I was at a friend’s photographing his back-yard wedding… Melisa had just left to pick up the boys from our other friend’s house (who watched the boys so Melisa could come to the wedding too…) Anyhow, Melisa was at the friend’s house when she gets a call from our home number… (I’m still at the wedding…) It was a police officer telling her that our house was broken in to.  After Melisa couldn’t get a hold of me (phone on silent, phtographing & DJ-ing at this point) she drove back to the wedding to tell me what she knew.

We race back to our house & talk with a police officer about what he found.

Apparently our next-door neighbors were sitting on their front porch & saw a car pull up into our driveway.  2 hispanic men got out of the car & ran up to the side door, while 2 more hispanic men stayed in the car.  It seems that they pretty much went straight toward the master bedroom & went digging through the jewelry box.  About then, the driver must have noticed our neighbor because he started honking his horn & the 2 guys came back to the car & they took off.

It seems like they made off with 2 pairs of ear rings (1 pair diamond, 1 pair CZ) and Melisa’s wallet. It doesn’t look like anything else was even gone through, I don’t think they had enough time. Melisa’s wallet was on the bed because she took out her ID & debit card to carry it tonight in her smaller purse, so they did get credit cards & our check book.

We canceled cards, put a hold on our checking account, got credit reports, and fixed the door jam to the side door.

I then talked to our neighbors to see what they knew.  It was a 4 door burgandy sedan much like an older model Mitsubishi Mirage.

Justin & Brooke came over when Melisa called them to tell them what happened. When they left to go home. Justin noticed a car very similar to the one described, so he stopped & got the address & license plate number & called me up.  I tucked Melisa in & drive by to get a picture of the car (to see if the neighbors recognized it) and then proceeded to drive around the streets around our neighborhood to keep an eye out.

I found a couple of cars that matched the descirption, but not much else. I made note of where they were & I will be keeping an eye on those places.

Here’s a video I did tonight… (Just because…)

I just got done writing up a letter that I’m going to pass out to every house on this stretch of our street. I basically tell them what happened, and then ask them if they are interested in a block-part of sorts so we can get to know our neighbors & maybe do a little “neighborhood watch” type deal.

We’ll see if we get any type of response. I plan on passing them out tomorrow or the next day.

No… Not Greasy Monkey, just greasemonkey.

My Truck’s inspection sticker expired in February… (oops).  In early March, my check engine light came on the week I was going to go get the inspection taken care of (oh great!). The error codes pointed to a sensor in the air intake (Mass air flow sensor), and there was a chance that it might just need a good cleaning. So I bought the proper cleaning spray and went to work pulling things apart, cleaning then, and putting it all back together.

No dice. The Check Engine light is still on.

If the check engine light is on, it’s an automatic “Fail” for the inspection… So what do I do? I learn that unplugging the battery’s negative terminal will reset the computer in the truck, so I do that. Now the check engine light is off! YEAH!

I drive to the inspection place the next day. FAIL. Apparently when you unplug the battery the vehicle’s computer needs to be driven through a “drive cycle” (apparently about 100 miles) to recalibrate the sensors & whatever else it keeps track of.  The Inspection report listeds half-a-dozen sensors as “Not Ready”, which put me in the FAIL catagory.

Ug. I was told to drive the truck 100-200 miles & come back within 2 weeks. (DOH… I barely drive 60 miles in a week.) So we drive the truck a little more than usual those 2 weeks. In the middle of all this, the check engine light comes back on… AHHH!

I get it diagnosed again (for free at AutoZone) & it’s the same sensor, in addition to the IAC valve (Idle Air Control). Needing to try to conserve our emergency stash, I decide I’m going to replace the parts myself lastnight.

It wasn’t too bad. I was able to swap out the Mass Air Flow Sensor in the AutoZone parking lot (so I could return the old one for the Core Charge). Then I went home & looked up online so I could find out where the IAC valve was even located & what would need to be done to replace it. Luckily it was an easy process. Unfortunately, I had to disconnect the battery again. I guess I”m going to have to drive another 100-200 miles for the computer to reset before I can actually get the truck inspected. (Assuming that those 2 items were the only components causing the error codes in the first place).

It is actually kind of rewarding to be able to figure things out & work on them yourself.

I need to do this more often.

Looks like Dilbert is celebrating 20 years of never  aging… It’s always strange when you look at things from that perspective. You’ve gotten 20 years older, but all the while, Dilbert and his gang have been cruising along in their 30s?

Anyhow, here’s a link to an interview with Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) about, well, 20 years of Dilbert.

Just for this, I think I’m going to create a Dilbert costume for Halloween this year! (Of course, my ideas for halloween costumes end up grandiose, with little (if any) follow-thru. I’ve been planning for 3 years to make some cool strap-on stilts to go as a giant, but since I haven’t yet done so, who knows if I’ll actually be Dilbert-esque this Halloween. (But it’s fun to think about walking around with a flipped-up tie and an odd tapered head with hair the same color as my skin.)

Well, I build a desk last fall & it’s been sitting in our shed awaiting paint since then. I finally got around to painting it a couple weeks ago & I put the last layer of clear-coat on it this last weekend.

Last night, I wrangled it in the house & cleaned out enough space to get it in the office (which if you’ve been to our house, you know the cleaning out part was the hardest part of it all since out office is our unofficial junk room at the moment.)

When I re-hooked up the computer & all it’s peripherals, I also hooked up one of my old (and admittedly cheap & crappy) webcams. I decided it would be fun to put up a “current” shot ever now & then, so it’s over in the side-bar (if you’re Feeding my blog, you’d have to swing by to see). It’s nothing new, big, exciting, or even interesting, but it’s something I’ll update (hopefully) regularly.

Oh, I forgot to mention… Our poor point-&-shoot camera died… The last time I took some pics, it was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. but when I picked it up next, it opened the lense (like usual, but then it made a noise you should never hear from a camera. Kind of like a mix between an old man’s grumble and an old alarm clock buzzer. (Go ahead, try to simulate those noises, then picture that coming out of your little camera).

This camera has served us well. It’s a Canon Powershot SD550 & we’ve been using it for pics for 2 years, and really started doing a lot of videos on it (VGA resolution) over the last year. Most of the pictures on this site since 2007 were taken on this camera & I’m starting to feel a little withdrawl. It’s not so easy to quickly snap a picture or catch a quick clip of the boys in action now.

I’ll try to see if we can get it fixed, but with the cost of cameras these days, I’m not very hopeful that it can be fixed for less than the cost of a new one. (Oh darn, I might have to buy a new camera…) Money’s a little tight these days, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. We’ll see.

I know I’m always complaining about my job… For those of you who’ve heard my moaning & groaning, I appologize. I actually have a job. I have no good reason to complain.

In any case, our company actually won a fairly sizeable bid to build over 4000 structures for Oncor to deliver power from the wind farms out in West Texas back into the power grid. This may not seem like big news, but it’s cool to be a part of a company that’s not fighting to keep our heads above water these days. Anyhow, Oncor held a press conference yesterday with our company President (my boss) and it’s kind of cool to see our company name on TV & I even heard a quick blurb about it this morning on my alarm radio (on KLTY).

Here’s a cut-down version of the press conference.