It's more than a house. It's an adventure.

Out of hibernation

2008-05-25T13:26:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time sine I've updated. I've just been lazy. Not much to report on as far as work on the house; no major indoor projects, and we've only started working outside the past couple weeks due to weather.

The lawn is looking amazing, if I may say so. Considering that we had nothing but bare dirt 2 years ago, it's looking damn good. We have some weed issues, but nothing major. The ground is uneven in places, just need some topsoil to fill those dips.

This is only our third Spring in the house and already we're changing landscaping decisions we made ourselves. We've removed the two "corner" gardens by the sidewalk, and merged the areas around the front rosebushes (which, BTW, are already covered in flower buds) and hydrangea tree. The irises which were on those corners now fill this area. This morning my wife finished that off by putting in some scallop-top brick edgers. Somehow this all makes the front yard look larger. It's a welcome update, and will make maintenance and mowing much easier. The sod we took up was used to fill in some of the areas that are no longer gardens.

She also moved some phlox from the top of the driveway down to alongside the front sidewalk. It'll fill in and color that area nicely.

While she was working on that, I spent some time freshening up the mulch and doing some trimming of our Japanese Maple. The tree is getting big and blocking the view of the other plants near it. I also brushed some more sand over the sidewalk to keep filling in between the pavers.

Pictures hopefully later this evening after the sun moves to a better location.

Learning to use glass block

2007-11-18T15:37:00.000-05:00

In my quest to get the house a little more heat-efficient, this weekend I attacked the basement "window" by the stairs. When we bought the house, the opening in the foundation by the basement stairs where a window should have been was instead wide open, with a thin piece of foam insulation loosely tacked in place. It was very drafty and I'm sure let a few critters through. Shortly after we closed, I made a thicker, heavier baffle out of styrofoam, fiberglass insulation, and an entire roll of duct tape. It helped, but not much.

This weekend, spurred by the installation of the new front door and a $10 coupon for Lowe's, I finally fixed it up right. I decided to fill the opening with glass block, as it both insulates and will help illuminate the dim stairs.

The whole project actually went pretty smoothly, considering the space wasn't designed, modified, or modifiable for the job. I am lucky that the rough opening had previously been prepared for a window of some sort, so it had good wood all around and was square. However, I only had 16 1/2 vertical inches to work with - and 8x8 blocks. Once I installed the plastic channels all the way around, I dry-fit everything, and it was tight. Tight enough that to get the last pair of 8x8 blocks in, I had to remove one side of the lower channel to slide the block in.

Once the blocks were in, I was left with a roughly 2 inch gap on one end. I stuffed some 2" styrofoam insulation in and sealed around it. It's not the greatest solution to the situation, but it'll keep things draft-free through the winter.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the project turned out. The basement stairs definitely have more light, the opening is now sealed against bugs, mice & other small intruders, there's no draft that I can find (and if I did miss anything, I can just re-caulk), and it looks better from the outside to boot. When not used in a "structural" capacity, glass block turns out to be extremely easy to work with, requiring no mortar or other masonry tools; just the channels, spacers and silicone caulk/adhesive. They just look intimidating due to the size & some of the "special" materials. I'm looking forward to doing a future project with them.

Pictures

First Mac post!

2007-11-04T22:54:00.000-05:00

I finally did it. Thursday night I picked up the new Santa Rosa-equipped MacBook. 2.2GHz, 120GB hard drive, 1GB RAM and a SuperDrive. I'm still working on completing the switch. So far things are going pretty well but I'm still finding my way around the system.

One thing that I haven't worked out yet is continuing to use Quicken 2006 for Windows. My original plan was to convert my PC to a VMWare image and run that in VMWare Fusion. I've done that conversion and copied the image to the MacBook, but it's amazingly slow. I need more RAM for VMWare to work with. I may also have better luck with a fresh Windows install with only Quicken in it. We'll see what happens.

Switching credit cards

2007-10-28T17:08:00.000-04:00

For 10 years now, I've been a loyal Discover Card user/member. It has been my/our "default, use it unless the place doesn't take it" card, mostly because of the cash-back bonus. This weekend, that has changed. I finally made the decision to switch to the Amex Blue Cash card. Why? It's a far, far better cash-back program.

Discover maxes out at 1% cash back, across the board. Quarterly, they have specials on certain types of purchases to get 5% back on (for example) gas during the summer vacation season. But it's 0.25% for the first $1000 in purchases each year, 0.50% for the next $2000, and then 1% after that. That middle threshold may be different, I don't recall at the moment.

The Amex Blue Cash is much, much better. 1.5% on "everyday" purchases (drugstore, gas station & supermarket) and 0.5% on everything else for the first $6500/year. After that, it's 5% on the everyday stuff and 1.5% on everything else.

According to the calculator on Amex.com, our annual cash-back should be more than double using their card vs. Discover. Plus all the usual Amex member benefits. So long, Discover - it's been fun, and I'll still drop in and see you from time to time, but I'm moving on.

All lit up again

2007-10-28T15:37:00.000-04:00

When we cut off (and subsequently reconfigured) the power to the famliy room, the pantry lighting was an unfortunate casualty. That light was powered off the same circuit, for some odd reason. Yesterday afternoon, I finally picked up the requisite parts (a few conduit connectors and a junction box to use with my Genova conduit I've used previously, plus a wide, flat switch) and rewired it.

I figured the path of least resistance (that's an electrical pun, get it?) would be to tap into the electrical outlet we installed above the switch just inside the door, bring that power down to a new switch in the same place, then up to the fixture. More time-consuming than difficult. Then I thought "hey, maybe the wiring from the switch to the fixture is still good, and I can just bring power down to the switch."

So, I opened up the outlet and connected a branch to that. Pulled out the switch and the wires looked good. I was hoping to see one pair coming into the bottom of the box, which would be the supply (which I know is now dead on the other end), and then a pair going up to the fixture. No such luck. Both came into the top of the box. 2 black wires connected to the switch (the hot leads), 2 white wire-tied together (neutral). Time to play detective.

Obviously, any electrical circuit has to be "closed" to work. I connected one black and one white (to simulate closing the circuit, AKA flipping the switch to ON), then took my voltmeter on the Ohms setting to the bulb socket on the light fixture. The first 3 times (out of 4 black/white combinations), I just got OL - open loop, no closed circuit. The last attempt, paydirt! I had a closed loop with some resistance. I found my light circuit. Wire-tied the white on the Romex and white in the wall together, connected the black wires to my switch, popped a bulb into the fixture, and closed the breaker in the basement. Success!

Switched the breaker back off & closed everything up. We can finally do laundry without a flashlight. It's only been about 18 months since it last worked.

So many "little things" I need to do

2007-10-19T22:47:00.000-04:00

The weather this past week has reminded me that winter is fast approaching, and there are a lot of little things I've been putting off - some are new, some have been around a while, all really ought to be done before the weather really turns cold and the days become short. I just need a couple days all to myself, or with a dedicated assistant, to finish it off. Setting the date for the door install has made me even more anxious now. In no particular order (which is why I'm using <ul> instead of <ol>.

Mow & fertilize the lawn
Get new power run to the pantry light so that we don't have to keep doing laundry by flashlight
Pull out the stove, remove some plaster, and insulate the wall behind it. Then cover with concrete backer board and slide the stove back in. Last winter, my toes froze while cooking because there's no insulation in that wall. I'll only go up about 3 feet from the floor with it, but it'll be an improvement.
Take down some trees
Put a glass block window in the hole in the foundation wall by the basement stairs. I have a styrofoam plug in it now where a window should be, but it's most definitely not airtight and drafts come into the kitchen from there.

The stove wall and glass block window, combined with the new door, should make the kitchen a lot warmer. I won't go so far as to say "cozy" because it's just not meant to be a "cozy" room, but at least our toes won't freeze.

We did buy a new mailbox and mounted it to the wall last weekend, instead of the old, small, rusting box we had sitting on a window ledge. The new mailbox looks great and is large enough to hold magazines & keep them protected. It even locks! Also put in some solar-powered lights next to the sidewalk, but I'm unimpressed so far. They won't get enough sunlight in the fall/winter to illuminate long enough into the night to be useful. We'll give them a few more days, maybe a week, then they're going to be returned I think.

Our door is on its way!

2007-10-19T12:09:00.000-04:00

Got a call from the door folks yesterday to set up a date for our new kitchen door to get installed. We'll get it on Halloween. Just in time for winter! Now I just need to fix up the wall behind the stove and the basement window and the kitchen floor might be tolerable this winter!

Big project, very sore

2007-10-07T22:05:00.000-04:00

For a while we've been wanting to replace the front sidewalk as it had been becoming increasingly dangerous. Just some stones embedded in the ground, very uneven, large gaps where weeds grew through. The stones were growing moss and algae, and some were working loose. And a major PITA to shovel in the winter.

The last few weeks we had been getting closer and closer to actually doing it, and about midweek my wife said "ok, let's do it this weekend." I'd been reading and researching the project for a while, so I knew it wasn't necessarily a quick job.

We took some measurements of the old sidewalk and decided to go with a new, straight walkway made of paver bricks, 16 feet long by 3 feet wide. I made up a quick spreadsheet to work out how much we'd need in materials to do it. After some research on patterns, we decided that a 36" wide layout wouldn't work well with the bricks we'd selected without a lot of cutting, so we reduced it to 32" to make for an easier fit.

Friday night we went down to Lowe's to make our purchase. 250 red/charcoal paver bricks. 42 bags of base stone. A dozen bags of sand. Various other supplies and tools. Total bill: just short of $500. I asked about reserving the "Load n' Go" truck but it's on a first-come, first-served basis.

I arrived about 8:15 AM on Saturday and the truck was available. Got the paperwork taken care of and brought it around to the garden center. They loaded the bricks on first, right up at the front of the bed. At first, they set them down on the driver's side. The whole truck squatted and I thought it was going to roll, it leaned so far. They pushed it to the centerline and it leveled side to side. Then the stone & sand was loaded. At the back of the flatbed. The truck squatted even more, to the point where it clearly looked overloaded. By my math, we had loaded 1000 pounds of brick and 2000 pounds of stone & sand onto the truck. A 3/4 ton truck. This was looking to be a fun ride home. And it was. Over 50 MPH, the truck got very squirrelly, as there was very little weight on the front wheels to maintain control.

When I got the truck home, I backed it into the driveway and we set about unloading. My wife and I unloaded the truck, one bag at a time, a half dozen bricks at a time, by hand, in an hour. Not too shabby.

When I returned from returning the truck to Lowe's, the work began in earnest. We put in stakes and ran some twine to mark off the area we'd be excavating. Excavation was not too difficult as the ground was soft, but by my figures we had to remove over 1 cubic yard of dirt. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're moving it all with shovels and a wheelbarrow, it definitely is. We managed to get the job about halfway done when the sky started threatening rain. Then we heard thunder. We covered the area with plastic and within minutes, the skies opened. Saturday was over for the sidewalk.

Sunday morning we got a good start and finished digging everything out. Along the way were several surprises. First, just below the surface was a layer of sand. The previous owner had installed her sidewalk somewhat properly, putting a good sand base below the stones. Below the sand (actually, intermingled with it), was black plastic. Maybe to block weeds from growing through? I'm not sure. The biggest surprise, however, was the 4 inch diameter hole I found under a hunk of cinder block. Apparently we were standing on top of a concrete slab which covered a larger cavity. A cistern, old drywell, or septic system? Don't know yet. I'll have to check village records to find out.

Once the excavation appeared complete, we tamped the soil down. Only to discover that we'd taken too much out. An hour or so of retrieving fill & fixing low spots later and we were ready for the base material, 30+ bags of stone. We spread out & tamped 8 bags at a time so as to not go too far too fast. The downside of that is that you have to do an extreme amount of tamping. It's an excellent triceps exercise but my wrists are complaining and I've got at least one blister, on my right thumb.

Once the base stone was complete (4 inches deep), the hard part was finished. We put down 8 bags of sand and screeded it to 1 inch thick in short order. Then laid down edging for one side of the walk, laid the first course of brick, then put down the second side's edging. From there, my wife took over putting the bricks down, while I delivered them to her. Everything came together very quickly. Once the bricks were done, we filled the areas on either side of the walk which had been dug out, but weren't to get brick, then started brushing sand into the crevices. We got as much in as we could, but as things settle we'll need to brush more in to fill the gaps. Not a big deal.

I figure it was about 20 man-hours of labor. Not too bad, considering it's our first attempt. We're very pleased with the results and we look forward to enjoying our safer sidewalk for as long as we're in the house. We're very sore and very tired after this effort, but it feels really good.

Pictures of the project

Small changes

2007-09-09T22:53:00.000-04:00

We got out into the backyard again last night before dinner. Only put in about 45 minutes but we cleared about 200 square feet in a triangle shape near our west neighbors' garage. We relocated the Lenton Rose to the front of the house, but everything else (mostly peonies) was removed permanently. Also pulled out a tree, hopefully I got enough of the roots that nothing will come back.

Didn't put any seed down yet because the ground is very uneven - just not ready for it yet. I'll get that fixed soon. If the rain lets up. Rained all day today. Hopefully this will get the other seed we'd planted out back growing. The seed we put in a couple weeks ago between the kitchen and bedroom has really sprouted. Another week or two and it'll be ready to get cut. Again, if the rain stops and things have a chance to dry out. Other areas of the lawn desperately need to be mowed now with all the water they're getting, but I just can't do it now.

