Janicek.com

Matt e-mailed this morning to let me know that he and Gabrielle (and the cats) are safe in Houston after having just moved into a house in New Orleans!

Hey Everybody!

Thanks so much for all your emails and phone calls over the last couple of days. It means the world to us to know you are all there. Here’s what we know.

As some of you know, we are in Houston at my Dad’s house. All the animals are fine, we are fine. Just worried about where all this will put us. The road in and out of the city are littered with trees and debris. The twin bridge that runs to the west bank (our version of the golden gate bridge) is gone. There is no clean running water, no electricity, lots of snakes and “swamp-things” running around the hood.

We spoke to our landlord last night for the first time. She is a head nurse in the ICU at the only remaing hospital. She let us know that except for a missing fence and a couple of broken windows the house is fine – no water damage that she could see. That was good news. The sad thing is, we dont know what it will be like to come home too. With a million homeless people, contaminated water, and no power, it could be like living in a Mad Max movie……and I’m no Mel Gibson!

Thanks again for all your help and concern. We will be alright. Just pray for those 20,000 in the Superdome! yikes!

-matt & gab

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Elise and I ran a few errands yesterday. We were listening to a Podcast on the iPod shuffle (very hard to do if you want to listen to a particular episode) when all of the sudden the tape adapter would fast forward and stop. It would play a few seconds of the Podcast and then stop as the adapter tried to fast forward. Eventually the tape deck in the truck started clicking, the tape adapter’s reels continued to spin in fast forward and there was no more Podcast.

Frustrated, Elise pressed the eject button. The tape adapter came out of the tape deck and the stereo switched to radio mode. In radio mode the stereo found itself in a perpetual state of seek, scanning every radio station but not stopping. We just watched as the channel numbers cycled over and over at a rapid speed.

I’m wondering if I should summon the scholarly minds of the Ford Forums.

In unrelated news: I couldn’t fall asleep last night. Elise fell asleep on the couch at 10:30. I woke her up and we both went to bed at 11:15 and I just layed there.

I layed there.

I layed there.

I rolled over.

Still haven’t yet fallen asleep I finally lean up and looked at the clock. 1:30 a.m.

I rolled over. I put my feet outside of the sheet and comforter. I layed on my side. I switch sides. I turned my head one way, then the other way. I rolled over. I meditated and thought about nothing. I just couldn’t fall asleep.

I didn’t want to get up and do anything in fear that I might overly stimulate my senses and make it that much harder to fall asleep.

So I just layed there for what seemed like forever.

I don’t know what time I finally fell asleep but I think it was somewhere near 10-minutes before my alarm sounded.

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On Saturday morning the winning bidder of the trusty Shadow auction and her son showed up to pick up the bike. We chatted for a while as I signed over the title. They’re great people and it’s good to know my bike is going to be ridden someone who will really enjoy it and take care of it.

I watched from the driveway as the Shadow made way to its new home. It was a sad morning indeed.

I didn’t have time to dwell on the loss or be reminiscent as I had a list of projects and chores to tend to. It was 10:30 in the morning and time to get up in the attic. A month ago I bought 100′ of speaker wire and swivel speaker mounts so I could put speakers out on the deck.

I climbed up into the attic, made my way to the opposite side of the house, fished through insulation to find the coax cable that goes down the living room wall and out behind the TV armoire. A new hole needed to be drilled through 4-inches of of wood to drop a string down the wall to pull up the speaker wire. I crawled back through the attic and into the garage to get my cordless drill and my spade bit. The drill tuckered out on me. My backup battery was dead.

Off to the local hardware store for a corded drill. The local hardware recently went out of business. Then it was off to the ol’ HoPot. I picked up a reliable corded drill and a 1-1/4 spade bit. I got home and it was up to the attic again. It was 1:30 at this point and probably 200-degrees in the attic. August + Texas + Attic = Hell. I sweated so much that it looked like I just got out of the shower.

It was so hot that I thought I was going to puke and pass out but was bound and determined to run the speaker wire. I was finishing up in the attic and making my way back toward the garage. I had a flashlight, extention cord and my new drill with the new spade bit attached. I lost my balance and had to take a large step so my foot would land on a rafter instead of falling through sheetrock. In doing so I stabbed the back of my calf with the spade bit. I heard it puncture my skin and I became light headed.

I installed the speaker mounts, installed the speakers, ran my wiring and now have music on the deck. And a Band Aid on my calf.

Elise had to go to work later that afternoon. I took some clothes to Goodwill, ran to the bank, had the oil changed in the truck, went to Bed Bath & Beyond for kitchen gadgets and then to Pep Boys for an air filter.

Christine worked for Elise that night so I went over to John’s place for a guys night in. John, Jack, Josh, a deep dish pizza from Mangia and a football.

I got home after midnight and Elise and I stayed up until after 3 a.m. talking our jobs. Man, we’re party animals.

We didn’t get out of bed until 10 this morning. I finally fixed the water softener that hadn’t worked in a month or so.

While at John’s last night we saw an ad for Furniture Row… no interest financing until 2010. So Elise and I went furniture shopping this afternoon. We didn’t find anything.

Next stop: the grocery store and finally home. For dinner I made a hot & crunchy fried trout with habanero garlic tartar and a late summer sauteed vegetable salad.

