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Where do you put the kid?

imageConnor’s bathtub is so full of toys I’m not sure where the heck Amy puts him in it. We’ve got toys all over the house (except my office) and Amy doesn’t like the way it feels “cluttered”. Solution: bigger house. Do I move us soon or wait for her to start working again after she finishes school?

Personally I think we can live in what we’re in for a while. Connor’s outgrown half the toys he has anyway. It’s time to clean out his bedroom – hint, hint Amy. Speakin of tubs I gotta get in the shower – it’s already 7 am. I’ve got meetings all day starting at 8:00.

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WRAL.com – News – Duke Health Trims Hospital Bill; Woman’s House Still Vulnerable To Pay Debt

WRAL.com – News – Duke Health Trims Hospital Bill; Woman’s House Still Vulnerable To Pay Debt

Duke will cut you up with Hydraulic Fluid (see below) and then take your house. This reminds me, I just got a follow up card sent by Duke to review my care during my stay. It sucked quite a lot. I’m starting to feel glad I survived it. Is Grandma Johnson the only thing good from Durham?

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So it’s 2005…

imageAnd today we finished the last of our Christmas celebrations. Once again we gave and received. But this time it seemed like we did a little more receiving. Our gifts weren’t the best we’ve given but we had an impactful December with hospitalizations and car wrecks. My new years resolution is to pay off the Mustang. I’m tired of having two car payments. Not that we can’t afford it but I just don’t like it.

Amy and I also came up with two other ways to save money in 2005. We’re cutting off the lousy, useless DirecTV and since we both have cell phones we’re getting rid of the home phone (we mostly get calls on it for someone named Karen Westbrook anyway – bill collectors are looking for her and we don’t know her but it seems she used to have our phone number). That’s $110 a month saved that can go towards getting rid of the Mustang payment. So if you want to reach us call our cells in Y2K5. Fewer car payments, less TV and more cell phones? Sounds kinda European. I think it sounds overdue.

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The Santa Fe is repairable.

I got word from the Geico insurance adjuster the other day that the Santa Fe is not totaled. Seems that if the airbags deploy in any wreck it gets pretty expensive. My next step will be gap insurance to make sure we don’t come this close to being a one car family again.

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Audiovox 8910 and BitPim

imageAlltel wants $3.95 a month plus charges against monthly minutes to “send” photos taken with my 8910 to my email account or a URL. – Ya, count on that. I downloaded this photo of Connor from my phone straight to my PC.

It came to my attention that the Audiovox 8900 is not the easiest phone to work with in terms of getting pictures off of using a USB cable. Neither BitPim or Brewsky support the firmware. Luckily I learned that the 8910 is not an upgrade from the 8900 – it’s a firmware upgrade from the Audiovox 8600 series. BitPim does work. Here’s how:

1. Acquire a USB cable for the 8910 off ebay with the Curital drivers (no need to pay more than $12.00).

2. When the cable arrives load the CDM8900 drivers contained on the driver CD BEFORE PLUGING IN THE PHONE. This process will load three different drivers and then assign your phone to Serial COM Port 4 when it’s plugged in.

3. Download and install the latest version of BitPim.

4. During the installation it will ask you to specify connection settings. First specify a download path to your local system. For “Phone Type” use LG-VX6000. For the COM Port use “COM4”.

5. Next go to “View” and “Filesystem” or click on the “Filesystem” tab. Then click under the “+” under “Name”. If you’re sucessfully connected you should see the directory structure of the phone similar to the one below. The next part is what confused me – where are the fr#@kin’ photos?!!

6. The image below shows the path to the photos in the “brew” directory. They are not in the camera directory as you might think. Just right click on one of the .jpeg files and select download.image

Be careful messing around in the file system of any phone. There are very many stories on the web where people have fried their firmware for good. Your provider will give you a hard time about this if they realize what you were doing at the time the phone died. Use this information at your own risk.

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Santa Clause came to see Connor!

image…and left him all kinds of new things for us to fall over and trip on. But it’s cool because he loves his new John Deer 4-wheeler, even if he can only drive it backwards. Daddy pushes it forwards. Amy got a new camera phone on “the family plan” so it will actually save a lot of money. She also got plenty of other stuff she wasn’t expecting including a shopping trip to Aldos.

imageThe best gift I got came from my dad (as usual). It’s my new Magellan Meridian Gold hand held GPS. More Geocaches are on the way to being discovered. I’ve got to come up with a cool theme of items to leave at the caches I find next year. I think I’ll post more about xmas later but right now I’ve got to go eat chicken wings.

Since several people have been asking I’m also going to work on the photos section of the site tonight or tomorrow so all the pics on my server can be viewed from one page.

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Fun in the Hospital

I just spent the past two nights in Duke Regional Hospital in Raleigh. I was admitted throught the ER Tuesday night with a fever of 104.7 (I was told that’s impressive and that I shouldn’t have waited so long). We didn’t know if it was my Crohns disease or a virus causing the fever. 3 X-rays, a CAT Scan, four steriod injections and two days of anti-biotics is what it took to determine I had the flu.

I’ve made it 24 hours without any fever. I was admitted on no medications and came out on six. There is a full out assualt being waged by the staff of Raleigh Digestive Medicine to put the Crohns into remission. The main drug I’ll be taking is called 6MP. It’s a drug commonly used in combination with radiation to treat Lukemia. It’s used in small doses against auto-immune diseases like Crohns and Colitis.

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Amy crashed the Santa Fe

imageAmy really did try to make it to Mary Kay’s duet at church this morning. She was heading down 64 towards Knightdale when a lady slammed on her brakes in front of her as the light turned red. It didn’t help that Amy was watching Connor do something in the back seat. She was doing about 40mph when she ran into the back of a Buick Rendezvous. Always a Buick… I hate those cars. Congradulations to Amy for making it through her first airbag deployment.

imageAmy and Connor are fine. A claims been opened with Geico and I’m certain of a Christmas present from them in the form of a rate increase. I don’t care because like I said Amy and Connor are fine. So’s the lady who was driving the ugh,…Buick. The car’s been towed to Barbour’s Towing and Recovery and Geico’s going to have it moved to a body shop tomorrow.

On a side note: Let me praise the durability of the mighty Olympus Stylus 300 digital camera. It sat completely submerged in a puddle of coffee in the dash compartment of the Hyundai until I arrived on the scene. I wiped it off with my shirt tale and took the pictures above. So far it’s proven to be indestructable.

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