May 30, 2008

File Under: No Thank You.

Damn. I just got a quote from Renewal by Andersen which included custom-built new windows, installation, and warranty. The cost of one of their windows was more than all six of the off-the-shelf windows I was originally considering, and three times the amount of the windows we picked out on Tuesday. The entire bill was enough to make me dizzy.

Posted on May 30, 2008 11:59 AM | link to this entry

May 29, 2008

This is How We Renovate...In the Ghetto.

My original intent, when I began the front porch renovation, was to keep the costs low by using off-the-shelf materials to replace the crap I was tearing out. I'd looked at stuff at the local superstores and found inexpensive candidates, but I knew I'd have to special-order certain things (windows) because nothing in this house is standard size.

With that in mind, I've been hemming and hawing over the replacement windows for weeks now, unsure of my plans. The window openings on the porch were all framed in by drunks, so their heights all vary by as much as an inch, and the horizontal level is off by at least a half-inch. In order to figure out what I was going to do (and what shape the framing was in), I pulled all three of the front-facing jalousie windows out on Monday to see what I was dealing with. The base of the frame on the far right was in terrible shape, and I had to pull the entire thing out in order to see what I was dealing with. For a temporary fix, I cut sheets of plywood down and nailed them up until we got our new windows delivered.

Aaaaaaand, here's where things go south.

Returning to Lowe's Tuesday with my 10% off coupon, Jen and I looked at the off-the-shelf offerings, and she helped me realize how shitty they look. The mullions (crossbars on the top window) were inside the glass, which looks funny from the outside, and the entire window is covered with a screen, which is ugly. After some discussion, we got a quote for better quality replacement windows which turned out to be about three times as much as I was originally expecting—not what I was hoping for. With the coupon and a firm quote I figure it will go down to about twice my original budget, but this is still putting a major dent in our plans. I've got a couple calls in to the better window companies to see what decent replacement windows will cost; I'm not expecting miracles but I'm hoping for one. The hard part will be getting a quote for the windows minus installation fees; I'm pretty sure that's where their markup lives.

Meanwhile, eating our breakfast in the upstairs bedroom has gotten more exciting due to the looks of shock and awe of the passers-by as they crane their necks trying to figure out what happened to the front of the house.

Outside, we wrapped a couple of branches of the cherry trees so that we might be able to enjoy some of the fruit this spring. With the exception of the Year of the Locust (when plentiful, if earthy-flavored food was burrowing out of the ground all summer), the birds have cleaned out all of the ripening red cherries before we've been able to taste it. The grape arbor also got wrapped on Monday to keep the bunches protected for the season (and to keep the vines off the stairwell).

* * *

In other strange news, I had a dream last night where I was asked by Daft Punk to sit in on one of their concerts. I knew all the parts to the songs, but the "instrument" they stood me in front of was like no other I had ever seen, and made no sense. They got pissed at me when I couldn't figure out how to play it (it was like a vibraphone stood on its side, with lots of added glowing sampler buttons that made no sense), yelled at me in French, and kicked me off the stage. I was so psyched to put on a helmet and a jumpsuit and rock out, too.

Posted on May 29, 2008 10:47 AM | link to this entry

May 27, 2008

Memorial Weekend.

This weekend was spent as any good summer weekend should be: lots of friends, outdoor activities, and laughter. I carried my camera with me pretty much everywhere but only took a select few pictures, which seems to be the M.O. these days.

I had a chance to catch up with Mr. Scout on Friday, who has been hard at work on a familiar friend:

Compare that shot with this one:

He's been able to get the body off, have the whole thing sandblasted and painted, then replace the fuel tank, brakes and brake lines, water pump and fan assembly, as well as a pile of other things too long to list here. it makes my heart feel good to see the old girl looking better.

We then joined he and his wife for the Herb Festival on Saturday morning, where we enjoyed the sunshine and picked up a cartful of plants and vegetables from the assembled vendors, including this little gem:

This is a Northern Purple pitcher plant, not as sexy or elegant as a Venus Flytrap, but still deadly to our eight-legged friends. Leaving the festival, we wasted no time feeding it a live ant, which now seems to be in a state of digestion. I set it up on our office windowsill in wait for more unwanted tenants, and we'll see how well it does.

