wysereeser.com

Call from the service shop indicated that it’d cost $440 to replace the waterpump (and thermostat while they’re at it). I keep thinking I’m getting shammed. My brother pointed out that he could order a water pump from NAPA Auto Parts for about $65, and said he’s done the work before. Part of the problem is that Angie and I have never tried to take the time to find a relatively inexpensive mechanic in town. Angie is pretty happy with going to the dealership for her car. I’ve been going to a dealer as well for my truck repairs, and its worked out okay so far. Once we’ve gotten started going to a place it makes it a little difficult to switch since they’ve done a better job keeping our repair records up to date.

Hmmm….Maybe I should just quit my job and become a mechanic.

So if anyone’s interested it costs roughly $200 to get your truck towed from Rockford, IL to Madison, WI. My lovely wife, lovable pooch, and myself were driving back from a weekend in Ohio where we visited family and participated in the Black Swamp Benefit and Bazar to raise money for charity, when the truck decided that it had had ENOUGH! I looked down and the temperature guage was in the red.

Fast forward…after a couple cycles of waiting, letting the truck cool down, and pouring in more fluids we decided that we should weigh our options.

• spend the night somewhere and get it fixed the next day (who knows where) skipping work (while a cool idea, not the best option).
• try and figure out some other way to get home, then come back and get the truck later (don’t ask me how)
• shell out the bucks to get our assses towed home.

Seeing as how it was after 10pm and we were still a couple hours away from home, we decided to opt for the last option. We ended up calling the folks at:

Smitty’s Towing
3240 W State St,Rockford,IL 61102
Phone: (815) 962-6159

They were very nice and Matt (the driver) was very accomodating. They suggested that we join AAA and call them back since AAA (we’re not currently members) would cover up to 100 miles for free. We thought that was a stellar idea, since a year membership would be half the cost of the tow. But …. BUT….Angie sat on the phone for about 30min on hold …. on HOLD!! Angie was willing to hang on longer. I was pissed and said, “F@#$’em!” Any emergency service that keep me on hold for over 1/2 hour, is not an emergency service.

We’re still debating the merits of AAA, especially since many insurance companies provide roadside service (did I mention that we couldn’t find our insurnace card?).

Regardless we made it back home, and the truck’s in the shop. I hope the bill is low.

A co-worker pointed out this handy little 44k application that will display the RGB or HEX value of whatever color your mouse pointer happens to be hovering over.
Playing around with it I found out you can hit the *P* key to pause the application and catch the current color you’re looking at, and then hit the *R* key when you’re ready to resume viewing the colors you mouse over.

The select button pops up the familiar color selector you’ve probably seen in various applications.

NOTE: Unfortunately this is only for Windows based systems. I don’t know if it is dependent upon any particular version

I decided that it was time today to make a change. … That and the bandwidth is a litttle larger at work.

Either way I’ve been having fun lately with MovableType an open source web log system. Its been fun playing around with what I can and can’t do. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be any real limitations, its just a matter of figuring out how to implement it within the environment they’ve set up.

Regardless, Angie and I’s site has been the same for seemingly forever. As I played around with the site more I kept thinking that it needed to be in some state of *finished* before setting it out there. But its it the point of all this wonderful technology that it changes? SO I thought I would go ahead and post the change. I needed to clean out the site anyway.

I’ll be hopefully adding a few things along the way as I take the time to do. The cool hack of the day is the Google API functionality within MovableType that I haven’t taken the time to learn anything about until now. You can get your own liscense key to the Google API too. Some sort of automated photo albumn would be cool…as well as something similar for small videos perhaps? Jay has been nice enough to allow me to host my stuff here so we’ll have to see what he will and won’t let me do. ……….

Not that I’m looking for a job at the moment, but I stumbled across a decent collection of Wisconsin related job resource sites. Most of the state/gov/university job postings are pretty slim since the state budget is going through some heavy cuts and most offices still don’t know how much $$ they’re going to have in the year(s) ahead. The University of Wisconsin is currently under a hiring freeze.

