davedogcaddy's Xanga

Installing our swimming pool...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:58:08 GMT

What?!? You didn't know we were installing a swimming pool?? Neither did I! But seriously, back story:

As most of you know I have a 55 gallon freshwater fish tank. In order to keep it squeaky clean I do a 10% water change once a week. To easily do this I have a special tool. One end screws onto your sink faucet and contains a value. Switch it one way and it pushes water through a hose to your tank, switch it the other way it it allows the water to run straight through the valve into the sink which creates a suction and sucks water out of the tank. On the other end of the hose is a 1 foot section on stiff pipe that you use to poke around in the tank and suck the water out. It has an on/off valve on this end that you can use to stop the flow of water instead of running back and forth from the sink.

This setup worked well as the bathroom is a hop, skip, & a jump away from the aquarium. However, when we remodeled the bathroom we got a new faucet which doesn't allow things to be screwed onto it. No big deal, we have one of those large utility type sinks in the laundry room downstairs. So I purchased some similar sized hose from Home Depot, and patched in a longer length so it would reach downstairs. This has been working fine for the past several months.

Normally, after I finish refilling the tank, I just walk downstairs and shut the water off at the sink instead of using the cut off valve at the end of the hose. Don't ask my why, that's just how I did it. Well for whatever reason when I did my weekly water change at about 11pm last night (usually just takes 5 mins), when I finished filling the tank back off I cut off the water at the cut off and the end of the hose instead of at the sink. Big mistake! I immediately heard a POP and then the sound of Niagara Falls coming from downstairs.

I ran downstairs. Turns out that the sink downstairs has much more pressure than a normal sink, and when I cut off the water it blew the hose apart where I had connected the new length in. Now I had water spewing everywhere from TWO places. One from the hose coming from the sink (which was still on), and one coming from the hose leading back to the fish tank (it was still stuck in the fish tank, so now it was siphoning water out of the tank into our downstairs). I froze. I didn't know where to run first. I grabbed the line coming from upstairs and pinched it which stopped the flow from the tank. Next I stretched over to the hose coming from the sink and with my other hand still holding a kink in the hose coming from the tank, I put a kink in the supply line......POP! The other end of where I patched the new length of hose into the original hose popped loose and now water was gushing into the laundry room! I froze again! What to do!?! So with the water gushing into the laundry room I ran upstairs and pulled the hose out of the aquarium to stop the water from siphoning, and then ran back downstairs and shut off the water in the sink in the laundry room. SO MUCH WATER! I then spent the next hour and used pratically every towel in the house to sop up the laundry room floor and try to dry the carpet as best as I could in the den. I put a box fan downstairs and then worn out, I finally crawled into bed. When we got up this morning I told Jen what happened and she found it all incredibly funny. Needless to say I will be investing in one continuous length of hose before my next water change.

Thankfully when I checked before I left for work things are feeling much dryer.

So much for a relaxing Sunday

Sun, 24 May 2009 15:44:53 GMT

Jen and I had pretty much decided to be lazy bums for most of the day and rest since we had such a busy day yesterday, and have another full day coming up tomorrow. So we were relaxing in the living room when we heard a very familiar noise. The squeal of tires on wet pavement and then a very loud thud. Our first thought as we ran to the front door was that we had a repeat of last summer. But no, this was quite different. This was a vehicle that had come down the hill facing our house, going too fast on the sharp bend, and lost control on the sharp curve and plowed down are mailbox! His dark purple Jeep Cherokee was stuck in the wet grass. In the time it took me to get dressed (about 30 seconds), he was already gone and I saw is vehicle disappear over the hill. So I grabbed my keys a decided to see if I could drive around and find him and get a license plate number (don't worry, I wasn't going to yank open any doors this time). While I was out driving around I called the cops. After having no luck I came back to wait for the cops to arrive with Jen. While we were talking to the neighbor (NJ) who also seen the accident, down the hill came the same purple jeep. A young guy (probably about 16) came out and owned up to it. Lucky for him he beat the cops by about 2 minutes otherwise he would have been in bigger trouble (i.e. hit and run). Turns out he had gotten scared and went home to tell his dad, who promptly told him to get his butt back over here and pay for the damage. We told the cops since he was going to pay, we wouldn't have the cop write up charges. I got his name and number (and just in case jotted down in plate number). So we got a whole two years out of that mailbox. Guess I know what I'll be doing this afternoon...

Four

Thu, 21 May 2009 10:59:21 GMT

Happy 4th Anniversary Jen!

Blog worthy

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:44:27 GMT

So...my store was robbed yesterday...

Yesterday at work I was behind the front counter, doing paperwork with a customer who was in the progress of purchasing a computer from us. I noticed another customer come in the store and he went over to look at the laptops (which, by the way are each locked in place with a special laptop lock cable thingie). So anyway, a few minutes later I hear this cracking noise, and I look up to see said customer walking out the door holding something under his jacket, and the laptop he was looking at was gone from the counter, only the security cable and the power adapter remained!

It is now that I has a temporary loss in brain function.

