2008 May Archive at The Wheeler Family

Archive for May, 2008

Crazy BIG weekend!!!

Published by Kate on May 18, 2008 in Audrey, Chris and Family. 6 Comments

Well, it is finally Sunday night and the weekend is over! It was a GINORMOUSLY packed weekend of fun and excitement! Friday night was Audrey’s 7th Birthday party! She had four friends from school and her best friend, Elise over for TWO HOURS of all things High School Musical! First the girls played High School Musical SING IT! After that, they enjoyed THREE pizzas and cake

The next day was Saturday which was Chris’s graduation from the University of Iowa It was definitely a loooooooooooooong graduation program but Michael, Audrey, and I are SO proud of Chris, so we were willing to sit there at Carver Hawkeye Arena for 2+ hours! Later in the afternoon we all convened at my parents house for a super fun graduation party! So many family and friends joined us and it was wonderfully fun with just the right amount of food (although, you may hear arguments from other people about this).

And TODAY, Sunday is Audrey’s 7th BIRTHDAY!!! So Daddy and Audrey took off today for a Daddy-Daughter day where they enjoyed a VERY fancy brunch at the Iowa River Power Company and then some shopping at the Coral Ridge Mall. While they were gone, Grandma Staley and Linda Kopping sneaked over to our house where we redecorated Audrey’s room! We repainted the room, erasing 4 years of toddler and young children’s drawing, and then hung up her brand new sparkly curtains and made her bed with her new bedset from Grandma and Grandpa Staley! We called Daddy to tell him it was safe to come home, so I sat in her room with the camera to catch her face when she saw her room As she opened her door this is what she saw…

2008 Pinewood Derby is in the books…

Published by Christopher on May 7, 2008 in Michael. 3 Comments

So before I write about what happened tonight, I want you to read my post from last year: Last years Pinewood Derby recap. Go ahead, I’ll wait, just come back when you’re done…

So basically, this year was exactly like last year. Sometime last week I told Michael that when we were finished with this car, I wanted to start on next years car almost right away, like in a few weeks, so we would have plenty of time and didn’t have to rush. I said the same thing last year.

Last year I said this:

Since we were running so close with time this year I feel like we missed out on some things that really would have helped Michael’s car do better, like doing a better job of polishing the axles, or sanding the car even smoother to cut down on friction. Our axles were bent and I didn’t even try to straighten them, and I thought about trying to align the wheels but just didn’t have the time.

Those things are the EXACT things I wasn’t happy with about Michael’s car this year.

Last year I closed by post by saying:

Finally, a special thank you to Kate, for allowing us to take over the kitchen table for the past few days, and not getting too mad when I spent money on stuff for a wooden car.

Well, same thing this year.

Kinda strange how this works out I guess huh?

Last year, in Michael’s first year, he placed 4th out of 17 kids, missing 3rd place and a trophy by not much at all.

Anyways, on to the good stuff I guess…

This is obviously a VERY rough cut. I drilled the holes in the back first before I cut the general wedge shape with a coping saw. The cutting would have been much easier if I had a vise to hold the block. Also, if we had a vise to hold the block, I would have made Michael cut it instead of me.

This is the finished car, rear left. Notice the personalized license plate!

This is the front right of the car.

This obviously is the bottom of the car.

I don’t have video yet like last year. But, when I get it, it is going to be sweet. I borrowed an HD camcorder from work and I need to transfer the video over… I will do it as soon as I can.

Well, so about the results…

Like I mentioned, last year, 4th out of 17 kids.

Tonight Michael placed 2nd out of 16 kids. Way to go Michael!

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Sometimes, I hate my job

Published by Christopher on May 7, 2008 in Really Annoying. 3 Comments

So anyways, for those of you who don’t know how the printing here at the University of Iowa works, they installed this new system with a series of checks to make sure you really want to print whatever it is you want to print. The way it works is this:

Step #1: You click “print” like you normally would when printing a document.

Step #2: A little box pops up with the document information, such as number of pages and total cost. You click OK.

Step #3: You get up from your chair, go to a different computer called the “Print Release Station” (some of you may remember this from a previous post) and sign in with your HawkID. There you are presented with a screen that lists your print job(s) as well as number of pages and total cost.

So, before you can print ANY document, you have have to confirm printing THREE different times. At any time before you click OK the third time, you can choose not to print the job. First, you could choose not to click Print in the first place, but if you do, when the little box pops up on your computer, you can cancel. If you do click ok and decide that you don’t want the job printed, you can either a) just not log in to the Print Release Station, or b) if you do log in to the Print Release Station, you can STILL click Cancel.

Drew and I have had discussion about whether or not the system is excessive. I’m not exactly sure what the reasoning was for the University to install this system. I think I can guess a few of them. A lot of people used to print a job and not pick it up right away and forget and walk out and leave it. It’s wasn’t unheard of for a person to print a job and not pick it up right away and somebody else swiping a job that wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t exactly an infrequent occurrence for somebody to print a job that they didn’t need, or sometimes print a whole document when you needed just one page.

Which leads us to today’s story. Some girl had a big document, something like 100 pages or so. She needed just 2 copies of 1 page of the document. Well, as it turns out, she ended up printing the entire document twice. So instead of paying a dime for 2 pages, she ended up getting charged 10 bucks for 200 pages. Those of you who have been paying even not so close attention could probably figure out from what I have written here that there were numerous opportunities for this girl to bail on the job and reprint it the way she wanted.

So, he job starts coming out, and I hear her mutter “Oh crap” or something like that. She started grabbing all the pages she didn’t need and started gently placing them in the recycle bin. A few seconds later she asked me if there was any way I could cancel her job. I told her that I couldn’t and asked her if there was a problem. She told me what happened, and seriously, as politely as I could, I mentioned that she had several opportunities to cancel the job herself before it came out. Then she muttered something to the guy standing next to her something like “If he just get off his lazy fat ass maybe he could do something about this” and I replied that really, there wasn’t anything I could do. So then she just starts grabbing her extra pages and starts THROWING them violently into the recycle bin and swearing and stuff about how stupid this whole thing was and how she wishes I would just do something to fix it.

By that point, if I could have fixed it, I probably wouldn’t have. But anyways, I couldn’t. Duh.

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It’s beginning to feel a lot more like summer…

Published by Kate on May 5, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

How about we catch up the theme to the blog! NO MORE SNOW!!!

The Wheeler Family

Archive for May, 2008

Crazy BIG weekend!!!

2008 Pinewood Derby is in the books…

Sometimes, I hate my job

It’s beginning to feel a lot more like summer…

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