Infinite Abyss

I will warn you at the beginning of this it isn’t going to be much of a fun post.  I am doing this partially selfishly in hopes that writing it down will help me move forward.  This is at least part of the story of what Kelly and I have gone through over last 2+ years and where we are now.  This is not something I have talked about much at all with anyone, Kelly has talked about a little more than I though.

Shortly after Kelly and I were married in March 2009 we began to attempt to have children.  Kelly started by going off birth control as an obvious first step.  She then went on to investigating potential causes for infertility issues due to diet, vitamins and other standard body issues.  In this pursuit she determined she was allergic to gluten and certain forms of dairy.  In order to improve our chances to get pregnant she drastically changed her diet and began taking supplements.  She also went to acupuncture to see if it could help. While this was going on she was charting her temperature and using other techniques to try to increase our odds.

Almost exactly a year after we were married and had made almost zero progress with diet, supplement, acupuncture and other homeopathic remedies we began to pursue more traditional infertility treatments.  We started meeting with the Fertility Center of Maryland after some recommendations in late March / Early April 2010.  They immediately started by putting both of us through a battery of tests to try and figure out what is wrong with us.  Much to Kelly’s dismay her tests were much more numerous and invasive than mine.  This began a trend that continues to this day that they focus on Kelly more than me, something she is not fond of.

Shortly after starting this process I had the beginnings of my own health issues in May 2010.  That however is a story for another post.

After much testing and theorizing Kelly was put on a course of drugs, both pills and shots, to induce / force ovulation.  This was accompanied by a process called IUI or artificial insemination.  This means that the doctors help my part of the equation get to the right place in completing fertilization.  The IUI was done partially because I was determined to not be ideal in my fertility as well.  Something that has never been investigated to Kelly’s satisfaction again because they seem to want to focus on her.

Only 2-3 of the 5 forced ovulation attempts resulted in theoretically viable eggs.  Of those none successfully implanted as fertilized embryos.  These attempts happened from the summer of 2010 until January of 2011 with pretty much zero progress.  During this process and after Kelly continued to go through more and more tests to try and determine why things weren’t working out properly.  There have never been any concrete answers.

After January 2011 we determined with the doctors that the next step forward was IVF.  IVF makes what Kelly had gone through so far look like a walk in the park.  Each attempt is about a 2 month process.  The first month is somewhat shutting down ovulation mostly done via oral medication.  All the while with at least weekly if not almost daily blood tests.  The second month is much worse for Kelly (and wasn’t great for me).  This is involves daily shots of 2-3 different medicines injected by me into Kelly, Kelly does NOT like needles.  This was a pretty painful process both physically and emotionally all around.

The first retrieval happened in mid-May.  This involved putting Kelly under anesthesia and surgically removing all the eggs she was forced to produce.  Normally an ovulation cycle produces 1 egg and sometimes 2.  Kelly produced due to drug intervention 22 eggs.  They then took the 22 eggs and fertilized half “naturally” and the other half via a process called ICSI.  ICSI is a process where sperm is manually inserted into the egg to almost guarantee fertilization.  Seven eggs fertilized via these two processes.  Two were returned to Kelly in hopes of a pregnancy and then the other 5 were frozen in case they were later needed.

While the retrieval / fertilization / return was happening Kelly suffered from OHSS or ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome.  This caused her ovaries to swell excessively and then begin leaking fluid into her abdomen.  This landed her in the hospital for several days.  While there they had to drain the fluid from her abdomen and give her medication to help prevent the retention of further fluids.

After all of that there was no pregnancy and that was pretty heartbreaking.  A few months later the frozen embryos were defrosted and attempted.  This process for Kelly was closer to IUI than IVF, but still not fun in any way.  Unfortunately this ended in the same negative result.

