Over the past few years, I've often thought to myself that for my next career move, I need to work for a company that makes an actual THING you can hold in your hand. Okay, so that goal went by the wayside with my new career in the financial industry (and no, I don't work directly with cash, so that doesn't count), however I have to say I sometimes wonder how much better I could make things than the people out there who actually do it. Have you ever come across a product with a flaw so completely and utterly stupid it makes you wonder why the designer wasn't burned at the stake by company stockholders?
Take, for example, the air mattress I just attempted to inflate for my daughter's sleepover with her friend. This mattress, made by Coleman, comes with a handy-dandy inflator that blows up the mattress in less than two minutes. It's great when it works. However, the designers of this gadget demonstrated their idiocy by missing one important characteristic of the inflator.
Let's think for a moment...how often does one typically use an inflatable mattress? A couple times a year? When the in-laws come to visit? During flu season when the spouse bans you from the master bedroom due to excess phlegm? So that means for about 360 out of 365 days each year, this cordless inflator sits idle in the closet with a dead battery. That dead battery takes eight hours to fully charge, by plugging the inflator itself into the wall. AND, when the inflator is plugged in, it CANNOT BE USED. I'm sure most inflatable mattress users. like myself, never think to charge the inflator a day in advance before pulling the mattress out of the closet. And, if you're like me, you then end up rigging up your bike pump to do the job you'd originally bought the inflator to do. I'd really like to know what idiot allowed this through testing.
Next let's take a look at my new printer, a Kodak ESP5250. This is actually an excellent printer. It's one of those that Kodak is touting to have the lowest replacement ink cost in the industry, and it appears to be true. It prints well, scans well, and runs virtually flawlessly. Except if you move it.
The power cord on this printer resembles that of a laptop cord, with a "brick" that rests on the floor between two pieces of cord. The adapter that plugs into the back of the printer is so loose that if you move the printer a half inch, it sheds itself of the power cord completely. Really? No one noticed that in testing?
Finally, let's look at this alarm clock and iPod charger/player I bought for my daughter. It seemed simple and functional enough. It works as a clock, and it allows Thing #1 to fill her bedroom with the sounds of Hannah Montana blaring from her Nano any time she wants. However, it cannot actually be used as an alarm clock, despite the product description. You see, for some ridiculous reason when the alarm sounds, it always sounds with the volume at it's HIGHEST LEVEL. It even says in the directions, "after the alarm sounds you may adjust the volume to a lower setting." Seriously? Someone not only tested this "feature" but didn't feel the need to question the design? Way to go, tech writers. I'd like to know if the quality assurance team that tested this device actually tested it on small children, only to watch them launch through the ceiling when the alarm goes off with the music volume set past eleven. Morons.
Unfortunately my daughter wants to keep the clock radio, because it has cool changeable designs. At least the designers had their priorities straight.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
40-year old Verging
Okay, okay, I know, the blog. Yeah, it's time to get my butt back in gear and let those creative juices flow. I have to say that the past couple of months have been a trying time for the creative side of my brain for many reasons. For starters, I've quit my job (the one I've had for a little less than a year after being laid off from a place I'd been with for close to two decades) and am starting a new one two days from now. Meanwhile I'm taking a week to get my head, my life, and the house back in order, to prepare for my upcoming role as an engagement manager (sorry, that's as detailed as I'm gonna get right now...it's a rule of mine not to blog about work), and to lay some concrete below the back steps. Yup, there's always a home improvement project.
If you were expecting to see a post here that I'd spent days and days noodling over to get the content and the comedic timing just right, you'll be sorely disappointed I started this post at 11:15pm and expect it to be done by 11:21. Instead, this is more of a reboot for me. At least once a day lately I've been saying to myself, "would you just sit yer ass down and write something already?" The problem was, I couldn't decide on a subject. Should it be about my daughter's solo at the 3rd grade violin recital? About buying a new Flip Video camera only to have its hard drive completely filled with shaky closeups of the dog's nose as taken by my 6-year-old? Or how about the fact that after completing our major home renovation only two short years ago, we just completed about seven grand worth of re-work as a result of damage from this winter's snowpocalypse? Hmm, well you know how sometimes your guest room just gets so messy, you don't even bother straightening it up and instead just close the door and pretend it's not even a part of the house until the day you find out your sister and her entire family are coming for a weekend stay for the first time since your wedding? Well, in blogging terms, today is that day. Time to open the door and start shoveling.
I suppose a good enough place to start would be with what may be deemed by some as a personal milestone this year. It finally happened. I hit forty. I don't believe I've thought much about it up to this point...it's just another notch in the long, somewhat worn belt of life, really. And frankly, I tend to wear the crap out of my belts, keeping them around for years and years past their prime, until the holes are loose and the leather is so shredded that I would have an easier time keeping my pants up with duct tape. So, I guess if I were to build this into a solid metaphor, I can say that I've got a lot more life in me before I completely fall apart and I will attempt to make the most of it by adjusting a notch or two.
I realized one interesting thing related to my birthday, though. 40 years old is the youngest age that I truly remember my dad being. Oh, he's still alive and kicking, so this isn't some memoir about a father long since past. But when I think back to my childhood, I realize he was 40 when I was ten years old, and I don't really remember any time when he was younger than that. For some reason, this strikes me as important. I think I know why, too. According to my own brain and memories, my dad's life began thirty years ago, when he turned 40. This means I'm just getting started, as well. And I've got nothing to complain about. Well, except that I need a new belt.
If you were expecting to see a post here that I'd spent days and days noodling over to get the content and the comedic timing just right, you'll be sorely disappointed I started this post at 11:15pm and expect it to be done by 11:21. Instead, this is more of a reboot for me. At least once a day lately I've been saying to myself, "would you just sit yer ass down and write something already?" The problem was, I couldn't decide on a subject. Should it be about my daughter's solo at the 3rd grade violin recital? About buying a new Flip Video camera only to have its hard drive completely filled with shaky closeups of the dog's nose as taken by my 6-year-old? Or how about the fact that after completing our major home renovation only two short years ago, we just completed about seven grand worth of re-work as a result of damage from this winter's snowpocalypse? Hmm, well you know how sometimes your guest room just gets so messy, you don't even bother straightening it up and instead just close the door and pretend it's not even a part of the house until the day you find out your sister and her entire family are coming for a weekend stay for the first time since your wedding? Well, in blogging terms, today is that day. Time to open the door and start shoveling.
I suppose a good enough place to start would be with what may be deemed by some as a personal milestone this year. It finally happened. I hit forty. I don't believe I've thought much about it up to this point...it's just another notch in the long, somewhat worn belt of life, really. And frankly, I tend to wear the crap out of my belts, keeping them around for years and years past their prime, until the holes are loose and the leather is so shredded that I would have an easier time keeping my pants up with duct tape. So, I guess if I were to build this into a solid metaphor, I can say that I've got a lot more life in me before I completely fall apart and I will attempt to make the most of it by adjusting a notch or two.
I realized one interesting thing related to my birthday, though. 40 years old is the youngest age that I truly remember my dad being. Oh, he's still alive and kicking, so this isn't some memoir about a father long since past. But when I think back to my childhood, I realize he was 40 when I was ten years old, and I don't really remember any time when he was younger than that. For some reason, this strikes me as important. I think I know why, too. According to my own brain and memories, my dad's life began thirty years ago, when he turned 40. This means I'm just getting started, as well. And I've got nothing to complain about. Well, except that I need a new belt.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
My new Theme Song
Every once in a while I come across something accidentally that gets me all giddy inside. This weekend, I came across my new theme song, along with the genius behind it.
While listening to Pandora yesterday, I heard something completely new. It was a song called "Shop Vac, but an artist named Jonathan Coulton. It seems back in 2006 Coulton produced a number of songs under the Creative Commons License, giving them away for free and thus becoming an internet sensation. Which makes me wonder why I never heard of the guy before yesterday. Especially because he grew up in Colchester, CT and was roommates with John Hodgeman. Anyway, the guy is a freaking genius and absolutely hysterical. Take some time and check this stuff out:
If you're an itunes user, click on this link to be taken to Coulton's collection of 52 songs he produced by releasing one each week for a year. The album, aptly named Thing A Week One, is available for free as a podcast. Make especially sure to listen to the songs below.
Now, to make the experience even more worthwhile, it turns out there's an entire Wiki site dedicated to Mr. Coulton, where you can read the lyrics to each of his songs. The song links below are to their lyric pages.
Shop Vac
Re: Your Brains
Mr. Fancy Pants
Code Monkey
The Town Crotch
After you've listened to the above selections, I dare you to not go about your day with "All we wanna do is eat your brains" running through your head endlessly.
Genius. Absolute genius.
While listening to Pandora yesterday, I heard something completely new. It was a song called "Shop Vac, but an artist named Jonathan Coulton. It seems back in 2006 Coulton produced a number of songs under the Creative Commons License, giving them away for free and thus becoming an internet sensation. Which makes me wonder why I never heard of the guy before yesterday. Especially because he grew up in Colchester, CT and was roommates with John Hodgeman. Anyway, the guy is a freaking genius and absolutely hysterical. Take some time and check this stuff out:
If you're an itunes user, click on this link to be taken to Coulton's collection of 52 songs he produced by releasing one each week for a year. The album, aptly named Thing A Week One, is available for free as a podcast. Make especially sure to listen to the songs below.
Now, to make the experience even more worthwhile, it turns out there's an entire Wiki site dedicated to Mr. Coulton, where you can read the lyrics to each of his songs. The song links below are to their lyric pages.
Shop Vac
Re: Your Brains
Mr. Fancy Pants
Code Monkey
The Town Crotch
After you've listened to the above selections, I dare you to not go about your day with "All we wanna do is eat your brains" running through your head endlessly.
Genius. Absolute genius.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
My thoughts on the iPad, and more importantly on books
I came across a blogger's well-written post about Books in the age of the iPad through my friend's blog. I began writing a very long comment at the end of the article, but decided that, as long I was in the mood to pen a full diatribe, I might as well make a blog post about it. So go ahead and read the article. I'll wait. Then, come back.
