Janicek.com

It’s been a long week for yours truly and his battle with technology. Since building a new computer, I’ve been gradually installing software as I need it. Earlier this week I wanted to download some photos from our digital camera. To make these images web-ready, I used to use a combination of XP’s Image Resizer and Albert Bertilsson’s Renamer. With a couple right clicks of the mouse, I could batch resize and rename an entire directory of digital photos.

I can’t get the Renamer freeware to work like I once had. The instructions (which I’m sure are for Windows 98/2000/NT) tell you to:

• Select “folder options” in explorer.
• Select “File types”.
• Find the type “File folder” in the list, and select it.
• Select “Edit”.
• Select “New”, to edit add a new action.
• Name the action “Renamer”, and select Renamer as application.
• If you rightclick a drawer, a “Renamer” option will appear,

  selecting it will start Renamer with that directory.

Doing this in XP will make the search utility open when a folder is double-clicked. Very frustrating. I explained my frustration to Elise and told her that this is why I want an iBook – for iLife (as well as overall OS stability). I figured she’d empathize because she’s the photographer of the family and photos are, well, very important – especially in their digital format and should be handled very carefully with computers made by Apple.

Then comes the hacking. Janicek.com was hacked early this morning. Damn script kiddies. HartzVictims.org has been hacked twice in two weeks. Damn damn script kiddies.

Then there’s my recent online banking experience. I “forgot” to pay our Jeep payment last month. Well, I remembered somewhere around April 17th. The payment is due on the 1st. To make sure that that didn’t happen again, I scheduled an automatic payment using UFCU’s BillPay. I “forgot” that I implemented this time and energy saving system so I also manually sent our Jeep payment this month as well. I sent two Jeep payments in May. Since I’ve only been paying our bills online for a couple months, I watch my payment history very closely. I’m lucky I do this because both instances of the Jeep payment had, what they call in the banking industry, “errors”. I called our credit union this morning to get things squared away. I’m still not sure what’s going on. I called our credit union in Temple (Jeep lien holder) and told them that their money was on its way. Somehow.

We were also to become part of the elite, prestigious, pinkies-up, high-nosed Advantage-Plus Checking members at our bank. Again, this was an oversight, or an “error”, and we were still in the peasant-like e-Checking bracket. Because this change hadn’t been made in our wear-on-our-sleeve banking status, we were charged $4.95 for what would otherwise be free BillPay services provided for Advantage-Plus Checking members. The horror. I got our $4.95 back.

The Big Kahuna of annoyances. The Mother of Reasons to Put a Fist through your Monitor. Omegasearch. My browser was hijacked by
Omegasearch. That sucked. My homepage was changed, a nifty search bar was added to Internet Explorer, I got loads of new bookmarks as well as a huge banner added to the bottom of my browser window. If your browser is ever hijacked by Omegasearch, go here, download Hijack This, run the utility and post your log file here. Dexter will help.

But wait, that’s not all. My Outlook at work is hosed. I have two messages in my outbox that appear to not be sent, but they’ve sent. They’ve sent a lot. Like 19 times they’ve been sent. This is, of course, after Outlook refuses to open or when it does, it hangs for 10 minutes. This happens once a month. I’ve embraced it.

I love computers.

Tweedle Dee decided to bring a bird into the house and kill it behind the armoire. Tweedle Dumb (pictured in orange) came to supervise. I would have taken a more forensic-type photo but I had to mop bird blood off of the walls.

We found no matches for “lighter fluid.” Below are results for “plaid.”

Thanks, Target.com… EXACTLY what I was looking for.

This past Friday Elise and I rented Big Fish and Kill Bill Vol. 1. On the way home we stopped at HEB and picked up some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. We both didn’t like Big Fish. I guess it was over-hyped.

On Saturday we drove way out to the middle of nowhere somewhere west of Dripping Springs and set up a catering at a couples’ home. We drove back to El Arroyo, had dinner and walked down 6th street to eye the goods being sold at the Pecan Street Festival. We didn’t find much of interest and it was getting too cold to be outside.

