tonyandkirsten.org

We’ve had the Ody about a month now, and I have been fortunate enough to always be able to find a place to park where I could pull in driving forward fairly near our house. The Ody is great overall, but it has the turning radius the size of a small house. A three point turn on a normal street seems like an impossibility. I could barely parallel park the Volvo, so parallel parking the Ody has seemed like an impossible task.

Tony is gone to a men’s retreat tonight, and so the kids and I went to have dinner and play with some friends at their house. When we got back, there were no obviously large enough places to park within a half a block. I circled a couple times and made a half-hearted try and a couple spots, but nothing looked big enough for me with my non-existent parallel parking skills.

Then I had a brilliant idea — I would just pull the car around and park in the off street parking behind our house! We usually never park there, because it involves going through three locked doors, while coming the the front involves one locked door. It isn’t extremely well lit back there, so I didn’t notice how high the snow really was…until I drove into it and promptly got stuck.

You would think I would know better since I have lived in a snowy climate my whole life, but I just wasn’t thinking very clearly at 8:30pm when I just really wanted to get inside and get my kids to bed. I rocked the car back and forth a little bit, but the tires mostly only spun. I knew that I probably needed a shovel and maybe some ice melting salt to get the car unstuck…but I also had two tired kids in the car that needed to get inside… and I didn’t think I could shovel it out very fast by myself.

The day was saved by our downstairs neighbor. We all went inside and knocked on Michael’s door downstairs. He was home, and came out to shovel the car out while I brought the kids inside, and he even pulled it around front and got it into one of the parking spots that I gave up on. I felt pretty silly making such a dumb winter driving mistake, but at least the problem was solved and the kids got to bed before it got too late. Maybe I need to find a way to practice my parallel parking skills in the Ody (or be willing to park way down the block!)

A recent trip to the winter clearance section at Old Navy netted us the following:

That’s 11 items we purchased for a total of about $26! Five shirts are for Erik to wear later this winter (since he has almost outgrown his current crop of long-sleeve shirts), and the other six items are for Madeline.  It’s too bad we used up the kids’ patience looking for clothes for them — it would have been fun to find some bargain clothes for us, too!

Just in case you’ve seen the news and are wondering, we are indeed okay. I was in my office working at the time of the collapse. Though my office is very close to the bridge that collapsed, I did not even hear about the tragedy until about an hour after it happened.

I am now home, safe and sound.

If you don’t know what happened, the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississppi river collapsed during rush hour today. Many are injured, and everyone is trying to make sure their loved ones are alive and well.

The story is on every major news outlet, if you’re curious.

Here’s a picture (click on “Bird’s eye view”) of the bridge that collapsed.

To get the background for this story, we have to turn the clock back almost seven years.  It was the fall of 2000 and I was living in the famous “Deca Femme” house on Knapp Street.  While hosting a banana split party to celebrate a Lifegroup multiplication, I had a can of Reddi Whip tragically and catastrophically lose its nozzle, rendering it useless after the first banana split was made.

Heartbroken at the loss of my Reddi Whip, I called the Reddi Whip hotline listed on the back of the can.  An extremely enthusiastic man answered the phone saying, “Reddi Whip Hotline, how may I help you?”  After explaining my predicament him, he offered his best attempt at a sincere apology and said he would put a coupon for a free can of Reddi Whip in the mail.

Why is this story of any relevance?  Well, until today I still had the coupon.  They made the mistake of sending me a coupon with no expiration date.  I have bought many cans of whipped cream in the past seven years (most of them in past few years since we have been frequently using our espresso machine to make home made lattes).   Most of them have been generic rather than the more-pricey Reddi Whip.  But somehow I was never able to bring myself to use it.   I just brought it with me each place I moved, careful to never lose this precious coupon worth “up to $2.75.”

Sometime since we moved to MN, I was pondering out loud to Tony why I had never used the coupon.  The best way I could sum it up was to say that I was saving it in case of a Whipped Cream Emergency.  Maybe I had a fear that some mythical day might come when I could not afford a $1.29 generic can of my favorite latte topping, yet would need one desperately.

Today we tossed out yet another empty can of Aldi brand whipped cream. The one thing I had to get at the store today was green onions, and Aldi doesn’t carry those.  For whatever reason, I decided to take the plunge.  I didn’t hold out.  I used the coupon.

Unfortunately, this cause me to be one of those annoying people that holds up the line.  The cashier tried multiple times with no luck to scan the bar code on the coupon.  I was very worried that they might accuse me of using a fake coupon, so I nonchalantly mention the coupon is kind of old so maybe that would be causing the problems.  (No need to mention exactly HOW old, right?).  Finally, the cashier calls a manager-type over to manually enter the coupon.

