close now. Lorraine went home crying and didn't sleep over. More with her neck and throwing up. Jonny convinced her that throwing up is linked to what you eat. For the next 24 hours she was fine. They planned to go that Chinese place on Packard two blocks away but it was too crowded after twenty minutes they left and went to Miss Saigon. And it was empty. Jonny had "the best General Tso's Chicken ever". It was good. He had that left over for lunch. He had a trader joe chinese meal for dinner the next day as they had to rush out to Wixom. That is just like Angelina to serve chinese four meals in a row, dinner saturday, lunch and dinner sunday and lunch Monday.

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Friday, April 11, 2008

This and That

Jonny is still healing. He read a few blogs today and left comments too. This was for inspirational purposes. Today at work at Hotel California he went to a presentation. It was about If Disney Ran Your Organization. This is some self help book. While he was on the phone with Angelina the call waiting went off. Kristina was on the other line. She was on the way to the beach with Wendell. They had to call. Last night Jonny left them a message about his bicycle accident. She said she rides slow on level ground. Lorraine is still complaining she is gonna die. It got really bad. Last night Jonny went out in the rain with the dogs to the liqour store across Stadium just past the gas stations. He brought all his loose change and got a 1/2 pint of Jack Daniels. They were so nice and let him bring the dogs into the store. They almost ate some candy. They he got a rid of some more pennies. He did that yesterday too and the Jefferson Market. The bottle was 7.99 and Jonny had the 99 cents. He went and took apart the desk top to blow it. He used up a whole tub of the icy liquid nitrogen or whatever it is. Later into the second tube Lorraine came down and started whining. He had a plastic cup and took about 1/4 inch of the amber liquid in one swallow. She came into the room while he looking for network adapter drivers. She said Dad why do you have maple syrup on the desk. He thought you wanna see throw up, I'll be plenty sick if I drink this whole thing. Fortunately he started to get drunk on the sour mash. No Lorraine that is sour mash not maple syrup, you know alcohol to drink and get you drunk. Keep talking about how sick you are. She finally got bored and went back to bed. She slept in her new bed for a couple of hours. It was now around 10:30 and she left. Jonny proceeded to take apart the PC. He blacked out while shooting dust all over the place. He told her to leave if the asthma was acting up. Dust isn't good for that. But it wasn't that bad. Finally she left. Her whining was much, much worse this morning while walking the dogs. She whined Jonny into being 15 minutes late for work and far too sober. Both Jesse and Lorraine slept in bed with Angelina and Jonny woke up 7 hours later in the bed in much more pain then when he went to sleep. Last night he was feeling no pain. Half a half a pint of JD isn't enough to give most people a hangover so he was fine this morning. He listened to this weeks parsha for the third time. Jonny is really upset about the torah chanting website no longer being available. He took no naps yesterday. He also watched one episode of Scrubs that he taped using DVR. Awesome skipping through commercial. The first TV Jonny has watched since moving in a couple of weeks ago.

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Ready to pass out again

Continuing on with the blogger theme of being sleepy, Jonny Lee Miller is tired. Time for other updates. Alberta is still a brat. Lorraine is whining she is dying. Jesse didn't sleep in Angelina and Jonny's bed for two nights in a row. But Lorraine did last night. And finally Angelina is working with the sewer repair company for day 3. The garage door guys were there at the same time. And she was working with AT&T too. But she sits home and eats bon-bons anti-stay at home moms would say. Jonny got a new 2GB ram at Staples minutes before they closed at 9 PM. He regretfully took Alberta. Regretfully because he was telling the helpful sales girl his life story and Alberta wanted to go home.

Here is what happened. Jonny was riding home on his bicycle Wednesday afternoon. He fell asleep around 3PM at work so ended up staying until 5:15. He was in a hurry to make his 5:30 arrival. He took William to Main Street. He was adjusting his head roll to maximize peripheral vision. There spell checking intact now. The head roll is like a ring shaped scarf and black and warm. Ears get cold from bike wind. So he was going slow and finally got up to Main. Then he waited forever to cross at the light and head 1.5 miles south by south west on Packard. He went a block and realized it is almost 5:30. He picked up the pace. Jonny was on the fricking sidewalk not the hot road 20mph bike lane. A short non-English speaking Asian woman in a small grayish light blue car turned in front of him onto a driveway. Probably the bike lane would have been a better choice. Jonny was going 15 mph. He braked. He was thrilled to stop on a dime. Then the world went upside down. Oh no Jonny flipped over the handle bars. It took him 5 minutes to get back on the bike and go home, very slowly. He called Lorraine mumbling incoherently all except "I'm gonna die". To this point Jonny can hardly move his right arm. That helmet saved his life and that useless lady well Jonny would be late for work and adding to Angelina's work load if he called the police and went to the hospital. Tomorrow is rain, so no bike for Jonny. Next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that Jonny is taking a day off to do more work around the house. Jonny sees cars hitting him everywhere. He drove today. And he'll be gun shy according to Lea for a while too. It hurts to tie his shoes, put on a coat, just about anything with the right hand. And today Angelina called about 7 times before 11 AM, so he went out to Jefferson Market a block from Hollywood and got an early sandwich. On the way back he went to the extra Hollywood bathroom. Only to drop his hat into the toilet by mistake. Fortunately it was after flushing.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Burning eyes