Major yard work

2007-09-03T21:59:00.001-04:00

A break in the weather today and someone to help take care of the little one and we were able to make some huge progress in the backyard. We managed to:

Clear out the area on the side of the shed, put in edging, and transplant a few hostas and other plants. Then the requisite mulch. There was a large cluster of peonies in that space, but we just dug them up and threw them out. We also made this area smaller than originally planned. It works better though.
We cleared more area for grass in the main part of the backyard. Unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture of this. We're now clear about 2/3 of the way across, in a straight line even with the back of our neighbor's garage. I also found some high spots to take down and use as fill for some holes. Lime, grass seed & fertilizer applied.
The area behind the bedroom (actually outside the closet wall) was a total mess, very overgrown with grass and a few plants we couldn't identify.Cleared all that out, put some more edging down to get some good definition of the flowerbed, and transplanted several "elephant ear" hostas from the area by the fence against the house wall. We laid out the last bag of mulch that we had, but came up well short.

Overall, a tremendously productive day. We may even find ourselves getting more done in the backyard for the year than we'd anticipated. That'd be a first for any of our projects!

Work pretty much stopped

2007-09-03T21:42:00.000-04:00

No updates the last couple months because there's not been much to post about. Between weather and parenthood, we haven't been able to get much done on the house. We did manage to move into the family room a couple months ago, which has been very nice. In the process, I learned a very important lesson about RG59 vs. RG6 coaxial cable. We have a few small projects left in the room, but it's habitable at least.

I did manage to finally get onto the roof and put some screening on the defunct chimney, in hopes of keeping squirrels out. I heard noises in the family room ceiling last night, however. Hopefully it's just that they gnawed through already.

And on the 530th day...

2007-06-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

Last year, we had a family friend who's an electrician come out to have a look at the family room and help us get the power situation fixed. Between my laziness, the baby coming along, and his insanely crazy schedule, the room remained dark.

Until yesterday. The stars aligned, he was able to come out for hte morning, and we now have fully functioning electrical service in the room, with safe, modern Romex wiring and a lighted ceiling fan. I've spent about 10 minutes just playing with the switch watching the fan.

All we have left to do is run speaker wire, put up the crown molding, and touch up some paint!

The pantry is still dark. The BX cable supplying it was tied into the same circuit the family room was on, tied in down in the basement (as was one basement light). Running new power to that light should be pretty easy, I just need to get some more wire molding.

So antique I'm back in fashion

2007-06-02T22:14:00.001-04:00

The Albany Times Union ran an AP story last week about the resurgence of the reel mower. Turns out that with our antique mower, we're actually ahead of the coming mower rennaisance.

Kogan and Skalinder said that, considering their yards are the size of apartment bedrooms, power mowers didn't seem necessary.
"I felt a gas-powered (mower) was a little over the top for my needs," said Skalinder, adding he didn't want to use the kind of screaming power mower that keeps him awake when he's trying to nap.

Sums it up nicely. We don't have a lot of area to mow, and between the cost of a gas mower, the maintenance, the fuel, the size (we don't have a big garage to store it in) and the noise, I don't want a gas mower. Plus, a reel mower is healthier for the grass - and me.

Our local Lowe's can't keep the mowers in stock this year, they're flying off the shelves.

Sign-on stupidity

2007-06-02T22:07:00.000-04:00

I own some of my employer's stock, purchased through our employee stock purchase plan. Money comes out of my paycheck post-tax, and goes into shares of the company once a month. There's an "investor services" website which I can log onto to check out my account, buy more stock, sell some, etc. Nice & convenient.

I also learned, about a year ago, that my position is one which the company decided is worthy of receiving options on an annual basis. Very cool indeed. I wasn't aware of this when I took the job, but I'll gladly accept. When I got my notice last month for this year's grant, the letter stated I could go on the investor services website to acknowledge it. So I logged on, but couldn't find where to do the acknowledgment. I emailed the service address, and they responded saying "we can't do anything to help you till you email us with your company code and account number."

Yeah, right. Like I'm going to send something like that via plaintext email. Why don't more financial companies make it easy/possible to email them using GPG, or just put a "contact us" form on their website instead?

Anyway, tonight I was clearing part of my desk and found information from last fall about the program which I had carelessly set aside. It turns out that there's a different section of the same site for my options program! With a different ID/password combo to sign on with.

Same institution, same employer, same employee. Can someone explain to me why I can't have a single view of everything behind one ID & password? It's asinine.

Long weekend

2007-05-29T21:56:00.000-04:00

This weekend was Memorial Day, which meant an extra day off from the paying job and an extra day to do the non-paying job - work on the yard. In reality, we only were able to work on it on Saturday, but much was accomplished.

I hauled the bags of yard junk collected over the past couple weekends (and a couple from last year) off to various places. 215 pounds to the trash place, all pulled over the past week. A few more bags to the town highway department, leftovers from last year, as well as some of the tree material we cut last weekend. And a bunch of broken bricks, found under the pond tub when I moved it.
My wife attempted to turn the pond tub into a sandbox. We (mostly she) dug a good-sized hole to plant it in, only to find the remants of a large tree stump & roots. So, she moved about 18 inches...and found the other side. It looks like someone tried to burn or grind the stump out, but only got partway through, and then buried the remains. So, she filled it all back in and spread grass seed.
While I was out lugging trash all over, I stopped at CountryMax and picked up 6 bags of mulch and a wheelbarrow so that we can return my brother in law's to him.
Some more rocks moved, some plants relocated.
Lots of watering

Tonight, I wanted to make at least a little progress, so I took my pitchfork out back and filled 2 more 39-gallon trash bags with weeds in about 30 minutes. In the process I discovered more rocks (what a shock) and more hostas (what a coincidence!). I failed at removing a Staghorn Sumac that's starting to grow - I need to get that thing out before it spreads.

Major project #2

2007-05-24T22:03:00.000-04:00

We got our quote for the other major house project earlier this month. We need to have the pantry window replaced, one of the family room windows replaced (these 2 windows are much older than any other window in the house), and the kitchen entry door & screen door replaced. The quote came out quite a bit higher than I'd anticipated, so it looks like we'll have to push at least the pantry window off to next year, unfortunately.

Bulk isn't always better

2007-05-24T21:42:00.000-04:00

We've been using a lot of mulch. More last year than this, at least so far, but still quite a bit. Every time I went out to the local CountryMax and plunked down my $11.something for 3 bags, I kept thinking "I should just get a cubic yard delivered to the house and be done with it. It's got to be cheaper."

Turns out...not so much. Most places that deliver require a minimum of 2 cubic yards to be delivered. That's far more than I need. What if we borrow a pickup? Well, then we can get the mulch we're using for about $33 per yard, but we have to use it all right away or chip away at the pile in the driveway.

9 bags of mulch is 1 cubic yard. About $36 when all is said and done. Compared to $33 for a "bulk" yard. The $3 is well worth it to me, to get the convenience of bags. I can buy what I need, when I need it, and manage it easily. No mess in the driveway, no endless wheelbarrow trips to the backyard, and I can throw it all in the back of my car.

Something you don't see every day

2007-05-23T22:02:00.000-04:00

I took an alternate route home tonight as I wanted to stop at a grocery store we don't normally visit to pick up some fish for dinner. This particular store is located in one of the ritzier suburbs, so there tends to be a higher concentration of high-dollar cars on the streets there.

As I was cruising down the road, I played leapfrog with a VW Phaeton, with the W12 engine. I'm certain I've seen this exact car in the area before, because fewer than 3000 were ever sold in the US according to that Wikipedia article. A very rare find, especially with the W12.

While I was dancing with the Phaeton, I passed a gas station. Waiting patiently to exit the station and merge into traffic was an Acura NSX. Yet another rare find! Not sure just how rare this specimen was, as I couldn't get a model year off it, nor determine what features it had. I wish I'd had my phone with me to snap a picture of each.

More water!

2007-05-23T21:49:00.000-04:00

But in a good way, this time. I asked my wife to pick up a sprinkler for the yard while she was out today, because we actually have enough greenspace which needs watering that a hand nozzle just isn't practical anymore. She grabbed a pair of Gilmour 8830Ds. I gave them a 90-minute test drive tonight and I'm pretty happy with them so far. I haven't yet been able to get a good, deep soaking on the grass yet using the hand sprayers, but these are just the ticket. I just have to make sure to carefully adjust the spigots so I don't send too much water down the hose - these sprinklers have a much maximum larger range than I need right now.

I never thought I'd actually take interest in watching a sprinkler operate. The soaking I gave the grass today means, of course, I'll have to mow tomorrow.

Five. Hundred. Days.

2007-05-23T21:31:00.001-04:00

OK, today actually marks the 499^th day we've been homeowners. Close enough. I was talking to El Gee this morning about the progress that we've made on the house lately and I decided that some pictures were in order. All pictures here that are "before" pictures were taken the weekend we placed the offer on the house. The "after" pictures were taken tonight. I present the before picture, then the after picture, with the caption between them.

The front of the house. The left side is English Ivy. The right, Pachysandra. Now it's all grass, the flowerbeds taken care of, and the town has redone the sidewalk and end of the driveway.

The area off the back of the bedroom. Totally overgrown. Cleaned up some, and the bricks exposed as I mentioned in my post the other day.

The lilac tree "island" between the driveway, bedroom & shed. The whole area, really, was overgrown. We ripped out some of the flora last spring, I started to finish the island last fall, and this spring my wife finished it off. We didn't really discuss what we wanted it to look like, but it ended up matching my vision almost perfectly.

Not bad, eh? We still need to get the grassy areas cleaned up, but a lot of that will be "nuke & pave", just tilling everything under and planting new seed. The big chores are all the plants & garden areas.

Shhhhh

2007-05-21T21:36:00.000-04:00

We have an open floorplan at work, and cube "pods" with 4 desks each and no real walls between pods. As a result, sound carries very far, and people never seem to realize how loud they're being.

In a couple weeks, we're getting a "sound masking" system. Basically, a white noise generator, with speakers scattered throughout the ceiling. It's supposed to make a constant sound similar to our air-conditioning system which will cover up and change the voice sounds.

What I'm wondering is, what will the constant exposure to this sound do to my hearing, long-term?

Weekend Update

2007-05-21T21:27:00.000-04:00

This weekend was our first serious yardwork session. My mother & sister were out visiting and we ripped into the backyard Saturday.

First off, I mowed what little grass we do have for the first time this year. Yes, it's a little late. I finally found a place to get my ancient bent-reel mower sharpened, and they did an amazing job. Last year, the mower clogged & stopped regularly, and cut very unevenly. Now, it's smooth sailing. No clogs, just a smooth, even cut. It's beautiful. The folks at Titus Ave. Mower Service did a terrific job with the mower. Given the amount of lawn we'll have when everything is finished, I won't need to get it sharpened more than once every 3-4 years. For $65 for the sharpening, lube & adjustment, it's a bargain. 20 minutes, plus some time with the weed whacker and the lawn looks infinitely better.
The majority of the rock pile next to she shed has been relocated to behind the shed.
The "island" where the lilac tree lives near the shed has been completed. My wife finished the rock border/wall that I had started last fall, planted her one of her two new May Night Salvia (happy Mother's Day) plants in it, and covered with mulch. It looks finished. It looks beautiful. It looks exactly the way I had imagined it. I need to take some pictures I guess.
The big chore was weeding, specifically clearing out everything that had started making the backyard look overgrown. 5+ 30-gallon bags later, we've pushed the "cleared" line about 8 feet further back, so we've got about 16 feet from the back of the house relatively clear. We also cleared a path past the dogwood tree to get to the area behind the shed, so we could put the rock pile back there.
During a break, my mother started looking at some of the smaller trees (3-4 years old) that had sprouted up in the yard. We decided they needed to come down, so the big shears came out and we lopped the trees off about 4 feet above ground level. I still need to dig out the stumps, but it opened things up some for more light to come in. We identified some other small trees that can come down too, but that'll be a chainsaw job.
My sister, needing to stay close to the baby, started digging around the brick patio behind our bedroom. She started scraping at some of the bricks, and discovered that they extended much farther out from the house than we had thought. They still need to get cleaned up, and it's not a very smooth patio, but it looks nice so far. I'll have to stay on top of the weeds with a chemical treatment (RoundUp maybe) that are sure to sprout up from between the bricks.
While we were working in the backyard, my wife was hard at work in the area between the kitchen, family room and bedroom. A couple weeks ago she'd weeded a good portion of the side by the kitchen, and she finished that off. She also moved some of the plants that were there (Elephant Ear Hosta, Bleeding Hearts) to other garden locations.

We made some terrific progress this weekend. We need to keep pushing though, we can't let things sit idle and start falling apart like last year.

Well that was fast!

2007-05-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

Talk about a whirlwind.

We had our chosen roofing contractor come out to the house last weekend to give us a quote on replacing our roof with a full tear-off, new vents and 30-year architectural shingles. We added into the deal vinyl soffits all the way around and wrapping all the exposed word (eaves & fascia boards) in aluminum sheet to protect against carpenter bees. Plus close up the exposure in the back bathroom corner.

I faxed the approved quote/contract to the contractor on Friday afternoon. Today, my wife called me when she arrived home and said "why are there people on our roof?" I had been expecting the contractor to call us, set up a date for the crew to come out, etc. They sent them right out today and 11 1/2 hours after they arrived, everything was finished.

I saw a squirrel on the roof looking very confused. His home is now gone - he can't get into the roof like he could with the old vents.

The only "gotcha" is with payment. Like I said, I was expecting them to call ahead to set up a date for the work. So the money for the job was in a different bank from my checking account, so that I could collect better interest on it. I had to ask them to hold cashing the check for a few days while the transfer completes. I feel kind of bad that I had to do that, but if I'd had some warning, it wouldn't have happened.

Oh sweet irony!

