Scrabble Time

I picked up a copy of Scrabble for the PC the other day. It only cost $5. Momoko loves this game. so I thought I would test it out for her.

I love the thing. I can't get enough of this game. They did a good job of making it fun and easy. The only problem is that this is for the PC, not the Mac. Momoko is Mac only.

They do have a version of it that does run on the Mac. However it costs a whopping $30. I think Momoko is going to buy it anyway. Good stuff.

Painting Surprise

Previously I bleached the ceiling of our bathroom. That got all the mold off. Momoko thought we should paint the ceiling with mold resistant paint. Tonight she assigned Kit Kat to this task. I asked Momoko to go up and supervise the job. She decided to chat or play some games. When it was time to check Kit Kat's work, Momoko found that Kit Kat did not put down painter's tape on the wallpaper. Oh oh. Now we got a "trim" of white paint on the top part of the wallpaper. Momoko said she was going to get something to remove this paint tomorrow.

In other news, I just spent the last week at home learning a new programming language. I previously wanted to take a college course to learn this JavaScript language. But my college cancelled the class. I negotiated with my company to let me learn it on my own. The gave me a week off to do it. It was not a big deal. I get one week a year to do training. So this counts as my training. It was harder than I thought it would be. When I got stuck, there was no teacher or other students to help out. I only had Google at my fingertips. I got through 5 chapters of a textbook. Got to keep learning though.

Hail of a time

Yesterday I buckled down and did my taxes. Good news. I am getting money back from the fed and the state. Yee haw. I hate paying at tax time.

Momoko got me TurboTax. So the job was not that hard. Today I decided to take my tax returns to the post office. I always file by mail. I figure it makes it harder for them to audit me if I do not file electronically.

Got some lunch. The parking lot of the sub shop was jammed. They have some farmers market going on Fridays. Coming home it started to rain. Then it felt like the rain was pelting the car. No. It was hail coming down from the sky.

This was all a surprise. The weather was very warm. I wore a short sleeve shirt outside. I guess it is colder up in the clouds.

New Couch Time

The couch in our living room is falling apart. The seams have split near the back where you sit. This is not unexpected. We had this thing when we moved into the house. It is time for a new one.

We almost bought a new one last year. But the sales clerk at the store that I liked try to pull a fast one and charge me more at checkout. She would not change the price to the amount we had agreed upon, so I would not buy that couch.

Today I went to another one of the company stores I like. There was a guy there from another state. He had a lot of trouble taking my order. He kept calling his boss on this cell phone. After he entered my order, I reviewed it on the computer screen and found a lot of problems.

Hopefully in one week, we will have 2 new black leather couches delivered. They have good support for sitting. They also are very puffy and comfy. We are getting two because the love seat costs the same as a couch. Might as well get a longer piece of furniture for the same price.

In Search of Cherry

Last weekend we had the anime convention. Then we worked on building a storage unit for firewood outside. I was very tired on Sunday. So Little Kat and I skipped our usual shopping.

This was too bad because coca cola products were on sale at our store. Today I decided to force myself to go pick up some cokes. I was disturbed to find that they did not have any cherry coke. Momoko like that the best.

All the had in cherry was cherry cola zero. Yuck. Instead I picked up an extra Barqs root beer. Everybody here likes Barqs. I also loaded up on regular coke.

Getting the Apps

I essentially play one game on my laptop these days. It is Angband. It is the most primitive dungeons and dragons application you ever saw. Everything is a bunch of alphabet characters on the screen. It looks like a broke down MS-DOS game. However I have been playing a variation of this game ever since the college days.

The rest of the family plays iPhone apps. A family favorite seems to be this zombie farm thing. Momoko is pretty much hooked, working on it all hours of the day and night. Little Kat is fighting back to stay in the lead by purchasing some help with real cash. Doh!

