I have a couple additions to my life hack list of upgrades and downgrades.

Upgrade: Skagen Watch
My last list downgraded to not wearing a watch. I have gone a year without a watch, and still recommend it if you can do without one. If you have to wear a watch, take the time and invest in something that compliments you and your lifestyle. I own a beautiful Skagen 105LTX titanium watch that is extrememly light with an absolutely minimul face. I tried to replace the battery myself today before I realized that I was going to scratch it up. I went to Walmart and they were able to replace the battery but their machine wasn’t strong enough to put the back back on. I had to go to a jewelery store because they have more powerful presses. Apparently more expensive watches require professional maintenance so save yourself some time and money and just go to a jewelry store in the first place.

Upgrade: Bean Bag Wrist Support
I am starting to feel Carpal Tunnel in my right wrist so I did what I have been meaning to do for a long time. They make gel pads, but I went with the bean filled one falling for the description on the box claiming it was designed by an orthopaedic surgeon. You have to go to an office support to get one (not Walmart).

Downgrade: More Salad, Less Bread
I loosely taken on the South Beach Diet. I have never been on a diet before, but this was relatively easy and it worked. I lost a little over ten pounds. More than a miracle diet, South Beach trains you to eat better. I have never been over weight, but it has been nice to see people comment on my slimmer waist and face. Running has helped too.

Downgrade: Unflitered Beer
Now you know why I said I “loosely” started dieting. Ok, this one is a stretch I know, but I wanted to tell you about my current favorite beer. To quote the Odell’s website, “Easy Street Wheat is an unfiltered American-style wheat beer. Leaving in the yeast gives the beer a nice, smooth finish and a slightly citrusy flavor. Easy Street Wheat gets its name by brewers “taking it easy” and not filtering the beer. However, for ultimate enjoyment, we encourage you to work just a little harder in pouring it: just pour 2/3 of the beer into a glass, swirl what’s left to stir up the yeast, then pour the rest and enjoy.” Easy Street is made locally in Fort Collins, and I am hoping to tour the brewery one of these days. Perhaps for my birthday in November.

I thought we had put the car accident in our past, but a couple letters last week brought it back to the forefront of our minds. There are some big developments actually.

First, Betsy got a subpoena to testify in a case of the City of Evans vs. Eliza Hill. We were surprised to learn that Eliza is claiming that she wasn’t responsible for the accident. Whatever. Betsy will tell her story and it will be interesting to see how things turn out.

Then yesterday we got a letter from Eliza Hill’s insurance company. They are not going to pay Betsy’s injury claim. They said, “It has been determined that Nationwide Insurance Company is not liable for this accident. Therefore, we will not be making any payments to you for bodily injury or property damage.” Then comes the good part, “It has been discovered that Walmart was the cause of this accident due to negligence by the employee that was performing work on our insured’s vehicle prior to this accident. Please contact Walmart’s claim representative to proceed with your claim.”

So this is what appears to have happened: Eliza went to Walmart to get her car looked at. She left Walmart and according to Eliza’s sister, they pulled over because the car’s gas peddle was sticking. Eliza started driving the car again, the gas peddle stuck, and she ran a red light hitting three cars.

I would assume that the trial is now going to involve Walmart. I am not the judge, and I obviously don’t know all the facts, but it seems to me that Walmart isn’t completely liable for this accident. Eliza clearly recognized that there was a problem with her car because she pulled over before the accident. Eliza became liable for the accident when she got in her car knowing that there was a problem. She was negligent because she didn’t honk or try stopping when she reached the intersection. That is negligence despite the failure of Walmart to fix Eliza’s car. It will be interesting to hear what the judge says.

(Update September 14, 2006)
I talked with Wal-Mart’s insurance and the filled in a few more clues. Eliza went to Wal-Mart to get her oil changed. She alleges that the person who did the work forgot to put the oil cap back on. The cap became wedged against the throttle. The plot thickens.

A vacation? Noooo. A long weekend means I close myself off to the rest of the world and crank away at some website maintenance. Most of my weekend was spent playing around with WordPress. I am a pretty loyal Movable Type user, so you know it was a last resort to even entertain the idea of switching. The main reason I wanted to give it a chance was because I am looking for an easy registration system. I want people to be able to register to be an author of a site and have an automated system to set them up. WordPress has this as a standard feature and there isn’t even a plugin for MT. To complicate things, I wanted the WordPress blog to be private. In other words, I only only want registered users to be able to view the site. The solution came in the form of a plugin called “Registered Only” and a small tweak to prevented it from hiding the registration page. Needless to say, learning WordPress and figuring out the plugin took up a good chunk of the weekend.

I also installed a shopping cart using an open source application called “ClosedShop.” It was surprisingly simple to install and get up and running. I have dreaded the day I would have to learn how to implement a shopping cart, but it turned out to be pretty painless. I only linked it to a PayPal account, so maybe processing credit cards will be harder. Check out ClosedShop if you ever have to tackle that beast.

I also played around with Amazon’s new associate option called astore. I am not sure if I will use it, but it is an easy way to set up an Amazon store. Perfect for a landing page if you own a great domain name.

Time to sign off and call it a weekend. Happy labor day.