I ran around the front counter to the front door and opened it and yelled, "Hey you need to come back here!" The thief now began running towards his car. So I did what every normal person with a loss in brain function would do and began to run after the 6'2, 350lb man. When I got to his car, he had already started it and shut the door. So I pulled open the door, and told him "Give me back the laptop!" After getting a sort of a deer-in-the-headlights look for a couple seconds he told me he didn't know what I was talking about. I responded "Give me back the laptop, I just saw you take it!" It was then that I heard is tires squeal as hit he reverse hard, and since the door was still open and I was still standing there, I nearly got run over. At this point I finally resumed some normal brain function and got the heck out of the way. Oh, but wait, then I lost brain function again, and if chasing the thief wasn't enough, also taunted him and yelled at his still open door as he drove off "Hey that's pretty stupid, drive away while I write down your tag number!"

(once again, resume normal brain function here)

As he drove off I quickly memorized his tag number a ran inside to write it down where the customer I had been helping early already had 911 on the phone. By the time I got off the phone with 911, the police arrived and took our statements

And if you though this wasn't crazy enough already, keep reading...

After the cop left, I got a phone call from him asking me for my cell phone number. I told him that was the number I had given him already. He asked me if I had picture and text messaging on my phone! I told him yes and he asked me if he found the vehicle could he send me a picture message so I could ID the guys car! I said sure. About 20 minutes later I my cell phone starts beeping, I look down at the display and it says "1 New Picture Message." I flip open the phone, and there is a picture of the guy that just robbed us with a caption "Is this your guy?"

I text him back:
"That Looks to be him"

I get another text message:
"We got him"

and another text message:
"and your computer"

I little while later the cop calls me and says he's on his way back to get me to write up a statement, but he wanted to call and tell me that when they recovered the laptop, the cop opened it up and the laptop was still powered on from when he snagged it, and had our Affordable Computers wallpaper with our name, phone numbers and logo still set! He also said this guy was wanted by several other counties in addition to ours, and had all sorts of outstanding warrants and felonies, etc etc. He said the guy will do 19 months in one county for stuff they already had him on before he even gets to serve time for what he did today. He also said that when he asked the guy "what did you try to run over that guy for" the thief explained that he didn't try to run over me, his door was open and I was stating behind it, and he backed up. Um.....

Two good quotes from customers:

The lady who was there during the robbery got a phone call from her boss who was wondering what was taking so long. The one-sided phone call went something like this:

"I'm at the computer store"
"yes still at the computer store"
"because while I was here they were robbed"
"yes!"
"well how should I know who it was! If I knew that we wouldn't be giving the cop statements!"

One lady who I had been helping before the robbery had went outside to her car make a phone call, when she saw me run out to the car and open the door of the robber's car she thought to herself: "Now there's that David, being courteous and opening doors for people again."

Holy old school batman

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:12:13 GMT

An Open letter to the drunk girl who drove into our woods last year:

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:01:42 GMT

The following is an open letter to the drunk girl who drove into our woods last year:

How could I have been so insensitive to be unaware of the great favor you did for me by driving into our woods. I am truly inconsiderate. As I was cutting back and trimming various vegetation in our front yard that need to be trimmed/cut back before spring, I did my yearly tradition of hunting a break, any hole in the woods that I might toss the trimmings into. This is normally difficult as our woods, even in the dead of winter are very dense. Then I saw a HUGE hole in the woods at a convenient location, and thought to myself, 'now how could I have missed that great spot for the past 4 years?" As my eyes drifted down to the skid marks leading to the giant hole it all came back to me. Good times. Times of summer fun. Times of four Waltermyers under one roof. Times when we thought the economy was in the toilet. Times when drunk individuals could freely barrel into our wood unannounced.

So thank you random drunk girl, wherever you are. Thanks for the memories. Thanks for the enormous hole in which I can now haul yard clippings into. Our woods are very much alive and will inevitably swallow this hole, whole, within the next few months, so my only request is that you make this a yearly occurrence. Late August is fine. I'll leave the light on for you. And this time, I promise, we won't call the cops.

A fresh pile of yard clippings is waiting to cushion your decent.

Yours Truly,
David Waltermyer

Monday, March 02, 2009

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:33:58 GMT

just call me uncle dave

Best Commercial Ever

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:01:28 GMT

Guest Bathroom Remodel

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:02:33 GMT

Alrighty guys, here they are, the much anticipated Guest Bathroom remodel pics. I have picked some of the best, but if you want to see the entire project, they are all on http://daw.redirectme.net/davespix/.

Lets face it, we didn't have much to work with...the bathrooms in this house are small and average looking. I think we managed to get the look we wanted anyway though. And b going with a 24in vanity instead of the 31 inch that was in there, well it seems much larger now. The remodel included; recessed halogen lighting, replacing the vent fan with a new quieter one that looks like a light and not a fan, new paint, new vanity, new mirror, new hardware (shower head, faucet, towel bar, etc), and of course - another floor tiled by me. This time we went with two inch tiles. No more linoleum! Real tile!!

Our Theme was "Spa" - - And here we go:

Here's what the Guest Bathroom looked like before we moved in back in 2004:

And here's what it's looked like ever since:

And here we go with the remodel:

New lighting went in first...there are 4 of those recessed lights, two on the other side of the room, and the big light in the middle is actually a vent van!

Room emptied, no more ugly vanity, and we did away with the light above the mirror all together and patched up the wall. Lots of wall work going on here, and first (of THREE) coats of primer started:

And fast forward:

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:01:35 GMT

And Redemption has been watched.