It was announced a couple of days ago, that Volkswagen is recalling nearly 80,000 cars. The problem that this recall addresses is “the malfunctioning brake lights and brake light switches could fail to come on or remain stuck on.” This is the same exact problem we’ve had with our Jetta, not just once but twice. Even though we had all the signs of the defect, and replaced the part multiple times, our car was never under one of the previous recalls for the same issue. Luckily I found some replacement directions online and I only paid for the parts. I guess VW finally realized that the issue was larger than originally thought.

When I decide to take the car into the dealer for the free fix, I’ll be sure to mention the brake light switches that I’ve replaced in the past. In fact I still have the receipt for one of them, so I’m hoping I can be reimbursed. I’ve been reading about the recall and I guess that VW has personally redesigned the switch themselves this time, and are no longer using a third party. I hope that this is the final fix for the switch!

We rented movies over the weekend for the first time in a long time, and even signed up for our very own Blockbuster account. We picked two movies but only got around to watching one of them, You, Me and Dupree. Despite all of the bad reviews from the critics, I though the movie was actually pretty funny and entertaining. This isn’t the first time I’ve disagreed though. In fact, I didn’t even attempt to watch the Oscars, especially since I don’t think I’ve seen any of the movies that were nominated. I take that back, I think I saw Little Miss Sunshine awhile back, and if I did it put me to sleep.

Unfortunately there is no snowboarding update from this weekend. This must be the first week we didn’t snowboard since we moved out here. And strangely enough, the weekend flew by.

We did venture to the mountains on Saturday to meet up with my buddy Aaron, who is on a ski vacation with his family all week. We decided to meet up at the Breckenridge Brewery & Pub, which was a great because I’ve been wanting to go there. As an added bonus, happy hour beers were only $2 each! They were out of one of my favorites, Oatmeal Stout, so I had a couple of the 471 IPA instead. If you can find this special brew, I would highly recommend it! We didn’t get a chance to eat anything, but I will definitely be back sometime soon.

I am seriously flirting with the idea of finishing off the basement, and even attempting to do most of the work myself. I figure it can’t be that hard, and it’s probably about time I start learning to do some handy things. The first step in this adventure was downloading a copy of Google SketchUp. I’ve known about this program for along time, but never played with it until my dad showed me some plans of his for an expansion on their house. Now, armed with my own copy of the software, I just needed a few measurements to get started. Once I had those, I quickly began laying out the foundation of the basement. I still need to get some more measurements, but this is what I have so far…

I’ll be sure to keep you updated on this little project.

I use a package called XAMPP on my web server to run this here website. Well they released a new version (1.6.0) the other day and as usual I updated pretty quickly. After the update, I could not get apache to stay running for longer than a minute tops. After running it manually, I was able to use the error logs to diagnose the problem. It appears the version of eAccelerator that they included was not the correct one. eAccelarator is a plugin that caches PHP scripts so the speed of the site can be improved. Obviously this was something that I didn’t want to just turn off.

The version of eAccelerator that was included was for PHP version 5.2.0, but this version of XAMPP included PHP 5.2.1. After searching the web for awhile, I was able to find the eAccelerator binaries for the new version on this site. Once I downloaded both eAccelerator.dll and eLoader.dll my server was back to running normally. Hopefully this little bit of info will help anyone else who may be having problems.

And as I am writing this, I just realized that there is another version of XAMPP available today, 1.6.0a. I’ll likely install this soon and see if they have solved this issue or not.

For those of you yet to experience the wonders of a DVR (are you living in a cave?) I am selling our old ReplayTV box on eBay. The beauty of this system is that it can be used with just about any cable, satellite, or standard TV setup, as long as you activate and pay the monthly $12.95 fee for the programming guide. We loved this system, but currently Comcast offers a built in DVR for cheaper than $12.95, so we switched over to that.