2007-05-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

Sometime this week, the town came along and picked up the huge pile of tree debris we had put out on the curb (that post, started 8 days ago, has yet to be finished. Soon, I hope). They did this so that they could pull up the nasty, fine gravel they had laid down between the sidewalk & curb, and on the edge of the curb (overlaying our grass) last fall after finishing the sidewalk. In its place, they put down some actual soil. We waited a couple days to see what they'd do, but nothing changed. Just dirt. So, Saturday morning, I got out the grass seed and reseeded everything on our side of the sidewalk.

15 minutes later, I heard a couple loud engines coming down the street slowly. One was a Ford F250 Diesel. The second was the hydroseeding trailer that it was pulling. They took care of both the lawn side and the strip by the curb. And they did a darn fine job, taking extreme care to not let any overspray get into our flower gardens by the sidewalk.

If only I'd waited another 15 minutes.

Spring has sprung!

2007-04-29T21:33:00.000-04:00

For the second weekend in a row, we got some decent weather and we were finally able to start work outside. I'm sore & exhausted, but it feels good.

We started last weekend with my wife weeding out front and laying out some of the leftover mulch from last year. Out back, I started cutting up some of the trees & limbs that came down over the winter, and dragging the large chunks of dead tree trunks out to the curbside. I also found some fill for a couple holes left behind by the sidewalk project last fall.

I just found this post, an old draft started several weeks ago. I'm posting it now, incomplete. I can't remember what I was trying to write.

One other switch

2007-03-18T18:40:00.000-04:00

I have recently switched from Bloglines to Google Reader for my RSS subscriptions. There are some glitches and bugs with Bloglines that have been getting on my nerves, and it's also difficult to read feeds post by post - if you want to save something for later, it's either "keep as new" or mark the whole feed unread. So far I'm really preferring Google Reader.

One downside of this is that my "friend links" on the blog here were previously fed from my "Friends" folder in Bloglines, so that's gone now. I'll come back when I have some time to update the template here.

Bonus!

2007-03-18T17:55:00.000-04:00

Our 2006 annual bonuses came through at work about a month ago and I was very, very pleasantly surprised. My previous employer was very stingy with bonuses, it seemed - if we were lucky, we might get the equivalent of one paycheck for a bonus. One or two years, we got nothing. Most years, it was a pittance.

Now, I understand that no company is obligated to pay out bonuses to anyone (and I never figured a bonus into my budget, and nor should you), but in the case of my previous employer, their so-called bonuses were an insult. I'd rather they not even dangle the carrot in front of us. The first year we got nothing, it was particularly despicable as we were told that bonus time would be delayed, then it was eliminated altogether.

My current employer knows how to take care of its employees. They were very, very generous this year. With the money, I'm going to have the opportunity to do two things I really need to do, and one thing I've wanted to do for a long time.

Replace one or both front doors on the house. Even with a ton of weatherstripping, the kitchen door leaks air like you wouldn't believe.
New roof on the front part of the house. It's at least 15 years old, and stripping off the old and coming in with new 30-year shingles will put my mind at ease. Plus, we can take the opportunity to evict the squirrels living in the roof who aren't pitching in for the mortgage, and install new roof vents to keep them out for good.
I'm gonna buy a MacBook Pro. Yep. As soon as Leopard is out and the hardware gets refreshed, I'll be a "switcher"

All three of these things won't happen until spring, or even early summer, so in the meantime that bonus will attempt to collect a little interest in the bank.

More water woes

2007-03-18T17:38:00.000-04:00

While I was on my break from work after the baby was born, I decided to replace the flush/fill mechanism inside our downstairs toilet as it had been making some odd noises ever since our city water issues in the late summer/early fall.

I read all the instructions, it seemed clear enough. I drained the tank, removed it, and then proceeded to remove everything from it. Including the large gasket/grommet combo at on the bottom, which sealed up the connection between the tank and bowl and the bolts holding it all together.

This turned out to be a huge mistake. The kit didn't come with an appropriate replacement, and I wasn't able to put the old one back in properly. Several applications of silicone and it still didn't seal properly.

So, off to Lowe's we went, and we purchased a new toilet to be installed by a licensed professional. It was probably good that we did it anyway. We had a lot of clog issues with the old toilet, and this one has been trouble-free. It's a "Class III, high performance" model and was well worth the upgrade.

We have also had, twice in the span of 2 weeks, a leaky clothes washer. This unit is only 6 months old, but it sprung a major leak a few weeks ago which took us a couple days to discover (and a few more to clean up the mess). GE's warranty service came out and fixed it, but this weekend it leaked again. So, another service call. Fortunately it's free of charge, but it means taking time out of our work schedules to wait for the tech to arrive "between 8 AM and 5 PM."

Hiatus

2007-03-18T17:35:00.000-04:00

I've been gone for 3+ months. To my 2 or 3 regular readers, I apologize. Things have been more than a little crazy around the house. About a week after my last real post, my wife gave birth to our first child, and we've had our hands more than a little full with him.

Work on the house has similarly been on hiatus, but there have been a few goings-on to report, which I'll get to shortly. I have a few posts stacked up here to get written and then hopefully I'll get more regular with the updates. Spring is coming, and I hope to have more housework to report as things warm.

Make me an offer!

2006-12-06T21:57:00.000-05:00

Verizon has been calling me almost daily for the last few weeks, trying to get me to renew our contract since our previous agreement ended in September. We've been month to month since then. I really have no good reason to renew right now - our phones work perfectly fine and our current plan isn't lacking.

Finally, today, I talked to the Verizon rep. Or, rather, she talked to me for 9 minutes. She was offering 700 minutes, 200 more than we have currently. But we don't use the 500 we have now. I explained to her the billing errors which were likely skewing the numbers she saw for our recent usage. I told her about the runaround we got with our new every 2 and new phone eligibility.

She was offering a phone upgrade, for $79.99 less a $50 mail-in rebate. I told her my phone works fine right now, and the only compelling reason I would have for replacing it is if I could go Bluetooth and get a wireless headset. The new phone she was offering does have Bluetooth, but I'd have to buy my own headset for an extra $49.99.

I continued to rebuff her, and she just wasn't interested in making me a compelling offer to renew, and that was that. Had she offered me a better phone, or tossed a free Bluetooth headset into the deal, I might have been interested.

I did some research and it looks like we can go to Cingular, drop $10 from our monthly bill, move up to 550 minutes/month, and get new phones in the process. I'm not chomping at the bit to switch services, but it's good to know we can jump ship easily. I'm just shocked that Verizon wasn't interested in trying very hard to get me to renew the contract. I may call them back, present them with this research, and see if they'll make a good counter-offer to attempt to keep us another 2 full years.

Congratulations Oleg!

2006-12-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

I see that Oleg has welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. I'm due to join the "new daddy" club myself before the year is out.

Oleg notes "A newborn can fall asleep by listening to the soothing voice of one of her parents. I was helping Miriam Rae fall asleep by reading her the November 25th, 2006 issue of 'The Economist.'" I'm reminded of a scene from Three Men and a Baby where Tom Selleck read a Sports Illustrated article about a boxing match to the baby to put her to sleep. "It's not what you read to her, it's the tone of voice you use."

Enjoy fatherhood, Oleg!

Tis the season

2006-12-03T22:05:00.000-05:00

Nate & Heather have their Christmas tree up and lit. As coincidence would have it, we put our tree up today as well (yet another thing I worked on today). Nate's post reads as though they have a real tree. We, unfortunately, can't have a real tree because our cats would surely wreck it. We picked up a 7 1/2 foot artificial tree 2 years ago relatively cheap for our first married Christmas. It's pre-lit, and somewhat small in diameter - but it fit our apartments well. Now that we have a house, we may get something larger in a year or two.

Sorry, no pictures yet.

While we're on the subject of Festive Holiday Season, what starts the season for you? We all have our own little rituals and ceremonies that mark the beginning of the "season" - some people go out shopping at 5 AM on Black Friday, for example. For me, it's a viewing of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Once I've watched that (usually Thanksgiving weekend), I'm set for FHS. I just can't get enough of that movie. Look kids! A deer!

Day of frustrations

2006-12-03T21:09:00.000-05:00

Whew. Got a few things done today, all of which required extreme patience and involved several attempts.

First was mounting the child seat base in the Subaru. Although the recommendation is generally that one put the seat in the middle of the rear seat, our Subaru is a wagon, and without LATCH anchors in the middle position, that's a very long run for the seat belt as far as I'm concerned. Plus, Subaru has outstanding side-impact ratings. So, I mounted it on the driver's side. Here's the short version:

Unpack seat protector mat. Discover that there's nothing that holds it to the seat other than the child seat itself.
Place base on seat. Scratch head wondering why the hell the straps won't reach the anchors. Finally look at the label again and realize the base is backwards. Who puts an arrow on something that goes into a car and makes the arrow point backwards?
Spin base around and hook strap to anchor bars. Attempt to tighten. Strap moves a little.
Attempt to get into car to apply full weight to the base, as recommended, to draw strap down more. Discover that 200 pound American male cannot kneel backwards in the back seat of a Japanese car. And damn, that plastic's hard on my already-unhappy knees.
Flip driver's seat back forward all the way. Push driver's seat forward all the way. This creates enough room for me to get in.
Attempt to kneel on seat base. Still very hard and uncomfortable. Get a little more pull on the strap. Seat still rocks too much.
Get bright idea to put fleece jacket on the plastic. Knee can now handle it.
Give the strap a few more tugs. Finally, the rocking is within tolerances (1" max).
Restore driver's seat to correct position. Curse a few designers.

There's gotta be a better, more dignified way than that.

Next was replacing the lamp in the master bedroom closet. We purchased a 3-light track setup at Lowe's this morning and I pulled the old fixture down. What a surprise - everything in the box was normal! Standard Romex, plastic junction box, nothing weird going on. The instructions were a little unclear, but I got the fixture ready and made the connections. Then I attempted to slide the fixture over the mounting screws and attach the nuts which would hold it up. No dice. Shuffle wires some, still nothing. It took quite a bit of pushing wires around before I could get enough threads for the nuts to grab onto. The mounting bracket between the fixture and the box just took up too much space. Finally, I managed to get it secured somehow. Then it was on to the lamps themselves. Here's where the instructions were very unclear - apparently I was supposed to mount the lampshades and bulbs before putting the fixture up. More struggling, more fighting, finally those were in.

The day's final challenge was cutting and installing 2 threshold/transition pieces in a couple doorways to compensate for some very large height differences between 2 floors. The first was very difficult - I chose a hard wood, and my coping saw didn't like making straight cuts in it. I got the piece cut pretty much in line with the contours of the doorway, and then just used a rubber mallet to bring it home. The second piece went much easier, but I again had to shave some extra wood off due to irregularities and then use the mallet to finish things off. In both cases, I made more than a couple trips between the installation site and my work area in the family room.

Lots of effort, lots of frustration, only 3 projects. But they all needed to get done and we're much better off for it.

Why fix when you can replace?

2006-11-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

I tried finding parts for the fluorescent light fixture that quit on us last week. From what I can tell, it's the electronic ballast that's broken. The part number appears to be 49NK, and it says that a Class "P" electronic ballast is required for proper operation. I have yet to find this mythical device in Home Depot or Lowes. I may have found it online, but at $33 each per shipping, is it even worth replacing this part? For a similar price, I can replace the whole fixture with something that works better for our needs in the closet.

Why people leave their jobs

2006-11-24T08:25:00.000-05:00

I've been at my current job for just over a year now and have no plans to leave at this time. I spent over 2 years searching for a new job, and reading Top 10 Reasons To Leave Your Job, I found myself saying "yep, that was me" on 9 out of the 10 points that it mentions. That's right, out of the top 10 reasons to leave one's job, nine applied to me at my last job. How sad is that?

Toilet progress

2006-11-23T08:35:00.000-05:00

I was able to confirm that the piping wasn't the source of the upstairs toilet leak by pouring about a gallon right down into it with the toilet off. We think we have it finally sealed up with an extra-large wax ring. Haven't been able to fully test it yet due to my overzealousness though. I overtorqued one of the hold-down bolts and pulled it through the flange underneath, and then when I was tightening up the supply line I over torqued that and broke the plastic fitting that screwed onto the bottom of the tank. I'll get that fixed sometime this weekend.

New electrical woes

2006-11-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we blew the light bulb in our bedroom closet for the second time since we moved in. No big deal, you might say? This is an 8" compact fluorescent bulb, with a service life rated at over 10 thousand hours, at a price of about $7 each. We shouldn't be blowing 2 a year when we only use it for a total of maybe 30 minutes a day.

I bought 2 bulbs Tuesday morning so that we'll always have one on hand, and discovered that even a new bulb won't fix my problem. There's something wrong in the fixture. Most likely it's the ballast, which I now need to find a replacement for. Depending on the price of that, I may just replace the whole fixture with something more reliable which I can put a dimmer switch on.

A dimmer switch in a closet, you say? Yep. The baby's changing table is in this closet and being able to turn the light way down will make it a lot easier on the eyes for those 3 AM changings.

MS Office finally catches up with OpenOffice

2006-11-23T08:20:00.000-05:00

I see this morning on Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen that Microsoft has released an Office 2007 Add-In to allow users to save files as PDF, instead of having to go through a PDF print driver.

OpenOffice.org has had this feature for as long as I can remember. Nice to see MS finally woke up to the value of this sort of feature, but it's really too bad that so many people will never know about it because it's still not built into the product out of the box.

Why no LASIK?

2006-11-16T22:10:00.000-05:00

For several years, people have asked me pretty regularly why I haven't opted for LASIK or other eye surgery, to eliminate my need for eyeglasses. I've always had a number of excuses: it's expensive, I like how I look in glasses, I don't like stuff touching my eye, the whole idea creeps me out, and I know things can go wrong - and you only get one set of eyes.

