Webb Family Blog

Kellie and I spent our first nights apart (since getting married) this weekend. She went with a group of women from the Bridgeway Christian Church to a women's retreat weekend at Mount Hermon… in the Santa Cruz Mountains. During the time she was gone, I got a few things done. First off, I got both of our cars worked on (taken in to a shop for oil change, etc…). On my car, I took it to the Nissan Dealer because it is still under warranty and it is easier for them to keep records of it when done at a dealer. They told me that the air cleaner was pretty dirty and needed to be changed. They charged nearly $30 for a new one plus the cost of doing the job. I then immediately thought that it wouldn't be much more for me to get a K&N Filter and do it myself. They actually sell K&N Filters at the dealer, but they were charging around $55. I thought that a bit high. I declined and figured I'd check it out when I got home. I searched online and found a few for my car that were in the $30s. I really would have rather gotten it overwith, so I decided I'd stop in at an autoparts store and see what they charged. I stopped at a AutoZone Auto Parts store in Rocklin. I searched and initially couldn't find the one I needed (33-2031-2). I got some assistance from a clerk who found it. I asked him how much it cost. He said it was $55. I then told him "I guess I'll just order it online… it's around $20 cheaper." The guy replied that if I could prove it was cheaper online, they'd price match it, but I'd have to show proof that it was the same item… some filters are cheaper or more expensive than others. I came home and did some searching and found several from stores that didn't have great web pages, but Amazon.com had it for $36.76 and with free shipping. I have dealt with Amazon.com before and have never had any problems, so if he wouldn't price match, I'd just order it from them. Anyway, I printed out the page and brought it in. Apparently, what he hadn't told me before is that they take shipping costs into consideration. They price match for the price of the item PLUS the cost of shipping… thinking that any savings online would be negated by shipping. Well, the printout clearly showed FREE shipping. His face was showing shock. He left and was gone for several minutes. I'm wondering if he went to a computer to verify that it was all legit. He came out with a worried look on his face, saying that he'd make an exception, since that IS what he'd told me… that they would price match, but that they were REALLY looking for online stores that are an extension of a local retail store… which he had not told me initially. All-in-all, I DID get the filter from the AutoZone store in Rocklin for the same price I could have gotten it from Amazon.com. I saved around 30%. Installing the air filter was fairly easy, requiring no tools. It should last nearly the life of the car… just needing the occasional cleaning or re-oiling.  Besides the cars, I also mowed the lawns and worked on the computer.

I'm happy that Kellie made it home safe and she enjoyed the retreat.  We just ate over at her parents and with Katie and the grandparents.  We had some pizza.

I've become extremely annoyed by spam here on this blog site.  I'm getting about 20 pieces of spam a day.  It is being caught, but why should I have to put up with this.  There are many ways to try to prevent this.  Some are quite annoying.  I've found an easy prevention that keeps bots from spreading spam by asking a simple math question before it allows your comment.  It asks questions like "What is the sum of 2 and 8?"  Obviously, the answer is 10.  Because it is a word question, most bots won't know to answer the question.  If this doesn't work, I may have to use a more sophisticated program that creates difficult to read random characters that you have to type in.

I finally got around to having my labs drawn… ordered back in March. I forgot about them. I don't have ALL the results back, but so far, they look OK. I don't have back the one I'm most concerned about yet… parathyroid hormone, but I thought my lipid panel was interesting.

My total cholesterol continues to get lower, but unfortunately, my HDL has gone lower. My last HDL was 31… it has now dropped to 25. I like the fact that I can search my lab results online from Kaiser.

At this time, Kellie is at work. It's a football Sunday, so I'm keeping entertained by football. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Denver Broncos do so poorly. The St. Louis Rams didn't play very well either, but when the Broncos played so crappy, the Rams were able to win anyway. I'm currently watching the San Francisco 49rs at Arizona Cardinals. I think the new stadium in Glendale, Arizona is pretty cool. I'd like to go to a game there sometime. Cardinals Stadium not only has a retractable roof, but a retractable floor. The entire playing surface is moved in and out of the stadium, so the grass grows in the sun with the roof closed, when there isn't a game going on. They can have other events, like rock concerts and not have to worry about the field being damaged… they'd just have a concrete floor. Unlike other stadiums with a retractable roof, they'll have their early season games played with a closed roof and later season games played with an open roof… this is due to the heat in the desert, with nice weather in the winter. Maybe the Raiders will play them in the pre-season next year… I don't know.

Thank Goodness It’s Friday!  I write this while sitting in the backyard next to a fire in the outside fire pit.  

