Earlier this month, Kris said the horrific words, "I think the dishwasher is broken." I looked into the dishwasher to see four inches of stagnant water, and thought, well, crap. I told him not to worry, though, I'd fix it. He looked at me, and shook his head, in a "I wonder how long this is going to take." sort of way.

Nearly a week and a dozen sinks worth of dishes washed later, I pulled the bucket and a screwdriver from the garage and went to work under the sink.

I have no idea what convinced me that 1. I knew what the problem was, or 2. I could fix it, but ignorance breeds confidence and, within minutes, the plumbing was disconnected under the sink. One quick, flashlight-aided look later, and I knew we weren't spending hundreds of dollars on a new dishwasher.

Turns out, when I made my most dee-lish-shush mushroom barley soup for Thanksgiving, and had dumped the old, spoiled barley down the drain (before I realized how stupid such a move would be, and threw it into the compost pile instead), I had inadvertantly clogged the incoming dishwasher line. It was packed full of barley, about eight inches worth of barley packing.

A plumber's snake, a chopstick, fifteen minutes and only one dishwasher water explosion later, and we had clear plumbing again.

Plumber Kitt to rescue. I'm liking this hands-on approach to fixing house problems.

Following Jason Kottke's My Year in Cities post, I have my list of cities. I'm completely ignoring all of the local cities around here that I don't frequent, but that traveling to is blog-worthy, such as Santa Cruz, Oakland, and San Francisco.

Chicago, Illinois #
Winchester, Virginia
Boulder, Colorado *+
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada #
Waimanalo, Hawaii
San Diego, California #
Davis, California *+
Big Island, Hawaii
Portland, Oregon #
Grand Canyon, Arizona
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Phoenix, Arizona
Chico, California +
Burlington, Washington +
Seattle, Washington +
Sarasota, Florida +
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia +
Perth, Western Australia, Australia +
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia +

Following Kottke's rules, I've spent "one or more nights in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days." Those marked with a + are ultimate-related cities. Those marked with a # are conference cities.

Electronic journalling works better if I have some electronic mechanism for input. Alas, tonight I didn't.

Mostly.

Didn't quite finish the post, though.

When Kris and I purchased my car six years ago, we made the beginner's mistake of walking into a dealership and buying a car off the showroom floor. Not the first time we've done that, but most certainly the last time.

After we had signed the documentation and handed them a check, the salesman handed us a set of keys. The first and second keys were black and could open all the locks on the car. The third key of the set was a grey key. He handed it to us, and told us it was the valet key: it unlocked the doors and started the engine, but wouldn't unlock the truck, nor the glove box.

Except, when he handed us the key, he pronounced the word, VUH-lay. He was handing us the vuh-lay key.

Kris and I looked at each other and cracked up. Since then, we've teased each other about the vuh-lay key. The mispronounciation humours us, much the way I use Intarweb to mock the Internet.

Tragically, the mocking can become an embarrassment, especially when the mispronounciation becomes ingrained in my normal speech.

I couldn't find my regular car key this morning, so I grabbed the valet key to drive my car to the dealership for the back window replacement. When I arrived to talk to the service manager, I asked him if "the vuh-, the vuh-, vuh..." Crap, I couldn't remember how to pronounce the word valet! Crap, crap, crap!

The service guy looked at me. "You mean the VAL-lay key? Yes, that's fine."

As Bella and I walked home, I kept repeating, "VAL-lay. VAL-lay. VAL-lay. The VAL-aaaa key."

I went to a new client today, the one I wrote my first statement of work for. I'm very excited about the project, and not quite sure why. It could be because I have the emotional investment of "my first project start to finish."

Heading over to the client's office, I wasn't particularly nervous, so much as worried that I had prepared well enough for the meeting. I detest wasted time, and meetings are a big waste of time for many people. I shudder to think of how many tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars some previous employers wasted in status update meetings where at any given time 95% of the engineers are just waiting for their turn to speak (schedule a different group to come in every ten to fifteen minutes, unless the rest of the engineers need to hear what the others are doing).

I was hoping to keep the meeting short, meet with the client, get my answers, and leave. Five of the client's employees were in the meeting, so they were as motivated as I to keep the meeting short. After an hour, I had what I needed. However, based on some of the conversations at the meeting, I messed up in a few places.

At least my mistakes were few in number: it could have been a lot worse.

My first mistake was, when bringing a list of questions to a client, not having my own answers to my question ready.

I asked for a few sites they liked, with the intent of asking what they liked about the site, which features they liked, which features they hated. The first answer was, "Let me ask you, what sites do you like and why?"

As soon as he asked that question, my thoughts were, aw, crap, I didn't prePARE! Dammit! Okay, start scrambling. Of course I had prepared, but not enough. I should have sent my questions to the client so that he could ponder the questions, also.

So, yeah, I started scrambling, and listing the sites whose design I wanted to emulate, should I ever get around to actually changing my site (such change is currently scheduled for next week, and I'm looking forward to it).

My second mistake was not sending the list of my questions to the client beforehand, so that they could prepare as much as I could. No reason everyone in the room couldn't have been fully engaged in the meeting, minimizing the amount of waste.

My third mistake was not installing and testing all the products I'm recommending for the client. I read up on a couple of modules that I was recommending for the client, but, in reality, I haven't installed them, I haven't played with them. If they don't work as advertised, I'll be eating the cost to bring them up to spec.

Even with these obvious mistakes, I think the meeting went well, and I'm looking forward to this project.