This week, yet another solid argument. My eyes just aren't stable. I've been wearing glasses for more than half my life now. For quite a while, my prescriptions got progressively stronger and stronger. But lately I've been getting really bad headaches, especially from the computer. Finally got into the optometrist and lo and behold, my prescription has changed again! Last year, it was made weaker by two steps on the right and one step on the left. This year, the same adjustment was made.

So...right now, still no eye surgery for me. Spending that money and then having things change again and ruining my vision completely is out of the question.

About Linux

2006-11-11T21:48:00.000-05:00

El Gee posted a couple days ago about Linux vs. Windows, and how many people expect that they can simply install Linux on their PC and continue life the same as with Windows. El Gee has almost completely converted himself to Linux, and I commend him for it.

I first learned about Linux in 1996, when I was in college. I'd had some exposure to UNIX previously, including the school's AIX servers, but never seen it as a desktop operating system. As I learned more, I decided I wanted to learn more, and in 1998 I switched over to it almost exclusively. In an academic environment, in a Computer Science program, it really wasn't that hard - the only software I had that "required" Windows was games.

I had become a Linux fanboy. This was back in the days of NT 4 and Windows 95/98. NT 4 was still clunky, but better than 3.51. Win9x was unstable and buggy as all get-out. Linux was terrific - I had uptimes measured in weeks, not hours.

I started my first post-college job in an all-Microsoft shop, but I kept using Linux at home. My rationale was "I want to come home to something that just works." I had Windows installed, but it was sluggish on my computer; it was there so I could use Quicken, and log onto the VPN for work. I got a lot of ribbing at work about my Linux fanboyism, but I shrugged it off. Some of the things I did in Linux were harder than their equivalents in Windows, but no matter - I'm a geek, and it just meant that I had more control, right?

After a while, a couple factors conspired against me. I found myself spending more and more time working from home, which required Windows. And I found myself becoming increasingly dependent upon Quicken to track my finances. I tried some of the other money-management software that worked on Linux, but couldn't find anything that I liked as much as Quicken - ease of use wasn't there, and features I wanted weren't there. Then, the last straw. I installed an upgrade to the distribution I was using, and my system was configured in a very weird way. Try as I might, I just could not get certain things working with this new version which had previously worked.

By this time, Windows 2000 had been out for a while and was very well-established. Windows was "good enough" and let me get things done easily - somehow, Linux and Windows had flipped positions for me. And so, I removed my Linux partition. I was able to do what I needed to do in Windows just fine. It was stable, it was usable, and that was good enough for me.

I still have a Linux box in the house - never was without one, really. But it's been relegated to strictly server duty. I know that Linux has advanced quite a bit since my last bad experience, but I just don't have a compelling reason to go back at this point. I don't want to have to tinker anymore - Windows XP is now that system that "just works" for me. Maybe things will change in the future, maybe they won't - we'll see what happens.

Got a few things done today

2006-11-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

Kind of a slow day today, had a family breakfast this morning then I came home and did a few things around the house.

Took one of the cats to the vet
Got a new set of sneakers for the car. Old tires (Falken ZE-512) were shot after 22,000 miles and one year. They come with a 60,000 mile treadwear warranty, but since I didn't get an alignment when I bought them, it didn't apply. Replaced with Goodyear Assurance TripleTreds and got an alignment while I was there. Many dollars later, I should have solid tires and handling for 50 or 60 thousand miles.
Installed a pair of smoke detectors
Removed the box spring from the bed, as my wife was starting to have trouble getting onto the tall bed now that she's over 8 months pregnant.
Sorted a large and aging pile of mail.
Scooped the litterbox
Hung an old coat rack in the closet for diaper bags

Lazy and ignorant

2006-11-11T18:26:00.000-05:00

What a combination. First, the lazy: My wife picked up a couple new shirts for me about 3 weeks ago. I still haven't tried them on. I also picked up some extra smoke detectors several weeks ago, before the clocks changed, as well as some extra 9V batteries, as I wanted to have more detectors in the house, and we were overdue for changing the batteries in the ones we had.

Or so I thought. Here's the ignorant part. We only had one smoke detector installed in the house to begin with! It's in the master bedroom, and is hardwired. Good news - batteries. Bad news - no batteries. If the power goes out, we're in trouble.

So, I installed my new detectors upstairs and in the kitchen. I want to get a carbon monoxide detector for the bedroom, so I'll just get a combination unit, battery-powered, so we have all our bases covered in that room.

How in the world did I miss all this?

Another PSA

2006-11-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not going to tell you to go donate blood again; I'm not eligible to do so again until January 2^nd. No, this time it's CPR.

As we have a baby arriving in roughly 6 weeks, my wife and I decided it would be a good idea if we took an Infant CPR class just to be prepared. We're set to take that next weekend. But my employer also offered up a CPR and AED certification course this fall, which I took yesterday. I decided that the combination would round everything out for me so I'm prepared should the need arise.

Infant, child or adult, CPR is one of those things you hope you never need to use - and something which may not turn out as well as you'd hope. Although survival rates are up significantly since the American Heart Association revised and simplified the CPR procedures, doing CPR is not a guarantee that you will actually save someone's life. But it's better than feeling completely helpless.

If you previously had a CPR certification, get it renewed. Things have changed a lot since I got my certification about 12 years ago.

Got a lot done this weekend

2006-11-05T22:26:00.000-05:00

With the weather being clear for the first weekend that we've been home in quite a while, I had a pretty long list of things I wanted to get done. I got some of them done, but not as much as I'd wanted to. I really ran out of steam quickly, I think because I pushed myself to do 6.5 miles on our stationary bike on Saturday morning in an attempt to get some exercise back into my system. I'm still feeling it tonight, but I'd like to start doing it a few mornings each week.

Mowed the lawn for the last time this year
Picked up most of the dead plants in the gardens we redid this year.
Checked and adjusted tire pressures in both cars, and in the process discovered my car's tires need to be replaced.
Finished the nursery armoire assembly by screwing in the brackets holding the two halves together, and installed a clothes rod for hangers.
Hung a rod in the doorway between the nursery and the smaller bedroom upstairs for a privacy curtain.
Moved all the liquids from the toolshed into the basement so they don't freeze.
Hung shelves in the nursery and a curtain the window in that room.

I have a whole bunch more that needs to be done in the next month, I really hope I can finish it all.

A little carpet goes a long way

2006-11-05T22:21:00.000-05:00

We picked up the new carpets we had made up from remnants on Tuesday, but didn't get around to unwrapping them until today. Amazing. What a difference a little texture and color put on the floor can make in a room! The 5'6" foot circle we had made for the nursery could probably have been made 6 feet safely, but it still works. It really warms the room up and gives a nice cushion in the middle of the floor. We're still working out the best way to arrange the 3x6 foot piece we have for the master bedroom.

I'm actually looking forward to going back for another remnant piece for the front upstairs bedroom now.

SPAM - apparently it's everyone

2006-11-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

Mike commented on my SPAM post from last week that his volume is increasing dramatically as well. It turns out that this is a widespread phenomenon. Seems that an increase in bot nets may be to blame. One can debate the merits of one OS vs. another or another, but regardless of your desktop OS, it all comes down to safe and responsible use of an Internet-connected computer. If you're lax in keeping up with security patches, downloading crap from random websites, opening attachments from strangers sending you email, and not keeping your home network locked behind a firewall, you're just contributing to the problem.

Unfortunately, there is very little good education out there, ISPs aren't unplugging people who are running these bot net zombies, and the average computer owner/user simply doesn't have enough reason to care. If they only understood that their own sloppiness was the reason their inbox is filling up every day with crap, they could start helping to fix the problem.

Verizon customers, check your bills closely!

2006-11-05T21:36:00.000-05:00

About a week ago, I mentioned the bill formatting change that Verizon introduced recently. After getting a second email this weekend notifying me that my electronic statement was available online to review, I started scratching my head, and decided to take another look.

I found two very interesting things. #1, my wife's call detail is now available, whereas it wasn't a week ago. Good. #2, I looked more closely at my own details, and discovered that I had been charged for a dozen IN calls totaling 26 minutes, and I'm pretty sure that we have the IN option on our plan.

Normally, I wouldn't bat an eye at getting dinged for 26 minutes of airtime, as we rarely use our full plan allowance. However, in October I had a few work calls during peak hours and that pushed us over the edge, to the tune of $20 in overage charges.

So, a quick call to customer service (*611) was in order. She confirmed that yes, I have the IN option on the plan, and no, I definitely should not have been charged those 26 minutes of airtime. She also told me that the formatting change had caused some other funkiness, and the CSRs were going crazy because they were used to the old format and have to retrain their eyes to adjust now. I told her that my data collection had been thrown off by this change as well and she was rather sympathetic to my plight, but obviously there was nothing she could do about it (I wasn't accusatory, and she didn't get defensive). She put in the correction on my account and the credit should kick in within 3 business days. She'll even give me a phone call when it gets applied! Total call time: under 6 minutes, and no time spent waiting in an on-hold queue.

So, to recap: If you use Verizon, check your bill carefully. Make sure all your IN calls (listed in the Usage Type column on your detailed statement) have no aitrime charges associated with them. If you find that there are any of these charges, call up customer service, they should take care of it without trouble.

Got spam?

2006-10-29T16:27:00.000-05:00

A number of people I've talked to have noticed that their SPAM volume has increased over the last month to 6 weeks. We aren't sure if it's due to the recent Spamhaus legal activity, or just a natural increase in traffic. But frankly, I'm sick of it. Better than 80% of my incoming messages are SPAM now. I've had to redirect our family domain's catchall address to my GMail account, but that hasn't helped much, as I am getting a lot of junk to legitimate addressed too.

We don't have SpamAssassin on our mail host, but I've been thinking about asking whether it can be installed.

I wish it was easier to apply simple filtering rules, but that really requires that senders take extra steps. Things like GPG-signing or encrypting messages would go a long way. SPAMmers won't take the time (or may not even be able to) GPG-sign messages, so if everyone signed legit email, we could just filter anything that isn't signed. This would be a huge anti-phishing advantage for financial institutions as well - if it's not signed, they didn't send it, so don't click anything. I'd gladly give my banks my public key so they can send me 100% encrypted email, to make things that much more secure. I know that financial institutions know about GPG/PGP, as I know of several which use the technology to securely send system-generated email for transaction data. Getting that message through to Customer Service, however, is a chore.

Alas, I seem to know at most 4 people who understand and would actually apply GPG measures on their email. It's not terribly difficult to understand, really. And there are tools out there like Windows Privacy Tools to help make working with it easier.

Format change

2006-10-29T14:35:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been trying to download our Verizon Wireless call data on a monthly basis and get it into an Access database to do some reporting - mostly so that we can take the appropriate tax deductions for our use of our phones for work purposes. My wife more or less is required to have a cell phone by her employer, and she gets a monthly reimbursement, but I think we may be able to claim some of the difference between her reimbursement and the monthly bill on our taxes as well.

Anyway, I logged into the Verizon Wireless site this morning to pull our latest billing cycle data, and they've gone and changed the format of the CSV downloads that they offer. This, of course, requires a change on my part so that I can keep using the data.

Why do they insist upon doing this? They aren't providing any different data, they've just changed the data structure and presentation. No longer is "PM" used - it's "P", which breaks my date/time parsing. Phone number are no longer (123)456-7890, they're 123-456-7890.

Are they doing this to foil screen-scrapers and other automatic downloaders? Or is it because they don't think people are trying to use the data, thus they can change it at will?

IE funkiness

2006-10-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

I discovered something funky with Internet Explorer 6 a couple weeks ago. As I've noted here before, I'm wriging my documenation for my project at work in HTML wherever I can. I printed my full spec document out, and found something really weird that I'd never seen before.

I set a text-indent on paragraphs for readbility and style, via CSS. Everything looks great on screen. When I printed the document, I found that for any paragraph that spanned a page break, IE indented the text of the paragraph's first line on the second page!

It's not a huge deal, but I found it curious. I haven't tested with IE7 yet (IE7 isn't allowed at work, and I don't want to mess with my system at home), nor have I been able to chase down reports of this behavior elsewhere online.

Bug, or proper behavior per the W3C spec?

Kids, clean up after yourselves

2006-10-22T22:35:00.000-04:00

Forgot to post this when I posted about my drywall patching earlier. When I last worked on drywall, I didn't exactly clean up all the tools, and as a result the knife had a good coating of joint compound on it, and the mud tray looked like one of the valleys you might see in pictures of Mars - craggly, rough, a total mess.

I spent a good 20 minutes chiseling the crud off the knife and attempting to clean up the mud tray. The knife cleaned up OK, but the tray is still a total mess. It might be a complete loss. Not sure how best clean up even a brand new one. Maybe line it with plastic wrap so I can just throw that out when I'm done?

Patching things up

2006-10-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

Now that we have all our wiring run (I hope) for the family room electrical, it was time to patch up the various holes this weekend. For the holes we put in the walls, some wire mesh and fiberglass tape was enough. But I had put a pretty sizeable hole in the ceiling where the fan is going to end up. Only one side of the whole has a joist to screw drywall into, so I picked up a Sheetrock repair kit. It includes some joint tape, some dry joint compound (requires water & mixing), a spreader, and 4 clips. The clips are perforated metal which attach to the existing drywall and your patch, with hooks on one side. Hook the clip onto the existing drywall, and screw through the drywall to secure. Then slide your patch panel in place, and again screw through the patch panel into the clip. Grab the hooks with pliers and snap off, and you've got a perfect patch.

So, right now all my joint compound is drying, I'll put another coat on tomorrow night and possibly one more to finish off, and we'll be in good shape to finish the room off once the electric is hooked up.