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I had heard a lot about Willie Nelson’s new “reggae” album recently. I passed it off as some overly-hyped thing that usually turns me off…

I don’t know how it came up but Elise and I started talking about Willie Nelson tonight as I was looking into a new flatbed scanner on eBay while sitting at the bar and while Elise was making a milkshake in the kitchen. I hit the iTunes Music Store and sampled Willie’s song: “I’m a Worried Man“. Elise and I, without prompting nor a head nod, immediately found ourselves in a groove. Elise was twisting and bobbing while blending her milkshake. I, at the iBook, stationed at the bar, was deeply and rastafarianly bouncing and turning my head in two directions to the rhythm. We could have easily been the b-roll for the opening credits of The Cosby Show. It was hot.

So, I bought the song, “I’m a Worried Man” for $.99 from the iTunes Music Store. I played the song 4 more times on the stereo in the living room via AirTunes. The bass was awesome… the hardwood floors were rumbling.

I revistited the iTMS and sampled more of the Countryman album. All of the songs are fun. It really is a great album. I haven’t listened to the lyrics yet – but it’s one of those albums that you just crank up while driving to New Braunfels in route to a killer toobin’ adventure. It doesn’t matter so much the lyrics, it’s just a fun album from a head bobbin’, neck jigglin’, Cosby Show intro perspective.

So I decided to buy the entire album (or “record“). Since I had already purchased the “I’m a Worried Man” song, I was asked if I was sure that I wanted to buy the entire album. What was I to do? 12 songs on the album. I had already purchased one song for $.99. There were 11 songs left to purchase. $9.99 for the entire album or pick the other 11 songs that I hadn’t yet purchased for a total of, yes, you guessed correctly, $9.99.

Could I return the one song? Instead of omitting one song, I purchased the entire album. So the music industry got $.99 out of Joe Consumer. It was for a Willie Nelson album… and a pretty cool album for that matter. I have some awesome en-route to a toobin’ music for next year!

On a personal note: my family moved to Cat Spring (population 17 and a coon dog) when I was 11-years-old. My parents had donkeys (Domesticated Ass would be great name for a band) for agricultural write-off purposes as they had a house on 35 acres of property in the country. Our donkeys received awesome names like: Dolly Parton, Earl Campbell, Kathy Whitmeyer, Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson. I have a deep-rooted and personal relationship with very important people. And donkeys.

So now I’m groovin’ to reggae music by Willie Nelson. All I see in my head is a donkey hanging out with Ricky Williams and they’re both buying music from the iTunes Music Store.

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I got home from work at 8 o’clock tonight and quickly mowed the lawn, edged and blew the grass clippings off of the driveway and sidewalks. I walked into the garage and stopped to look at the trusty Shadow. There it was… shiny black paint and chrome. I put the key in the ignition and the garage was illuminated by the headlight. I pulled the choke, turned the key and my faithful steed came to life.

I wanted to crank it up just to make sure everything sounded okay before Charles and his family come to pick it up tomorrow morning. Everything sounded great. I listened and stared. My old friend turned, looked at me and said, “Come on, let’s go. One last time.”

I obliged.

I saddled up and reved the throttle so the straight pipes could echo in the garage.

The trusty Shadow and I went on a peaceful ride. I wanted it to be one to remember. We took Slaughter up to MoPac and headed south. We curved onto Hwy 45 and took in the baby blue glow of the hill country sky as dusk began to pass. I held back a tear or two as it set in that this was our last ride. Then a bug hit me in the forehead.

We turned right on 1826 and I gunned it just for old time’s sake. I thought about all the miles I put on that bike. All the places we had been. It was my only source of transportation for years. I’d been through a lot with that motorcycle. It’s a great bike and has a lot of years left in it.

It was a great last ride. The temperature outside was comforting, the air was thin and all I could smell was grass and trees. There were very few cars out and of those, none were trailing us. We could go as we pleased.

I pulled into the garage and left the engine running for a bit so I could listen for one last time. I turned off the engine, dismounted and stopped to look at the trusty Shadow again. Riley walked into the garage, looked up at me and meowed. He and I are in-tune. He knew that this was a deep moment for me. I picked him up and we shared a final look at the ride I’ve always known as trusty.

I’m going to miss my old friend…

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Janicek.com was hacked sometime in the very early morning yesterday. Janicek.com has been hacked a few times in its years. In the past, I would contact Dreamhost’s technical support and say, “My site was hacked. Can you fix it for me?” And they would.

This time I wrote and said, “Hey, my site was hacked. How do I fix it?”

Dreamhost takes full backup “snapshots” of your data twice hourly, twice daily and twice weekly. How’s that for getting your money’s worth?

So if you’re website is hosted by Dreamhost and you get hacked:

Telnet into your account
Windows: Start>Run> “telnet www.yourdomain.com” (without quotes)
Login will be the same as your FTP username and password
Or you can use PuTTy

OS X: Terminal

Here are Dreamhost’s instructions…

Steps for restoring data on your own :

1. cd into the hidden directory named .snapshot (it will not show up in any directory listing at all, but it’s there)
2. Choose how far back you would like to go ( hourly.0 is one hour ago, hourly.1 is two hours ago, nightly.0 is one day ago, nightly.1 is two days ago, weekly.0 it one week ago, weekly.1 is two weeks ago )
3. Copy the restored file to where you want it (using the unix cp command). You’re done!

I had to reacquaint myself with the Unix command line…

cd yourdomain.com
cd .snapshot (note “.”)
cd nightly.1 (or however far back you need to go)
ls (to see your data files)
cp index.html /home/.server/user/domain.com/folder

Let me know if you need help. Or you can contact the Happy Help You Recover Your Data Team at Dreamhost.