In late September / early October a second round of IVF was attempted.  This time Kelly produced about the same number of eggs.  Luckily she did not suffer the same fate of ending up in the hospital.  This time ICSI was attempted on all the eggs.  11 successfully fertilized and were monitored.  This time the fertilized embryos were kept in the lab for 6 days to try to find the best candidates.  This ended up with 6-7 likely possibilities but none were “great”.  The embryos didn’t blastocyst as they should have by that time.  The 3 best ones were returned to Kelly in hopes that they would continue to mature correctly.  We found out a week ago they didn’t.  Also none were viable candidates for freezing so we don’t have any for further attempts.

With this result it pretty much brings to end our attempts to have a child of our own.  Our insurance will only cover three attempts at IVF with no success.  Also since we haven’t made much progress over the last 18 months there doesn’t seem to be a reason to continue.  Further Kelly can’t handle emotionally or physically any further attempts.  We have so far spent almost $10K dollars out of pocket in this process and the insurance companies have kicked in probably another five times that much easily.

In the last 6 months or so we have been investigating various forms of adoption.  Ranging from foster care to international to local or national domestic.  We have gotten pretty close to deciding on a national domestic adoption agency.  As part of that process the agency recommended coming to terms with what has happened thus far in our family planning.  This post is definitely a part of that.

One of the steps of moving on is admitting and embracing the anger felt during the fertility attempts.  Often this anger is misdirected at totally inappropriate people.  The main direction of anger is toward other people who are pregnant.  There is a feeling of “why do they deserve to have kids and we don’t?”  Like I said this isn’t helpful, but happens none the less.  This is especially hard for Kelly and I due to our jobs I think.  At least for me it seems like almost every week someone else is either having a kid, announcing they are pregnant or some other stage in between.  I know I have felt resentment that all these people around me are having kids and I can’t.  This thinking isn’t helpful and I hope I can move beyond it.

If you have read this far thanks and I hope I haven’t depressed you too much.  I hope that sometime in the future Kelly and my fortunes with becoming parents will have changed for the better.

With the death of Steve Jobs and the release of his biography there is much discussion of his legacy in the tech world and beyond.  Anyone who knows me will know that I have never been a fan of the Macintosh operating system or the Apple hardware that runs it.  However as I have documented here as well as my now lost purchase of a 5th gen iPod nano last fall I have given money to Apple for four iPods.  I have also been party to Kelly getting an iPhone 3 and 4, even pretty much paying for the 4.

I wanted to write up some thoughts on Steve Jobs and the more recent products he had a large part in releasing.  This wasn’t meant to be as long as it turned out but I just kept writing.  Hopefully it is worth the read for those who find it.

Many people will argue that Steve Jobs legacy is the Macintosh and its related computing devices or possibly Pixar.  I think his iDevices have had and will have much larger and longer lasting impact on the technology world and beyond.

iPod

The iPod was first introduced almost exactly ten years ago on October 23, 2001.  When the iPod was released it was not the first MP3 player that honor goes to the Diamond Rio which was followed by the Creative NOMAD . It  wasn’t the best by most accounts either.  It didn’t even really take off in sales until 2003 when the 3rd Generation iPod (now known as Classic) came out.  Not surprisingly sales seemed to increase when iTunes 4.1 was released and introduced Windows support for iPod removing the need to use MusicMatch Jukebox to sync the iPod and opening the iPod up to the vast majority of the computing world using Windows instead of Macintosh computers.

The iPod did nothing truly new or unique other than potentially the click wheel which Apple didn’t even create (Synaptics who is known for laptop touchpads primarily created it) and has since been all but killed by the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Over the first few generations Apple rapidly refined the iPod and iTunes to support it.  As the iPod sales and popularity grew it basically killed off the rest of the MP3 player market.  The iPod is also arguably responsible for the near death of the CD and growth of digital audio sales via the Internet. 

There have been many sizes and shapes of the iPod including the now named Classic, the Mini, the Nano, the Shuffle and lastly the Touch which is really an iPhone without a phone.  The storage sizes grew with the growth of miniature hard drives and then shrank again when the iPod switched to solid state memory instead.

