ace’s blog

Bad attitude Aaron is 95% gone and the old Aaron is back. He hasn’t had casein in his diet since Friday (4/18/08) morning and his attitude has improved greatly. The only thing I still see missing is his attention span. He used to be able to do the 100 piece puzzles with me with no problem at all. Now, he is having issues paying attention for more than about five minutes.

We bought a new car! A mini-van actually; it is a slate metallic green Honda Odyssey. I heard a radio ad about “up to 30% off on clearance vehicles from a chain of local car dealerships and when I got home, I checked out the prices. I noted a Honda Pilot and the Odyssey. They had both listed for a very low price. I called, expecting they would be out-of-stock and sure enough, they were. I asked how much a base-line model of each vehicle would be and was told about $5,500 less than the MSRP on both vehicles. We went up there Saturday to look at both the Pilot and the Odyssey side-by-side and based on functionality (why did Honda shove an non-functional third row of seats into the Pilot?!), we bought the mini-van. I didn’t think we’d ever own one since Meri has been 100% against buying one since it would be her vehicle.

The Odyssey has the same gas-mileage rating as our old Jeep Liberty so there wasn’t a savings there. I feel like the Honda will be a longer-lasting vehicle (than the Jeep) and much safer for Meri and our boys. Plus, we now have even more room for more kids (hello Cadence – daddy’s little girl, someday I hope).

Holy sheep shit! I just fixed a known (to me) bug in the vox-crossposter WP plugin I wrote a LONG time ago.

All I changed was the character encoding from

$email_headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1'."\r\n";

to

$email_headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'."\r\n";

If you look at the second “known bugs” list at http://www.acedanger.com/vox-crossposter, you will see exactly what I changed. Now I need to get home so I can update the download link and the download from the WordPress Plugin site.

Edit: I updated the source that the download link points to.

Aaron starts soccer practice tonight. This time, he’s on a team that we thought was really badass the last time he was in the league. This team was great last year in that most of the parents wore shirts that matched the kids’ jerserys at each game. There was enough kids on the team last season that some were able to sit and rest and didn’t have to run the entire game.

This soccer season is sort of weird though, we have our first practice tonight and our first game on Saturday! I know there will be some kids that won’t be ready to play a game after only one practice so it will be interesting.

Meri got her truck back after 13 days in the shop! Hooray for the shop not having anything else to do so they could have 4 people working on the Jeep and being 16 days ahead of schedule!

I’ve wanted a bike for a long time. I have never ridden one before so I don’t really know what I’m looking for. I know I don’t want a bike with a large engine for my first bike. I found an Orlando bike dealer with a lot of models on their website and they are up front about their prices and all that good stuff. Ideally, I’d get a Harley Davidson bike but since I’ve never had a bike before, I don’t think I should go out and get the bike I really, really want and like right now (VRSC VRod). So I thought I would just get a mid-price but good starter bike, something like a Honda Shadow Aero or Honda Shadow Spirit, both 745cc bikes . I will probably just go up to a dealership and talk to a salesperson at some point but I don’t want to do that quite yet. The problem is that I don’t have a clue what to ask about and all that jazz. I guess there is only one real way to learn what you don’t know…just do it!
Now for the pictures!
Honda Shadow Aero:

Honda Shadow Spirit:

Harley Davidson VRSC VRod:

Well alrighty then, Pete Meri and Aaron have purchased yet another new vehicle. This one was just as necessary as the last one (mine) b/c of the damage to Meri’s old car. We think we got a good deal on our brand new 2005 Jeep Liberty Renegade 3.7L 6 cyl SUV. We ended up paying $21,400 and that’s rolling in about $2,000 from the old car and Meri’s old Explorer. We are glad to be rid of the damaged old car and into a brand new one. I let Meri use my truck Thursday and Friday (July 28th and 29th) and it already had a funky odor! I think I localized it and brought the disgusting parts of the funk into the apartment for a thorough washing! I febreeze’d the hell out of that truck and it did nothing till I took out the passenger side rear floor mat. I don’t know what got on that but it f*** reeks!

I just updated Aaron’s website. I updated the software behind it, not any actual pictures. There is now a slideshow for all the pictures, it’s kinda cool.

We took Aaron to the Memphis Zoo on Saturday, July 30th. We all really liked it a lot better than the Jacksonville Zoo. We were there for 2 hours and still didn’t get to see everything. In the Memphis Zoo’s jaguar exhibits, you can actually see the jaguars! I was amazed at that! There are so many more animals but damn, that place was expensive. If we hadn’t been members of the Jax Zoo, we would have had to pay full admission and that would have been $13 per adult! We got 1/2 priced admission. Oh, and the Memphis Zoo charges non-members $3 parking! They are definitely more expensive than the Jax Zoo but it is much better. I’m sure we’ll be getting an annual membership there.

