Frenzied Daddy

Banks charge an insane interest rate via overdraft fees. I admit that sometimes I consider; “if I buy these groceries now, and it turns out that I don’t have enough cash, is it ok to pay the extra $34 dollars the bank will charge me? Which is worse? Hungry kids or $34 in fees?” So in that regard, I’m ahead of some of these poor fools who think the bank will refuse to honor their purchase. Looking at the heinous interest rate, however, I’d be better off at a ‘paycheck loan shark’ … (mom: no, I would never go to one. However, if I *never would go* to them, I should *never pay $34 in fees* too ).

Almost every one of our overdraft charges can be traced directly to purchases via debit. The ones that happen when a check goes through? It’s because of debit purchases that weren’t taken into account before the check was written. It’s really hitting us, we’re living paycheck to paycheck exactly as this article describes. I’m working very hard to stop this.

Another thing about this whole process is that we’ve got about $400 in “overdraft protection,” maxed out. So it’s basically a 19% interest loan from the bank to cover my previous overdrafts. The bank automatically takes out some random amount for repayment of this loan; so it’s pretty difficult to always know exactly what’s in there.

I’m currently checking our accounts daily, which is about the only thing that keeps us afloat with regard to USBank.

I’d never heard about BA flight 009, and how it fell from the sky. I love to travel, I like to fly, and I want my kids to have the same love that I do… but not to the extent of my brother and I pestering the flight attendants for olives (when we were unaccompanied minors). I don’t know how I’d react, though, if Miss K and Miss B and I were on a plane and all four engines quit.

I hope my pilot and crew would be as skilled as these; and I’d hope that we were so lucky.

I can only imagine that I’d be snapping pictures like a fool of the glowing wing and some of the worried faces in the plane. What a memory.

color with me ?

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

We first got Ms K’s color wonder markers, we were going to save them for the Disneyland trip. We decided, after she decorated herself with a ballpoint pen, to go ahead and give them to her. Now she will carry them around looking for someone to color with her. She has many books; they fill up quickly. I actually wound up hiding most of her completed books- she’d open them all up and look for new pictures to color.

When we first got them, she would point at a picture and command us to “color!” Now, she’s learning to color by herself, or next to someone else. She’ll still tell people to color, but it’s more companionable now.

Dragon Smiles

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

Ms A and Ms L brought our daughters a stuffed dragon, as big as Miss K. Miss B likes to have Miss K on top of the dragon, and then picks her up and spins her around as if the dragon were flying.

Miss B is really Miss K’s most favoritest toy ever. Look at the love between them. We all suffer when we have to seperate them. We work really hard to keep both of them happy- sometimes it’s good that they play together so much, but sometimes the 10 year old Miss B needs some personal space.

Kind of like parents.

Woo-Woo!

SCI FI Channel unveiled a new slate of programs in development, which includes shows from executive producers George Clooney, Darren Star and Mark Burnett. SCI FI made the announcement Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book), is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV.

(emphasis mine)
source

And to go on from that short blurb; there winds up being two copies of the book. One is, of course, given to the daughter mentioned. The other falls into the hands of an impoverished young woman who doesn’t know how to read (the book adapts and teaches her). It has some great imagining of how nanotechnology could transform our world (both as a lethal weapon and as a tool for construction). It’s actually the second of Stephenson’s books I read, and confirmed my enjoyment of his combination of the technical and the fantastic.

keithblur

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

This is the man who gave us our laundry back. Thanks to this man, my family is once again in clean, non-stinky clothes.

Now, I have a much better picture of him. But I wanted to ask a question… WHY is the center of this picture out of focus? The doorjamb and wall look great (behind him). I’m reasonably sure I wasn’t too close for the camera’s focal length.

I have cavities just from looking at these pictures.

What an awesome way to spend your Christmas Break; by creating a huge “gingerbread” display of the battle of Helm’s deep. Yeah, there are some detractors (”dude there were no catapults at Helm’s Deep”, “Dude there were no elves at Helm’s Deep” ) but they were working from the movie version of the battle. And what they accomplished was awesome. My favorites have to be the catapults. But he says in today’s post that he wishes “they made gummi bears with sufficient, magnificent stubble, so Viggo could have really been portrayed.”

Thanks to K and C, we have a new clothes washer. They bought a new house and moved their washer/dryer. Which means I’m no longer lugging six loads of laundry to the ‘mart. It’s amazing how many clothes we have around here. Thanks K!

It was one of those times where everything’s coming together. We had a dead washing machine in the basement. We had a dead Christmas tree in the living room. K and Cr were moving on a day Ms B was off from work, so I rented a u-Haul cargo van to take the trash to the dump and then help K move, and then bring home the washer. Well, it didn’t quite go ‘like buttah’; the first problem was that the U-Haul place had a $500 fee if pine needles had to be cleaned out of your rental (aiee!). I lugged the washer up the 15 steps out of the basement and ran it up a door to get it into the cargo van (My brother’s response to seeing my ramp? “Dude, that’s a ramp? It still has the doorknob!”). I threw some more crap into the van (some sodden rotten magazines, etc) and took it to the dump; 450 pounds of stuff (and a discount for recycling the washer?). After helping K move (hoping to save him some money on the mover bill), I lugged home the washer and thunked it down the 15 steps into the basement. Luckily I didn’t break it (grin: yeah I know I should have braced the tub. Sorry.) Amazingly, it ran!

It’s that time again. I’ve been using free hosting from a previous employer (Hi Mike), but that’s coming to an end. It’s been free since 2004, and it’s time to move on. The problem I see is that DotManiac’s hosting plans are stupidly expensive. My plan here runs out at the end of the month.

So I’m looking for a new hosting company. I’m going to pay for it out of ArghWebWorks money, and move that site over as well; that way, the new hosting plan is tax deductable. I’m thinking, certainly more deductable. Frenzied Daddy gets more traffic than I feel comfortable putting on the server I maintain for Bill. Shared hosting is O.K. with me; that’s cheaper than renting a server or even a virtual server.

I’m looking at BlueHost, Site 5(that’s an affiliate link. I’ll spend the money wisely, I promise) and Dot 5. Do y’all have any opinions on them? I’m sort of leaning towards Site 5 because of their huge $5 deal; the only drawback is the two year contract (paid in advance). I don’t like that; in technical terms, 2 years is an eternity. However, at $120, that’s not a big barrier (as opposed to the 2 year contracts on a lot of cell phones).