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December 26, 2006

Merry Christmas ... maybe

So another Christmas has come and gone. This year was an interesting one to say the least. While the holiday events themselves were enjoyable, I wasn't really able to enjoy myself. As I arrived at Michael's house on Sunday, the timing belt in my car broke. I wasn't aware of any problem upon my arrival, but when I tried to start the car and head to Amanda's mom's house, the car wouldn't start.

Initially, we thought that it might be a gas gauge problem, so Michael got out his gas can and put some fuel in the car. Afterwards we tried to get the car running by popping the clutch. No go on either of those, so we decided to park the car and deal with it after Christmas.

At this point, Amanda and I called her sister to come and get us so that we could participate in the events at her mom's. It was hard to enjoy myself during the festivities, and I think that it showed more than I cared for it to. Amanda kept looking at me and asking if I was OK. I told her that I was fine and tried to keep my spirits up, but I was really having a hard time doing so. On top of that, my wrist began to hurt as I had jammed it on the back of the car trying to push it while Michael attempted to pop the clutch.

We stayed the night in Frankfort, staying at Amanda's mom's on the pull-out couch. We went to church with her family, which was pretty enjoyable. I got to see a school mate of mine from high school, who was very very pregnant. She approached me and I realized who she was immediately. As she was in the middle of introducing herself, I said "Hi Sarah" and said my hello. This was nice, as it has been a very long time since I had seen someone from school. Had it not been for the car breaking down, I doubt that I would've had that opportunity.

This was also the first time that we had been back in her family's church since the wedding. It felt quite different with the amount of people that were in there, in addition to the changes that were made to the stage. It had been setup with a nativity scene and most of the stage was covered in hay and by a set. The cross in the background was covered by a star that lit up to represent the star that guided the wise men to baby Jesus.

It was nice.

On Christmas day, we spent some more time with Amanda's family before they brought me back home. As I wasn't expecting to stay the night, I didn't bother to pack up any medicine. My alergies were beginning to bother me, and my stomach was understandably upset for most of the day. I had Ashley take me home. Amanda came with, but was going to be heading back to Frankfort to take the car to the dealership to get it fixed today. I decided to stay home, as there was no point in coming here, heading back to Frankfort for dinner and coming back home.

Today, Amanda had the car hauled to the dealership. Originally, we had planned to have it towed to Louisville to have our mechanics take a look at the automobile. Unfortunately, our insurance would only pay for 10 miles for towing, so we opted to drop the car of at Jeff Sach's in Frankfort to have it looked at.

This afternoon, Amanda called me with the news. Jeff Sach's quoted her a repair price of $1800.00 to fix the car. According to the mechanic that she spoke with, the timing belt broke and warped the valves in the engine. I had Amanda call her dad, as he works on engines and knows the right questions to ask, and had her call the dealer back. She called me back and told me that after she asked her questions, they backed off their original statements and told her that they hadn't actually verified that the valves were warped.

Man I hate car dealers. They always try to rip you off.

After Amanda called Dewey back, he told her that he and his friend, Dave, might be able to get the car hauled away and get it fixed for us. Amanda and I are're hoping that Dewey's friend will be willing to work on the car. And until this is taken care of, we're going to be down to a single car.

When it rains, it pours.

~out...

Posted by ed at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2006

Bring out your dead!

So today I go to use my desktop computer. The machine typically stays on around the clock, as I never really see a need to turn the thing off unless I'm doing something drastic to the unit such as upgrading hardware or upgrading software. My monitor was in sleep mode, so I moved my mouse and waited for the password screen to come up.

And I waited...

And I waited some more...

Wait ... still waiting ... wait wait wait ...

At this point, I'm thinking that maybe the machine has frozen. I hit the power button to turn the machine off. It goes through its normal process of shutting down and comes back up. As the computer came back up, I still wasn't seeing a video signal on my monitor. I unplug my monitor and plug it back up ... still nothing. I change out my monitor cable, still no go.

At this point, I knew that the problem was going to be with my monitor or video card. I grabbed the laptop and hooked it up to the monitor ... sure enough the video came up on the screen. I was happy to see that my monitor was okay, mostly because I didn't feel like spending another $300 dollars on another unit. I also like my desktop monitor. It's very bright and vibrant and the colors look very good.

R.I.P ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - 2004-2006

My ATI card has served me well. I got it for free from a well known computer vendor a few years ago due to a mistake on their part. I had ordered a machine that took roughly three months to deliver. When it arrived, it had the wrong video card in it. When I called the company up, I expressed my frustration with the delay on the computer and the annoyance for it to arrive with the wrong video card. They said that they would send out the right card immediately, and for my trouble I could keep the card they mistakenly sent me.

I've used the heck out of this card. It has served me well for many years and through quite a few video games. It will be missed, if only for the fact that it was a great top of the line video card that was given to me for free.

My hopeful replacement? A PNY GeForce 7600GS video card.

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

Three years old this month

I just realized today that my blog is officially three (3) years old this month. That's right ... around this time three years ago I was bored enough to start blogging about myself.

What's really interesting about having a blog around for this period of time, it gives me an insight into what I was thinking over the past few years. It shows me how much I've grown as a person and how much growing I still have yet to do.

Some observations:

1) I don't cuss on my blog as much as I used to.
I honestly think this is because I've stopped hanging around the people that used to upset me so much. I'm much more mellow now.

2) I don't make nearly as many entries as I used to.
Most of my entries lately come in spurts. I try to blog something at least once per week, but if you look back even at this month you can see how much I've failed at that attempt.

3) I don't talk about work as much as I used to.
Maybe because I'm paranoid...

4) I'm not the only person who's slowed down on their blogging.
I think that the "newness" of blogging has finally reached its peak. It's something that everyone has tried, either on their own personal page or on a MySpace page. It's yesterdays trend. Same thing goes with Podcasts.

5) No one reads my site.
This is actually a good thing. This site is really for my own purpose. I started it as a kind of experiment to reflect on my life over a period of time. It's also a good reminder about the things that I have done and things that I want to do.

Well, that's about it on this weeks entry. Tune in next week and we may have something posted ... but the odds are that probably won't happen. :)

~out...

Posted by ed at 10:55 AM | Comments (2)

December 03, 2006

All about buying a home

Over the past few weeks, Amanda and I have been moving forward on something that we have both wanted for a very very long time: buying a house.

Yup, that's right, the Engelking's are looking to purchase a house of their own. No more apartments. No more giving away money to a company that refuses to come and take a look at a broken garbage disposal. No more noisy neighbors hooping and yelling outside your room early in the morning. No more thumping and bumping of cars at all hours of the night. No more gangs of kids running around giving you weird looks like they're getting ready to do something rotten.

Amanda and I went a few weeks ago to begin the process of getting a mortgage. It's taken a while to get all of the proper paperwork together, but I think that it has been worth it. We're hoping to have word no later than tomorrow evening if everything goes right. We may be able to make an offer within a few days.

I've never thought about it before, but we're doing quite well financially. The loan officer explained that our debt to income ratio is quite low. Most people have something like a 50-50% ratio ... Amanda and I have a 25-75 ratio. Twenty-five percent of our income goes to debt, such as a car payment or credit card. The rest of it is open, and generally goes towards things like utilities, rent and such.

Oh, and we've already found the house that we like. We found a foreclosure that is in a good area of town. The house itself is about 6 years old. There are some minor things that need to be taken care of, but they're all rather small items. A floor needs to be fixed and some siding needs to be put back in place, but things like this can be expected when a house has sit vacant as long this one has.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. This is something that we've really wanted for a long time. With just a little luck and a little time, we may just get it.

~out...

Posted by ed at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)