BBBS has 400 Boys Waiting for Big Brothers.

I'm helping to spread the word via my blog! Here is Matt's request...

As a Big Brother, I'm writing today to ask for your help. Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Twin Cities (BBBS) is facing a serious shortage of male volunteers. At any given time, there are more than 400 boys waiting for someone to play catch, read a book or just talk about life over a burger.

As volunteer or supporter of the agency, I hope you'll join me in e-mailing your colleagues, friends, family and other contacts and asking them to consider being a Big Brother or to help spread the word. Please forward this e-mail to men who might volunteer or women who might know great Big Brothers--ask them to visit www.bigstwincities.org to apply online today! Together we can start an e-volution that will make a BIG difference.

I've been matched with my Little Brother Sam for nearly five years in BBBS' School-based mentoring program. For just one hour a week, we spend time playing games and eating lunch. The time I spend with Sam is one of the highlights of my week. I get back so much more than I give to this great 12-year-old. To see our story, visit Putting Your Heart Into It: Matt Corcoran & Sam.

I know--we're all busy. But today, you can make a difference in the life of an eager young guy who just needs a friend. Volunteer or encourage those you know to get involved.

Thanks for caring about kids,

Matt Corcoran
Big Brother

Losing power sucks

We lost power on Monday night around 6:30 pm during a nasty storm. Most of the time Xcel will fix it within a few hours. Soon it was bedtime and still no power -- surely it would come on in the middle of the night. But when we awoke this morning, unfortunately we still had no power. Now we started worrying about the food in the fridge and freezer. So I drive out to buy two big bags of ice, and come back to fill all our coolers to save our food. It wasn't more than 30 minutes later, and suddenly the power comes back on. It sure makes you appreciate electricity and how much we depend on it when it goes out. I'm out 8 bucks that could have went to a decent lunch, but at least we'll get our fridge and freezer cleaned out, which doesn't happen very often.

Doing a Subquery

For future reference, this will lookup a value (email) from table2, to use in where clause in table1.


select *
from table1
where EmailAddress = (select EmailAddress from table2 where UserID = '#URL.UID#')

Complaining works

Yesterday I had about enough of an overgrown lawn at a home near ours that was becoming a real eye-sore. I wrote an email to the city code enforcement, and also one to Counselor Realty. The realtor has a sign on the yard, and the home has been vacant for quite some time. I got email responses back from both right away. The city said they would send someone out to make an inspection. Then Cheryl Daniels at Counselor said she would notify the sellers and have them take care of it. That must have done the trick, because when I got home from work, the lawn was mowed. Moral of the story - sometimes old fashioned complaining works!

Time to rant about my auto glass

Instead of a complaint about the installation, which went fine, this time it's with the insurance company. I use AmEx Prop Casualty, but they outsource their glass claims to N-Site Solutions. These guys gave me a fax number to submit my claim. I tried 3 times on Monday, and once on Tuesday and have given up. Each time my company fax machine tries multiple times, but continues to get a busy signal. So, I'll do it the old fashioned way, and send it through postal mail. I can't spend my time playing with the fax machine, waiting for an open line. For some reason, N-Site has not accounted for the demand and scaled their fax solution accordingly. I've given them a few gripes on the phone, as well as to AmEx about my struggles. That's it, hope N-Site fixes it for the next guy.

Firefox would not start today

I rebooted XP today, it had been awhile and my memory usage was very high. When I tried to open Firefox, I got this error message dialog box: "The program must close to allow a previous installation attempt to complete. Please restart." I did a Google search, and found the solution. I had to delete this file and all was sell: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\xpicleanup.dat
I found the answer here, thankfully that was quick and I can move on to real work.

Alero needs a new windshield

This should be fun, calling around for the best quote on auto glass. The Alero got both a pit and crack over the winter, and I was waiting for warmer weather to get it fixed. Today I plan to check out a few and see who has the best deal. I'm paying cash out-of-pocket, then getting reimbursed by my insurance company. A cash paying customer pays about half the cost that they would charge directly to your insurance company, it is quite the scam. So I figure I'll do a little leg work and save my insurance company some money. I'll have more to report soon...

What I found:
Rapid Auto Glass - $292.80, could do job tomorrow - free steaks included.

Liberty Auto Glass - $291.46, no specials available.

Advantage Auto Glass - $233.96, cheapest and included rebate. I asked if rebate could be done as side deal, not shown on invoice, but guy wanted no part in that as it could lead to insurance fraud and $50K fine.

Auto Glass Specialists - $268.11, includes $20 gas card if you do at their shop. I went with them as it fit my schedule perfectly on Sat AM. Now I hope they get the job done in 1 hour or less as they say they will so I can make my golf tee time afterwards.

Interleague Play - c'mon Gardie

Last night the Twins were down 4-1 in the 5th. With only 1 out, the D-Backs walked 2 guys, and next up was pitcher Kyle Lohse. The Twins were playing at The BOB, a NL park, and pitchers must hit. This was a perfect spot to pinch hit, and get a better shot and driving in at least 1 run from second. But no, Gardie keeps Lohse in there, and asks him to bunt the runners over. Loshe tried 2 bunts, each went foul. He then tried a third time with 2 strikes in the count, this time missed the ball completely and struck out! In my opinion, Gardie should have pinch hit in this situation. Kyle was not pitching real great and the bullpen had the day off last night as Santana went a complete game. There is no reason he had to save up every pitcher for the LA Dodgers series next. A great opportunity was missed by Gardie and he is partly to blame for the 4-3 loss. Oh well, the Twins took 2 of 3 games from the D-Backs to win the series.

Golfed at The Jewel

On Saturday I played the new course in Lake City, MN called The Jewel. This course was designed by pro golfer Hale Irwin, and is set in a beautiful surrounding of bluffs. The course has not even opened to the general public, but I'm on their mailing list and got an invitation to come down and check it out early and play for free. What golfer would pass on a chance to play a course like this for free? It was a bit disappointing in that they asked us not to drive on the fairways, as they want the grass to get stronger. And we got a soaking shot of rain on hole 3 to start our morning. Other than that, the course was nice, especially the tee boxes - wow! I'm not sure it's worth $60 a round, instead I'd play a course closer to the cities for less money and about the same caliber of golf.

IE javascript window.prompt not resizable

You basically are limited to 1 line of text in the window.prompt() popup window for IE. However, in Firefox, it appears that the window will expand vertically when newlines (\n) are used. Another good reason to switch to Firefox!

Shutterfly locking up IE

Tonight I'm trying to post new pics of Ben, and it seems the drag-drop browser tool keeps locking up IE on me. Last night I went to the sight and found a "We're sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties", so the sight was completely out of commission. I've tried 3 times now, and I'm about ready to throw in the towel if it locks on me once more. Arrrgh!