Two Hour Tour

This week we had a quiz in my community college class. The class only meets once a week. But the class lasts for three hours. The weird thing about our quiz was that it was a whopping two hours long. What kind of quiz lasts for two hours? Our's I guess.

The instructor provided a four question quiz. Three of the four questions were simple. The fourth one was massive. The instructor told us to read over the quiz and ask all questions in the first 15 minutes. I read over the big problem and found many issues. Some sentences in the description made no sense. Other requirements were missing. Some parts of the directions contradicted others.

I asked a bunch of question. Eventually I determined that the guy did not care what assumptions I made. Looks like he just wanted to give the class some experience dealing with real world problems. Because problems in the real world are always messy. They don't look like exercises from our textbook where everything works out fine.

There is a deaf guy that sits in the front row. His interpreter normally sits next to me. The deaf guy said he was going to be an hour and a half late for class. So his interpreter just left. Deaf guy showed up just in time for the quiz. He seemed to be scribbling a lot of stuff down on a piece of paper during the quiz. That was odd given that it was an online quiz.

In the end, the deaf guy was the first one to finish the quiz. I followed him out shortly thereafter. I figure the rest of the class probably never finished the quiz. That was one hard problem the teacher gave us. I liked it though.

Couch Shopping

We have two full size couches in our living room. Momoko sits on one of them most of the time. The kids share the other one. We purchsed these couches not too long ago. At first they seemed nice. However the cushions keep falling off the couch. The couch has also lost most of its support. In other words, the things were cheaply made.

Momoko proposed that we buy some new couches. Since we spend most of our time in the living room, I figured that was a good idea. We were definitely not going back to the store that sold us these defective couches. Momoko thought we could visit a new furniture store that has been advertising recently. Too bad their locations are all far away. Instead we went to an expensive furniture store nearby.

At least they were having some sort of sale at the furniture store. Momoko and I sat on every single couch they had in the store. It was a big store. We also layed down on the ones they felt good. In the end I narrowed it down to two couches. Momoko thought those were fine. But she thought two others should be in the running as well.

In the end, I decided to purchase two couches. I went for one of each of the two that were my top picks. We wanted the cloth couch to be green in color. The sales associate said that color change would cost an extra $100. Okay. Then she came back and said the extra $100 would be on top of the original non-sales price. Oh snap. That plan got rejected. The original tan color couch that was on sale was good enough. Luckily the leather couch cost the same regardless of color.

For an extra fee, the store would deliver the new couches, and remove the old ones. Deal. The couches are scheduled to arrive in 10 days. We can't wait.

Little Kat the Biker

Momoko and I were scheduled to do some shopping after work today. Little Kat was going to accompany us. At the last minute, Little Kat decided to stay home alone. He wanted to ride his bike. Momoko was worried that Little Kat was riding his bike with nobody home. The guy is in high school. He should be able to ride his bike.

I told Little Kat that he needed to lock the house door behind him when he left for biking. Momoko and I fought traffic to go shopping up North. In the middle of shopping, Kit Kat called us twice. Momoko got worried. She called Kit Kat back. She said that she came home from school. The shed door was open. The house door was open. But nobody was home. Kit Kat was disturbed.
Later Kit Kat got a call from Little Kat. He has crashed on his bike. Little Kat wanted a ride home because he was injured. But Kit Kat could not fit the bike in her car. So Little Kat had to hobble home. He said his leg got caught in his chain and he flipped off the bike. Some young kid came to Little Kat's rescue. The kid got Little Kat unchained from his bike.
Little Kat now says he has a sprained leg. I am now going to go pick him up a sub for a late night dinner.

Minecraft Server

Little Kat wanted Momoko to sign up for a recurring credit card charge. This was to pay for his Minecraft server. I guess that is some type of rented computer space out there on the Internet. They also probably provide some tools that let you set up a virtual Minecraft world that you can control. The thing would cost about seven bucks a month.

Momoko asked me for guidanceon whether this was a good idea. I told her that it would be better if Little Kat could figure out how to set up his own Minecraft server on his laptop or desktop computer. Little Kat said he tried many times. However other people were unable to connect up to his servers. The servers were also way too slow to host the Minecraft game.

