So that is the reason the audi is louder now... I hit a bump on lower wacker at speed and the car slammed into the ground... and then I had a louder exhaust...

Here you can see the flange actually hit the pavement hard enough to buckle the pipe. That is T304 stainless steel. See the bubbling on the left? that isn't supposed to be there. So there is an air leak there and the pipe touches the body a bit further up near the motor since the bend it causing the pipe to be pulled towards the back of the car.

Awesome.

I live in Chicago, which is a fairly dense city. But I am over 2 miles from downtown, so the tallest building around me is usually 3 stories, so the density is not that high. But with that kind of density, parking is clearly at a premium, and I understand this. I even pay for extra parking outside of the 2 spots that I have at my house and I am fine with that.

What I hate are people that double park. HATE it. I hate it when people do it on quiet little residential streets, but it isn't the end of the world, because there is room to get around and one is really not blocking the flow of traffic due largly in part to the fact that there aren't usually that many cars driving by. I hate it more when it is done on a major artery, so Ashland, a major north south street in the city that is 4 lanes plus a center lane.

The thing that often makes it more frustrating is it is almost ALWAYS done with an empty spot within a stones throw. Perhaps it is a no parking zone, or a hydrant, but it is a place you could park your car that is not impeding the flow of traffic. And really, if there is a fire, I am not sure double parking is really any better.

I can only assume that the people that do this are either too self centered to even consider parking a little further away as to not block traffic? Or perhaps, even worse, they considered it but just don't care? Let those people go around me? Or perhaps they just don't want to have to walk so far?

I mean how can one not feel like a giant asshole blocking all the traffic on a major road?

On my way to work today, which is what prompted this rant, I encountered an even more slefish situation. I am driving on a quiet residential street. I approach a stop sign, and none of the cars are moving. This is due to the fact that both other vehicles, a school bus and an SUV wanted to go east. However eastbound was blocked due to a double parked car that had managed to back up 4 other vehicles, one of which was another school bus. I, going north, thought oh, that is unforunate that one person is causing a problem for so many others and drive on.

I notice that traffic is not moving much northbound either, but due to the one way nature of the streets, north is looking better than east. I get up there and there is a couple loading a uhaul truck, of course double parked, blocking my northbound lane. On the southbound lane, there is a gentleman unloading a uhaul trailer, again double parked. These 2 geniuses managed to leave JUST enough room for 1 car to slalom between them. Meanwhile there are 4-5 cars in each direction that have essentially gridlocked themselves in due to the fact that southbound traffic is already stopped by the OTHER double parked car. Awesome.

To make this entire thing worse, there is a LOADING ZONE about 10 feet from where the uhaul truck is parked that is sitting empty. In fact people are using it to turn around.

So there are now about 15 cars all stopped, honking, with no place to go. Would you, as a perhaps NOT insanely selfish person, feel a little anxiety if it were you blocking the road? Would you perhaps feel a little emabarrased or al the very least uncomfortable? I would. I would feel really bad.

These 2 groups of people, who are evidently very important people, so much more important than the rest of us, but not so as important to be able to hire movers, have stopped unloading and loading their respective vehicles and are walking up to the cars and yelling at us.

Insane. Seriously. Insane.

Side note... I hate it when websites don't use title and meta tags correctly... for example... google the title... the top 3 include the IMDB page, the trailer on apple.com, and then the 'official' site... which has a title of 'Lars and the Real Girl - Coming Soon' ... which is dumb, since the movie is already released, and the site itself acknowledges that. Then the lack of meta tags on the page combined with the fact that the page is entirely flash means there is actually NOTHING to show on the google description. Seriously, really?

When someone was fired/laid off (mostly almost always fired) an email would come across to everyone... the person's name would be the subject line, and the body would have the phrase "Effectively immediately is no longer employed by ABC Consulting". I swear he had that as a template saved and ready to rock.

Well, I assume that such an email was sent when I was let go from that job, and such an email would have been sent yesterday provided that was common practice at every job. I had been the IT Manager of a small real estate developer based out of chicago. They did primarily residential stuff, and they had made a few decisions that perhaps weren't the best for the markets that they were in. Thus we had buildings built, condos and townhouses, that were done but not sold. Combine that with the current down turn in the residential market and the lack of a light at the end of the tunnel, it was decided that my position, as well as that of a project manager, had to be eliminated in a cost cutting measure. So I was called into the boss's office yesterday at 4pm and told it was my last day, pack up my stuff, etc. I was paid out what I was owed in both hours worked and vacation, which was fine. Obviously a fancy severance package would have been nice, but I have never received one in the past, so I am ok with that.

So with that, that chapter of my resume is complete. But before you go feeling bad for me, let me fill you in on some details that partially explain the blog drought that I have been in... I have obviously made web pages in the past, and for the last 2 years or so I have been making sites together as individual consultants, and we decided that we work quite well together, as he likes the front end CSS/JS stuff and I like the backend PHP/DB stuff. Obviously, we both can do all aspects, but it is a good match of our likes and dislikes.

