Been busy pulling together the 3rd Annual Toy Tester event at work. Tomorrow, 10 – 3. C’mon by, bring the kiddos, and play all day.

First one to mention that we are supposed to break 100 tomorrow gets a kick in the shins.

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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The following words are keyed to attract the attention of the DHS and the NSA – including the new “Spy Center” in Bluffdale, UT: Terrorism Al Qaeda (all spellings) Terror Attack Iraq Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Agro Environmental terrorist Eco terrorism Conventional weapon Target Weapons grade Dirty bomb Enriched Nuclear Chemical weapon Biological weapon Ammonium nitrate Improvised explosive device IED (Improvised Explosive Device) Abu Sayyaf Hamas FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) IRA (Irish Republican Army) ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) Basque Separatists Hezbollah Tamil Tigers PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) Car bomb Jihad Taliban Weapons cache Suicide bomber Suicide attack Suspicious substance AQAP (AL Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) Yemen Pirates Extremism Somalia Nigeria Radicals Al-Shabaab Home grown Plot Nationalist Recruitment Fundamentalism Islamist Emergency Hurricane Tornado Twister Tsunami Earthquake Tremor Flood Storm Crest Temblor Extreme weather Forest fire Brush fire Ice Stranded/Stuck Help Hail Wildfire Tsunami Warning Center Magnitude Avalanche Typhoon Shelter-in-place Disaster Snow Blizzard Sleet Mud slide or Mudslide Erosion Power outage Brown out Warning Watch Lightening Aid Relief Closure Interstate Burst Emergency Broadcast System Cyber security Botnet DDOS (dedicated denial of service) Denial of service Malware Virus Trojan Keylogger Cyber Command 2600 Spammer Phishing Rootkit Phreaking Cain and abel Brute forcing Mysql injection Cyber attack Cyber terror Hacker China Conficker Worm Scammers Social media

Very interesting day.

Headed out to work this morning (“Hey, I cleaned up cat piddle, nothing worse can happen to me today!” heh.) and as I was crossing Grand, heard a little grinding/growling noise from under the right front side of the QX4. Traffic slowed, I tapped my brakes, and the noise grew to a full on metal-on-metal squeal. I got the car over to the right and turned off the main road, and parked with a lurch – felt like something seized.

Preliminary inspection showed the brake caliper assembly wasn’t in the right place – looking closer, the bottom of the caliper had dug a groove into the magnesium rim. If that had happened at highway speeds …

Called the boss, called the wife, and then started looking even closer. The bottom bolt on the caliper was missing. Plain not there. The top bolt was loose. Hmmm – maybe back where I heard the noise? I walked back the way I came for a bit, but didn’t find anything. TMBWitW pulled up, and we headed for the house. (sat at the railroad crossing for about 30 minutes as a train was switching back and forth, and I think they were building the train for departure).

Got home, changed clothes, headed up to the dealer (‘cuz I knew, in my heart, that the bolt was a dealer-only item. I was right), found out that the bolt only cost $4.74. I could pick it up on Monday.

Monday? Yup – the nearest copy of the bolt I needed was sitting in a warehouse in Tennessee and they would Fed-Ex it to the dealer and I could pick it up Monday afternoon. My mind was already racing, worried about transportation with only one vehicle and long commutes to work.

I couldn’t leave the QX4 where it sat – I needed to get it home. I called a member of boss’s networking group to have it towed, and they told me it would be about an hour to an hour and a half. I headed out after an hour, so I wouldn’t be rushed getting there when they called. As I drove along, thinking about how to get the transportation stuff done, something in the road caught my eye.

I though to myself “No way.” This was several blocks before the noise had started, so I didn’t think it was possible. I turned around, parked, waited for traffic to clear, and walked out to pick up the object – because it looked a lot like the bolt off my caliper.

When I got to the QX4, I checked it against the other caliper bolts – and it sure looked right. It fit in the hole, and threaded into the exposed rotor mounting point. I called and canceled the tow truck, drove home, grabbed the tools I would need, (cancelled the part order from Tennessee) and drove back. A little bit of mechanical work later, and the assembly was back in running order. I drove home, got TMBWitW and MEG (and Cinnamon, because she had an appointment today and TMBWitW was going to be taking her) and headed back to the QX4. Once I got the car home, I headed for the hardware store to get a new washer – hey, I found the bolt, I was more than happy to spend 30 cents on a split ring washer – and then tore the assembly apart again so I could put it back together.

30 cents instead of $4.74 and a tow bill? No problem!