And now, I have a yummy can of Reddi Whip Extra Creamy to enjoy!

We try and arrange our schedules so that I can get out one night a week for some “alone time” away from the kids.  I usually use a majority of this time to get some extended time with God, and sometimes I also do a little shopping or whatever else I might be in the mood for.  My usual routine is to go get coffee somewhere, and then spend time reading my Bible, praying and then sometimes reading something else for fun.

Tonight I went to a Caribou Coffee, since I had a gift card to use from there. I prefer the local shops, but you can’t beat having a free drink.

I hadn’t been thinking at all about what I wanted while I was traveling there, so I needed a few moments to think about it once I arrived.  Here’s an approximation of what happened next:

Clerk (after I had been standing there about two seconds, obviously looking at the menu board): What can I get for you?

Me: I’m still deciding

Clerk: Oh, are you in the mood for something hot or cold?

Me: Hot

Clerk: Okay, do you want something sweet or not-so-sweet?

Me: I really am familiar with the drinks, I just need a moment to think about it.

Clerk: Do you like things that are chocolaty or fruity or…

Me (interrupting): It doesn’t help me make decisions when you are talking to me the whole time.  Fine, I’ll just have a Caramel High Rise.

Clerk: Wait, what else were you considering?

Me (annoyed): A White Raspberry Mocha. Why?

Clerk: Well, I think you should get that instead.

Me: Is there a reason you are trying to get me to change my mind?

Clerk: It’s probably what you really want. Most people’s snap decisions are really their second or third choice.

Me: Okay, fine. I’ll see if you are right.  Make it a medium, with whip.

Clerk: Are you sure you don’t want it iced?

Me: No (again, annoyed voice — Iam thinking how I already said I wanted a hot drink).

Clerk: Have you ever tried the Lite White Berry version of that drink?

Me: Yes, but just do the regular version tonight, okay?

Clerk: Okay, and did you want whip on that?

Me: Yes!  (Again, I’m thinking about how I already told him this)

We then finally finished out the transaction and my drink was quickly made by the barista and was waiting for me at the end of the counter.  This experience was so humorous it almost could have been something out of a Monty Python sketch or something.  I wonder if this clerk is always like this.

I was so flustered and annoyed by the whole experience that I forgot to order it decaf, which I usually do since I don’t need that much caffeine in the evening.  The result is that it’s almost midnight, I haven’t slept at all, and Erik will be awake again sometime in the next one to three hours for a feeding.  I better get to bed and try and make myself sleep before I have a really regrettable morning tomorrow!

A little background would probably be helpful on this one. The room we stayed in at Abbott Northwestern was really warm, had no Internet access for patients, and cell phones were not allowed. In between visitors, these ideas were ones that crossed my mind.

It’s worth noting that some of these activities are illegal or unethical — you shouldn’t do illegal or unethical things. It’s also worth noting that I only went through with a fraction of the ideas below.

• Figure out whether or not cell phones really do interfere with the infant security system (as posted).
• Find a way to really interfere with said infant security system.
• Notice that there is a Wi-Fi signal broadcast to your room, with the ESSID: 2WIRE450.
• Upon noticing that the Wi-Fi is WEP protected, ask your nurse for the password.
• When told that the password is only for hospital staff, politely thank the nurse for the information and then ask another staff member until you find one that doesn’t realize that guests aren’t supposed to have the password.
• Impersonate a technician of the “Two Wire” wireless company and ask hospital staff for their site’s password.
• Knowing the WEP is pretty weak security, look up the how-to for running aircrack-ng to crack the WEP key.
• Go through the how-to on cracking WEP.
• After realizing that your Wi-Fi card’s driver needs to be patched to perform and injection attack, notice that there is already a PC in the room, plugged into ethernet.
• Attempt to login to the PC using common passwords.
• Try plugging into the other ethernet jack in the room.
• After finding the second jack dead, decide whether or not a rainbow tables-based attack on the PC will be detected or not.
• Wait until a nurse shuts down said PC for the night, and then plug into that jack with your laptop.
• Post pictures to your website with this ethernet connection.
• Find a way to remove your identification bracelet without breaking the band.
• Find another couple with a good sense of humor.
• Convince said couple to swap bands with you after each shift change, just to keep the staff on their toes.
• Play staff bingo! Just draw up a bingo board with random names in the squares. After meeting a staff member, cross of their name. Normal bingo rules apply. For an easy version, use only female names; to increase the difficulty of the game, add some male names to the mix as desired.
• Play security staff bingo. The rules are similar to staff bingo, but you are restricted to only using the names of security staff that visit your room.
• Play advanced security staff bingo. This game is similar to security staff bingo, but you can’t mark a square unless the security staff member in question escorts you to their office for a conversation about expectations for guests of the hospital.
• Blog.