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I have to keep lists for myself. I’m pretty good about keeping a mental list but I usually write things down for safe keeping and so I can actually scratch something off of my list. I really like my Ta-da List but I find myself using that for personal “honey-do” projects that are usually reserved for weekends. Most always I have a peice of paper in my left front pocket. I might need to run over to HoPot and I can’t call up my Ta-da List there.

This was on my tangible list today:

Test setting up a client pharmacy domain in Plesk
Determine if there is a RDA for Choline
Pick socks up off floor in bedroom
Cat puke

Well I’m here to tell you that I found time to clean cat puke but not time to set up a client test domain. I’m a family man – family comes first.

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Mom, Elise and I went to Star Furniture in Houston on Saturday afternoon. Elise found a bedroom set that she liked. I liked it. Mom liked it. Elise and I decided to buy at least the bed. A saleswoman approached us. After introductions I asked if there were having any same as cash specials. She said, “No, but if you pay cash you will receive a 12% discount.”

12% is a nice discount and we would prefer to pay with cash but at that juncture, we didn’t have that much cash in our checking account.

I next asked if she could discount the bed as the footboard and a deep scratch on the top. She walked over to her point of sale kiosk and called her manager. We continued to inspect the bed. A few moments later she came back and told us that we would receive an additional 5% for the scratch in the furniture (the floor model was the last in their inventory).

Elise asked the saleswoman if we could have a few minutes to talk about it. She obliged. We talked about it and decided we didn’t need to spend the cash right then. We thanked the saleswoman and said we weren’t going to make a purchase today.

We continued to walk through the store. I was quick to notice a big poster that read, “Pay cash and receive a 12% discount OR take advantage of our two years no interest and no payments.”

We walked around the store some more (a 110,000 square-foot showroom) to see if we could find another bedroom set we liked. We decided we like the one we all had originally agreed upon. We walked back to that wing of the store and decided to go ahead and get the dresser as well.

We walked downstairs and had the business center page our salesperson. She came downstairs and I told her we’d like to buy the bed and dresser with the two years same as cash. We filled out the credit paperwork. Before she took our application, Elise asked to make sure that the 5% discount was applied to the purchase. We all heard her – she said, “Are you going to make sure to apply the 5% discount?” To which she replied, “Oh yes, of course. It will be on your receipt.” She then left and processed our approval. She came back with the the bill of sale which required our signatures. Elise noticed no 5% discount. She asked the saleswoman where the discount was.

“Oh, I thought you said you didn’t want the discount!”

Elise responded, “Why would we not want the discount?!”

Saleswoman’s response: “I don’t know. I was wondering that myself.”

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We spent this past weekend visiting my parents. We got to mom & dad’s around 7:30, said our quick hellos and hopped in the car again to drive up the road for catfish at Crossroads. Crossroads’ catfish always makes for a treat and is comfort food for me.

After dinner we went back to the house and we gave dad his belated birthday present. After belated birthday present opening, mom, dad and Elise endulged in homemade ice cream and cobbler. Everyone eventually fizzled out and went to bed. I stayed up, went outside and looked at Mars in the eastern sky. I thought about life, Mars, life, life, where my life is going, where Elise’s and my lives are going, if I left the toilet seat up for the cats so they could get water, I checked my armor, thought about life a little more and went for bed. Before settling in I softly asked Elise if she wanted to see Mars. She said, “Josh… See Mars?… You’re obviously stoned from the peyote so you and Jimi Hendrix need to put your guitars away for the night, you need to take Jimi home so he can take his kid to T-ball practice in the morning and you should brush your teeth and get some sleep.”

She got up and I showed her the bright orange glow in the eastern sky. She said, “Wow! That’s Mars?” To which I said, “Yes!” Elise then checked her armor and went straight back to bed.

Dad woke me up on Saturday morning so we could run the coax cable from the attic, down through the wall to the TV so mom could watch one show and record another….

My parents have been really up on television technology as of late. Last year they bought a large, flat panel DLP television for the living room. They subscribed to a digital satellite TV service and last week they acquired a new DLP TV for the den. Mom has been working on setting up the TV in the living room so they could watch one show while recording another on their DVR.

Enter Josh: I was up in the attic with an electric drill, flashlight, string, coax coupling kits, pliers and yards of coax wire. An attic in Texas turns into an oven at 10 a.m. in August. With the help of everyone I eventually ran the coax from the attic and through the wall to the TV in the living room.

The remainder of Saturday was cooking. Mom and I made homemade Salsa Verde. Mom went on to make garden grown spinach with balsamic vinegar, peas and a salad with purple onions, walnuts, Mandarin oranges, goat cheese with a sweet balsamic dressing. Dad marinated and grilled 1.76″ inch (yes, I measured) ribeyes. Dinner was awesome.

On Sunday Elise and I slept in. Around 1 p.m. the girls and I drove to Katy where I picked up a new e-Machines AMD64 Windows box for the office. We then drove around Houston in search for furniture. We had lunch at Panera in Memorial City and eventually we found a great bed and dresser for our bedroom at Star Furniture. We weren’t really in the market for new furniture but by chance we found a pretty good deal, aside from the terrible sales experience we had to endure.

We didn’t get home until almost 7 p.m. and had to immediately hit the road.

Another weekend that quickly blew by!

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Tejashri, Jenny, Christine, Tonja, Cyndi, Michelle and Elise had a girls’ night in at our house last night. Last month Christine, Kim and Elise decided that the girls needed to maintain regular get-togethers once a month. Christine and Cyndi decided on the name: Third Thursday Thenoritas. One of them has a speech impediment.