Jonny's eyes are burning today. Note to self bring eye drops to work. He is in Hollywood today. And he rode his bike yeah. Jonny's butt is sore from sitting on a bike. Now he just finished listening to Brachos 53a. They were talking about a perfume shop. Jonny is sad to report the website bible.ort.org seems to no longer be the Navigating the Bible II. It is now the Rosner school. Whatever. Earlier Jonny was falling asleep about 10 minutes ago so he knew it was time to blog. He started with a little blog inspiration: aiedel, styx, bec, and Erica not necessarily in that order. Jonny is far too lazy to blog roll them. He really doesn't remember the passwords or method to the system or it's competition blog roll something else. But he wanted to point out about the real player site above, what a damn shame. Once a week Jonny would try to listen to the chanting of the weekly parsha and that is the only site that has it. He sent an email to them in their Michigan office. Its getting cold here so there might not be any grilling tonight. Today Angelina informed us that is part two of the sewer line. Also today Jonny was picked up and taken all the way back to home. Well Chase bank is practically across the street. Then they had to wait to sign the papers. The fee was $25 for the loan. The bank paid $50 of the fee, for a total of $75 which gets rolled into the loan anyway for a direct withdrawal of $227 per month. The papers they signed said $229 but the were assured it was less because the fees got paid partially by the bank. This was because Angelina was promised there was no pre payment penalty on the 5 year loan and there is one of yes you guessed in $50. This sure is more complicated than trying to get Data Direct, .Net framework and the ROHL7 server all to work together. Jonny got them to upgrade from .net 1.0 to 2.0. Now he needs them to upgrade from Data Direct 2.0 to 3.0. Ahh the coffee is starting to have an effect. Fortunately Angelina returned that stuff to Circuit City today what an efficient wife. This morning Jonny was late because the TV had no sound. No clue yet if it is still broken. Today was Wednesday so part three of the three part roast beef sandwich trilogy was consumed an hour ago. Oops did you know that sandwich only has one h not two? Things cost so much. Living near DQ Jonny was walking the dogs the other day. And for two reasons he never carries a wallet, no way to get ripped off if you don't have a wallet. And no way to have money buring a hole in your pocket. If you don't have it you can't spend it. Somehow he had both $5 and passed DQ at 9PM on a rainy Saturday night two weeks ago. He was told by one of his neighbors "get a doggy treat" so what. Dexter wouldn't share a dixie cup of white ice cream with Lucy. Jonny had no choice but to fork over $3.40 for a small oreo mint blizzard. Last night DQ was hopping by the way. So where is all this going. Today at the bank he had to pee really badly and had to wait for the loan papers. Angelina said what do you want coffee or something. He said all I want is a mint and to go to the bathroom. She said gave him a buck and directed him to Caribou Coffee across the street. Sure enough he j walked twenty feet from the corner, it is getting colder today. He walked in and paid $2.07 for a box of mints and then was directed to the men's room. Wow $3.40 for a blizzard on the opposite corner doesn't sound so bad. And just to make the story complete. Angelina ran there yesterday and bought a coffee and didn't drink it just to use the bathroom. He found it last night and remembered to drink it this morning. Yuck with cream and equal. She was too busy to drink it. Thank G-d she didn't throw it out. She might send Jesse to day care for $40 today. Wow 40 bucks who cares about $3.40 for a blizzard, whatever for Caribou coffee you don't drink so you can pee and $2.07 mints you buy eating up a whole $3.00. Hmm is this post getting too long? It sure is faster to read than to write. Better go check on Lea Thompson. She is trying to remote desktop for a presentation tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Past out