Thus endeth the photographic portion of the weekend; we had another dinner and picnic scheduled for our remaining days, interspersed with yardwork, sloth, and delicious scratch-made coconut cake. Not a bad way to spend the holiday, in my opinion.

Posted on May 27, 2008 5:16 PM | link to this entry

May 23, 2008

The Secret History of Star Wars.

I originally put this in the sidebar, but it's too large to read well over there: The Secret History of Star Wars, an unauthorized origin of the series, told through interviews, articles, and other sources. The Behind the Scenes article on the set of The Empire Strikes Back is the kind of stuff I love the most: What is the creative process behind the movie? How do the people interact? For example, this exchange:

Irvin Kershner: (Turns to Carrie) Now you see what a problem it creates if you slap him.
Billy Dee Williams: Well, let's just try it that way.
(Suddenly, Carrie gives Billy quite a powerful whack.)
BDW: Don't hit me like that!
Carrie Fisher: Did it hurt?
BDW: Of course it hurt.
CF: I'm sorry. How do you hit someone?
IK: You telegraph it to him.
BDW: If you want to hit me, fake it.

Based on the final product, Lucas should have let Kershner direct the remaining four movies too, or, at least, the prequels.

Posted on May 23, 2008 11:10 AM | link to this entry

May 22, 2008

Dear Carrot.

On this day four years ago, your mother and I married each other at a big party in front of our friends and family. It was a wonderful day which went by way too quickly, and when you're ten we'll explain to you all about the locusts.

Your mother and I have had quite a few adventures since then. We've traveled around the world twice, started our own businesses, watched friends and family graduate, give birth, and pass on. And during that time, we've grown closer than we were when we married each other, sharing good times and helping each other through the bad. It's pretty cliche to say "my partner is my best friend", but I think that's what makes your mother and I work—because nobody but a best friend could stand to live with me, that's for sure. Who knew there was a "correct" way to load the dishwasher?

You, our greatest adventure, are doing very well from what we can tell. Your mother is having intermittent Braxton-Hicks Contraptions, which are her body's way of getting itself ready for the Big Stretch. She calls them "contraptions" because she doesn't like the sound of "contraction" in relation to her own body, which I can completely understand. We're also beginning to receive baby clothes from family and friends; your aunt knitted you a beautiful sweater, your grandma sent along a package of new clothes, your aunt sent you a bear-themed bathroom set, and there's a chest-high pile of clothes from one of your future playdates. So throw up all you want, kid—we'll keep you covered.

Mommy is beginning to show now, too, which is good, because for a while there I was thinking that the doctors were fooling us into believing you weren't really there.

We still don't have a name for you yet. All of the ideas we've had are pretty much dead in the water with the exception of one girl name and two boy names, but I don't think we have consensus. We're working on it, though, so don't worry ~~George~~ ~~Lavernius~~ ~~Tiffani~~ ~~Othello~~ ~~Thibodeaux~~ ~~Aragorn~~ ~~Jim-Bob~~ ~~Sally~~ ~~Katrina~~ ~~John Wayne~~ ~~Knute~~ ~~Britney~~ ~~Shaqueela~~ ~~Chewbacca~~ ~~Dylan~~ .

Posted on May 22, 2008 2:33 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

May 21, 2008

A Little Subterfuge.

I was all ready to drive out to the gucci Lowe's in Columbia last night to write a big fat check for nine replacement windows. I had my clipboard, I had my measuring tape, I had my wife with me and we were going to make a side trip to try out the Parsa Kabob near the store. MMMM, yummy lamb kabobs. It was at the front door, ready to leave, that I remembered something: I wanted to see if there were any coupons or discounts I might find online that could save us a few bucks.

When we first moved into the Estate here, I got a packet in the mail from Lowe's for 10% off purchases of $5,000 or more as a "welcome to the neighborhood" sort of thing. They obviously check county records each week to see who's recently purchased land and then send out a blanket mailing. After moving in, I let the coupon lapse because there wasn't anything I needed to buy that would make a 10% discount worthwhile—the house needed elbow grease more than it needed raw materials.

After a quick search online I found the moving section of their website and plugged in my spamcatcher email address; the page says 3-7 days to fulfill via postal mail or email, which is plenty of time for me to continue insulating, running wire, and cleaning the space. 10% off a thousand bucks' worth of windows is nothing to sneeze at, in my book.

Update: Yeah, bitches!

