Tone Parsons

Welcome to the wonderful word of Monday!

Yay! (or not!)

The weekend was actually pretty good at Casa de Tone!  My sister and brother-in-law came over on Saturday night for dinner (corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and red potatoes).  We had a few beers, played Clue (little sister won) and Monopoly (I won!).  Basically, it was an evening of good times!

Also on Saturday, I did the unthinkable….  I drove my car for the first time since December!

It was nice getting behind the wheel again after all that time, even if it was just to go to the barber shop down the street.  Independence is a good thing!  I’m going to try riding my motorcycle next weekend (if I feel up to it and if the weather permits).  No long distance trip, just a quick zip around to see how I can handle it.

It’s good to be off the old medications!!

Next Saturday is my eldest son’s 18th birthday.  He’s being very vague on what he would like (though he did give a definite “no” to an iPod).  I guess we’ll come up with something he will like.  If you’ve got an idea (that doesn’t involve a prostitute), leave a comment and I’ll consider it!

It’s been a rough week so far, but friday is right around the corner.

While there have been a few shake-ups this week, I’m not going to go into them (it’s not polite to air dirty laundry online). I will, instead, shower you with my usual calorie free mental diarrhea.

My wife picked up a new battery for my motorcycle on monday. I had called around to get the best price (high: $149.99, low: $69.99). We went for the low price and picked it up from Toby’s Battery (they ROCK!!). They also suggested that we get a battery conditioner (which she did), so now we just plug the bikes in at the end of the season and unplug them again in the spring.

So, with a little luck, I’ll be able to ride around shortly (when it gets warm enough). That’ll make me happy!

Oh… and we picked up our season tickets to the Spokane Shock yesterday. I’m a computer geek to the core, and everyone knows that geeks and sports are mutually exclusive, but arena football is amazingly fun (especially when the Shock sell out every game so there are 10,500 screaming lunatics in there). If you happen to go to the game, look up at section 216, the east end of row G, and you’ll find me (I have 7 tickets).

With the early change to Daylight Saving Time, my weekend was cut short by an hour.

That’s not my only beef with the government’s decision to move the date this year. The change caused a lot of extra work in my old department (a data center full of servers, routers, and switches…. not all of which supported the new change). I was only involved with one system, and only as support.

All went well.

At my house, I had to manually update my Tivo, but pretty much everything else took care of itself (with the exception of my timer for the outdoor lights). It’s an Intermatic self adjusting in-wall timer, and is the greatest thing since sliced bread! It knows when dusk and dawn are (based on your latitude, which you program in when you set it up). Sadly… it doesn’t know about the new time change. So… I have to leave it on the old time so it knows when dusk is (turning the lights on) and change the shutoff time to an hour earlier.

I guess if that’s the worst of my problems, I have no problems at all.

On the motorcycle front: I didn’t follow my own advice of starting up the motorcycles every few weeks over the winter to keep the batteries healthy. My wife’s bike started (after a trickle charge), but my battery is deader than a very dead thing. No worries though! It’s in the back of my wife’s car as I type this and she’s gonna pick me up a replacement today.

Now all I need to do is get my head clear enough to be able to ride the damn thing (stupid medications!).