Today at work Jonny totally passed out listening to the parsha. He worked on a project and then got sleepy. So he slept, woke, worked, slept some more. It was a passed out moment for sure. Now at 3PM he is drinking his first cup of coffee. A week ago AT&T came out to install a service for Angelina. Prior to that on Monday they were supposed to install a dish. But no dish for you. There are too many trees in tree town. In tree town the trees roots are choking Jonny's sewer line. Today Angelina is getting that repaired to the tune of $10,000. So she called and yelled at them something to the effect of "I have three kids and no TV". So they came out and pulled out the DSL line and put in a cable with DVR and internet wireless. They put a router in the basement. This girl was really clueless. She changed her mind 2 or 3 times about how to string the wires. She ended up leaving around midnight. That was when Jonny decided he needed to take last Wednesday off from work too. She even used Angelina's dryer since her clothes got wet. And Angelina was screaming that Alberta ran the dryer and left her clothes in there. She claimed that the desktop computer had no network adapter. It has a hole for an ethernet. The network adapter is on the main board. The main board is made by some ridiculously impossible to track down company like mainboard, pc 100, pcillian, pcnet or sis. SIS stands for systamatic information systems company or something equally ridiculous. So Jonny never found the right driver or the right anything. The network adapter says code 10 this device is installed but will never work. Maybe the printer is in conflict with it. That is doubtful since the printer is on the parallel port. Would an external modem work? Hmm Jonny can't find it or some other miscellaneous USB wires. So there was a USB port behind the router. Jonny connected it directly to the PC and the PC complained it needed a driver. The cable girl hooked up the wireless to the laptop but didn't give them the password. It connects though. In the meantime Jonny was able to get free wireless from somewhere else in the neighborhood, but this is legitimate. The last time he did that was some SSID like 8 double D, this one was containing a more meaningful name like Motorolla. Hmmm. In the meantime, Jonny took the HP Deskjet series 1300 out of storage. It came with the laptop as a promotion. It takes color too. Well it works like nothing, it doesn't work well at all. Sometimes it prints and sometimes it doesn't. And it has all the drivers. So Jonny copied a file from the notebook Compaq Presario 500 series to a USB and copied it to the desktop of no brand name. He went to Circuit City last night and got a USB enabled wireless connector. Then he got a piece of Kingston memory for the Compaq. Out the door he went $83 lighter off his VISA. Angelina returned it all today. He came home and finished off his Bicardi rum on ice and discovered with a take your pick: scissors, knife or file could make the memory stick. (Pun). So he broke the clips on the Compaq. After extensive testing he concluded, Angelina or Jonny will take this back to the store. After liqour had been imbimbed he went to the router. The signal strength on the SSID 2187WIRE or 2WIRE187 was 100%. Of course it was about 10 inches away from the router. Jonny didn't know the password. Ahh he just finished his coffee. The desktop won't shut down either. What a fricking pain in the neck. So he finally got Angelina to admit she didn't know the WPA network id, or in layman terms the password to go with the wireless. Duhh. So she thought it was her favorite restaurant. Hmmm probably not. So finally at 10:30 at night Jonny talks to a live person on AT&T. The guy says the password is on the back of the router. Just like the one that was 1/4 of the size that Angelina mailed back to the company when they no longer were letting her use DSL because the dish package and long distance and phone that she set up for 1.5 hours on the phone three weeks ago was null and void. Because of the trees that beautiful Monday morning, cold and almost spring in Michigan last week, when Jesse refused to go to school. That was reason #2 for Jonny taking last Wednesday off in addition to Friday for the closing, Monday and Tuesday. Not getting the keys until 3.25 hours after the closing was the #1 reason back on Friday March 28. The capper was the AT&T lady not leaving until after midnight. The neighbors think Jonny is absolutely nuts. His maintenance men billed him for about 50 hours in a week's time since they moved in. They won't be back until after tomorrow when Jonny and Angelina close on a home equity loan. Another $10,000 coming. Fortunately the money for the sewer guys is already available. This is because it was rolled into the home sale loan. Unfortunately the next $10,000 coming tomorrow is coming at 13% instead of a nice 6%. But Angelina is gonna refinance and pay that off in about 6 months anyway. The AT&T help desk people were absolutely clueless. The funnest part for Jonny was swearing at the automated voice prompter. If you have a problem say problem. Jonny said "Yes I got ***** problem with my ***** internet connection". As you can guess simply saying problem was all that was needed. Angelina thought that was quite cute. The password and network id's on the back of the router didn't work. Amazingly enough the help desk guy said prior to saying thank you for using AT&T to try 2wire dot com. He "had no idea if that would work". But it did. Jonny used the lap top to download a driver for the USB hub connector. He installed the driver on the desktop with no name and plugged it in via USB in the back where there are four ports. No password required. In the LAN just like that. Next he downloaded Angelina's emails 288 of them to Mozilla Thunderbird. He browsed the internet trying to agonize over the Compaq notebook memory. He resigned to shower and bed before 2AM. Jonny was told by Angelina he did sleep from 1:15 to 7:00 so it wasn't really that bad. Today he went to get his last visit for the flu study. He also met with Rob and Rob said he is doing a fine job. Rob gave him an iron gate 4GB USB to use while in the department. He also said come back in May or June for your raise that will take effect in September. So Jonny will get a COLA around 12 months after starting just like everyone else, provided of course management approves. Thanks for listening to this story.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Bike Ride