For the first girls’ night out I was volunteered to do a cooking demonstration. This was the menu I prepared:

MexiCoffee Rubbed Smoked Pork Tenderloin Medallions topped with a Grilled Corn and Chardonnay Cream Aioli

Grilled Asparagus Fence with a Butter & Balsamic Reduction

Smashed Mashers

Café Amoré Crème Brûlée

Thankfully the girls were chumming it up most of the evening so I wasn’t on the spot all night. Unfortunately the meal didn’t go as well as I wanted. The pork was too done, I didn’t like the asparagus, my first corn chardonnay sauce congealed and I put too much beer in the potatoes which didn’t leave room for cream.

I think the girls liked the food. I wasn’t happy with the meal but all of the estrogen floating about the house kept my spirits up and eventually made my boobs tender.

It’s hard to cook a good meal for more than a handful of people. Next time I’ll definitely need a sous chef. Elise helped me as best she could but I hadn’t organized myself enough to account for help. I was expecting to do everything on my own and realized that I needed help only after it was too late.

The crème brûlée was well received. It was actually refered to as “orgasmic” – it’s hard not to blush when you’re the only guy in a dining room full of women and that word is used.

So… I’m glad the girls had fun. I tried to join their group for next month’s outing but was quickly denied. So I’m going to start organizing another Godfather Club meeting. First on the agenda is to see if Alexandra will come over and show us how to make crème brûlée.

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This illustration is an actual pie chart generated in my web server statistics software. It clearly indicates that Janicek.com serves a wealth of information on topics that vary significantly. Janicek.com is a cornicopia of useful information.

Big: Adjectives & English Translations
Janicek: Slovakian Geneology
Keg: Food & Drink
Jokes: Humor
Ball: Sports & Recreation or Male Anatomy
Triathlon: Sports & Recreation
Training: Sports & Recreaction or Al Queda Summer Camps

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Ever since returning from Cabo I’ve tried to maintain the “no worries” mantra. It really sucks to come home to anti-Bush bumper stickers, road rage, death in the news, a war, money, radio and everything else that we subconciously hyper-consume on a daily basis.

I spend a lot of time on the road. I used to think I liked listening to talk radio in the mornings. Not NPR. NPR is depressing. I used to channel flip between Austin’s KLBJ-FM Dudley & Bob show and the syndicated Howard Stern show. The Dudley & Bob show is sophomoric and to the best of my knowledge is the only “funny” local morning talk show. I listen more to Stern now because when you get past the boob and ass bits, I think he can be funny at times. But most of the time I have talk radio on for noise. Half the time I’m not really even listening.

Enter Podcasts. I read about Podcasts when they started gaining popularity and you could subscribe to them with your RSS Podcast applications. I downloaded a couple of them and gained no interest. Podcasts are modern day’s pirate radio. Most are not much unlike watching cable access – geared towards a very limited audience and generally very badly produced (I’m not complaining – I know if I tried to produce a Podcast, it would be terrible). We can all now subscribe to Podcasts from the iTunes Music Store. Last month I subscribed to a few new Podcasts to see if I could actually find a few that I would actually enjoy. After returning from Cabo I wanted to stay in that paradise state of mind so I subscribed to shows like HawaiiUp and Beach Talk for my commutes to and from work. They just couldn’t hold my interest.

So I don’t feel much like subscribing to Podcasts anymore. If anyone knows my sense of humor and personality and know of a Podcast that I might like, let me know.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from David Sadof. David had a weekly talk show on KLOL in Houston that I used to listen to religiously. He e-mailed me to let me know that he was back on the airwaves in Houston. Well, I live in Austin so I can’t really listen to him. I wrote him back and asked if he thought about producing a Podcast. He said he hadn’t fully researched it but apparently it’s being considered. That would be very cool – I would definitely subscribe to his Podcast.

An interesting thing about David Sadof: He was the first to interview Eddie Vedder about the meaning of Pearl Jam’s song “Jeremy“.

So I would subscribe to Sadof’s Podcast (hint hint). If they were still around, I would subscribe to the Stevens & Pruett Podcast. Funny, both are out of Houston. Austin needs something. Maybe I’ll start my own Podcast.

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On Friday night I took Elise out on a date. I woke up on Friday morning, got ready for work, kissed Elise goodbye and told her we were going out to dinner that night.

My wife loves Italian food so I planned on taking her to Vespaio. We got to the restaurant at a quarter to nine and there was a two and a half hour wait. We turned around with no back up plan. We ended up at the Tree House Italian Grill on S. Congress. Elise had the roasted pork loin and I had the veal saltimbocca. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. We should have waited until midnight to eat at Vespaio.

On Saturday we shopped for deck furniture.

I woke up early on Sunday set on smoking my first brisket. For many years I have sought true culinary enlightenment. I am a die hard Texan. I have never smoked a brisket.

I bought a small brisket the last time we went grocery shopping because the cut of meat looked so nice. It also provided me the opportunity to learn to smoke a brisket.

I did a little research last week and found what seemed like a great way to smoke meat. We don’t own an electric burner or have any spare terracotta pots so some supplies were needed.

While shopping on Saturday I looked for pots, grates and burners. I couldn’t seem to put together the smoker. We held off on shopping makeshift smoker supplies as we were deck furniture shopping. I decided to hold off on Sunday morning to get my supplies.

I woke myself early on Sunday with a vision. It wasn’t necessary to buy anything. I could make my own electric smoker. I wrapped my electric crockpot in foil and put it on the bottom of our gas grill. I ran an extension cord and plugged the crockpot in, put wood chips in crockpot, cranked it up and waited. I put the brisket in the grill and monitored the temperature with the remote thermometer that Steve and Joanne gave me for Christmas.

