When disaster strikes, it’s a good to have a plan . . . but, plans won’t help if you don’t stick to them.

My father was a man of practical wisdom, and one lesson he tried to teach me was to tune up my lawn mower every May.

This year, I ignored his wisdom.
This weekend, disaster struck.

This is when my disaster plan should have kicked in. Unfortunately, I’ve been gaining weight lately, so I decided to tackle this problem without my standard tools: A bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a box of Mike-n-Ike. So, what should have been a 30 minute repair job, turned into a week-long battle.

I started with all the general maintenance tasks I should have done four months ago, but the mower still wasn’t working. So, I started on dirtier tasks like disassembling and cleaning the carburetor.

Four days later, I was a Lowe’s pricing new lawn mowers. I don’t like spending more than $20 on anything that doesn’t have a circuit board, so looking at the cost of new lawn mowers was making me a little sick.

The Second-Best Tool For The Job

That’s when I had an epiphany. I sprinted to the check-out counter and was thrilled to see Lowe’s had a full stock of assorted candies — no Mike-n-Ikes, but in a pinch, StarBursts will do. (The benefit of Mike-n-Ikes over StarBursts is that when you’re doing repair work, your hands get dirty, so you can just pour the candy into your mouth rather than unwrapping the candies individually . . . that is the wisdom I will pass on to my son.)

On the way home, I finished half my candy and all the soda. When I pulled into the driveway, I had my second epiphany; When I cleaned the carburetor, I hadn’t checked the diaphragm. I dug through my pile of lawn mower parts, found the carburetor, and sure enough, the diaphragm was bad.

On the way back to Lowe’s I finished the rest of my candy, and was feeling pretty good.

Twenty minutes later I had a working lawnmower, and I had consumed 23 grams of sugar. Total repair cost: about $10. And I learned an important lesson: When disaster strikes, all diets are off.

Last week we visited family in Memphis, and since our kids usually fall asleep in the car, we thought we’d travel at night so the kids could sleep and we could enjoy a few hours of quiet time to talk . Unfortunately, the kids decided not to cooperate with our brilliant plan, and they stayed awake crying the entire time.
Tired kids are usually a nightmare. Add two tired parents and it might be wise to declare the home a disaster area and send in the National Guard. Unfortunately, America’s broke, so we needed a different solution.

How To Make A Kid Happy

There is one guaranteed way to end any conflict: Get everybody soaking wet (water-guns are my preferred tool, but we didn’t have any so we improvised). My Sister-in-law recommended Memphis’s Mud Island River Park.
The park is a model of the Mississippi river that starts just north of Cairo, Illinois and ends at the Gulf of Mexico. What makes the park great is, you can put the kids in bathing suits and they can wade down the model.

We started at the Kentucky Dam, where my son dropped a leaf in the water and then chased it down the river (when I say “a leaf” I mean a hand full of leaves, a few rocks, and a glob of mud). I was already impressed by the huge stone maps that represented the tributaries, and the way they represented contour lines by building the model out of layers of stone, but then we found Metropolis. Wherever the the Mississippi or it’s tributaries passes by a city, the model includes a street map and any bridges that cross the river.

A Whole City of Name-Droppers

If the City of Metropolis sounds familiar, the mayor of Metropolis would be pleased; The small Illinois city does everything it can to associate itself with Superman including building a 15 foot bronze statue of Superman outside their courthouse. (Don’t get too excited, I visited the statue about ten years ago, and although a 15 foot statue of superman is cool the town is kind of small and run down.)

The model of the Mississippi tries to match the actual shape of the river, so some areas are deep. I’m pretty sure my kids could have drown some places. And although drowning kids sucks, the accuracy of the model is sweet.
The model ends at the Gulf of Mexico and they even included Louisiana’s swamps. Awesome! The “delta” includes a water fountain, so if the kids didn’t get wet enough walking down the river they can get drenched here. Apparently there are even sharks in the delta–I was “attacked” by a 5 year old boy who mistook me for his father
Since America is broke, I should mention Mud Island Park is free. If you want to visit the museum or go on a swan ride, you have to pay for that, but after wading down the Mississippi, my kids were pooped, so we all went home and took a nice long nap. After every was rested we were all in better moods. And we agreed not to travel at night any more.