Well I’m into my first week here at Terminix and I am very pleased with how things work here. I don’t think I could have picked a better company to move into. I’m very thankful for the opportunity I have here.

House news: We bought the house that we both really liked. It is move in ready and the best part is that we won’t have to do anything to the house immediately. We can move in and just live there and not have to worry about putting up a fence or painting walls or anything like that. All we have to worry about is where to put the furniture. Actually, we will have to paint a room, Aaron’s room but that’s not bad, his room will be fun.

I took down my resume on my homepage because I’d like to stay in Memphis for a while. I think this place will grow on us all.

We had our car fixed that was in the flood. During one of the inspections of the car, this damage was noticed! Apparently, someone who owned/drove the car before Meri and I bought it got into an accident and covered it up by replacing only the bumper and the hood but never fixed any of the real damage! The car dealership where we bought the car used never noticed the damage in their inspection of the vehicle when it was brought to their lot over a year ago. We are in contact with the GM of Subaru of Jacksonville in hopes of finding some sort of fix for this situation. Right now, nobody feels safe in the car because of the bent frame and the car is being used by me as a way to and from work only. The truck is now our main transportation, for the time being. FUN STUFF!!!

I got a new truck! Check it out in my previous post. It’s a “Raceway” Blue 2005 Toyota Tacoma V6 SR5 with the TRD package. According to the Toyota dealer, the color is “very rare” and I won’t see many of them around. I got the fake hood scoop action going, some 17inch alloys and the JBL stereo system. Because of the great deal I got on my previous truck, I made about $4,700 off of the insurance and we ended up putting $5,000 down on the truck. So for my brand new truck, Meri and I are only out about $300! Now that is what I call a sweet deal!

The movers are here today, tomorrow and friday. I called and pushed back my start date to the 25th but still have to go in monday or tuesday to fill out all of the new-hire paperwork! JOY!! Looks like I get a semi-vacation for a week, albeit a very hectic vacation.

Well, after owning my second Toyota Tacoma in my lifetime (as of August 1st, I will be 26) for about 4 months, I’ve destroyed number 2. In about 40 seconds, I caused over $17,000 worth of damage to my beautiful truck. But enough about my truck, I must say that I was very scared for my son. He was asleep in his car seat just snoozing away, waiting for his daddy to take him home and what does daddy do but hit a couple of concrete barriers in the pouring ass rain! He woke up screaming after the first impact and I immediately turned to see that he was alright and I didn’t even see the second impact. We were alright, both got away with a few bruises but that was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. If anything would have happened to Aaron, I don’t know what I would have done with myself.

Meri, Aaron and I all went to the Progressive Claim Center here in Jacksonville to get the rest of the my stuff out of the truck and we saw the damage from the second impact. I hadn’t seen it yet because of how the truck was resting on the concrete barrier. After seeing that second impact, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that God was looking out for my son and myself on that day. It is difficult to understand how someone could walk away from that accident with only a few bruises. I hit the first concrete barrier going about 50 MPH. Sure I hit the brakes before I hit but wow. I must have gained a lot of momentum after the first impact because the damage from the second impact made the damage from the first look like a fender bender! It is scarry to think that I could have killed myself and my son because I was driving too fast for the conditions on that day.

The accident happened on Saturday, July 2, 2005 at 4PM. I was in the shower this morning (July 7, 2005) and noticed that my knot on my right forearm had turned into the largest bruise I think I’ve ever had!

The speed limit is 65 MPH on I-295 and I was going 50 MPH. I guess that was way too fast for the rainy conditions that day. I thank God that I was the only vehicle involved in that accident that day. I’m sure I would be getting sued if any other vehicles had been involved. What a terrible phone call for Meri to get on her last day at work!

So now on top of moving to Tennessee on July 16th, I’ve got to buy a new truck! Normally I would be happy about buying a new vehicle but dammit, we just bought that one and we got such an awesome deal on it! Turns out the deal we got was better than we thought! Since progressive it going to declare the trucka total loss, they are going to give us a check for $21,450 for the truck after taking away the $500 deductible. Of that $21,450, $17,600 will go to the bank, and the rest (approximately $3,800) will go to the bank of Pete and Meri. Aaron will get a generous savings bond out of the deal, probably another $1,000 before we’re done spending money. That boy will be set for college…only 17 more years to go!