Family Computer

Little Kat seems to have bad luck with computers. He drop laptops. His friends seem to get his laptops banged up. Water gets into his system. And the machine quits working. Momoko asked if we could get a family computer. I saw an ad for a Dell desktop computer with Windows 7. I went for it.


This desktop is powerful. It has 8GB of RAM. And 1 TB of disk space. Inside there is a an Intel i3 processor. It might be more powerful than any PC we have in the household. I just need to put Microsoft Office on it, set up the printers, and we are off to the races.


The key for longevity will be to keep it on Momoko's desk. Everyone can use it. I hope by not handling it over to Little Kat that it lasts longer than a year or so.

Carpet Install Issues

Installers came to put new carpet in my basement today. They said they needed to remove the shoe molding. This is a 1/4 inch wood at the bottom of the molding just off the floor. Removing it was fine by me. But then the carpet guys said they could not put the molding back in when they were done.


I ended up calling the owner of the carpet store where I purchased the carpet. This is really quite simple. They got to install carpet. They can remove anything in their way as long as they put it back when they are done. Haven't these guys ever heard the Boy Scout motto? Leave the place the same or better as how you found it.


Luckily the carpet store owner decided pay the installers to put the shoe molding back after the install. That this even came up is pretty astonishing to me. This job should have been an easy one. I moved all the furniture out of the room prior to them arriving.

Bob's Discount Furniture

Last year I bought a couch with built-in recliners for our living room. We chose one that had power recliners on each end. Momoko initially complained that her side had problems coming back from the reclined position. A service tech came out but could not fully fix the problem. We ended up getting a replacement couch.


The replacement was worse than the original. First the center cushion caved in. Then Kit Kat's side of the couch would not come out of the reclined position. Two service techs came out but the couch is still a big failure.


On the most recent visit, I spoke on the phone with a rep from the company. She said the center cushion issue was a normal wear and tear problem, and there was nothing that could be done. Now I know wear and tear. This was certainly not it. This was a manufacturing defect no doubt. I told the rep this was unacceptable. I needed to speak to management.


Later in the week I did get a call back from management. I explained how the cushion could not be wear and tear by any stretch of the imagination. I also told them I was tired of having techs come out and patch a couch that continues to have severe problems.


The result of that conversation is that we are getting store credit to choose another couch. Let's hope it is not a lemon too.

Steep Hills

I had my brother's truck over my house. It was here because we had just visited the motor vehicles administration and transferred the title to my brother's name. I told my brother I would drop it off at his house on the weekend.

Little Kat and I took the truck to my brother's house. We parked it in front and then switched to my Nissan Versa. I showed Little Kat the neighborhood while driving around. Then I went to my elementary school parking lot and we switched places.

Little Kat took the wheel and started to drive around. He was nervous because it was a new environment. Previously we had only been driving in our own neighborhood. Also there were a bunch of steep hills and speed bumps all over the place.

One time someone came behind us. Little Kat took a right turn to evade the chaser. We ended up on a steep cul de sac. Little Kat stalled at the top of the hill as he tried to switch gears. He got the car started, but misjudged the space he had to turn around. He was in trouble.

Little Kat tried to back the car up. But we were on a steep hill. I had him put on the emergency brake. I took the wheel and got him out of the jam. Then I went back up the cul de sac and showed him where he made his mistakes.

It was a rough but productive thirty minutes of Little Kat driving my manual transmission Nissan. After driving practice, we visited my brother where we started cleaning up the place. We filled a 30 gallon heft bag worth of trash and took it away. This might be out new Sunday tradition.

1-800-GOT-JUNK

I have been slowly cleaning out my basement to allow my brother to move in with us. There was a lot of stuff down there that we never use. Most of it I tossed into the trash cans that the county collects twice a week. There were some large items I hauled out to the curb. I called the bulky trash pickup for them.