Cheap Rug

2006-10-22T15:13:00.000-04:00

We bought an area rug last month for the family room, but were still on the lookout for something for the nursery, and maybe a few other pieces as well. Trouble is, "real" area rugs tend to be a little expensive.

Out and about yesterday, we decided on a whim to check out a flooring store. We were looking for a 5 to 6 foot diameter round rug, as we thought it would be unique, and make good use of the floor space without interfering with the furniture. They were short on round rugs, and they were quite expensive. Then the salesman took us over to the remnants section. He had a 6x9 rectangular navy blue remnant for only $79! Good deal. We got to talking, and decided that rather than waste the leftovers, we could make a smaller rug for our bedroom as well.

So, for under $150 (binding for the edges is $2/linear foot) we've got 2 carpets taken care of.

We'll definitely look at remnants for the next piece rug we need. There isn't as much selection in patterns (if any), but the pricing is hard to argue with.

Who needs a driveway?

2006-10-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

Work on our street has been progressing. Thursday, we both took a half day as we were driving quite a distance to attend a wedding over the weekend. When my wife arrived home, she found that the road was completely torn up, and the crew had started laying gravel. Trouble was, they had a big pile right in front of the house, and a large ditch between the street and our driveway. Thus, she was unable to get into the driveway and had to park down the street.

When I arrived, the large gravel pile had moved, but the ditch was still there. One of the guys operating a small bulldozer/shovel machine saw me, drove over to my car, shrugged, and then said "sorry, road's closed, where are you going?" I pointed at the house, told him it was mine, and he said "oh, I'll go build you a driveway" and in under 5 minutes the gap was filled and I rolled right up. When we left later, I caught him and told him we'd be shuffling cars, and then he could dig it all back up and leave it that way till end of day Friday. He said it wasn't needed, they only needed to re-dig the trench on Tuesday when the granite curb was scheduled to come in.

Fast-forward to this evening. I arrived home before my wife, and found a Road Closed sign at the end of the street. I bypassed that, as usually these signs mean "closed, except for local traffic" and the other end wasn't closed at all. What did I find? An even bigger ditch in front of the driveway, and the crew had gone home for the night already! I looped around and stopped at the village hall to get some answers, but they were closed. On my return trip to the house, I was tailed rather suspiciously, by the Code Enforcement Officer (only found out after I had parked and he had gone by). I resigned myself to parking across the street.

I called the town highway superintendent to find out what was going on. I was under the impression that we'd be informed well in advance of any disruptions like this. He's going to check on that. In the meantime, we're out of our driveway until Wednesday. The ditch is for the curb. Installation starts at 7 AM on Tuesday. After installation, they backfill with concrete and that has to set for a day. Then in another week or two, we're locked out again for a day or so, when they pour the new sidewalk.

I'm not upset that they're doing all this work - I'm actually pretty happy to see the improvements made. What I do take issue with is that we're not informed of these disruptions to the driveway and water service. Notifications which I believed we'd be given when these activities took place. I'm just glad this is happening now, and not in December when we have a baby to manage around it.

Here's a nice surprise!

2006-10-15T08:15:00.000-04:00

About 2 weeks ago, I posted about the various rebates I was sending paperwork in for. I was concerned that I wouldn't get my $65 Lowe's rebate for the delivery charges on our washer & dryer. Well, we arrived home late last night from a weekend away at a wedding, and what was waiting for us? A $65 check from Lowe's!

Whew! We lucked out on that one.

Progress and Congress

2006-10-08T20:28:00.001-04:00

After all, "con" is the opposite of "pro", right?

Progress

Wiring in the living room took a huge leap forward. We managed it with minimal holes in the drywall. I had forgotten that we had run power from up high on the west wall down to the outlet on that side and across to the brick wall for the TV. We also learned that the outlet at the north end of the room was still live, as it was on its own circuit for the washer & dryer when they were in the family room. We tied the 14/2 Romex that was run across the ceiling into that other wiring in a junction box, replacing the old wire that had been used. Then we pulled the baseboard and ran another line from the washer/dryer outlet to the newer one below that junction box. Everything's live there now.
The east wall was a little tougher. The wiring in the wall is a mess, so we decided to just pull new Romex to the right place and save the rest for the electrician. Pulled the quarter round and inserted a smaller piece of wire so that we could locate the right place to run the Romex from below. Then we punched a hole in the wall above that to fish the wire from. And then...into the crawlspace I went. I'd been dreading this for a while because it's so hard to get in and out of there. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I found my guide wire deep in the crawlspace, right by an end wall and tucked behind the air duct. I had my assistant shine a light down from above and was shocked to find that there was a gap between the subfloor and the brick wall. I had originally thought that I would have to drill up into the wall cavity but this was a lifesaver. I was able to run the Romex up through that gap, and once complete, we had a relatively easy time fishing the line the rest of the way up the wall. Electrical rough work done, now I just have to arrange for our electrician to come out to finish up.
While I was in the crawlspace, I retrieved the coaxial cable I'd stuffed down there for the TV. I also installed some more pipe insulation on the hot water supply for the master bath.
In a somewhat unexpected move, our sister in law and my mother in law decided that they should finish painting the master bedroom closet with my wife supervising.
We moved a bunch of baby furniture into the house.

Anti-Progress

The upstairs toilet looked like it had leaked some into the floor under it, so we bought a new wax ring for it and attempted replacement today. It seemed like we had installed everything properly, we heard the wax being "crushed" under the toilet, but upon first flush, it leaked pretty badly. We're afraid there may be a problem with the cast iron pipe itself up there. That requires a plumber, and I'm afraid, a lot of money. Ugh.

Running water is overrated

2006-10-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

For the second time in as many days, I came home to messed-up water service. I arrived at 6:00, and my wife said it had been weird for at least 15 minutes already. Checked a couple faucets. Yep, tons of air in the lines, and a chlorine smell. The toilet hadn't filled since its last flush. Seeing the force with which the air was coming through the faucets, I shut off the water to the toilet. The last thing I need is a disintegrated fill mechanism or worse. We sat tight for a little while, keeping ourselves occupied, thinking things would be OK in a while.

Around 6:45, we tried again. No water anywhere. Just some noise. A few minutes later, I tried again, and started getting some water.

At this point, I decided to stop risking our internal fixtures and plumbing, and decided to try the garden hose outside. It sputted and spat for a bit, then it went dead. No water, no air, nothing. I tried around 7:00, and it fired nothing more than a large, loud, cloud of mist. No real liquid water, just mist. The crew working on the mains came over and were shocked that I was still getting so much air. They had left a fire hydrant open for 90 minutes to flush the system, and I should not have had air in my lines at that point.

About 7:15 I guess, I tried again, and got a little water finally. The crew came back. They were still surprised. Everyone else was getting solid streams of water, no air. So I let it run for a while and after about 5 minutes, started getting consistent water flow.

Then it was on to the inside fixtures. I opened up the kitchen faucet and it sputtered for a while. In the basement, I could hear pipes all around me crackling with air pockets, so I shut off the water to the back end of the house and the kitchen cleared up in a hurry. Reopened those valves and went back to the bathroom and turned those loose. What a racket.

There was lots of crud coming out of the lines too. I was told that they had hooked up to some older lines which hadn't been run in a while, thus all the sediment build-up and subsequent flush. I really hope this isn't going to be a regular event while this road work is going on. It's really inconvenient. Supposedly we were to be getting notified anytime water service was going to be disrupted, but that has yet to materialize.

One good outcome of all of this: traffic control. They've ripped the street up so bad that it's just one giant muddy, rutty, pot-holed mess. People are avoiding using the street as a bypass for main street, and those who do come down here are going much, much slower.

More kudos on the project

2006-10-02T22:26:00.000-04:00

My project at work has been moving along. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't understand. In fact, there's a fortune cookie fortune taped to a whiteboard in one room that sums it up quite well:

If you understand what you're doing, you aren't learning anything.

Following that, I must be learning near-infinite amounts.

Anyway, we've brought a consultant in to help get things back on track, help with documentation, planning, testing, and more. I met with him last week so he could find out where my portion of the project stands, what kind of documentation we have, and so on. He was pleasantly (and visibly) surprised when I told him I had all my documentation in Subversion and could recall any version from any point in time. He was genuinely happy to see that someone was approaching the requirements documentation and test cases the way that I was. Great. I feel pretty good now. I thought that was the end of it.

But it wasn't. In my meeting today with our developer and a member of IT management, the manager told us that a lot of the project documentation was in rough shape, but the consultant had specifically mentioned the documents that we've been maintaining for test cases, specs, etc. as being very well done. Some portions of the project have been done with little more than cocktail napkin sketches. The developer and I looked at each other, and he spoke first, saying that we were doing all the documentation at least as much for our own sanity as for the benefit of others. I have to agree. If we weren't being so detailed and rigorous about our specifications, we'd be going mad with confusion. We'd be completely lost without the history tracking and collaboration support which Subversion affords us.

Ultimately, my hope is that by setting a good example with this project, we can get version control and other tools more heavily used throughout the organization. But first I need to get through this project alive.

Tired of trim

2006-10-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

I laid down more 11/16" quarter-round trim yesterday. Covered the master bedroom closet with unpainted wood. The gaps around the edges of the floor were just hideous. This really tightened it up.

Then it was on to the nursery upstairs. We had pre-painted several sticks of the moulding to match the baseboards, and I started in with that. I got all but one side of the window, and half of one wall, completed with the material on hand. We still have one stick to paint and then we can hack that up and nail it down.

I figure I've cut and installed well over 100 feet of this stuff, all with a $20 Craftsman miterbox and handsaw. I'm getting tired of doing it that way. I should have just bought a real power miter saw. Maybe with my $50 gift card that I'm getting from Lowe's. It's that or an air compressor so I can use pneumatic tools.

Water Works

2006-10-02T21:39:00.000-04:00

What a mess. They're still working out the kinks with our new water main, it seems. They did the hookup last Thursday. Apparently something got flushed into the line between the water main and our meter, and the crew had to come in and disconnect us briefly to fix that. Then, as expected, the water in the house sputtered some as we flushed air bubbles out of the lines running to each. All weekend, we had cloudy water and the toilet made odd noises. I tried adjusting the fill mechanism, but with only limited success.

I came home tonight and the toilet sounded like it was going to explode upon flushing. Water was sputtering again. The upstairs shower ran orange with rust for a couple minutes while I cleared those lines out. Toilet filling either takes forever, or runs hard enough that it continuously uses the overflow tube.

If things don't clear up within the next day or so, we'll have to call the town to find out what's going on. This just ain't right. I may just replace the toilet fill mechanism anyway as I'm sure I've misadjusted it horribly and it's probably in rough shape as a result.

In other water news, I finally tracked down the source of the water on the bathroom floor by the shower. The silicone bead where the surround and the "tub" was leaking. I pulled up the old, dried it well, and laid down a new bead. Still needs a touch-up, but it's far, far better than it was before.

Rebates, rebates, rebates

2006-10-01T17:27:00.000-04:00

I could kick myself. I went through my Lowe's paperwork today to fill out the rebate forms for my "free" waster/dryer delivery and my $50 gift card. Only to find out that the delivery rebate requires a copy of the signed delivery sheet. Which I threw out. Oh well, at least I'll still get the $50 Lowe's gift card.

Yesterday, we discovered that the Bosch wipers on my wife's car were in bad shape. They didn't wipe well at all. So we stopped at Pep Boys while we were out and, after much searching of the store (they had wiper blades scattered everywhere), I found the "real" rack and settled on a set with the Rain-X brand. I ended up going for their most expensive model as there was a buy one get one free mail-in rebate deal on those. So, $34.98 of wipers becomes a respectable $17.99. I normally like SilBlade wipers (I've had 3 sets, including one set on my current car which went on the week I bought it), but have trouble finding them locally and the metal bits tend to rust pretty quickly. These Rain-X blades look to be pretty good.

What I've been up to

2006-09-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

Not much house stuff. Work got crazy this week. I'm in charge of App1, which we're currently working on version 2 of which will integrate with a very large system we've bought from a vendor. I have a steno notebook which I'm keeping my to-do list in. I have a full page of items (one item per line), and the list never seems to shrink. One item comes off, 2 more go on. We're losing one of the key developers provided by the vendor, and guess who's going to be picking up the stuff he had been doing. So, a quick rundown on what I've got on my plate:

Manage App1 version 1
New system analysis and investigation for writing specs, queries, etc. to be used by App1 version 2
Updates to multiple reports and web screens for VendorPackage, including working out the exact requirements for what has to be done.
Set up new repository for managing VendorPackage project documentation.
Teach people how to use Subversion for the above
Mock up some forms to ask people to use when requesting changes so I don't have to ask a million questions when they send me a one-sentence request for a change.
Work with App1 developer to work out how to run multiple instances of App1 version 2 on the same web server, each instance pointing at a different database environment (it was originally designed for a 1:1 relationship).
Develop test scripts/scenarios for App1 version 2.
Various impromptu meetings and phone calls to discuss all of the above.
About to start learning our new check scanning/processing system. Currently covering for someone else while the vendor does some debugging, but I don't know any of the history of what's been going on with the issues thus far.

Time management has been interesting. I disabled my email notification app today so that I wasn't constantly interrupted by messages coming in. That had me feeling out of the loop, but I was able to concentrate. I also started blocking out time in my calendar - from 8 to 9, I'd only work on task 1, 9 to 10 task 2, and so on. If I tried to task-switch on demand, I just wouldn't have gotten anything done. It worked pretty well, until about 10:30 AM, at which point I had to start talking to other people and taking phone calls. I was able to get back to it in the afternoon.

So much to do, so little time.

Donated again

2006-09-12T21:45:00.000-04:00

There was a blood drive next door to my office today so I went over and donated blood during lunch. I'd actually made an appointment for it a few days ago, but completely forgot until I saw the signs in the lobby promoting it.