Posted on May 21, 2008 9:16 AM | link to this entry

May 20, 2008

Back to the Salt Mines.

It's been quiet around here lately. I don't have anything really exciting to tell you about, so I'll show some pictures.

This is a thrilling picture of our side lawn. Notice the patch of slightly darker grass near the garden planter? That's where our ghetto sidewalk used to be. Jen gave me the all-clear to knock it apart and pull the concrete up a few weeks ago, and we were just now able to find some sod to drop in its place. Who knew sod was hard to find? Apparently it gets delivered right before the weekend and sells out almost immediately. We bought a bunch on a cold Thursday night, and I put it in on a rainy Sunday morning, just in time for a week of cold rain to help it grow.

This is a picture of the new wiring in the shared bathroom wall. I spent a good portion of Sunday running up and down the basement stairs, elbow-deep in insulation, trying to fish wire through small holes in the floor. After a half-hour of false starts, I realized that Ma Bell had already blazed a clear trail for me, and replaced two thick Eisenhower-era cable runs with new copper. I was actually able to get two cable and two data lines run before I ran out, which means there's 800+ feet of ethernet wire fished throughout this house.

Looking at the picture above, you'd think I would have used the handcart Dave left for me in the Big Red Truck to move the sink and radiator out of the bathroom and into the garage. That would have been the smart thing to do. I'm not so smart, so there they sit. Thanks anyway, Dave!

Behind all that heavy porcelain is the exam room, which is now finally devoid of blown fiberglas insulation, a task I was avoiding until I realized it was eventually going to get hot again, and if there's anything worse than bagging up loose fiberglas insulation, it's bagging insulation in 90° heat. (I've done it, and don't care to ever do it again.)

I then installed a bunch of insulation in the east wall after the cable went in. Finally, I disassembled one of the beautiful jalousie windows on the front of the house to see how difficult their removal will be; after ten minutes with a flathead screwdriver, I had one ready to push out onto the front lawn. In the next few days, I'm going to order six new windows for the front of the house and get things ready for installation.

Posted on May 20, 2008 11:51 AM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

May 15, 2008

Continue? Y/N

Onsite again, attempting to migrate a MySQL database to a new version of OS X Server. I've got the machine live on the internets, but now I have to move the database, get a Perl script to talk with it, upgrade passwords, and get a table of users to be able to log in.

Update: MySQL is installed differently on OS X Server, from what I can tell, and so does not work the same way as with plain old OS X.

Posted on May 15, 2008 12:58 PM | link to this entry

May 13, 2008

Car Shopping.

I've lately been scouring back issues of Consumer Reports, reading on different cars, determined to find the one that will provide the best balance of mileage, protection, space, and value. Reliability is key, because if we actually do buy a car, it's going to need to last the three of us a good long time. I started with the Honda Fit, thinking small and nimble meant gas-frugal. When my neighbor found out what I was looking at, he told me to consider an Accord, which he claimed had comparable gas mileage and offered more protection. Consumer Reports put that myth to bed, but I then looked at a Civic, which isn't that much more expensive than a Fit but offers plenty of room and similar efficiency.

For comparable cars, I'm adding in the Scion Xd due to the mileage and reliability ratings, as well as the Nissan Versa and the Toyota Matrix. Even though Jen's 10-year-old Saturn coupe gets 40mpg, modern Saturns are out due to reliability issues and lousy gas mileage, and I'm ruling out any other American brands for the same reason. Subarus are out due to thirsty AWD, as is the Mazda3. I refuse to buy a Hyundai, Kia or Suzuki because I already own enough plastic toys.

Note: I also looked at hybrids but I'm not impressed with the available space: if I need to cart baby, luggage, and X-mas presents around, interior room will already be at a premium. I also looked at VW's TDI offerings, but their cumulative reliability ratings leave me shivering with fear.

To level the playing field, I'm trying to stick with the same basic setup in each car. As much as I hate the idea of a 4-cylinder for durability, it's the best mileage option. A stick shift is a no-brainer; we both prefer them, they're cheaper, and they get better mileage. Crash ratings are important to us, obviously, but I understand I can't own an Excursion and expect to afford the gas, so I'm going with the offense-is-the-best-defense strategy. Each of these cars have standard front and side curtain airbags and ABS brakes.

