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Just a friendly reminder to anyone who reads this that it is never a bad idea to clean your refrigerator’s evaporator coils. Especially if you have a lot of pets or haven’t done it in a while.

Since we got our new LG fridge last year this is the first time I tried to clean it. In fact I couldn’t find anything on google or in the manual on how to even do it. Thankfully it’s pretty simple really….all you have to do is pop off the back panel and vacuum anything you see.

I’m shocked at how tiny the coil setup is on our fridge honestly. I think that means in years to come I really need to keep on top of doing this yearly if I want it to keep working.

So it has been a few months since I got my new computer so I decided it was time to get on with at least one upgrade. The existing power supply that came with it was a 350w model that I’m sure was more than enough for me but since I had an Antec Phantom 500w silent power supply I figured why waste it. After all bigger is always better right?

I wasn’t really sure if it the power supply would work with the newer computer since it was three years old but thankfully in the end everything squeezed into place.

Here is the case before work, a comparison before and the case with no power supply in it:

I was really concerned about having enough space with the DVD drive and the thick black cables running up to the USB slots on top of the chassis but everything fit really well I have to say with a little encouragement.

Aside from having to bend a little piece of metal to make room for the power plug there wasn’t anything fancy required. The old power supply was super quiet so having a fanless one in doesn’t really change that but I just like to know I have plenty of power for the video cards/hard drives/future DVD drives. Maybe now I’ll get one of those USB mug warmers to keep my coffee warm down here.

I’ve been working on converting my old office into Tabitha’s new bedroom for the last few days of my vacation. While I was busy doing that Jen pointed out something I had just been turning a blind eye to for a while. There was a bit of black mold up along the top of the window. Now this isn’t like any other window in our house because it’s the only one that opens to the side. Every other windows is an up/down kind of one. Since my desk was in front of it for 6 years I really just didn’t pay attention to it nor could I reach it easily (giant metal and glass desk and all).

So while I was doing all the painting and stuff I finally got a chance to look at it and you won’t believe what I saw. Apparently ….for some unknown reason…this windows is 1/4 of an inch to short for the opening. Instead of shimming it 1/8 on both ends it appears they just dropped it in and shifted the top up which left a 1/4 gap between the glass and top aluminum frame. That gap was filled (and I use that term loosely) with white caulk, which is what the mold was growing on. I’m going with plain old off the shelf cheapo caulk since it was growing mold in a non bathroom.

look closer:

and even closer:

See the little details that count…oh say like actually filling in the gap entirely with the previously mentioned cheapo caulk? I don’t even know where to begin to describe something so half assed as this. This doesn’t even count as a kludge because there’s no actual thought behind it aside from “gee I hope nobody sees me doing this”. This is proof positive that if it wasn’t for the brain stem regulating breathing and our heart beating 1/2 the world would probably drop dead in 30 seconds.

So as you can see below I gutted the “caulk” that was in there (all in one piece no less) and replaced it with black exterior grade caulk.

It has been 14 days since Jen gave birth to Tabitha and it’s amazing how much of a blur it has been. As fast as it’s been though I wanted to make sure I made time to post a few pictures of how things are going.

Pumpkin carving: Nothing fancy just a quick and dirty one. Heck I was proud we actually got it done.

Jen had these really cute matching shirts for Amelia and Tabitha:

I had a really…REALLY hard time not falling asleep with Tabitha on me earlier today:

And the best part (and reason for posting this) is that Tabitha has marked me as her territory.

Almost three years ago our cat Juliet went into kidney failure. At the time I was given the choice of euthanasia or taking a long shot on emergency 24×7 care. We went with the latter and for the last 154 weeks she’s been getting an average of three subcutaneous fluids and 14 can’s of cat food (2x a day).

Today we had her euthanized. Even though we’ve known it was coming eventually it still sucked and wasn’t easy. She pretty much just stopped eating or drinking and then even lost bladder control. Three years is an amazing amount of time considering how sick she was but again it really just sucks.

Here are some of the best pictures from over the years. I’m pretty sure that heaven doesn’t want her and hell’s afraid she’ll take over. Where ever you end up Julie I hope they have your favorite kinda beer.