spugbrap's personal thoughts blog

Hi there. This is the wife. ;) I guess for the ...

2007-05-15T23:04:00.000-04:00

Hi there. This is the wife. ;) I guess for the most part my pregnancy with my 3rd was uneventful, until the very last month or 2. That is when I started some pre-term labor and having to go to the hospital almost every couple of days for non-stress-tests. Plus on top of that, they wanted to deliver her 3 weeks early because they were worried about the chance of rupture, but after the 3rd and only sucessful poke doing an amnio (and yes they do hurt, especially after the 2nd time they try) they discovered they could not deliver until 2 weeks early. In the end, they said my uterus looked pretty good (probably because of the patch job my OB did after my 2nd pregnancy). But many factors came into play. My 3rd happened to be my smallest which put a lot less stress on my uterus, plus I avoided many of the other complications I had with the first 2 (Kidney infections & preecclampsia). In the end, I am thrilled with the results (a gorgeous baby girl), but there definately were moments that I was scared for both of our safety. Anyway, if you would like to e-mail me you are welcome to: calysto.com+blog@gmail.com :)

Lacey

I see I'm very late, but I read your wife's commen...

2007-05-14T15:28:00.000-04:00

I see I'm very late, but I read your wife's comments on another site regarding her 1st appt. with the 3rd pregnancy. I have 3 and would love to try to for 4 but have been warned of the thin uterus from 3 c/s. Did your wife have any complications?

Yep, I actually figured this out about a month ago...

2007-01-24T10:50:00.000-05:00

Yep, I actually figured this out about a month ago. Thanks for posting! A little more detail:
- Holding the Unlock button for a few seconds actually rolls down my front windows
- Holding the Lock button for a few seconds toggles the honk-on-lock "feature".

I've had that damn honking disabled for about a month, and I actually sort of miss it!

Without the honking, the only indication you get that the doors have been locked is a very subtle quick flashing of a couple of the lights in the headlight assembly (maybe the daytime running lights?).

Unlocking, if I remember correctly, provides an equally subtle cue (I don't remember if it behaved differently when honking was enabled. I know it didn't honk-on-unlock, but I felt like it was less subtle anyways).

What makes this subtlety even worse is that my Nissan, unlike every other car I've ever dealt with, does not make a loud ka-chunk sound whenever you push the lock or unlock buttons. If the doors are already locked, and you push the Lock button, it silently does nothing. If they are not already locked, and you push the Lock button, it quietly locks them. The same applies for unlocking.

My point (as already stated earlier) is that without the honk-on-lock feature, there is not much of a cue that anything has happened when you push a button the key fob. At least when I was locking the car while the door was still open (as described in the original blog post), I was more attuned to what was going on, because I was holding onto the door.

I still prefer my van's reasonably quiet (but loud enough) "beep beep" [plus flash headlights and taillights] when I unlock it and "beep" [plus flash headlights and taillights] when I lock it, plus audible ka-chunk sounds with both operations.

Try pressing and holding the Lock and Unlock butto...

2007-01-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

Try pressing and holding the Lock and Unlock buttons on the remote for a few seconds. The parking lights should flash 3 times to signal success. I just tried this on a 2006 Sentra.

Hey, the world loves little people. Midgets are f...

2006-10-01T20:07:00.000-04:00

Hey, the world loves little people. Midgets are fun, but drunk dwarfs dressed in green? That's way "funnier"!

If you like midgets, you might want to check out my blog. Let me know what you think.

The Midget Master
http://www.allaboutmidgets.typepad.com

in case you bend one? Yea.. not much use.

2006-08-27T16:03:00.000-04:00

in case you bend one?

Yea.. not much use.

those links were really hard to click :) Hopeful...

2006-08-19T16:22:00.000-04:00

those links were really hard to click :)

Hopefully your house situation can be resolved quicker than 3 years. :)

http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_28/m_img_6750.jpg - we used a similar fan for our tiny, 5-to-10-gallon flood. (mold test came back positive)

The only semi-valid reason I can think of to disab...

2006-07-18T11:34:00.000-04:00

The only semi-valid reason I can think of to disable text selection is when you have drag-and-drop widgets happening on your page via dhtml + javascript. You don't want a drag operation to highlight text in the process. I tried this with Google Calendar and it re-interprets the click-drag selection as a calendar-box-range-selection, which is kind of nice. But I don't see anything that fancy or useful on the dental site! Plegh!

Gotta love those security holes. I had a similar ...