Okay, so here's my thoughts. Much of the author's future vision of print seems dead on. In the coming age of the iPad, books will need to become more creative, more special, and more worthy of buying a paper copy as opposed to simply downloading it. However, I think that the points he makes about what won't be missed are simply untrue for a great many people.
As a result of focusing the last 20 years or so of my life on the printing industry and loving it, I got to have the last summer off when my company downsized. I hold no vision of a printing industry that isn't close to death's door. It has shrunk in size each and every year I've been in it, and I'm happy to be moving on to brighter pastures. But I will never stop loving print. It's just to special an industry.
Meanwhile, I watch the transition of print to digital by watching the habits of my lovely wife. She reads somewhere close to 100 books each year. She keeps a massive, color-coded list of books she has read each year, and looks forward to seeing it grow the way a triathlete in training looks forward to seeing his times shrink with each workout. Sometimes I think she skirts the fringes of insanity with this passion of hers, but I have the utmost respect for it. Frankly, it is kind of fun to watch her obsess over the latest issue of Bookmarks Magazine, or burn out a hair dryer (and a few hair follicles) after sitting in the bathroom for an hour lost in the pages of her latest novel. And of those 100 books each year, very, VERY few are purchased retail. They come second hand, they are borrowed from the library, they are purchased at used book sales, and they are even found tucked away in our house, obtained in years past by providers unknown.
My wife has told me over and over that she will NEVER read an electronic book. While I find the finality of that claim somewhat dubious, I cannot disagree that she, and many like her, are the reason the printed book may never go away, and I hope she's right. After all:
-You shouldn't have to spend $500 just to read a book.
-You can't give an iPad to your friend after you're done reading an ebook. Heck, you can't even conveniently give it to your spouse. And likewise, most households aren't going to buy an iPad for each member of the family. At least, mine ain't.
-As I mentioned above, very few books in our house were bought retail. I know, I know, this is one of the reasons why the printing industry is having such a hard time, and they need this new business model. Sure, that's true, but if my wife had to pay $15 for each and every book she read (now would probably be a good time to point out that she's actually purchased or obtained enough books that she hasn't read yet to keep her squirreled away in her reading chair for another couple of years without ever leaving the house), plus $500 for an iPad, well, the kids would be headed for technical school instead of Carnegie Mellon.
-Personally, one of my favorite times to read is during that period on an airplane when your tray tables must be placed in their full upright and locked position. The time when all electronics must be shut off is the best time to pull out that second-hand novel sitting in my backpack. And when your landing gets delayed such that you're circling for two hours without being able to use your ebook reader, well good luck not trying to light your sneakers on fire in frustration.
-Books don't break.
-You can't take an iPad to a book signing (which, by the way, is exactly where my wife is at this very moment).
-While I definitely agree that this new paradigm will force book manufacturers to get more creative with their printed products, I don't believe the same is true for childrens books. Be it toddler board books or young pre-teen Judy Blume novels, those products will be around for a long, long time. And believe me, after you've watched your nine-year-old waste an afternoon playing the Wii or on Webkinz.com, it's incredibly uplifting to see her pull out a Nancy Drew Mystery (yeah, they're still around) and disappear into a cozy chair for an hour with it.
-Imagine how dull and drab the den will look with empty bookshelves. I will have none of that.
-Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the concept of an iPad is the distraction. My wife complains that I never read anymore. That's almost true. I have to make an effort to detach myself from the day-to-day, from my latest home project, from the TV, or from the computer, in order to sit down and read something. But when I do, it's a unique experience that cannot be compared to attempting to read a story when you can be so easily distracted by something completely unrelated without even looking up from the page. This morning, as my daughter was reading The Lightning Thief at the breakfast table (and mind you I would NEVER let those grubby, pineapple juice-ridden sandwich clamps touch my ipad at the breakfast table if I had one), she asked me what a "caduceus" was. Not recognizing the word, we headed for the computer and suddenly got lost in a half hour of surfing Wikipedia and related sites. On the one hand, it's great to have all that information at your fingertips. On the other hand, it's great to disconnect once in a while.
Don't get me wrong. I want an iPad. I can't justify buying one right now, but I want an iPad just the same.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The REAL reason I haven't been blogging...
At long last, my latest workshop odyssey is complete. Well, at least complete enough to take a break for a while. I've finished constructing my entertainment unit. I still plan on building a piece over the TV and perhaps putting doors on the bottom of the bookshelves, but for now it's done enough that I can sit back, watch LOST, and enjoy the final product.
This was definitely a fun project. It was quite a challenge working with those old sycamore floorboards, as often times it was tough to get a piece of any decent length without huge knots or holes. Overall I didn't have any major disasters during the project, except for when I realized I incorrectly measured the space for the bottom drawers such that there's quite literally less than 1/16th of an inch of extra space for the DVDs to fit in them. Oh well, soon all video will be online anyways.
Hmmm, what's the next project gonna be? Well, my neighbor conned me into helping her build built-in cabinets around her fireplace, so that should keep me busy for a while. Plus I have a dining room to redo. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll spend a little time OUT of the basement for a while.
This was definitely a fun project. It was quite a challenge working with those old sycamore floorboards, as often times it was tough to get a piece of any decent length without huge knots or holes. Overall I didn't have any major disasters during the project, except for when I realized I incorrectly measured the space for the bottom drawers such that there's quite literally less than 1/16th of an inch of extra space for the DVDs to fit in them. Oh well, soon all video will be online anyways.
Hmmm, what's the next project gonna be? Well, my neighbor conned me into helping her build built-in cabinets around her fireplace, so that should keep me busy for a while. Plus I have a dining room to redo. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll spend a little time OUT of the basement for a while.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Coffee...a cup best brewed cold...
I'm baaack! And I'm seriously caffeinated. I'm also attempting to enjoy life a little more and, as a result, I'm working on getting my creative juices flowing again by reintroducing myself to my own blog. I hope the one or two remaining people with an RSS feed to this blog missed me as much as I missed myself.
While I refuse to blog about anythig related to work, I will say the past few months of my new job have been stressful and exhausting, and I will leave it at that. you want the full scoop? Buy me a beer. Or a cup of coffee. Hey speaking of which, that's quite the natural segue into the subject of today's blog post. Snow. No wait, I mean coffee, not snow. I'm sick of snow. and so are you. I'll just talk about coffee.
I'm somewhat of a coffee snob. I get all my coffee fresh roasted from Prestogeorge, my favorite place in Pittsburgh's Strip District, and tend to drink about three of four cups a day. I refuse to drink that standard office swill, and cringe any time someone tries to offer me skim milk to put in my cup. Recently my trusty-yet-raggedy DeLonghi coffeemaker decided it was time to give up the ghost. Well, not totally, but the timer button stopped working. Yeah, sure, it still makes coffee, just not at four in the morning while I'm still asleep. And that's annoying. So it was time for a new coffee maker.
My needs were simple. A steel carafe and a timer were really my only requirements. I wasn't interested in a machine that automatically grinds, as waking the dog at four in the morning would be a whole different annoyance. I also believe that those doohickies that take the single-serving plastic tubs of coffee are yet another example of how this planet is doomed, so I'm not going there either. And, unfortunately, I took the time to read all the comments on Amazon.com for each coffee maker I viewed, and noticed one common thread...they all sucked. Curse you, Amazon, and your Web 2.0 openness. It was so much easier to shop when I knew nothing about what I was buying.
Then I started to read about the concept of "cold brewing". The idea is that you take a pound of ground coffee, dump it in a plastic tub with about nine cups of water, let it sit for a day, then drain it through a filter. The end result is sort of a coffee "concentrate". Take a little bit of this concentrate (about a 1/4 cup) and mix in a cup of boiling water Yes folks, it's a trendy take on instant coffee! But the concentrate has none of the oils and acids left in typical brewed coffee, and therefore it tastes more "pure" and is less harsh on your stomach. One batch of concentrate apparently will last over a month in the fridge and makes about as many cups of coffee as the traditional process would, but with no waste because you make it a cup at a time. The gadget to do this cost about thirty bucks, so I decided to give it a shot.
The verdict? I'm still undecided, but I'm leaning toward excellent. They say that this process makes coffee that "tastes like a coffee shop smells" and they are absolutely right. It has a sweet, pleasant taste with no bitterness. You can make it as strong or as weak as you like simply by adding more or less concentrate. It's the first cup of coffee that I've ever enjoyed drinking black. While I'm still in the process of finishing my first batch, I'd say I'll stick with it for a while. Here's some other interesting things I've learned about this whole process:
Someone on a website commented that if you drain the "sludge" after it's done steeping for the day and immediately put new water into the old coffee grounds, you can get a second batch of concentrate that's just as good as the first, thus doubling what you get out of a pound of coffee. It appears to be the truth, because I can't taste the difference between batch 1 and batch 2.
The brewing process isn't exactly the cleanest in the world, but since you only do it about once a month, it's not so bad.
This stuff makes kickass iced mocha and iced coffee as well.
It's nice making coffee with boiling water. You end up with much hotter coffee that you do from a typical brewer.
If you invite friends over that drink decaf (god knows why), you might have a problem if you don't have a spare coffeemaker around, because this whole cold brewing process isn't exactly a spur-of-the-moment thing. You can, however, make an entire pitcher of coffee simply by measuring out enough concentrate to mix with the right amount of boiling water
The leftover sludge makes great compost for the yard. Just dump it around your plants to keep deer away. That is, if the snow ever thaws.
While I refuse to blog about anythig related to work, I will say the past few months of my new job have been stressful and exhausting, and I will leave it at that. you want the full scoop? Buy me a beer. Or a cup of coffee. Hey speaking of which, that's quite the natural segue into the subject of today's blog post. Snow. No wait, I mean coffee, not snow. I'm sick of snow. and so are you. I'll just talk about coffee.