I told Little Kat that he should try for a few more months to get s server up and running. If he cannot figure this out before my college class is over, then I would come in and give him some support. If we together could not figure it out, I told him we could eventually help him sign up for the recurring cost of a rented server.

Resignation

Kit Kat put in her two weeks notice last night for her weekend job. Things have been a bit crazy for Kit Kat. She goes to school a few day a week. She also works for her school in the alumni relations department. On top of that, she hung on to her summer job, working weekends. That meant she was working and going to school 7 days a week.
It was not just Kit Kat who was affected by her busy schedule. The family had to shuffle things around her schedule. We have two meetings a week to discuss our schedule and any issues. Those were moved around a bit because Kit Kat works on the weekend. There is a weekly shopping trip that could not happen on the weekends because of Kit Kat's job. All of that is changing now.
Kit Kat and I put our plans to teach her to drive manual transmission on hold for a while. There was just no opportunity to have Kit Kat go out driving in my pickup truck. Now I will give her a week after she ends her weekend job to celebrate. Then it will be time to get out there and learn to drive a stick shift.

Bike Repair with Little Kat

Little Kat and I both had flat bike tires a week or so ago. I ordered us some inner tubes off Amazon. They got delivered early. Little Kat scheduled up a time for today so we could work on our bikes. I had a tough day at work. After work I took a quite nap. Little Kat came knocking at our appointed time.

Little Kat grabbed Momoko's tool box. I helped him turn his bike upside down. He had trouble finding a wrench that matched the bolts on the back tire of his bike. When he could not find any, he tried using some pliers. That did not work. I taught him how to use an adjustable wrench. There was a second nut and bolt holding the axle on the bike. Eventually Little Kat used a wratchet wrench to get it off.

Once Little Kat had his wheel off, he had trouble taking the tire off the rim. I showed him how to use a blunt object to pry the thing off. The tube seemed much bigger than the rim. However it was the same size as the old one. Turns out we needed to compare the tube to the tire, not the smaller rim.

Little Kat had trouble getting the new inner tube and tire back on the rim. I explained how to do it. He could not understand. He recommended I change my own flat tire as he watched and learned. I changed my inner tube real quick. Then Little Kat put his inner tube and tire back on. When he pumped up the inner tube, we found the tire off the rim. I let a bunch of air out of the tube. Then Little Kat made sure the tire was fully on before filling it with air.

Little Kat and I tested out of newly fixed up bikes. We rode down the ramp from the shed. And then we rode around the cul de sac. Finally I followed Little Kat down the street. We waved to some neighbors. And then I followed him back up the cul de sac. We tried some hard core lines, riding off curbs and such. Then we went fast. We navigted between Kit Kat's car and my truck in the driveway. We has enough speed to ride up our steep shed ramp. It was time for Little Kat to start cooking dinner.

Say No to the Jump

I went to the home improvement store to pick up some supplies today. Was happy that I could find an indoor flood light bulb that matched my track lighting. I also picked up some lumber and a lot of mulch. I parked the old truck by the store exit. However I checked out by the exit at the other side of the store. It was a long walk back to the truck. I pushed the heavy cart the whole way.

Then I started packing the truck. Had three separate stacks of mulch bags going on the in the truck bed. Wedged a paint can in there as well. Put the lumber up on top. Wedged it down so that it would not fall out the back of the truck. When all was packed up, I took the cart back to the store. A guy asked me if that was my truck that just got packed. I told him yes. The guy then asked if I had jumper cables.

Now I carry jumper cables in all my vehicles. You never know when you need to jump start a car. However the cables were packed in the far end of the truck. I just spent 5 minutes packing this truck up. I had a lot of work to do. So I had to tell the guy that I could not help him. I felt a little bad. However I spent a long time at home getting the shrub garden bed ready for the mulch. I am glad I did not spend another half hour trying to jump start this guy's truck.
As I drove my truck out of the parking lot, I saw a store employee trying to help the guy out. Let's hope he had some jumper cables.