Not much to go on from that weekend.  That marked the third weekend in my recent spate of oncalls, so I hunkered down in the dark and waited for the inevitable pages.  And they came, so I wasn’t disappointed.  Most of my time was spent on various dorky tasks about the house, so about all I can do is re-tell my computer-related exploits.  It’s a pretty safe bet most of you couldn’t care less about those, so if you want to just quit reading now and go back to sleep, that’s OK.

Don’t believe me?  Well, here goes.  And who knows, maybe somebody will find some interesting tidbit in here.  (Doubtful.)  Friday evening I stayed up way-too-late working on my wireless network.  I bought a used wireless router from a guy at work last week, with the original plan of just having a spare in case I messed mine up.  (Again.)  But, unable to stand the thought of having something sitting in the closet gathering dust, I instead embarked on an exciting mission to implement WDS between my two routers.  The first struggle in this project was to pick an alternate firmware for the routers, one that would support the WDS feature as well as my rather unique firewall setup.  After a perilous and ultimately unsuccessful struggle with Tomato and HyperWRT, I finally found network nirvana with DD-WRT.  When I finally called it a night, I had achieved my goal of having an “excellent” wireless signal anywhere in the house, and most likely half-way up the block.  On the downside our wireless doorbell and light switches no longer work, and there is a slight tingling sensation from all the waves in the air, but you gotta have priorities I suppose.

Saturday, still flushed with the excitement of the evening before, I started on a project to install Linux on our laptop.  This was my first attempt at using a machine solely with a Linux O/S, no dual-boot or virtual machine crap.  I decided on the relatively user-friendly Ubuntu distribution, brewed a pot of coffee, and went to work.  Ultimately this was a relatively easy undertaking;  With the exception of having to install a new wireless card I would honestly say it’s an easier process than installing Windows.  So far I’m quite pleased with the results;  It’s fast, easy, and most importantly comes pre-installed with a fancy Sudoku game.  What more could you ask for?  After that, Donette’s parents came over and dropped off their laptop, which had fallen into an unfortunate condition not unlike the one ours was in.  I doubt they would have liked the Linux look though, so I went about installing good ol’ Windows back on theirs.  First though, I wanted to try and salvage some of their data, so I hopped on the scooter and took off for the geek-mecca of the west, Microcenter.  I searched out the skinniest sales guy, with the thickest glasses, told him what I was trying to do, and he recommended a 2.5″ drive case.  The price was right, so I picked it up and scootered back home.  It got the job done, but it turned out to be pretty much a piece of crap.  The directions were almost as bad as the build quality too.  These were the instructions:

Q1:  I could see the icon at the right down comer on the screen, but I still couldn’t find my external HDD.
A1:  Please make sure your HDD has been installed correctly.

Q2:  Why I couldn’t find my enclosure at all?
A2:  This situation somethings happens to some notebook models.  This problem mostly couldn’t solve the problem, please buy a AC power adaptor to offer sufficient power for enclosure.

Wow.  Those aren’t typo’s either, that’s actually what it said.  “This problem mostly couldn’t solve the problem”??!!  Long as it worked, I guess.

Sunday, since I was sorta tethered to my laptop with the whole work thing, the Martins came over to do a little barbecuing.  We decided to practice a few chicken recipes, since our team poultry-guy has forsaken us.  I went with a simple marinade and dry-rub method, while Martin opted for a much more elaborate basting scheme.  At the end of the day, everyone agreed the basted bird was to be our “official” entry at Kearney next weekend.  The only downside was his somewhat aggressive basting technique, but I won’t complain about it.  Somehow, in addition to a liberal application on the chicken, he also basted my patio furniture, the smoker, the deck, the sliding glass door, and one of the dogs.  I’m not complaining though.  The chicken was good.

Ahhhh, four-day weekends are GOOD.  Our long weekend started developing last Wednesday, at the Brooksider of all places.  We happened to be down there having some dinner, and griping about a problem we’ve been having with our car.  For the last several years (yes, YEARS) the Accord has been bedeviled with this problem where, when the weather gets hot, it won’t start.  It will run like the finely engineered foreign auto that it is, and then BAM, you come out from work and can’t get home.  It might start five minutes later, it might not start for two days.  We’d taken it to our regular mechanic a few times for this, and mentioned it to the dealer, but they could never replicate the problem while it was there.  So, we’re sitting around the table bemoaning the fact that we basically have no four-wheeled transportation when it gets over 80 degrees, and one of the guys at the table says “Oh, I know exactly what that is, that happened to my Honda.”  OK, yeah right, somebody named “Flop” knows the answer to the mystery of our non-starting car, which our $100-an-hour mechanic has assured us is absolutely the oddest problem ever to beset a vehicle.  And not to discount ol’ Flop’s word or anything, but just out of interest I go home and Google “honda doesn’t start when it’s hot.”  What do you know, my mechanic and myself are the only people in the free world who don’t know what the problem is.  The moral of the story?  1.)  Always Google any problem you’re having, somebody else is having the same problem.  2.)  Flop knows everything.  (Incidentally, buoyed by this success, I searched on a problem I was having with my Palm Pilot and fixed that too!  Wonderful times, people.)

