Yep today is my birthday! I turned 22 today.

Also, 3 days ago on the 5th of October was the birthday for my website also. My site turned 3 years old on the 5th. I actually had a personal website prior to October 5th, 2005, but it didn’t have the jeremyjefferson.com until that date.

As some of you know, I am a Chicago Cubs fan.  Here once again in the playoffs the Cubs are probably preparing to be swept out of the NLDS again.  If the Cubs lose tonight it will be 9 straight post season loses since 2003 when the Marlins came back on us after being down 3-1 in the NLCS.

I can’t begin to express my disappointment, heartbreak, and overall sadness.  Odds are at this time tomorrow the Cubs 2008 year will be complete, and they will go down in the most humiliating fashion ever once again, getting swept out of the playoffs.

This also means that the Cubs era of no championships will extend into a second century.  How much longer can I take this?  I really am not sure.

I’d also like to take the time to recommend any Cubs fans who find this post on Google or some other search engine to look into Cubscast.  Cubscast is a podcast with 2-3 episodes a week.  It is done by 3 die hard Cubs fans who give really good insight into the Chicago Cubs.  You can find a link to Cubscast on my sidebar to the left, or by Clicking Here.

Yep, I really did.  I’m fine though, and how I did it was pretty funny actually.

My mom came upstairs and woke me up to tell me the Internet was not working.  I thought this was just a case of the router freezing up or something so I went into my back room to reset the router.  I noticed however that the DSL and Activity lights were not on/flashing on the DSL modem.

I restarted the modem figuring it had just froze up, although it had never done that before.  It still would not connect.

I assumed that either my dad either didn’t pay the Internet bill or the ISP was just down right now.  I asked my mom if he paid it, and she said yes.  Thus I just figured the ISP was having issues or doing something right now.

After a while, maybe 5-10 minutes, I had a thought.  One of our dogs, Bailee, was chewing around the top of the steps last night.  I thought she was just chewing the floor board.  I went and looked and sure enough, she had chewed through the phone cable that runs along that step.  There was the issue.

Okay, so here I was.  My dad was at work, who would normally fix this type of thing.  I didn’t want to wait 6 hours for him to get home so I started to work on it myself.

I knew if I could strip the wires and reconnect them and tape them back together I could get Internet again.  Unfortunately I could not locate my dad’s good pair of wire strippers.

I used my pocket knife to get the outer cover off each end of the wire, but obviously the two wires inside the phone cable were too small to use my knife.  I decided, I would use my teeth.

I first did the side that goes to the modem.  I got both of the covers off the wires showing the copper inside.  I then started on the other one (that goes to the wall downstairs.  I put the wires in my mouth and OUCH!

I pulled the wires back out of my mouth then thought I had just poked myself with the bit of copper that was showing, I started to put it back inside my mouth but realized, that hurt way too much to be just a poke then I remembered, this thing has current running through it.

Basically I electrocuted my tongue a little.  It still hurts a little right now, about an hour after the fact.

After that I went down and disconnected the other end of the wire from the wall and went back upstairs and continued what I was doing with the wire; stripping it with my teeth.

I have it rigged right now and working, but we had no electrical tape so I used shipping tape to just tape the wires to the wood floor.  Its rigged so it will work fine right now until my dad gets home and does it properly.

I guess I’m just lucky phone wire just has a couple volts running through it.

I am proud to announce that I have a new free hit counter service on my JWJKP site.  Please feel free to check it out.  You are required to have an account with me however to use this site.  Registration is fast, easy, and best of all, free.

My goal is to offer some of the most advanced free hit counter available on the web.  This includes the ability to highly customize your hit counter and view detailed stats about your hits.  These stats include detailed logs with graphs.

This is still a work in progress but it is fully functional right now.

The best part is, these counters can be used on sites such as eBay.com.

Click here to check it out.

Well, yesterday I went back to the doctor for my follow-up appointment for my hernia surgery.  He told me everything looks good.

I have a little bruising around the incision that has started to go down over the past couple of days.  He said it should be completely gone within a couple days.

Unfortunately, he said I would still have some swelling around the incision for another month.  Its not swollen that much right now, but it does bother me from time to time.

I am pretty much back to normal with very little pain.  When I wake up in the morning, or get up after sitting for a while I am a little sore but once I get moving I am fine.

Oh, and the doctor also told me that my hernia was pretty big.  He said it was no wonder it was bothering me.  He also said that I have had it since birth.