I mentioned a few months ago that I wanted to do the full 6 donations this year, but I fell off the schedule and that won't happen. My last time, I attempted to do the double red cell donation, but the needle was inserted wrong and they were only able to get one unit. Today, I was asked if I wanted to try the double again, and said I'd rather not, explaining why I was hesitant. I was told that I probably had a rookie the last time, and today's double-red technician was a seasoned pro. So, I decided to go for it.

In the screening, my red cell count was 50%. I have no idea what this means beyond it being exceedingly high and seen very rarely. OK, so I'm a good candidate. That plus my good veins, they love me there. I got hooked up, and it went much better than last time.

The double-red donation process is a little more complicated than a regular donation. You're hooked up to an Apheresis machine, which basically separates blood components. One unit of blood is drawn, then the red cells separated from the rest (plasma, etc.). Everything but the red cells is then returned to your body, plus some saline solution. Then, repeat that for a second unit. The whole process, done right, actually hurts less than a regular blood donation. Just a couple extra little "twinges" when things change direction. But there's one thing I didn't count on, one thing they didn't tell me. And I'll tell you now.

Bring a blanket.

All those fluids they put back into your veins? They're at room temperature. That cools you off in a big hurry. I was actually shivering. It would have been great this summer on one of those 95° days.

This donation brings me up and over the 1 gallon milestone. Where's my cookie?

Finally, construction!

2006-09-11T22:22:00.000-04:00

Nope, not on the house. The road construction we were told about in May, which was to begin at the end of July, began today. Let's hope it doesn't mess things up too much.

The laundry equipment

2006-09-11T21:18:00.000-04:00

By popular demand (one comment counts as "popular" around here), here's what we bought.

The washer is a GE WHRE5260EWW. Energy-Star certified, 3.5 cubic feet, nearly silent.

The dryer is a GE Profile DPGT250GCWW (I think - too lazy to go check). Dries in about half the time the old dryer needed. And again, very quiet.

Close encounter of the rodent kind

2006-09-09T23:24:00.000-04:00

Went up on the roof today to measure the old chimney so that I can buy something to put up there to keep rodents out. I caught a squirrel jumping in there a couple months ago - guess that explains the noises and other evidence we found in the family room ceiling.

So, there I was, taking my measurements, and trying to pry the stone cap that was put up there off the bricks giving it some airspace. Suddenly, something catches my eye - it was a squirrel coming up out of the chimney! I almost sealed it up with the critter still in there. Before I close things up for real, I'll have to take a mirror and a big light up there so I can see down the chimney to make sure everything is OK.

Long-term, the chimney has to come down completely, but that won't be until we have that portion of the roof redone.

The joy of new toys

2006-09-09T22:45:00.000-04:00

The new washer & dryer are an amazing upgrade from the ones we got with the house. They're nearly silent in comparison, and don't rattle the whole house. My wife called the washer a "bottomless pit" after it took what the old washer would have considered a "large" load and it was barely half-full.

The dryer is absolutely unreal. It's got a light inside. It has a touch-screen LCD for operating it. It dries clothes in half the time the old one did. Had we gotten the matching washer, the washer would actually communicate with the dryer to tell it how best to dry the clothes.

This is what 15 or 20 years of laundry technology progress looks like. It's nice.

And that was just one day!

2006-09-09T22:18:00.000-04:00

We haven't had a "productive" day on the scale of today in quite a while.

We got up early today so that we could prepare the pantry for our impending washer & dryer delivery, believing that they'd arrive in the morning. Cleared lots of stuff off shelves so those could be removed. A good chunk of project-related materials were sent down to the basement. Relocated the cat stuff to the hallway. I disconnected everything and moved the dryer into the kitchen. Then the washer was moved away from its position but kept in the pantry.

I need to rewind a bit here. Early last week, we started noticing that the pantry floor felt wet & slippery near the washer & dryer. I thought it was because I'd spilled some fabric softener and didn't clean it up. Then, around Tuesday I guess, my wife noticed a lot of what looked like mold growing on the floor between the wall and the washer. At first we thought the cats had been spraying, but even after I cleaned it up, the mold came back a couple days later. It was starting to look like we might have a leaking washer.

Back to this morning. The washer moved, I picked up the carpet that we had placed underneath. It looked like it might have some mold on it too. Suspicious. Then I noticed the carpet felt damp. Then I felt water run down my fingers, and onto the floor. Jackpot. We had a leaking washer. Talk about dodging a bullet!

We mixed up a Clorox/water solution and cleaned the floor thoroughly. At this point, it's about 10 AM and we have no idea where our delivery is. I called the store and learned that it wouldn't be until mid to late afternoon. So, what else to do?

My wife had planned on painting the nursery ceiling today. Before she started on that, however, she decided that we needed some color in the master bedroom closet. So, the south wall of that is now a greyish sky blue, the same color used in the nursery. She also painted a few sticks of quarter-round for the trim in the nursery. Looking good.

Finally, around 2:30, our delivery arrived. They brought the units in, and started the washer hookup. They don't do gas hookups, but that's no problem as I've done it before. The washer hooked up easily, but they discovered that it lacked a drain hose. Kind of important. They left to make another delivery, and said they'd return with the parts in about an hour.

Since everything was still somewhat pulled apart, I took the opportunity to hook up the gas and vent for the dryer. Gas was cake, no leaks on the first try. The vent hose required extensive modifications before I could get it to fit right. Just a matter of the amount of space vs. the design of the tube. Eventually I got it. Shortly after that, the Lowe's guys returned and hooked up the drain tube for the washer, and we were in business.

A little tidying up, pantry reconstruction, and then we put the clothes back in the closet. Long day.

Building a new wall

2006-09-06T22:25:00.000-04:00

I ran outside tonight after dinner to attempt to get a little more done in the yard. Time is starting to run short in the evenings now with the days getting shorter. Instead of working on creating new grassy areas, I went to work on the "island" between the bedroom, shed and fence.

The island is pretty well set, as far as plants go. But, it lacks definition. It's just a mound of dirt with a lilac tree, some hostas, and a bleeding heart planted in it. We decided to put our giant pile of rocks to good use, and build a small stone wall around the island to give it some character and a well-defined border.

I managed to get about one third of the wall built before running out of daylight. I also was having trouble finding suitable rocks. I'm sure there are more in there, I just need to dig through and find them all. The pile is completely surrounded by plants now, so it's a little difficult.

Cleaning out the closet

2006-09-03T22:56:00.000-04:00

My wife ripped through all of her stuff in our master bedroom closet today, putting away all her summer clothes and all of her non-maternity clothes. End result: very, very few clothes of hers left in the closet. Once she was done, I decided to attack my own.

First step: remove the door. The door opens into the closet, toward the shelves/hangers. This effectively makes 3 feet of shelving/hanger space inaccessible. Moved some things around, put quite a few shirts and pants on the Salvation Army pile, took the winter clothes out and put some summer clothes away, and my section was looking a little better.

We also attacked the back wall and opposite side. We cleared out the plastic shelves that the previous owner had left, and broke them down for use elsewhere (I have shelves for the basement now!). The weird cabinet that was in there is gone now. Shoes will all go under the hanging stuff on the right side of the closet.

Looking at what's there now, we think we'll have enough space to put the changing table and maybe even a small dresser for the baby clothes in the closet. That solves a lot of problems for us.

Flourescent

2006-09-02T22:52:00.000-04:00

That's supposed to be "compact flourescent" up there.

A while ago, we decided we wanted to try to minimize the electrical load of our lighting. Rather than throw out perfectly good bulbs, however, we're doing it gradually - as bulbs burn out, they'llbe replaced with compact flourescent bulbs.

The house came with CF in a couple kitchen fixtures, but last week the 100W bulb in the master bath finally popped. I replaced it with a 13W CF bulb and it's quite a difference. Not as bright (expected), a bit of a lag after flipping the switch (expected), and a bit of a purple cast (unexpected). The kitchen bulbs are in blue glass "shades", so any purple cast isn't noticable. I find myself using the second light in the bathroom, also a CF, but this one a ring type instead of a more conventional socket a lot more than I used to. But I know that combined, these 2 CF bulbs are drawing less than half the juice the old 100W bulb did.

As winter approaches, we'll start using more lights more often, so we'll have more opportunity to replace them and see how the whole house looks being lit this way.

Major impulse buy

2006-09-02T17:47:00.000-04:00

My wife got a call from her father this morning while we were still in "wake up" mode. He said that someone had just returned a gas dryer to his Lowe's store and wanted to know if we were interested in it. We showered, dressed, and rushed there.

Our current dryer works well enough, but the washer is quite old, small, noisy and inefficient. The dryer was marked as originally being $300, and on "clearance" for $99. Bigger than what we have, obviously newer, and most likely more efficient. It had some scratches and dings, but hey, for $99, as long as it works, right?

So, on to washers. We ultimately settled on a 3.5 cubic foot GE top-load model. Maybe a front-load or high-efficiency model would have been better, but at significant extra cost, and we've heard about a number of problems with front-loaders. Besides, this unit is Energy Star certified, which is a good start, and it's still far better than what we already have. $450 for that. $99.99 for the extended warranty with in-home service. $65 for delivery (which we'll get back via mail-in rebate). Toss in an industrial carpet to go under the pair, a new air filter for the furnace, a big carpet gripper for the rug in the living room, a couple new smoke detectors...

Fortunately, Lowe's is running one of their 12 months no interest/no payments deals for any single purchase totalling $279 or more, plus a $50 gift card (mail-in rebate style) with purchase of appliances totalling $497-$749. So we've got some time to pay it all off.

The dryer has a 1-year warranty on it. If it croaks on day 366, it was (basically) only $50, so it's not like we won't get our money's worth out of it.

Delivery next weekend. Finally, we can do large loads of laundry again!

Bienvenido, Ernesto!

2006-09-02T17:45:00.000-04:00

The leftovers of Tropical Storm Ernesto are coming through today. Lots of wind, even more rain - they're predicting 2 to 4 inches. It's been raining pretty hard since about 11 AM today.

I really wish I'd cleaned out the gutters before this came along. Next weekend for sure.

Organized the shed

2006-08-27T20:35:00.000-04:00

I got stir-crazy today and decided to clean out and organize our shed out back. It's been getting pretty bad - can't walk in without tripping over something, junk piled on top of junk, nothing easy to find or retrieve.

I didn't find a whole lot to throw out. I did find a very large stack of shingles, and a baker's dozen 8-foot 1x2, among other various lumber. The 1x2s went up into the rafters (open rafters are great for storage), as did our extra bike tires and the 15 pound roofer's felt left over from the family room floor. The leftover wood from the family room floor was stashed in the corner behind the door, where they'll be out of the way. All flower pots are now emptied of old dirt and ready to be reused, and the new half-dozen that I found wrapped up are out on display and ready to be picked up for whatever we might need them for.

The shelves are now organized in a somewhat sane manner, some tools hung back on the hooks, and other things stahed well out of the way but still accessible.

All in all, I think I tripled the available space in the shed, and in the process gained a lot more accessibility. I still haven't put into place any serious storage-management stuff - more hooks on the walls, baskets, etc. which will really help out as we collect more stuff. Maybe in a few weeks.

Long overdue

2006-08-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's really been 6 weeks since I've posted an update? I've been slacking!

Not a tremendous amount to report. We had a major hot spell, which limited work outside. Once things cooled off, though, we were able to make some major progress in the yard. We have now:

Re-weeded the area between the kitchen, family room & bedroom and put landscaper's felt down just to keep the weeds down.
Completed cleanup across the top of the driveway and mulched that.
More securely replaced the fence section that kept dropping.
The walkway between the fence and the bedroom was ripped up, somewhat leveled, and grass planted.
Relocated some of the plants behind the fence at the top of the driveway to "outside" the fence, and planted grass there.
Started cleanup of the "island" where the lilac tree is.

With a week left in August, we're feeling confident that we can turn the entire area between the shed, bedroom & driveway into grass before the snow flies. We'll need the rain to hold off on the weekends so that we can push hard, but it really seems doable. More than we expected to get done this year! And given the progress made this year, we think we might be able to get the rest of the backyard cleared in 2007.

One step closer to cold Fusion?

2006-07-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

Went away for the weekend and discovered that I'd forgotten my trusty Gillette Mach 3 Turbo at home. I had last shaved on Thursday, so by Saturday morning things were getting pretty ugly. So, I zipped out to the local supermarket to pick one up for the weekend.

They had both the Mach 3 Turbo and Gillette's new "Fusion" razor, for the same price. Actually, after the supermarket's "saver club" card, the Fusion was about $2 cheaper. I had sworn I'd never spend the kind of money on a razor that this device commanded, but figured with the discount, I was saving money, so why not give it a shot?

Unfortunately, I don't have a card for that chain, and they wouldn't cut me any slack at the register, so I paid full price - same price I would have paid for the Mach 3, so it's not like I wasted money on the deal.

The verdict? Well, the razor seemed to work better than the Mach 3, but I've had similar first impressions each time I've changed shaving devices. It's just a matter of "different", not necessarily immediately better. The razor cartridge is huge and I felt like it was flopping around a lot on my face. The 6^th blade on the back side, for trimming, is a nice touch. We'll see how the razor performs through this head and the second cartridge it came with. I'll keep the handle around, but I really don't think I'll be buying replacement cartridges unless there's a price advantage to it.

Super weekend

2006-07-09T20:52:00.000-04:00

Had an interesting automotive experience this weekend. Saw two "supercars" in 2 days, without going to any extreme lengths.

