Okay, so it was Sunday morning. I had been out a bit to late, but was up early and feeling pretty good. I was opening at work and was due in by 6. I got myself showered, fed, dressed, and smelling good all with a minimal of fuss. I even made a lunch! Richard was ready earlier and headed out the door, even tho we were both due at our respective jobs at the same time. It wasn’t a carpool day, so I was lagging about 5 minutes behind him. I finally made it down stairs and was at the door balancing my man-bag, waters, lunch, and phone all at once. I opened the door to the garage to put on my shoes that are always sitting just outside that door. As I slipped on the second shoe I lost my balance.

Time stopped.

It was in slow motion that I caught myself and heard the door click shut.

Shut.

And locked.

“This can’t be happening” I thought. I blinked. I tried the door. Locked. I shook my head and tried it again. Harder. Locked.

I was in my garage with my man-bag, waters, lunch, and my phone. I had no keys. My car was locked. I was locked out out of the house. My keys were just inside. I panicked.

tagged: work richard morning emergency embarrassed event locked out

Big drama here kids. Drama with the fish tank. None of it is anyone’s fault.

Richard decided to do a big water change. Great! Except that he also decided that the filter had to be done immediately as well. Now normally we space those two chores out. Not because they both suck, which they do. We space then out for the safety of the fish. A big water change can stir up a lot of dormant pollutants. The filter has bacteria in it to deal with said pollutants. If you clean the filter you weaken the bacteria inside, so doing both on the same day can potentially harm your fish if the tank is dirty. Ours apparently was, and worse than we thought. We are on schedule with the chores, as both get done once per month. However, a fair amount of plants died while we were on vacation. Since we weren’t home picking out the leaves and such the filter was filthy and a bit clogged. This made the tank extra filthy. We hadn’t noticed. You see, the water chemistry had balanced out to the dirty conditions, and sustained life (although we have lost two fish since we’ve been back). We just destroyed that balance and now the water chemistry is out of control. Sort of like a brand new tank that you aren’t supposed to put live fish in. Richard has now done two consecutive 25% water changes. That amounts to roughly 50 gallons emptied and then replaced 5 gallons at a time. Yikes! That’s a workout! But the hope is to dilute the bad bacteria while the good bacteria re-establishes itself.

To make it all worse, there are two chemical products on the market to save you in just such an emergency that will rapidly eliminate the bad stuff in your water. We always have these on hand. Always. Except for right now. We have neither. I really wish we hadn’t put off that trip to the pet store. There really should be a 24 hour pet supply. I am surprised that there isn’t actually.

Anyway, even if this all makes no sense to you, please cross your fingers that the fish are alive when we wake up in the morning. 

tagged: fish pets emergency aquarium ph water chemistry ammonia spike

iPhone Emergency via minor9th.

tagged: links funny iphone apple emergency comic

It all started on Thursday night. I had gotten home late from a long day at work. Richard had our friend Amy over. I visited a bit, checked email, and settled in to blog about my day. Pretty normal, except when I got back to the computer my site was down! I didn’t panic though. My host is like really awesome and saves my electronic ass all the time… So I sent him an ‘FYI, Site Down’ email and watched some TV. He reported back that not to worry, all should be back up in a bit. Erm. Okay. But before I went to bed he sent this:

hey daniel, you know that power outage in eastern missouri? that’s why you’re still down.

kmov_localnews

I think i have a super old backup on a different server on the server in texas, but it’s about a month old. :/

My server is in St. Louis?? That’s where dp.com lives?? Weird. Wait! Gah! Bad news… and it kept getting worse:

ST. LOUIS Dec 4, 2006 (AP)

tagged: blog weather emergency backups st.louis happy