At this point it appears Apple is ready to kill off the iPod except for the iPod Touch which has more in common with the iPhone than its iPod ancestors.  The iPod was the first of the iDevices and started a string of changes throughout the world.

iTunes and iTunes Store

iTunes is a piece of software as opposed to hardware like the other three but it is intrinsically linked to them and they wouldn’t have worked as well up to this point without it.  iTunes was initially released on Mac OS 9 and then shipped with all versions of OS X.  As mentioned above in October 2003 iTunes 4.1 was released bringing with it Windows (2000 / XP) support.  iTunes wasn’t the first CD ripping / MP3 playing / music organizing software and initially it definitely wasn’t the best.  The Windows version still to this day is a little bloated and slow but it is your only option if you have an iDevice, at least for now.  Just as with the iPod iTunes has succeeded in killing of most competitors (like its initial partner MusicMatch JukeBox) or at least keeping them niche players like WinAmp.

During its development Apple added podcast support and even tried to control the name podcast saying it was related or similar to iPod.  Again iTunes became known as the defacto standard podcast aggregator mainly due to the index of podcasts available in the iTunes store.  I personally use iTunes and iPods for podcasts about 90% of the time with audiobooks and music making up the remaining 10%.

In the spring of 2003 Apple released the iTunes store that is now one of the largest (if not the largest) digital media stores on the Internet.  The iTunes store started with music only; bringing with it some of the biggest changes in the music industry in decades.  iTunes brought legality to the realm of MP3 (or AAC) music; something that had been sorely missing in the time of Napster and other P2P sharing services.  Second, in most cases songs were available individually rather than in a total album grouping.  This allowed consumers to purchase only the '”good” songs and skip the filler that many albums had.  Over time there have been several competitors in the digital music sales arena that have come and gone even from big companies like Wal-Mart and Best Buy.  Currently the only real competitor to the iTunes store is Amazon, which is good since it is keeping Apple honest at this point.

The iTunes store started offering other products over the years as well.  First was Audiobooks via a partnership with Audible.  Next Apple added video in the form of music videos and TV shows in October 2005 with the release of the first video capable iPod.  Later in March 2009 Apple added movies to its video library.  The last major addition to iTunes was the App Store as part of the iPhone 3G release.  The App Store now has hundreds of thousands of apps available.  My biggest problem with the App Store is that it doesn’t have a requirement of having demo versions.  In many cases the only way to test an app is to purchase it and hope it is worth the money.

One interesting note about iTunes is that even in its latest version of 10.5 it still supports Windows XP which means machines dating back to at least 2001 if not earlier can still run it.  On the flip side iTunes 10.5 only works on Mac OS X 10.5.8 which can’t be run on anything before 2003.  It is required to have iTunes 10.5 to support the latest iPhone which means some will be forced to upgrade their computer to support their phone.

iPhone

The second major iDevice released was the iPhone which was announced in January 2007 and released in June 2007.  Just like the iPod the iPhone wasn’t the first smart phone by far, the Palm Treo (2003), Windows Mobile (2003) and BlackBerry 8000 (2006) all proceeded it in the US alone.  It also wasn’t the first Apple branded phone either, that honor went to the doomed from the start Motorola ROKR.  The iPhone brought with it a new touch screen based interface not needing (or really working with) a stylus and form factor eschewing almost all buttons.  It also had a web browser that worked more like a desktop one than a mobile phone one allowing access to more of the web.  It did however ship without Adobe Flash and still to this day lacks it and by all indications will never have it.  With the increased functionality of HTML5 the need for Flash keeps shrinking.

The original iPhone lacked 3G which meant its Internet connection was quite slow, even in its latest version it doesn’t yet have LTE/4G opting to wait for the chips that provide it to shrink and lower power demand.  It also had an initial price of $599, which was soon dropped to $399 and left many early adopters a little unhappy.  The first versions of the iPhone came in 4 GB and 8 GB models which was less storage space than almost all iPods which meant the iPhone wasn’t even a very good iPod initially.  Now more than 4 years later the iPhone is on its 5th version with an almost yearly release schedule.  The latest generation is thinner and lighter but for the most part is similar to how it started.