I’ve been busy lately.  I thought I was going to recover from the previous weekend while at work this week, but unfortunately it was busy at work too.  Last Saturday night I worked another Rock Med event; Tool… up at Sleep Train Amphitheater.  Of the recent concerts I’ve done, it was the busiest, but I recall much busier concerts back in the 90’s. 

On Sunday, I agreed to help my dad and Aunt Fran with a job at one of her rental homes down in the Land Park area of Sacramento.  This is a nice, approximately 1000 square foot home that is one of the older homes in Sacramento, but in a nice area.  It had lawn sprinklers, but you had to turn them on and off manually.  She wanted to have an automatic controller installed…. No big deal… just change the valves and run the control wire to the controller…. right?  WRONG!  This was an OLD system.  It was ALL iron or steel pipe.  The valves were inline with no anti-siphon.  We dug out the dirt around the valves to find where we could change them out.  As we worked on the front of the house, there were two zones with the valves about an inch or two apart… too close to place the new valves side-by-side.  We then went to the backyard to see what we had to deal with.  We again dug out the dirt around the current valve.  We tried to follow the pipe to the nearest joint.  This pipe was VERY rusty.  The pipe went under a sidewalk and appeared to have concrete covering the pipe.  I tried to knock some of it off and realized that it was actually just rust and all of a sudden, water started to spray out of the pipe.  We saw that the lawn had 3 sprinklers… none of them really being ideal.  Due to how rusty and how poor it looked, we decided that the best solution would be to lay down a completely new sprinkler system in the backyard.  After collaborating with my dad, we designed a system and headed off to Home Depot for supplies.  We purchased a couple hundred dollars-worth of supplies and had a neighbor drive it back for us… since we were in my car.  Meanwhile, my Uncle David stayed behind to dig the trenches that my dad and I had worked out.  When we returned, we got to work and realized that we needed a couple extra supplies we’d overlooked.  Thankfully, we sent my mom and my aunt to get them, so we could continue to work.  After much work, I finally dug out the section of dirt under sidewalk and started cutting the pipe with a hacksaw.  I hadn’t even cut my first section when my blade snapped.  Thankfully, a neighbor had a hacksaw and I was able to finish cutting the pipe.  I was then able to "man-handle" the old pipe and rip it out of the ground.  We then laid out the PVC pipe.  In the front yard, we had an issue with one of the small lawns… it had a sprinkler in the middle that sprayed out in a circle.  It sprayed so much that it got water on a neighbor’s car and she wasn’t very happy about it.  Dad decided we could change that layout too.  Instead of one sprinkler in the center, we replaced it with two sprinklers on either side of the lawn spraying in a half-circle… keeping the concrete dry.  We had it all hooked up and I started setting up the control wire and controller.  I made a small oversight at the beginning of the work that later came back and haunted me… I had 100 feet of wire.  I ran it from the garage at the back of the property to the rear lawn… made a break in the insulation and attached a few wires to the valves in the backyard.  I then continued the wire to the front lawn.  I had too much slack going from the garage to the backyard valves… and fell short by less than a foot to the front-lawn valves.  We had to make a short jumper to connect the front yard valves.  I was running out of time and had to leave… it was also starting to get dark.  After getting home, my dad called and I agreed to go down on Monday… Labor Day, to finish the job.  My father-in-law, Phil, volunteered to go down and help me, as my dad had gone back to Modesto.  Phil and I were able to finish burying the pipe and all the other little things in just about 2 hours.  After coming home, Kellie and I started working on our garage.  Our garage needs organization.  We started working on it, and Phil and Donna came over to help.  I helped Phil mount some storage shelving.  We worked into the dark.  We were quite tired.  After getting cleaned up, we all went out to eat at Pasta Pomodoro. 

On Tuesday morning, I had a dreaded dental appointment.  I needed to have an inlay placed and have my two remaining, upper, wisdom teeth pulled.  I had problems with my two lower wisdom teeth and dreading this.  I was quite pleasantly surprised that this didn’t hurt much at all.  I had very little pain. 

I’ve been busy at work this week too.  On Wednesday and Thursday, I had to do some traveling, but today was busier doing local transports.  I thought it kind of odd that ALL of my transports today were too Mercy General Hospital. 

Upon coming home, Kellie was at work (as I knew was going to happen.)  I decided to grill some vegeburgers and have a fire in the backyard.  The burgers were good.  I’m now looking on to the coals and thinking of finishing this typing and breakout the marshmallows.