Sunday

The dentist appointment resulted in a nice new crown on my cracked tooth. It was a partial crown, but it does cover the majority of the top of the tooth. Was pretty sore the first day. It still is sore today, its the same pain I had before they did anything where it hurts when I chew on that side of my mouth. Hopefully that pain goes away because so far its no improvement over how it was before the crown.

Of course, my dental insurance doesn't cover crowns, only cleanings, x-rays, and fillings. So I had to pay full price for the work, whatever that ends up being. This sure has been a horrible last few months for unexpected expenses and I really don't foresee it getting better for a long time. Maybe a giant bag of money will fall out of an airplane flying over my house and land in my backyard.

I suppose I could get into part-time diamond robbery. It sure looks like fun from the movies I've seen.

I'm a king now!

I just got back from the dentist where I had a crown put in on one of my molars. It had cracked in a couple places so he had to drill out the filling and prep it to be crowned. It was actually a pretty cool procedure once all of the barbaric drilling was done. He took some pictures of the tooth with this instrument that turned it into a 3D model of my tooth. From there he was able to sculpt out the crown which in turn got sent to an automated milling machine.

In about 20 minutes we had a perfect crown, he got it put in and glued down or whatever they do to secure the thing, and I was good to go. It was a 2 hour procedure and was pain free, just some discomfort at times. When I got home, it looks like a perfect tooth. Its kind of weird not seeing the silver filling there anymore that I've had for something like 15 years.

Cheers

Anna and I have inherited Grandma and Grandpa Harvey's bar glass collection. They are very nice glasses and quite the assortment. We spent a little while cleaning them all and figuring out the perfect way to display them. We like how they look and they add some sparkle to the room. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Spring?

Anna and I finally got to go out Geocaching on Sunday. It was an absolutely beautiful day to get out and go hunting. A quick recap for those that don't know what Geocaching is:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value.


We set out with GPS, cell phones, and our Geocaching bag which currently contains a small first aid kit, baby wipes for cleanup, hand sanitizer, a towel, spare batteries, and trinkets to put into the geocaches that we find. The first one on the list was very close to our house and we got to the area that the GPS wanted us to go to. But then after lots and lots of searching, we did not find it.

We moved on to the next on our list which was supposed to be a multi-stage cache. The posted coordinates contain not the geocache itself, but a clue or the actual location of the end point. It led us to downtown Mankato but we came up empty handed again. It seemed to want us to go into an abandoned building, which we know isn't right because these things are always on public property. We were disappointed when we could not figure it out so again, we moved on.

We drove over the river to North Mankato to a nice park. We quickly found the area the cache was supposed to be and had some ideas of where it was. We were not finding it at first, then Anna had an "ah-ha!" moment and found it! Since readers of this may want to go find it, I will not give away any details other than it was an extremely clever find.

The final stop on our list brought us to Hiniker Pond in North Mankato. We headed off in the direction the GPS was pointing us, but after awhile I got confused that we'd walked a couple hundred feet and the GPS didn't appear to have realized this. I then realized that I had the wrong thing punched into the unit, I punched in the correct coordinates and realized that our destination was 60 feet straight ahead. As we were approaching, I got a low battery warning and hoped we would find it in time before the batteries died.

Once again, Anna quickly found it and we wrapped up our day. 2 found, 2 not found. Not too bad for the first outing of the season. We can't wait to do more!

Oh, you're still here? I'm not.

Lets see, whats new in my life?

Our basement flooded due to something horrible happening to our water heater. We were in the basement on Sunday, noticed nothing bad. Tuesday morning, right before I left for work, I went down there to scoop the cat's litter box and quickly realized that my socks had become wet. I looked around and saw that the carpet was completely soaked and in many places there was about an inch of standing water.

Needless to say, I got that horrible panicky sinking-feeling. I went back upstairs to the bedroom to remove my wet socks and change into some shorts so my pants cuffs wouldn't get soaked from the water. I let Anna know of my discovery and we both went back to the basement to inspect everything. The utility half of the basement which covers 2 rooms was all wet. It took us a little bit to figure out that it had come from the water heater. I noticed that the water on the carpet was warm near the water heater and we saw some drips coming off the bottom.