Saturday, I was out driving w/ my brother, and he exclaimed "look a couple cars ahead! Is that a..." It was hard to see, as the car was so low-slung and there were about 3 vehicles between us. A few good bends in the road, and we were able to confirm it. We were sharing the road with...a Ford GT. We managed to shuffle through traffic to get right behind the car, and followed for several miles (not stalking; we were actually going in the same direction). We eventually had to pull up alongside, and looking at the occupants, it appeared that this was a mid-life crisis car, and a mid-life crisis female companion in his passenger seat as well.

Then Sunday, we were driving home and taking the senic route unintentionally, and crossed paths with a late-model Dodge Viper.

Truth hurts

2006-07-06T21:38:00.000-04:00

I went through some of our records over the last few days and updated loan payment data in Quicken. I have our loans set up in the software, but most of the payments had been recorded in a very simple fashion (my own mistake), applying the whole payment to the principal. Anyone who's dealt with a loan knows this is wrong - each payment is comprised of some money going to the principal, and some to the interest.

Why is this so important? First, it more accurately reflects the amount left to pay on the loan. And secondly, the outstanding loan balance detracts from one's total net worth. All this time, our net worth was showing as significantly higher, because all those payments had been going towards principal (as far as Quicken was concerned) and thus driving the balance down faster than in reality. And thirdly, tracking the interest spent can provide insight into how one can reduce money going straight out the window, and plan extra payments against principal accordingly.

The data isn't 100% cleaned up, but it's a lot more accurate than it was. The net worth is a lot lower now, but at least it's more correct.

Fun with MS Project

2006-07-06T20:54:00.000-04:00

I arrived at work this morning to find an email from one of the other leads on my project saying that somehow, my MS Project plan had gotten corrupted and it was breaking the main plan when he tried to open it. So, he renamed my file to get around the issue and let's talk in the morning.

I checked my file and it was indeed corrupt. Really odd, since it worked fine yesterday when last I touched it. But now, hosed. And my only "backup" copy is on tape from last Friday. Glad I was keeping it on the network, but I do still lose a day of work.

Second time in 3 weeks that this has happened to me. I scoured Google (web and newsgroups) for most of the morning and came up empty as far as resolution and recovery. The best information I could find said that setting dependencies (at either "end") with tasks that have subtasks can cause corruption. Well, I'd been doing that. Maybe that caused it? I don't know. The only recovery tool I found only works with MS Project Server, which we're not using.

For now, that is. The other lead and I are talking about going in super-early a few days next week to try installing Project Server to see how much overhead there will be if we use it. Can we integrate with LDAP? Will it require extra system administration? If it's smooth, we may just switch to that to help alleviate these issues. We've been wanting to do it anyway, just haven't had the opportunity or availability for it. We just can't keep taking chances with the current setup - we need something reliable. I can't lose a day's work every 10 days.

Lawn Update

2006-07-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

We created some more lawn last night. Finally caught our neighbor on the east side at home last night and checked in with him regarding what's his, what's ours, what he's OK with us doing, etc. Short version: Everything but the peonies over there, we can have our way with.

So, we set about ripping out the weeds, brush, etc. over there and got about 1/2 the length of the scrub area cleared completely. It works out to about 2/3 of the area, as it tapers as you go up the driveway. From the driveway all the way to his house. Seeded, limed, fertilized and watered the whole area. Let's hope it goes as well as the rest of the lawn so far.

I also mowed the lawn last night. I know I just did it on Saturday, but with the dull blades on the mower I have to keep on top of it. It went a lot easier than the first time because the grass was so much shorter - it was just a trim.

While we were discussing the area we worked in last night, our neighbor told us that the previous owner had spent a lot of time pulling out all the grass that was in front of the house when she bought it, and now we'd gone and ripped all that out and replaced it with grass. I kind of got the feeling that he thought it was a waste of effort somewhere, but whatever. It's our house now.

Alaskans, I give you your Senator

2006-07-02T14:49:00.000-04:00

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has in the past made a lot of noise on the indecency front. But this week, he was voting on a net-neutrality amendment to a bill before Senate Commerce Committe, and voted against. His explanation of why is interesting to say the least. A few choice excerpts.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I would kill to have my own personal internet.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

I would expect that the Senator would have his staffers sending email to him within the Senate's own email-system, or even his own office's mail system. If that setup routes all internal email out onto the Internet, someone's woefully incompetent. And regardless of internal vs. external, I can't recall the last time a legitimate email I was expecting or sending took more than 10 minutes to arrive. Usually the email arrives before I've finished telling the recipient that the email is en route in the first place.

But we're also making an assumption here, that when he says "an internet" he means "an email." He might mean something else entirely. In which case maybe it really did take overnight for the entire internet to be packed up and physically moved into his office.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.

I'm actually at a loss on this one. I don't know what to say. Really all I can come up with is...TUBES!?

Well, that and George Costanza saying "It's all pipes! What's the difference?!"

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

Oh, where to start? First off, if the DoD's "internet" is their own, then it's really not "an internet" - it's their own private network, built using internet technologies. A little history lesson - DARPANet, a DoD computer network, is what the Internet grew out of in the first place!

Second, I would expect the DoD to have their own network. Not for latency. For security. If they didn't have that, I'd be worried.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.
It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

Those small businesses are using that messaging for...you guessed it! Commerce! And how many billions of dollars of commerce done on the Internet every year are driven by "consumers"?

And if Internet messaging is "essential" to the "operation of our families", then we're in serious trouble as a society.

I guess it's too much to ask that the people voting on stuff like this actually have some knowledge of the subject, or at least have some advisors to help them out. Maybe even have that advisor write up some key statements/phrases so that the Senator can appear informed.

OTOH, maybe this guy really does represent the people of Alaska. I'd like to think, however, that most people can understand a lot of this better than their Senator.

Maybe it'll pay off

2006-07-01T20:03:00.000-04:00

We had our first big review/design discussion meeting yesterday, centered around my Word Doc From Hell™. Meeting went well, we didn't cover the whole doc but we were at it for almost 2 hours.

As I was packing up at my desk, prepping to leave for the weekend, bossman came over and gave me an attaboy on the document - he liked the format, liked the flow, overall liked what he saw as far as where the document was going. Maybe I can be an example for others. Maybe I have figured this whole thing out.

Maybe there's hope yet. Now if I can just get access to the right environment for the application I need to interface, I can wrap up a lot of this stuff.

Yet another case of lost data

2006-07-01T15:42:00.000-04:00

Donor data stolen from Dallas Red Cross

A laptop containing personal information from thousands of blood donors — including Social Security numbers and medical histories — has been stolen from a local office of the American Red Cross.
But Red Cross officials note that the information was encrypted.
"We haven't viewed this as a security breach at this point," said Darren Irby, spokesman for the national American Red Cross office.
The laptop was one of three stolen from a locked closet in the Farmers Branch office of the American Red Cross in May, but the two others did not contain the personal information.

It could be worse. It's not as though someone took data out of a secured location and left it easily available - the Red Cross office's physical security was compromised. And the data was encrypted - but was it strongly encrypted? We can only hope.

I've long expected my credit card companies, my banks, my insurance companies to leave data out there blowing in the wind. No one really is safe, it seems.

Weekend routine, or routine weekend?

2006-07-01T15:24:00.000-04:00

We worked about 2 1/2 hours this morning, before the heat & sun got to be too much to bear. My wife weeded out front and removed the plant that smells like cat urine, as the smell was filling the house. I pulled out the lawnmower and attempted to sharpen the blades. I'm not sure how much I really accomplished, as the blades were really, really dull.

But, the big news! We've mowed our front yard for the first time. It looks infinitely better now - even, the weeds are cut down, it looks a lot less ragged.

After mowing, I attacked some of our many bags of lawn debris. We had been just piling as much as we could into cheap black plastic bags for disposal later. Unfortunately, this meant that the bags were all torn to some degree, the plant material had started decomposing, the bags and garbage cans had started collecting water...it's a mess. I dumped as much water as I could, then emptied one barrel right into our regular trash bin. That was one of the most vile smells I have ever encountered. The water alone was bad. The rotting plant material was just heinous. In all, I bagged up 9 34 gallon UltraFlex bags, and have easily 5 or 6 more to fill, just based on what old bags remain.

I'm planning on emptying the shed and reorganizing that this weekend, maybe even tonight. We'll see. There's a lot of stuff in there and it's just a mess.

Now I can say I've tried it

2006-06-28T21:59:00.000-04:00

I gave Tor spin tonight. Not so much because I'm ultra-paranoid about my anonymity online, but just as an occasional extra layer of protection to use when I'm on a network I don't fully trust.

Setup was a snap with the Windows installer and Firefox extension. Only took about 3 minutes. Unfortunately, I had to give up on it. My web browsing speed was cut by at least 50%, and it seemed to really mess with some of my website logins.

I've uninstalled, and have abandoned any notions of using it regularly. But like I said, I'll keep it in mind when I'm dropped on a foreign network and want that extra bit of security.

Word vs. OO.o, part 2

2006-06-28T21:31:00.000-04:00

The gap between OO.o and Word 2003 widened today. My document is now up to 27 pages, and over 750KB in Word 2003 format. OO.o - still under 60KB. And Word keeps getting slower and slower as it flashes "analyzing the document" on the status bar every few minutes.

I'm trying to use Word properly - styles for everything, lots of structure to the document, etc. But the document map keeps dropping elements, performance is going to hell, and the file is getting really bloated. I keep fighting the app as it constantly reformats and guesses at the formatting it thinks I should have. I'm spending 20% of my time undoing what it's doing!

I've been fighting with MS Project 2003 as well. And PowerPoint was fun a couple weeks ago. Visio is the only MS Office app I've used in the last 2 weeks that hasn't given me lip. I am quickly becoming MS Office's bitch. And I can't fight back and replace it altogether.

A tale of two word processors

2006-06-28T06:46:00.000-04:00

I'm writing a pretty large spec document at work (relatively speaking) and MS Office Word 2003 has been struggling with it at times, slowing way down when working with certain portions of the document. It's not complex, just a lot of content, including a couple tables with over 100 rows on them. The file is around 697 KB right now. Pretty large for a Word document.

Then I remembered that our consultant uses OpenOffice.org, and when he sends me updates to documents we're working on together, his version is always about half the size of what I sent to him. Very interesting indeed - he's saving as Word, but cutting the file in half.

So, I downloaded and installed OO.o for comparison purposes, both performance while dealing with a large document and file size. My first surprise was in performance. OO.o handled this large document much better than Word 2003 had. However, all the custom styles I'd set up in Word disappeared; I think they're in the Word template, not in the document itself. Dang.

Then things got real interesting. After making no changes, I saved the file from OO.o in Word format. The file was only 347 KB, with the identical content! Only 50% of the original size. Amazing. Then I saved in OO.o native format. Only 54KB That's 92% smaller. This improvement is in large part thanks to the fact that the OO.o "document" is really a zipfile containing the elements that make up the document - style information, images, and the content itself. Non-binary data is stored as XML, which is plain text and massively compressible.

So I got to thinking that OO.o, in addition to being a lot less expensive than MS Office (it's free), has a lot of other hidden TCO advantages. How many gigabytes of documents does your organization have? What if you could reduce that storage (and backup, and data-management) requirement by 50% or more just because you're using a different office suite? Think of the bandwidth savings, reduced network congestion, less load on your email system. Carry all the documents for one project on a USB thumbdrive, instead of having to waste time and materials burning DVDs to move them around.

Now, OO.o isn't a "perfect" replacement for MS Office, as there are still some compatibility issues (especially with macros), but if you were just starting up an office, OO.o would be a great place to start for your employees. Maybe keep one or two MS Office licenses around to handle any really tricky documents sent from the outside, but beyond that, why not take the opportunity to enjoy the savings?

A "me" day

2006-06-24T17:06:00.000-04:00

My wife had some shopping to do, then a Pampered Chef party to attend today, so I had most of today to myself. I took the opportunity to get a few things done, and do some relaxing.

Started out by being very lazy this morning, rolling out of bed about 8:30. Didn't even shower & dress until about 10:00. I finally made a solid backup of my C drive, something I had been procrastinating on for quite a while. While that was going on, I replaced the left taillight on my car, as the lens had been destroyed about 2 months ago in an unfortunate incident involving me, the car, Reverse gear, and the automated payment device at a car wash. That only took me about 20 minutes, but now I don't have to worry about getting a ticket.

The car fixed, I put my to-do list together hit the road. First stop: the mall on the far side of town. I went into Dick's Sporting Goods to check out their pocketknife selection. They didn't have the Leatherman Squirt S4 I was looking for, only the P4, the Leatherman Micra, and the Gerber Shortcut. The Leatherman Squirt P4 goes about $30, the Shortcut about $20. And while a little smaller & lighter than the Micra, both seem to be short on tools and long on something extra - eye candy. Both have a little "cover" on each handle for color, and while they look nice, they seem flimsy. Further, the Shortcut is considerably wider than either of Leatherman's offerings. I told the guy at the counter "thanks, I may be back in a few minutes" and walked down the mall to EMS.

EMS apparently doesn't carry Gerber, but they did have the original Micra, 100% pure Stainless Steel, nothing extra, and a good tool selection. And only $22. Did I mention that EMS also had a sale going, 15%-20% off everything. Such a deal. Of all the tools I had looked at, the original Micra I think was the smallest (in total volume), simplest (no extra colored covers), and best overall package deal. EMS also had the Mag-Lite Solitaire I had been looking for, only $9. Keychain is complete. I'll post pictures later.

I also picked up a pair of full-brimmed hats for my wife and I. We really need to start keeping the sun off us while working in the yard and for vacation, and a ballcap doesn't fit the bill (HA! I made a pun!). I walked out of there with over $75 of stuff for about $60.