Four years ago I bought my Toyota Corolla. It was a sexy little black car, so I thought it could use some nice rims . . . unfortunately I couldn’t afford nice rims, so I bought a cheep $20 set of wheel-covers.

Two weeks later we had a huge hail storm which dented my car, ruining the paint, and poked holes through my new wheel covers.

(By the way, this isn’t my first case of bad luck with wheel covers. On a previous car, I went to Sears to buy new tires. The mechanics broke one of my wheel covers, then tried to hide it by putting it on my rear-passenger-side tire. I guess they were hoping I wouldn’t walk around my car and look at my new tires. Bums.)

Back to my story . . .

Monday, after taking a final, I got back to my car and noticed my wheel covers were missing.

I was too irritated to laugh, and too amused to be angry.

Who steals cheap broken wheel covers? Should I call the police? Should I call my possy? Is Wal-mart trying to scare me off?

I can’t rest until I know, so I’m offering a reward for my missing wheel covers. If any of you can return my original wheel covers, I’ll give you . . . hummmm . . . $100 (I’m not joking).

Timeout doesn’t seem to phase my kids. They come up with the most bizarre ways to have fun while I’m trying to punish them.

Here’s what the last two minutes of timeout sounded like in my house:

• “No roaring like a lion in timeout.”
• “No singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’.” (That’s a weird rule to have to impose.)
• “No being a blowfish in timeout.”
• “No pretending your hand is a cookie.”

What do I have to do to make timeout as un-fun or my kids as it is for me? (I’m secretly proud of them for being so imaginative.)

The price tags on most food items in Walmart have a nice orange label that shows you the cost per oz. I like the orange tags because they make comparing similar items easy.

A couple weeks ago we ran out of laundry detergent, so I made an emergency trip to Walmart (the emergency was caused by a poopy diaper that exploded onto my kid’s clothes).

When I grabbed a jug of sent-free All laundry detergent, I noticed the orange tag was missing. Technically, this wasn’t food, so I guess Walmart didn’t feel the need to add the orange label, but it made me suspicious. I did some quick math an discovered that buying three 100oz containers would be about one dollar cheaper than buying one 300oz container.

I didn’t have pencil and paper with me so I didn’t get the exact prices. That’s why I went back yesterday to investigate what I call:

“The Walmart Bulk Scam”

Most of us believe buying bulk is cheaper than buying smaller individual items. I bet Walmart knows that, and that’s why they started charging more for the larger containers.

Here are a couple more over-priced bulk items I found:
(I was careful to compare the same chemical – I didn’t compare ultra-concentrate to regular, I only compared different sized containers of the exact same product.)

Detergent
Gain 2xConcentrate – 100oz for $10.00 (so every 50oz should cost $5, but wait)
Gain 2xConcentrate – 150oz for $15.97 (They’re sneaking in an extra 32 cents per 50oz)

Dish Washing Soap
Palmolive Original – 16oz for $1.00 (If you bought three 16oz bottles you’d have 16 * 3 = 48oz for only $3)
Palmolive Original – 38oz for $3.48 (But Walmart will sell you only 38oz for $3.48. That’s 10oz less for an extra 48 cents.)

Paper Towels
This one’s a little more difficult because I had to break this product down by price per sheet, that’s because the paper towel 2-pack had 144 sheets per roll, and the 8-pack had 84 sheets per roll – I think that’s another trick they use to keep us from figuring out they’re overcharging us for bulk items. I multiplied the number of rolls by the sheets per roll, and divided the price by the number of sheets:

Bounty one-ply 2-pack (w/ 144 sheets per roll ) $2.84/(2 * 144) = .009 per sheet
Bounty one-ply 8-pack (w/ 84 sheets per roll) $8.86/(8 * 84) = .013 per sheet

That doesn’t look like much until you multiply it back out. If I bought the same amount paper towels by buying the 2-pack and by buying the 8-pack. (2016 is the least common multiple)
7 2-packs = 2016 sheets = $19.88
3 8-packs = 2016 sheets = $26.58

That’s almost $7 more for the
exact same quantity if you buy in bulk.

And yes I will use 2016 paper towels – remember this all started over a poopy diaper explosion.

The Bad News

Walmart keeps switching which products they overcharge you for. When I first noticed they were overcharging for bulk, it was for bulk All laundry detergent. By the time I went back to Walmart with paper, pen, and calculator, they had fixed the price of All but now they were overcharging for Gain. That means we have to keep a close watch on what they’re charging us.