A few hours later, no smoke. An hour later, no smoke. My temperature was perfect but no smoke. I didn’t want to bake my brisket. If I did I would have done it in the oven and not out in the 100-degree outside heat.

My brisket needed smoke pronto. I hopped in the truck and headed to the ol’ HoPot. My plan was to buy a chiminea or a vase-like terracotta pot that would pipe smoke from its top. I would then use some sort of tubing to channel the smoke into the gas grill. I figured this would require some complex engineering, beer and duct tape.

I walked into HoPot and realized that this project would 1) be too involved 2) relatively expensive and 3) look pretty white trash. So I took the money I would have spent and put it toward a pre-assembled Char-Broil smoker. Man, that thing smokes.

Earlier that morning I rubbed the brisket with salt, pepper, coriander, cumin, paprika, cayenne, garlic, fennel, brown sugar and coffee. I was envisioning the perfect brisket.

My first smoked brisket looked great but it was tough. Now it is my goal to smoke a tender, melt-in-your mouth brisket. I’m completely open to suggestions…

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This really, really, really, really, really, really hurts.

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I hate breakfast. Back in 1996 I had an oral surgeon crack the front of my upper jaw back into place before the Novocaine set in. That was more fun than any breakfast I’ve ever had.

I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast, but now I just don’t like it. It’s not so much breakfast itself, it’s the foods that are generally involved.

I woke up this morning and started smoking a brisket. That’s why I’m wasting a post on breakfast foods – because I woke up early, cranked up some Jimi Hendrix and started toking on the Angus dooby. No, really, I have a slab of beef on the grill with a makeshift electric smoker (more on that in a later post). I decided to cook a standard American breakfast for the wife and myself: scrambled eggs, toast and bacon.

What’s with scrambled eggs? Chicken embryos that are quickly stirred into a yellow snot and heated to the point where they become a solid that have no signficant protein strands to make worthy of even chewing. And the taste – how would you describe the taste of scrambled eggs? Eggy? So we add salt and pepper so we can eat salty and peppery eggy nothingness that requires little more than a tongue and gums to pass through the food tube and into the stomach. I know there are dietary values of eggs but that’s not the point. I’m going on 30-years-old and I’m questioning the really important issues these days.

Toast? It’s really just a big crouton. Not much flavor there either if you’re using plain ol’ bread. Most people put butter on their toast. That takes so much time. And what if you just pulled a stick of butter from the freezer? How are you going to butter your toast? Now you have to chisel shards of butter into some sort of vessel so you can microwave it. You microwave your butter and now you have soup because it’s early in the morning and you don’t want to take the time to reprogram the microwave so it cooks at 24.67% power. Now you have to pour your salted milk fat soup onto your crouton so you have a soggy peice of charred bread that has the same consistency of your salty, peppery eggs.

What about jams and jellies? Some call it “preserves” – those are “preservatives” – so you have a soggy crouton with a sweet, gelatinous embalming fluid spread atop.

I cooked bacon. Now I like me some bacon. Bacon’s probably the best invention since the pig. But what is bacon? It’s pork belly. A fried-up swine’s digestive sack that’s 86.42% fat and pumped full of water, sodium nitrite and phosphates.

When I think of food, I don’t think of waffles, French toast, toast, bagels, pancakes, scones, fritters, scrambled eggs, Girl Scout cookies or Pine Sol.

For breakfast yesterday I had barbecued pulled pork butt, a beef rib and blackened chicken with a jerk barbecue sauce. Then I went outside and worked on my motorcycle. That’s breakfast in my book.

Brunch? Don’t get me started.

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Elise and I spent all day shopping for deck furniture. We searched south Austin for manufacturer-direct locations with no luck. We did however witness a middle-aged woman on a pocket scooter tooling around the sidewalks. It was hilarious… I can’t put it into words, you had to have been there. Not but ten minutes later we saw a guy riding an old mountain bike while carrying a chainsaw. I kid you not. Man, this town is so awesome.

So we drove down 71 and stopped in at L&L Furniture to find patio furniture that was way out of our price range. Swivel rocker chairs were ~$500. We looked around the store and found our way out relatively quickly.

We drove down 620 and stopped in at Chair King. The prices were similar to L&L’s. Next we stopped at Sandy’s Burger Hut for two lousy, overcooked burgers. Then it was futher north up 620 and we drove by two other places that were similar in price range for furniture. We drove down 183 to 360 and stopped at the Container Store so I could get a desk drawer. No desk drawer. Nothing good from this outing thus far aside from crappy burgers.

We drove down 360 to Barton Creek Square to look for furniture at Sears. Nothing good there. Onto Garden Ridge. Nothing at the GR other than Christmas decorations. Remember, it’s August… time to start thinking about Christmas at Garden Ridge. Then to the ol’ HoPot on Brodie Ln. Nothing there. Then to Wal-Mart. We were exhausted and about ready to settle on anything at this point. Elise saw some wicker furniture that she thought she could settle on. I personally don’t like wicker. I decided that we would go back to the Chair King and pay a huge amount of money for deck furniture.

Back to the Chair King we go. Keep in mind we’ve circled the entire city of Austin in search of furniture – six hours have gone by and all we have are crappy hamburgers sitting in our stomachs. We’re at the point where we just want to buy something to make it a fruitful day out and be done with deck furniture shopping.