Then there was the exercise equipment in the basement. Momoko wanted the stationary bike. It will be moved into our library. However the Christmas tree is in the way for now. So I hauled the bike out to the shed. Little Kat wants to keep his weights. I got rid of the weight bench he does not use. But I had to haul his weights out to the shed for storage too.

That left the treadmill and elliptical machine. Both were big and very heavy. I thought I might be able to move them with a couple guys. However why bother? I researched some junk haulers in the area. Called a local guy that came highly recommended. But he did not pick up his phone. Thus I decided to go with the big company. They just use local franchises. Still I heard about 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

I scheduled 1-800-GOT-JUNK online. They arrived a few hours later. They estimated it would cost $300 to remove the exercise equipment. And for another $250, they would take all this other trash. The two guys who came struggled getting the treadmill out of the basement. They called the home company for more help to get out the elliptical. They ended up disassembling the thing and carrying it out piecemeal.

Now my handymen need to finish adding a bathtub in the basement. They are also erecting a well to give my brother a large room that is private. Today I am going with my brother to the carpet store to re-carpet the whole basement.

Probate Court

I decided it was time to take action to probate my parents' wills. My dad had delayed in getting my mom's will processed. Now we had more work. No need to delay because we were already running into complications with the auto insurance on my dad's vehicles.

I printed out all the forms from the court web site. Spent the day filling them out. Needed info from my brother. We planned to go visit the court the first thing Monday morning. I got to my brother's house and made sure we had everything from the list of items to bring.

One item was mom and dad's will. The originals were in my brother's house. My mom's will was missing. The thing had been in my dad's lock safe for 25 years. Now it turns up missing? We ransacked the house and finally found the will. Then I decided we should take my mom's Chevy Monte Carlo to court. The thing needs to be driven occasionally.

Finding the court was no problem. My GPS got us there to the front steps. Parking was another story. There were some metered spaces on the street. They were all occupied. I tried to follow the signs to parking. All the lots required permits. Eventually I thought we were headed towards satellite parking. Instead I found none, and a copy tailed me as I slowly drove along.

Finally I drove down the street and parked in the CVS parking lot. Broke out the phone and started to Google where to park. The 4G LTE access in the parking lot was terrible. Took a long time to find the name and address of the satellite parking. I punched the address into my GPS, and we got going.

Unfortunately the GPS took us right by the parking lot, but put us on the highway. We drove around in a huge circle until we were able to get back to the parking. Initially I decided we would walk to the court house. But it was taking long so we hopped on the bus. The bus did not stop at the courthouse. It came really close though.

I found out we need to obtain nominal bonds for both my parents' estates. That would have to wait for another day. We spent so much time searching for mom's will and looking for parking that I was late for work. To be continued.

Curse of Beowulf

Last week, Momoko and I discovered that Little Kat was not checking his English web site. That's where all the homework is posted. Of course Little Kat is clueless about assignments that are due. He was not even looking at the place where the assignments are doled out.

We found out that Little Kat was behind in reading The Wife of Bath's Tale. This was written by Chaucer, and is one of his Canterbury Tales. We spent the majority of last weekend making sure Little Kat read and understood this story. This was not without great pain as Momoko and I had to pick up the slack around the house that normally would have been done by Little Kat.

I figured after this debacle, we might start getting English under control. Silly me. Little Kat had a substitute teacher this week in English. Instead of reading the next assignment of Beowulf, he read comics online in class. He also did a bit of sleeping in class. Now we were behind schedule again this weekend.

Little Kat ended up having to find a copy of Beowulf, read it, and understand it. This required more work on Momoko and my part, as Little Kat could not attend to his regular household duties. It was even more difficult because Little Kat had trouble finding a copy of Beowulf that he could understand. He even struggled with the copy he ended up using.

The level of fail in here is getting way too high. Getting tired of all this worked created because Little Kat is slacking off. I am proposing some punishments that get Little Kat's attention. Momoko is advising some other courses of action. But I believe she will come around as she is starting to put in more and more effort to make up for Little Kat's shortcomings.