***************************
For those of you who like statistics, here’s how I conducted my survey:

I sampled 15 items from the two isles in Walmart’s food section that didn’t have the orange price-per-ounce sticker. I sampled no more than two items in one category (for example, I picked two laundry detergents, two dish soaps, etc). The only exception was for paper towels. Since the math was more involved, I sampled three different products, two by the same brand, Bounty.

I actually found 4 overpriced bulk items, but two were Bounty paper towels and I didn’t want to include two price breakdowns for paper towels (The results of the other Bounty paper towel comparison were: For two-ply paper towel packages, the 8-pack was the most expensive, the 6-pack was the least expensive, and the 2-pack was in between)
***************************

Next, I’m going to check out the pharmacy section to see if Walmart is over charging for bulk items like shaving cream and shampoo.

No wonder Walmart is doing so well even though the rest of the country is struggling. When consumers are trying to save money, most of us buy bulk, but apparently that might not be the best decision.

Walmart, you have one week to hire someone who knows how to use a calculator.

5 Parenting Mistakes Tips:

1. Don’t put your kid to sleep with talking books. (Last night my daughter fell asleep looking at a push-n-play book based on Disney’s Aladdin. She rolled over on the button that made the sound of Jafar’s evil laugh, which played over and over and over until she woke up screaming.)
2. Don’t give your kid six boxes of apple juice in one day. (Apparently, apple juice is a laxative.)
3. Never read the story “Five Silly Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” to your kids. (Whenever I catch my son jumping on the bed, he’s giggling and reciting that story.)
4. Don’t take your eyes off a one-year-old with play-doh. (My daughter’s poop came out neon green.)
5. Don’t teach a two year old the word “penis.” (Yes it’s the medically correct word, but it’s still pretty embarrassing when you’re at church and your son says, “I have a little penis, and daddy has a big *clasp hand over son’s mouth* .”)

Dedication

I’d like to dedicate this post to my dad, and to my grandpa, and to all the Royal men throughout history who always had to fix their own cars because they were poor.

The Symptoms

1. It had been a couple years since I changed my spark plugs, so I’d been planning on changing them for a while. In fact, I actually bought new plugs and wires when I wrote Is It Worth It: The Oil Change.
2. My car had been a bit sluggish for a while. Granted my car is 13 years old, but it’s a Toyota, and it’s hasn’t quit on me, so I’m not giving up on it.

Assemble the right tools

If you’re new to my blog, you should know these three tools are a long standing tradition in my house. See my Proof that washing machines eat socks for another experience the good Dr. got me through.

And, if you’ve achieved “SuperDad” status, don’t forget to strut.

You’ll notice that I went with the two-liter Dr. Pepper this time. That’s because auto repairs usually turn out to be a bigger job than you originally planned on. The book I chose was Burning Angel by James Lee Burke.

Side Note on James Lee Burke

Any writer who wants to see a brilliant example of how to create Setting should read Burke. I’ve read about a dozen books by him, and I’m almost ready to believe that Louisiana really exists.

Honestly, he’s good. I usually enjoy his mysteries, but Burning Angel is not one of his best.

Car Repair Gets Ugly

The first 3 plugs came out without any problems. And the plugs were all worn out, which was encouraging because that meant my diagnosis was correct. But when I pulled the fourth plug out, it was covered in oil. Crap. Time to refill my soda.

I pulled my valve cover off (four nuts and two bolts all right on top of the cover, so pretty easy), and saw the rubber ring on that plug’s tube was cracked. $3 at Autozone. Awesome. Time to refill my soda (a celebratory glass this time).

The Only Useful Part of This Post:

If you take your valve cover off, one helpful hint is that the washers under the nuts have a rubber center. The rubber fits snugly over the bolt, so they help keep the oil in . . . they also make it almost impossible to remove the valve cover while they are still on the bolts. I didn’t realized this, and since my valve cover was covered in dirt, I couldn’t tell the washers were any different than the cover. So I wasted a lot of time trying to pull the valve cover off before I discovered the rubber washers.

The Explosion

Well . . . I hope not. But I have to wait 24 hours for the RTV sealant to cure before I can start my car. If you don’t hear from me by of the end of the week I might be chatting with some of my poor Royal ancestors.