We woke up early on Sunday and I started cleaning the interior of the Jeep. This was necessary because it was becoming a health issue. Last weekend while helping Elise cater the GreenFest, I spilled chicken fajitas inside the Jeep. Chicken fajita meat doesn’t smell good after sitting in a car for 8 days. The good thing about having a Jeep is that you can pull the drain plugs and hose out the interior.

After sanitizing our ride, we drove back out to nowhere somewhere west of Dripping Springs to pick up the table and chafing dishes we dropped of the day prior. We came back to Oak Hill and cashed in on a free lunch buffet for two coupon at DoubleDave’s. I always remembered DoubleDave’s as having crappy pizza. Our pizza was really good this time.

Since we had the van, we drove to Dollar Tile and bought some (1200 lbs.) landscaping stones. We spent the rest of the afternoon edging our garden and the oak trees in the front yard.

I had to run to the post office today during my lunch break to mail items recently sold on eBay. I went to what I thought was one of the least busy post offices in the city. My number: 97. Number they were serving: 65.

I didn’t have time to wait in line so I decided to go out for lunch. For some reason, my stomach had been bothering me all day. What better way to remedy a tummy ache that a hearty, healthy meal from Taco Bell. I can back to the office and at my tacos and burrito. I immediately felt like I gained 20 lbs. My stomach didn’t feel any better.

I’m going to go home, cry and eat ice cream.

I hurried home on Friday after work to mow the yard. A couple of months ago I had pulled up the existing owners’ flower bed/garden that was edged with landscape timbers and positioned awkwardly in our backyard. I found that there is now a plethora of sweet basil growing from where the bed used to be. I pulled up 20 of the young plants and planted them in my garden and in a couple pots. I’m thinking it won’t take long before grass will take over that old garden box area.

After my yard work, I hopped in the shower and went to the Austin Music Hall to see Elise. She catered her boss’s UT fraternity reunion. I ate fajitas and watched Rusty Weir perform.

Elise went back to work on Saturday morning. I got up and did some more leveling in the backyard for the to-be-built-someday deck. Then it was off to El Arroyo before going to the Copper Tank to help Elise cater Galleywinter’s GreenFest 2004. I’m guessing that I rolled 7.2 million fajita tacos. We had a lot of fun even though we were working and didn’t get home until 4 a.m.

Sunday morning rolled around too quickly and guess what? Back to El Arroyo. Elise and I drove the catering van out into the high rollers’ neighborhood to pickup some chafing dishes and tables from a previous event. On our way back to the restaurant, Elise rolled down her window and talked to a bird. Keep in mind, we’re driving around in a old, beat up baby blue cargo van in a very well-to-do neighborhood and my wife is leaning her head out the window saying “Hey bird, what kinda bird are you?” Had to have been there.

The van ran out of gas on 5th street 300 yards from the restaurant. Elise was already late for a meeting with a client and John was on his way to pick me up. Elise went to her meeting and John and I stayed and had lunch at the restaurant. We then went to the Frank Irwin Center to watch the Austin Wranglers lose to the New Orleans VooDoo. Although Austin lost, the game was a lot of fun to watch.

After peeling a parking ticket off of John’s windshield, we drove to CompUSA so John could price digital video cameras. We just looked. We went back to our house, hung out in the backyard until Elise got home and then ordered a pizza. Elise went back to work, John went home and I stared at the TV for the rest of the evening.

It was a busy, fun and way-too-short of a weekend.

I wish I had found this article earlier and I could have saved myself a 20 minute phone call last week. Nine seconds (yes, I had a stop watch) after Elise and I closed on our house, our loan was sold to Washington Mutual. I learned before buying a house to send an extra payment each year and you can knock seven years off of your loan. I figured we were in a good position to do this because it’s our first house and our first payment was due soon. So I’ve adjusted our budget to where I send our full mortgage payment plus 1/12th of a full payment with a separate check with “Apply to principal” in the memo field each month.

I recently received a letter from Washington Mutual regarding their “Equity Accelerator” program that can withdraw half of our mortgage payment from our checking account every two weeks and knock 7 years off the life of our loan. I didn’t think that I would be making 26 biweekly payments (13 months). I thought it had something to do with compounded interest over two weeks versus a whole month. The payment would be the exact same. I thought to myself: you could enroll in this Equity Accelerator program and continue to send the additional 1/12 of a full payment each month to apply to the principle and reduce the life of our loan to somewhere around 15 years (instead of 30).

