As in: new transmission, new appliances, new furnace. About eleven grand on those (unplanned) expenses alone.

Oh, and we had another kid this year too.

Anyway, I'm really just fishing for a topical way to get into the furnace story.

Let me take you back in time a week or two. It's Wednesday the 20th. We're planning to leave for the in-laws on the morning of the 21st. Last night we called for someone to check out the furnace -- it's been cutting out recently, but will work fine again if we shut off the electricity to the furnace and turn it back on again* (it's a gas furnace with electronic ignition). So the guy shows up at 4 pm, about 15 minutes after I get home from doing the last of the Christmas shopping. He takes stuff apart. He calls me down to take a look.

There are cracks in the wall of one of the chambers where the flames are. This is a bad thing. I never really paid attention to this before but some previous owner (16 years ago) installed an 80,000 BTU furnace in our tiny house. The furnace guy figures, based on the assumption that we're heating about 1000 square feet (it's more like 800), that we only need about 35,000 BTU of output. So anyway, the ducts weren't taking enough heat away from the furnace and things cracked from overheating.

Then he says "I have to shut you down." As in he is legally required to shut off the gas to our house and seal it with a big red tag that says we can't have the gas back on until the equipment is certified to be safe. And a big red tag for the furnace too, indicating that it's unsafe and not to be used.

They can come and do the work the next day (Thursday) if we say so right now, but otherwise it'll have to be after Christmas. He calls around suppliers to see what furnaces are available. We could have kept it under three grand (all in) but figured we might as well go for a high-efficiency model and a two-stage fan.

So there's going to be 24 hours without heat and hot water. My wife quickly packs and she and the kids leaves immediately, a day early. I'll take the train when the furnace is done.

After that, it went smoothly. The biggest part of the job turned out to be the vent. The high-efficiency furnace is vented through a 3-inch pipe going through the wall, rather than through the chimney like the old mid-efficiency one. So they start drilling a big hole through our 100-year-old stone foundation wall. After an hour or two, one of the guys comes to me and asks if I know how thick the wall is because they've drilled 12 inches and there's still no sign of breaking through.

And the rest of the day (starting at 8 am and they were done around 4) they're in our tiny basement (just a crawlspace really) with three guys. There's about enough space for one guy to crouch (not stand up) on each of the three sides of the furnace that aren't against the wall -- and that's all the space there is down there.

Remind me to tell you the story of the appliances (a.k.a "Why Home Depot sucks") some day.

---
*Because doing this and changing the filter are the only things I'm qualified to do with regards to the furnace.

First off: Dolphins saved in the arms of a very tall man

The world's tallest man helped save two dolphins in China by reaching into their stomachs and pulling out harmful plastic they had swallowed, state media said Thursday.

In other news: my wife, both kids, and the cat are all sick. I'm the last one standing. Help. Is there anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?

Hm. I think my throat is a little sore.

I've got alot of eBay stuff to ship out this week. Can people get strep throat through the mail?

I got a call from my main client at 10 am this morning (Friday). They need someone to be in Berlin for six days starting Monday. They're really stuck and if I can't do it then they haven't got anyone.

Darn. My passport just expired. Phone passport office to see how fast they work when you pay for emergency service. They can do it on time.

Meanwhile I've been checking flights on the web. If I extend the trip to include a Saturday night stay, I can fly for as little as $550. Otherwise, it's going to be $5700 at this late date. By the time I'm done talking to the passport office, I've got an e-mail back from the client that yes they'd rather put me up in the hotel for a couple extra nights than have me charge them ten times as much for the flight.

Now all I have to do is get together the necessary stuff for my passport application. First thing on the list is: Birth Certificate.

Hm. I think the last time I saw the birth certificate was 5 years ago when I last filled out a passport application. We've moved since then. I have no idea where it is.

Long story short: My wife and I spent four hours going through every place a piece of paper could be. Pulled all the boxes out of the basement, went through all the files, etc., etc., etc. Went through the house top to bottom. It's not here.

Check the Registrar General's web site. The fastest I can get a birth certificate is two days.

Call the passport office back. There's no way to get the passport without an original proof of citizenship, which for me would be a birth certificate.

By now it was mid-afternoon (on Friday, of course) and if I've got to bail, I'd better do it soon.

sigh. And they would have paid me the same amount in EUR that they otherwise would pay me in CAD. That would have been a okay Christmas bonus.

numbers are fun

We've got a new baby around here: Stefan. Born at home on Wednesday evening.

