Janicek.com

mickeysmind316: did you find out Terry’s last name at
the pharmacy?

mangledhand: Harrycarrie

mangledhand: no

mangledhand: Terry Harrycarrie would be scary

mickeysmind316: I guess ill just put Attn: Terry on it

mangledhand: really scary if her middle name was
Mary

mangledhand: or Larry

mickeysmind316: to marry

mangledhand: What if she’s hairy?

mickeysmind316: that would be for a fairy

mangledhand: What if she was the captain of a ferry?
With her sidekick fairy?

mickeysmind316: his name is Harry Hairy

mangledhand: Larry, would you marry Terry Harrycarrie if she were hairy, drove a ferry with her friend the fairy?

mangledhand: Whoa

mangledhand: That was a Haiku

mickeysmind316: good one

So I’m doing some not-so-regular maintenance on Janicek.com last night and decide to see who has become a registered user of the site. I’m looking around when all of the sudden I see a registered user by the name of “pig”. Next to the nickname is “Matt Montgomery”. I laughed and said out loud: “Hey! I know a Matt Montgomery”. For grins I kept reading. His signature read: “Fence-eater”. My eyebrows curled a little and I thought to myself: “Hey, I know a Matt Montgomery who is a fence-eater”. By fence eater I mean that Matt and I were riding little 50cc Honda dirt bikes on my parent’s property when we were around 11 years old. Matt hit a sandy spot on the trail, rode parallel to a barbed wire fence and had his arm and leg chewed up pretty nicely. We spent the rest of the night in the emergency room.

Matt left a link to a homepage. After closer inspection I found out that the Matt who became a registered user on Janicek.com is the Matt that I grew up with. We used to be inseparable late in our elementary school years. I eventually moved out to Cat Spring with my parents and Matt and I slowly lost touch.

Matt is apparently living in Hollywood and plays guitar for the band Amen. Judging from the ensemble I’d venture to guess that they play inspirational Tejano music.

Though only virtual, it’s weird to see and find out about an old friend who I haven’t heard from in over a decade.

[9/2/05 Update: Matt is here. “Lions are Growing” is here.]

Elise and I had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. As it’s been for the past four years now, we go to my parents’ house on Wednesday night, stay the night, eat, eat and eat on Thursday, wake up on Friday and drive to Grandma B’s house in Okeene, OK. I am finally to the point where I can blend in among Steve’s (Elise’s dad) 57 siblings and their offspring. This annual reunion and feast consists of approximately 741 people. Hungry people. Hungry people in a small farm house.

I really enjoy hanging out with Elise’s family. It was rather hard for me the first couple years seeing how I actually don’t have a family. I was spawned asexually by something. Judging from my overall physique, I would venture to say I am perhaps the bi-product of a praying mantis. Or maybe some type of starved albino primate species. I wouldn’t really know because I never had a parent who could sit down and explain to me from where I came. I only know this based on the limited genealogical knowledge I have gained from Google. The people that I call my parents are actually a nice couple who immigrated from Madagascar in the 50’s and used my existence as a tax write off.

I always have a good time hanging out with my brother-in-law, Eric. He and I spent hours in the basement, talking and playing Cricket on the electronic dart board. Saturday night Eric told cousins, uncles and yours truly stories or yore – of picking blueberries and cranberries in the Northeast, flipping a car sideways into the air and wedging it between two trees and tales of a trip to Jamaica.

On Sunday morning we headed out. Elise drove most of the way home. I took pictures. We stopped in Dallas for a potty break and I took the helm. Sunday after Thanksgiving traffic between Hillsboro and Austin can make for a pretty worn out clutch leg. The last week in November can make for a pretty expanded waistline.

By computer, I think Mr. Pitts is referring to a Windows machine…

This hits sooo close to home.

Nov. 29, 2003, 5:09PM

The joys of computer ownership are hard to fathom
By LEONARD J. PITTS
Knight Ridder Newspapers

It is spring. I walk into my home office ready to work. My computer is not. It seems to have smoked crack overnight and will not function, despite repeated rebooting, several sharp slaps to the CPU and curses upon the name Bill Gates.

I call technical support. Technical support explains that I am in deep waste matter and must reinstall the operating system. This, in turn, will require me to reinstall all my software and hardware.

Crying like a baby will not help.

I reinstall the operating system. Also, my scanner and printer, my Scrabble and SimCity, my Bible and dictionaries, and a bunch of other stuff. Working off and on, this takes a few days.

