I haven't posted an actual update in far too long. Let's dial back the Wheel of Time™.
I finally moved off the Daily servers for both my email and my web hosting. The email wasn't a big deal since Yahoo is free and I just forward everything from umich anyway. Keep emailing me at mbibik at umich dot edu, since I might not stay with Yahoo. The web hosting, on the other hand, was a big deal. My gallery was taking up at least a gig and no host would charge less than $39/month for that much space. Well, I found a free host for most of my site and then I'm hosting the galleries at home (thus the mbibik.dyndns.org URL). No, I can't tell you where I'm hosting, but you can sort of figure it out if you are smart.
Kat and I have been up and down lately, but she is in Italy for two weeks so hopefully things will improve (absense makes the heart, blah blah blah). Unfortunately, she had a slight hiccup with her flight plans! Her flight from Seattle to Chicago left on time, but due to weather it couldn't land and had to circle for an extra two hours. This made her miss the connecting flight from Chicago to Rome! Her sister flew in from North Carolina so they could fly together to Rome so she skipped the flight to be with Kat. Now they are both trying to find another flight to Rome. The next direct flight that is available isn't until Saturday night and American Airlines keeps telling them to fly to London and then home for a standby flight to Rome. No matter what, I would be very upset. You can't really get pissed since there is no control over the weather, but very upset nontheless.
My car is really pissing me off lately. Purchased on 06/27/2003 for about $18k and 8 months later it is only worth $10k. I still owe about that much! Anyway, it looks like I haven't posted about my car problems over the past few months. My CEL (check engine light) came on during normal driving. Nothing seemed amis, but I made a service appointment anyway. By the time the appointment arrived, the CEL was off. They took it and ran some tests anyway. They replaced a fuel hose and said the car should be fine. I took it home that night and the CEL went back on the very next day! I waited a couple weeks before making another appointment. During those few weeks, the CEL would go on for a couple days then go back off for awhile. Nothing really seemed wrong with the car until I checked my fuel logs. The car was getting 17 MPG! This car is rated for 27 MPG, so something was definitely borked. I took it in and this time the CEL was on when they received it. They replaced an 02 sensor and again said the car was fine. Well, I completely grannied the next tank of gas and got 22 MPG. Not bad, but not good either. I went back to my normal driving style and I'm still getting 17 MPG. I could be driving a WRX for that sort of gas mileage! I talked to the service tech and he claims he has seens Focii get 17 MPG and there was no solution. Great.
I finally just decided to ignore the gas mileage since I'm not driving that much anyway. About two weeks ago, I was simply changing a preset on my radio and it decides to completely freak out. Now, it goes through this cycle of playing 0.5 seconds of music then turning off for 1.5 seconds, constantly rebooting. What make its even more annoying is that you have a 0.2 second window while the radio is off to hit the power button so that it will stay off. I'm sure I can fix it by pulling the plug (disconnect the battery), I just haven't gotten around to it.
I finally moved off the Daily servers for both my email and my web hosting. The email wasn't a big deal since Yahoo is free and I just forward everything from umich anyway. Keep emailing me at mbibik at umich dot edu, since I might not stay with Yahoo. The web hosting, on the other hand, was a big deal. My gallery was taking up at least a gig and no host would charge less than $39/month for that much space. Well, I found a free host for most of my site and then I'm hosting the galleries at home (thus the mbibik.dyndns.org URL). No, I can't tell you where I'm hosting, but you can sort of figure it out if you are smart.
Kat and I have been up and down lately, but she is in Italy for two weeks so hopefully things will improve (absense makes the heart, blah blah blah). Unfortunately, she had a slight hiccup with her flight plans! Her flight from Seattle to Chicago left on time, but due to weather it couldn't land and had to circle for an extra two hours. This made her miss the connecting flight from Chicago to Rome! Her sister flew in from North Carolina so they could fly together to Rome so she skipped the flight to be with Kat. Now they are both trying to find another flight to Rome. The next direct flight that is available isn't until Saturday night and American Airlines keeps telling them to fly to London and then home for a standby flight to Rome. No matter what, I would be very upset. You can't really get pissed since there is no control over the weather, but very upset nontheless.
My car is really pissing me off lately. Purchased on 06/27/2003 for about $18k and 8 months later it is only worth $10k. I still owe about that much! Anyway, it looks like I haven't posted about my car problems over the past few months. My CEL (check engine light) came on during normal driving. Nothing seemed amis, but I made a service appointment anyway. By the time the appointment arrived, the CEL was off. They took it and ran some tests anyway. They replaced a fuel hose and said the car should be fine. I took it home that night and the CEL went back on the very next day! I waited a couple weeks before making another appointment. During those few weeks, the CEL would go on for a couple days then go back off for awhile. Nothing really seemed wrong with the car until I checked my fuel logs. The car was getting 17 MPG! This car is rated for 27 MPG, so something was definitely borked. I took it in and this time the CEL was on when they received it. They replaced an 02 sensor and again said the car was fine. Well, I completely grannied the next tank of gas and got 22 MPG. Not bad, but not good either. I went back to my normal driving style and I'm still getting 17 MPG. I could be driving a WRX for that sort of gas mileage! I talked to the service tech and he claims he has seens Focii get 17 MPG and there was no solution. Great.
I finally just decided to ignore the gas mileage since I'm not driving that much anyway. About two weeks ago, I was simply changing a preset on my radio and it decides to completely freak out. Now, it goes through this cycle of playing 0.5 seconds of music then turning off for 1.5 seconds, constantly rebooting. What make its even more annoying is that you have a 0.2 second window while the radio is off to hit the power button so that it will stay off. I'm sure I can fix it by pulling the plug (disconnect the battery), I just haven't gotten around to it.