Heroin Diaries

On a tip from my buddy Chris, I checked out Nikki Sixx’s book The Heroin Diaries. Its a walk through one of the darkest periods in the life of the Motley Crue bassist. In the mid-80’s when Motley Crue was topping the charts, Sixx was secretly wrestling with the demons of heroin addiction. Though its not a pretty picture, it is compelling reading. I’m amazed Sixx had the presence of mind to keep a diary when he was so strung out.
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Water, water everywhere

It was a wet, bone-chilling day today but not a snowy one, fortunately. Though it rained practically all day, I was disappointed I could only capture 130 new gallons of rain into my tank before I had no more capacity left. Maybe Kelly’s right: maybe I do have a “problem.”

Today’s rain got me thinking again of this N&O story about a potential new water source for Raleigh. A Raleigh company called Eagle Water has rights to up to 58 million gallons of water per day (mgpd) being pumped from the PCS Phosphate mine near Aurora, NC. The problem is the company has no way to get it here to Raleigh where its needed. Not only that, the company needs to sell at least 25 mgpd just to make a profit. Pump anything less and they lose money.
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I’m a five dollar deadbeat

I owe UNC Healthcare five bucks. Or at least I did at one point. Only my credit report seems to care anymore, it seems.

Last April, when Bellsouth began threatening to sock me with someone else’s phone bill, I ordered up a copy of my credit report just in case. Aside from the usual house loans, car loans, and credit card accounts belonging to my brother, Jeff, I noticed something else that didn’t belong: an unpaid bill for $5 for “medical services” that went to collection. Yes, UNC actually sent my $5 unpaid bill to collections.
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The streets tell me when school’s out

We’ve lived within a mile of Capital Boulevard for a few years now. I’ve developed the ability to tell if a day is a holiday based on the lack of traffic noise coming from the roads. The same applies to school delays. The morning traffic is not nearly as heavy when the schools aren’t open.

That makes me wonder just how much resources are wasted in getting kids to and from school every day. Its got to be enormous. School has a big impact on morning traffic, and to some extent afternoon traffic, too. When kids are bused to schools across town that makes the problem even worse.
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Freezy stuff on the way

Word has it that we’re doomed to get some freezy stuff tomorrow morning. As long as it winds up in my rain barrel when its done melting, I’m fine with that.

A snow day is one of the few times working from home becomes a pain. Problem is, when it really get stormy around here, working from home is next to impossible because everyone who’s normally at the office is tying up neighborhood phone lines that are normally available for my use.

We’ll see what happens, though.

Astounding water savings

Last week Raleigh mayor Charles Meeker drew some flak for putting forth the goal for everyone to limit themselves to using only 25 gallons of water a day, per person. The mayor’s own water bills showed his household consumption to be around 33 gallons per person per day.

Being of the curious mind, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and see just how MT.Net was measuring up against this goal. Last Monday evening, I carted a flashlight and screwdriver out to the meter and noted the usage. The meter displays water use in cubic feet, and mine read 7,936.7. One cubic foot of water equals 7.48 gallons for those keeping score at home.
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Great awakenings

I’ve slept terribly the past few nights. I think it has to do with the lingering cough I’ve had since before the holidays. Kelly and I took the kids to a puppet show at the N.C. Museum of Art on Saturday morning and I fell asleep right in the middle of it.

Last night, though, I slept beautifully. You can tell any morning you catch me singing and dancing that I must have slept well. I don’t know what made the difference, though. Maybe I’m getting over my cough, or a change in diet, or the absence of allergens after we vacuumed Friday. I wish I knew. I was even going to set up a video camera to film myself sleeping last night but thought it too much work. If I had, it would’ve showed me sleeping like a baby, which isn’t particularly telling.

Last January I had another sleep study set up but I had to cancel it due to business travel. I never tried rescheduling it until a few weeks ago, when Rex Hospital told me I had to get it reauthorized. Though I slept well last night, I’d like to know why sometimes I don’t. It sure would be nice to wake up like this every day!

Disconnected, but a converter box saves the day

We don’t watch much TV at MT.Net. In fact, our TVs are one decade old and two decades old, respectively. One day we’ll move to HDTV but with the dreck that passes for TV entertainment lately, why bother?

Fortunately the gummint (or specifically the FCC) is moving things along. The analog NTSC TV signals that first debuted in the 1950s will be turned off for good next February. That would normally give TVs like mine a one-way ticket to the landfill, but there is a way to use them with the new, all-digital signals. The government is offering coupons for purchasing converter boxes that allow old TVs to see the new signals.
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Disconnected, but in a good way

I’m about to cancel the $10 DSL I’ve had after having tested it and deciding we don’t need it anymore. The plan now is to drop Bellsouth service entirely and go to VoIP over our cable service. I’m still mulling that change over, though.

As I perused Bellsouth’s FastaccessDSL page, I note that the FastAccess DSL Direct service – the DSL service without phone service I mentioned earlier – is now listed on the DSL page. Its near the bottom of the page, mind you, but at least it’s there.

And to think you heard it here first on MT.Net!