I finally broke down and did a search for some of the more popular iPhone apps. Got about 20 free games downloaded to my PC. Just today I synced my iPhone to the PC and downloaded the games. Too bad I need to study my programming. Otherwise I would be playing those games right now. One app I did not download is zombie farm. It looks just too addictive. And now, back to my programming.

Convention Day

Today was the day Momoko planned for us to go to the anime convention. Somehow I ended up driving us there. There was some sort of fire next to the Interstate that delayed us. There was also some confusion when we got to the place how to get to parking. I was tired before the whole thing started.

We wandered around this huge convention hall to find the place to check in. The line was massive. It felt like forever before we checked in. I kept asking Momoko whether she wanted to leave before we even checked in. But no, she was determined to go to this thing. The line snaked around back and forth like we were going to a baseball game. Little Kat and I were forced to spy on scantily clad girls dressed in what I assume were some anime character costumes. Little Kat also say his friend from school near the end of the line.

After checking in, I was reading to take a rest. Little Kat and I muscled into a place to sit, while Kit Kat and Momoko bought some sandwiches. Our first event was the voice actors panel. This featured the people who do the English version voices of the animations we watch. Guess what? There was a line to get into the room. Dang. However once we got in, I was pleasantly surprised that the voices from some of my favorite characters were sitting in front of us. They took questions from the crowd and shared a lot of funny stories with us. The biggest bonus was that I got to sit down in the audience for a whopping hour and a half.

Anime Convention

Tomorrow the whole family is going to an anime convention. We were going to rent a room in the hotel. However the thing is less than an hour away. So we are just going to drive there for the day.

The highlight of the convention seems to be the actors that do the voices for the characters we love. Previously I had a grand plan to dress up in an anime outfit. However the costume I want would probably need to be customer made. Since I am a busy guy, there never seemed any time take care of that.

Little Kat wants to attend the Pokemon session. He is also planning to meet up with his friend who goes to this convention every year. I am betting we can count on Kit Kat to wear her animal ears. Darn. I wish I had planned better and had a costume to wear.

Paper Plates and Cups

Last week I was about to go to bed one night when Kit Kat called for help. The dishwasher door would not close. Thus she could not wash the dishes. Momoko took a look at it. Then I did too. The latch on the door would not hook.

Normally I would just buy a new dishwasher. But the floor underneath the dishwasher is not level. This caused a major pain when we bought our current dishwasher. So I want to avoid that nightmare again.

Kit Kat washed the dishes by hand. We decided to use paper plates, plastic cups, and plastic utensils until the problem is fixed. I called up manufacturer. They referred me to a local repair company. Let's hope we can get this thing fixed soon.

Kit Kat Hacked

Kit Kat came downstairs and told Momoko her PC got infected. Something was telling her she needed to pay up to get the license to fix the problem. It sounded like a scam to me. Kit Kat said she had to pay $70 to buy the program to fix the problem. That's when I knew this was a scam.

Me and Kit Kat found the program that was causing all the ruckus. It was called avg. This was not the real AVG Antivirus. It was a bad program pretending to be AVG. I killed the program and deleted it.

The problem was not fully fixed. The virus left some trails behind to make Kit Kat's life difficult. None of her web browsers would work. It kept saying that Windows could not find the program. It took a while to find and delete the registry keys making this happen.

When all was said and done, I told Kit Kat we should download a real antivirus program to clean everything up. We tried Spyware Doctor. After installing, running it, finding a lot of bugs, it asked us to buy the darn thing. Nooooooooo. Luckily Microsoft had Security Essentials already on Kit Kat's machine. It found and removed the bad virus for us. Whew.

Road Failure

Little Kat and I drove to the bakery to get Momoko's birthday cake. We had them draw a picture of the Angry Birds game on top of the cake.

On the way home, we saw that police had shut down the road home. There was a bunch of traffic jammed up in front of us. After a few minutes, we got the chance to turn around.

I thought we could just take an alternate route home. We were driving down a two lane road following a fire truck. The truck stops in front of us. Little Kat said the doors were opening.

