I’ve had a problem with the taps in my house for a while.

Two of them had a slow leak, one is an occasional drip, the other a steady drip. They’ve been on my “to do” list for a while, but life has a tendency to get in the way of the little projects.

Today, we had a more pressing issue that got those two and more done.

I’ve noticed some moisture under the kitchen sink. My wife got under there and started removing all the crap we had stored in the cabinet below (it’s a large area, and there was a ton of junk that had accumulated over the years). Oh yeah… we had a problem. Apparently, the sprayer hose on my sink was split at the joint where it attaches to the faucet. Every time you turned the sink on, it would start dripping wildly down there.

With quite a bit of water all over the wood in there, we had to remove everything and set up a fan. Once it started to dry, my wife applied a bleach solution to kill anything attempting to grow on the wood. While she was doing that, I ran to the hardware store.

I picked up a couple of cartridges for the two leaking faucets I had mentioned earlier, and started pricing a new spray hose.

$40?!? For a friggin’ spray hose?!?

“Screw that”, I said, and started looking at new faucets. The one we had was a little dated, so I looked at my options. I settled on a Delta faucet where you could grab the head and pull it out of the neck for use as a sprayer. Of course, it was $128, but I had a gift card of $50 as part of a rebate on a ladder we had purchased to paint the house, so it was the same price as a normal one (and apparently the MSRP is over $100 more… so in retrospect, I got a smokin’ deal).

Two hours and 3 trips to the hardware store later… everything is done. No leaks, no drips, life is good!

Today is my little sister’s birthday.

While I won’t say exactly how old she is, suffice it to say that she’s younger than I, and I’m older than dirt.

Happy birthday!

I posted last week about the joys of being a programmer when the scope creep becomes scope sprint and no matter how exactly you follow the design spec they provided, that’s not what they wanted at all.

Today announces the release of the same application, 80% re-written, with all the new requested functionality.

Of course, I’m fully expecting to get beaten up again, because they’ve had a whole week to think about it and the new features will spark even more ideas.

This thing started as a simple data storage project. Enter the data, look at the data, perhaps modify the data. I was told point blank that it was not to be used for reporting.

It now generates reports-o-plenty, does email notifications, and is so user friendly, a 6 year old can use it.

I’m sure that I’ll be re-writing it again by the end of the day.

Microsoft released a patch for the WMF exploit yesterday.

If you use Windows and you haven’t done live update yet… do it now (or click here to get the update directly).

Do not delay, do it now, damn it!

Or not… but then I don’t want you to bitch to me about how you got SpyAxe (or something else equally as nasty) on your PC later (and no…. I will not fix your computer).

Oh yeah… the work week begins.

First work day of the new year, and already, I’m praying for a quick death.

Server problems, application problems, and the fact that people can’t/wont give you a product design spec that actually meets their expectations.

“Make an application that does this but not that”.

<insert two weeks and a fully functional application that matches the spec>

“Why doesn’t the application do that?!? I need it to do that right away!!!”

I shall now place upon my head the mighty turban of all knowledge and write them an application that provides everything that might be, complete with flash pie charts and animated bar graphs. It will tell you all about your data, remind you to water the plants in your cubicle, and propel you straight up the corporate ladder with stunning velocity.

Then I’ll never have to deal with your ass again. They don’t let me talk to important people.

In other news…. I purchased a couple of lottery tickets yesterday.