Anytime something like this happens, that prevents me from going somewhere or doing something I had planned, I always wonder what God was keeping me from. I had extra toys in the car that were headed for the warehouse; that prevented me from switching cars with TMBWitW – and prevented her from being the one stranded with the broken down SUV. The caliper came apart on a fairly calm stretch of road, instead of on the stretch of highway in my commute, keeping me from having a more catastrophic event. If the caliper assembly had dug into the magnesium rim at highway speed, I wouldn’t have been able to stop before it sliced all the way through, possibly causing a loss of control and the resulting incident afterwards. Not to mention how much more expensive a rim is compared to a 30 cent washer …

All through this, TMBWitW and MEG are recovering from or headed into a stomach bug – MEG was throwing up last night, TMBWitW is feeling nauseous tonight – and the rest of the crew at the store stepped up and picked up my sudden absence.

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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OK – so, you know when you get something that has had a previous owner, there are sometimes things that need to be taken care of that the previous owner either did not take care of or was unaware that it needed to be taken care of. (<--Dangling Participle alert! let me try that again:) ... of which they were unaware it needed to be taken care. ... of which the care of they were unaware. This is harder than it looks.

REBOOT

Sometimes, there are issues that need to be taken care of that a previous owner of something was unaware. Of.

Anyway –

Samantha (the new addition, she of 99 pounds of overjoyed iloveyou black lab mix) has developed a slight hacking problem. (yes, you smarty pants, she likes to try to break into the pentagon’s computers while they aren’t looking.) My suspicion is that the missing patch of tennis ball cover is lodged somewhere in her intake manifold. Her hacks are not of the stomach acid variety (being somewhat of an expert on what stomach acid looks like from various feline and canine sources) but clear, and the major clue that it’s not stomach acid is that it doesn’t leave the grout clean after clean-up. (i sure hope you’re not reading this over a meal of some type. on the other hand, if you were, you would see what i was talking about first hand …)

we have an appointment this morning with the wonderful folks at Acoma Animal Clinic to see about this issue, and since we are headed up there anyway we might as well make this an introductory visit instead of waiting until the Friday appointment.

As a side note – boss must rank in the top ten – no, the top five – of the best bosses ever. Even though today is a special event at the store, she is OK with me being, essentially, a couple hours late to take care of Samantha.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

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Just before the trip to Anaheim, I join Twitter. Not sure how it’s going to work out. I initially joined to find out how it worked, in order to help Kidstop get going on Twitter. In the process, I’ve ended up following a lot of other tweeters.

Sunday at the opening session of the ASTRA conference, I end up following Graham David, the opening speaker. Over the course of the Academy and two days of Marketplace, I ended up following more industry twitter leads.

(i think i may have found a way to start catching up on industry information, compared to the boss – but i know that i will never be able to match her knowledge about this industry. i can only keep learning as much as possible.)

After ASTRA, The Good Toy Group meets and buys for the winter catalog. All the vendors who were selected to be in the catalog are in a private buying session, and orders are placed by the stores. This is another day and a half. Thursday, the room looks like a warehouse with the items I am bringing back to the store, the boss is catching a ride to the airport, and instead of waiting for my wife and child to arrive any minute – they are sitting at a parts store in Phoenix while a mechanic friend tries to wrestle the inoperable piece of alternator off the engine block to replace it with a working version.

Family vacation delayed for lack of equipment. I am frustrated because I’m not there to help. She is frustrated because she ends up spending eight hours in a parts store with our daughter. My cousin shows up, and he and I go to dinner without my family. It’s good to meet Bob, bad that my family couldn’t make it. The thresher shark at the Dana West Yacht Club is delicious.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

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Good News: I can get the starter out of the Road Rhino in twenty minutes.

Bad News: I’ve taken the starter out so often that I can do it in twenty minutes.

At first, I thought it was just a hot start problem. Then, after the Rhino had been sitting for over an hour and it still wouldn’t start, I knew there was a problem. So, I asked the guy who had gotten the starter for me if he still had the receipt. I got out from under the Rhino by 2320 hours, and after cleaning up, here I sit. I’m supposed to be leaving for the ASTRA Convention in a few hours. Now, I’m very wound up/exhausted. Yeah, doesn’t sound like a good sleep combination to me.

Follow me on Twitter and I’ll keep you up to date this week – no blogging, and after the timed-release Father’s Day post, nothing new until I get back. So, both of you regular readers, don’t lose heart. I’ will be back.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

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