Luke’s Notebook

This morning, my mom was having some really severe pain, so Paul and John rushed her to the emergency room at the hospital. It looks like she had an infection of some sort, and that was the cause of the pain. She was given some pain-killers which seem to have really helped things, but I think we’ll have to wait and see how long it is until she no longer needs those and the pain just subsides on its own.

From what I hear, she’ll likely have to stay a few nights there, but evidently the doctors think that the antibiotics she is on now will help heal her up, and hopefully she will be able to come back home in a matter of days. Keep her in your prayers, please! It sounds like everything is under control and all, but we’d all much rather have Mom here at home instead of at the hospital. I know she’s in good hands, though.

It was a fun Sunday.

For lunch, a few of us went over to Cici’s in South County to meet up with some friends of ours, the Balassi family. The Arndts that went were Mark, Jude, James, Philip and I.

After we ate lunch and talked a while there, we went on over to their house to hang out for a little bit. Even though we weren’t there very long, we had a fun time. We played the card game Mafia (which I mentioned a month or so ago) for a little while.

In the evening I had six — count ‘em, six — volleyball games. On a typical night, we’ll play three — three games to 25 or two games to 25 and one to 15, depending on the amount of time remaining. Anyway, we had a double-header tonight at 7:30 and 8:30. We played really well in the first three games, and we managed to win all three against the first team. It was the first time our team has swept a game in quite a while! It was really satisfying, because we just played much better than we had been in previous weeks.

At 8:30, we played Paul’s team. We won the first game, but they took the final two. All three games were very well-played, though, so it didn’t feel like we just gave the games away. They definitely won them. It was a great feeling to take one of the games, though. His team has always seemed to have our number. We finished the night 4-2, which is pretty good. I thought I played pretty well, with covering a lot of ground and also putting down a few nice spikes. While we were practicing, I was just trying to tweak the timing of my jump, and with that adjustment I was really knocking some good spikes down. So I think that might help me consistently spike better — simply having better timing. I’ll try to remember this when Wednesday rolls around!

Well, all that volleyball has pretty much drained the energy from this guy, so I think I’ll go ahead and sign off for the night.

I didn’t get a chance to make an entry last night, so I’ll do one this morning about last night.

At 5:30, Paul, Mark and I left the house and headed towards Collinsville. There was an office party/celebration at the American Legion Hall for Woods Basement Systems, a company out of Collinsville that we had worked with before. It was almost like a wedding reception, with dinner, a DJ and dancing. We basically videotaped everything going on, from the opening prayer, to little kids running around, to the people dancing under the disco ball. I think it will turn out nice.

Paul and I were the videographers last night, and Mark was the still photographer. We don’t really do professional photography, but this was kind of a unique thing, and Mark was willing to snap photos of the event. I manned a camera on a tripod in the back of the hall, getting wide and general shots of things. Paul was roaming with his camera, so he was able to get more interesting angles and such. The reason we do this, by the way, is later when we synchronize the two video tracks, we can switch from Camera A to Camera B at any time! It’s very, very handy to have two angles going, because you can always simply choose the better of the two angles. Multi-camera setups are very much worth it, I think, especially in something like a wedding.

Late last night, I did some scoping. There was a deposition that Dad needed done ASAP, so I put in a couple of hours of scoping last night and managed to get 65 pages done. I finished about 1:30, so it wasn’t ridiculously late or anything.

Well, now I need to get ready for the day. Tonight I get to play six volleyball games, since we have a double-header!

Yes, it’s true. The wind has been quite strong here all day. In fact, when I went outside to the truck this morning, the leather cover on the bed had been blown to the point where it was standing vertically. James and I managed to push it back down, and then James put some bungie cords on it to hold the cover down. See, the hydraulics for the cover that hold it down are currently off, which is why it was able to be blown open like that. Still, though, it’s very, very windy. And with it being only 19 degrees out already, the wind makes things feel extremely bitter.

Anyway, down to business. This morning and afternoon, James and I helped Aunt Ann with lots of stuff. First, we went to her office in Belleville to help rearrange boxes, tables and things, solve a computer problem or two, and basically help neaten the place up.

After that, we drove out to her house in Millstadt and went to work on some shelves in her closet that had collapsed. They’re those white, wire-frame shelves that are in lots of closets. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Anyway, the support for them just wasn’t very good and one of the shelves had already fallen. So James and I unscrewed the shelves, then went ahead and installed new (and much stronger) supports for the shelves. We managed to replace two of them before running out of supplies, so that’s where we stopped.

In a few hours I’ll be leaving for a video job in Collinsville. From what Paul tells me, it’s some sort of company party or banquet or something. Oh, and speaking of video — now launched is the official website for Arndt Video & Digital Services — http://www.arndtvideo.com. It’s not a completely finished product, but it’s at the point now where people can visit it and get an idea of what we’re all about, as well as prices, samples, et cetera.

