Tag Archives: Grandma

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The wireless gaming adapter that I’ve been playing with doesn’t seem to like holding an IP for more than a day, so I’ve gotten the suggestion that I should go with a static IP on the Xbox 360, because that might help. I am not sure that the problem isn’t really that I’m using a virtual network on my router, because the adapter only does WEP and my network was WPA. I was told that WPA is better security. I will have to wait and see if this fixes the problem. Right now I can’t suggest this setup to Renee, because while I incorrectly said she bought an Xbox 360 when in fact she exchanged one she got for her birthday and got one with a hard drive, she needs a wireless solution, but this isn’t really stable enough for right now. Lucky for me her television is basically rubbish so she isn’t in any real rush for this solution.

The kids went to the doctor’s for their physicals and everything seems to be fine. We are still waiting for some routine tests to come back, but so far the only problem is the kids are slightly overweight. I was already aware of this fact though, so there wasn’t any surprises that have come of this physical yet. I believe the kids have been losing weight, and when the school year is over and they can spend more time riding their bikes, which I still have to find a bike for Patty, then I’m sure this problem will resolve itself. The Easter candy isn’t helping the situation any in the very present. Hopefully they slim down enough to make it easier to fit them for uniforms for the new school year.

I have the Praxis II content and PLT test on the 25th and I’ve been reading some books to help me get prepared for them. I picked up two AP history books at the Akron public library, because to my surprise the University of Akron library did not have any world history books that would be of value to me. I need the history books for the content part, which is about 130 multiple choice questions that can be pulled from world, American, geography, economics, and politics. I have made it to about the 15th century for the world history, but I feel that the next four centuries are going to be more important to me. On the PLT side of things I’ve made it through about a dozen people who have contributed theories that have shaped the modern education system in the United States, but I really have to go back through and read them all again and finish these books. These tests could not have come at a worst time, as the semester is winding down and I have a lot of assignments due in all my other classes.

Speaking of assignments what I have due is a final draft of my Historical Methods paper, which I got the rough draft back today and there are quite a few corrections I have to make to get a better grade. I need to put together another paper for my Advanced Teaching Instructions class, along with a Curriculum Connections paper, a rough draft of the unit plan, and I have to finish the observation hours I’ve been doing at North High School. I have a big paper and a possible presentation coming due for Measurements and Evaluation, which I sadly have not even started on. I have to finish up about 6 online quizzes for Family Financial Management and start thinking about the final project that is due on finals week. I have the final paper and a presentation due in History and Film, which while that is actually not that difficult is still more work piled on. I would like to finish all these books I got for the Praxis II tests.

I have so many assignments and appointments lately that I forced myself to learn how to use the appointments and tasks feature on my phone. I was keeping all these things written down in a notebook, but I need a more constant and ready reminder of what needs done. It wasn’t hard to learn and I feel more confident about keeping track of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. I don’t have any reminders or anything set, because I’m constantly in there adding or checking something so I don’t think I’m going to forget what’s due next.

Everywhere I go anymore it smells like fresh mulch. This is both a blessing and a curse. Sure everything looks better and eventually the smell settles down and it is fine, but in the very present it is a very pungent smell. Sometimes I feel as though I’m carrying the smell around me if I walk too close to it.

Time Warner Cable will be out to fix my cable for a 3rd time in a month. I know 3rd time is a charm, but I’m really just hoping they get it right this time. I don’t even know what went wrong this time. The cable box isn’t working and now the kids are telling me that some of the higher channels are scrambled on their televisions. This problem seems to be brand new. I don’t know what’s going on. I even talked to Rick and while he probably knows what the problem is there isn’t anything I can actually do myself to fix it.

My Grandma helped me with dinner tonight and she made the pork chops better than I do. I learned how to do it from my Dad and the recipe is dip them in Italian dressing, then breadcrumbs, then in the oven for an hour at 350. Grandma did them with egg instead of Italian dressing, and I have to say that I like it better that way. I’ll have to start doing that.

Grandma’s Birthday

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Grandma wanted to go some where special to eat for her birthday, so she suggested the Imperial Wok in Solon. It’s a really great Chinese place that you only want to go to once a year. It’s a bit pricey, but you get a lot of food and it’s much better than a Chinese buffet. It’s approximately a 50 minute drive from here, but she wanted to go, and it was her birthday, so we went.

