Today, I have to travel to my company’s home office to teach a class. The day before I’m supposed to drive over I find I’ve got a voice mail. As I do 99.9999% of my job either via emails, IMs or F2F, this in itself was extremely odd. Then I listened to the message and found out it was a sales manager from dealership where we bought the new car.

It turns out that they want to borrow the car for a bit to have to their insurance people look it over (since it was on the lot at the time of the tornados hitting Iowa City). I thought this more than a little odd. As I was busy getting ready for my trip to the home office, I kind of blew off the message. Then this morning, I got another call from the dealership asking for the car again. I called the guy back and explained that I’m driving out of town today. He said it should really only take about 20 minutes and they’d give the car a wash while they had it. He also said they’d bring a loaner by for me, just in case.

I agreed to let him do it and then immediately got a tad nervous about it. I checked their website and found him on it. A little bit later our receptionist called and said a guy from the dealership was here. I went up to the front desk and the only person around was a scrawny looking kid. But he was wearing a sweatshirt with the dealership’s name & logo on it. Then he held out a key to him and we walked to the parking lot. The key was to a 2005 Volkswagen Passat. The stationwagon version. With a dealer’s plate in the back window, a sales sticker on the same. I felt a lot better about giving him my key and took him to my car. He drove off, and I hopped into the Passat for a quick peek.

Oh my God! The wagon is fully loaded with all the goodies Volkswagen has to offer. Now I feel slightly cheated in that I won’t get to drive this puppy for my trip. Don’t get me wrong, I love our new car and our new car does have more gadgets in it than any car I’ve ever owned. But still, that Passat sitting outside if so dang plush and luxurious. I could definitely enjoy driving that card. 😀 Oh well, at least I’m getting a free car wash. Though, now that I think about it; I’m wondering if I should have asked them to top off the gas tank. With gas at $2.84/gallon, that would have been a nice bit of savings for me. *shrug* That’s probably being a little greedy and they’ve been good to me already.

I’ve not been posting anything for a while because… Well, I just have not felt like it which is not to say I haven’t had anything to talk about. Today, I decided to update the world at large about what I have been upto in my little slice of it.

  • We survived the tornados and hail that hit our area a week ago. Our apartment and cars were not even get damaged by the storm. Below are a few links to some of the stores online about what happened.
  • Last weekend, we replaced Ariesna‘s car (1992 Ford Escort, aka Ghost) with a 2002 Volkswagen Golf (aka Grace, aka Gracie). The really odd part about getting the new car? Even though it’s a replacement for Ghost; Ariesna has been letting me drive it the most. Apparently, this is at least partly due to the amount door dings her old car suffered through in her office’s parking lot but it still seems strange to me. Then today, the dealership called me back asking me to come in and sign a new finance contract on the car. Why? Because they found me another offer which would drop the interest rate by 1.25 points! Now that’s what I call service. So a big thanks goes out to Carousel Motors for the excellent service.
  • Last weekend, Ariesna and I looked at a house. But it was too expensive for the amount of work required to make it a home we’d want to live (namely a musty basement and some bad remodeling in the family room, dining room and kitchen). We showed up about 15 minutes early for the showing and the realtor showed up just short of 15 minutes late. He did eventually call to let us know he was running late… 5 minutes after he was supposed to be there. I was initially a bit underwhelmed by the guy. But when he finally got there and let us into the house; he let us do our own looking around without trying to pressure us and listened to the comments we had about the house to get a better idea of what we were interested in.

For all you people searcing for more information on getting the C4237B soundchip working under Ubuntu, here are the links to my previous posts on the subject:

Some other people out there in Internet land have reported the steps detailed in those posts as working for them. Some have reported that they don’t work. *shrug* My best guess as to why is I think the chip can be configured with a DOS/Windows utility to use different IRQs and what not. Or it could be some sort of difference in the kernel(s) people are using. Or something else entirely. I really don’t know for sure. Lastly I should note that when I last updated the kernel on my laptop to tot 2.6.12-10; the sound stopped working.

Chocolate Brunch Waffles

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup NESTLE® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
  • 3/4 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • Toppings (whipped cream, chocolate shavings, sifted powdered sugar, fresh fruit, ice cream)

Directions

  1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl.
  2. Microwave morsels and butter in medium, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH (100 percent) power for 1 minute; stir.
  3. Microwave at additional 10- to 20-second intervals, stirring until smooth.
  4. Cool to room temperature. Stir in milk, eggs and vanilla extract.
  5. Add chocolate mixture to flour mixture; stir (batter will be thick).
  6. Cook in Belgian waffle maker* according to manufacturer’s directions. Serve warm with your choice of toppings.

[Editor’s Note:] As a child one of my favorite things to have for breakfast was waffles. Unfortunately, we didn’t own a waffle iron so I almost never got to have them. Ariesna and I have had a waffle iron for a while now but our attempts at making waffles have been… less than entirely successful. We had been buying those box mixes at the store but the waffles made from them always sat like lead in our stomachs. Yesterday, we were talking about trying to make waffles again. Since I’ve had such good luck with AllRecipes.com; I went to their site to search for waffle recipes and found bunches of them. I copied several into an email and forwarded them to Ariesna. This morning she went through them and decided to make these Chocolate Brunch Waffles. They turned out scrumptious. Though I do have a couple of caveats about this recipe.

  • Be very careful not to overcook them or they come out crunchy.
  • The recipe makes a great many of the waffles. Come hungry or have something you can freeze them in.
  • While very tasty, these waffles are still have something of a bread-like texture and aren’t as light/fluffy as the ideal waffle should be.