Wayne and Erika Pfeiler

We both went into work for most of the day. Campus was pretty dead, as would be expected for a holiday when the Univeristy is closed. After work, we ran out to Home Depot and Target. I got parts to install a new shelf above the washer and dryer. It had become a bit crowded for all the cleaning supplies and things we keep up there, and there was plenty of room to add another shelf. So I installed that after TKD tonight. We also got some storage bins for the kitchen to keep Annie's food and treats, and several boxes of cokes. And yes, I'm from the part of the country where I say "coke" and I mean any sort of non-alcoholic carbonated beverage. I probably probably picked it up by going to restaurants and asking for a coke and the waitress asks "what kind?". Anyway, we had to get the bins since Annie learned today how to tear open the cardboard boxes and bite open cans. Today we came home to find a floor covered in Mellow Yellow and a very hyper Annie.

Posted by Wayne at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We went to Umstead park with Annie again this morning and took a different trail. Didn't bring the camera, so no pictures this time. We did however spot a copperhead snake in the creek. Luckily, this was before were about to let Annie romp around in the water.
Ater that, we came back and Erika finished painting the bathoom. It looks really good. The "Cloudy Day" is very close to Carolina Blue, so that's kind of funny. I think it looks great. Check out the new pictures.

Posted by Wayne at 11:32 PM | Permalink

Erika got the itch to do some more painting, and decided to tackle the upstairs bathrooms. She started today with the guest bathroom. Since the paint she's using is a light blue (Behr "Cloudy Day") over a pueblo color, she had to prime everything first. The walls in this bathroom look pretty rough, almost like there had been wall paper on there that was half-torn away when somebody decided to change it. The old pueblo color was pretty glossy, and it really showed all these flaws. The new paint Erika chose is closer to a matte, so hopefully all the flaws won't show as much. And I know... conventional wisdom says use glossy paint in bathrooms, but this stuff is suppoesed to be fine in there too. We'll post some pictures of how it looks.

Posted by Wayne at 10:13 PM | Permalink

Okay, get ready for this. Guess what's the latest American job to be outsourced to India. And what's worse, this makes an already super-annoying experience just a bit worse. TELEMARKETERS!
That's right, I got a phone call in my office at work today from a heavily-accented caller from India asking for someone I didn't know. After asking the caller to repeat the person's name about 4 times for me to understand what he was saying, I told him I didn't know that person, and he had the wrong number. He then became a bit agitated and informed me that perhaps he had "the right number, but the wrong name", and confirmed my phone number. He then proceeded to tell me that "as the owner of this phone number" I would qualify for some $500 prize. I stopped him right there and said "Please don't call us again, goodbye." And I hung up.

Posted by Wayne at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This was fun. We went to the NC State Surplus Property sale this morning around 8:30. Apparently, we should have been there by 8:00 to get the really good deals, but we still did alright.
Erika's been trying to put togther a Linux machine from one of my old computers. Unfortunately, the computer she was going to use is so old that several parts are dying. Enter NCSU Surplus. It's basically a warehouse where all the equipment (good and junk) go after faculty and staff decided they don't need it anymore. There's lots of computers and office equipment, laboratory things like microscopes etc, and then furniture too. Imagine large wooden desks, all for $1 a piecce, office chairs from $1 to $3, computers from $1 to $100, large photocopiers for $50. I don't think they price anything over $100, and it's all cash and carry. I think some people are able to make a living from this, by carefully buying things and selling them on e-Bay or somewhere.
We however, just needed a few random computer parts to replace the worn-out ones. So what do we do? We bought two $1.00 computers (sans hard disk) that should collectively have everything we need. I don't think we could have found a better deal.
So if you're interested, the NCSU Surplus sale is only held 8-11 am on Fridays on Ligon St. in Raleigh. We learned the best deals go quickly. Some people even camp out the night before to be the first one in line. They hold a pre-sale viewing on Thursday mornings too, so you can make a list of what you want to buy. The whole thing's a little crazy, but it can be lots of fun.