The iPhone started with a still only 2 megapixel camera and now has an 8 megapixel still camera that can also record 1080p video as well as a secondary camera that is front facing for video conferencing.  Its storage has also grown up to a maximum of 64 GB on the current high end models.  The screen also doubled in resolution giving it one the highest pixel density displays on the market (it is less than 4” in size though).

The iPhone has sold millions of units worldwide now over its five versions.  Those sales have brought thousands of developers trying to cash in on all the users of iPhones via the iTunes App Store.  Also as the iPhone has matured its performance and capabilities have improved allowing for larger, more complex and a wider variety of apps.  All apps must go through the Apple approval process which sometimes seems overly rigorous and at other times amazingly lacking.  If Apple doesn’t like an App, like Google Voice, it will just not allow it but then turn around and allow over a hundred fart sound apps.

The iPhone made a large dent in the fledgling smartphone market.  It pretty much sealed the fate of Windows Mobile 6.x but Microsoft is attempting to make a come pack with Windows Phone 7.  The iPhone began the decline of BlackBerry which has since accelerated and now it is questionable how long BlackBerry will survive.  About a year after the iPhone came out in September 2008 Google released the first Smartphone running the Android operating system.

At this point there are close to a hundred different smartphones worldwide running the Android operating system from almost a dozen manufacturers as opposed to the 3-4 models of the iPhone from only Apple.  The Android operating system is still pretty rough around the edges and Google has to rely upon phone makers and cell phone service providers to release updates as opposed to Apple being able to totally control the process.  However due to the sheer number of options the Android based phones are now outselling the iPhone.  Apple still has mindshare due to marketing and the app store but who knows for how long.

There is no denying the iPhone revolutionized and jump started the smartphone market just like the iPod did to the MP3 player market.  It remains to be seen how the iPhone will fare in the long run since it actually will have to compete instead of simply being a monopoly owner of the market.

iPad

The final iDevice and potentially the one that Steve Jobs will be remembered most for is the iPad.  The iPad was announced in January 2010 and released in April 2010 and then was quickly followed by a second version in March 2011.  After the initial announcement I wrote up my thoughts on the iPad based on the information released at the announcement.  I still agree with much of what I said then but I have changed my opinion in some areas.

This will sound like a broken record but the iPad was definitely not the first device of its type, there have been tablet / slate devices since the late 90’s at least.  Many if not most of those previous devices were not commercial successes.  One of the more successful previous attempts was Microsoft’s Tablet PC as part of Windows XP and later Windows 7.  Even Microsoft couldn’t break out beyond a couple of vertical markets like healthcare and education.  Microsoft was just not a wide ranging success.

Apple took what it had learned and succeeded with in the iPhone and iPod Touch and just expanded it to a larger screen.  The iPad doesn’t have the phone functionality of the iPhone but does have the option of cellular or can be Wi-Fi only like the iPod touch.  The software is literally identical between the three devices which have further helped expand the market for the iTunes store and especially the app portion.  It seems Apple just took the iPhone and stuck a 10” screen on it.

The iPad had the luxury of coming out at a time where miniaturization, screen technology and battery efficiency intersected in such a way to make the device possible.  Previous devices were missing at least one of the above which prevented the device from succeeding.  For Windows the two common drawbacks were weight and battery life.  Other devices lacked functionality or performance to get the battery life needed for a portable device.  I honestly don’t think the iPad could have existed as little as six and for sure twelve months before it came out.

The iPad has been an even bigger success in a shorter time than the iPhone; it has sold 40 million units in only 18 months.  It took the iPod over 4 years and the iPhone almost 3 years to sell that many units.  As a result of its massive sales the iPad has become synonymous with the term tablet so much that when talking about a Windows tablet PC I have to be careful to be more specific since if I just say tablet everyone thinks I mean iPad.  The iPad has also helped accelerate digital books (but not nearly as much as Amazon Kindle) and digital magazines along with digital on demand of other types of content.

