I broke down and bought another amplifier for the car

The lack of clean sound coming from the AVN6600's bulit in amplifier started getting to me and I started looking around for cheap used amplifiers, just for kicks. Then one day, Vijay told me (paraphrased), "When you have kids, you won't have time or money for this kind of stuff anymore, take advantage of it now. Plus, you have pretty much everything else in the car in terms of car audio, might as well add this one final little piece." Ok, that convinced me. I ended up getting an older 4 channel Alpine MRP-F200. It's one of Alpine's weaker amps, but it does have a little more kick than the even weaker MRH-F254 I used to have in the Civic. I dunno if $70 was worth it, but I don't think it was a terrible deal. It should do the trick! It's coming in the mail right now, hopefully I'll REALLY have the car audio squared away by next weekend. Can't wait to take apart my backseat again to mount the amplifier! (that was somewhat sarcastic)

As a side note, I think there is a loose connection in my driver side speaker. I'm gonna have to remove the door panel and get in to see what's going on. I'll probably have to re-wire it a bit and find a better mounting spot for the crossover inside. I believe I just taped it to the door panel with tape! Bad me, I should do a better job this time around.

As another side note, I put up some pictures of the AVN6600 on the pictures page of our website. They're not the greatest pictures, but they'll do.

I read a news story today that was pretty encouraging

"Gifts and cries of 'cheapskate' greet the story of a homeless Detroit roofer who returned $20,738 in lost bonds and got a $100 tip for his honesty"

If only the world were this perfect. But then again, if it were, there wouldn't be homeless people!

Other searches about this story brought up comments like "$100 was so cheap, he should have gotten $1000" (and in the end he got much more). Others on the opposite spectrum said, "The feeling of being righteous and knowing you did the right things should be a reward in itself, he shouldn't have gotten any money."

Here is my take, I don't see the rewards he's received as values of money, I see them as means to get him back up on his feet, and the people providing the means trust that he will. That is the beauty of it. Both sides, the homeless guy and the people who donated money, have both shown something that isn't seen that often, and that is complete trust: trust in God and trust in each other. Did the homeless guy get what he deserved? I'd say yes, not because he deserved money, but he desered some help to get him started in life again. And if he really is the honest man he says he is, things should work out well for him, thanks to all the people who donated the rewards.

More friggen ants

Ok, so good news 1st. The Ortho Home Defense stuff works. No ants by the trash, no ants near the back door, no ants along the bottom of the front door.... BUT..... They're coming in through the top of the front door now!!!!!!! I guess I neglected to spray all around the front doorframe like I did the back doorframe. Little bastards! So I came to work late this morning because I was dealing with those little suckers and then spraying around the front doorframe. This time, since they came through the top of the door frame, they ended up going all the way to the top of the ceiling and then down around the birdcage. We have pretty high ceilings so getting them cleaned up from way up there was a pain, I had to wait for some of them from way up to crawl back down the wall before I could vacuum them up, I couldn't reach that high. They might seem to crawl fast when they're on the ground, but it seemed to take them forever to crawl all the way down while I was waiting with the vacuum. Hopefully there aren't anymore cracks I missed.....

Friggen ants

It's been almost a month of summer already and I thought to myself the other day, "Hey, no ants yet!" Well I must have jinxed myself. The other night, Audrey went to get some fruit at about 12am and told me there were a bunch of ants on the kitchen counter. I went downstairs and it took me over an hour to clean them up. They appparently came through one of the vents in the floor near the kitchen. I was lucky this time because I sprayed ant poison around the vent and I haven't seen them since.

Well today, I saw more! >:( This time, they were downstairs in the entry way. Today really pissed me off, you know why? For those of you who don't know, our front door is right by our back door that goes into the garage. We normally have ants running through our garbage in the garage, which isn't that big of a deal. Well today, they decided to take a shortcut into the garage by coming through our front door, going across our entry way, and out through the back door into the garage! Maybe I should have charged toll or something.... there were hundreds or even thousands of them.... Instead, I vacuumed them all up and spackled the cracks in the door frame. Apparently that wasn't enough though, I guess the rubber gaskets around the doors are a bit loose, they still kept coming (resilient little suckers). So I took my buddy's advice and bought some Ortho Home Defense. It's a spray that you spray around the perimeter of your house and over doorways or windows that are susceptile to insect attacks. I just sprayed it on now, we'll see if there are any more ants in the coming days. I HATE ANTS.

p.s. Looks like the little spider I decided to keep alive near the front door isn't doing his job anymore. So I pulled a Trump and said, "You're fired" as I vacuumed him up with the ants.