Ups and downs of the week.

Red Sox – Looking much better. 8-2 in their last 10. They should be riding a seven game streak now, but…

UPDATE and CHANGE OF STATUS: Papelbon blows his second save in a row. Sox are now 7-3 in their last 10. They had sooooooo many opportunities tonight to put this game away and couldn’t come up with the clutch hits. Manny looks like he’s going into a slump. Only bright spot: Yankmees lost again.

Julio Lugo – The Sox as a team have 20 errors this year and 10 of them belong to Lugo. His fumbling of a double play ball on Wednesday night cost them a game they fought hard to win and broke their winning streak.

UPDATE: Make that 11 errors. This one cost the Sox 2 runs and essentially this game.

Celtics – Looking more like the championship team they are.

Spygate coverage – Enough already. It’s over.

School’s out – Summers are so relaxed when all the kids are gone.

Ups and downs of the week.

    Red Sox – First the pitching was bad and the bats were hot. Now the pitching is hot and the bats are cold. It’d be nice if they could get together. On the good side, of course.

  End of Semester – Nice to have no homework or projects to think about.

   Grass growing season – I’ll be glad when it doesn’t grow 6 inches in a week.

    Celtics – Not as easy as it they thought it would be apparently.

UPDATE: So the bats finally came alive (except for Manny’s). Good thing, too, because the pitching was only so-so.

Ups and downs of the week.

  Baseball Season – Here at last. Well, almost. The Red Sox have played two games in Japan, but now have to wait until the official opening day on Tuesday.

  Friday classes – Last one tonight. It’s good to finish up a course with only 6 meetings, but spending Friday night and all day Saturday in class is no fun.

   Open access spectrum – Finally the government does something right. Of course it remains to be seen if it really happens.

  Construction noise – It’s going to be a noisy summer as they dig up the street in front of my office. I’ve been listening to idling dump trucks and backup beepers all day.

  Earth Hour – The idea is for everyone to turn off their lights at 8PM on Saturday for one hour. What happens when the entire population of a timezone turns the lights on right at 9PM? I bet the power grid folks just love this idea. Luckily the promotion of the idea is practically non-existent, so it shouldn’t be a big deal in any respect.

Update: Now Google has picked up the Earth Hour flag and is running with it. It’ll be interesting to see how widespread the effort becomes in the U.S.

Ups and downs of the week.

 European Webcams – Most of these webcams are in Europe, such as this one in Italy and this one on some ferry.

  File and Settings Transfer Wizard - This is supposed to save time?

  Vacation – Off to Bermuda tomorrow.

  Chicago traffic - Nuff said.

 Spring Break – I need it. And I get two in a row. This coming week for EIU, so no school for me, and the following week at UIUC, so all the students are gone.

So today I was stuck in a class from 8:30AM to 5:30PM. Sarah dropped me an email late this morning to tell me some animal was caught in the vent for the stove hood. She said it was making a real racket. Our stove hood vent apparently does not have a screen or flapper valve at the top to keep animals out. Somehow an animal had fallen down the vent and was struggling at the bottom to get out. At first we didn’t know if it was a bird or a squirrel, and judging from the amount of noise, Sarah thought it might be a squirrel. So all day while I was in class, I was thinking about how we’d get the squirrel out of our vent. I even called a local plumber who suggested we let it die and then remove it. Being big fans of animals, that was not a good option in our house. Our cats were, of course, mesmerized by the prospect of a small critter so close. Kitty excitement reigned.

So after I got home, I set about trying to see into the vent. It didn’t look like it would be easy from the stove end, so I crawled up into the attic to try from that end. Our attic is not an easy place to walk, though. It’s criss-crossed with support beams and has a few feet of blown-in insulation on the floor. One misstep and we’d have a new hole in the ceiling. It took me a while to work my way over to the vent pipe, but I still couldn’t get into a position to look down inside it. Time for Plan B.

I removed the screen over the hood vent fan and could see up inside enough to realize that it wasn’t open directly to the vent pipe. There was a flapper gate in a mail-size slot at the stove end. When the fan turned on, the flapper gate opened enough to vent out the air. I pushed the flapper open a bit and could see feathers and a bird leg. One mystery solved. It was actually better that it was a bird as it’s easier to deal with a bird in the house than a scared squirrel. Time to disassemble the stove hood.