I'm somewhat of a coffee snob. I get all my coffee fresh roasted from Prestogeorge, my favorite place in Pittsburgh's Strip District, and tend to drink about three of four cups a day. I refuse to drink that standard office swill, and cringe any time someone tries to offer me skim milk to put in my cup. Recently my trusty-yet-raggedy DeLonghi coffeemaker decided it was time to give up the ghost. Well, not totally, but the timer button stopped working. Yeah, sure, it still makes coffee, just not at four in the morning while I'm still asleep. And that's annoying. So it was time for a new coffee maker.
My needs were simple. A steel carafe and a timer were really my only requirements. I wasn't interested in a machine that automatically grinds, as waking the dog at four in the morning would be a whole different annoyance. I also believe that those doohickies that take the single-serving plastic tubs of coffee are yet another example of how this planet is doomed, so I'm not going there either. And, unfortunately, I took the time to read all the comments on Amazon.com for each coffee maker I viewed, and noticed one common thread...they all sucked. Curse you, Amazon, and your Web 2.0 openness. It was so much easier to shop when I knew nothing about what I was buying.
Then I started to read about the concept of "cold brewing". The idea is that you take a pound of ground coffee, dump it in a plastic tub with about nine cups of water, let it sit for a day, then drain it through a filter. The end result is sort of a coffee "concentrate". Take a little bit of this concentrate (about a 1/4 cup) and mix in a cup of boiling water Yes folks, it's a trendy take on instant coffee! But the concentrate has none of the oils and acids left in typical brewed coffee, and therefore it tastes more "pure" and is less harsh on your stomach. One batch of concentrate apparently will last over a month in the fridge and makes about as many cups of coffee as the traditional process would, but with no waste because you make it a cup at a time. The gadget to do this cost about thirty bucks, so I decided to give it a shot.
The verdict? I'm still undecided, but I'm leaning toward excellent. They say that this process makes coffee that "tastes like a coffee shop smells" and they are absolutely right. It has a sweet, pleasant taste with no bitterness. You can make it as strong or as weak as you like simply by adding more or less concentrate. It's the first cup of coffee that I've ever enjoyed drinking black. While I'm still in the process of finishing my first batch, I'd say I'll stick with it for a while. Here's some other interesting things I've learned about this whole process:
Someone on a website commented that if you drain the "sludge" after it's done steeping for the day and immediately put new water into the old coffee grounds, you can get a second batch of concentrate that's just as good as the first, thus doubling what you get out of a pound of coffee. It appears to be the truth, because I can't taste the difference between batch 1 and batch 2.
The brewing process isn't exactly the cleanest in the world, but since you only do it about once a month, it's not so bad.
This stuff makes kickass iced mocha and iced coffee as well.
It's nice making coffee with boiling water. You end up with much hotter coffee that you do from a typical brewer.
If you invite friends over that drink decaf (god knows why), you might have a problem if you don't have a spare coffeemaker around, because this whole cold brewing process isn't exactly a spur-of-the-moment thing. You can, however, make an entire pitcher of coffee simply by measuring out enough concentrate to mix with the right amount of boiling water
The leftover sludge makes great compost for the yard. Just dump it around your plants to keep deer away. That is, if the snow ever thaws.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Avoiding frozen pipes without setting fire to the house
Okay, I had three different Facebook friends mention they had frozen bathroom pipes this weekend. I think it's high time I share my discovery with the world regarding a great way to avoid frozen pipes forever.
When we renovated the house we made a really dumb decision and located the new master bathroom sink not only on an outside wall, but in sort of a "bumpout" that looks like this:
I know, I know...kind of looks like the side of an RV, right? Well, not the brightest idea, in retrospect. The pipes froze twice in the first winter. The solution we came up with was to install a Watts Water Circulating Pump on the hot water tank.
The concept is simple. On the "hot water out" pipe atop your water heater, you install the pump. under the sink with the problem pipes, you install a special mixing valve (that tubular thing in the foreground) that connects the hot and cold water pipes together before the water runs to the faucet. The gadget on the hot water tank has a 24-hour timer on it, on which you can set intervals of 15 minutes each for it to run at various times throughout the day. When it kicks on, it sends hot water up the hot water pipe, to the mixing valve under the sink, and back down the cold water pipe to the water tank, thus filling your entire system with hot (or at least warmer) water. Voila, no more frozen pipes. During the coldest time of year (um..now!) I have it run once every two hours.
Installation is simple, and if you're lucky no soldering is necessary. By "lucky" I mean that if the hot water pipe coming out of the top of your hot water tank is flexible, then all you have to do (after properly turning off and emptying the tank) is unscrew the hose, put this gadget on in between it and the tank, and reconnect. If the pipes are straight copper, you'll need to cut the pipe. I helped a friend install one in his house and, to avoid soldering, we used a pipe fitting called a "sharkbite" fitting. Ask the guy at Home Depot about it.
Another advantage to this thing is you no longer have to wait ten minutes for warm water to reach the shower. The only disadvantage (other than the relatively minor electrical usage) is that you, ironically, must wait a bit for COLD water to come out of the tap. But really, which is worse, rinsing your teeth in warm water or crawling under the sink and setting fire to your house with a blow torch?
When we renovated the house we made a really dumb decision and located the new master bathroom sink not only on an outside wall, but in sort of a "bumpout" that looks like this:
I know, I know...kind of looks like the side of an RV, right? Well, not the brightest idea, in retrospect. The pipes froze twice in the first winter. The solution we came up with was to install a Watts Water Circulating Pump on the hot water tank.
The concept is simple. On the "hot water out" pipe atop your water heater, you install the pump. under the sink with the problem pipes, you install a special mixing valve (that tubular thing in the foreground) that connects the hot and cold water pipes together before the water runs to the faucet. The gadget on the hot water tank has a 24-hour timer on it, on which you can set intervals of 15 minutes each for it to run at various times throughout the day. When it kicks on, it sends hot water up the hot water pipe, to the mixing valve under the sink, and back down the cold water pipe to the water tank, thus filling your entire system with hot (or at least warmer) water. Voila, no more frozen pipes. During the coldest time of year (um..now!) I have it run once every two hours.
Installation is simple, and if you're lucky no soldering is necessary. By "lucky" I mean that if the hot water pipe coming out of the top of your hot water tank is flexible, then all you have to do (after properly turning off and emptying the tank) is unscrew the hose, put this gadget on in between it and the tank, and reconnect. If the pipes are straight copper, you'll need to cut the pipe. I helped a friend install one in his house and, to avoid soldering, we used a pipe fitting called a "sharkbite" fitting. Ask the guy at Home Depot about it.
Another advantage to this thing is you no longer have to wait ten minutes for warm water to reach the shower. The only disadvantage (other than the relatively minor electrical usage) is that you, ironically, must wait a bit for COLD water to come out of the tap. But really, which is worse, rinsing your teeth in warm water or crawling under the sink and setting fire to your house with a blow torch?
Friday, January 01, 2010
A pink kink in my think
Why pink? Why, why I ask you?
This New Years weekend will be spent painting my daughter's room pink. Why? Because after months and months of hounding and hounding me that she didn't like the washed-out green walls, I finally relented, made the mistake of handing her the Sherwin-Williams paint book, let her pick her three favorite colors, and thanked heaven she didn't pick obnoxious orange like she originally requested for the bathroom renovation. Then I made her promise that if she did most of the work emptying out her giant scrap heap of a room I'd paint her walls with her. So, pink it is. Never mind that it's a dark pink that will make the room feel like the inside of a Hello Kitty clock on a cloudy day. Never mind that her room currently has the cleanest and most not-in-need-of-repainting walls in the whole house. Never mind that I hate pink.
My hatred for pink goes back quite a ways. The first girl I ever dated wore nothing but pink. Everything, absolutely EVERYTHING, she wore, day in and day out, was pink. It would stun anyone to see her mix it up a little with a red scarf or a purple sash. Luckily she dumped me before I truly couldn't take it anymore.
A while back, researchers did a study that seemed to suggest women are genetically programmed to prefer shades of pink. One possible reason for this was that while men hunted, women gatherered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits. I'm not buying this. My daughter hates berries.
This New Years weekend will be spent painting my daughter's room pink. Why? Because after months and months of hounding and hounding me that she didn't like the washed-out green walls, I finally relented, made the mistake of handing her the Sherwin-Williams paint book, let her pick her three favorite colors, and thanked heaven she didn't pick obnoxious orange like she originally requested for the bathroom renovation. Then I made her promise that if she did most of the work emptying out her giant scrap heap of a room I'd paint her walls with her. So, pink it is. Never mind that it's a dark pink that will make the room feel like the inside of a Hello Kitty clock on a cloudy day. Never mind that her room currently has the cleanest and most not-in-need-of-repainting walls in the whole house. Never mind that I hate pink.
My hatred for pink goes back quite a ways. The first girl I ever dated wore nothing but pink. Everything, absolutely EVERYTHING, she wore, day in and day out, was pink. It would stun anyone to see her mix it up a little with a red scarf or a purple sash. Luckily she dumped me before I truly couldn't take it anymore.
A while back, researchers did a study that seemed to suggest women are genetically programmed to prefer shades of pink. One possible reason for this was that while men hunted, women gatherered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits. I'm not buying this. My daughter hates berries.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Comcast Makes Good
At long last, we have a working Tivo. For those who weren't paying attention, after writing my last post clearly describing how the fine folks at Comcast could not for the life of them figure out how to get a Comcast CableCard properly installed in a Tivo, an Internet-trolling Comcast Customer Service employee came across my blog and actually posted a comment asking me to contact him so he could help. So I did. And he did. And just like that, all is right with the world. He conferred with the tech that was coming to the house, made sure the guy would have a full arsenal of tools at his disposal, and voila. At long last I can Tivo this week's episode of "Hung" on HBO. Not that I'd want to. The show is pretty lame, frankly.
So what have we learned, class? Well first, it pays to speak your mind. And these days, if you speak your mind you'd be surprised just who might actually hear it. In fact several months ago, I posted a similar rant about attempting to replace a defective ceiling fan bought at Home Depot. As a result of that rant, the administrator of a large ceiling fan sales website commented, thanking me for posting such useful information. Had I thought of doing this a few years back when we discovered the aftermarket warranty on our couch was as much a sham as the blanket tossed over the back of the same couch, I would have ranted about that, too. Hmm, maybe I still will.