Anyway, first thing Thursday morning, Donette took the car up to our (NEW) mechanic and he fixed it right up.  We were so excited by our new-found mobility that we decided to take a road trip;  All we needed was a destination.  We did a little quick research to find the best available entertainment in the nation over the Labor Day weekend, and found that Night Ranger was playing in Denver!  Wow, what luck!  We got there late Friday afternoon and hooked up with Ed and Kim, who kindly put us up for the weekend.  The big show was Saturday night, and lived up to our every expectation, easily overshadowing the DMB show we went to last Tuesday.  Those guys truly put the “power” in “power ballad.”  Our only regret was that Donette cut off her hair just a few weeks too early, so she wasn’t able to get her 80’s bangs on.

OK, so they were just as over-the-top cheesy as they were last time I saw them, circa 1987 or so;  I can’t really remember that far back.  The most noticeable difference between the shows was that last time they were at sold-out Kemper Arena; this time around they were doing a free show at the Taste of Colorado festival.  Other than that they were pretty much identical.  And our weekend didn’t really center around the concert.  We visited Golden for an afternoon, ate lots of good food, (including some fresh Hatch green chiles,) played some cards, and generally relaxed.  As a bonus, our car reliably transported us both ways, SWEET.

Man every year I dread stupid fantasy football, and every year I get stuck doing it again.  I basically drop $100 to go show a bunch of people how comically little I know about football.  What a treat.  Some years I get it back though, and a few years actually come out ahead, but those are few and far between.  This year I doubled my misery by going down to the Brooksider Saturday afternoon and drafting Munkir’s team for him.  My motivation here was two-fold;  First, I wanted to help out a buddy in need, and second I wanted to get some good tips for my own draft which was later that night.  Those two items are not necessarily listed in order of importance, mind you.  I can say I was pretty happy with the way his team came out though;  It was better than my own anyway, mostly because he was third in line to pick and I was ninth.  I did have to sneak in the “Oh he’ll hate this pick” jab around the fourth or fifth round though, giving him Randy Moss, whom I’m sure he has already traded or dropped outright.  As for my brilliant idea to spend four hours of my afternoon picking up hot tips for my own draft?  Well, I laboriously typed all 150 picks into an Excel spreadsheet with any notes I thought pertinent, so I felt it was time very well spent.  When I got to my draft that evening, my stupid laptop wouldn’t start.  So, I ended up wasting my afternoon (except the moderate joy of the Randy Moss pick) and going into my own draft just as clueless as ever.

Sunday was spent cooking my fourth “practice” brisket.  Nothing new to report, which is good in that I think they are coming out a bit more consistent.  I went to a nice store to get this one though, where as the last three have come from good ol’ Costco.  I haven’t decided if it was worth the extra buck per pound yet, but I’m leaning towards “yes.”  Costco’s are fine, but it seems you can’t count on them having exactly what you want each time.  Kind of hit-and-miss on the size especially, which adds guess work to the cook time.  Martin kindly came over and judged it for me, although he didn’t reveal the actual numbers he gave me.  He takes that “Judges Code of Conduct” stuff a little too seriously if you ask me.  Something tells me that all this time spent practicing is going to end up much like my fantasy football “practice”;  A lot of time spent for more mediocre to low results.  That could just be my natural optimism shining through again though.

I ran into another moderately interesting item last week, which I had never seen before.  Now I must warn you, this part of the weekly update is mildly bawdy for my usual content, but I feel it is worthy of inclusion, mostly based on the sheer oddity of it.  I’m not quite sure how to broach the subject even.  You know those plastic round things that sit in the bottom of urinals?  I believe they are commonly referred to as “breath mints” or something.  Anyway, I’m not sure of their exact function, and to tell you the truth I’ve never put a lot of thought into the matter, but I have always assumed they have something to do with freshening the place up a bit.  Well, when I was down at the Brooksider last week I found that they “upgraded” these things to talking models.  No lie, they talk.  I don’t know what triggers them (it’s a little disturbing to think about) but I can say with all certainty that it is very unnerving when they start babbling.  You are just standing there minding your own business and the urinal starts lecturing you on the dangers of drinking and driving.  I even got into a rather animated argument with it Thursday;  “Hey buddy, I’m just here for a 1/2 price burger and a water, I don’t need any lip,” but it turns out they can’t be reasoned with.  They won’t shut up either, it just keeps going on.  Kind of breaks your concentration, if you know what I mean.  Just goes to show you the horrible ways that technology can be exploited these days.

Hey it cooled off a bit today, I guess thanks to the torrential downpours yesterday.  Good thing, I was about to literally melt riding that scooter around.  Before I get around to my always-fascinating weekend coverage, I’ll throw out another bit of excitement from last week.  Martin and I traveled to beautiful Garden City, MO, last Tuesday to attend a KCBS barbecue judging class.  It was an interesting event;  We pretty much sat there and ate ‘que for about 3 hours.  They went over what to look for, what not to look for, proper judging etiquette, blah blah blah.  Interesting stuff, if maybe a bit lengthy for my stunted attention span.  My plan now is to hopefully go judge a few contests, to kind of survey the competition.  I’m going to give everybody top scores, to lull them into a false sense of security.  Sneaky.