Yeah today Jonny rode his bike to work to Hollywood. It is only 2 miles. He was out of breath when he got there. Right now he is running a query in Access and it is taking forever. There he just modified it and now it might be quicker. Nope that seemed to break it. Now he is putting it back and hopefully it still runs only just as slow as before. Over the weekend Jonny walked the dogs several times. He has a new 1 mile route. First he goes a few houses down his street East towards Packard. Then South on Packard two blocks. First he passes South Avenue. Don't be fooled South Avenue is one block long. It backs up to Jonny's street. Their backyards are his backyards. In between is a bunch of business but then street veer together. One business is a fish store. Another is a auto repair. On the other side of South is another auto repair called Lou's Transmission. There is Oz music store and BTB burrito. Next is another dead end street called Coler Street. He walks down that street one block. At the end is a fence with an overlapped fence allowing one to walk in an s shaped path into an apartment complex called Wisteria. He walks through the complex for the equivalent of three blocks. These aren't the kind of apartment complexes you would find in Brooklyn like Starret City. No this is a typical suburb apartment complex with carports, tow away zones, garbage dumpsters and riff raff of various levels. There is always a super market within walking distance for the extremely poor. Finally he passes into an Ann Arbor park. This is a small one with an opening and a sign and trashcan specifically set aside for dog waste. There is a play ground, a back stop and grass. There is also a sand box where you can sit on a scooping toy and pretend you are working in construction. Next there is a fine gravel path. This is almost sand and it is gray. Next a block later is Stadium. Jonny walks down Stadium so he won't have to stop and talk to his neighbors. Angelina is waiting for him to get back to work on the unpacking, it is Sunday morning. Three blocks later he hits the gas station at the corner of Packard and Stadium. There is another on the other side of Packard. There is a Caribou coffee house on the other side of Stadium. Across the stree the coffee drinkers can see the spectacle. Instead of avoiding talking to 20 houses occupants on his own street he has been plagued with this new obstacle. An extremely old lady is walking the three houses to the gas station to get smokes probably. She walks about an inch an hour. She is wearing a house coat hobbled over in pajamas. Jonny doesn't want the dogs to bite her but he also doesn't want to run into the street, Stadium is very fast. There is a lull in the traffic he juts into the street. Lucy wakes up from a trance and barks half-heartedly at the old lady. He cuts through the gas station. Across the street he sees Dairy Queen on Packard. Next he turns right, full-circle he has come home again.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Weird dreams

Jonny and family have succesfully moved into their new house. Jesse and Lorraine walked to school with Jonny on the days he had vacation. Today Jonny is in the middle of trying to get sybase to calculate ages. Hotel California prints out a label for patients with their DOB and incorrect age. Ooops.

Last night Jonny had the strangest dream. He went on vacation and read a book. He started the book a couple of vacations ago and it was about that hotel he stayed at. Later a movie was made based on the book. The shooting for the movie was at that hotel, since it played a part in the setting of the book. He and his family were going back to that hotel and they were interested in seeing the making of the movie, be in the movie, or watch the movie. Jonny thought it ironic because he was there at that hotel the day he started reading the book a year ago. Then when they had been checked for a few hours they were told they were invited to a screening. Earlier in the day Jonny had asked around and the hotel staff said the movie was delayed because the management was "hot dogging." Angelina wasn't interested in the movie because it was $60 a person and the kids wouldn't like the food. It was vegetarian too. And it wasn't the final version it was the director's cut that would later get edited, or if the movie was terrible never get shown.

Today Jonny listened to the parsha and now he is listening to the drash of it.
 
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