Fred and Valerie

I talked to my brother Frank last night about some computer problems he was having. After we got through most of the software/virus stuff, he mentioned that their new dog had chewed through the power cord for his router, so it stopped working. He found out from someone at Circuit City that he was going to have to buy a new router because (apparently) the power cord was specific to that router and a generic one wouldn’t work.

After telling him to give me the part number so I could look online for a power cord, he asked me if he should retrieve the router from the trash. I told him that he should, indeed, go rescue it and I heard him go to the trash and start rummaging around to find it. After a few seconds of rummaging, he asked, “Does it matter if it has apple sauce in it?”

It took me a while to stop laughing.

We went to the movies tonight and saw The Departed. Holy cow was that a good movie! If you can get past the extreme language and number of dead bodies that pile up, it’s an excellent movie.

But, I did have a bit of a geek moment during one scene. In the scene, Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) is talking with the psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga). Every time they cut to Madolyn, there’s a computer monitor behind her. About halfway through the scene, I notice something odd (hey, I’m a geek, so I look at computer monitors!). Sure enough, right there in the bottom-right corner of the monitor is a McAfee Security Center message. It looks like the “Your subscription is out of date, click here to purchase a new one” message. Funny stuff… if you’re a geek.

Seen on the electronic highway information sign this morning…

DENSE FOG
I64 EAST
REDUCE PEED

Our good friend greeneseale has once again come through for our garden. She gave us some Irises and Lamb’s Ear to plant and help round out our garden. The Irises will fill in the empty space between the Garden Phlox and Spider’s Wart, while the Lamb’s Ear will provide some edge decoration from the Daylilies back to the Spider’s Wart.

After planting the larger Irises, there were some smaller bulbs left over. Rather than tossing them out, I decided to plant them between the Spider’s Wart and the herbs to see if they’ll grow. Given the story that greeneseale told me about these Irises not dying, I figured it’d be worth a shot.

Our garden is now pretty much complete. We’re thinking about a bird bath near the back section of Irises, but we’ll figure that out later. We’ll also need to replant the tomatoes and herbs next year, but other than that we’ll just watch things grow.

A couple of weekends ago, we returned back to the house to an odd smoke and smell in the house. Valerie alerted me as soon as she walked in the door and I quickly grabbed the fire extinguisher and searched for the smoke/smell. It took a minute or so, but we finally determined that the source of the problem was our washing machine. Somehow, the belt got caught (or something) and ended up burning and breaking. I took a look under the washing machine and did some searching online and determined it was going to be a bit expensive to fix given the type of machine we had and not knowing the exact problem. Valerie and I talked and we decided it was a good time to get a new washer and dryer.

We headed back to Best Buy with our gift card and coupons in hand and were sold on a front-loading LG washer and dryer. They delivered the set on Friday and we did a lot of laundry on Saturday, thus the reason we missed the UVA/Maryland debacle, since we hadn’t done any laundry since our machine broke. After just a day of laundry, we’re completely sold on front-loading machines. We had to buy some special low-suds detergent, but our clothes are coming out cleaner and, somehow, softer. Another nice thing is that the washer cycles are a bit longer than a normal machine, though still MUCH more efficient in terms of water and power, and the dryer cycles are a bit shorter. It ends up that on normal washing and drying, the machines finish their cycles pretty close to each other, meaning there’s no waiting on either machine.

And, the front-loading washing machine is mesmerizing. I actually sat on the floor and watched it for a couple of minutes. It doesn’t just start and go and it doesn’t do the back-and-forth motion. It actually starts, then stops, then sprays, then starts the other way, then stops, then sprays, then… Yeah, it’s mesmerizing.

We’ve been taking in quite a bit of college football lately and it’s been an interesting ride.

Last weekend, we took a road trip down to Auburn, AL to see Auburn take on Arkansas in a good old fashioned SEC throwdown. We decided to forego UVA football season tickets this year because of what looked like a fairly boring home schedule and figured we’d use the money to go to an Auburn game. While the result, a 27-10 loss for Auburn, was not what we had hoped for, but the game and the trip were still a lot of fun.

During the Auburn/Arkansas game, we were keeping an eye on the Wake Forest/Clemson game because Valerie’s a Wake Forest alum. Wake Forest gave the Tigers a run for the money, but still lost the game 27-17 for their first loss of the season.

To top things off, as we were leaving Auburn to head back home, we noticed that UVA had lost to East Carolina 31-21 and it was pretty much a losing weekend all the way around.

Fast forward to this weekend and things ended up a bit different.

Wake Forest started the action by putting up a fight against NC State. NC State was coming off of wins against then-#20 Boston College and then-#17 Florida State and Wake Forest looked to have a tough time in Raleigh. Still, the Demon Deacons got a lead early and took it into the fourth quarter. With a 22-14 lead, Wake Forest traded field goals with NC State to put the score at 25-17. With 5:07 remaining, NC State scored a touchdown and went for the two-point conversion. They failed. Wake was still up 25-23 and an interception on NC State’s next possession sealed the victory. Wake Forest upset NC State at Raleigh.

Next came UVA at home against Maryland. The Cavaliers have had a rough go of things this year and the Maryland game looked like it was going to be a long afternoon. We didn’t get tickets to the game because we had a ton of laundry to do (that post will be forthcoming), so I watched it via Yahoo Sports. Imagine our surprise when UVA took a 20-0 lead into halftime! Then things went downhill. Maryland put up a touchdown in the third quarter, then another and another and another. Four unanswered touchdowns later, UVA was down 28-20 and there was only 8:30 remaining in the game. UVA managed another touchdown, but the two-point conversion failed and UVA saw their record move to 2-5 on the season.

Auburn, dropped to #11 in the rankings, had the last game of the evening and they faced a tough challenge in the visiting #2 Florida Gators and quarterbacks Chris Leak and Tim Tebow. Despite some good scoring and a safety in the first half of the game, Auburn still didn’t look like they were going to be able to challenge Florida. They were down 17-11 at halftime and a Florida win seemed to be coming on. Then Tommy Tuberville did something he rarely does: He ripped his team.

According to reports, Tuberville lit into the team, particularly the defense, at halftime and asked them if they were “scared” of Florida. He told them they were playing as if they were “scared.” I don’t know the full text of what Tuberville said, but it certainly worked. The Tigers forced a Florida to punt for the first time in the game in the 3rd quarter. Auburn blocked the punt and Tre Smith returned it for a touchdown. Auburn was now up 18-17.

The Tigers and Gators then traded two punts each and the Gators had the ball on Auburn’s 6 yard line. Once again, the defense stepped up and sacked Leak and forced him to fumble the ball. Auburn recovered the fumble and drove down the field for a missed field goal. On the Gators’ very next play, Chris Leak was once again pressured by the Auburn defense and he threw an interception. On consecutive Gator plays, the Auburn defense had forced a fumble and an interception. The interception turned into a field goal and Auburn was up 21-17 with 35 seconds remaining in the game.

Florida then tried to pass their way down the field, but the result was three consecutive incomplete passes. The Gators were down to the last play of the game with 5 seconds on the clock. The pass across the middle was complete to Baker, who lateralled to Fayson, who then tried another lateral, but fumbled the ball. Auburn picked up the fumble and ran the 19 yards for an exclamation point touchdown. Auburn took down #2 Florida 27-17.

And that’s the highs and lows of college football for three teams over two weekends.