Randomness #11

Due to the A to Z Challenge, I’m not posting much this month other than those posts.  But I have Sunday’s off from the Challenge so I’ll throw a Randomness post to cover the week.  I typed this out throughout the week.

Monday

Took Samantha to her 2nd softball practice, first one I was able to attend.  Most of it was throwing and hitting exercises so there wasn’t much to watch so for the most part, I read.  I sat in my car and was glad I did, since it rained through most of it.

Tuesday

Samantha had another practice tonight but it was just a batting cage practice.  So once again, I took my Kindle and read in the car.  And once again, it rained.   I ended up getting a text from my cousins wife who was also out there with him and their kids.  They have 3 kids who play out there at the same diamonds.  Their 4th used to but he made the high school team this year.  I also ran into my niece who lives up the road and was there with her neighbors kids.

This is the first year that I’m not coaching or at least helping out with any team.  This is, of course, because of my stupid ass hours at work.  Last year I was Trevor’s head coach and I helped out a little with Samantha’s team.  I was asked to be Samantha’s head coach this year but I had to turn it down.  On one hand, I’ll miss being a part of the team, I already know Samantha misses it.  But on the other hand, it’ll be nice to just sit and watch and not have to worry about anything else.

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We watched “Psycho” tonight because Cheri had never seen it and we’ve been watching the TV Show “Bates Motel”.  Netflix didn’t have the original so we watched the newer version but it’s not real far off the original so it did the job sufficiently.

Wednesday

I was at work today and grabbed my phone to check the weather and this is what I see.

Now notice the “Dry Conditions Will Continue”.  Like I said in the last 2 days posts up there, it rained both days.  So I’m not quite sure where they get “Will Continue".  But also notice the little icon underneath that. It’s usually some kind of weather watch or warning so I figured I’d click it and see what’s up.  Here’s what I saw.

A flood watch?  But I thought it was supposed to be dry.  I’m thinking maybe I should just get the Weatherbug app that my brother suggested.  I liked this one because it has a widget that I can get today and tomorrow’s weather with just a glance.  But after coming home to this

I may change my mind.  It doesn’t show as well as I had hoped but on the roof next to the siding, where you see the white, is rain water running down and at a pretty good pace.  You can also see the water puddled up on the ground.  Yeah, maybe time for a new weather app.

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The founder of the A to Z Challenge emailed me today and notified me that he noticed my link wasn’t working and he said that he was going to try to get it fixed.  A few minutes later he commented on my Randomness #9 post where I was bitching about them not answering my tweets about it.  You can read about it there, I complained that they didn’t answer but I also admitted that it was all my fault so I wasn’t too bitchy (I don’t think so anyways).  He apologized and said again that he was going to fix it and give me a little love on the A to Z Challenge blog so hopefully in the next few days, my viewership will go up.

Thursday

I noticed they got the link working on the A to Z Challenge page, my numbers haven’t boosted a bunch yet but I have picked up a follower or 2.  Arlee said that he’d plug me on the A to Z blog tomorrow which I greatly appreciate.  That’s pretty awesome of him.  I just hope my Q post is worthy.

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Samantha’s practice was cancelled last night, Trevor’s was cancelled tonight.  Samantha has at least had a couple of them, Trevor is still waiting for his first one.  Every one they’ve scheduled in the last few weeks have gotten either rained out or cancelled because of the cold.  Tomorrow is a practice free day but both have practices on Saturday but they aren’t going to those due to our annual trip to the Maple Syrup Festival.

Friday

Today was a day of driving.  We drove to Cheri’s sisters house (31.4 miles per Google Maps) and spent a couple of hours there, mainly talking and the real reason we went over is Cheri is baking a cake for her niece’s graduation from college.  So we got together so they could make plans on the type and design of the cake.  Little was accomplished there but my phone battery was dragging.  I was charging it all the way there (about 45 minutes) and it was still dying before we left.  So I was playing around with it trying to figure out why.  I use a task manager, whenever my phone starts to run slowly, I click it and close all the apps I’m running which is usually a crap load.  Since the ladies were chatting and I was more or less sitting there, I did a test.  I opened up my task manager and closed all my apps.  I then opened up the timer and set it for 5 minutes then set my phone on the table and did nothing with it, for 5 minutes.  After the timer went off, I opened up the task manager again.  Now the only thing that should have been running is the stopwatch.  I’m also not naïve and I know there are some apps that automatically restart so I figured there’d be a few things running.  This is what I saw

    

I could have screen capped a 3rd one but it only had a few on there so I didn’t bother.  Some of those I don’t care that they are running because I use them.  But the majority of those, I rarely use and some of them, I never use.  The only thing I actually used since I shut everything off 5 minutes ago was the Alarm Clock Xtreme (stopwatch) and at the top, it shows I got a Facebook notification so that should be running, and the task killer.  But no, there are 25+ apps running.  How about instead of trying to invent a battery that lasts longer, you invent something that won’t let apps start unless you click them.

Anyways, from that sister’s house, we drove to her other sister’s house (48.6 miles, (1 hr, 6 min) to pick up Cheri’s wheelchair that she had loaned to her other niece who has just had surgery on her ankle but wanted to be a part of the local Relay for Life walk but Cheri needed her wheelchair for tomorrow’s activities.  We picked it up and hung out for awhile and chit chatted before heading home.

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My stats have definitely gone up the last few days since Arlee helped me out.  I’m up 100 or so more pageviews in a day which is up a little more than double my usual.  My followers are also up 8 more.  But a lot of the people commenting aren’t following via the Google connect so it may be more than that anyways.  I don’t blog for the stats but you can’t help liking a confirmation that someone is reading.

Saturday

Had our annual Maple Syrup Festival today.  Here’s the schedule that we adhere too every year.

• 8:00 am – Breakfast (All you can eat pancake & real sausage)
• 10:00 am – Parade
• Whenever we’re done with the parade we go to Nelson’s and have an all you can eat buffet.

It’s a fun day hanging out with the family, although it was freaking cold today.  The real feel temperature was in the low 20’s mainly because it was windy.  Cheri really froze because she was more or less stuck in the wheelchair where she couldn’t move around a little and try to stay warm.

Afterwards, the kids went with their grandma on theEx’s side because she and the JackAss are out of town this weekend and she wanted to spend some time with them.

Both kids had practices cancelled again today on account of the cold.  So they didn’t miss them because of the festival like I had planned.  Trevor will miss one on Sunday though because he will be at his grandmothers.

Sunday

Has anyone else seen this commercial, it is hilarious.

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I seriously need to to get some blog posts prepared and read.  I’ve gotten way behind on checking in on all the A to Z Challenge blogs.  Not to mention there are over 8000 posts in my Feedly that I’m behind on reading.  I’m in the color section this week at work, which is the slowest so hopefully I’ll be able to put a dent into that.  I’m caught up on all my posts that I had finished in the challenge so I need to write some and get ahead of the game again.  I have submitted a few articles to Yahoo and am waiting to see if those get posted as well.  But today’s plans are, read and write posts.  I should probably pick the kids up from the grandmother as well, but blogs are more important then kids, right?