Joe and Jamie's Blog

Here’s another little toy I finally bought. Jamie’s camera doesn’t use the typical digital camera  USB cord, it has some weird, funky, bulky connector that is bundled with the audio cables as well. Needless to say it has become a hassle for me when I want to pull pictures off of it. I used to go to her laptop and transfer the files to my computer because I found it easier with the SD slot in the laptop than that silly cable on mine.

Any-who, I broke down and purchased a Transcend TS-RDM5W USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader reader for my computer last week from Newegg.com. Price was about $18 straight to the door. It accepts every kind of digital media there is out there today, even those little itsy-bitsy micro-SD chips, which Jamie’s phone uses coincidentally. I read all the reviews and based my pick on what other people thought. I don’t typically do that, but I have never had to buy a card reader before. It has been pretty good so far. The only annoying thing is that it uses four drive letters for the slots and I needed to play the guessing game as to which slot was which drive letter. As soon as I found out I labeled each one and changed the drives letters to my liking. I transferred pictures from a SD and xD card at the same time and it is working just as fast as USB flash drives and a bazillion times faster than that stupid cable!

Card reader in action, lookout now!

Crappy photo, but vioala anyway. This is what happens when you open and throw away the case before you look at the pictures to see if it came out.

Last week I bought a new flash drive off Newegg.com for Jamie since she lost her old one. I purchased a 4GB drive from OCZ Technology. I have used their flash drives religiously in the past and never had any issues. Always fast data transfer rates and never corrupt/missing/unreadable data. I highly recommend this brand, as well as Newegg.com for their prices. Can you believe this was only $14.00 delivered to my door? Remember when 4GB flash drive was unheard of?..I think it was only last Tuesday…

I have some unfortunate news, Doodle has passed away.

When I woke up this morning Doodle was acting very strange. He was near the top of the tank barely moving, just floating with the current. I went near him, but he swam to the bottom so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I started to research this while at work today and found several reasons why this could be happening.

1. Overfeeding or bad diet can cause digestive problems. – I rule this out because Doodle was new and he didn’t eat much at all. Bubbles comes to the top to eat and would eat all the flakes before Doodle got them. I also hand fed Doodle because of this, so I know he only ate a flake or two since Saturday.
2. Swim Bladder issues – I rule this out because he had no problem swimming around until this morning. So unless he developed it overnight (which now I think he actually did) then it wasn’t this.
3. Dirty water conditions – I still think this is why. Bubbles was in that water for two weeks before Doodle, so Bubbles was used to the conditions, Doodle was not. With just Bubbles all I did was change the water once a month which was fine, but now that there was two I should take out at least 15% of the water each week.

I had Jamie run to the store and get two gallons of water and change it out because of #3. Doodle responded better for a bit, but didn’t recover. Jamie went to the store to get test kits for the water when my mother found Doodle behind the filter on his side.

So farewell Doodle, we barely knew ye. You were the best looking Telescope goldfish Petco had, sorry you had to go.

Off to Petco to get some test kits now, possibly a Doodle2 later tonight….maybe Doddle Jr or Doodler, not sure how the sequel name will go yet.

[UPDATE]

Jamie and I went back to Petco last night and grab a test kit and then headed home. We tested the water and the pH, hardness and nitrate leves were just fine. Nitrite was a bit high and the ammonia levels were a bit more on the stress than safe side.  We plan to change out two additional gallons of water this weekend before purchasing another fish. I talked with the people at Petco for a long time last night, going over everything. I learned that we did pretty much everything correctly and that it could have been anything that killed the fish. They said that it could have just been the fish itself and that it probably wasn’t anything serious that would affect the other fish. I tend to agree with them now, especially after Jamie read that Telescope Goldfish are the hardest goldfish to care for. They are not recommended for beginners (that’s what we are obviously) and that they are prone to disease and die more often than others.

So we think we may hold off on the Telescope Goldfish again, unless we use our second smaller tank for it by itself. We now have our eye on a Black Moor or Calico Fantail. We’ll see this weekend which one wins I guess.

Web-Market.us reported this morning that it made a complete sale. I have had many people in the past click checkout but not actually purchase anything. Hooray for the first sale! You can read more over at the HanniganWebCompany Blog, or click here.

As I said in the last pet post, we have had our eye on a certain fish, a companion for Bubbles. Well this weekend Petco finally restocked their Telescope Goldfish, so we just had to get one!

Meet Doodle. Unlike Bubbles, Doodle likes to just float around the bottom, swimming here and there. Bubbles is the one that non-stop swims around the tank. I think Doodle is just getting adjusted. I was surprised how Bubbles reacted with another fish in the tank, it was as if the other wish wasn’t even there. Now they swim around together and I have no worries of coming home and finding only one fish. I caught them playing what looked like tag today which was fun to watch for a bit.

Next we plan to get a tropical fish since we need to put the smaller tank to good use. We saw this shark looking fish with a flat white bottom with whiskers like a catfish. I forget the name and can’t find a picture online so you’ll just have to wait till we get one to show you what I mean.

Some of you may know that Jamie and I have been sleeping on a twin for almost 2 years now. It was time we went out and got a new mattress. We took advantage of the Labor Day sales and ordered a new Serta Perfect Sleeper Intriguing Euro Top Queen mattress with split boxes and a new frame from Sleepy’s. We had the mattress delivered last Sunday and the old one taken away. It was a really great deal. Because of our two different needs of a mattress we settled for a semi-plush, semi-firm mattress.

It has been almost a week and we have been sleeping great. Just need to pick up a new bed skirt to hide the box springs.

Here are some of its features from the Sleepy’s website:

Features:
Unit:
Foam Encased Coil Unit – 14 3/4 Gauge Wire
Continuous wire design
Head to toe helicals
Posturized center
Heavy Duty clipped border rod

Quilt:
Pillow Fill
Fireblocker Insulator
Zoned Convoluted Foam
Super Soft Foam

Upholstery:
Visco Memory Foam
5 zoned Convoluted foam
Serta Comfort Foam
Fireblocker Insulator

Bottom:
High Density Foam
Fireblocker Insulator

We upgraded Bubbles to a 10 gallon tank. He seems a bit more calm now since he has more room and more oxygen in the air. I think it was mostly the current in the small tank. We needed to aerate the small tank so he had enough oxygen, but that caused a bit of a current which Goldfish don’t tend to like too much.

Jamie and I have been eying some companions for Bubbles, so maybe more to come this weekend. For now watch another video of Bubbles in his new home.

Here are the past articles on this topic to follow along:
2008/03/23/a-little-housework-remodling-the-attic
2008/03/24/continued-house-work-in-the-attic
2008/04/14/progress-on-the-attic-project

Now as you probably notice this has been going on since March. Well from April til now nothing has gotten done except for maybe a few touches here and there. We both were way to busy on the weekends with soccer and work to get anything done. We don’t normally take this long to do simple painting, but eh, it’s done now.

Jamie and I wanted to finish painting our bedroom before school started, which was Monday. We did get it all done last week which was tough but great now that it is all finished. The colors came out nice and we are happy. Only thing left to do is paint the door and jam, but I am waiting for a day that I can remove the door to fix it up a bit. After we finish the door, there is just a section outside that needs to be completed, behind my clothing rack. This was a pretty inexpensive area to do, just a few gallons to complete the whole floor. Now I have to go finish hanging all the pictures again!