When I am done, the computer has more bugs than my old apartment in the projects. Worse, it has passed the crack pipe to my printer, which now declines to print because, it says, the paper is jammed. It says this even after I have removed every scrap of paper within a six-foot radius.

I buy myself an iPod, a device that will allow me to record thousands of songs to my computer, download them and carry them with me on the plane trips that are the bane of my existence. But when I get it home, I find that my new iPod isn’t. New, that is. There are some 1,800 songs already on it, along with more fingerprints than a toddler’s mirror.

I have been sold a used machine, packaged and priced as new. Far be it from me to embarrass the electronics superstore that did this by naming it in public; suffice to say, this wasn’t the best buy I ever made.

It takes visits to two stores, but I get a new new iPod. It serenades me while I beg my printer to acknowledge my existence.

Summer comes. I visit a writer friend in North Carolina. He’s computer illiterate and proud of it. I tell him the Internet is the best research tool a writer could have. I tell him to wake up and smell the 21st century. He just shrugs.

When I get home, I take my car to the shop. It occurs to me that if the auto industry ran like the computer industry, I’d be in a world of hurt. I can just see myself on the phone with Toyota Technical Support being guided through a transmission overhaul. Sometimes, it seems like I talk to technical support more than I do my wife, but I am determined to eradicate these bugs. Of course, the bugs seem just as bent on eradicating me.

Meanwhile, my printer is still on crack. Even at this, it is in better shape than my iPod, which has been possessed by Satan. It now refuses to download new songs, mysteriously erases old ones, and causes the computer to freeze every time I plug it in. It also levitates above the desk and spits pea soup when I reach for it.

Fall arrives. I decide to exchange my new new iPod for a new new new one. It turns out they no longer make the model I have. I ask the salesman if the updated version will be compatible with my computer. He says it will. He is just joking.

In order to use my new-to-the-third power iPod, I must buy and install a new computer operating system to replace the one I restored last spring. I do this, and a number of programs immediately stop functioning. My printer is still paper-phobic. I consider enrolling it in a 12-step program.

Instead, I take it to a technician who advises me to reinstall the printer’s software. Miraculously, this fixes the printer and it works for almost 20 minutes. Then it becomes jammed with invisible paper again. Somehow, I resist hurling it through a window. Instead, I buy a new printer.

As I’m hauling it to the car, I think of my poor writer friend. Still hammering on his typewriter. Still driving all the way to the library to do his research.

I am sad for him. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.

Dell is going to stop using tech support in India.

“Weisblatt would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction, but some U.S. customers have complained that Indian support operators are difficult to communicate with because of thick accents and scripted responses.”

I am in full agreement with that statement. Hopefully this change will generate some more local jobs.

Today was a real crappy day. Surprisingly, I’m in a good mood. Elise and I were beat out of buying a gorgeous house. We are still really bummed about it. Johnny came and picked me up for Tae Kwon Do tonight. In the middle of my bitching about the house we almost had, we hit a deer at approximately 50 mph. We were both terrified for 20 seconds or so. A few profanities were let loose. The weirdest part was that we both didn’t see the deer until impact. It came out from the brushy median in a flash. We both agreed that we could see it so vividly when it happened. I could see the deer’s eyes. The gross part was when I saw the antlers snap off during the ‘boom’. After the initial impact, we lost site of the deer. John let up on the brakes enough not to swerve into the other lane of traffic and to slow to a stop. A few moments later, the deer came falling from the sky and onto the road in front of us. We guesstimated that it flew 10-12 feet straight into the air.

John was pretty upset – who could blame him, he busted up his car two days before Thanksgiving. We couldn’t help but laugh though. Not because we killed a deer, but because this sort of thing just happens to us. John and I were driving around on a country road one afternoon in his old VW Beetle. We came to a dead end. Johnny put the car in reverse, we began backing up and both banged our heads on the car’s ceiling as we drove over his rear bumper. We still don’t know how the hell that happened!

Another time we were ‘motor surfing’ with John’s little brother, Evan, Philip and my girlfriend-at-the-time. John was driving while Philip was motor surfing (riding a skateboard while hanging on to the back of my Mom’s Audi). Philip decided to pull around to the side of the car when he slipped, went under the car and we ran over his leg. Luckily nothing happened.