Just like with the iPhone the competitors (after getting over the initial shock) are fighting back.  Google followed almost the exact same game plan by taking its existing Android operating system and polishing it a bit and putting it on 10” tablet slate devices.  Also just like with phones Google has partnered with even more hardware providers with devices ranging from 5-11” trying to compete with Apple.  Google’s attempts thus far have had not had much success with the sales of its device being measured in the tens of thousands instead of tens of millions.  Although Samsung with its Galaxy Tab 10 has gotten such a good device out that Apple has sued to prevent its sale based on patents.  As with  phones, I have a feeling that given time Google will get more devices refined and will have a broader range of devices and pricing and as a result may start selling more competitively with Apple.  Microsoft is also preparing a response with Windows 8 which will be geared more toward touch based computing with an emphasis on slates.  Windows 8 is most likely 6-18 months away though so Apple will have an opportunity to have 1-2 more revisions and get an even larger sales lead in this space.

Legacy

I think one of or all three of these devices will be Steve Jobs lasting legacy or at least the changes they brought about in technology and society.  Apple and Jobs didn’t invent most of these ideas, what they did was refined and polished them and marketed them amazingly.  That is another important part of Jobs legacy is being this generation’s P.T. Barnum and knowing how to make people desire what he is pushing.  Most competitors could only wish they had a pitchman like Jobs and the mystique of Apple.  It remains to be seen how Apple will do in the post Jobs era, but it will take 12-18 months to really get an answer.

Saw these and thought they were interesting / funny.

This post is just a little bit of weather trivia for my area of the world.  As Kelly said just minutes ago when she saw me looking at stuff for this "NERD" is the only way to describe this.  However I think it will have baring during the storm.

I will start with a pretty graphic that I borrowed (with attribution) from Weather Channel website.  The important detail here is the average monthly rainfall of about 4 inches a month.

The next bit of data comes from a weather station fairly close to our house.  I used this since this August there have been very localized thunderstorms in the area.  I have highlighted the precipitation for the month, which is 11.5 inches already.

For this month we are 7-8 inches above average already.  Now they are talking 6-12 inches more rain for the hurricane Irene timeline.  The house may just float away!

This post is a little bit the preparations Kelly and I did, some on accident and others on purpose.  There is a second post with some weather trivia which may have bearing during the storm as well.  I will probably follow-up with a third post sometime Sunday.  First, a bit of history on the last few months.  In mid-April as I was about a week away from (my since cancelled) spleen surgery I went down to the basement at about 11 PM on a Thursday night to find a squishy carpet in the theater room.

If the carpet was wet that meant that there was a few inches of water in the basement.  Sure enough the laundry room has 2-3 inches of water.  I found that the sump pump had failed to activate and run for an extended period of time and allowed the basement to fill.  This was really the first problem that had happened with the pump since my dad and I installed it five and a half years ago.  I got the pump running by tapping the float and it began emptying.  I then did as much as I could to clean up that night.

The next day Kelly and I began the ordeal of removing almost everything from laundry room and parts of theater.  Then we pulled up the padding / carpet in a third of the theater and dried the raised floor.  We spent the weekend throwing away and cleaning stuff up and putting things under porch outside to get out of the way.

Over the course of the rest of the spring and early summer we tried various things in working on the basement.  Cleaning floor with bleach and scrubbing the walls.  Then trying to put down some new flooring, which we later removed since it didn’t work well.  We threw out even more stuff, cut out some drywall and kept cleaning.

Eventually we just sort of called a truce with the problem for the summer it seemed.  Kelly left for Seattle and our new twin nephews.  When I went to visit her in early July the basement flooded (much less) again.  Our pet sitter did his best to deal with it thankfully.

Once we got back in mid-July  I looked at the pump again trying to figure out what was happening.  I figured out the float cable had slipped over the years allowing the float to get stuck against the side and not to activate either at all or at the right time.  This probably explained most of the issues of the last few months with it.  At least that is what I thought.