I’m really liking more and more the area of Minneapolis we have ended up in. On Wednesday, the three of us went to the near by commerical area where there is a Target, Cub Foods, Rainbow Foods, a Savers (thrift store), and many small shops and restaurants. There’s also a library branch in this area, though it is closed for rennovations until March. This area is only a mile or so away, so it’s a shorter drive than Target was for me in Ames. We did some grocery shopping that day at Cub (I can already tell I am going to miss Fareway!) — It was really cool to see the diversity of people who live in the area. There were people of many ethnicities, and people speaking a number of different languages other than English. This is the first time in my life I’ve lived in a really diverse area.

Today Madeline and I went on an adventure to Wal Mart. I had collected a list of a lot of miscellaneous items we needed, and I had a gift card to spend, so it seemed worth the six mile or so drive to the nearest Wal Mart location. On the way I noted that we are about a six minute drive from a decent sized lake with a park around it (Lake Nokomis) and only a little over 10 minutes away from Ikea (oh, and the Mall of America). The airport is also close by, so if you ever want to fly out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, you can come stay at our house before your flight.

Wal Mart itself was another story. It was both arranged differently and seemed much more disorganized than our Ames Wal Mart, so it took me forever to find what I was looking for. One item (some adhesive strips that come off the wall with no damage to item or wall) turned out to be impossible to find at Wal Mart. Two clerks both thought it existed somewhere in the store, but they didn’t really know where, didn’t really want to take the time to help me find it and gave unhelpful suggestions on where I might go to look. Wandering around and even looking with other similar products produced no results. After church at the Urban Refuge tonight Madeline and I ventured to a nearby Menards to find those same strips. It took a total of four clerks to find it, but at least one passed us off to the next, and then to the next…so it seemed like they were really trying to help, and we did eventually find them.

Our postal carrier was nice enough to ring the doorbell and introduce himself today, and to point out that our mail would not come in the little slot directly in the house (sadness!) due to its small size, but that instead we had a mailbox around the side of the house. I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to figure that out if he wouldn’t have told me! He also gave me a little card with the address and hours of our nearest post office — also handy, because it is maybe half a mile away, while the nearest post office I had found (and already visited twice) was a little further away.

On a related topic, I’m finding that living in a really old house has lots of interesting quirks. When we walked through it, we noticed mostly surface beauty — wonderful wood floors and other woodwork, built in buffet, fireplace, etc. You never notice the small things until you actually live in a house. On the plus side for me, the shower head must have been installed by someone short, because it is at a perfect level just above my head. Unfortunately for Tony, he has to duck several inches to get his head under it! The kitchen has lots of cupboard space, but it is arranged in interesting ways. The kitchen must have been done either by someone tall or someone who had lots of things they didn’t plan to use very often, becuase I think I will need a step stool to reach at least 1/3 of the cupboard space! Another funny thing about this house is the outlets. For one thing, there aren’t a very large number of them (to be expected in an old house, I guess). But what is really funny are all the types of outlets. There are a couple different designs of pretty normal-looking three prong outlets, a number of two-prong outlets (including one place with three, two-prong spots), and also some really weird looking outlets, like one that is three prong, but rather round. I’ve also learned that beautiful wood floors are also very cold, so I’ll be getting a lot of use out of my slippers (which I almost never wore in Ames).

Those are my random thoughts for today…Thanks to everyone in Ames who came over to help Tony out with the house. Tony told me he had lots of help…I don’t think he could have gotten anywhere close to getting it done in time with out all of you!

I got a really weird phone call this afternoon.  A guy calls and says something along the lines of, “Hey, do you know one of your neighbors named Alexander?”  I say no, thinking it has to be some kind of wrong number.  Then the guy says, “Well, he lives at 3415 or 3414.  Sometimes he goes by Alex.  Are you sure you don’t know him?”  I said I didn’t — I know some of our neighbors but I don’t know anyone from either of those two houses.  Even if I did, I’m not sure I would have told this guy without a great deal more explanation as to what he wanted and why.

So, after I hung up I was even more weirded out that this guy found my phone number, with just knowing I lived down the street.  It quickly occured to me he probably was using one of those reverse phone/address searches on the web to track down someone who knows this guy Alexander for whatever reason.  Out of curiosity I decided to try one myself and see if our info came up.  I tried a couple of them, and it didn’t.  After again being weirded out for a few seconds, I remembered that property owner information is freely available on the county assessor website.  It would then be a trivial matter to look up the phone number from there.  I’m not sure why I did this, but I decided to look up our info on the online whitepages.  Much to my surprise, a search for our names didn’t bring up anything, even on Qwest’s own search page.