Suddenly, I'm taken to a moment back in time, back when I was when I was a strapping young lad by the age of 10 or 11. One day in elementary school I was assigned a homework assignment that involved selecting a product that I liked and writing a letter of praise to the manufacturer. The product I chose was the Swingline stapler. But not just any stapler. Specifically, one of those tiny red ones designed for elementary school to students carry around in their pencil boxes.
For some reason that seems to escape me at the moment, this was the product I chose. Looking back, I realize now how close I became to becoming that guy played by Stephen Root in Office Space. It's kind of eerie, actually. Come to think of it, I do mumble a lot, and I like setting fire to things. I could set this whole building on fire, in fact, I...
Wait, where was I? Oh yeah.
While I don't recall exactly how I extolled the virtues of the Swingline Mini Stapler or how exactly it completed my childhood, I do remember one thing. Out of all the kids in the class, I was the only one who got not only a response from the manufacturer, but a freebie as well. Yes, Swingline actually sent me a shiny new Mini Stapler, with a year's supply of staples. I remember walking proudly into school that day, heaving my shiny new Mini Stapler over my head like an Academy Award, thrown off balance by the proud slaps on the back from my fellow students, showered with cheers and coy giggles from fawning school girls. There I was, a true hero of the gifted class, for one brief but powerful, shining moment that my fellow students would recall fondly for years to come. At least, that's how I remembered it.
What the heck was I talking about again?
----------
And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
So what have we learned, class? Well first, it pays to speak your mind. And these days, if you speak your mind you'd be surprised just who might actually hear it. In fact several months ago, I posted a similar rant about attempting to replace a defective ceiling fan bought at Home Depot. As a result of that rant, the administrator of a large ceiling fan sales website commented, thanking me for posting such useful information. Had I thought of doing this a few years back when we discovered the aftermarket warranty on our couch was as much a sham as the blanket tossed over the back of the same couch, I would have ranted about that, too. Hmm, maybe I still will.
Suddenly, I'm taken to a moment back in time, back when I was when I was a strapping young lad by the age of 10 or 11. One day in elementary school I was assigned a homework assignment that involved selecting a product that I liked and writing a letter of praise to the manufacturer. The product I chose was the Swingline stapler. But not just any stapler. Specifically, one of those tiny red ones designed for elementary school to students carry around in their pencil boxes.
For some reason that seems to escape me at the moment, this was the product I chose. Looking back, I realize now how close I became to becoming that guy played by Stephen Root in Office Space. It's kind of eerie, actually. Come to think of it, I do mumble a lot, and I like setting fire to things. I could set this whole building on fire, in fact, I...
Wait, where was I? Oh yeah.
While I don't recall exactly how I extolled the virtues of the Swingline Mini Stapler or how exactly it completed my childhood, I do remember one thing. Out of all the kids in the class, I was the only one who got not only a response from the manufacturer, but a freebie as well. Yes, Swingline actually sent me a shiny new Mini Stapler, with a year's supply of staples. I remember walking proudly into school that day, heaving my shiny new Mini Stapler over my head like an Academy Award, thrown off balance by the proud slaps on the back from my fellow students, showered with cheers and coy giggles from fawning school girls. There I was, a true hero of the gifted class, for one brief but powerful, shining moment that my fellow students would recall fondly for years to come. At least, that's how I remembered it.
What the heck was I talking about again?
----------
And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Construction of the Horse Poop Cabinets
One month into my latest workshop project, I am surprised to say I'm making good progress. You may recall that I've decided to tackle the construction of an entertainment center using, among other things, some reclaimed lumber from an old barn in the area. Jeff, my woodworker buddy who sold me the sycamore floorboards that he scavenged from the old barn, reminded me that a)not only will this wood make for a beautiful piece of furniture and a good story but b)horses, cows, and perhaps an occasional goat have been peeing and pooping on this wood for over a hundred years. Mmm...smell that history.
Working with the stuff has been an interesting challenge. As demonstrated yesterday when I tossed a few scrap pieces into the fireplace and watch them erupt into flames, this wood is as dry as the Sahara. Every time I cut a piece on my table saw, I nervously expect the piece to disintegrate into dust. But so far the wood has held together quite nicely. It's also been a challenge cutting down boards in such a way that I don't end up with giant knot holes or nail holes, although a few nicks and scrapes here and there make for nice character.
The project is proving to be a good learning experience, as well. For example, I learned you really shouldn't put the back of a bookshelf on before putting the face frames on. If your back isn't quite square, the face frames ain't gonna fit. I also learned that a biscuit joiner is a very cool tool to have in the arsenal, because it allows you to screw up and get away with it. I've also learned that I should have bought a random orbit sander years ago, using Gel Stain is a lot like spreading chocolate pudding, and I proved the old woodworker's saying that you can never have enough clamps.
So, here's my progress so far:
The original design:
Just checking to see how off-square I am:
Bookshelf #1 complete (well, aside from shelving and lighting of course)
The sycamore has some really cool grain patterns to it:
I think I need more clamps.
Working with the stuff has been an interesting challenge. As demonstrated yesterday when I tossed a few scrap pieces into the fireplace and watch them erupt into flames, this wood is as dry as the Sahara. Every time I cut a piece on my table saw, I nervously expect the piece to disintegrate into dust. But so far the wood has held together quite nicely. It's also been a challenge cutting down boards in such a way that I don't end up with giant knot holes or nail holes, although a few nicks and scrapes here and there make for nice character.
The project is proving to be a good learning experience, as well. For example, I learned you really shouldn't put the back of a bookshelf on before putting the face frames on. If your back isn't quite square, the face frames ain't gonna fit. I also learned that a biscuit joiner is a very cool tool to have in the arsenal, because it allows you to screw up and get away with it. I've also learned that I should have bought a random orbit sander years ago, using Gel Stain is a lot like spreading chocolate pudding, and I proved the old woodworker's saying that you can never have enough clamps.
So, here's my progress so far:
The original design:
Just checking to see how off-square I am:
Bookshelf #1 complete (well, aside from shelving and lighting of course)
The sycamore has some really cool grain patterns to it:
I think I need more clamps.
Comcast continues to amaze me
I promise I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging about constructing the ultimate family with my next post, but first I need to vent about Comcast one more time. We're now into our third week of owning a new Tivo and of having Comcast pay visits to the house only to have no clue what to do with us.
It was such a simple matter. Tivo requires the use of a CableCard. Comcast provides CableCards. Make an appointment, have a Comcast dude come over and install it, and you're golden, right? So let's see where we are....
December 4: Make appointment for a week from Saturday
December 12: The 8-12 window of the appointment goes by, and at 11:59 lady calls to say the tech has no cable cards, can they bring me a set top box instead. I explode at her for making me wait all freaking morning to tell me this, instilling fear and wrath such that the woman cowers in a corner and pleads for me to let her supervisor call me. Supervisor never calls, so I call Comcast tech support and complain for an hour. Supervisor then calls, comes over 45 minutes later with three CableCards, none of which work. Says he needs to get new ones from "the warehouse" during the week. Makes appointment for 6pm-9pm December 16
December 16: Tech shows up at 1:30 in the afternoon. WTF. Installs a Cablecard. Spends an hour on the phone with the home office. Gets it working, except there are no premium channels showing. Doesn't mention that to my lovely wife, and leaves thinking he's free. I come home see there's no premium channels, call Comcast.They spend ten minutes trying to send a signal to the Card with no luck. Says they need to come out again with a new CableCard.
December 19: Tech arrives on time, but with no replacement cableCards. Spends an hour on phone with home office, trying to get current card to work, with no luck. Lists the name of every supervisor he can to woman on other line, pleading my case to her and explaining how Comcast has totally screwed us. I like this guy, despite the fact that he didn't do anything for us. Plus Daisy LOVED him. Our next attempt happens Tuesday afternoon.
Okay, so that brings us to today. I've realized the flaw in their system.
First of all, it's a known fact that CableCards arere a commercial failure for the industry, primarily because Comcast and other Cable companies realized that they shouldn't offer $2.00 CableCards to customers when instead they could market $10 cable boxes and get additional revenue with On Demand sales. Sure, makes sense. But that doesn't negate the fact that new Tivos REQURE the use of CableCards, and Comcast still OFFERS CableCards, therefore they should SUPPORT CableCards.
Second, most of their techs work from home. They wake up each morning and say, "Well Brain, what are we going to do today?" Pinky answers with, "Same thing we do every day, Pinky...install some cable boxes." Basically if a gadget ain't in their truck already, they aren't prepared for the day and there's going to be a problem. At no point are the techs informed ahead of time that there will be a CableCard installation, and he'd better stop at the warehouse and get a working CableCard.
Third, CableCard settings expire. If the tech grabs a bunch to keep in his car, they are already initialized and coded to work with the local Comcast system. But if they aren't used in, say, three months, the settings automatically expire and the card needs to be reinitialized before it's brought to the house.
Seems like a classic failure to communicate. If they ever get this working right, the next thing I'm going to do is have a little chat with Comcast, and have them lower my bill by using this strategy.
Oh and the next Comcast employee who asks me why I wouldn't like to keep Comcast's DVR instead will get punched.
It was such a simple matter. Tivo requires the use of a CableCard. Comcast provides CableCards. Make an appointment, have a Comcast dude come over and install it, and you're golden, right? So let's see where we are....
December 4: Make appointment for a week from Saturday
December 12: The 8-12 window of the appointment goes by, and at 11:59 lady calls to say the tech has no cable cards, can they bring me a set top box instead. I explode at her for making me wait all freaking morning to tell me this, instilling fear and wrath such that the woman cowers in a corner and pleads for me to let her supervisor call me. Supervisor never calls, so I call Comcast tech support and complain for an hour. Supervisor then calls, comes over 45 minutes later with three CableCards, none of which work. Says he needs to get new ones from "the warehouse" during the week. Makes appointment for 6pm-9pm December 16
December 16: Tech shows up at 1:30 in the afternoon. WTF. Installs a Cablecard. Spends an hour on the phone with the home office. Gets it working, except there are no premium channels showing. Doesn't mention that to my lovely wife, and leaves thinking he's free. I come home see there's no premium channels, call Comcast.They spend ten minutes trying to send a signal to the Card with no luck. Says they need to come out again with a new CableCard.