2006-07-18T11:26:00.000-04:00

Gotta love those security holes. I had a similar issue with trying to buy a gift certificate from Archie McPhee's store. Check out their gift certificate page:

http://www.mcphee.com/info/gc.html

NO SSL WHATSOEVER. I contacted them and said they lost business from me because of it (I'm not about to put my credit card info out into the open). They emailed me back and tried to say I was mistaken about the lack of security on that page. The funniest part was that their IT guy was trying to convince me that it was secure. Excerpt from his email follows:

"the gc buy page is NOT secure, in that it doesn't use SSL, but in this
case it doesn't matter. this particular page kicks off a script on the
server which then transfers the information to us via an encrypted email.
no credit card information is ever passed on via HTTP, therefore the SSL
certificate doesn't come into play. A sniffer would have to be running on
our actual server, since no internet traffic is generated by the form
post. In fact, the gc.html page does not even touch the cookie."

I love the horrendously flawed logic behind that claim. The sad thing is that I'm guessing many folks use the gift certificate form without realizing their credit card information is out in the open for the taking. And I *love* Archie McPhee's products (they make cool novelties like the Jesus Bobblehead and bandaids that look like strips of bacon), so it is all rather unfortunate.

Funny! The same thing happened to us when we were...

2006-07-13T22:11:00.000-04:00

Funny! The same thing happened to us when we were on vacation:

The Beach Batmobile

So, when are we going to hear more? I presume the...

2006-07-13T11:58:00.000-04:00

So, when are we going to hear more? I presume the water level is below 1" now. Clint's house has become a little stinky due to multiple small leaks from a variety of sources.

I think singing along to a CD is the most energizi...

2006-06-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

I think singing along to a CD is the most energizing for me. It's also very nostalgic-- I have fond memories of singing along to Violent Femmes or NoMeansNo on the road trips I took with Carolyn.

I also will roll down the window to get fresh air (regardless of the temperature).

And often, I'll stop at a rest area for a brief nap. BUT-- make sure you turn your headlights off before you do that. One afternoon I woke up to a dead battery! :)

It sounds ridiculous but one thing I've tried out ...

2006-06-17T07:11:00.000-04:00

It sounds ridiculous but one thing I've tried out of desperation to stay awake is to surprise myself by screaming as loud as I can. It seemed to work but the effect was brief.

You can try slapping yourself.

Another thing to try is to just pull over and take a 5 to 10 minute mini-nap. I haven't tried this but I know that sometimes at home when I am very sleepy, I can become more alert by taking a little catnap.

If it's cold outside, put the windows down. Turn off the heat - the warm air is soothing and sleep-inducing.

Concentrate on keeping the mind active. If I'm sleepy, I get even more so if my eyes are simply fixed on the horizon instead of scanning my mirrors and the surroundings.

Stop at a gas station or rest stop, or anywhere that grabs your interest, and walk around / stretch / distract yourself from your sleepiness.

And, of course, there are our old friends caffeine and sugar. Energy drinks are all over the place these days; some of them are effective, at least for short bursts of energy. But beware the caffeine/sugar crash!

Diet soda is actually evil in other ways. Read the...

2006-04-17T10:22:00.000-04:00

Diet soda is actually evil in other ways. Read the book "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills" You'll never drink a diet-anything again.

-Dave

We will never order from checks unlimited. They ba...

2006-02-23T22:55:00.000-05:00

We will never order from checks unlimited. They bait with low prices in an ad, small print - "first time orders only" If you ever purchased (even 25 years ago) they cash your check and bill you a VERY high remaining amount. Pay up or else. They draw from your bank account immediately after a call to find out what is going on, presumably with the info. from the first check. Stay away from this company - BAD NEWS - WARN OTHERS.

wether I agree or disagree and to what extent or o...

2006-02-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

wether I agree or disagree and to what extent or on which aspect of the issue is of no importance here but you just gotta ask yourself if you are doing any good at all. Are you a part of a solution or just another whiner?

> Did you try re-installing windows??Hehe. No, and...

2005-11-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

> Did you try re-installing windows??

Hehe. No, and I didn't try defragging my hard drive, either.. That's a pointless step that every computer-related troubleshooting guide/support person seems to recommend, regardless of the problem.

That is the best excuse I've ever seen for bad ser...

2005-10-31T13:30:00.000-05:00

That is the best excuse I've ever seen for bad service!

"Our stuff is so awesome that it just naturally sucks sometimes."

I've gotta include that disclaimer in our own software products. :)