The food was as great as I remember. I got to do the same thing to the kids as my Dad always did with us, which is to say that I had them try the hot oil stuff that they bring out to your table so you can make your food spicier. They did the same thing all of us always did. They took a dab, and then they remarked that they didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and then the burn started. I love Asian spicy stuff.

I have to say that as long as I remember Solon it’s barely changed. It’s pretty much the only area of the world that I remember fondly. If I ever had the money I’d move there.

Quest: Waffles (Complete)

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I grinded in making waffles last night, because I was up and had nothing else to do, and I got it. The problem was pretty simple, and it was part stupid and part something that comes with experience I guess.

The stupid part was I wasn’t really following the directions well enough. I was making the batter too runny and that was causing not only a mess for me to clean up, but also the waffles didn’t come out right at all.

The second part was just timing. I just needed to really get a feel for when I should pull them out. I nailed it. Grandma and Patty already had them, and Eddy would have surely been invited down if I could pull him away from the cartoons for five minutes, and they said they were excellent.

I dinged.

Phone Issue Resolved

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My Grandmother and I are now on the Family Plan with AT&T and we have phones being shipped to us. The cost of the equipment if we had gone through the AT&T website, which is cheaper than over the phone, would have been over $300, and instead I got it all for $77 going through Amazon.com.

My Grandmother, for whatever reason, really wanted the pink Sony Ericsson Walkman phone. That seems really trendy and what not, but she really wanted this phone. I don’t know. Maybe when she’s at church in the morning all the other old ladies and gentlemen pull out their cell phones and they are cooler than my Grandma’s, so she needed to upgrade to something flashy.

I on the other hand have gone way over and beyond any phone that I’ve ever owned and purchased the AT&T Tilt. This phone has all the buzzwords that you could possibly have heard in the past year. Touchscreen, full Qwerty keyboard, wifi, bluetooth, GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1, and probably some other things that I am not aware of right now. To be honest I don’t even know to what extent I will be able to take advantage of all these features. I just wanted them. I was going to get a phone with GPS anyway, and my choices were pretty slim, so why not go for the gusto and get all the features I could ever want or desire.

I am so glad that the phone issue is finally resolved.

Phone Fun

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My Grandmother was supposed to call AT&T and ask if there were any discounts that she could get, because she retired from there. She called and got the run down, and the short answer was “no”, but they did offer a family plan, and to be honest I’m not even sure if it is in fact called a “family plan”, that would save us some money.

The representative she was speaking to was extremely pushy about the whole thing. I am not a big fan of walking into a situation where the sales people make commission. I don’t care what the reasoning behind this practice is, I would prefer that I can shop at my leisure. I told my Grandmother to hang up, and I would think about it.

I decided that there was no real reason for us to stay with Verizon, since there are certain features that I am sort of interested in playing around with, not the least of these being GPS for the purpose of track log software, and so I said that we might as well.

She called, we are apparently signed up, and since we already have AT&T for our home phone and internet it’s going to be automatically added to our phone bill. I need a phone, because I need to cancel with Verizon.

Jo, Anthony, and I all end up driving out to the AT&T store in Fairlawn to look at phones and decide what my best option is going to be. Quickly, thanks to the fact that GPS was a necessity, the search for a phone was narrowed down considerably. Then those phones started falling out of favor quickly, one of them has a required $30 a month data plan, another phone is $250, and finally another phone is as wide as my hand, and quite hilariously that’s the one I was going to get, but it’s actually misconstrued in the pictures on the website (hint: the circle D pad is oval in the picture on the website for AT&T making it look considerably slimmer). The best phone ended up being the Blackjack II.

I must have spent quite a lot of time getting to that point and finally the sales person needed some information. I was getting the information he needed when time apparently ran out. The store closes at 8 PM. I had no idea, otherwise I would have felt a bit more decisive, and instead of playing with things in the store that I had no intention of getting I would have gone straight to narrowing down my search. I thought the store was open till 9.

Tomorrow I will have to resume this getting a phone thing. I’ve sort of thrown another problem into the mix, because I found that I could get a refurbished Blackjack II from the website for $60, but first I’d need to register on the site. That would require having an AT&T phone. So, things might become a little more complicated before they get resolved. This seems to be a pretty constant theme though. I’m thinking of adding it to the text at the top of the page “Family, Friends, Life, Problems with Consumerism…”