Anyway, for our weekend entertainment, we traveled to Mahoney State Park for my sister Sharon’s surprise 40th birthday party.  (Made even more surprising by the fact that her birthday isn’t until December…)  We got there Friday afternoon and got our campground all situated, then settled in to wait for the party.  Actually, we stayed in a room in the Lodge, complete with A/C and wireless Internet access.  But, if I want to call it camping, so be it.  I was in a State Park, so I musta been roughing it.  The party was a big success;  Anything with a fried chicken dinner is a big success in my book.  We turned in a bit earlier than most though, because 1) There was a large constituent of little people there and they were giving me a nervous tic, and 2)  We always turn in early.

Saturday the vast majority of the revelers went to the nice water park which was on site.  We, however, lamely opted to take a side trip into Omaha and do some shopping.  Again, the little ‘un population was a bit dense at the water park.  Anyway, we just kind of shopped around anywhere that looked interesting, including a Big Dog Cycle shop, Cabela’s and Bass Pro.  Our lone purchase was some new BBQ gloves, although we did shop the GPS’ pretty hard.  After that outing, we enjoyed a very tasty buffet dinner back at the lodge, and then went and saw a play at the local Melodrama.  (They have a very wide variety of entertainment options at this place, especially for a State Park.)  It was a pretty amusing diversion;  If you’ve never been to a “Melodrama” (I certainly hadn’t,) you boo the villian, cheer the hero, and other such assorted silliness.  You also pelt the villain with popcorn, which the all the kiddies seemed to enjoy immensely, to put it mildly.  I think there were about 100 people under the age of 6 in our group, although there might have been closer to 20 and they were just moving really fast.  Hard to tell.

Sunday we got up early and hit the road.  Ronda was watching the dogs again so we had to get back and provide some relief there.  After a good mauling by the mutts, I headed directly down to the Brooksider to watch the Royals and soak up some peace and quiet.  Whew.  I didn’t make it all the way through the game;  If you watched any of it, it was very evident early on how it was going to end up.  Not to mention, my quest for peace and quiet was somewhat dimmed by the fact that they were sanding the floor in the next room.  Good grief.

OK, my “always-optimistic” outlook on the weather has waned considerably since last week.  I have progressed from “Well at least it was a mild July” to considering a move out of country.  Nowhere particular, just as long as it’s 30 degrees cooler.  It’s so hot out I couldn’t wait for the weekend to end so I could get back to work, where they keep a nice meat-locker temperature going all day.

That was a pretty lame weekend.  I was oncall so I kept a low profile.  Friday night we went to see “West Side Story” at Starlight.  I made it through dinner, but didn’t stay for much of the show.  As in, my butt never even hit the chair, I walked straight from the air-conditioned dining room to the air-conditioned car and drove home to watch TV in the air-conditioning.  Donette and Kelly sat through it though, and said it was pretty good.  I’ll take their word for it.

Saturday didn’t bring much more in the entertainment arena.  I took the scooter out on a ride in the morning, before it got too hot.  I stopped by Scooter World to hang out with all the other cool kids, and then went to Microcenter and bought some new PC speakers.  I’ve the same set of Altec Lansings for about 12 years, they are without a doubt the oldest piece of computer equipment I still use.  They had developed a seriously annoying hum though, so I decided it was time to retire them.  So, I bought another set of Altecs.  They don’t sound nearly as good as the old set, but then again they were only $15 and they don’t hum.  That pretty well covers Saturday.  About the only other thing we did was go to Costco.  We were out of coffee, which rates as something of an emergency.  Unfortunately our car is acting up again, so we had to ride the scooter.  Boy THAT was a nice comfortable ride.  Nothing like putting on a full-face helmet and climbing on top of a burning hot motor, then zipping around in a blast furnace.  It’s not really that bad when you’re moving, believe it or not, but when you’re stopped at one of the 600 traffic lights in midtown you pretty much bake.  But, hey we got our coffee so all is good.  By the way, on the off chance that you care, we bought a bag of Parisi beans this time.  I’d never heard of them, but they are right here in KC, somewhere down by the Roasterie.  I’ll be darned, learn something every day.

Sunday, for the third time in as many weeks, I spent the day smoking a brisket.  Anybody want a sandwich?  We’ve got about 10 lbs of leftover beef in the freezer by now.  I think my technique is coming along nicely though;  I am pretty happy with the progress each week.  I also nearly threw my entry at St. Joe in the trash but did rather well with the judges, so what the heck do I know.  I think it’s a crap-shoot.  While the smoker was doing it’s thing, I sat in front of the PC and got some pictures up.  I finally got some more pictures from our big Europe trip posted, if not nearly all of them.  I put up a few from Seville, Spain, and some from Portugal.  That leaves only the New York pics still to go.  I also put up some random photos that I snapped over the last few weeks, just because.