Project Miner

My grandfather (John Miner, aka “Papa”, part of the duo of g’parents this site was named for) was quite an electrician.  Mainly self-trained and often times hilarious in his methods (as kids we heard many a “crack” followed by Papa walking kind of sideways with his hair standing up saying “that was a doozie”), he could fix absolutely anything.  I was too busy playing baseball and generally running around being a donkey kid to learn as much from him as I now wish I had.  However, I still try to do some things myself and channel his skills. 

About a month ago, our DVD player crapped out.  The power light was blinking red and it responded to nothing.  Since I was pissed off and I’m super cheap, I searched the internet for “philips blinking red light” and found out that I wasn’t alone.  I also found out that you can fix the problem yourself, if you are up for grabbing a set of tools and a soldering iron (really, I was hoping the internet search would reveal a “press play, pause, stop, play and it’ll fix itself”…. oh, well).  I figured “what the hell” and went to radio shack (see: hilarious Onion story) and bought a replacement capacitor (less than $1).  Then, I got lazy and left it sitting on the shelf for a month or so.  Today, I decided to tackle it and went to town on it.  I realized I shouldn’t be a surgeon, because my hand was Shaky McShaky the whole time, but after about 15 minutes, I got it done.  Getting the old busted one off was the hardest part, because I expected the solder to just melt away, but it just heated up did nothing.  I had to tug like mad on the other side to break it loose, but once I got it loose, it left perfect little holes for the new one.  After that, it was just sliding the other one in, cutting the excess, dropping some solder back on to secure it and putting the board back in place (which was a pain in the arse to get off, but cake to get back on) and then cross fingers and plug it in.  Shockingly, nothing exploded and the DVD player works again.  Holy schnikeys, it turns out I deserve my nerd card.

That soldering iron has now fixed the volume buttons on a cell phone and replaced a capacitor on a DVD player.  Totally worth the ~$10 I paid for it.

And, for the record, I totally channeled Papa to the extreme…. there is a screw leftover with no apparent home. 

A general update post, about Katy, the future hater knows as my kid and our kitchen. 

This week has been sucky for Katy.  She had a typical appointment early in the week and when they took her blood pressure and checked her reflexes and did all the typical stuff, they said “get to the hospital”.  She officially has pre-eclampsia, which is hyper tension for the preggo, and tries to tell the kid “time to get outta there”.  So, the kid is trying to be like it’s dad and be born early.   Thankfully for the kid, they know better than to put the mom on an IV drip of alcohol, so at least it won’t be born all drunk and crazy like I was (which means hopefully it won’t scream and torture us like I did my parents).  Anyhows, Katy is on bed rest officially now.  She’s allowed to do some stuff, but not work or clean or shop or anything fun.  Sucky McSuck, says me.  Hopefully she won’t be way too bored and lose her mind.  The kid is scheduled to be cut out on the 18th of September, but that date will surely be moved up.  The doc said 3.5 – 5 weeks left, so that means mid/late August.  At least I won’t be surrounded by yet another Libra.  I feel wicked bad for Katy, though she’s handling it really well.  Typical Katy, being all happy go lucky.  She rocks.

The kitchen is coming along.   I seriously love our contractor, I want to take him to the BFF party.  He’s been great about dates and doing good work, but also this week really helped us out by taking me to drop off Katy’s rental car (oh yeah, our gigantic pine tree is dying and dropping huge branches and one destroyed katy’s front windshield this week, so add “tree removal” to the list of shit we have to do, sigh) and took care of Milli today while we vacated the house and the new hardwood floors went down.  So, the walls are up, the lights are in, the range hood is in, and the floors are down.  The exterior walls are done, the pantry/laundry room tile is down.  We’re now waiting on cabinets and then we can do countertops, backsplash and drop in appliances.   We’ve decided on KitchenAid appliances, granite tile counter tops, subway tile backsplash and a brick accent wall at the back of the kitchen.  Look like three more weeks…. just before the baby arrives.  Yikes.

What else?  I think that’s enough.

I’ve decided to stop being a donkey and start calling this a blog (I put up a good fight, I think) and stop being pseudo-anonymous.  So, here I am, Eric Muntz, writing in my bloggity blog blog. 

As a wise man once said, oooh weeee.

lot ‘o stuff going on lately…

i’ve been playing golf again.  weird, because i was sure i was done with golf.  wade and i decided to go out a few weekends ago, and since then i’ve been playing once a week.  i bought a net a few years ago but was always too lazy to do anything with it, and i finally set it up in the backyard, so i’m even practicing a lot now.   christopher gave me the serious hook up with a mat to hit off of and a couple of sleeves of balls.  super awesome.  the time off actually helped my game, because i’m a lot better, even though i still suck.  i only lose about one ball per nine holes now!  sigh. 

was in DC last week for business.  wasn’t as social this time, as i didn’t have the time to really hang out and didn’t give peeps enough notice to clear their schedules.  hung with jol tuesday night for dinner and all-star game watching and went bowling with the team wednesday and split my thumb open pretty good (didn’t realize how good until the next morning).  i’m not even sure how i jacked it up, but i guess the bowling ball had a nick (knick?  something) in the thumb area and it cut me up.  though, it didn’t happen to anybody else, so i dunno what i did wrong.  i beat them, so maybe i need to cut my thumb before all bowling outings.

thursday night was kind of rough for us.  when i got off the plane and checked my celly, katy left a message on her way to the hospital in what they thought was “early labor”, or something.  yikes.  turned out to be not early labor and was something along the lines of “false labor”, which sounds a lot like “we don’t know what happened or why, but you are ok now”.  the next couple of days she was fine, so all seems good, but it was kind of not fun.  they gave her a pill that made her shake, so she was getting her “muhammad ali” on by the time i got there.  we saw the kid again on ultrasound, but still don’t know the sex (i thought we might see something, but an ultrasound just looks like the cable went out).  the little turd weighs 2.5 pounds right now.  cool.

went to a braves/pirates game this weekend and hung out in the fancy schmancy suite hosted by a friend of katy’s from childhood.  it was her 30th b-day and she was throwing a party for her friends and family in the area, which was much the cool.  first time in a luxury box and it was pretty sweet.  i still prefer to be on the field, closer to the action, but you can’t complain about air conditioning in the middle of a summer in atlanta hell…. and free food and drinks!  super cool.  the braves also won the game 5-1, so it was a good outing all around.

the kitchen is coming along.  it’s typical construction type stuff…. wicked progress initially and then a snail’s pace.  katy is being the foreman on this project, and using the pregnancy to her advantage… “i’m pregnant and CRAZY, you better get this job finished!!  RAARRRARRR”.  it’s pretty awesome, especially since it’s not directed at me!  she’s got them on target more lately and we’re seeing progress again.  gotta buy our material for the counter tops and get the appliances this weekend.  poor bank account. 

Several weeks ago I signed up for 41 Pounds, a service that claims to be able to get your address (the physical one) off of junk mailing lists.  It’s been several weeks now (four or five, I guess I could look it up) and I have to say, that service really works!  I didn’t think about it until yesterday, but the amount of junk mail that I’m throwing away now has dramatically decreased.  I can’t remember the last “super urgent must open now” piece of crap credit card offer I’ve received.  It’s $41 and is supposed to last for five years (though that doesn’t make much sense, do they add your name back after five years?) and you can add five names for your household (Eric Mendoza gets offers also, which is both funny and wicked scary).   Other than the tree hugger stuff on the site (which is actually fine, but I like to make fun of dirt heads), it’s one hell of a product.