December 19: Tech arrives on time, but with no replacement cableCards. Spends an hour on phone with home office, trying to get current card to work, with no luck. Lists the name of every supervisor he can to woman on other line, pleading my case to her and explaining how Comcast has totally screwed us. I like this guy, despite the fact that he didn't do anything for us. Plus Daisy LOVED him. Our next attempt happens Tuesday afternoon.
Okay, so that brings us to today. I've realized the flaw in their system.
First of all, it's a known fact that CableCards arere a commercial failure for the industry, primarily because Comcast and other Cable companies realized that they shouldn't offer $2.00 CableCards to customers when instead they could market $10 cable boxes and get additional revenue with On Demand sales. Sure, makes sense. But that doesn't negate the fact that new Tivos REQURE the use of CableCards, and Comcast still OFFERS CableCards, therefore they should SUPPORT CableCards.
Second, most of their techs work from home. They wake up each morning and say, "Well Brain, what are we going to do today?" Pinky answers with, "Same thing we do every day, Pinky...install some cable boxes." Basically if a gadget ain't in their truck already, they aren't prepared for the day and there's going to be a problem. At no point are the techs informed ahead of time that there will be a CableCard installation, and he'd better stop at the warehouse and get a working CableCard.
Third, CableCard settings expire. If the tech grabs a bunch to keep in his car, they are already initialized and coded to work with the local Comcast system. But if they aren't used in, say, three months, the settings automatically expire and the card needs to be reinitialized before it's brought to the house.
Seems like a classic failure to communicate. If they ever get this working right, the next thing I'm going to do is have a little chat with Comcast, and have them lower my bill by using this strategy.
Oh and the next Comcast employee who asks me why I wouldn't like to keep Comcast's DVR instead will get punched.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
As long as I'm venting
Wow, this is a first. I'm bored. I'm actually bored. Not to say my life is normally the most exciting there is, but it's raining outside, the wife and Thing #1 are out, while Thing #2 has vanished into the playroom with her new Barbie dollhouse. It's cold and rainy outside, my cabinet project is currently in midst-glueup so I can't work on it right now, and I don't feel like watching TV, exercising, or in any way improving my life.
I know! I'll vent some more!
As you could see by my last post, major consumer goods have annoyed me lately. So as long as I'm walking down that path, maybe I'll take some time and bitch a little bit about Apple.
W....H...A...T...?...?....?
"But Mike," you say. "Aren't you, like, a total Mac lover? I mean, don't you want to MARRY your Mac?"
Well sure. Our house has gone all Mac, as we currently has two Apple iMacs no PC-based machines, three iPods, an iPhone, an Apple Time Capsule, and an Airport Express. After all, I use PCs all day at work and, much like a gynecologist, do I really want to take my work home each day? And all of it works together just so bloody well. So why would I complain?
Because Apple seems to have failed with two simple, basic home computing rights: The right to keep a to-do list and the right to print an address correctly.
I'll explain. First, Apple has done a very nice job on integrating a To-do list application into their Mail and Calendar programs. Since users are always in Mail anyways, it's easy to click one button and add an item to a to-do list in a separate window of the Mail program. Those To-do items also synchronize with the Calendar program, so you can easily see in the calendar what's coming up on the To-do list.
But there's one huge flaw with the whole To-do list feature. It doesn't exist on the iPhone. You can sync your mail, calendars, addresses and notes between the computer and the phone. Why THE HELL can't you sync To-do lists? It seems like a basic human right. And come on, Apple, people have been complaining about this since the day the iPhone first came out. I mean, I can point my iPhone at a star in the sky, and it will automatically tell me what star that is. I can hold my phone in front of me, and it will give me the name, menu, and reviews of the restaurant in front of me. I can even update my Facebook status. Why the hell can't I keep a decent to-do list on it using Apple's own to-do application?
The second issue I have is that, apparently, the developer of Apple's address book application came from a very broken family. There's a seemingly nice intelligent feature in the address book, where if you enter the name of a contact's spouse in the "spouse" field, that spouse's name will magically appear when you print an address label. Great, so if my buddy John Smith is married to Jane, I just put Jane's name in the Spouse box, and as a result I can print a mailing label and it will state "John and Jane Smith". Great. Almost.
The first problem is that you must put Jane's last name in the Spouse box as well. Otherwise her name will not appear. Okay actually, once I managed to figure out this extremely poorly documented feature, I began to realize it actually makes sense, because if Jane keeps her own name of "Jones" then the system is smart enough to print "John Smith and Jane Jones" rather than John and Jane Smith.
But wait. There's more. It turns out that if there is ANY other "Jane" in your address book, her name will not print on the mailing label unless you create an address book entry specifically for Jane Smith, with exactly the same address as john's, AND enter her name in John's Spouse field. Huh? Why? I get the feeling that this is because the address book is trying to handle the concept of divorce elegantly. Perhaps Jane moved out, got a new address, and therefore needs her own Christmas card.
But wait, it gets better. The same process is true for kids. If John and Jane have a little boy Joey, and you want to address their Christmas card as "John, Jane, and Joey Smith", then you must put Joey's name in the Child field and include his last name. but if there's any other Joey in the address book, then little Joey Smith needs his own address book entry too, or his name won't print on the Smith's address label. Why in the name of Steve Jobs would I want to create a separate address book entry for every child of every friend of mine in order to get a working mailing list for our annual holiday cards?
Oh and speaking of which, there's no way to toggle the feature on and off. So if I want to send an Xmas card to the entire Smith family, great. Do the above. But then if I only want to invite John and Jane to the Bar Mitzvah, without the kids, I have to completely redo their address entry.
I have a hunch that Steve Jobs doesn't send out his own Christmas cards. Otherwise this would never be a problem.
I know! I'll vent some more!
As you could see by my last post, major consumer goods have annoyed me lately. So as long as I'm walking down that path, maybe I'll take some time and bitch a little bit about Apple.
W....H...A...T...?...?....?
"But Mike," you say. "Aren't you, like, a total Mac lover? I mean, don't you want to MARRY your Mac?"
Well sure. Our house has gone all Mac, as we currently has two Apple iMacs no PC-based machines, three iPods, an iPhone, an Apple Time Capsule, and an Airport Express. After all, I use PCs all day at work and, much like a gynecologist, do I really want to take my work home each day? And all of it works together just so bloody well. So why would I complain?
Because Apple seems to have failed with two simple, basic home computing rights: The right to keep a to-do list and the right to print an address correctly.
I'll explain. First, Apple has done a very nice job on integrating a To-do list application into their Mail and Calendar programs. Since users are always in Mail anyways, it's easy to click one button and add an item to a to-do list in a separate window of the Mail program. Those To-do items also synchronize with the Calendar program, so you can easily see in the calendar what's coming up on the To-do list.
But there's one huge flaw with the whole To-do list feature. It doesn't exist on the iPhone. You can sync your mail, calendars, addresses and notes between the computer and the phone. Why THE HELL can't you sync To-do lists? It seems like a basic human right. And come on, Apple, people have been complaining about this since the day the iPhone first came out. I mean, I can point my iPhone at a star in the sky, and it will automatically tell me what star that is. I can hold my phone in front of me, and it will give me the name, menu, and reviews of the restaurant in front of me. I can even update my Facebook status. Why the hell can't I keep a decent to-do list on it using Apple's own to-do application?
The second issue I have is that, apparently, the developer of Apple's address book application came from a very broken family. There's a seemingly nice intelligent feature in the address book, where if you enter the name of a contact's spouse in the "spouse" field, that spouse's name will magically appear when you print an address label. Great, so if my buddy John Smith is married to Jane, I just put Jane's name in the Spouse box, and as a result I can print a mailing label and it will state "John and Jane Smith". Great. Almost.
The first problem is that you must put Jane's last name in the Spouse box as well. Otherwise her name will not appear. Okay actually, once I managed to figure out this extremely poorly documented feature, I began to realize it actually makes sense, because if Jane keeps her own name of "Jones" then the system is smart enough to print "John Smith and Jane Jones" rather than John and Jane Smith.
But wait. There's more. It turns out that if there is ANY other "Jane" in your address book, her name will not print on the mailing label unless you create an address book entry specifically for Jane Smith, with exactly the same address as john's, AND enter her name in John's Spouse field. Huh? Why? I get the feeling that this is because the address book is trying to handle the concept of divorce elegantly. Perhaps Jane moved out, got a new address, and therefore needs her own Christmas card.
But wait, it gets better. The same process is true for kids. If John and Jane have a little boy Joey, and you want to address their Christmas card as "John, Jane, and Joey Smith", then you must put Joey's name in the Child field and include his last name. but if there's any other Joey in the address book, then little Joey Smith needs his own address book entry too, or his name won't print on the Smith's address label. Why in the name of Steve Jobs would I want to create a separate address book entry for every child of every friend of mine in order to get a working mailing list for our annual holiday cards?
Oh and speaking of which, there's no way to toggle the feature on and off. So if I want to send an Xmas card to the entire Smith family, great. Do the above. But then if I only want to invite John and Jane to the Bar Mitzvah, without the kids, I have to completely redo their address entry.
I have a hunch that Steve Jobs doesn't send out his own Christmas cards. Otherwise this would never be a problem.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Commercial Failures of the week
Ever have one of those weeks where everything seems to cost you time and money? Where everything seems to break at the same time? where the whole concept of the "valued customer" apparently means nothing anymore? This was one of those weeks. It started early in the week, when I called a medical supply office that was making custom fit orthotics for my running shoes. I suddenly realized it had been over two months since I ordered them. They told me, "yeah, they're here, can you come in next week for a fitting? Okay great, see you then. Oh and (lowers voice to a mumble) these aren't covered by insurance, so that will be $160."
Wait...what? And, why didn't you tell me this before making the order?