Before and After

Computer geeks can be kind of jerky sometimes, so here’s a suggestion for Linux etiquette.

If someone asks a question in a forum, don’t do either of these:

1) Tell them to “read the manual”
I had a simple question about the tar utility and while digging around in a Linux forum I found a reply to a similar question which basically said, “Go read the manual.” After I found GNU’s manual (the Linux jerk poweruser didn’t even give a link) I discovered it was almost 300 pages. >: (

2) Tell them to Google it
Today I typed “add Java to PATH Linux” into Google, and in one of the top results was a forum where someone had asked the same question, and the Linux jerk poweruser’s advice was to Google “add Java to PATH Linux” >:(

Of course that ruined Google’s indexing thereby making the search phrase a little less meaningful (now you know one of Google’s weaknesses)

Here’s my first rule for How not to be a Linux Jerk:
If you aren’t in the mood to actually answer the question, don’t.

I’ve finally recovered from the near-fatal paper cut in my right eyeball.

Getting Hurt Helping Someone Else Get to the Emergency Room.
Last week I had my first Emergency Room visit as a parent (My son had a rash that started swelling pretty bad. His ankles were swollen so bad he couldn’t walk — he just sat down in the middle of the kitchen and cried. I was scared . . . I had images of his throat swelling so he couldn’t breath. Having a good imagination and being a parent is a bad combination.)

Everything turned out okay (apparently swollen ankles happens sometimes with hives). When we got home at 11:30pm I put the discharge papers in my mouth so I could get him out of the car seat. Of course, my car’s dome light just blew out (apparently that happens sometimes when you drive 13 year old cars), so everything was pitch black. Then a gust of wind blew the discharge papers into my face, and since I couldn’t see them flying into my eyeball I didn’t instinctively blink.

Are They Making Meet the Parents Part 3?
The pain in my eyeball radiated back into my brain, and I was incapacitated for almost 30 hours while my eye healed. After the pain was gone, my vision was still a little blurry. And of course, I had a final to study for (at this point, I felt like I was in a Ben Stiller movie).

When I needed to focus, I covered my right eye with my hand. I was worried my instructor might think I had written a cheat-sheet on my hand, but just like in a Ben Stiller movie, eventually things started going right, and I’m pretty sure I made an A on the final.

The Long Road to a Mini Notebook
I spent the last five months reading and watching every review I could find about netbooks trying to decide which one to buy. The one drawback of the Mini became the inspiration for a breakthrough — Wires are for old people.

The most helpful site I found was notebookreview.com’s review of the HP Mini 1000. They had the standard aesthetic-oriented video review, but they also had in-depth information about the Mini’s performance. And I also found several reviews about other netbooks I was considering buying.

What Makes Netbooks Unique
After reading and watching all the reviews I could, here are the categories that I used to compare the netbooks.

Most importantly, how well the netbook is supported by the Linux community.
Secondarily, keyboard size
Tertiary, kind of hard drive

The other categories are basically the same any computer purchase:
Processor speed
Aesthetics
RAM
Price
Etc.

After deciding which options were most important to me, I was left with two choices; the Aspire One and the HP Mini 1000 (I bought mine just before the 2410 came out).

Why I Almost Didn’t Buy The Mini
The only thing I didn’t like about the HP (and the one thing most reviews criticized HP for) was their proprietary video output. If you want to plug the Mini into a larger monitor, you have to buy a special $70 adapter. Now, I honestly didn’t expect that I would buy a second monitor just for the Mini, and I would probably never unplug my desktop monitor in order to plug in the Mini, so the video output was probably useless anyway, but the fact that HP tried to require me to buy the extra adapter irritated me.

Why I’m Smarter than HP
While debating which netbook to buy, I realized HP was trying to hold me down. Trying to hold me down with their accessories. Trying to hod me down by requiring me to buy more of their stuff, first it’s the video adapter, then the external DVD, but where does it end, the tote-bag? I say NO!

Two key points:
1) I had just spent the last several months setting up and tweaking my home network.
2) I was planning on putting Linux on the Mini.

Which means, rather than waisting my time and money messing with a hardware video adapter, I could just mount my Mini’s hard drive onto my desktop via SSHFS. Brilliant.

Take that HP and your ridiculous video output. I don’t need your extra hardware, I’ve got free software.