It took a while for me to realize he was talking about the fire truck. The firemen left their truck stopped on the street in front of us and entered a house. We had a small bit of luck. The traffic going the other way was heavy. One guy did not take off fast enough, so I again did a U-turn.

We just want to get home and show Momoko her cake. Sheesh.

Mold Invasion

Momoko and I had a growing mold problem on the ceiling of our bathroom. It was disturbing. You got to take care of the problem. Otherwise mold spreads like crazy.

I got all white clothes on. Then I applied bleach to the ceiling. It took care of the mold. However it was not easy. The bleach kept falling down on me. Hopefully my hair does not get bleached white.

Kit Kat took care of the kids bathroom last summer. They had a smaller mold problem on the ceiling. But like I always say, you got to attack mold problems early. Otherwise you will have bigger problems later.

Dentist Duty

I took the day off from work to drive Momoko to and from the dentist. She was getting her wisdom teeth removed. We got there on time. It was supposed to take an hour for the procedure. I knew we were in trouble when we waited more than an hour just to be seen.

I came prepared. I brought my textbook to read. After I read a few long chapters, I figured we were never going to get out of there. That was a problem because we had to pick up Little Kat from school. I had to call in reinforcement. My mom went to pick Little Kat up from school.

Momoko was in pain. So I ran out to get her prescriptions filled. Then I got Little Kat from my mom's. We got home in time for Little Kat to cook us up some spaghetti. After dinner, the family worked hard to wake Momoko up from her nap. Then we watched the excellent movie Secretariat.

Running Late

Momoko and Little Kat were late coming home from work yesterday. They were supposed to pick up a few groceries so Kit Kat could make baked potato soup. They were too tired to go the grocery store. That meant dinner was in trouble.

In these situations, Momoko usually wants to go out to eat. For me that requires a lot of energy. I am the one who usually has to drive. However we were out of options. We hit out favorite Mexican place. Their chili con queso was especially good last night.

There is talk of a storm coming our way this weekend. So we put gas in Momoko's car, dropped by the bank to get some cash, and stocked up on groceries. Finally we got home. We were all still tired. Momoko and I both went to bed early. That is rare for a Friday night.

Car Trouble

Momoko and Little Kat were late coming home from school yesterday. I played some computer games. Kit Kat was reading on her new Kindle. There was a furious knock at the door. That seemed strange. It was our neighbor from across the street. Her car would not start.

I told her I had some jumper cables. So I drove my car up her driveway. There was a problem. Her car was parked front side in her garage. I pulled my car up as close behind her car as possible. My extra long jumper cables reached. However the jump did not work. Her problem must not have been a bad battery.

This was troubling to my neighbor since she just brought the car in to the dealer for a lot of work. She said she spent over $1000 on the maintenance. I advised her to call the dealer and have them tow the car back to the dealership and fix the darn thing. She already paid her money. She did say that her car was an old one. But come on. It is a Volvo.

The Big Melt

The weathermen were calling for an ice storm that would leave everything covered in ice. Momoko talked me into bring home my work just in cast. It was a false call. The weather was just too warm. All we got is rain.

By the afternoon, temperatures were in the 50 degrees F range. Snow is starting to melt away. Rain gutters are flowing from water off the roof. Now there is still snow around. But it is starting to melt.

They are calling for another storm later this week. Personally I would prefer to see spring weather than another snow storm. I am tired of shoveling snow.

Ice Comes In

The weathermen are calling for a lot of ice on the streets tomorrow. So Momoko made me take home my work to potentially work from home tomorrow. Everything depends on the temperature when the precipitation comes. I hope it just turns out to be rain.

Today everybody in the office stayed home from work due to fear from snow. Personally it sounded more like people wanting to goof off at home. I don't have that luxury. There is a lot to do at work. It is hard to leave at the end of each day because there is so much to do. Luckily I love leaving work. So I find a way each day.