I called Washington Mutual and spoke to a very friendly customer service representative who told me that there is $200 up-front fee and a $2/month fee. Had I enrolled then and there, they would have to withdraw a full months payment to cover the following month while the account was setup and then would have to pay my standard mortgage payment at the beginning of the month. That would have been two months worth of mortgage payments plus an additional $200 in less than a month. It might be Spring but my money tree ain’t bloomin’.

I decided against the program because I didn’t see the point in having to pay fees for something that I can do on my own for free.

There are two truths in this world: Teeth and taxes.

I haven’t been my normal Seinfeldian self recently with the checkbook. I decided to give the online statement a gander today only to find that *gulp*… we have a lot of month at the end of the money!

At first I was mad, thinking that we had frivolously tossed our money around this month. I closely examined our e-statement to find that I shouldn’t beat myself up over this financial stress. I paid my dentist a large amount earlier this month for some new choppers. I paid the IRS half of what we owe. I paid off a large amount of our Basset credit card balance (even though we have something crazy like 57 years same-as-cash). I can’t stand being financially indebted. So, we’re struggling now but it’s for the greater good.

It’s Ramen and Kool Aid until May.

This past Friday evening I put a bunch of stuff on eBay. I watched School of Rock (boo) and went to bed. I finally reorganized our pantry and spice cabinet on Saturday morning. Damn I’m an exciting dude. I rebuilt my computer with a new Abit mainboard and 2.8GHz Pentium (insert annoying chime) 4 processor compliments of my parents. Seeing how I haven’t built a computer from the ground up in a few years it was much to my surprise that I put everything together quickly and painlessly. Painlessly until I turned the computer on and XP wouldn’t load. I called my mom, we tried to troubleshoot the issue over the phone but decided it would be best if she came to check it out.

Elise came home later that evening and I went to Blockbuster and rented The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scarface and Radio. We stayed up until 1 a.m. and watched Radio. Good movie.

My parents drove in on Sunday in time for the four of us to have lunch at the Oak Hill Grill. Elise went to work later that afternoon, I went to the grocery store, Dad assessed the backyard for deck building and Mom reformatted my computer’s hard drive (which was all that was needed). I cooked Thai pork and fried rice for dinner.

I worked a half-day on Monday and spent the afternoon with my parents. Mom and I drove to Discount Electronics and bought a case, 15GB hard drive and 32MB graphics card to build another computer with my old motherboard and processor. I slapped this new computer together late that afternoon and grilled ribeyes, potatoes and squash for dinner. We all watched American Idol, The Swan and American Chopper.

I stayed in this morning to spend more time with my parents. They left around 10:30 and I went to work. Now I’m bummed because all of the excitement is over – my parents have gone home and I haven’t seen my wife in something like a month.

Maybe TKD will cheer me up tonight.

I grilled a pork tenderloin with a chipotle corn cream sauce (better than the Y Bar & Grille), grilled rosemary potatoes and sugar snap peas on Monday
night while Elise watched the Ms. U.S.A. pageant.

I sat in the dentist’s chair for 2.5 hours on Tuesday while Dr. Cox sawed out my old grill and fitted me for two new front crowns. That was a painstaking ordeal. If you ever find yourself in Austin during a freeze in 1996, do yourself a favor and don’t fall face first onto concrete. My dentist is a cool guy (and a neighbor I recently found out) as is his staff. One of his hygienist sings while she cleans your teeth and Anne, his assistant gave me a jaw massage while Dr. Cox was cutting out my old crowns because my mouth had been open for nearly two hours.

