My boss Jerry is finally back from vacation. It's been a busy several weeks with little end in sight. Alex and I are starting to buckle down and work on the member portals and www extensions more seriously now.

I've probably already written on this, but I got a handheld GPS receiver and have been having a blast with it. In the past six days I've ridden 70 miles on my bike and loaded the tracks and waypoints (points of interest) onto my PC. On a similar note, yesterday I introduced Eighmee to geocaching.com, and showed her there are several, near-by hidden 'treasures' various people have hidden in public. Today we loaded four of these locations into the GPS unit, and headed out looking to find treasure, and trade items in the 'treasure-chest' with those items left by previous visitors. We were able to find 3 of the 4 cache's today, but plan on trying again tomorrow. I've had GPS in the car for 3 years, but who knew a handheld GPS unit could be so much more fun!

We FINALLY are scheduled to get our replacement washing machine from bestbuy.com on Friday. I'll be working from home until it arrives. This weekend with be busy. We told Eighmee's parents we would help them move lumber Saturday morning, and Sunday Eighmee wants to take her parents to Half Moon Bay for dinner and possibly do some geocaching along the way. ;o)

I took 2 to 5pm off yesterday, as well as all day today. Jerry (da boss) is still on vacation, but told me to take some time off since my vacation time is maxed out. (I'd lose my accrued vacation time for this pay period if I didn't take any.)

So last week I spied something neat at Target I had to have. It was a Garmin ForeTrex wearable GPS receiver. I found the model I liked (ForeTrex 101) and ordered it from target.com for about $136 with tax and shipping. I've been having a blast with it. It can be used for basically any distance based activity (running, walking, biking, kayaking (it's water resistant), etc.) And it records your distance real-time, current speed, avg. speed, time in motion, current position, path you took, and the relative position and distance to any waypoint you set (home, work, parks, etc). So the past two days I've been biking (about 18 miles in 2 days). It remembers the last ten trip you made and allows you to data dump your tracks to your PC for permanant storage, and graphing in mapping apps. Not to sounds cheesy, but it's made exercise a helluva lot of fun.

Tonight we're probably gonna go see March of the Penguins (new National Geographic film) in the theater.

I just entered the last blog entry, but here another for the past month I've missed. This past weekend we went out for our (Eighmee and my) second Subi (Subaru) drive. This time a faster highway course around the hills around the Pleasanton/Dublin area. It was Ryan in his Subaru 2.5 RS, Kitt's Subi WRX (Sean came with him), then several of Kitt and Ryans car buddies which included an Acura NSX, a heavily modded Subi WRX, and a Dodge SRT-4. This course was MUCH faster than the last drive we did around Half-Moon Bay (wider road with more, and longer straight aways). Overall it went well, however we had to stop after several miles after a few things happened: First, the reason we stopped was the SRT-4, while it hung with the pack leaders quite well, it seemed he was quite close to having blown his turbo. His check engine light came on and he had to call it a day and limp back home. Second, there was a significant speed difference. The NSX was in a class by itself (the course was Ideal for this car) and set a very aggressive pace for the rest of the cars to follow which most did well but Ryan's RS, while it did well, he had a real tough time keeping up. So we stopped every 10-15 miles and he'd be a minute or so behind. Third, after that first stop where the SRT got roxxord, Eighmee and Ryan had "Beh" faces when they pulled up. They apparently offed a squirl on the first leg of the drive. Not a fun thing, and definately not good for ones karma. :o) We ended up on 580, which we took into Dublin. Scott navigated us to the local Hooters restaraunt for lunch. Most of use hadn't been to one, but I was impressed. :oD And that was about it. We headed home casually after lunch.

It's been a good month since I blogged last. Not a whole lot goin on but here goes:

The washer / dryer incident

Earlier this month we bought a new clothes washer / dryer set from BestBuy.com to replace our rentals. Both the pickup and delivery occured on 7/6. I elected to save a few bucks and do the installation myself. The new ones were delivered, and I hooked up the washer first. It was the first time I'd hooked up a washer, but it was really quite simple, however once done I turned on the water, and tried to start washer and NOTHING. It didn't do shiet. I poked around a bit and read the instructions and everything was cool, but it didn't do shiet. I check the breakers: good. Then after another examination I realize the power cord has a slice through it about a half-inch from the back of the unit. :o( The nearest I can figure is the delivery crew cut it either when opening the box, or if there was a bag over the power cord, when opening that.

So I call Bestbuy and spend about 45 minutes on the phone with their (apparently) 3rd party service company (and she was quite nice) before they realized I need to talk to the actual Bestbuy sales department. So they transfer me to sales (not quite so nice lady probably having a bad day like me :o) and she tells me that because it was delivered today it's 'not in their system', and I'll have to call back tomorrow to schedule a return of the defective washer, and a repurchase of a new one. (no exchanges for online orders, it must be 2 separate transactions). I ask her if there's a direct line to her department so I don't get the service department again, she says no. I ask her what menu option I need to select to talk to her tomorrow then. She says she can't tell me that because it changes too often, and I 'have to press the right buttons' to call them tomorrow. So by then I'm like wtf-ever and get off the phone.

I hookup the dryer (a bit more difficult than the washer) and all is well with that.

So the next day I call Bestbuy again the next day a little more chilled-out, and got a super-nice girl who took care of everything quite well. Scheduled a pickup of the defective washer within days, but could only deliver a replacement 3 weeks out. :o( So last week they came and picked up the defective one, and we've been without for a week, and have 2-weeks to go before we can wash our clothes at home. They did say we could pick one up from a store, but I'd have to co-ordinate getting a truck to bring it home, and get it up to our upstairs apartment myself. (forget that heh)

So at the very least it's been nice having our fresh new dryer. :o)