Now it needs to be said here that I am no handyman. In fact, my nickname at a former employer was Handy, but it wasn’t a compliment. I’m a disaster with a screw gun or a hammer. Nonetheless, I dismantled the hood. (Taking things apart has never been a problem for me. Putting them together again is a different story.) So I finally got the hood apart and was able to remove the flapper vent. It wasn’t out 2 seconds when the bird flew out and the chase around the house was underway. The bird, of course, flew past the windows we had opened and finally lodged itself in the most difficult place to reach; behind our biggest CD rack. I had to move a smaller rack and bunch of loose CDs and then move the large rack. Once I had moved the rack, the bird finally flew to a spot where I could grab it and set it free out the window. Chalk up one for the good guys. Hope the birdbrain learned a lesson. 🙂

My reward was a good pepperoni pizza, some very good Merlot, and getting to sit and watch The Italian Job, which is a favorite of mine. Animal rescue has its rewards.

Ups and downs of the week.

  School’s out – Quiet at work and no more papers to write.

  Winter -  6″-8″ of the white stuff coming tomorrow.

 Timing – This storm could have been next weekend when we’re trying to fly out of here.

  MLB steroid report – While I have no pity on steroid users, the report smacks of sensationalist slander.

 Fireplaces – Nice on a cold night.

Ups and downs of the week.

 Patriots – Keep on rolling.

 Dental work – Not terrible, but bad enough. Plus it’s dragging out to a sixth visit.

 Thanksgiving Break – Been nice having time off.

  Group projects in school – No fun having to rely on others for your grade.

  Celtics – No longer undefeated, but still looking damn good.

I’m currently taking a class on Total Quality Management, which is a business practice based on the idea that if you improve the quality of every facet of your business, the end result will be lower costs and higher profits. The class discussions have me thinking a lot lately about the quality of work I see in businesses I frequent. Take for instance, lunch. I’m not as conscientious as I should be about making my own lunch. Even though I usually would rather bring lunch than buy it, I’m most often too lazy to make a lunch at night. I end up buying a sandwich at one of three places near my office. The first is my daily coffee shop, Espresso Royale. I like their coffee. The staff know me and know what I want. And they make good sandwiches. They’ve earned my continued patronage because they achieve quality in all aspects. But they don’t always have sandwiches available. On those days I can either go next door to Subway, or one more door to Silver Mine Subs. I’ve written about Silver Mine Subs before. Of the two, Silver Mine is far better. The staff at Subway (the one near my office, at least) are usually dour and act like it’s such a pain to have to make sandwiches. Their final product reflects that. The sandwiches are usually skimpy and poorly made. On the other hand, the staff at Silver Mine are usually quite friendly and even jovial. They joke around a lot and work quickly, but their sandwiches are always well made and generous. Accordingly, they have earned my repeat business.

This past winter my beloved BMW 740iL blew out its coolant expansion tank. The expansion tanks and radiators in the BMW 4.4 liter engines have a design flaw which causes them to crack every 70k miles or so. Poor quality in an otherwise high quality car. Because my expansion tank blew right down the street from the local BMW dealer, I had the car towed there. I normally have my cars serviced at Isringhausen Imports in Springfield, Il, but that was 80 miles away. So despite my better judgment, I let the local dealer work on my car. I should have paid the extra to have it towed to Springfield. My car was in and out of the local dealer’s shop every day for the next two weeks. In the end I feared they had damaged my engine so badly that I traded the car in on a newer X5. At Isringhausen, of course. Isringhausen has always done quality work, they always find me an almost new loaner car, and they’re quick to address any concerns I have. I always feel I’ve gotten a fair deal from my salesman, Jeff Colman, from whom I’ve bought 3 cars. Isringhausen exudes quality. The local dealer has lost my business forever.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling a $4 sandwich or a $40,000 car; quality will keep people coming back and ensure a continued income. I’m just amazed that so many businesses lacking in quality manage to survive.

Another summer is almost gone, although you’d never know it from the weather. Still hot as a sauna. We had a nice break from it this past weekend during our trip to New England where it was drier with temps in the low 70’s. And with the end of summer comes the horde of students descending on both Champaign-Urbana, where I work, and Charleston, where we live. It’s the dichotomy of academia that students, without whom it would not exist, are the primary complaint of those who work there. It’s the old “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em” issue. It seems those relationships always offer enough benefits to make them worthwhile.   😎

I am myself a student again. I started the Master of Science in Technology program at Eastern Illinois University this summer and I have one class this fall. I had planned on taking three, but I have quite a few major projects at work planned for this fall, so I decided to cut back to one course. The two courses I took this summer were no-brainers, but they did require a lot of reading and that took up more time than I’d expected. I still hope to be able to take at least two courses in the coming semesters so I can finish up this program in less than three years. We’ll see.

For a couple of weeks, anyway. My two online summer courses finished up this past Friday. Wish I could say they were worth it, but considering the cost, I think I got short-changed. I’m hoping the classroom course I start in a couple of weeks is more substantial, else I’ll be looking for another program.   😐