And on another occasion, John and I were leaving a party. John was driving (notice a pattern here?) John pulled out of the driveway, thinking he was going to merge onto the main street. Instead, forgetting that this main street was perpendicular to the driveway, drove straight ahead and we nose-dived into the ditch across the cross street. That was the only time I really got mad at him.

I had to rib Johnny a little bit tonight. I asked him why he couldn’t have gotten at 8-point. The one we got was only a 6.

Before we buy an iBook and I become inundated with iLife, I thought I’d try a robust photo organization application for Windows. After a quick search I downloaded Picasa. Seems pretty cool so far. I’ll play around with it a little more tonight on my home computer, see how it works with our Canon S400 and if it’s worth $29.

I finally had a house dream last night. Very rarely do I remember my dreams. I’m thinking this is a sign.

You see, we made an offer on a house that we really like on Sunday night. Last night we found out that an offer has been made by another buyer. We upped our offer by a few thousand dollars in hopes that ours would be considered first. I think we’re in a good position as we’ve already been preapproved for a home loan, are willing to pay for a survey and all closing costs.

I’m generally a laid back and nice guy. I don’t let many things get to me. Only in a plaid mood would I stab my computer with a screwdriver. There are only two things that really get my blood boiling. One of those being when strangers sit across from me in a restaurant. The other is house shopping.

Elise and I set a goal to have a house by January. That wasn’t really anything written in stone, but just a goal. We set that goal when we moved back to Austin this January. We figured we could save a good chunk of change in a year. We did just that. The lease on our apartment is up in January. Perfect time to buy a house, right?

We’ve been driving around by ourselves and shopping online. Recently we’ve had our agent take us to look at houses. The hard core looking where you actually go into the house. The weekend before last we found a house that we liked and thought we could afford. Based on our research, we made an offer on the house. The sellers counter-offered by dropping their price by $900. We quickly realized that they weren’t going to budge. Neither were we. After a quick reevaluation of our finances, we decided that we really didn’t need to pay that price for a house anyway. We were upset. We lost a lot of sleep due to the anticipation and eventually, the let down.

Della (our agent) immediately sent us a ton of new listings the very next day. Elise was swamped at work and it was my job to narrow the 40+ homes down to ten. This was stressful for you humble narrator. I carefully chose the houses that I liked best and the ones that I felt Elise would like as well. One really stuck out in my mind – this based on photos and a description. We looked at nine or ten houses on Saturday. We both fell in love with that one house.

To make a long story short, we made an offer on this house on Sunday evening. Della called the listing agent and left him a message telling him that she faxed our offer. We didn’t hear anything until 8 p.m. last night. The listing agent told Della that there was another offer that had been put on the house. He didn’t indicate if that offer came in before or after ours. Elise and I really wanted this house, so we upped our offer by a few thousand dollars.

Elise called me today and told me that the sellers are going with the other offer. Apparently the other buyers are paying the majority in cash. I’m pretty pissed. Elise and I both have a feeling that this listing agent wasn’t very ethical in this situation. There’s a little more detail behind that statement, but I’m done thinking about it. Time to move on. As everyone has been telling us “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be…”

I rushed home from work on Friday and cleaned the apartment for most of the night. Every once in a while I have to clean so I can remember why I don’t like cleaning. I made the process more palatable by throwing on my headphones and shuffling all of my Tool albums on the iPod. After four hours of cleaning, I took the trusty Shadow out to gather manly things. I first went to Hollywood Video and rented Terminator 3 and The Italian Job. Next I went to the Diamond Shamrock for beer. I went home, watched Terminator 3, drank beer and scratched myself while sitting in my clean apartment.

Elise came home from work around midnight with approximately 972 lbs. of crab rolls, mini chimichangas and chicken flautas. We had to throw the chimichangas and flautas away, but froze most of the crab rolls. We stayed up until 2 a.m. or so, just talking out on the balcony.

We woke up early on Saturday. I took a chimichanga-caked sheetpan to the dumpster because our apartment smelled like El Arroyo. Elise had to get the door for me on my way out because I was toting 938 lbs. or stale, fried Tex-Mex appetizers. Really. I walked back from the dumpsters to find out that I had been locked out of my apartment and Elise was taking a shower.

I hung out outside for 15 minutes or so and then started banging on the door. Elise finally opened the door for me. I was pretty upset. That made Elise upset. Then we went and looked at houses with Della for five hours. The whole time Elise and I were giving each other the silent treatment. Quite counter productive when you’re house shopping with your spouse.

