Procrastination!

Well here at the Monkey Ranch it's business as usual. Why do today what can be put off till tomorrow? Actually we are a day ahead of the curve currently.

Today's dinner topic was, "with Halloween tomorrow, what are the kids going to wear?".

Fortunately with the monkeys spaced fairly closely together last years costume can usually be made to fit for one or the other monkeys.

Emelie was covered as her costume from last year still fits, and what almost 5 year old girl doesn't want to terrorize the neighborhood as a carnivorous dinosaur?

Olivia batted cleanup on the costumes and gets to be a bear. I think this is her 2nd year as a bear but we are getting our moneys worth out of the costume.

Eli we had to think about befor a bit before inpiration struck.

Yesterday morning he had gotten into the garage and was busily looting it for new and interesting stuff to play with. Fortunately he's yet to discover the joys of a gallon of latex paint. But I am sure at some point that will be another blog entry.

Well Eli headed to the far reaches of the garage and discovered my old kevlar Marine Corps helmet! He was a very happy small boy!


























And then the other monkeys had to get into the act.



And little miss, "I am going to be trouble in another 10 or so years"....



So tonight we started working on Eli's costume. I broke out some of my old field gear that was being used to store some ammo, decided that Eli probably didn't want to wander the neighborhood carrying almost 300 rounds of 308 rifle ammo and I decided to be nice and off load it. Well he's still a little small to fit a combat web belt and a set of "Y" suspenders so we had to improvise.

I'll have real Halloween pictures tomorrow night but I couldn't resist posting this tonight.



Makes a Marine Daddy proud!

How to get lost with a GPS!

Well last Monday we had a visitor to our area.

My brother-in-law was in town for a work related conference and had a spare evening that he wanted to use to get together and see the monkeys.

As he was on one side of the Metroplex and we are on the other we were looking for middle ground to meet.

My BIL wanted to find a restaurant halfway between here and there. I simply explained that with three small monkeys, Vicky and I dine out so much that the restaurants all run together. Yea right! The budget at the Monkey Ranch being what it is, dining out is the rare trip to the local Sonic. The kids particularly enjoy looting their $4 meal for the $0.25 toy, playing with it and refusing to eat their meal. Vicky and I are now wising up to this.

I had the idea to meet at our local Cabelas. I figured since my BIL was from Massachusetts a brief exposure to a store such as Cabelas might actually do him some good. We were worried though that having him just seeing guns in Cabelas might disqualify him from ever returning to Massachusetts but that is another subject.

Well, I'd offered to pick up my BIL and drive him out. He had rented a car though and due to his last experience of getting lost in the Metroplex had requested a GPS for his rental car. I emailed him the coordinates for Cabelas and thought everything should go smoothly.

Unfortunately the map database in his GPS was about three years old. In the Metroplex three years may as well be 100 years with respect to the speed of construction around here. Needless to say, Cabelas was not in its database. No problem I told him, just punch in the coordinates I emailed, oops problem. The antiquated Magellan that is in his rental car does not allow the direct input of coordinates.

I walk him through where he needs to go given where he is at, should be no more than a 20-30 minute drive. 75 minutes later he finally arrives after having taken several scenic detours, discovered our one way frontage roads the wrong way, missed an exit or several and generally had a stressful trip out to what should have been a fun time.

Of course I was planning all week to tease him unmercifully in this blog about getting lost with a GPS. And then I was on my way down to Mesquite to run errands. Well I had my Garmin set to where I wanted to go and was merrily following the arrow and ended up not being where I wanted to be, aka lost. What was worse, I had friends with me to witness this event. Oops!

My Dell Experience.

I've heard most of the horror stories out there of people having to deal with Dell for a warranty issue.

As of late, my Dell 5150 Inspiron has been getting a little glitchy. First I thought it was something minor and I could live with, lately though it's gotten to the point that it's pretty much toast, as in dead. Being as I generally use this laptop almost daily during the week it's a pretty big issue being without it.

Finances being what they are here at the Monkey Ranch, replacing it was not on our list or even being contemplated as being put on the list.

As the laptop is three years old and was bought as a refurbished unit, a covered warranty repair was also out of the question.

I was starting to try and figure out how the cost of the repair was going to fit into the budget when I got another lesson in just how God provides for his faithful.

Out of the blue, tucked in with all the mountain of vacation mail was a notice that almost ended up in the junk mail trash bag. Something said open it and see what it was. It was notice of a settlement of a class action lawsuit addressing the specific problem my Dell laptop was exhibiting.

I read through the settlement statement and realized part of the settlement was extending the warranty till September 2007. I was more than happy with this, there was still the issue though of having to battle the dragon that was supposed to be Dell's customer service and warranty people. All of the horror stories I'd heard and read led me to believe I was in for one heck of a fight.

I put of contacting Dell for a couple of weeks just because I didn't want to deal with a full on battle just to get them to fix my computer.

Last Friday night I finally had the time and attitude ready to go to war with them. I logged into their support chat, waited the requisite 27 minutes on hold to talk to a live person.

24 minutes later, I was connected. They asked the problem, I checked my ammo load out, got ready for battle and waded in. After a quick explanation of my problem I was stunned to see them say, "that's a known problem with that model and if you wait a minute I will set up a call tag so we can start the repair process".

I was literally stunned! Within 15-20 minutes we had the warranty process started and a shipping tag on its way to the Monkey Ranch.

People can say what they want about Dell, but I am one happy customer. When it does come time and the budget permits, I'll be buying our next computers from Dell. Service like I recieved is well worth rewarding and encouraging.