[Edit: e-mail me for photo link]

I've used a gmail address for my mailing list subscriptions for a while now and decided that gmail is by far the best e-mail interface (anywhere! desktop clients, webmail, anything) and by far the best spam filtering (no spam in the inbox and no false positives in the spam folder). Now that I can use gmail on my own domains with Google Apps for Domains, there's no reason to use anything else.

Three weeks ago I moved my personal domain, including my main e-mail address since 1999, over to gmail. This e-mail address gets over 500 spam per day. With gmail's spam filtering I get 2 or 3 spam per day in the inbox and no false positives.

Yay Gmail!

On the new microwave, the Stop/Reset button is where the Start button was on the old microwave (which I used daily for 13 years) and vice versa.

(These guys started it.)

Q: What's orange and sounds like a parrot?

A: A carrot!

I have an overdue library book.

The title is: Getting things done : the art of stress-free productivity

I haven't read it yet.

So I'm sitting in the kitchen eating lunch at the table near the patio door. The patio door is open, screen closed.

Suddenly there's a loud bang in the backyard. Not quite a gunshot but close.

I stand at the door and look around to find the source of the sound when something falls on the ground just on the other side of the patio door -- as though it were thrown against the upper part of the house and fell down along the wall.

I don't see anyone or any other movement. I step out the door and look at the thing that fell. It's half of the butane barbecue lighter that I used to light the barbecue last night. And then left the (black) lighter on the shelf on the side of the barbecue. To sit in direct sunlight all morning.

I've got a new pet peeve (aside from finding potentially fatal doses of dangerous drugs on my doorstep)

I don't know why this is happening to me alot lately, because the technology involved isn't new, but it has -- especially when calling small businesses.

Here's how it goes:
1) I have a complicated problem, so I call and leave a detailed voice mail giving all the necessary info and asking several questions.
2) The person on the other end is (apparently) paged with my phone number (from caller ID, I guess).
3) They call me back with a poor mobile phone connection from a noisy environment, without having listened to the message I left -- they don't even know who they're calling.
4) Communicating the information (that I've already given them) is painful and getting proper answers is near impossible. I didn't need to be called back right away -- I would prefer to have a complete answer once they got back to the office.

Anyway, I stepped outside the door with my two-and-a-half year old son this morning and there was a large-ish red pill lying on the front porch. I scooped it up and pocketed it to keep it out of little hands. Didn't look at it until early this evening. It says HYDROMORPH-CONTIN on it. Hmm, "contin", that sounds familiar, eh?

Googled. Did some reading. Sounds like morphine with nastier side effects. The red ones are the maximum dose 30 mg.

The only person that I know of who would was on our front steps in the time period in which this thing appeared was the mail man. (The front yard is fenced all around and the steps are about 30-40 feet from the sidewalk).

Not sure if I should report this to someone (or who) (especially as I've now flushed it). Someone who would have a legitimate reason for taking this stuff wouldn't be in our yard.

So they're saying that Canada is the country with the most nationals to evacuate from Lebanon. They're being taken to Cyprus.

Today the Prime Minister was in Cyprus. There were seats available on the PM's plane for a free ride back to Canada for 100 evacuees. 63 people accepted the offer.

1) If you do what you've always done, you get the results you've always gotten.

2) Someday never comes. I majored in Theatre Arts. Everyone in the department had plans for their professional theatre career, the theatre company they were going to start, etc. 90% of them never even attempted to get a job related to theatre, it was still something they'd do "someday." But someday never gets any closer. I've seen it again and again since then -- people often seem in awe of others who achieve their goals, but they key thing that those who achieve their goals have that others lack is the fact that they actually made the attempt. If you're planning to do something "in two years or so," (for example) start telling yourself you'll do it "around June 2008," or else two years from now, you'll still be saying "in two years or so."

eh, I'm tired and can't be concise right now. I've got some more but they'll end up three paragraphs long each. (random half-remembered quote: Mark Twain once said, "A 15-minute speech takes a week to prepare. If you want the 3-hour version, I can do it right now.")

Google Spreadsheets is a limited test. If you fill in your email address below, we'll send you an invitation - first-come, first-served.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/

Update: I've got in, thanks to grub. See his journal entry or e-mail or reply here to get in (You need an existing Google account -- e.g. gmail)