Well, it wasn't the compressor... just the capacitor out there. However, between the costs for those, new contactors, and the service call the bill would have been over $300 probably. But we have a Home Warranty that came with the house for the first year. Get this... it cost the seller $345. The deductible is $75. Now, if you do all the work on your own, $345/year is a waste of money. But this would have been $300 today and it was a minor repair on one of almost 100 things that our Home Warranty covers. Needless to say, we'll be renewing that when the first year ends.
But, at least everything is working now. I love air conditioning.
We get back from the football game (more on that later) and find out our A/C has went out at the house! The upstairs is oppressively hot. The air handling unit is working just fine in the attic, only it's pushing room temperature air. So, it's the compressor outside. Well, we have a Home Warranty that covers this and there is a guy coming out to check the outside unit today between 11am-1pm. Hopefully he can hard start the compressor. If the compressor is completely locked and has the be replaced, it'll be Tuesday at the earliest.
But... at least we won the football game and Clemson lost their game! In fact, Clemson's last two football games have been nationally televised and they've lost both by a combined score of 85-15.
Ours wasn't the best performance. A win is a win, but a 14-7 win over Louisiana LaFayette isn't that impressive. But there were quite a few players who really shined on offense and the defense looked really good most of the time. Certainly some potential... I hope it was just first game jitters. They dropped two touchdown passes and a ton of other passes during the game. It was frustrating to watch, but at least it is a win.
The worst part about it all was the heat though. The sign when we were driving in said 95 degrees. Add the humidity and a copious amount of beer to that and by the time the game rolled around at 7:00 (we got there around 2:15) I had a huge dehydration headache. It didn't ease up until about 12:30am after getting home. Our game against Miss. State was worse during the game heat-wise, but this game was by far the worst heat during tailgating I remember. Fall weather cannot get here soon enough!
And can I get a 'Hell yeah!' for a long weekend? Thank goodness this is a 3 day weekend... after everything that's happened, I don't know that I would handle going to work Monday.
Tomorrow at this time we'll be down at the fairgrounds tailgating for Carolina Football 2003. This year should be very interesting. We've had back-to-back Top 10 recruiting classes. Lots of young paper talent, but we'll see if they produce. Holtz has done a lot more with a lot less, so we have the chance to have a very good season. Tomorrow is merely a tune up game though versus Louisiana LaFayette.
Much better week already. Things are settling down and many of the requests are disappearing faster than new ones are coming in so far. And one receptionist for one of our 6 departments even baked us in IT brownies for all the help we've given everyone lately. And good brownies...
Hopefully things will get better soon but we have been bombarded by support requests lately. Add that to the virus problems that went around that we're still trying to catch up from and things are insane. On March 13th, 2003 we were averaging 12.20 requests or emails per day. By May 22nd, that was down to 11.46/day. Over the course of the last two weeks we have received 216 emails to our Support mailbox. That's about 21.6/day but today isn't over yet, so it's really around 22.7/day as of right now. That wouldn't be that much of an increase really except for the fact that many of the request are dealing with cleaning up an infected machine (30 mins-1 hour roughly) or rebuilding a PC or setting up a new one for someone (2 hours - 4 hours depending). I'm not even doing the math on how far behind we are or how long it's going to take to catch up.
Weeks like these are where you kick into a mode where you come to work, do as much as you can, and go home. And leave work at work... that's the important last step. Of course, that's not taking into account the few days the last couple weeks I've had to work late. Blah.
We got a lot of chores done over the weekend that were being put off for way too long. We also bought an exercise bike yesterday. Nothing too fancy, but it is nice for $149. It's annoying not having a free gym like we used to with every apartment complex. This subdivision has a pool, nature trails, tennis courts (too hot still), river access, etc... seems like everything except a workout facility. So, the choices are try to do something at home, join a gym out here, or use the USC gym in downtown. We live too far to have the ambition to drive all the way into town all the time or to go into work any more early than we already do. Gyms are expensive to join. So, we're going to do what we can around here I guess.