Thinking it might be some weird online error, I go to check the phone book.  Again, I am not sure why I did this, other than it seemed to make sense at the moment.  Much to my surprise, we were not listed in any of the three phone books I found in our house.  Um, don’t you have to pay for an unlisted number? But, being determined to solve this problem, I decided to do one other thing — I looked up myself under my maiden name.

Much to my surprise, there I was.  “Kirsten Skelly” — Listed with my current addy and phone number.  As far as I can tell, it must have been like that for the last four years.  You never look yourself up in the phone book, and I guess no one else ever tried to look us up either (or if they did, they must have assumed we didn’t have a home phone or it was unlisted).  I guess no one we know has caller ID either (or actually looks at if they have it), because it would have showed up wrong there too.

Next step, I call Qwest and get it fixed.  The customer service rep I talked to said something along the lines of, “Huh.  I guess when they updated your name and added your husband four years ago they forgot to ask you about your directory listing.”  Now, in the past four years I have called Qwest numerous times about various issues including moving twice and changing or dealing with internet service problems numerous times.  And never did a customer service rep (who always tries to look at your current service and sell you other things) ask if I really wanted to have a different name on my directory listing than on my billing and the rest of my account info. Amazing!

So, here’s the rundown on the mysteries:

Solved:  Why I couldn’t be found under my current name in the online whitepages.

Probably Solved: Why I still get lots of junk mail under my maiden name.  I assume they were just using databases or lists derrived from the phone book.

Partially Unsolved:  How the guy looking for Alexander found our phone number.  However, since my correct and current address was listed in the phone book, i think there is a good chance he just had a better reverse phone/address search than I did.

Mostly Unsolved: How we could go for four years without knowing our directory listing was wrong! Amazing!

Totally Unsolved: Why the guy wanted to find Alexander. How strange!

We went to the ISU Surplus Sale today. If you haven’t had the pleasure of attending this sale yourself, picture it as sort of a weekly geek garage sale. This is where the university sells off old computer systems, old lab equipment, old furniture, and sometimes even old foodservice dishes and equipment.

They also sell off “lost and found” type items that are never claimed. You could get yourself a new (well, slightly used) winter coat for only $5! (So yes, there are defiitely non-geek items at this sale too).

Today, I saw one of these (tagged at a price of 25 cents, if I recall correctly):

Well, it wasn’t exactly that model, but pretty much the same concept. It was probably at least 25 years old and very possibly older.  Haven’t a clue what it is? Imagine putting a phone headset onto those cups and using it to send data from your computer!
This is what passed as a modem in the late 60s and 70s, until the Hayes modem was popularized starting around 1981 (that was a more “modern” modem you could actually plug into a phone line). These accoustic coupler modems went at the rip-roaring speed of 300 baud. That’s 300 compared to 56k (56,000) with the fastest dial-up modems today, which again are slow compared to broadband internet services.

I think part of what I found so amusing in seeing this at the surplus sale (other than wondering where this has been sitting for the past 20 to 25 years that it hadn’t been sold off already) was the tag on the item.  It didn’t say “modem” or even “old modem” or “antique modem.”  It said “Old School Modem.”

You can learn more (just as I did) about old school modems at Wikipedia.  (And yes, computer history is one of my many geeky interests. It’s fascinating!)

I don’t know why I am so excited about this, but I really am. Our household is doing radio listening surveys for seven days starting today. So, you probably have heard of the Nielson ratings that measure TV audience. Well, the radio equivalent is called the Arbitron ratings. We got randomly selected to participate. They told me on the phone that we represent something like 1000 households in Ames (I may be off on that, but it was a large number). My first thought was, “Yea! I get to make WOI-AM look really popular!” It made me wonder how many other public radio junkies like me were randomly selected, and if somehow I would actually overepresent WOI-AM since I listen so much. Not that I would mind if that happened–I really want for them to look and be popular. It probably works out somehow statistically.

These people with the Arbitron ratings are serious about what they do — they send something in the mail to warn you they are going to call you, they call you to ask if you want to do it, then they call to follow up to make sure you get the survey materials in the mail. They said they will call during the week to check and see how it is going. I bet they call afterwards to remind you to mail the books back.

How it works is each adult in the household gets a little book to fill out where we write down any radio listening for the day, whether we picked it or it was something we randomly heard in a business or at someone else’s house. We then mail them in at the end of the seven days. I was having no trouble remembering to fill it out each time I turned the radio on and off today, so hopefully my enthusiasm will continue through the week!