I finally showed Elise the bulging biceps I had acquired by carrying half a ton of greasy leftovers. She giggled at me, curtsied and we danced like those goons in the movie Grease. We went home, Elise took a nap and went to look at more houses. I stayed home and started reading a book. My parents called. We talked about houses. Elise came home shortly thereafter. She talked to my parents about houses. I went into the office and ripped a few more CDs. I talked to Riley about houses. Riley went onto the balcony and talked to my parents about houses.

Elise and I got up on Sunday and looked at houses. We called Della and had her drive out to show us a couple more houses in a neighborhood that we’re eyeing. We got home just as the sun was going down. Elise made a really good cheese and potato soup. We watched The Italian Job and went to bed.

I recently purchased a 52X CD burner on eBay. I bought it because my 2X burner wasn’t really cutting the mustard. The installation took me all of five minutes. I started ripping some CDs using iTunes when I suddenly received an XP error, something to the effect of “Drive E: write error”. I clicked My Computer and noticed that my C drive existed, but my 30GB E and 120GB F drives weren’t showing up.

“Hmmm…” thought I. So I restarted my computer. All three hard drives were there. I started ripping another CD. After the first song ripped, I got the same error. I restarted again. Same thing happened.

I’m not usually a violent person, but something clicked and I kicked the ever living hell out of my computer. I mean hard. I was livid. I went East Side on my PC tower. I threw a couple gang signs and even tried to stab the side of my computer with a screwdriver. Seriously. I am soooo pissed at my computer right now. For the past six weeks I haven’t even wanted to sit down in front of it because I wind up having to fix something – or I have to ship it off to my Mom who has the patience (and lack of a gang sign repertoire) to work on it.

Anyway – I pulled out the 52X CD burner and put my old one back in. Things work normally again but what a pain that was. Now I have a CD burner that I can’t use. I’m really looking forward to getting an iBook. I’ve always thought that I’d remain biplatform if I were to own a Macintosh but the way things are looking, I just might have to switch.

Life has been stressful here recently… Elise and I went house shopping with Della this past Sunday. We found a house that we really liked in the neighborhood we really like. We made an offer on the house Monday afternoon. We made an appointment to meet with a mortgage broker on Tuesday. On Monday night, the sellers of the house counter offered by reducing their price by $900. Yes, $900.

We decided to just stop. Without even really discussing it, we both agreed that we’re going to continue living below our means. I think it’s a husband and wife ESP-type thing. Even after having talked with another broker and being nearly convinced that we could pay more than we wanted to, we still didn’t do it. We were trigger happy. Although we haven’t slept well all week, we’ve still been able to “sleep on it”.

Well I finally got my computer back. What was wrong? Wrong boot sequence. It was booting the floppy drive first versus the CD ROM. It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve had access to a computer at home. Now I’m going to have to spend all weekend installing software. I’ve been itching to play with my new Pinnacle Studio AV capture card. I also want to re-rip all of our CDs using iTunes.

Elise and I met my parents in La Grange last night so we could pick up the computer. We had dinner at Boss’ Steak House. My parents and Elise all ordered hamburger steaks. I ordered a tough and overcooked filet mignon. I drew the short straw (and most expensive) of the meals.

In other news – last Friday Elise and I met John and Christine along with some other friends at the Broken Spoke. After being in Austin for almost 10 years, I’d never set foot in this landmark. I don’t regularly listen to country music so there’s really no reason why one might find me in there.

Elise and I drove to Bastrop on Saturday for the computer hand off to my parents. We ate barbecue at Cartright’s (great food) for lunch and tooled around Wal Mart for an hour or so. Elise and I drove back to Austin and decided to go to Kohl’s so yours truly could get a new pair of black jeans. I bought black jeans. And black dress slacks, a pair of khakis, a sweater, new shoes, a hat and gloves. After having been out all day, we decided to go home and have a quiet night alone. I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Elise conked out on the couch and I watched a horrible episode of Saturday Night Live.

We both woke up early on Sunday. I promised John and Christine that I would make hot wings for them. Elise had to go to work for a couple hours so she dropped my off at J & C’s on her way. John and I made some pretty potent hot wings. We were in the kitchen for quite a while. During that time, Elise and Christine went house shopping. After eating, Elise and I stayed for a couple more hours, hung out in the back yard and tried to figure out what we’re going to do as far as buying a house. We’re still not sure. I’m thinking about pawning it all off onto fate.