James and I are about to leave to go help my Aunt Ann with some stuff at her office and then over at her house. And then this evening, Paul and I have a video job in Collinsville. So I’ll probably be kept fairly busy today. No bother, though. Sunday is right around the corner.

By the way, yesterday was Mom and David’s birthday! Two years ago yesterday, David was born. He’s such a cute chub. Yesterday morning, we older guys took Mom and David out to breakfast at Bob Evans. After that, Paul and I went around Fairview Heights with Mom as she did some shopping.

I’d better jet. I should be at her office at 9:30, and I need to go round up some tools.

So here’s the deal. I decided to trace or highlight the route that Mark and I took as we navigated our way through Moston on January 10th. I basically did it from memory, but I think it’s very accurate as far as the streets we walked on and everything. The only real question marks are the subway’s actual location underground. I have no idea how it is really situated from station to station, so I drew it as a straight line.

Another thing to note is that it’s not the prettiest map you’ve ever seen. I put arrows down to indicate our direction, so I hope it’s clear enough as to which way we were walking on a given street. After we hit the Charlestown Bridge, we turned around and doubled back on quite a few streets, which is why you might see arrows going in both directions. And for further clarification, I will give you the chronological order of the events, so you’ll know exactly how to read the map.

START

Blog

Old North Church

Subway

Government Center

Kenmore

Fenway Park

Walk

Boston Garden

Burger King

END

Our Map Of Boston (it’s a large image, so be patient while it loads)

Several weeks ago, I wrote about an opportunity the four oldest had to go on a multi-week trip out west with our Grandpa Arndt. At first we thought that this trip would be taking place in the near future — say, in February. Well, this morning the four oldest went out to breakfast with Grandpa, and we collectively decided that though it sounds like a tremendous trip and we are all very much looking forward to doing it, now just simply doesn’t look like a good time. It sounds as if it would be better for Grandpa if it’s postponed, and it would definitely be better for us, as all of a sudden we find ourselves in a very busy time.

This is kind of a relief, really, to have come to this decision. There are so many things to keep us busy and excited here and now, and it would be hard to break away for two or three weeks. The airing of the Montel Show is one reason that we want to make sure we stay close to home. There’s a very good chance that once the show airs, there will be other interviews/articles/stories done on the family. Also, from what we learned the last time we were on Montel, we’re likely to keep very, very busy with website-related stuff.

So I’m not sure when this trip would end up transpiring. While we were talking this morning we bounced around the idea of us all flying out to some location — say Las Vegas or Los Angeles — and then from there renting a car and driving around the west. We figured that even that would require a good 2,000 miles over the road, so you would still do plenty of driving even if you flew out west. But who knows what will end up happening. It’ll be interesting to find out, that’s for sure!

This afternoon, Paul (24, oldest brother) was having a problem with his computer. After he turned the thing off, suddenly it would no longer boot into Windows XP. It would suddenly reboot while at the Windows loading screen, and when he would try any of the fail-safe modes — the safe modes, command prompt, last-known good configuration — none of those would work. Well, that’s kind of rare that nothing will boot, because normally when you have a problem you need to boot into safe mode or go to the command prompt or something. So it was kind of scary.

I did a little bit of Googling but couldn’t really find anything related to his problem. I read on a forum somewhere someone suggesting (for a different problem) using the Windows XP CD and running the recovery console. I went and got the CD, popped it in his drive, and booted from the CD. The great thing about these CDs are even if the hard drive is completely messed up, you can still boot from the CD because the computer will attempt to boot from the CD before trying a hard drive.

Anyway, the forum idea didn’t work. But I decided to try to run CHKDSK (which is XP’s version of ScanDisk, I guess). Long story short, it worked! I let it run through the check, and all of a sudden his fine computer was up and running again. So evidently it was a pretty simple solution. I’m just thankful that I was able to find the idea to use the XP CD, because I wasn’t even thinking along those lines. With that, we conclude tonight’s lesson on why it’s important to go to Start -> Shut Down instead of pressing the power button. Every now and then, the computer will punish you!

At last, we won a volleyball game! It’s sad to admit it, but I think it’s been a few weeks since we’ve one a game that I’ve been at. I think my team won one game while I was gone, by the way. But it was a very good feeling to win at least one of the three games we play each night. We lost the first game, won the second, and lost a very close third. Actually, the first was semi-close.

What’s strange is that just recently — the past several weeks — we have been playing unusually bad as a team, both on Sundays and Wednesdays. I’m not sure why that is, but today we played like we were more comfortable with each other and just did better overall. Obviously, we want to win more than one out of three games, but it’s much better than losing all three.

Wednesday’s team is a little bit different than Sundays. There are three people who play both Sunday and Wednesday — me, Aunt Jane and Judy. The other folks for Wednesday are my Aunt Greta and Uncle Rob and then Uncle Rob’s nephew, Adam, who is around my age.

