LukPac.org

6.23.2008

Current promo on CNN.com:

A T.V. exclusive! Christina Aguilera rocks the vote and talks about her new baby with Larry King! Wednesday, 9 p.m. ET

Methinks the editor that wrote that should be reassigned.

[9:01 PM] view comment (1) Last post by Terry

6.10.2008

I could never figure out why everybody talked about spring baseball around here, when Park always played during the summer. Finally, an answer:

Prep baseball has two seasons in Wisconsin – spring and summer. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), Iowa is the only other state in the nation to offer summer baseball.

The spring season begins in late March and runs through the second week of June. The summer season typically begins the fourth week of May and goes until the final week of July.

Interesting...

I've been playing the contacts game again. I've had rigid gas permeable contacts since 1993, and my pair is actually from 1993 or 1994. A few years ago I noticed my eyes were pretty red and during my yearly checkup my current eye doctor agreed to try some things to reduce the redness. He is a big fan of soft contacts, and while I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of switching, I agreed to try them. We tried 3 or 4 different pairs, but my vision wasn't as good, and my eyes were still a bit red with some of them. After giving up with that, we tried some different RGP designs, but those had problems too. Eventually we ended up with a pair that was supposed to be identical to the pair I already had, but I still wasn't comfortable with those and ended up just wearing my old pair.

Fast forward to my yearly appointment a month or two ago. We tried a bunch of different soft contacts again, but again with no success. Right now I'm trying some different RGP's again, and while my vision is mostly fine, my eyes seem to be just as red or worse. I wish I knew what the heck was going on.

[1:25 PM] view comments (2) Last post by Luke

6.09.2008

I like rain. A lot. I like the sound of it falling, I like the muted look it gives things, and sometimes I even like being out in it. I love thunderstorms.

I don't like when it tries to get into my house.

Sunday morning it was pouring, so I went out and took a look at how things were holding up. There was quite a bit of water pouring over the gutter on one side of the house, so after it stopped and cleared up a bit, I went up and cleaned that out. So far so good. I've never been happy with the downspouts, though, so after a trip to Home Depot, I started to rebuild them using PVC. Of course, it started to rain about then, so I only got two of the four done.

Then it started to rain *harder*. My PVC contraption wasn't quite working how I wanted it to, and that nasty thing called gravity was channeling a good bit of the water right to the corner of the house. With no shirt on and it coming down even harder, I went out to move the pipes around. Problem temporarily solved.

Unfortunately, ponds were still forming in various places around the house. Eventually some water started to seep in from under and around the stairs. Nothing compared to some of the disasters at the old house, but still enough to make a good sized puddle. It didn't create too much of a disaster, but now I have to figure out how to get under the stairs and have Basement Systems come out to look at things.

I did manage to get the lawn mowed on Saturday before the big rains started, thankfully.

[1:36 PM] post a comment

6.06.2008

Blah - somehow I managed to get sick. Wednesday night I started getting drainage down my throat, and for the past couple days I've been blowing a lot and have generally felt out of it. Today was a little better than yesterday, but I stayed home both days. Hopefully I perk up soon.

Last week was my Little Rock trip. Pretty whirlwind, but it was still nice to get away. I just wish airlines designed their planes for 6'6" folks. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos which are here.

The lawn is a hayfield. Who wants to come mow?

[10:25 PM] post a comment

5.27.2008

Busy weekend. Yesterday I cleaned out the garage again - a car can once again fit inside. Barely. I also got some parts back on the snow blower that had been off when I was working on it. Unfortunately, while it started and ran the first time I tried, I couldn't get it to stay running a few hours later. Maybe I'll take another look in the fall...

I thought I'd ping TDS about WiMAX since I had not heard anything new. I got this:

I had our WiMAX team look into your question about expanding WiMAX in the Lakeside St. area. According to the team, that area is not up for immediate expansion, but because of your inquiry, they are now looking at it.

I guess nobody thought to "look at it" when I was calling them daily about DSL and phone problems.

Oh - a family of robins built a nest on the light for back yard. The hungry babies are very cute.

[1:08 PM] post a comment

5.19.2008

As of yesterday, I'm now officially an Internet developer. Well, I received the Internet Developer Certificate from MATC, anyway. I'm still going to take one more class in the program in the fall, but hopefully this should help with my future endeavors.

Yesterday I took some chicken out for dinner, but didn't really know how I wanted to cook it. On a whim I decided I would try to pan fry it, which turned out amazingly well. I just sprinkled on some BBQ rub, dredged the pieces in flour (with a little salt and pepper mixed in) and fried in canola oil, about 6 minutes each side. I guess I did something right, because it was juicy, tasty and crispy. Even the piece I reheated in the microwave today for lunch was good. Add another page to Luke's cookbook.

I'm flying down to Little Rock for a night at the end of the month for work. Long story short, somebody needs to personally deliver a hard drive back to Madison, and since I'm working on the project, I was given the chance to go. I won't have much time to bum around, but I figured it is some place I've never been, it's a few days off of work, and it's free, so I really couldn't go wrong.

[12:39 PM] post a comment