Needless to say, I was in pain for the rest of Tuesday. I drove up north to Fry’s and picked up a new motherboard and 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor
that were on sale. 700MHz to 2.8GHz should make for a nice change of pace. I then drove over to Tommy’s to drop off a CD before heading home to
see if the garage door had actually been repaired…

Our garage door hasn’t worked correctly since we moved into our house. It would open halfway and then stop. We’d have to click the remote button again for the door to either go up or go down (depending on its mood). I found a coupon for Gordon’s Overhead Doors in our mailbox one afternoon and decided to call. A young lad came out to my house and worked on the door. That worked for a couple weeks and then the same half opening/half closing started again. I called Gordon’s Overhead Doors again and asked to have someone come out. Someone was scheduled to come out that Wednesday night. Nobody showed. I called on Thursday morning and told Aaron (the owner) that nobody came over to fix my garage door. He scheduled someone to come out the following Monday. Monday rolls around and nobody showed. Now I’m pissed and want my money back. I called Aaron from work and gave him an earful. I was told that one of his repairmen had told him that he came to my house and fixed the door. This obviously didn’t happen and I later found out that this guy was fired because of this incident. Someone was scheduled to come to my house this past Monday evening. Guess what? Nobody shows! I called Aaron and was about to jump through the phone and strangle him. It’s bad enough that I was stood up three times, but Aaron would always say “God bless you, sir” and “this is a Christian-based company” on top putting me on hold numerous times to the point that I’d have to hang up and call back and giving me
conflicting schedule times. Each time I would call and tell Aaron that a repairman didn’t show up, he would say “it says here that so-and-so was scheduled to be at your house [confirms address] between 7 and 9 p.m. last night” when I was originally told between 5 and 7.

Anyway, two repairmen from Gordon’s Overhead Doors showed up on Tuesday. The garage door works for now but I won’t call Gordon’s Overhead Doors for any new service nor will I recommend them to anyone else.

Yesterday afternoon I rode the bicycle home from work, trying my damnedest to keep my mouth shut. After around the 7.5 mile mark I started getting tired. I was almost to my street but needed to take a little break. I hopped off the bike and started walking with the iPod still blaring when I heard someone yell: “Helllloooooooooooooo…” I turned and saw an almost middle-aged woman and her parents on bicycles behind me, waiting for me to move so they could go by. I pulled one of the earbuds from my ear and said “Excuse me.” She peddled slowly ahead of me. I could have swore I heard her mumble something to the effect of “you shouldn’t be doing that on the sidewalk.”

A few minutes later I confirmed in my own mind what she said and mustered the late rebuttal “What? Walking on the sidewalk?” It was one of those “Oh yeah… well the jerk store called and…“

This week has been stressful.

This past Friday Elise and I had a group of old friends over for burgers and beer. Since the weather was so nice, we spent most of the evening out on our gigantic 8′ x 9′ patio.

Elise and I went to Home Depot (bad) on Saturday to buy a mirror for the finishing touches on our guest bathroom. We were in the HoPot for approximately thirty minutes. When we left, the temperature had dropped a couple hundred degrees and it was raining. We drove through the artic rain that is normal during mid-April in Austin to Our Glass and had Nick custom cut our mirror.

We then went to Bed Bath & Beyond to find a butter dish, a kosher salt container and a rug for the guest bath. We came home and finished our bathroom project. Elise and I took an old chicken coup window from Grandma B.’s farm, sawed out the center support, dry brushed it a rust color and turned it into a mirror.

Before and after.

Elise went to church on Sunday morning. I stayed in and cut a large chicken into four smaller pieces, marinated said pieces with homemade barbecue sauce and slow cooked them on the pit. I made cole slaw, Coors and chipotle mashed potatoes and pork and beans. Tommy came over later that afternoon for dinner and to hang out.

We then flopped down on the couch and watched the Matrix Revolutions before going to bed.

I use this simple command line prompt to create an ascii tree list of the directory in which I store my music files.

Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt

You’ll then need to navigate to where where your music folder is. This
is old school DOS.

Your command line might read something like this:

C:Documents and SettingsAdministrator>

If your music files are on a separate drive, just type the drive letter
followed by a colon.

C:Documents and SettingsAdministrator>E:

If your music files are in a folder named ‘mp3’, you’ll need to change to that directory by using the CD (change directory) command:

E:>cd mp3

Type the following to print your list:

E:mp3>tree /f /a > mymp3tree.txt

Here is what your ascii list will look like.