This Blog Sucks

The problem: Each time I try to open a video file, I get the infamous message “windows explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close”.

The solution: Uninstall the Xvid Codec via Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs, and then install the newest version of the Xvid Codec.

There are all kinds of suggestions out there for fixing this problem and they all sound like way too much work, ie: scan the registry and reinstall certain files, go into Safe Mode and do blah blah blah, reinstall Windows, etc. Removing and reinstalling the Xvid Codec worked, and it was easy!

This is where I found the answer:  http://www.xvidmovies.com/faq/#3.4

It looked brand new and still had the cardboard support thing inside. Now I need to get it dirty cuz John Deere hats don’t look right when they’re all shiny and new.

Big Beef from Portillo’s: better than Mr. Beef mainly because the peppers are hotter

Great Italian beef but the giardiniera peppers weren’t hot enough!

This past weekend I hatched a plan! That’s all I’m saying.

2008 wasn’t ALL bad, but it was far from great. These are the personally significant events that I can remember from the past 12 months:

• Aunt Ronnie died.
  Ronnie was sick for a long time and her maker called on April 1. She was actually my great aunt and she was 96.
• I met a bunch of local-ish Korean Adoptees through “Katch” by way of Facebook.
  Generally speaking I like the people I’ve met through this oddly-named organization, but I’m pretty sure that at least two of the “leaders” of the group absolutely can’t stand me! But these girls keep inviting me to shit because it is… and probably will always be… a very small operation. Hilarious!
• My brother Pat and I took our Dad on the first annual Reliving-Our-Childhood fishing trip.
  The venue was Edgerton, WI (which will probably change in the future) and the occasion was Dad’s birthday (that part will stay the same). It was a lot of fun but we couldn’t catch a single fish that weighed more than my hairy ballsack.
• I met Kyle Orton at a Play for Life fundraiser.
  But I chickened out on asking him to autograph my chest. 
• I sunk like $50,000 into a car I hardly ever drive just so I can keep driving it.
  Yeah I know, I’m super smart. And it was closer to $2.000.
• I bought an iPhone and started a mildly successful iPhone website, and then another site that I’m hoping will do just as well.
  And then another, but just for SEO reasons.
• I had three visitors from Korea: Suzanne, Grace, and then Lee
  Lee and I got fucked up with Clayton while the Bears won on MNF. 
• My partners and I pulled the plug on Naperthrill.com.
  I still believe the site could have made it if we had the time and money to make it happen. Unfortunately seven years of being broke and usually busy is a recipe for failure.
• Pat got engaged to Heather.
  Are his-and-hers Bears jerseys inappropriate gifts for your brother’s wedding?
• I went to Pat & Heather’s Halloween party dressed as an iPhone Douchebag
  And while talking to Pat during a smoke break I stopped in mid-sentence to hurl on the sidewalk. 
• I donated any hope of getting a Christmas present to charity in accordance with family wishes.
  I really don’t mind, but it would have been nice to have been asked instead of told about the plan.

I almost forgot this piece of shit blog still existed until some guy named John (do I know you John?) left comments on a few posts.

So here’s the update from my August car nightmare… I bought my own parts and the guy at the shop estimated that I saved about $300-400. Not bad! And it was totally worth it. I bought the timing belt kit, water pump, serpentine belts, and a wheel bearing and gave it all to the shop and they put it in. The job still cost a shitload (6 hours of labor for the timing belt/water pump alone) but I’m no longer freaking out about my car self-destructing.

Only other “news” is that I started reviewing iPhone applications at iphoneappreviews.net and I’m getting some pretty good traffic… I’m on pace to hit about 35-40,000 pageviews this month. Why am I writing reviews? I dunno! Experiment, I guess, to see how much traffic a site like this can attract.

Since 2006 this car hasn’t needed many repairs (that I knew of at the time, anyway). Still, if I had a brain I’d dump it like a cheap skank and start slumming it with a Zipcar membership since I drive so little. Only problem is last week I had to blow $1,034.04 on new brakes all around PLUS two front calipers! Great, now if I try to sell the car I’ll basically be giving it away after deducting the cost of brakes from the sale price.

And now, after digging through all of the maintenance records I have for the past 65k miles (most of which were driven by my brother Pat when he owned it) I’m 100% convinced that the timing belt will ruin my day sometime soon despite Pat’s insistence that timing belts are never really the car-killing problem everyone makes them out to be. I want to believe that, but according to two different auto shops and this website:

The 2.5L dual over head cam engine is an interference engine. If the timing belt breaks in it, you will bend valve, break pistons, twist rods and crack heads. All sorts of catastrophes will be visited upon you. So, don’t play highway roulette with this one at all.

The 2.2 could lose a timing belt and just need a standard repair, but naturally I have the 2.5. And I’m planning to do 12 hours of highway driving in about two weeks! Sigh. Both over-the-phone estimates that I’ve gotten for a full timing belt job are around $1000. OMG. It’s not a Porsche, it’s a fucking 1996 Subaru Outback. And according to both mechanics, replacing JUST the belt is apparently a bad idea. Right, of course.

Well I guess I gotta do what I gotta do, but I’m not paying dealer retail ripoff for their parts. I’m gonna try to get the parts online and just pay for labor. The shop manager’s gonna start rolling his eyes when I show up with car pieces, but fuck him!

Will my thrifty little scheme work? Will I actually get the right parts and drive away without having to give up a kidney? Stay tuned.

Well super now I can blog about stupid shit anytime, anywhere! I knew Wordpress would come through with a free (and really well-done) app to make this happen. Too bad this blog is 100% pointless.

Here’s a picture of Terry the Dog’s mouth. And I did all this from my phone. Whoa.

Yesterday I was determined to get an iPhone 3G so I made some phone calls… everyone in Chicago was sold out… and I was about to give up until some guy at the Apple Store in Deer Park (a little north of Palatine) said they had just gotten an “extremely small shipment”.

I hauled ass to the store which took about an hour and, after waiting in a short line for about 30 minutes, a store employee was helping me set up my new white 16 gb iPhone! Sweet. I would have preferred black but whatever.

It’s great that the iPhone is basically a mini porn machine, but all the other bells & whistles are what make it so fucking cool. In fact this device is so cool that I kind of feel like a douchebag being seen with it in public! That feeling will go away eventually, but right now I can’t help but think people are watching me tap away at the screen and they’re thinking “omg that guy looks like a gigantic douchebag”, kind of how I used to look at people who walk around with a bluetooth earpiece on their head.

So far my favorite features are the GPS location mapping and all the 3rd party apps that can be downloaded directly on the phone from the App Store.

This is the free crap I’ve already installed:

Pandora - iPhone version of Pandora.com’s music genre player
Facebook - Stripped down version of the site
AOL Radio - Plays live radio from various stations around the country
Last.fm - iPhone version of Last.fm’s music player
Light - Just turns the screen white so the phone can be used to see things in the dark
TapTap - Stupid game that will probably get uninstalled shortly
BoxOffice - Finds local movie theaters and showtimes, and also has movie synopses
Shazam - “Listens” to music that I’m hearing in the real world and tells me what song it is
SportsTap - Tracks live sports scores from all the major sports
Midomi - Basically the same as Shazam, so one will get uninstalled eventually
Yelp - Finds local restaurants, bars, etc. from Yelp’s website
Google - Google search tool made for iPhone
NYTimes - News & crap
eBay - iPhone-optimized version of the site
YPmobile - Yellow Pages search

GPS assists some of these applications, such as BoxOffice and Yelp.

I definitely couldn’t get this on my old piece of shit phone