Of course, I'm waking up earlier and earlier it seems. I still hate mornings, but at least they're not as hard as they used to be. In fact, I even woke up at 6am on Saturday and wasn't really all that tired so I went out to take some pictures of the ponds around the Chestnut Hills clubhouse. Here's a small version of one of the pictures below:
Also, today is sunny! This is worth celebrating here in SC this summer. Any day without rain is a good day... trust me. Well, except today. That just means I'm on mowing duty this afternoon.
Work was hell today. All 11.5 hours of it. Thanks, by the way, to the person out in the world who wrote this newest virus. All the three of us did today from 8-7:30 was fix infected machines. And there's another big day on tap tomorrow of that same thing.
I guess if nothing else I have some comp time built up... Friday afternoon is looking more and more free all the time.
Kept pretty busy this weekend. We ended up going to Flying Saucer Friday night with Jenn and Jen. I joined their club and got my own membership card and everything. Turns out you only have to have 200 of them to get on the Ring of Honor. So far, I've had:
08/09/2003
Afanasy Light - a Russian beer
Bitburger Pilsner - Draught - a German beer
San Miguel - A beer from the Philippines
08/10/2003
Beck's - a German beer
Konig Pilsner - draft - a German beer
We also started to paint our bedroom the same darker tan that we have in the dining room. Our new bedding we bought matched the walls too well so we thought going with the darker color in there would look good. It looks great, but we haven't finished yet. Took a break to head out to the 'practice tailgate' Saturday and never picked it back up.
The tailgate wasn't really all that... not many people at all. It was good seeing familiar faces, but we got out there pretty late, so everything was wrapping up anyway. Plus, we didn't get to go into the practice that day.
Not many updates recently.... nothing new going on really. Hence, the title of the Blog.
Christina and I went to a new place Tuesday night after work called the Flying Saucer. It's not really new... it's 3 weeks old, but we're an old married couple who doesn't get out as often as they used to already! The place is pretty cool though. It's a Draught Emporium in their words. Over 200 different beer choices from around the world. 40 some on tap, the rest in bottles. But the selection is impressive. They also have a Ring of Honor club. This huge tall section of wooden crown molding encircles the place and if you join the club ($14 - but it gets you a tshirt too) and you try every beer available on their menu, your name goes up there. Maximum of 3 pints credited per night though. I haven't joined yet, but I should... a man's gotta have goals in life, right?
We also switched over to a joint bank account yesterday. One more official step out of the way. It'll take a pay period for my direct deposit info to change, but after that, things should settle down in that department again finally.
I haven't had much time to do anything else with the house. Well, scratch that... we've had time, I've just been terribly lazy. See, I feel you should do the things in life you excel in... right? I happen to excel in laziness... Seriously though, we'll get to work a bit this weekend. Our bedroom and the bonus room are still on the list to paint.
Though I'm not sure if I'm going to the tailgate this Saturday or not yet. A group of the Gamecock fans online from the message boards are getting together Saturday for a practice run tailgate. See, the players are all practicing for this upcoming season right now and as fans we feel obliged to practice what we do so that we're in optimal condition for the upcoming season when it really matters... or something. Regardless, it's beer and grilling and football talk with a good group of people... season or no, it sounds like a good thing.
Work has been crazy lately. Seems like every time I take care of an issue or two, there are 4-5 new support requests in our Inbox. And even when they're not being emailed, we're getting requests from other sources. In fact, I took over a desktop I'd finished setting up for a new faculty member at one of our 12 remote locations and while I was there I was given two laptops to setup that I didn't even know we'd be getting. What a nice thank you, eh? Ahh, it wouldn't be so bad if one of the laptops wasn't this archaic Gateway Solo Pentium II-333 laptop with only 64MB of RAM. Unfortunately, that's above or equal to the minimum specs for Windows XP, so that's what the user wants. Fun.
I'm sure things will slow down once the faculty and staff get absorbed into classes and everything that entails. Things for IT tend to slow down then, let's hope it holds true this Fall semester also.
Regardless, it's beer and grilling and football talk with a good group of people... season or no, it sounds like a good thing.