So a little while ago, we decided that we should form our own web development firm and migrate from our respective full time jobs into our own company. I had been leaving that off this blog in case it was read by any of my then coworkers. Thus I had exciting things going on, but I wasn't quite ready to make them general public knowledge.

So not that long ago, we actually formed an LLC, mk2 development, opened a bank account, credit card, etc The plan of course was to ramp up so as to avoid a financial crunch. Obviously, that isn't really what is happening, and I will have a financial dip in the near future, but I think overall, this is good timing. I had been aware, especially in the last week or so, that it is hard to find the time to get a new venture off the ground when a large chunk of your day is spent elsewhere, and you have a pregnant wife, and a 2 year old, etc... it is just hard to find time to schedule client meetings, work on marketing materials, set up the structure of the business, learn accounting, etc. All while not doing it during the 40 hours I was at my day job.

So while it is unfortunate, and I certainly could have waited until the baby was born, or gotten a severance package, or whatever, I can't complain. I a client meeting today at 10am, so we'll see where that ends up. I need to do some work for my dad on his website and the computers in his office, and we have a couple pro bona sites that we have been talking about.

It is time to step up the game and make this company my full time job. It needs to start paying me. And man, we need to finish our website....

One is being at work by 9am, which is fine. I started there as a consultant, so I had an off hour schedule. Eventually I became full time, and the start time was not an issue then, provided I worked 40 hours, which I always have, as I am not out to take advantage of anyone. But evidently the 9am thing is a larger issue now, so I have been coming in at 9am. It is kind of annoying, since that eliminates any time when I can do simple things like reboot the servers unless I stay late. We have a few people that come in really early (pre 8am) so I can't really beat them into the office. But it isn't the end of the world.

I am also trying to keep my work area organized better. While it wasn't in the boss's email, it is a good thing to do I guess. While personally, I can handle clutter and it is rare that I truly LOOSE something, it does at times make finding things I only need to use 1/year or something easier to find. It also makes my coworkers happy, so that is a plus.

At the same time, I have decided to not do work outside of work. I used to read the work email when I wasn't at work, go through the work SPAM filters to look for false-positives, check on the servers, etc. I have decided that runs dangerously close to ruining my time off (and at times, has). Thus I turn off those email accounts when I am not at work. Nothing is that important, and if something goes down, it will likely be email and thus, it won't be effective communication anyway.

So that is roughly what is up with work. It isn't nearly as awesome a job as it once was, but that could be the ebb and flow of work. Or it could be that I have changed, or the job has changed, or most likely a combination of the two. But is a good job, I like the people, and I don't mind the work. Is it as perfect as it once was? No, but that is ok. Work is work, and the most perfect job still has its work.

The odd thing is that it doesn't always hurt, just sometimes. And sometimes I will forget for hours that it is weird, then I'll do something weird. Makes me think I just tweaked a muscle. Grr.

I have been hyper aware of such things since Lisa screwed up her back, that is scary... so I am trying to be careful.

In mid december, the Audi started making an odd noise, and instead of getting it to Al right away, I decided to park it in the garage and see how hard it would be to NOT drive. I would not pay my january parking, and I would start taking more public transportation. I would try to carpool and not use the camry. I figured it would save some money, but really, it would be more environmentally aware. I had been thinking I hadn't been doing enough personally, but I did spend enough time thinking, reading, learning, and talking about it. But wasn't acting on it enough. Along with the less driving, I was making a conscious effort to turn lights off, not let the water run longer then needed, and I bought more of the CFL light bulbs.

Well, it is march now, and I have only recently bothered to get the Audi fixed, and that was because I had been thinking of selling it. I haven't had a car of my own since december and it is fine. I take the bus to work and back, maybe the L. Sometimes rebecca picks me up (which I realize uses gas, but the camry gets significantly better gas mileage than the audi, and it is rare that she drives me when she wasn't already out. She does drop me off on the way to the burbs on monday and wednesday, but it really isn't that far out of the way).

I have swapped almost all the lightbulbs on the 3rd floor with CFLs, and I am happy with them, light output wise. Rebecca says they are starker and more institutional feeling. I think that is partially true, but I think it is also partially due to the built in resistance that most people feel towards them. I am fine with it, and I think rebecca has already forgotten about it. I think mason's room looks better now since it is now brighter (one of the 75W incandescent bulbs had recently burned out) and the greens look better in the light. The first floor has then in a few places too. I am going to pickup a pair of dimmable, indoor flood CFLs for the den to see how they work with the dimmer. If they are fine, I am swapping out the ones in the living room too. That would be pretty much all the normal bulbs. We still have some halogen fixtures, and I am not going to swap those fixtures out. But they aren't the most used ones.

I was also looking at this, The Energy Detective. It is basically a digital electric meter the runs off any outlet in your house. You have an electrician wire up part of it into your circuit breaker box. Then you plug this into any outlet, and it will give you current (instant) energy usage, usage for the month, etc. I think it would be a great tool to monitor our energy usage. It is $150 and requires install (although it allegedly takes less than 15 min to install).

I just checked. In 2006, I spent $1022 on the electric bill. Perhaps in 2007 I can get that down to $800?

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