Things progressed when I paid a visit to my local Lowes. We have a light fixture in our kitchen with three hanging track lights on it, and one decided to fry itself. We installed it in late 2006, so naturally Lowes doesn't carry it anymore. And neither does the manufacturer. Not even repair stock. Great. So I can either tear apart the fixture and attempt to replace the element inside that's fried, or replace the entire light fixture AND the matching one over the dinette table, which won't be easy because these fixtures were specifically chosen because the hole in the ceiling is off-center. Naturally I'm going with the former plan.
And then, there's Comcast. You know all those FIOS commercials you see with the read-headed cable guy who simply just doesn't have anything worthwhile to offer his customers? I was that customer today. A little over a week ago we treated ourselves to a brand new Tivo. This Tivo takes CableCards, which are little cards that slide into the Tivo and perform the same task as one of those digital cableset top boxes. Comcast readily provides them, but they insist on coming out to install. No problem, I made an appointment for today (a full week after I called), and they gave me the typical arrival estimate of between 8am and noon.
At 11:59 today, just as I was about to click the "chat now" button on Comcast Support's website, the phone rang. It was the contractor's secretary who called to say not only is he running late, but that they didn't have any Cablecards and wondered if I'd like a set top box instead. At that point I completely blew up at her and demanded to know why they are just telling me this now, and how she expects me to insert a set top box into the little slot on the front of my Tivo. She quickly got herself off the phone by interrupting my tirade and asking if I wanted the supervisor to call me directly. I replied with "yes please" and hung up the phone.
An hour and a half later, having heard nothing from them, I CALLED Comcast support, and got a very nice and understanding lady who took all sorts of notes and sent all sorts of emails to allegedly the right people who would get in touch with me. Very nice of her, though so far that gets me cable service on my Tivo as much as pouring orange juice into the CableCard slots would. But it turned out that 45 minutes later I got a call from a "district supervisor" who said they found some CableCards and would be right over. And they were.
And none of the three CableCards he brought with him worked. He then told me they would have to come back during the week. So I scheduled the followup appointment, let him leave the house, then called the nice Comcast lady back and asked her what she could do for me to compensate for the misery of the day. The best she could do was give me a $20 credit. Not only was that pretty pathetic, but a friend reminded me this evening that this installation also cost $16. So I'll be calling Comcast back again shortly. Meanwhile, FIOS continues to dig up our street, laying cables for their service. Keep digging FIOS, keep digging.
And to top things off, my camera broke this evening. Awesome capper to an awesome day.
Wait...what? And, why didn't you tell me this before making the order?
Things progressed when I paid a visit to my local Lowes. We have a light fixture in our kitchen with three hanging track lights on it, and one decided to fry itself. We installed it in late 2006, so naturally Lowes doesn't carry it anymore. And neither does the manufacturer. Not even repair stock. Great. So I can either tear apart the fixture and attempt to replace the element inside that's fried, or replace the entire light fixture AND the matching one over the dinette table, which won't be easy because these fixtures were specifically chosen because the hole in the ceiling is off-center. Naturally I'm going with the former plan.
And then, there's Comcast. You know all those FIOS commercials you see with the read-headed cable guy who simply just doesn't have anything worthwhile to offer his customers? I was that customer today. A little over a week ago we treated ourselves to a brand new Tivo. This Tivo takes CableCards, which are little cards that slide into the Tivo and perform the same task as one of those digital cableset top boxes. Comcast readily provides them, but they insist on coming out to install. No problem, I made an appointment for today (a full week after I called), and they gave me the typical arrival estimate of between 8am and noon.
At 11:59 today, just as I was about to click the "chat now" button on Comcast Support's website, the phone rang. It was the contractor's secretary who called to say not only is he running late, but that they didn't have any Cablecards and wondered if I'd like a set top box instead. At that point I completely blew up at her and demanded to know why they are just telling me this now, and how she expects me to insert a set top box into the little slot on the front of my Tivo. She quickly got herself off the phone by interrupting my tirade and asking if I wanted the supervisor to call me directly. I replied with "yes please" and hung up the phone.
An hour and a half later, having heard nothing from them, I CALLED Comcast support, and got a very nice and understanding lady who took all sorts of notes and sent all sorts of emails to allegedly the right people who would get in touch with me. Very nice of her, though so far that gets me cable service on my Tivo as much as pouring orange juice into the CableCard slots would. But it turned out that 45 minutes later I got a call from a "district supervisor" who said they found some CableCards and would be right over. And they were.
And none of the three CableCards he brought with him worked. He then told me they would have to come back during the week. So I scheduled the followup appointment, let him leave the house, then called the nice Comcast lady back and asked her what she could do for me to compensate for the misery of the day. The best she could do was give me a $20 credit. Not only was that pretty pathetic, but a friend reminded me this evening that this installation also cost $16. So I'll be calling Comcast back again shortly. Meanwhile, FIOS continues to dig up our street, laying cables for their service. Keep digging FIOS, keep digging.
And to top things off, my camera broke this evening. Awesome capper to an awesome day.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Best music video ever
No, not this one:
That's Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, of course. I thought I would let you watch it as a simple refresher, before you see the REAL treat, which is this:
That's Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, of course. I thought I would let you watch it as a simple refresher, before you see the REAL treat, which is this:
Sunday, November 22, 2009
My chance to be just like Norm. No, not NORM!, the other Norm.
Okay, okay, I hear you...you're thinking, "geez, WTF... Mike's at home with the flu, the LEAST he could do is post to his blog once in a while." Yeah, well, you're right. But the trouble is I don't have a laptop, and I didn't manage to drag my sorry butt out of bed for at least three days straight. It got to a point where I was starting to form some sort of crust on my thighs, so I decided it was finally time to get up and face the world. And here I am. Three days off work with something that did NOT amount to swine flu, but managed to leave behind a nasty case of bronchitis that makes me sound like a fully grown harp seal stuck in the carburetor of a Civic (wait, do Civics have carburetors? Nah, probably not...there goes my whole metaphor).
Okay, so that's where I've been. If I WASN'T hacking up phlegm balls the size of a small squid I would perhaps be much further along with my latest renovation-related project. I've decided it's time to finally face the music (that pun will hurt in a moment...) and build us an entertainment unit for the family room (see, told ya). You see, When we built the addition, we at least planned ahead and managed to mount the TV on the wall. What we did NOT do, however, was anything else even remotely related to making our stereo system NOT look like it was set up by a couple of Alpha Chi brothers attempting to decorate their off-campus man cave. Here it is currently, in all it's glory, my favorite part being, as my buddy calls it, the "off" center speaker:
Okay, so maybe it's not THAT bad, but my wife and I are card-carrying adults now, and it's about time we had something that doesn't make us look like we've been furnishing our home via the As-Is section of IKEA (which, BTW, is exactly where we got that base cabinet). So, here's my master plan:
Okay, sure, you say, that looks pretty standard. What's the big deal? Why not buy yourself an entertainment unit and get it done with, right? Phphhhh. Please. I refuse to stoop so low as to go out and buy myself something that appears gorgeous, is likely shoddy in makemanship, costs about ten times what it's worth, and probably doesn't fit that whompin' huge CD player when in fact I can custom build something that perfectly fits our needs, comes with the same shoddy makemanship, and costs a tenth as much. Add to this the fact that my wife has already approved me spending oodles of hours down in the workshop to make this beast when I could be spending quality time yelling at my children, and there's obviously no question I should build my own.
But wait, there's more.
If you've ever watched Yankee Workshop, you know that Norm, the carpenter, is famous for a few things: 1)First, a little shop safety. Always wear "these" safety glasses 2)having thirty-eight different routers so he doesn't have to spend time changing router bits, and 3)somehow managing to get his hands on some slab of lumber that was scavenged from a Revolutionary War cannon stand that's been buried in a salt mine for 250 years and turning it, magically, into a beautiful and finely crafted duck-shaped wind chime. I mean, really, how many of you have watched those shows on HGTV only to scoff when the home builder proclaims that the floorboards have been reclaimed from a 200-year-old barn, or that the ceiling's false beams were saved from a vintage ice factory being demolished in Cheboygan, thinking "yeah, but they don't sell that stuff at Home Depot."
Well, thanks to my buddy Jeff (a far more experienced woodworker than I) I can finally say I can be just like Norm, sort of. Jeff discovered a 100+ year-old barn being torn down in his neighborhood, and he had the foresight to deal with the crew and buy himself a number of chestnut ceiling beams and sycamore floorboards. And then he had the foresight to offer to sell me some of those sycamore boards for use with this little project of mine And I had the foresight to say yes. So give me a several months, and if all goes well I will be able to stand there as visitors admire my handywork while I casually explain, "oh, this old thing? Yes, it's made from the salvaged boards of a centuries-old barn." and then move on to explain how I selected the sycamore because it brings out just the right tonal harmonies when I stream Depeche Mode on my iPod. Or something like that. I'll have to work on the story.
So production has started. Nothing to show just yet, but I know that resting comfortably across my workbench right now is the case for the lefthand bookshelf, awaiting the first pieces of newly planed antique sycamore floorboards to be applied to the front face. If only I could breathe well enough to handle being in my workshop long enough to do it. Well, that's what pharmaceuticals are for.
Okay, so that's where I've been. If I WASN'T hacking up phlegm balls the size of a small squid I would perhaps be much further along with my latest renovation-related project. I've decided it's time to finally face the music (that pun will hurt in a moment...) and build us an entertainment unit for the family room (see, told ya). You see, When we built the addition, we at least planned ahead and managed to mount the TV on the wall. What we did NOT do, however, was anything else even remotely related to making our stereo system NOT look like it was set up by a couple of Alpha Chi brothers attempting to decorate their off-campus man cave. Here it is currently, in all it's glory, my favorite part being, as my buddy calls it, the "off" center speaker:
Okay, so maybe it's not THAT bad, but my wife and I are card-carrying adults now, and it's about time we had something that doesn't make us look like we've been furnishing our home via the As-Is section of IKEA (which, BTW, is exactly where we got that base cabinet). So, here's my master plan:
Okay, sure, you say, that looks pretty standard. What's the big deal? Why not buy yourself an entertainment unit and get it done with, right? Phphhhh. Please. I refuse to stoop so low as to go out and buy myself something that appears gorgeous, is likely shoddy in makemanship, costs about ten times what it's worth, and probably doesn't fit that whompin' huge CD player when in fact I can custom build something that perfectly fits our needs, comes with the same shoddy makemanship, and costs a tenth as much. Add to this the fact that my wife has already approved me spending oodles of hours down in the workshop to make this beast when I could be spending quality time yelling at my children, and there's obviously no question I should build my own.