We get to Chair King and check everything out again. We look and look and look. I finally sit down at a display with a 72″x 42″ boat table with two high-back swivel rockers and four dining chairs. All have back and bottom cushions and they’re awesome. Price? $2,459. For patio furniture. There were some other set ups that were similar but these were, what we thought, the most comfortable. I spent a month building a deck so we could have fun with friends out in the backyard. I figured I’d make an investment in furniture as well.

We were both tired and done looking at patio furniture. I wanted to be done with this shopping outing. I have no problems spending money (luckily I married who I married) and was ready to spend $2,500 on stupid furniture that sits outside to get moldy and rot just so I could get home in time to watch Cops.

My wife said, “I’m not going to do what we did in Cabo. So, NO!”

I concurred. We walked away. I’m glad I listened to my wife.

We headed back down 620 and as a last ditch effort we stopped at the HoPot in Lakeway. We walked out to the garden section and found a display set of chairs and a rectangular table. This End of Summer sale was marked down 50%. The only problem was the set was missing one chair. So I had the HoPot kid go ask his manager if they could take $50 off the set since it was missing the one chair (yeah, me, Mr. Bargain Hunter who was about to drop $2,500 on patio furniture). The discount was approved contingent upon us taking the set tonight.

We loaded up the truck with a big, rectangular table and five fine rocker chairs for $200.

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This is probably going to make John’s weekend and get a reaction from my mom that wouldn’t be much unlike telling her I’ve decided to become a lesbian…

I think I’m going to switch. I came home this evening and turned on the PC in the office so I could print an e-mail. “Can’t access mail.janicek.com”. I checked the LAN settings. “Limited or no connectivity”.

I power cycled the modem and router. No luck. I swapped CAT5 cable. No dice. I had the iBook in the office with me so I could research my dilema. I found a couple websites that I thought might help.

So I download the Windows registry patch on the iBook, load it onto my thumbdrive (instant process) and inserted the thumbdrive into the PC to open the .reg file (not-instant process). I install the registry update and reboot the computer. I pinged Google and got a response. I opened Thunderbird and retrieved my e-mail veeerrrrry slllllllloooooowllllly. I tried to open the e-mail that I wanted to print. I think it’s still retrieving as I type (on the iBook).

For kicks and giggles I opened Firefox. I have Google.com set as my home page. Google’s header image is still trying to load. You know Google.com, that search engine website with the graphic intense 10k header image!

The Windows PC in the office is a great machine. It has a 2.8GHz Intel processor, 1GB RAM, a couple huge hard drives. Windows XP SP2 had to be installed a few times for the system to work like it should… but it’s all been a royal pain in the ass. What makes a pain in the ass royal anyway?

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many phone conversations and e-mails between my mom and I involve reinstalling XP or reformatting a drive. My mom’s a computer nerd/wiz, by the way.

So I’ve decided that I’ve done my time. I’ve built computers from the ground up. I’ve troubleshooted hardware, software and networks. I’ve collectively spent more time working on Windows-based computers that I have actually using them.

It’s true, Macs just work. (shut up John)

Without going into great detail, I can vividly remember the last September when Elise gave me the iBook. I plugged it in, turned it on and it just worked. The first thing I did was opened Safari and started surfing. I think OS X’s Network Utility popped up and asked me if I wanted to join my wireless network. Since then everything has been smooth sailing. The iBook did crash once… that was when John was doing something Super-Mac-nerdy on it.

I’ve really grown to enjoy the Mac experience since having purchased an iCurve and an Apple keyboard. I’ve never owned a notebook computer so getting 1) my first Mac and 2) my first notebook made for some frustration – primarily due to unfamiliarity with a trackpad. Now that I can use the iBook in a desktop environment the experience has been more than great.

I’ve really enjoyed having an iBook and have even been seriously considering a Bluetooth dongle mod (if that’s not a cool name for a rock band, I don’t know what is).

So what ties us to Windows? Familiarity? Market share? Compatability? Microsoft Office? I can use my Mac for anything. I bring it to the office all the time. I don’t have Quickbooks installed so I don’t do company finances, but I could. I have Microsoft Office on the iBook so I can open, edit and create anything work- or home-related.

My Fulfillment Manager asked me on Tuesday what she should purchase as far as a laptop. She said, “Josh, what kind of laptop would you buy?” I asked if it was for her. She said yes. I sold her on a new 15″ iBook. She was worried about things like Microsoft Office, e-mail, usabilty, etc. She’s going to the Barton Creek Apple store tomorrow and buying one. Her “friend” (I don’t know if he’s a boyfriend) received the advice I dispensed and researched new iBook because, so I’ve been told, he’s a computer nerd. Now he’s thinking about getting one as well.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to wait until Apple begins shipping units with Intel microprocessors and most likely get myself a nice, large iMac.

With said new iMac I’m going to use GarageBand to produce Bluetooth Dongle Mod’s first single.

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I bought an Airport Express almost a year ago because I’ve always liked to play music on the stereo from a computer. In the past six months the AE has been like a dog with a gimp leg – it cut out on my so much that I pretty much gave up on it. Well, the gimp-legged dog died on me while we were on vacation (when we got back I noticed that the green light wasn’t on). I took the dog to the Apple store and after a week and half, I had a refurbished Airport Express. After a quick setup using OS X’s Airport Setup Assistant I’m streaming music to the stereo again.

I’m dualy excited because now I can now run speakers out onto the deck. I almost had Elise convinced that we needed an Altec Lansing IM7. She told me to hold off to see if I could work something out by running speaker wires from the stereo in the living room out to the deck. Now that I have a rejuvinated Airport Express I can have tunes out on the deck. This weekend’s project will involve running speaker wire through the attic to the outside.

