.: bistan.net :.

Six years ago when we got married and moved into this house, we did what was pretty normal at the time: we got a telephone line.  From the time the line was turned on, we were inundated with calls for the P… family.  I’m guessing that they had our number before it was assigned to us.  

My first clue was that Georgia Power wouldn’t let us use our new number to have power turned on for our address, because the number was associated with a delinquent account.  After that, it was credit card companies and even Gillead Christian Academy (a local extremely conservative private school).

Joel and Sonja P… are the main culprits and their son Jonathon gets almost as many calls.  Here is how the conversations for Jonathon would usually go:

Bill collector: “Hello. Is Jonathon there?”
Me: “This is Jonathan.”
Bill collector: “My name is blah blah and I’m calling about the money you owe me blah blah.”
Me: “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

Do you think the bill collectors bought it?  Of course not!  Once they confirm there is a Jonatha/on here, they think I’m changing the story when I tell them they have the wrong number.  So here we are, six years later, still getting harassing calls for the P… family.  

So how am I smarter than the bill collectors and why all of this tonight?  Using my common sense approach to researching on the internet, I’ve found them all.  Joel works (or worked) at the local Honda dealership, Jonathon is currently in the Marine Corps and Sonya (and possibly the others) attends a baptist church that is 1/2 mile from my house.  The latter two are on facebook, along with extended family, cousins, etc.  Why can’t the bill collectors use google?  It certainly would increase their recovery rate.

The number actually forwards to my cell phone now — our land lines are long gone — and when this AT&T contract is up in 2011, the number I’m referring to will be gone as well. 

Now, even though hardly anyone reads this blog, I’m calling these people out.  They deserve it after years of telephone calls and dinner interruptions.  I did hold back a little.  I haven’t published their address here.  They moved into their current house (which they paid $84,000 for) in November 2002, about 5 months before I got stuck with their number.  It’s all about research!

This evening, I’ve made a few subtle changes to my blog.  

I’ve upgraded from 2.6 or something to the latest version, which means I can’t find anything in wp-admin anymore!  It takes me 10x as long to blog now.

I also added the fotobook plugin.  This links to my Facebook account and automatically imports my photos from there into my blog.  You can view the most recent photos in the widget to the right or all of them by going here.  This will allow non-Facebookers to view my photos, including Mobile Uploads from my iPhone. I’m going to stop using the old photo gallery software, but what is already up will remain.

I’m also considering going “public” with my blog.  This would entail changing the address so that www.bistan.net automatically points to the blog.  I’ve struggled with doing this since I started this blog, but up until now, www.bistan.net/blog has been primarily word-of-mouth.  I already watch what I say about people now, but if I do go “public”, I definitely won’t be able to say bad things about my in-laws or tell you how worthless the new marketing guy at work is.

So what do you think?  Public or word-of-mouth?

I promised more pictures from our recent Disney trip, so here they are. I’m too lazy tonight to caption everything so if you have any questions, ask by commenting. Basically it’s the American Idol Experience grand opening, some other shots around Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom on my 30th Birthday. Enjoy!

It’s been a beautiful February weekend.

Friday night, I finished my first C# project (which really sucked by the way) and submitted it for grading.  I’m rethinking this whole grad school thing.  It was much easier the first time around before I was married and had kids.  Then again, it’s only 3 projects per class and 10 classes in all.  That makes me about 3% of the way towards another masters degree.

Saturday, after grocery shopping, we decided to stay home and enjoy the nice day.  We spent a good bit of time working with Tristan on a new skill: riding a bicycle.

Tristan has a hard time taking risks or trying new things.  For example, if we plan to put him on a new theme park ride, he cries the entire time we are in line, but then enjoys the ride and immediately wants to ride it again.  Same thing yesterday.  He cried the whole time we were trying to get him to pedal, and didn’t enjoy it until he realized that he was accomplishing something.