In other news, I decided to remove my leather case from my phone and find out how I like using just the bare phone. A couple of reasons for this. One, the phone (Samsung A670) looks pretty neat with no case. But the more important reason is the case just isn’t all that great. It doesn’t fit perfectly (for example, it tends to cover up the lens of the camera if you’re not careful). Also, the inside of the case seems to be a dust magnet. There’s always dust or junk getting collected under the plastic covers, covering the front and back LCD screens as well as the keypad.

Soo… I’m going to try this and see how I like it. There are a few reasons that I don’t want to do it, though. One is that the case, in its own way, has a cool look to it. It’s black and kind of neat. The second reason is the protection I’d lose, as the case would take the hits, drops, kicks and protect the phone from scratches and such. A third reason is the belt clip! This one I’ll miss a lot, even though I rarely actually clip it to my belt. I’ll clip it to my pocket or something. But I will miss that.

A fourth and rather odd reason is because I stored a $10 bill in the case, behind the phone. The idea was for it to be “emergency” money, and I would essentially make myself forget about it, only using it in situations where I need it, such as to get gas, food, pay for parking — you know, just whatever the case would warrant. See, I don’t always have my wallet with me (though I make sure I do if I’m driving), but I pretty much always have my phone with me when I leave the house. So a little emergency dough would come in handy when I “knead” it. Ugh… pardon the cheesy pun.

So, with this whole cell phone case thing, I’m not sure where to go from here. Reading the pros and cons I just typed, I’m thinking it’s not a very smart idea to go case-less. One solution I can think of would be to buy a different leather case that is made specifically for this phone and which seems to fit much better. That would probably eliminate the dust problem (or at least minimize it), still allow me to have a belt clip, still allow me to store some emergency cash, still protect the phone and still have a good-looking phone. I think I’ll go look on eBay for those nifty cases.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Luke, and I will be doing some typing.

This Tuesday was quite a busy one! Let’s try one of those recap things, shall we?

In the morning, I took Philip, Jacob and Wizzy to an orthodontist appointment in Fairview Heights. Philip and I just had post-braces check-ups, and Jacob and Wizzy were getting looked at just to kind of track their progress to see whether or not they’ll need braces in the future. After that, I came home and did some work.

In the afternoon, I went to run many errands. I delivered a couple of depos in Belleville, hit the mailbox (not literally), went to our old house on West Main Street to get some meter readings, visited my Grandma and Grandpa Arndt’s house, and… let’s see… oh, yes, I also took the truck to Ross Automotive in Belleville to get the left headlight bulb replaced. Paul bought a replacement bulb but couldn’t quite figure out how to get the headlight out. A kind worker from Ross came out and replaced the bulb in minutes, for no charge! What a nice fellow. And now I know how to change it in case the right light blows out.

I came home with just enough time to eat supper and get ready for our Tuesday night prayer meeting/church service. After that, I went into the family room to get in a workout. I was able to do the cross-trainer and free weights, and boy, was that needed! After a week-plus of eating too many snacks, drinking too much soda and getting too little exercise, it’s a great feeling to be able to get active again. I didn’t really want to work out, as I had a headache this evening and just wasn’t feeling that great. Amazingly, though, as I got to using the cross-trainer I started to feel better than before! Maybe it was just a matter of getting the blood flowing.

On a side note, I just realized that Boston has 5% sales tax! I was looking at the receipt from the RadioShack where I bought the tripod, and the sales tax was only 5%. I think we’re in the upper 7’s here. So that’s kind of interesting.

This afternoon, two guys from Wisper ISP came out to our place to basically check to see if we’re able to get service from them. The one guy went up in a bucket lift and was attempting to get a signal, but he wasn’t having any success as their van was parked in the driveway. So that’s bad news, of course, as we were hoping that he would get a good signal, which would mean we would be able to get this wireless Internet set up here.

There are a couple of possibilities still. One is that a neighbors’ house or property may be high enough elevation-wise where it would essentially work as a bridge or a repeated for the Internet signal, enabling us to get service. I have no idea whether or not that would work. Another possible solution, though maybe unlikely, is to have a tall (think 60-foot) poll mounted with the wireless antenna on that. That would probably work, but I’m not sure how much we would want a huge poll sticking out of the ground.

A third possibility, and it’s kind of a toss-up, is that there’s a chanced that the reason we can’t get a signal is due to something on the radio tower several miles away. The technician said he was going to install a filter on the tower there, and that just might enable this equipment to work in our area. If it would, that would be terrific! But… we’ll just have to wait and see what, if any, solutions there are. I sure do hope that we’re able to get this service, because satellite Internet is just no fun. We’ve had it for almost 13 months now, and it just hasn’t been very good at all. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a good alternative really soon!