We used our DVR to tape American Idol last night and zoom through the 2 hour show in less than an hour and a half, just by skipping the commercials. I’m still a fan of Chris Sligh even though I had no idea what song he was singing. I also think that Blake Lewis is going to do really well in the competition as well. I though the show was a little below average when compared to past seasons, but it was just the first real episode. The girls will be singing tonight. Be sure to check out the early predictions on DialIdol.com, if you want to ruin the surprise all season.

We didn’t do much cooking while Kim’s brothers were visiting us. We did, however, find a great pizza delivery chain in Denver. Blackjack Pizza operates 45 restaurants in four states, but most are in the Denver metro. This is not gourmet pizza and it does not try to be. This is delivery pizza that competes with the standard national chains. What sets them apart is that their prices are cheaper than the national chains, and their pizzas taste better!

We had the Western BBQ Chicken pizza, a pepperoni pizza, and an order of CinnaBread. The BBQ Chicken was better than what I’ve had at Papa John’s, but still not as good as a gourmet pizza. However, for the price it is very tough to beat. Kim’s brothers seemed to enjoy the pepperoni. And we all loved the CinnaBread. It was delicious and we even had enough leftover for breakfast the next morning. I’m sure we’ll be ordering from Blackjack again soon.

Well it looks like I may have jinxed myself with all of these tales of snowboarding every weekend. I’m sitting at my desk today with my ankle wrapped and iced. To get around the house I’m relying on a pair of crutches that we just picked up from Walgreen’s. I’m thinking that it’s just a bad sprain, but I’ve also been reading up on “Snowboarder’s Ankle” or Fracture of the Lateral Process of the Talus (LPT). I’m hoping that Dr. Kim can come up with the proper diagnosis later today.

Contrary to how I feel today, the weekend started off great! Two of Kim’s brothers, Chris and Chip, came out to Denver for a visit. Early on Saturday morning, we took them up into the mountains and headed toward Keystone. This is where things went bad. The Colorado Department of Transportation forced an avalanche as we were driving out which dumped eight to ten feet of snow on I-70. We decided to stop at a gas station and wait for the road to re-open, which they finally did a couple of hours later.

Once we finally made it to Keystone, we enjoyed a half day or boarding. Chris and Chip are both still learning to board, but they both seemed to pick it up really quickly and easily. Once we were good and tired we headed to our hotel to rest up for a second day on the mountain. The second day would be the bad day for me. We were about four or five runs into the day when Kim and I went down a steep blue trail named Star Fire to meet up with Chris and Chip at the bottom of the hill. I hit a small ball of snow which caused me to lose my balance, catch one of my edges and slam down the hill. I hit my head pretty hard, but thankfully I had my helmet on. Then I quickly realized that my ankle was fairly sore. I made it down to the bottom on my own, but once I made it there I quickly decided that my day was done. Since then the pain and swelling has gotten worse, but I am starting to feel better today, at least better than I felt yesterday.

Keep your fingers crossed that this is just a sprain…

I’ve been listening to The Alternate Routes a bunch since seeing them just over a week ago. If you didn’t already notice, you can listen to my recording of their entire performance on the internet archive. With their recent signing on Vanguard Records, they are re-releasing their debut album on March 13 and they even have a music video for “Time Is A Runaway.”

On top of all of that, you can download their song “Ordinary” from the same CD, Good And Reckless And True. If you like what you hear, I believe you can get the whole CD from iTunes now. Or you can wait for the CD to hit stores in March!

Last night we headed to Boulder with our friends Christina and Taylor for a basketball game between the University of Colorado and the University of Kansas. Taylor is a really big KU fan and invited us to come to the game with them. I don’t think I have been to a basketball game since I was still in school, or sometime around then. And just like the University of Cincinnati, they sell beer at CU games, so that was an added bonus!

Well Taylor wasn’t the only KU fan in the arena, it was packed full of red and blue. I guess car loads of people make the drive across Kansas for the game, and the CU fans were clearly outnumbered in their own city. Although I don’t think it was a sell out last night, I think historically this is the only game that ever sells out at CU. And now I can see why, CU got crushed 75-46 by KU! There was even some Rock Chalk chanting going on. A very interesting chant, I might add.