Last Friday night just as another 2 inch rain dropping thunderstorm rolled through the sump pump just died basically.  This time the float was working and everything, it just wouldn’t pump.  I could hear it attempt to activate when I moved the float but nothing would happen.  This was a problem as there had been 4 inches of rain in the last 24 hours alone.  I attempted to deal with the problem with the backup pump I bought 5 years ago (and had never tested) only to find to my dismay as it totally was insufficient.  The pump simply couldn’t get the water from well to the sink.  This meant filling buckets and carrying them to sink.  When draining an entire yard worth of water that isn’t going to work for long.

I left Kelly to bucket bail and went to the store to find a better short and long term solution.  When I went out I found that the power was out at stores nearby but luckily the closest Home Depot was still open.  I was able to get a new backup pump that is almost as powerful as the main pump and is able to keep up with the incoming water and get it to the sink.  The only downside to the pump is it just runs non-stop.  Which means you have to watch it to keep it from just sucking air and damaging itself.  However, it got us through the night so I could do a proper long term fix the next morning.

The next morning I went out and bought a whole new sump pump system.  This system includes both a primary and secondary pump.  The secondary pump can activate for one of three reasons.  First, the primary isn’t keeping up and I hope this doesn’t happen because that is a lot of water.  Second, if the primary pump just doesn’t work which again I hope doesn’t happen anytime soon.  Third, most importantly for the next 24-48 hours is it can run off a battery which I got and attached to the system in a power outage.

This new sump pump came all assembled with the dual pumps and everything so installation wasn’t too bad.  The hardest part of the installation was just mating the 1.5 inch pipe and rubber clamps by pushing them together.  I had to cut a 4 inch pipe to fit the height from old pipe to new pump but that was it.  I had the new one installed in under 2 hours and it would have taken me less time if water would have stopped pouring in as I worked.  I kept emptying the well to work in.

Since last Saturday the new pump has been humming along and hopefully will keep doing so.  The timing of its installation was more by luck and accident it now seems given current circumstances.  We also got just a plain old water sensor just in case, something many will probably ask why I didn’t buy 6 years ago?  That is a good question.

Now fast forward 72-96 hours to Thursday and the story of Irene starts ratcheting up.  Thursday night as it became apparent there was likely going to be high winds and large amounts of rain arrive over the weekend we decided we should finally get everything off of porch from April so it didn’t become projectiles or become any more ruined than it already was.  Mostly Kelly (since I wasn’t feeling well) brought in everything from outside.  Even bringing it in rushed and not putting it all away it isn’t filling the space which shows how much we have cleaned up since April.  However, we still need to organize a bit.

The last thing we did was to get stuff put away in shed in back and with that the back porch is pretty much as ready as it is going to be for Irene.  Now to see what it brings in the next 24-48 hours.

Below you will find some pictures of my office before, during and after cleaning and a swapping of furniture.  I now have new to me furniture that caused me to clean my office.  It was a little messy before and some might think it still is, but it is better.  The panoramic views may not work on all browsers.

Before

Mid point of a mostly empty office

After View 1

After View 2

After almost 2 years of problems with various bits of my blog software I think I have it pretty much totally working.  Due to perl and some coding that give pretty much no error messages I have had lingering problems since June 2009.  Today as I was upgrading I stumbled across not so much a fix (since I am still not sure of exact source of problem) but a workaround.  I still have one other quirk, but luckily it isn’t preventing me from posting / updating the site.  Unfortunately it seems the Movable Type platform has been slowly dying as other platforms like wordpress improve around it.  Mostly I am too lazy / worried about switching platforms to make a jump.  Maybe the next server build I do I will switch.

For those that are curious about my issue check out this thread on a forum going back to the beginning of the problem.

Another recent anniversary is the fact that as of Memorial Day I have lived in the same house for 6 years.  This is by far the longest consecutive time I have lived in one place in my life.  Next year I will match the record of 7 years in one house, but that was separate 3 + 4 year stints.  Then it will be quite a while to match the amount of time I spent in Northern Virginia in general which is about 13 years spread out between 1984 and 2005.

As usual I am late on this anniversary. In May of 2004 on a server a couple of servers ago I created this blog on Movable Type 2 platform. Today I finished upgrading to MT 5.1. 7 years + 1 month ago this blog started and since I have posted 663 posts. Who knows maybe someday I will blog more in the future.