[an hour later: The AE is 'skipping' again. I posted a thread on MacNN's Forum (after fabricating an aluminum foil satallite dish to bounce back cordless phone signals) to see why I can't get constant streaming music. I hope I get a better response than this.]

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I’ve severely disliked Dell for a long time now. I don’t like Dell. I’m stuck with a Dell server and desktops at the office but I will never buy another Dell product.

We paid off all of our bills and got out of all of our lease contracts months ago. That was a joyous time – we all celebrated in that we would never have to deal with Dell again.

Today Dell called and stated that we owed them money. Dell called a month ago on an invoice for two Inspirion notebooks that we didn’t purchase.

Two laptops were fraudulently purchased on our account in early May. We disputed the charge.
Dell’s not-for-free tech support was called in the middle of May. The call today was to pay for the tech support phone call.

Dell is like a scab – it’s annoying, bleeds if you pick at it and you can never seem to get rid of it. And it tastes bad.

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The work week ended late on Friday after a company meeting. I left the office at 7, got home at 8, changed clothes and drove over to John & Christine’s. Christine made an enchilada casserole for dinner. John showed me his finished office in the backyard. I told John and Christine about the massage I got in Cabo San Lucas.

I woke up on Saturday and jump started the trusty Shadow from the Jeep. I unclamped the jumper cables and the Shadow just would go. It was like a sickly dog. It spat and spittered. I tried to ride it up and down the street to get it juiced to no avail.

Elise and I drove over to Kasson’s, picked up a new battery and stopped for lunch at Rosie’s Tamale House. Seeing how it was tax-free weekend we went to Academy so Elise could pick out some new tennis shoes. Seeing how I’ve tennis shoe shopped with my wife in the past and know how intense a process it is, I dropped her off at Academy and I spent an hour at CompUSA.

I called Elise to tell her I was on my way to pick her up. She had narrowed her choice down to two pairs of shoes. She made her decision shortly after I arrived to pick her up. We went home, I poured the sulfuric acid into the new motorcycle battery and realized that I didn’t have a charger.

The day went away and that evening we went to Brad and Kim’s wedding shower at Michelle’s house.

We got up on Sunday and I went over to John & Christine’s to borrow John’s battery charger. We loaded trash from John’s garage into my monster truck and we hauled it to the dumpster behind the Salvation Army.

I went home and made the mistake of letting the wife find the remote for the TV. I was subjected to two hours of a show called Bridezilla! on the Women’s Entertainment Network. I guess I could have gotten up off of the couch and done something but the cat was laying on my stomach and we were putting off going grocery shopping.

I couldn’t tolerate another episode of Bridezilla! so we went to the grocery store. Grocery shopping on Sunday is always a pain. Everybody grocery shops on Sunday and the HEB we shop is always packed.

We went home, put away groceries and I smoked a beer can chicken while Elise made a corn and basil soup.

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Elise and I spent a week in Cabo San Lucas last month and we had an absolute blast. We had so much fun that we decided that we will one day return to Los Cabos. So much fun and a desire to return that we bought a timeshare…

You’re probably thinking, “WHAT?!?!”

Yes, we bought a timeshare. We toured a beautiful resort, were subjected to an extremely high-pressure timeshare sales pitch and were sold. We signed on the dotted line and I put a significant down payment on our credit card.

The whole process took approximately four hours. After signing our names stating that we agreed to this, that and the other, we got up from the table and started to make our way back to our hotel. We looked at each other with puzzled looks on our faces.

“Did we do the right thing?”

“Sure. I think. Yeah. I don’t know. Did we?”

We went to the presentation having promised each other that the final word would be “no”. That didn’t happen. My gut told me “no”, but I didn’t listen to my gut. Neither did Elise. Our salesperson was awesome. She got us hook, line and sinker.

I had buyer’s remorse the moment pen hit paper but the devil on my shoulder told me we could do it.

We returned to the States and reality set in. I told Elise we weren’t buying a timeshare. We discussed the issue briefly and Elise was behind me all the way. Now it was time to go to battle.

I e-mailed the customer service manager at the resort. I wrote a polite and professional claim letter stating that I wanted our down payment returned and that we wanted to cancel our contract. I stated the reasons for our decision and documented everything perfectly. It was the perfect claim letter.

Three days later I receive a response stating that according to our contract we could not get out of the timeshare. I was kind of expecting that sort of response. I was still dead-set on not paying a single red penny (or peso). I was started doing a little legal research and was psyching myself up to hire a lawyer.

I did some extensive research and came across a great article from the L.A. Times. I followed a few links and found the most helpful information at Mescam.

Luckily I was immediately proactive in the pursuit of cancelling our contract and retaining our “earnest money” when we returned home. Mexican law states that timeshare buyers have a five day “cooling off” period. During that time the customer can cancel the contract with little or no questions asked.

In the meantime there had been a few exchanges of e-mails between the timeshare resort and your humble narrator. My e-mails were very polite and professional. The responses I received were blunt. The last rebuttal I received from Mr. Customer Service was, “I am sorry but there is not much to discuss, please look at the New Owners Verification Form Number 10..” That basically meant: “You’re screwed, we got your money and you’re going to have to pay.”