Posted by Wayne at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tonight we went to see the Durham Bulls play baseball. We've never been to a ball game here before, so it was a new thing for us. The stadium in Durham is pretty nice. It looks pretty new, I'm not sure how long ago it was built. There's also a parking garage close by, so that worked well to hold lots of cars. I know my cousin Julie and her family have been to some games there before, and they liked it too. A UNC biomed student organized the game as a get-together. The Bulls beat the Pawtucket Red Sox 6-4. It was a pretty good game...the pitching was a bit lacking, but I guess that's why it's AAA. They also had $1 hot dogs and popcorn, so that was great.

Posted by Wayne at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Did you know that my grandmother is an author? She recently published a book, Before the Dawn, about people and events leading up to the birth of Alexander the Great. I suppose it's technically historical fiction, but she's been working on it for many years, and even made a trip to Greece for research. You can check it out at Ki-Eea-Key or click on the Faye link under Friends on my main page. Her book is available now on Amazon.com in soft cover and hard cover.

Posted by Wayne at 11:30 PM | Permalink

We went out to see the new Star Wars movie last night. It was pretty good. Definately a bit dark, and I wouldn't recommend it for easily-frightened kids, but it was good. We were talking about it today, how it almost gave you a sense of compassion for Darth Vader, after we saw everything he went through. And it did an excellent job of tying the prequels to the original movies, which I appreciated.

Posted by Wayne at 08:06 PM | Permalink

Since we're done with classes, we've been working on research more now. Erika is doing her first committee meeting and presentation today. What that means is she's showing her PhD committee what research she's done so far, and what she intends to work on next.
I went to a real-time PCR training meeting this morning, and later on I'll be getting ready for my mechanical experiments with strain gages. Strain gages are pretty neat. The simple explaination is they're small rectangles with wires attached that help to measure how much something solid stretches when it is bent.

Posted by Wayne at 11:18 AM | Permalink

We ran out to Home Depot today and got a string trimmer to cut the grass in the back yard. I found a small corded electric one for $20. With as small as our back yard is, and the proximiy to an outlet on the house, I decided that's all we need. I tried it out, and it works pretty well, but I can see how I might need a nicer one once we get a house with a bigger yard. So how many names are there for string trimmers anyway? When I was a kid, we called it a weed whacker, and I've seen weed eater too. That's all for now.

Posted by Wayne at 11:40 PM | Permalink

We went to a Tae-Kwon-Do class at the YMCA tonight. It looks like a lot of fun, so we're thinking about joining the club there.
When we lived in Knoxville, we both took Isshinryu Karate and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we had been too busy with classes to think about taking any martial arts until now. So the neat part about this class is they have people of all ages in there. Young kids around 5 years, up to older guys in their 50s. Our previous karate class was only college-aged people and older. The class here looks like it's a very good environment to learn in, so that makes it much more welcoming for beginners. The only sad thing is we have to start out as white belts again. :/ But, I'd imaging it might be easier for us than for someone who's never done anything like this before. The small differences we've noticed so far are intersting. For instance, our karate class taught us never to lock any joints, but this TKD class uses forms that require that frequently. Also, little things like the side of the arm you block with, and the direction your fist is turned during a punch are different. I think it'll be fun to learn something new.

Posted by Wayne at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sunday we went for a walk on the Loblolly trail in Umstead state park. It's on Harrison Ave, exit 287 from I-40, if you're in the area. I say walk instead of hike since there aren't any mountains. It's mostly flat, with a few hills and some bridges across creeks. That said, it was a great day to be out. The weather was very pleasant, and the bugs haven't become awful yet. We also took Annie with us, and she turned out to really like the trip. Annie loved the creeks, she'd trounce around in the shallow water, sometimes nearly pulling Erika or me along with her at the other end of the leash. I'd almost wanted to try to let her walk freely, but they had signs posted to keep dogs on a leash-sorry Annie. Also, we're not really sure how she'll handle that. Annie doesn't seem to quite understand the importance of watching for cars on the road yet. We took several pictures along the trail of flowers, trees, and Annie in the creek. Go check them out.

