It was good.  Mostly.  The veggie burger, not so much.  I washed the taste of it out of my mouth with onion rings and the usurial “daddy tax” I levied on the kids’ milkshakes…standard practice when I’m buying the tasty treats.

     Unable to locate official nutritional information on Fudds food I contacted the company through their website.  They asked for which items, I answered, they provided:

Here’s the available nutritional information you have requested:

Menu Item	Total Calories (kcal)	Saturated Fat (g)	Sodium (mg)	Total Carbs (g)
Original Burger, 1/3 lb	500	9	439	27
Veggie Burger, 1/2 lb with Wheat Bun	359	2	1114	63
Turkey Burger, 1/2 lb with Wheat Bun	627	11	974	42
Original Grilled Chicken Sandwich	540	4	1074	38
Kids Macaroni and Cheese (1 serving)	340	3	830	48
Fries, Small	296	3	572	36
Onion Rings, Regular	566	6	1367	58
Sweet Potato Fries	485	2	373	61
Vanilla Shake	630	18	411	86
Vanilla Shake with Malt	660	18	444	91
Cookies N Cream Shake	677	18	591	89
Cookies N Cream Shake with Malt	707	18	624	94

 Thank you for your interest in Fuddruckers.

     I thanked them then asked for the whole list.  They couldn’t go for that…no can do:

Hello Paul,

 Sorry for the delayed response.  I wish I could send you the information I use; however it’s an unofficial list and I am unable to do so.  We hope to have this information available in the near future.

 Thank you for your continued loyalty and patronage.

     So here’s the plan…everyone ask for a different item and post it in the comments here.  Eventually we’ll have a more complete list.

     In the meantime, I think I’ll stick to my regular turkey burger, skip the fries, and tax the hell out of the kids’ shakes…and my wife’s sweet potato fries!

Swedish meatballs and affordable furniture for all the workers of the world!

As often happens when family gets together the conversation naturally turns to IKEA.  IKEA’s one of my favorite stores, so filled with hope and promise…truly an uplifting experience even if it’s impossible to turn their carts when fully loaded.  The carts, that is – I’ve never shopped at IKEA when I was fully loaded.

Chris asked, “Hey, have you heard the IKEA song?”  This may have been a ruse to give himself the opportunity to pull out his new iPhone and play the song through it but it failed.  The lyrics were difficult to understand so it was TiVo to the rescue.  In short order we had the video up on the TV, the family gathered ’round, and it was good:

I have several Billy bookcases myself, I noted with pride.

“What’s this about IKEA banned commercials’”, I think, eyeing a related search result.  Click first, ask questions later is what I always say*. Watch it below and meet me after, or navigate away now because the rest of the discussion won’t make sense.

When I wrote “the family gathered ’round” I meant all of us, including my 3 kids (ages 12, 10, and 7).  The only thing that saved me from having to come up with a good explanation for the 3rd commercial was the kids themselves.  “It’s a missile!” one of them announced and they proceeded to crack up about the little boy playing with a missile.  “Yes”, all the adults agreed, “a missile!”

Is that an IKEA product I missed as I aimlessly wandered the displays of “six rooms of furniture in 250 square feet!”?  The “håppybringûn” perhaps?  “Climákks”?  “Steêlydån”? 

Speaking of IKEA names (smooth, ain’t I?), check out the “Swedish Furniture Name Generator“.  At first I thought it was a cute idea, even if I ended up as an uninspired product.

I spend the best years of my life sitting on my ass and I come back as a chair. Just great.

Plugging in my daughter’s name, though, gave me a more worrisome product.

Translation: Swedish boys entering my yard will beaten with my large collection of Allen wrenches and tiny pencils.

Really?  Don’t I have enough to worry about without you throwing that out there, not-IKEA website?  If it’s any consolation to me, my stepdaughter (now 21) told me tonight that she still remembers what I said when she got her first menstrual cycle.  I told her on the first anniversary of her cycle I’d bake her a red velvet cake using my hemispherical cake pan…you know, the one that looks like a 3-D period. 

Wow, and I always thought she never listened to a word I said.  This is great!  I just need to find the right thing to say to my daughter and…and…

Forget it.  Any outcome depending on me saying the right thing will never come to pass.  I guess I’ll just have to stock up on lingonberry wine and ride out the red storm rising the best I can.

* I’ve never said that.  Ever.

We’re remodeling our unused dining room into a home office.  To save money I’m installing the floor.

The hard drive in our Series 3 TiVo failed.  The first clue?  Hearing the japanese audio channel for “The Perils of Penelope Pitstop” coming from one speaker.  The nail in the coffin was the frequent rebooting when watching a show or using the menu.

My oldest son is bridging to Boy Scouts this Friday and I have yet to finish painting his career arrow, which will be presented to him then.

This same son got in a fight today at school and has been suspended for two days. 

My stepdaughter was in a car accident today.

I still haven’t taken the written test for my private pilot’s certificate.

Which one of these pressing issues do you think I tackled first?

Fixing the TiVo, of course.  It makes perfect sense because I rarely watch TV.

(I actually dealt with my son first…besides receiving lectures from both parents and a chore list from mom, he owes me oral reports on the 2 volumes of “Shakespeare Can Be Fun!” I checked out from the library on the way home from work.)

When I found out TiVo wanted $149 to replace the hard drive I thought, “hey, now I have an excuse to buy one of the new ones coming out next month!”.  I came to my senses and realized I could upgrade our Series 3 with a new, 4x larger hard drive for less than the repair cost and certainly less than the cost of a new TiVo.

And heck, it would probably take me 30 minutes, max.  How hard could it be, right?

I ordered a 1 TB drive from Amazon.com.  Fancy.  $90.  Western Digital 1 TB Hard Drive WD10EVDS  With WD drives you should see item 29 in this post.  There’s a link to a bootable CD there with a utility program (wdidle3) used to tweak the settings on the WD “green” drives so they don’t cause problems with the TiVo.

I downloaded this free software in the hopes of not having to pay any more to restore my TiVo.  WinMFS  This post explains opening your TiVo and using the software beautifully.

I watched this video to see how to take out the hard drive.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca5EUGZsqvU  You will need Torx 10 and Torx 15 bits, though.  It looks like he uses the T10 on the screws holding the drive to the bracket but those are T15 screws.

I bought this software because my disk was bad in the wrong places so the free software did not work.  $40.  InstantCake  Read each screen carefully, so you won’t have to start over like I did.

It took longer than 30 minutes, probably about 3 hours total.  Here are some pictures.  This is one of those “archival” or “documentary” posts, not meant for entertainment.  Next post will amuse you.

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