The gloves came off:

I am writing you again today to cancel Josh and Elise Janicek’s contract #XXXXXX for one Bi-Annual Junior Suite at the XXXXXX Resort and Spa that was purchased on 7/25/2005 and to get a FULL REFUND for the $X,XXX.XX which you have already charged to my MasterCard; account ending in XXXX. I am providing you with notice that I have cancelled this contract within five working days from (the delivery of, or the signing of) the contract IAW Article 56 of ARTICLE 56 OF LEY Federal de Protección al Consumidor. (Article 56 of the Federal Consumer Protection Law states: “The contract will be perfected within five working days from the delivery of, or the signature of the contract, which ever occurs the latest. During this period, the consumer will have the right to revoke his consent without any responsibility. The revocation will have to be by means of warning or delivery of notice, in person, by registered mail, or another method of average reliability. The revocation according to this article, will terminate the contract. In this case, the costs of shipping and insurance will be the responsibility of the consumer. If the contract is for services, this article will not be applicable if the date of receipt of the service is less than ten working days from the date of the order of purchase.”)

I am aware that my right to cancellation and a full refund is non waivable (the buyer cannot give it up) and even if the buyer is convinced to sign a document to give it up (waive the right) that waiver is not valid and the buyer still has the 5 day right. Any argument you have claiming that my enrollment fee is non-refundable is invalid according to Mexican law and this has been verified with PROFECO.

I have been in contact with other Americans and know what my rights are under Mexican law. If you plan on sending me an email stating “As indicated in our agreement – you may cancel your membership at any time but the enrollment fee is non-refundable”, I am afraid I cannot comply with your request. You must comply with this request by law or face fines. Please do not send me an email saying that filing a complaint with PROFECO will tie up my refund for months. I know this is not true.

Any attempt to refuse this request will be immediately forwarded to PROFECO. I am also sending a copy of this e-mail and previous correspondences to PROFECO.

As indicated in the dated e-mails below, I have made a good faith effort within 5 working days to resolve this issue and request a full refund in a professional, polite manner and with full intent.

Please comply with the law, cancel my contract and send me my refund immediately.

Your timely response is greatly appreciated.

Booyah!

Half an hour later I get this response:

“The refund of the deposit will be issued within the next 15 days as stated on the contract.”

I called the credit card company, told them what I was doing and disputed the charge on my account – just to be safe.

We learned about timeshares the hard way. I’m sure I’ll have to deal with this for a while longer. That’s okay, I was prepared to battle for a year.

Los Cabos is beautiful as was our vacation. I was scared that we were going to be left to look back on our vacation in a negative light.

I’m pumped to do the Cabo Wabo again. Next time we’ll go to timeshare presentations. Hell, we’ll go to ten presentations and hoard all of the free goodies like deep sea fishing, sunset cruises, ATV tours, parasailing, free food and drinks.

Next time we’ll say “No”.

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I check Apple’s website every so often because I’ve grown to like not having to worry about viruses and spyware on my iBook – that and I really enjoy the iLife suite. I checked Apple’s site yesterday and got excited about the new Mighty Mouse. I got over that pretty quickly as I realized Apple is years behind in mouse development.

So after ten months I decided to hook my iBook up as a desktop. I connected my monitor and mouse and soon realized that switching to a Mac would be so much easier if done in the desktop environment. I walked into the kitchen and told Elise about my new dekstop experience with the iBook. I Googled Bluetooth mice and keyboards and found myself on Apple’s website again. I decided against Bluetooth peripherals and checked out new iBooks.

“DAMN. Elise.”

“What?” She proclaimed, thinking that I was really upset about somthing.

I read off the specs for the current iBook.

Elise said, “See, I told you. I knew I should have waited to buy you the iBook because one day they’d have the G5 thing with a 66-inch monitor, built in toilet and a thing that changes your oil.”

I’m still laughing…

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Returning to work today, to put it lightly, sucked. Big time. Hard core. Grande. Mondo bollucks. I remember being a kid and how I would wimper myself to sleep on that last August night before having to go catch the bus in the morning for the first day of the new school year.

Today I woke up a few minutes before the alarm. I could feel the glow of the blinds from the early morning through my eyelids. I was hoping that I would wake up and hear the waves crashing onto the beach in Cabo. No luck. The alarm sounded and I immediately rolled over and kissed Elise on the head and told her that I loved her. Vacation was officially over.

I walked to the beach, err, shower and started my Monday.

I soon found myself in the truck driving to work. I didn’t bother turning on the radio. I didn’t want to hear the usual morning crap banter from the Austin a.m. shmucks. I didn’t want the distractions. I didn’t want the stress. I didn’t want to think about anything much more than what Saul told me when I asked when we were going to start catching fish… “No worries”. I left the window cracked and drove the hour to work, listening to the wind and thinking about the awesome vacation Elise and I had last week.

I let work creep into my thoughts a few times and crushed those thoughts with the notion of trying to maintain a philosophy of not letting a job define who I am.

I got to work and said hello to everyone. Everyone asked how the vacation was. I showed them all a few pictures and told them the high points of the trip. As quick as it started the excitement died down and it became a typical Monday morning. It was as if I had never left – which is good. The staff handled everything very well while I was away and I wasn’t left with too huge a laundry list, although my e-mail inbox was about to explode. I decided to hold off on dealing with e-mail until tomorrow.

I was updated on the going ons of the past two weeks – a lot of what was brought to my attention was exactly why I went on vacation, completely forgot about work and why I think everyone should take more vacations. People get so caught up in work to the point where it consumes and defines them.

When I was getting ready for work this morning I really thought about what Saul said and what is printed on a lot of t-shirts in Cabo. So when I got dressed, I put on my pressed khaki pants and a nice button-down shirt. I took a few deep breathes before kissing Elise goodbye for the day and taking on the Monday.

My flip flops and I walked to the truck and headed out to take on Monday.

With no worries.

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