But wait, there's more.
If you've ever watched Yankee Workshop, you know that Norm, the carpenter, is famous for a few things: 1)First, a little shop safety. Always wear "these" safety glasses 2)having thirty-eight different routers so he doesn't have to spend time changing router bits, and 3)somehow managing to get his hands on some slab of lumber that was scavenged from a Revolutionary War cannon stand that's been buried in a salt mine for 250 years and turning it, magically, into a beautiful and finely crafted duck-shaped wind chime. I mean, really, how many of you have watched those shows on HGTV only to scoff when the home builder proclaims that the floorboards have been reclaimed from a 200-year-old barn, or that the ceiling's false beams were saved from a vintage ice factory being demolished in Cheboygan, thinking "yeah, but they don't sell that stuff at Home Depot."
Well, thanks to my buddy Jeff (a far more experienced woodworker than I) I can finally say I can be just like Norm, sort of. Jeff discovered a 100+ year-old barn being torn down in his neighborhood, and he had the foresight to deal with the crew and buy himself a number of chestnut ceiling beams and sycamore floorboards. And then he had the foresight to offer to sell me some of those sycamore boards for use with this little project of mine And I had the foresight to say yes. So give me a several months, and if all goes well I will be able to stand there as visitors admire my handywork while I casually explain, "oh, this old thing? Yes, it's made from the salvaged boards of a centuries-old barn." and then move on to explain how I selected the sycamore because it brings out just the right tonal harmonies when I stream Depeche Mode on my iPod. Or something like that. I'll have to work on the story.
So production has started. Nothing to show just yet, but I know that resting comfortably across my workbench right now is the case for the lefthand bookshelf, awaiting the first pieces of newly planed antique sycamore floorboards to be applied to the front face. If only I could breathe well enough to handle being in my workshop long enough to do it. Well, that's what pharmaceuticals are for.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Into The Woods
Okay, this has nothing to do with anything, but I took a few interesting photos over the weekend at Kentuck Knob. For those unaware, Kentuck Knob is the Frank Lloyd Wright home in Ohiopyle that ISN'T Fallingwater. It's actually only a mile or two from Fallingwater. Built as a home for the Hagen family (of Hagen Ice Cream fame), it is now owned by some British guy named Lord Palumbo, who still uses it on occasion but has opened it up to the public for tours. It's a very cool house, and far, far more livable than Fallingwater. Down in the woods behind it is a meadow containing a sculpture garden. That's where I took these.
The Red Army
Last Call
The Wall
This is an actual chunk from the Berlin Wall.
Kentuck Knob
Kentuck Knob
The Red Army
Last Call
The Wall
This is an actual chunk from the Berlin Wall.
Kentuck Knob
Kentuck Knob
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Back in my day...
This week was parent-teacher conferences. That most wonderful time of year, when the kids get a couple of free days off and the parents rearrange their schedules so they can sit in tiny chairs designed for six-year-olds and find out exactly what they are getting out of their school district's tax dollars.
For us, parent-teacher conferences are actually fairly boring. I mean really, how often can you hear phrases like "pure unadulterated genius", "miles ahead", and "their future fame and fortune will more than cover your retirement" before it starts to get a little repetitive? Really, the highlight of conference night is walking out of the classroom and roaming the hallway, picking out the documented moments of brilliance that are our childrens' artistic masterpieces hanging on the walls amongst more feeble and pathetic attempts at creativity while other, lesser parents run screaming from their own childrens' classrooms and hurl themselves off the top of the gymnasium bleachers in a vain attempt to quell their own anguish over their child's mediocre performance.
Sometimes I can't help but get my geek on, but this year during the conference I felt compelled to ask how involved the students get in computer skills development. I figure that by the time our children reach adulthood the cyborgs will be pretty much running things around here, so I want to make sure that my kids are skilled enough to be useful members of the Great Hacker Resistance of 2030. That, and I'm hoping my older daughter might be able to help my wife occasionally by recovering a lost Word document or two when I'm not home.
I received an interesting response to my question. It turns out that the kids don't spent a whole lot of time in the computer lab these days. Why? Because it's a complete waste of time. More often than not a typical lab session starts with a bevy of computer crashes, "teacher, I can't login" complaints, and accidental mouse clicks inadvertently leading kids to open the Windows System folder and deleting Autoexec.bat. Frankly, it's gotten to a point where it just isn't worth the time and frustration.
Wow. This is quite a testament to how far with computers we have come. Microsoft and other companies have spent billions trying to make computers so friendly and intuitive that they have become too complex to teach how to use.
I remember when I was a youngster and part of the gifted program (otherwise known as the short bus full of snowball targets). We spent many hours learning and understanding computer concepts. Each day we would fire up the trusted Radio Shack TRS-80, wait for the black screen to appear, and start typing. That was it. No logins. No icons. No worrying about accidental downloads of porn. Back then, porn was where it should have been...in that secret box in my dad's workshop that he thought I didn't know about. And as long as he doesn't read my blog, he still thinks I don't know about.
What a life these kids lead. My daughters have never seen a world without the internet. Heck, they've never been without WiFi. They've never not shared the house with at least one iPod. And as a result, they're not the least bit dazzled by these technological wonders. The other day I introduced my kid to an iPhone app that automatically recognizes songs playing on the radio and identifies them for you. She was completely nonplussed, and simply asked me for the iPhone so she could play that game where you make the monkey pee in the toilet by tilting the phone back and forth.
Back in my day, the monkey I had to make pee in the toilet was an actual monkey. And he didn't like it when I tilted him.
For us, parent-teacher conferences are actually fairly boring. I mean really, how often can you hear phrases like "pure unadulterated genius", "miles ahead", and "their future fame and fortune will more than cover your retirement" before it starts to get a little repetitive? Really, the highlight of conference night is walking out of the classroom and roaming the hallway, picking out the documented moments of brilliance that are our childrens' artistic masterpieces hanging on the walls amongst more feeble and pathetic attempts at creativity while other, lesser parents run screaming from their own childrens' classrooms and hurl themselves off the top of the gymnasium bleachers in a vain attempt to quell their own anguish over their child's mediocre performance.
Sometimes I can't help but get my geek on, but this year during the conference I felt compelled to ask how involved the students get in computer skills development. I figure that by the time our children reach adulthood the cyborgs will be pretty much running things around here, so I want to make sure that my kids are skilled enough to be useful members of the Great Hacker Resistance of 2030. That, and I'm hoping my older daughter might be able to help my wife occasionally by recovering a lost Word document or two when I'm not home.
I received an interesting response to my question. It turns out that the kids don't spent a whole lot of time in the computer lab these days. Why? Because it's a complete waste of time. More often than not a typical lab session starts with a bevy of computer crashes, "teacher, I can't login" complaints, and accidental mouse clicks inadvertently leading kids to open the Windows System folder and deleting Autoexec.bat. Frankly, it's gotten to a point where it just isn't worth the time and frustration.
Wow. This is quite a testament to how far with computers we have come. Microsoft and other companies have spent billions trying to make computers so friendly and intuitive that they have become too complex to teach how to use.
I remember when I was a youngster and part of the gifted program (otherwise known as the short bus full of snowball targets). We spent many hours learning and understanding computer concepts. Each day we would fire up the trusted Radio Shack TRS-80, wait for the black screen to appear, and start typing. That was it. No logins. No icons. No worrying about accidental downloads of porn. Back then, porn was where it should have been...in that secret box in my dad's workshop that he thought I didn't know about. And as long as he doesn't read my blog, he still thinks I don't know about.
What a life these kids lead. My daughters have never seen a world without the internet. Heck, they've never been without WiFi. They've never not shared the house with at least one iPod. And as a result, they're not the least bit dazzled by these technological wonders. The other day I introduced my kid to an iPhone app that automatically recognizes songs playing on the radio and identifies them for you. She was completely nonplussed, and simply asked me for the iPhone so she could play that game where you make the monkey pee in the toilet by tilting the phone back and forth.
Back in my day, the monkey I had to make pee in the toilet was an actual monkey. And he didn't like it when I tilted him.
Friday, October 09, 2009
My next 15 minutes of fame...very local, minor fame...
Too all those readers who came across my blog after reading about it in this month's North Hills Monthly, welcome to the party. I hope you stick around for a bit. What you will find here will quite likely not enrich your life. It won't offend you. It won't make you think. and it certainly won't make you feel any smarter. But if it makes you giggle, perhaps guffaw, or maybe even pee a little, then I feel I've done my job. If you like, click on the "Favorites" tag in the list to the right and find a little more out about me and my yammering. By the way that's an incomplete list...I'm working on it...
For those of you wondering what the heck I'm babbling about, See page 40.
For those of you wondering what the heck I'm babbling about, See page 40.
I'm starting to notice a trend here
Animals. They're out to get me. And it's not just the fricking dog.
Let's start with the fish. Take the photo below, for example. I will call this exhibit A. Lovely fish tank ain't it? Notice how it seems like there's about 6 inches of gravel in there, piled up like a miniature mountain range? I didn't do that. The stupid fish did. No, I spent plenty of time making a nice cozy home for the critter, but instead the stupid fish decided she'd rather dig up the nice smooth layer of gravel and pile it all in the front of tank as if she's building a fort. Oh, and you also might notice the black thing in the background. That's the water heater. Which isn't where I left it. She moved that too. And the plant that looks like it's growing out of the left side of the tank? Nice.
Let's move on to the dog. Surely by now you're read my previous post and learned how El Destructo spends her time alone. Well, we were having SOME amount of luck with her in the basement, until today when she discovered the wonder of berber carpet, and began tugging at the threads by the garage door, as if by some magic one of her owners might be attached to the end of them. Awesome. Maybe she'll chew through to the tack strip. That'll teach her.
