Jefke.com

thanks to don for catching the first of many spelling errors in this post. i guess i’m off my game.

yeah so i got older last friday. another year older in fact. i’ve walked this earth for just shy of a third of a century. and well… bleh- that’s what i have to say abou tthat
actually it’s not all that bad. the day was pretty low key–we drove up to CT to see the ‘rents and celebrate mother’s day. so really, it was a good birthday overall. no drama, no tears just me, the XT and the wife and the kid and the dog and a lot of people in very big suv’s going very very fast on the nj turnpike. for all the hype about gas prices, i really dont’ think anyone cares much. i mean is there really a need to go 90 in a h2? well apparently there is.

lemme ask you this–why are there head rests in cars? well more specifically for the driver– do you use it? for me to get my head to touch it, i have to totally lean back, which is not comfortable-well i’m a hunchback really, but even so- do people really drive with the head on the head rest? I miss my old wagon, with teh bench seats that came up to mid back. now that was a car.

we made very good time up to CT , including a pretty lengthy stop at in NJ for food and to walk the dog and such. pretty much as soon as we crossed over in to CT, it started raining and traffic stopped. fun. that took an hr. ok this is boring time to get bulletized:

• On saturday i attended my nephew’s soccer game one town over in a pretty much a sick den of really rich people. he’s 5 and they play on a half field with no goalies. apparenlty they try not to keep score, the kids just run around in a big pack and kick the ball. it was amusing. what was frighenting (besides the 1.2 million dolalrs in suv’s that were in the parkiing lot) was that the kids get a little bag of crackers or cookies everytime the come off the field. so like every 4 mins or so. back in my day we got some orange wedges at halftime and 1 can of soda (pop) at the end of the game. these kids were chowing down the whole fucking time. sees to defeat the purpose of exercising. oh well.
• We went shopping up in that area, and besides all the people wearing sweatpants (?) and yelling in to phones. i finally realized how mean and pissy people are in the greater NY metro corridoregion. just plain mean. and pissy. i dunno not a the most earth shattering revolation but i guess being a way a few years i finally see it. then again they’re not as fat as the people down here. so i guess everything is a trade off in life.
• sunday we hightailed it out of there and actually got home in the middle of the afternoon. and it was weird. i’m not used to actually getting home before 10 pm. so i kinda just wandered around the house. and then i heard it:

end bullets.

I’m not the first guy to write about how annoying smoke alarm “my battery’s dead, please change me” chirp. oh there’s lots of people that have talked about that. i like most people think that a person should be able to just change the battery and be done with it. it seems though, that it’s not always that easy. so anyway, we got home, and i heard hte chirping and then finally figured out itwas the alarm in the blair witch basement. ok, fine. soi get a new battery and go down there and i change it. this requires me to unhook the alarm from the AC wire. ok, fine. but then when you put it back on, all the alarms sound. ok so that scares the crap out of the dog, cats, baby and me. not cool. but fine, i did it. and naturally the fucking thing continues to chirp. so repeat that process. still chirping. jefke not happy.

so i go online and find these reviews on amazon which are not encouraging–then i found the manual online which suggested that i might have to hold the test button down to clear some sort of memory when i change the battery. ok fine. so i do that. the alarm sounds, scaring the dog, cats, baby, me etc. i plug it back in–still chirps. so i say fuck it. and give up.

the next day i go to the manufacturer’s website and submit an email. pretty much saying ‘wtf’. in about 3 hrs i get an email back, and a phone call from a customer service rep. she has me go and get th alarm and look, ‘very closely at the diagram above the battery compartment’–yep, i had the 9 volt in backwards. man did i feel like an ass. she was very nice and said that it happens alot, and that’s why she knew to ask that right off the bat. but yea. i felt cool. real cool. good thing i’m an adult now.