Back to Dick's, to check out their selection of Crocs (for my father in law). No luck there, but I did pick up a pair of shirts for $15 each which will be very nice this summer. One is button-down, the other a CoolMax T-shirt which should be comfortable while working in the yard. I love cotton, but once you start sweating, it sucks.

Then it was across the street to CompUSA to check out the MacBook and MBP again, and just browse. The MacBook's keyboard felt really weird. Those keys are spaced really wide. I much preferred the MBP's keyboard, I think. Bought nothing, then went next door to PetSmart just to look around. Bad idea. They were having one of their regular adoption days and I really wanted to bring home a few of the kittens they had. There was one named "Smokey" who looked almost identical to a cat my parents have by the same name. I thought I was looking back in time 11 years to when he was a kitten. They also had a year-old cat named "Ben" who is a displaced resident of New Orleans (courtesy of Hurricane Katrina). If I were to give our Juniper a haircut, this cat would be his twin. Walked out empty-handed, then had a 6" Tuna sub at Subway.

My next to last stop was Home Depot, mostly to browse but I did want to get some supporting cages for oue Peonies which can't support themselves. They didn't get any in this year. Also looked at Dremel tools, and briefly considered some landscape timbers to put alongside the driveway by the garden. I meant to buy a magnet for picking things up in hard-to-reach areas, but forgot. Again, left empty-handed.

Last stop: haircut! But I didn't get it, the wait was 30 minutes and I didn't want to sit around doing nothing.

Came home, assembled my new keychain, emptied the dishwasher, washed some dishes, tossed some laundry in the washing machine, and then came outside to hang out on the porch, as it was cooler outside than in. Enjoyed a nice frosty mug of beer and some hummus on crackers while bopping around on the 'net. Gotta love WiFi. My wife will be home Real Soon Now after a stop at Blockbuster to pick up the original Superman and we'll watch that tonight as I've never seen it, and we're getting excited about seeing the new one next weekend.

$5 Million before taxes, you say?

2006-06-22T21:24:00.000-04:00

Last week, I posted about what I would do if I managed to hit the lottery and my take, after taxes, was $5M. El Gee's original post was about $5M before taxes. He's since updated with his version of my post.

So, what if that $5M was before taxes, and we ended up clearing $1.25M after the IRS, the lump sum stuff, etc.? Well, the list wouldn't be too much different, just scaled back. We'd keep working for sure. Still set up the college funds, but only fund them at $50K each instead of $150K. Pay off those debts, replace cars, maybe skip the truck, boat & travel trailer. Put some money into the house, just maybe not as much. Then invest the rest.

More garden progress

2006-06-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, we worked mornings on the garden between the driveway and the house, and inside the fence behind the kitchen. Some plants were relocated, like our delphinium, irises and mint (mint repels mice and some other rodents, so we planted it along the foundation), and a couple new hydrangeas were planted. Tuesday night, we finished things up and laid down 7 bags of mulch. The difference is amazing. Days 160 and 162 in the photo gallery (link on the sidebar).

Now we're cooking with gas!

2006-06-22T20:50:00.000-04:00

Once spring hit, we picked up a small tabletop gas grill to take care of our outdoor cooking needs. I love to work on the grill, and although charcoal is best, it's more time consuming and offers less direct control. So gas it was. I would have preferred a full-size grill, but with nowhere good to put it, and money being a little tight as we're still landscaping, we opted for the smaller and cheaper option.

For a while, we were using the 14 oz cylinders that hook right up to the grill. Trouble is, this is very wasteful, and gets expensive in a hurry - the cheapest we found the cylinders was $3.75 for a pair at Wal-Mart. And you always run out in the middle of a meal.

So, this weekend, I found the 4' adapter hose to let me hook the grill up to a regular tank. $17 at Lowe's. Then over to Wal-Mart to pick up a Blue Rhino 20 lb tank for $42 (I had no old tank to exchange. Exchanges are about $15). So now, for under $60, I'm set with gas for over a year, instead of spending the money for one cylinder a week and having to dispose of them. And I won't run out mid-meal!

Plus, I won't have to buy a tank when we do get that big grill later.

No more dressing in the dark

2006-06-21T21:44:00.000-04:00

I discovered Monday morning that the light in our closet had burned out. Naturally, it's not a "normal" bulb such that one would have a temporary replacement readily available in the house. Instead, it's a 22W 8" flourescent ring bulb.

Tonight I remembered to stop at Home Depot and pick up a replacement. I don't know what the original bulb was, but this new one, a Phillips "Daylight" model, seems to be twice as bright. Maybe now I won't end up wearing the completely wrong things to work.

Who are we kidding, I'm a terminal geek whose only fashion sense is the wisdom of his wife.

Hard drive panic continues

2006-06-21T21:36:00.000-04:00

Last night, I thought I'd lost the computer. Shortly after booting, it really flaked out - it thought it was running on battery, apps weren't behaving properly, it was scary. HDD Health was telling me that my hard drive was at 37°C, which I knew couldn't be right - it starts at 42, normally. So I decided to reboot. A few programs refused to shut down clean, and it took a long time for Windows to finish. Finally, it did.

And then the box wouldn't POST. First, it wouldn't ID the CPU. Then, it got through the CPU, but nothing more. I powered it off and let it cool while I searched for our small boxfan, but came up empty. After about 5 minutes, I checked the various expansion cards, disconnected the secondary hard drive, and booted successfully.

I thought I lost everything last night. A fire has been lit under me to get my backups made more regularly.

2006, the summer of identity theft

2006-06-21T20:27:00.000-04:00

Once again, data that identity thieves drool over has been compromised. That's at least the 4^th time in the last couple months it's happened This is getting completely out of hand.

Companies just aren't accountable for this stuff. Not even a slap on the wrist, really. In some jurisdictions, they have to inform people whose data may have been compromised. Some laws place a limit on how many affected people it takes to trigger a notification. But by and large, companies don't pay any penalty for screwing this up. It's "whoops, sorry" and you're left wondering whether you're safe or not.

It's only a matter of time before every American is nailed by this. I've had the good fortune of only having a credit card number stolen once, and given how infrequently I used that card and the manner in which it was used, I think that person really just guessed on the number and got lucky. But I know my day will come. I safeguard my data, but I can't say the same for the other entities that hold it.

I posted the following as a comment on Slashdot last week, but I'm going to expand upon it. These companies need to see a real financial and time-cost impact to their lax approach to data security. Some people have suggested $1000 per affected person per lapse. But that's worthless. The money isn't significant to many companies. It's just not a punishment. The company writes a check after a years-long investigation and goes on their merry way. It doesn't repair the damage done. It doesn't protect those affected from further damage. The company's resources aren't consumed in a punitive way for their transgression.

Meanwhile, the people whose data was leaked are in a world of hurt. They're spending days, weeks even, calling banks, creditors, credit agencies, utilities, employers, insurance companies, etc. warning them that there might be fraudulent activity attempted in their name. Spending hours each week going over every little detail of their financial life, making sure that their credit hasn't been destroyed. Wondering if people are going to commit crimes in their name. But the company and people responsible for all this, they pay nothing. They don't have to care.

Here's what I want the company responsible for the information leak to be accountable for.

Contact all 3 credit bureaus and put a fraud watch flag on my account for at least 2 years, at their expense. I understand that today only I can make this request, by law. Amend the law to make this exception.
Contact every other institution the responsible company is aware of that I hold accounts with and inform them of the leak, and to watch for bad activity. For example, if my employer leaked my data, I would expect them to contact my bank (I have direct deposit, so they know the bank), the government (IRS), my 401(k) administrator, my health plan administrator, and probably a few others.
A simple method for me to report all expenses incurred cleaning up after the mess that the other institutions can't do themselves. I'll record my time. I want a fair hourly rate (my personal time is valuable), and payment should be swift (within 4 weeks of reporting, if reporting electronically).
A fine paid out not to the government, but to each individual whose data was lost. After all, they have those records, right? A flat amount disbursed to each person, at least $1000. Within 4 weeks of the information loss detection. Over and above the payment above.

I know, it'll never happen. But I can dream, can't I?

Since he won't post it himself

2006-06-20T06:54:00.000-04:00

Go over and wish Eric a happy birthday. It's his...um...I'm not sure, but it's lower than my count.

5 Megabucks

2006-06-19T21:20:00.000-04:00

El Gee asks what would you do with $5 million? I'll leave the math there on his blog. Straight out - let's say I won the lottery and took the lump sum, after taxes I ended up with $5M. What to do? I'm in a very different place in life than El Gee is, so my ideas will be quite different.

Set up college financing for all our nieces and nephews, plus our own child(ren). That's 5 nieces & nephews, plus our own kids, let's guess high and say 3 of them. 8 kids total, I'll budget $150K per for college (figuring that a 529 account will earn money, etc. that should cover most stuff). That's $1.2M.
Pay off all of our debt other than the mortgage. Under $100K.
Pay extra into the mortgage. Negligible, really.
Massive home improvement. Rewire the whole house, improve insulation, radiant floor heating in the master suite, fix up the plumbing, new roof, landscape the backyard. $100K or so.
Replace our cars. Gotta treat yourself. Won't go crazy with luxury cars, just some nice hardware. We're talking about a couple practical cars for daily use, a 1-ton Diesel pickup for home improvement supplies & dragging around a boat or travel trailer,and maybe a "fun" vehicle too. Under $200K.
Boat and travel trailer. Under $150K

Less than $2M has been spent out of the $5M so far. Yikes! I must be a bad consumer. I'd probably keep working. With most of the nasty bills taken care of, salary wouldn't be super-important, and most could be socked away in savings and used for nice vacations and other travel.

The $3M that's left would get invested for the most part. Split it between some aggressive investments and government-issued bonds & bills in a ladder setup. Somewhat low yield, yes, but quite safe. The aggressive investments would be the real moneymakers.

I think, with some careful yet aggressive investing, it would work out pretty well.

However, for any of this to even be remotely worth considering, I'd have to play the lottery in the first place, which I don't.

More on the hard drives

2006-06-16T21:45:00.000-04:00

My post last night about HDD Health may have sounded a bit harsh. Really, it was borne of frustration more than anything else. My changes to the settings last night did stick, so I'll keep it around a while. The hard drive temperature is still high. I'll have to see if I can separate the two drives a bit to let some air flow around them.

Really though, I'm just frustrated by the computer itself. It's fast enough, but its heat issues are causing stability worries and it's getting loud. More fans will just make it louder. It needs to get replaced, but that's not in the cards right now. Though I will want a good video editing platform (MacBook Pro) in about 8 months.

I gotta say it was a good day

2006-06-16T21:25:00.000-04:00

Or at least morning. This week a co-worker has been working on making some updates to a pretty important Perl script, but she's got no experience with the language. It's been a couple years since I've done anything with Perl, but I offered some help as questions came up. It's a mixture of flat-file access, database work, and manipulating Excel files. DBI, Win32::OLE, and a few other fun things thrown in.

She started by stripping the script down to the barebones, than building it back up gradually, adding back in the functionality that was unchanged, and tweaking the things that needed updates.

I initially tried to steer her toward using MS's ADO for the database access, instead of DBI, as there were a few things she needed to do that would be easier that way than with DBI. But, with most of the script already using DBI, it was better to keep using it. I'd never used DBI, but seeing code that did work, it was easy enough to get my head around it.

So, we chipped away slowly at the piece she was having trouble with, discussed how we thought the code worked, tried some basic "print debugging" and lo and behold, got things working as expected! Spent about 45 minutes on it, but made huge progress for her.

Our primary goal accomplished (connecting to the database and getting results back), I turned my attention to her development environment. She was using Notepad. I asked her if she'd be interested in another editor that might help her work with the code a little better, and she readily accepted. I sent her a copy of SCiTe and she promptly installed. She loaded her Perl script into it and I think I actually saw the light bulb over her head come on. She was thrilled! Syntax highlighting, bracket matching, code folding...she could actually see how the code worked about 100 times better than the plain black & white of Notepad. I think I made her week. And I had a good time too. It was great just looking through the code, picking it apart, learning how it worked, and getting everything new working again.

She asked if I like brownies, I think I might be getting a plate on Monday.

DVR Disappointment

2006-06-16T21:07:00.000-04:00

It appears that my DVR is no better than a VCR when it comes to scheduling recordings. I set up to record The Tonight Show the other night, when George Carlin and Ann Coulter appeared. I figured it'd be great fireworks.

Unfortunately, the NHL playoff game went long that night and Leno didn't start until nearly midnight. I had hoped that since I programmed the recording via the on-screen program guide, the guide would have updated and I'd get my whole program. Wasn't that supposed to be one of the promises of DVR?

I got the entirety of Carlin's "solo" appearance, and about 5 minutes of Ann Coulter, with no sign of fireworks. Very disappointed.

The cure is worse than the disease

2006-06-15T22:07:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I was discussing my recent hard drive related issues with El Gee and he suggested I check out HDD Health to monitor and diagnose my drives. This program monitors the S.M.A.R.T sensors, among other things, and over time builds an overall picture of the drive's health - good, bad, etc. Hoping it would give me a better idea of what's going on, I installed it.

The program comes configured to pop up alerts anytime certain thresholds are hit. Especially temperature, but also some error counts. I have no idea what these error counts mean. But the temperature is the one that's been bugging me the most. By default (and it appears that it doesn't save changes to this), it alerts when the drive crosses 45°C. My one drive with a temperature sensor seems to start at 42°. So, within a few minutes of usage, it's popping up messages. And it pops up a new one repeatedly even if you haven't acknowledged the previous one(s), so after a while of ignoring them I'll have a few dozen stacked up that need to be cleared.

Still no clear picture of what's causing my freeze-ups, aside from maybe heat. I'm going to attempt to disable these pop-ups while continuing to run the program, but if it won't store that as my default, it's getting uninstalled I think.