Okay, so that's the pets. But suddenly I'm realizing this conspiracy is wider than just this inner circle. This morning as I opened the garage door, I noticed two deer in the back yard, quietly munching away at my hostas. The looked up at me, smirked, and I distinctly heard one of them say, "What the hell you looking at?"
And then there's the moles. The moles that have made a tunnel network in my lawn more intricate than the London Tube system. Whick has been really great for drainage. Not to mention for the mower blade. Or the chipmunks that have dug a cavern so vast behind the retaining wall next to the driveway that it's expected to collapse within the next year.
Really, there's only one animal in this entire neighborhood that I can appreciate. And that's the bunny. The bunny has been living under a bush in the front yard for years, and never bothered a soul. Of course, I discovered him dead on the neighbor's lawn the other day. So there goes that. I'm thinking the deer bumped him off.
Let's start with the fish. Take the photo below, for example. I will call this exhibit A. Lovely fish tank ain't it? Notice how it seems like there's about 6 inches of gravel in there, piled up like a miniature mountain range? I didn't do that. The stupid fish did. No, I spent plenty of time making a nice cozy home for the critter, but instead the stupid fish decided she'd rather dig up the nice smooth layer of gravel and pile it all in the front of tank as if she's building a fort. Oh, and you also might notice the black thing in the background. That's the water heater. Which isn't where I left it. She moved that too. And the plant that looks like it's growing out of the left side of the tank? Nice.
Let's move on to the dog. Surely by now you're read my previous post and learned how El Destructo spends her time alone. Well, we were having SOME amount of luck with her in the basement, until today when she discovered the wonder of berber carpet, and began tugging at the threads by the garage door, as if by some magic one of her owners might be attached to the end of them. Awesome. Maybe she'll chew through to the tack strip. That'll teach her.
Okay, so that's the pets. But suddenly I'm realizing this conspiracy is wider than just this inner circle. This morning as I opened the garage door, I noticed two deer in the back yard, quietly munching away at my hostas. The looked up at me, smirked, and I distinctly heard one of them say, "What the hell you looking at?"
And then there's the moles. The moles that have made a tunnel network in my lawn more intricate than the London Tube system. Whick has been really great for drainage. Not to mention for the mower blade. Or the chipmunks that have dug a cavern so vast behind the retaining wall next to the driveway that it's expected to collapse within the next year.
Really, there's only one animal in this entire neighborhood that I can appreciate. And that's the bunny. The bunny has been living under a bush in the front yard for years, and never bothered a soul. Of course, I discovered him dead on the neighbor's lawn the other day. So there goes that. I'm thinking the deer bumped him off.
Friday, October 02, 2009
The Dog Runner
Ugh. Daisy. That friggin' dog. When she's out in public, the best way to describe her is "always on alert". Bring her outdoors, and all of a sudden every bit of movement, every falling leaf, every passerby becomes her immediate prey. As a result, she's a HUGE pain in the ass to take on a walk.
Our normal walking route takes us past at least a half dozen houses with dogs. One bark from any one of them and Daisy's ears perk up and her body language screams, "I'm on that!!!!" God forbid one of those dogs happens to be outside. Suddenly it's like gravity has no meaning, and it's more like I'm flying a kite on a windy day than walking a dog down the street.
Speaking of windy days, those are the worst. Earlier this week we had some rain and wind, bringing the Fall season to our neighborhood rather quickly. Everything within sight or earshot become an object of Daisy's desire. "What's that??? A leaf?? I need that! Ooh, another leaf! Another! A whole bunch! Gimme Gimme Gimme! I need those! Squirrel!!! Aghh! Bunny! Get the squirrel, no wait...I need the bunny! Agh, what's that noise in the tree! Climb the tree! Climb the tree! Someone get me a ladder! I need a ladder! A rope! One of those mountain climbing rigs! Holy crap, a crow! I love crows! Is that a crow What's a crow, anyways?? I dunno, get it! Wait, did you hear that??? Was that another dog! I think it was a dog! It was miles away, but I know she's talking to me! Was that a dog??? Tell me it was a dog, I need to see it now! She wants to play! NOW!! Please Please Please Please Please Please! Ooh, hey, peanut butter treat! Sure, I'll calm down, thank..ANOTHER SQUIRREL! Get it! Hey, a worm! Never seen one of those, can I eat it? Can I? Can I? Hey, let's try it! Oooh squishy! Makes me want to leap in the air! Gotta poop! No wait, more leaves! Can't poop right now! Gotta hold it! Don't care if the poop's hanging out the back, I need that leaf! Get it! get it! GET IT!!!!!! AGGHHHH!!!
By the time we've gotten to the end of the driveway, I'm done.
(above dog portrayed by actor. Not actual dog.)
So that's the great outdoors. Let's talk for a moment about the inside of the house. Overall, she's a pretty well behaved dog when inside. Except when we leave. Man, this critter's got some issues. We keep a crate in our bedroom where she happily sleeps, but we also have been attempting to leave her in said crate when we leave the house. Yeah, that doesn't work too well. More often than not, we come home to a scene much like this:
What you are seeing here is the slab of carpet I laid UNDER the crate. Daisy spent her time gnawing away at it in frustration until there was nothing left but shreds of yarn. I'd make her suffer and not put ANYTHING in or under her crate, but I'm afraid she'd chew through the actual carpet in the room, only stopping when the crate fell through the kitchen ceiling below her.
Given how tired I was with having to vacuum the bedroom every time we came home, we tried a little experiment. I cleaned the basement out completely, and we set her up with a place to hang out there while we're gone. Her food bowl, some chew toys, even a radio with some Beethoven playing (heh. Beethoven. Unintentional dog movie reference. Damn I'm good. Of course I'll stop before I say something really corny, like "his Bach was worse than his bite, that sort of thing"). Additionally, we set up the camcorder in a quiet corner to tape the goings on when we left the house. Lo and behold, we've actually had some success. While we still come home to a freakishly lonely, shaky and nervous dog who, according to the tape, spends the first hour alone wandering aimlessly about the room howling like a coyote, she has yet to destroy anything major in there. Well, that's not quite true. Jessica made the mistake of leaving her dress shoes on the floor of the basement yesterday. Yeah,there's forty bucks down the drain. And the day before, a wooden letter "A" from a toy got left out, and we came home to what looked like what you find stuck in the gears of a wood chipper. But we've made progress, And as an extra bonus, if we keep this up the basement might actually stay clean for a long time. and that makes dad VERY happy.
Our normal walking route takes us past at least a half dozen houses with dogs. One bark from any one of them and Daisy's ears perk up and her body language screams, "I'm on that!!!!" God forbid one of those dogs happens to be outside. Suddenly it's like gravity has no meaning, and it's more like I'm flying a kite on a windy day than walking a dog down the street.
Speaking of windy days, those are the worst. Earlier this week we had some rain and wind, bringing the Fall season to our neighborhood rather quickly. Everything within sight or earshot become an object of Daisy's desire. "What's that??? A leaf?? I need that! Ooh, another leaf! Another! A whole bunch! Gimme Gimme Gimme! I need those! Squirrel!!! Aghh! Bunny! Get the squirrel, no wait...I need the bunny! Agh, what's that noise in the tree! Climb the tree! Climb the tree! Someone get me a ladder! I need a ladder! A rope! One of those mountain climbing rigs! Holy crap, a crow! I love crows! Is that a crow What's a crow, anyways?? I dunno, get it! Wait, did you hear that??? Was that another dog! I think it was a dog! It was miles away, but I know she's talking to me! Was that a dog??? Tell me it was a dog, I need to see it now! She wants to play! NOW!! Please Please Please Please Please Please! Ooh, hey, peanut butter treat! Sure, I'll calm down, thank..ANOTHER SQUIRREL! Get it! Hey, a worm! Never seen one of those, can I eat it? Can I? Can I? Hey, let's try it! Oooh squishy! Makes me want to leap in the air! Gotta poop! No wait, more leaves! Can't poop right now! Gotta hold it! Don't care if the poop's hanging out the back, I need that leaf! Get it! get it! GET IT!!!!!! AGGHHHH!!!
By the time we've gotten to the end of the driveway, I'm done.
(above dog portrayed by actor. Not actual dog.)
So that's the great outdoors. Let's talk for a moment about the inside of the house. Overall, she's a pretty well behaved dog when inside. Except when we leave. Man, this critter's got some issues. We keep a crate in our bedroom where she happily sleeps, but we also have been attempting to leave her in said crate when we leave the house. Yeah, that doesn't work too well. More often than not, we come home to a scene much like this:
What you are seeing here is the slab of carpet I laid UNDER the crate. Daisy spent her time gnawing away at it in frustration until there was nothing left but shreds of yarn. I'd make her suffer and not put ANYTHING in or under her crate, but I'm afraid she'd chew through the actual carpet in the room, only stopping when the crate fell through the kitchen ceiling below her.
Given how tired I was with having to vacuum the bedroom every time we came home, we tried a little experiment. I cleaned the basement out completely, and we set her up with a place to hang out there while we're gone. Her food bowl, some chew toys, even a radio with some Beethoven playing (heh. Beethoven. Unintentional dog movie reference. Damn I'm good. Of course I'll stop before I say something really corny, like "his Bach was worse than his bite, that sort of thing"). Additionally, we set up the camcorder in a quiet corner to tape the goings on when we left the house. Lo and behold, we've actually had some success. While we still come home to a freakishly lonely, shaky and nervous dog who, according to the tape, spends the first hour alone wandering aimlessly about the room howling like a coyote, she has yet to destroy anything major in there. Well, that's not quite true. Jessica made the mistake of leaving her dress shoes on the floor of the basement yesterday. Yeah,there's forty bucks down the drain. And the day before, a wooden letter "A" from a toy got left out, and we came home to what looked like what you find stuck in the gears of a wood chipper. But we've made progress, And as an extra bonus, if we keep this up the basement might actually stay clean for a long time. and that makes dad VERY happy.
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