Home Repair & Improvement III

More taping, more painting...

It's starting to come together, we think. The layout for the taping was made 1000 times easier by having a self leveling laser (unfortunately a tool I already owned or I would have used this as an excuse to buy one). We both seem to have a little color in the lines trouble, so we'll have to go over some small mistakes with the field color again.

In today's impromptu production meeting we discussed 2" wooden plantation blinds in the foreground color for the window, and whether we think we have time to take up the carpet during this little blitz. Have to keep an eye on "the line."

Scanner quandary

Does anyone have a 120 VAC to 12VDC @ 1.2A power supply laying around?

Recently I discovered my scanner had died. Its a fairly serviceable HP ScanJet 3300C and while not inspiring me in any particular way has done what scanners are supposed to do for something like 5 years now. With what little technical knowledge I have in this area I have determined that actually the scanner is probably fine, its the power supply that's dead.

This shouldn't surprise me I guess. There's a lot of heat for a consumer component there, its been on constantly for longer than I can really remember, and HP has so much confidence in it that they won't even print their logo on the thing.

So, off to Radio Shack we go; as this is one of the few things that that particular store is still pretty good at. Not this time though. They have something close to what I want 12VDC @ 1.0A or 1.5A - no 1.2A, and the 1.5A is out of stock. So much for the easy solution.

But here's the real rub. Even if they did have exactly what I was looking for, it would likely cost North of $25. The whole scanner was only $80 when I bought the thing. Is it really worth the $25 to get this one going again? I think I may have fallen into a little bit of a planned obsolescence trap here. As a five year old piece of hardware the drivers are not supported by XP, its USB 1, and the resolution is sort of low. If I bought a new one I would get higher resolution, USB 2 or Firewire, and XP drivers.

Does anyone think there might be a person in an office at HP thinking I am supposed to come to this conclusion?

There must be an old adaptor somewhere in the house that will moot this train of thought.

Home Repair & Improvement II

Much better day today. Sanding, Basecoat, shopping, and color...

The color is growing on me, and I think it will look real nice with the couch and the wood floor if and when we take up the carpet. Its gonna get a wide dark stripe on two walls, and the whole wall in this picture will go dark, so really it won't look like this at all.

Next step - accents! Woohoo.

Worth a Thousand Words

The random image generator just showed me this picture:

Can you guess the word it was searching? It's there on the image: "US Air."

Although this is a six year old article, it still pretty well tells the story of our beloved (ok, recently less beloved) Pittsburgh airline. Actually, one of the things the airline has done to try to stop the bleeding was to take away the "hub" status at the Pittsburgh airport.

A lot of people around town are wondering how long it will be until someone puts this company out of its misery. Along with that, many are wondering if it is safe to book tickets with US Air, or if they will ever get to use frequent flyer miles they've accumulated to date.

Be nice to see them make it, but the anticipation is awful.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

This seems fairly close to the mark:

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Happy Birthday to

Peg...

Happy Birthday to Peg, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday...

Happy Birthday to Peg.

And many more!

Home Repair and Improvement

Phase One Begins:

Covering, masking, and um, er, sanding.

All the walls have this whiz bang texture on them, which I thought we could maybe sand down. This was a real nice bonus to the project because this way I could buy a sander (well actually two sanders) to do this work. Then reality crashes in. The texture turns out to be kinda gummy rather than brittle, so it just mushes rather than sanding down.

Well, oops.

But the rest went well, all the furniture moved and fit elsewhere. The awful valence came down without breaking. All in all a good start to the project. And even if the sanding didn't work I still got a belt sander and a random orbit sander out of the effort - and a shop vac.

Tomorrow, we prime.

Remodeling

Or maybe its just a little early spring cleaning. The left margin of the site has been reorganized. After living with it for a little while I think this order is better than before.

Also I recently tripped into one of the normal pitfalls for web developers. While I was at my folks I noticed what they see of the page versus what I see. They are using a fairly old Mac with the corresponding versions of Netscape and IE, plus they are using dial-up. I also got a message from a former student who was using Firefox. In the end, it is beginning to seem like the only person that sees the thing the way it is composed may be me.

For the record, I am using IE 6.0 for WindowsXP on a PC and my screen resolution is 1280x1024 (I really do like my new monitor). The window is formatted so that it displays correctly while still leaving a column for my AIM buddy list.

I hadn't thought I was using a lot of apps or images, but waiting for this page to load on my parents dial-up machine was painful. To any of you viewing that way, I salute your patience.

While I was at it, since no project is worth while unless you can get something new, I added a new counter under the hitmap. If you click on it you should be able to see some interesting demographic information - if I set it up right. Sometime down the line I will have to see if I can synchronize the dates for the map and the counter. A project for another day.

I'm also contemplating adding a blogger/google ad box at the bottom of the column. The host gets paid every time someone clicks on the ad, but that's not really my interest. The app scans the text and comes up with what it thinks are appropriate ads. I'm kind of curious to see what it comes up with. Maybe later.

Christmas Card Insert

At the very start of 2005, here are 10 things of note from my 2004:

#10 After a couple of years of doing the work, over this summer my boss decided it was time for me to have the title to go along with it and so I was officially named option coordinator of Production Technology & Management. Although it didn’t really feel like a promotion, I guess it was.

#9 Some bizarre combination of my friend Peg, a new computer, and high speed internet at home possessed me and caused me to start writing this blog. It’s been a lot of fun for me, a cool way to keep in touch with many many friends, and a nice outlet for writing. It may even be entertaining – jury’s still out on that one.

#8 This past summer, Marisa got a lighting design on a local production of Big Love. It was a very successful production, with cool people. A picture she took was included with the review in the paper. It may be proof that her staying here with me hasn’t doomed her to an unending list of electrics jobs. My fingers are crossed.

#7 The road from my grad thesis presses on. ESTA spun off ETCP. ETCP absorbed the Rigging Working Group I proposed as a member of the Certification Program Committee and took up the work on a rigging certification. Somehow at this juncture I was named a Theatrical Rigging Subject Matter Expert by some of the best riggers in the country. There should be a running certification program by the end of 2005.

#6 Marisa and I went shopping for patio furniture and came home with two kittens: Bra'tac and Freya. They have been the most fun and I am so glad we adopted them. Bra’tac is slowing turning from all black into something that looks like a panda. Freya likes to sit on my chest and clean my face. Too much fun.

#5 I found a lump on Trinity’s hip that turned out to be cancer. We took her to this whiz-bang Vet that explained I could take her to Ohio for chemo or she could have surgery. We bit the bullet and had the operation and so far it’s a complete recovering with no recurrence.

#4 I have independent testimony that I have almost become nice. I couldn’t tell you if its due to Marisa or kittens or creative pharmacology or whatever, but it is definitely there. Its something that I have been working with and around for quite some time and although I am sure I’m not finished its nice to know I’m making real headway.

#3 My student loans are paid off. They can no longer come and repossess my brain. I wonder if this means it is time to go back to school again?

#2 Marisa and I bought a house. It was both the most suspiciously easy and annoyingly complicated experience. So now I have a place with a yard, a driveway, and a mortgage – and a list of home projects longer than any install notes list. It’s been nice to have a place of our own.

#1 I asked Marisa to marry me and she said yes. What could she have been thinking? We will be married this coming June.

This of course neglects many things, including the health and support of my family, which has been so consistent it never seems like it ought to make a list or a summary or anything. It’s like gravity, but truth be told I should probably write a salutation to my entire family every day.

Now on to 2005

Happy New Year

Marisa and I would like to say happy new year to everyone. But we'll suffice with the people that read this page.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!