More Bad Luck!!

Well, I think my VW felt bad about it being left out of my blog, so it gave me a really nice streak of bad luck too.

So, it starts off by loosing a fog light, then a tail light, and then finally a head light. I guess it was like a "car stroke", all on the same side. Then, shortly after the head light died, I hit the rim pulling into the In-Laws house... "What the..." I get out, and sure enough, it is looking really low. It turned out to have only 5 psi when I checked it at the service station. So, I take it in to the tire place where I bought the tires from. They say, it had a nail and they couldn't fix it because it was ran low and now had a "ripple". On the positive side, they replaced it for free. So, they put on the spare, and ordered a new one. Of course it would be the only tire they didn't have in stock anywhere in the entire valley.
After A few days they call and say it is in. Trying to squeeze it into a over packed Christmas schedule, I take it back to them after work that night on my way to pick up the kids from the in-laws. Well, then their car lift managed to destroy the big plastic cover under the engine, which VW bends you over for .3k+ to replace. On the positive side, it was already "beat to stink" and probably need to be replaced soon anyway and they paid for most of it. I was also bummed because I thought they had lost the VW center cap and the lug nut caps. But they found them later in the compartment that holds the spare tire tools.
Later, I tried to fix the headlight on my own and ended up breaking another stupid piece of plastic on the light housing. Funny thing was, I was trying to fix the wrong side. I decided that was semi lucky but didn't try again and instead had a mechanic fix the headlight and the fog light when I had the engine splash guards replaced. Also, On the bright side, since I had already bought the parts he didn't charge me for fixing the lights.
Oh, and sometime in the middle of all that mess I picked up a speeding ticket on the freeway. It's funny how you never feel guilty even when you know your guilty. Oh, I managed to talk the court down another 15 bucks and give me a month extension to find the money to pay it.
I almost forgot, I also decided to decorate my front right fender backing out of the garage by turning the wheel before I was totally clear. I guess that was a double dip for the custom garage door frame dark blue stucko decoration on the participating garage door frame.
I know it doesn't sound all that bad, but I left out all the normal "day to day" crappy stuff, that always seems to happen at the same time. Which makes it all total up to be a good kick in the shorts. OK, I feel better now. :)

Pass2Go: Portable Automated Password Manager, Form Filler, Password Generator for USB key, ZIP disk

Ok, I found this to be really cool... personally I had gotten lazy with my passwords. I couldn't be bothered trying to remember long random unique passwords for every website that wanted me to log in. I found myself reusing weak passwords that I wouldn't forget. Recently I started listening to the Security Now podcast from the security site GRC.com and they had this program listed in the show notes, along with a few others I tried but didn't care for. Since, I seem to lose or my wife washes all the scraps of paper with my passwords on them this was exactly what I was looking for. Something quick, easy, portable and secure. Anyway, I've been using it with it's downloadable firefox extension and really really like it. I sleep better knowing that my email or whatever is protected by something a little harder to guess than "bobdog" or "asdf123" and I'm not scared to make them all unique. (um, I know usb sticks are still prone to hitchhiking a ride through the washer in my pocket, so it probably wouldn't hurt to make a backup stick every so often)

Read more at www.roboform.com/pass2g...

'Leap second' to be added on Dec. 31

I wonder if this is going to screw anything up or if most people will never know the difference. Don't forget to set your clocks back before you goto bed. Myself? I'm looking forward to that extra second of sleep time. :)

Read more at news.com.com/2061-11204...

Writely - The Web Word Processor

This web app looks really promising! I am most excited about the collaborative feature and ease of use. Still fiddling with it, but I like what I see so far. (Um, pay for another Office suite? what?)

Read more at www.writely.com/BasePag...

Protopage v2 released - free AJAX start pages now with RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks

I think this has a lot of potential. If nothing else it is flexable and better than most potential start pages (with a bit of personal effort and creativity)

Read more at www.protopage.com/v2