Posted by Wayne at 03:57 PM | Permalink

I checked the logs for the website today, and I see we've had visitors from all over the world. I'm not sure what the attraction is, but I think it's pretty cool. In particular, we've had visitors from Trinidad and Tobago, Belgium, and most recently Saudi Arabia. Welcome to any visitors from across the seas. Please feel free to leave comments on the site if you care to. Unfortunately, we mostly speak English only. Erika might be able to chat a bit in German and French. However, I took several years of Latin and a few weeks of ancient Greek, so I'm mostly useless ;)

Recently I saw a really cool perl applet that will display the geocode information from website visitors. It looked like more than a 1-hour project to implement, so if I get ambitious, that might appear on the site soon.

Posted by Wayne at 03:46 PM | Permalink

We had planned to go to a free concert downtown tonight, but a thunderstorm blew in and cancelled that. While we were shutting the windows and planning what to do for dinner, the power started blinking on and off. After a minute of that it went dark and stayed dark.
So then I realized another benefit of laptop computers. When the power goes out, we can still watch about 2 hours or a dvd or something. So I called up my Sifl & Olly playlist and we watched 5 or 6 episodes before the laptop's batteries ran down. Dinner plans got modified to accomodate for the lack of power too.
Then Annie needed a walk, and while were were out, we saw about half the neighborhood had power. Unfortunately, we were in the unlucky half. But then, suddenly the Progress Energy guys got something right, and everything lit back up just a little before 8:30.

Posted by Wayne at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Finally, yesterday I took my last exam, a grueling 4-hour long Physiology test. After that I took the rest of the day off to recover. Erika's grades have all come in, and she did very well. I'm still waiting on my grades from Tissues and Physiology.

So now it's the summer, no classes, no tests. It's very nice. so what does that mean for us? Basically, we'll spend about 40 hours a week working on our graduate research. Hopefully we'll get much more done now, working without the hinderance of classes, studying, and homework.

At least the weekends can be mostly relaxing now :)

Posted by Wayne at 11:40 AM | Permalink

So we went to see Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy tonight with a couple friends. It was good, I liked it. I think I've seen some of the characters, or something very much like this when I was much younger. It's kind of like how I rediscovered Monty Python when I was in middle school or so. Good movie, pretty funny, very original.

So we live in Raleigh, and it's May. What's going on with the weather? It's felt like February all week, and I'm about tired of it. Erika says it'll be warmer next week, and I hope she's right. I can actually tell a difference in the grass growth as a function of the temperature for the week.

Grades have started to come in. Erika did well in one of hers, I did alright in one of mine. I have one more exam on Tuesday, and Erika's done. She's very much enjoying that, and I'm happy that she finally gets a break from studying.

Posted by Wayne at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm told that 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and traitor Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862. Cinco de Mayo History What's that mean for us? Basically, we go have a beer with our friends.

Anyway, an update on us: We're in the middle of exam week. We've each finished with two of our classes, and have one more exam to take. Erika's lsat test is tomorrow morning, and mine is Tuesday morning. Wish us both luck.
Tomorrow evening, we're going to see Hitchhiker's Guide... It looks like fun, and Erika's been excited about it for a while. Yes, she's read the whole first book, and no, I haven't read any of it. I'm sure I can still enjoy it though. Maybe I'll read the book later, I'll put it on Wayne's book list.

Posted by Wayne at 02:58 PM | Permalink

Everything's growing nicely in the backyard. Erika's raised bed has been doing well, we just put up a trellis for the peas to grow on. And the grass has been filling in really well in the latest section.

Posted by Wayne at 07:55 PM | Permalink