We also saw evidence of water that had come from the top of the unit as well. We tried towelling up some of the standing water near the washing machine and quickly realized that it was an act of futility. I got through to my insurance company for advice and they recommended a company they have worked with before that could help us. I got them on the line and they were out within a few hours to inspect the situation.

They brought their equipment in to suck up the standing water and a lot of it from the carpet. They then set up 2 giant industrial dehumidifiers and something like 9 giant fans to dry everything out. They said with the amount of amperage all the equipment requires, it is maxing out our house's electrical system. Ideally, they said they would have preferred to put in a couple more fans to help dry everything, but had to make due.

That was all on Tuesday. Today is Friday, and today they removed 4 of the fans and we should be good to go tomorrow for the rest of the equipment to be removed. We also had to have a new water heater installed on Tuesday which went great. I called my dad to get a recommendation on a plumber and he referred me to a guy he'd done business with several times in the past. Real nice guy and we were very pleased with his work.

The thing that frustrated me the most about the whole ordeal is about a month ago when we got our tax refund, we made a very large payment on a couple of our credit cards. Being how this event that happened in my basement was expensive, I didn't exactly have the necessary funds in my bank account so I had to charge it all to my credit card. It was almost exactly the amount we had paid off just a month ago.

Just my luck, Murphy's Law, that's how it goes, ain't that the shits, could be worse, at least you have your health, happens to all homeowners, and that's life. They are all true statements but damn if I wasn't quite upset at having our debt progress wiped out by a faulty water heater. At least I helped out the local economy in my own little way.

Im home

Yep, I'm home. Its so good to finally be back, felt like I was away for a long time. I'm worn out and looking forward to a couple days off. I learned quite a bit on my trip and it was some pretty cool stuff. I learned a lot about HDTVs and color theory. But right now my brain is kind of a mush ball, so I'm going to bed.

Training, Day 3

I forgot to mention that we did get the hotel snafu corrected. I sent an email to my contact at corporate who took care of it almost instantly.

We had day 2 of classroom training and hands on experience with the calibration equipment. Pretty intense stuff, we prepped for our exam which made me realize I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. We got some good experience using the equipment so that helped quite a bit.

Tomorrow we attend a short meeting with other installers that are already certified, then we will go on ridealongs to see more work done out in the field. Will be nice getting out of the classroom, the day goes much faster.

I'm pretty worn out tonight. My roommate and I needed a change of scenery so we headed out to the Mall of America to bum around and have dinner. We discovered that we both love Famous Dave's so there we went. Ate way more food than any one person should consume in one sitting. And I couldn't even finish my plate it was so much food. Beef brisket, pork ribs, cole slaw, country fries, corn on the cob, and cornbread muffin. Delicious!

Training, day 2

Today was the first day of classroom training for our ISF Certification for HDTV calibrations. I have learned a ridiculous amount to information today and got to play with some very cool and VERY expensive calibration equipment, test pattern generators, and light meters. At the end of the training, I will be given a large equipment box similar to the ones you see in movies that transport a nuclear warhead. I'm pretty sure the cost is similar between the warhead and the calibration equipment.

I'm very please that they are providing lunch for us over the 2 days of classroom training so we don't have to leave and pay for lunch on our own, me being the cheap bastard that I am.

I'm still up here for 3 more days and I really can't wait to come back home. I already miss my wife, house, bed, comfy chair and couch.

Day 1

Today was my first day of the HDTV calibration training. They had me and my roommate go along with one of the guys that is already certified to do calibrations. we got to see him do calibrations for 4 different customers' TVs. We learned quite a bit and I was surprised at how much of a difference it made for their TVs. The detail and color was quite a bit better and the picture just looked better overall.

I had met my assigned roommate before at a prior training and we're getting along pretty well, so that's great. Our hotel reservations are a bit screwed up, my company told us we had reservations through Thursday, but the hotel has them only through Tuesday. We're going to have to figure this out or there's going to be some bad stuff going down.