Sunday, we had childcare at church.  We’ve worked in childcare since the church began — almost two and a half years — but today was the first time we had ever done it outside of the baby room.  We were in the 18 month – 3 year old room which was an entirely new experience.  I think that is my favorite age of kids.  There were 12 of them!  Follow that with some chocolate chip pancakes from IHOP and an afternoon nap and you have a great stay-cation weekend.

We spent this past weekend at Walt Disney World to celebrate a few things: the grand opening of the American Idol Experience, Valentine’s Day, and my 30th Birthday (but not President’s Day).  Disney lets you in free on your birthday, but since I am a passholder they gave me a $75.00 gift card instead which I used to score some overpriced merchandise.

Here is a picture of me with Pinnochio, who is also celebrating a birthday this year — his 70th!

I’ll post more pictures soon.

Sorry for the neglect, but I only have 4 more days to be a twenty-something.  We have a road trip planned for this weekend (guess where?) and I have a huge project due the day that I return.  However, I will be back to blogging regularly again soon.

Speaking of winning, Universal Studios Orlando had some deal where if you were one of the first 100,000 people to register at their site online after a specific commercial during the Super Bowl, you would win a 7 day pass to their parks.  I registered both Kimberlie and myself, ignorant of the fact that it was one winner per household.

I got an email today.  I won, she didn’t.  I’m not sure what to do with just one seven-day pass.  It expires on December 31.  I have Disney passes that go through December 20.  My frugal mind has an issue with buying another theme-park ticket (Universal) when I have an annual pass to the one right down the road (Disney).

How come I seem to always win useless stuff?  Why can’t I win the lottery or something?

This week at work, we had a chili-cook-off.  Basically the faculty and staff all cook pots of chili and the students go around and taste and vote on their favorites.  We even got t-shirts for the occasion.

My boss Chris and I both cooked for it.  He develops software on the side and I do occasional web development on the side, so we named our chili appropriately.  His was called Chili(beta) and mine was called Chili 2.0.

Now I do 99% of the cooking at my house, but I am by no means what you would consider a cook.  Yet somehow, I managed to get 5th place in the contest and picked up a whopping $5.00 gift card to Wal-Mart!  That just goes to prove that the majority of our law students are indeed . . . on crack.

This will end this blog’s fascination with 2.0 analogies.

Tomorrow makes one year of running for me.  On this date last year, I registered for the Disney races.  The next morning (February 5th), I hit the pavement.  I completed 1.1 miles (of which the first .10 was actually running) and I thought I was going to die.

Over the last year, my feet have clocked 392.25 miles, where 81.5 (20.1%) miles were part of a race.  I’ve also burned about 53,431 calories.  I thought about rounding it out to 400 tonight, but its too freaking cold outside and dreadmills aren’t for me.

Nonetheless, tomorrow, all of those stats reset and I start over.  My goal for the next year is one marathon plus the Disney races and a total of 1000 miles.  Who would have thought?

701 days — that’s how long it’s been since my last haircut.  One month shy of two years.  Yesterday, it all came out. 

I wish I had a more interesting story.  No, the kids didn’t make me pull it out and no I didn’t get gum in my hair.  It didn’t get singed making smores or caught in the doors of an elevator.

I just got tired of it.  Sick and tired of it.

Mackenzie was just over 6 months old 701 days ago.  She wasn’t sure what happened to me yesterday.  She doesn’t understand why Daddy doesn’t need bows (ponytails) like her anymore.  There were folks at church that didn’t recognize me this morning.  And this afternoon, when I ran up to work to make some DNS changes, there were people who didn’t recognize me there either.

I’ve told people at work that I wasn’t getting it cut again until I had a job interview lined up somewhere else.  I wonder what they will think tomorrow. (No, I don’t have a job interview.)

I can shower and get ready to go in half the amount of time now.  I love being low-maintenance again.  I’m almost 30 — it’s time to grow up.

Before and After