Hopefully this will be the end of my story on this topic.  I really can’t take another weekend like this.  It could have been a nice relaxing 4 day weekend, but didn’t turn out that way.

I woke up and got into work a few minutes after 9 AM on Sunday February 20.  I found that pretty much all the servers had come back up without issue.  The only real problem was the UPS that powers the networking equipment didn’t power on.  This is was most likely due to me trying to move plugs around on Saturday trying to keep stuff powered up.  I turned on that UPS and the network backbone booted up.  I found that the firewall again had forgotten to pass any traffic, I had to update its rules to get it working again, have to investigate it again.

Since everything had already been offline for almost 24 hours I decided to do some updates that needed to get done and just leave servers offline for a few more hours.  I had a series of Windows updates, drivers and firmware changes that needed to be made.  One set of updates was for the hard drive storage which is used by all the servers.  Which means I had to shut down all the Virtual Machines and all of the Virtual Servers.  The VMs aren’t too bad since they boot fairly quickly.  The virtual servers however can take 20-45 minutes to reboot.  I had to reboot them a few times to do all the various updates.  Once all of that was done I totally shut off the Virtual Servers and began the process of updating of the SAN storage.  That process took another hour or so.

Finally about 3:45 PM I had finished all the updates and gotten all the servers fully working again.  I then left work and headed out to my car.  After getting in and starting my car I realized I forgot my sunglasses inside and headed back in.  On my way back to my car I noticed that my driver side front tire was totally flat, yep my tech problems expanded to automotive.

I then set about removing the normal tire and mounting my space saver spare.  As I was jacking up the flat tire it began to seep air quickly enough for me to hear it.  I never found the hole visually but I could certainly hear it.  I then mounted the spare.  As I let the car down off the jack I noticed the spare was not “fully” inflated.  Which honestly isn’t too surprising since it had been in my trunk for four and a half years.  One small bit of luck is that I figured the maintenance shop at my school had some way to inflate tires.  I slowly drove around the back of my school to the shop.  I found a compressed air hose on a ceiling pulley that was pressurized, lucky for me.  After wrestling with an ill fitting mate point on the hose I was able to inflate the spare properly.

As I drove back to the front of the school I noticed a small shiny metallic cylinder on ground.  I stopped to look at it since it looked odd.  It is good I did since it was the key for my wheel locks.  I apparently left it on the lock lug as I drove away and it fell off.  If I had succeeded in losing that it would have been a week or so waiting for a new one in mail.  Another bit of good luck.  I then limped home on my space saver spare.

On Monday February 21 we had the day off for President’s Day.  I had decided to get a full set of new tires since I still had the original ones on my car and they had 45 of 50 thousand miles on them already.  I didn’t think patching a tire that old was worth it.  Kelly and I drove to Costco and I got a new set of 4 Michelin Primacy MXV4 which are the new version or upgrade of the Energy MXV4 that comes default on the Accord.  The tires were a little pricier than I had hoped, but they were cheaper at Costco and also had a $70 discount (for 4).  I can say for sure the new tires are better than the space saver spare, not ready to decide on them overall yet since I have only driven 10 miles on them.

After getting home from the tires and relaxing for a few minutes I was prodded to determine the fate of the TiVo and its potentially dead drive.  I took the “dead” drive and attached it to my arcade PC which I use for this type of diagnosis.  I was initially enthused since the drive showed up and seemed to work when I turned on the computer.  I then ran a command on the drive to prevent it from falling asleep (going idle) and not waking up.  This is a problem that sometimes happens with this model of hard drive in a TiVo.  I returned the “dead” hard drive to the TiVo and it worked, hurrah!  Another stroke of luck it seems.  I will be getting a UPS for this TiVo in hopes of protecting it and keeping it running well into the future.

The end of this story of a weekend of problems ends on a bright note I suppose.  Tuesday is a snow day, maybe I can relax a bit after shoveling some more snow.  If you made it through all 4 parts thanks for reading and I hope your President’s Day weekend was better than mine.