The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Category: General

  • Unsolicited Delivery

    Fedex stopped by my house this morning and dropped off 2 very large boxes and 2 small but heavy boxes, all with my name and address on them.  Hmmm, I didn’t order anything….

    I opened them up and discovered two 3000VA, rack-mountable battery backups along with 110lbs of batteries for them.  Neat!

    I called up the company, which I had purchased from almost a year to the day, and let them know that someone was probably missing a shipment.  They thanked me and let me know that it was destined for an Eric Johnson in Utah.  Kinda scary their shipping system just matched on name, I wonder who else is getting free toys but not telling anyone about them?

    I had to drag the boxes back out to my porch, Fedex is supposed to be by to pick them back up.  They had better be quick or they’ll be covered in snow.

  • “Dad… help…”

    He was having fun, we swear!

  • Spring Preview

    Today Central Illinois took a break from the regularly schedule winter to enjoy an absolutely beautiful 70 degree day.  Actually I don’t know how warm it ended up really getting, my car thermometer read 70 at one point though, and as I write this at 10pm I have my office window open and the computer is telling me that it’s 60 degrees.

    Ana and I even got to take David on his first stroller ride around the neighborhood it was so nice out.  He loved it until some sun got in his eyes.  He sure doesn’t like that.  We capped off the day sharing a great meal of grilled steak, potatoes, salad, and brownies(!) with Jay and Katherine.

    March 2nd, 70 degrees, baseball on the radio, steak dinner,  & friends.  If that doesn’t lift your spirits and make you smile, check your pulse!

    Don’t get too overjoyed, however.  Winter returns tomorrow with snow expected. Pfft.

  • Can you name that movie in less than 170,000 Pixels?

     The movie doesn’t get better at a higher resolution, trust me.   With this image, can you name the movie?

    Ana’s sister has been wanting to watch it since she arrived here earlier this weekend.  Since she has been so kind in watching David tonight while Ana and I snuck out for dinner at Bella Milano,  I gave in.  Now we suffer.

    If you guess correctly, you can keep the image.  Come on people!

  • Caught up

    If you’ve felt a little”off” lateley (well, for nearly 2 years on average) have no fear. Today is Leap Day – the day where we get to make up for those pesky extra .25 days it takes the earth to revolve around the sun.

    What are you doing with your freebie?

  • Tired Baby

  • Tools of the trade.

    Shoo tossed up a photo of his tools of the trade. Here are mine. The Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (4000!). Best. Keyboard. Ever.

    And the sidekick Dwight.

  • Laptop Woes

    The laptop I bought a year and a half ago is having a display problem. Any video output that’s supposed to be black is actually a bright, vivid green. While it might be pretty, it’s gotta get fixed. When I purchased it, I was offered the 3 year service plan and it was a lot cheaper than expected (80 bucks) so I went ahead and bought it. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be as crappy as Circuit City’s support. Here’s where I hope I don’t regret buying it from Sams Club.

    This afternoon I went online and “registered” my service plan and opened a service claim. Here’s to hoping it won’t take too long to get resolved.

  • Starbucks

    I just read this little blurb about how Starbucks all over the country are closing their doors for 3 hours to reinvigorate the coffee passion and retrain their people.  I can see this sort of thing working in Seattle, where they are headquartered, where there might actually be some passion involved.   But was there ever any passion to be lost in the 7,000 other stores throughout the country – like say the one in the Target store here in Springfield?  Yeah… I bet they just take 3 hours off and wander over to the connected Pizza Hut Express.

  • Prednisone

    Ana had her 2-week visit with the new hematologist, and her platelets levels were the same as they were 2 weeks ago so that apparently finally “proves” that prednisone isn’t helping.  Glad it took 5 months for that to be clear.

    Anyway, she’s going to start the weaning process – dropping her dosage 10mg/week while continuing to get blood tests every week.  The plan is to see if once she tapers down slowly her levels stay where they are – they are low (51k) but definitely manageable.  If they don’t continue to drop, they’ll call it good enough and, I presume, just test her every now and again as well as us being on the lookout for the symptoms of the low platelets.

    If on the other hand she does drop again after stopping the prednisone, it’ll be time to look at the spleen removal as the next phase.