I came across via Slashdot this article (‘Thinking’ robot in escape bid - theage.com.au) on a thinking/learning robot researchers are experimenting with that managed to break away from the rest of the group and make it to the parking lot. As the Slashdot post indicated, I’m also not sure as to whether this is cool or scary.

A bear wandered into Madison yesterday. I heard a few co-workers talking about where it was, etc. What pisses me off is that they shot and killed the bear rather than trying very hard to tranquilize it. The Wisconsin State Journal article says that they needed to get 2 darts into the bear to knock him out, and they couldn’t get the bear to sit still long enough to do it. My question is, why not have 2 guys shooting at the same time? It just pisses me off. It was probably just looking for food and probably didn’t want to be in town any more than we wanted it to be. But our typical response is to shoot first and ask questions later.

Way to go, folks. Another triumph for civilization.

I came across this story via Slashdot that discusses the potential for a new web browser war between Microsoft Internet Explorer and the newly released Mozilla 1.0 web browser. As they talked to a variety of individuals and organizations about the potential *war* the flexibility of open source came up in a quote.

WorldGate Communications Inc., which makes systems for interactive television, is customizing Mozilla for set-top devices, preferring it to proprietary software from potential competitors.

“We need to be independent enough that we can set our own course and not be beholden to someone else’s priorities and schedules,” said Gerard Kunkel, WorldGate’s president.

I think that’s a wonderful quote/argument. Myself and co-worker work at a branch of the University of Wisconsin dealing with educational technology. A lot of what we currently depend upon is purchased through vendors. When a change of systems takes place, a major effort needs to be coordinated to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and students aren’t lost in the process. Open source platforms allow for the ability to rely upon comprable systems that allow for a high level of customization without the dependence on vendor whims.

SO! Symbolic domain names that I sense I can identify with pop in and out of my mind periodically. EVERY time I think I’ve thought of a pseudo interesting one that I *might* consider registering, I check it, and its used.

Quite frankly it pisses me off.

I found a fairly helpful site, Nameboy, that will take a couple words and try various combinations with additional words as well. It provides some interesting combinations, but none so far that have struck off the bat as, “OOOO, I want THAT one!”

Ultimately I’ve been debating about what I should do with the names I have and if I should come up with anything different. wysereeser.com was initially meant to be my wife and I’s personal site. She’s shown no interest in it what-so-ever, which could be a good thing depending on your perspective. scottreeser.com shoud probably be my *professional* site (whatever the hell that is). On a whim I also snagged scouringbubbles.com, the name is a little too flowery for my tastes….I was thinking of using it as a site to post items that I find online. But in retrospect it seems a little long for whatever reason. Still…

My wife and I have attend a local Mennonite church here in Madison. Several church members have taken it upon themselves to help organize others for letter writing campaigns or other productive protests. This past year one of the larger church decided to recognize some of the work our congregation has done.

Indiana, Wisconsin congregations honored
WASHINGTON—Assembly Mennonite Church in
Goshen, Ind., and Madison (Wis.) Mennonite
Church have been named the recipients of this
year’s annual congregational advocacy award from
the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S.
Washington Office. The award, now in its second
year, is given to congregations that demonstrate an
exemplary witness to government.
Assembly’s initiatives have included demonstrations
and petitions against the death penalty, a campaign
to write letters to their congressional representatives
to oppose war in Iraq, a sister relationship
with a Mennonite congregation in Colombia,
local anti-racism work and peace and justice activities
by the congregation’s junior high youth.
Madison has worked with a synagogue to build a
Sukkot booth. The Sukkot holiday commemorates
the Israelites’ time in the wilderness. The congregation
has also been involved in negotiations over
the fate of a decommissioned military ammunition
plant outside the city, hosted forums on various
issues, collected materials for MCC humanitarian
assistance to Afghanistan and written letters against
war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Both congregations will receive original paintings
by Leo Emerson Jr., a graduate student at Howard
University in Washington. The paintings, commissioned
by the MCC U.S. Washington Office, have
peace and justice themes.—MCC News Service