	Honda Fit Sport	Honda Civic	Honda Accord	Nissan Versa SL	Scion Xd	Toyota Matrix
Price	$15,765	$18,260	$23,515	$14,452	$13,822	$14,973
Engine (4cyl)	1.5L 109hp	1.8L 113hp	2.4L 177hp	1.8L 122hp	1.8L 128hp	1.8L 132hp
Transmission	5-spd man.			6-spd man.	5-spd man.
MPG (avg)	34	31	24	29	29	27
City/Highway	33/38	22/40	22/31	n/a	n/a	n/a
IIHS offset	Good	Good	Good	Good	Acceptable	N/A

(All statistics courtesy of Consumer Reports)

So what's the deal with the Civic getting 22 city and 40 highway? That seems like an awful big spread to me. If I lived in a more rural area, I'd say Civic all the way, but I'm in one of the more congested corridors of the East Coast. I'll take 33mpg in the city, thank you. I like the idea of a hatchback, and I intend on putting a good-quality roof rack on whatever we buy, as well as a hitch (if I can).

We also have two glowing reviews from Fit owners vs. one from a former Accord owner. My ex used to have a Civic, and I enjoyed that car well enough to consider one of my own. Much of the final decision will involve a test drive.

To be continued...

Posted on May 13, 2008 9:49 AM | link to this entry | Comments (6)

May 12, 2008

Dear Banana.

It was great to go up and visit with your Pop-Pop in the hospital this past week, but it's good to be back home with you and your mother. She surprised me by re-arranging our entire bedroom while I was gone (do you remember all that bumping and clanging?) so it was like coming back home to a comfortable alternate-universe house where the cats don't have funny goatees that mean they're evil. That was a great surprise. Your mother also dragged a room-size carpet down from the attic into the yellow room, which brightens the whole thing right up. You seemed pretty happy to have me back, because you were kicking up a storm last night!

Your Grandpa, circa 1968

Pop-Pop is doing much better now that he has a tracheotomy tube instead of being fully intubated, and he's looking and feeling like himself again. Except for the fact that they shaved his face, which is weird. See, grandpa has had a beard since 1981, when we took a summer vacation and he 'forgot' his razor, and his chin has been missing somewhere in the pine forests of New Jersey ever since. For a few days, he closely resembled his brother Rich, who has a moustache and a Californian devil-may-care attitude, but then they shaved that off on Saturday, and the fact that he has no lips make him the spitting image of his brother Neil, the thought of which keeps your Grandmother awake at night. I sat up with him for two nights in the hospital, helping him get through the initial struggle to clear his lungs, and once he got through the first night things got much easier for him. Grandma's report from this morning says he's going to start physical therapy soon, which means he's well on his way. He liked your latest pictures too. I just hope you're born with lips.

Posted on May 12, 2008 10:47 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

May 9, 2008

More Distractions, or: MySQL and PHP on OS X for morons.

I'm on bedside watch this evening with my pops, who is dealing with fluid drain and a tracheotomy tube, so I decided to find something light to occupy my downtime: Installing MySQL and PHP on my laptop and setting up a development environment. Because what could be more easy and fun than wading through pages and pages of forums to try to install and talk to an open-source database?

Disclaimer: I'm not a grey-haired wizard, so these instructions are what worked for me, but not the One True Way. I'm including them here to maybe help someone else save some time. I'm running 10.4.11 on an Intel MacBook Pro, and I've never installed or started MySQL, Apache, or PHP on it. So here goes.

First, I checked to see if MySQL was installed on my machine with this terminal command (which should return a tidy list of applications):

ps -axc

If it's installed and running, there should be something in the list called "mysqld". It wasn't there for me. I also searched for any files called MySQL, and didn't find anything that looked like it was a running module. So I downloaded an Intel installer package from the MySQL site, ran the installer, and installed the Preference Pane.

After wondering stupidly for a few minutes why I couldn't get anything to come up at http://localhost/ in Safari, I remembered to turn on Personal Web Sharing in the Preferences, which starts Apache. This is why they call me the Idiot.

Next, I looked to see if PHP was running on this machine by writing the following file and saving it as php_test.php inside /Library/WebServer/Documents:

<html>
<p>This is an html line</p>
<?php
echo "this is a php line";
phpinfo();
?>
</html></span>

Opening up Safari, I pointed to it here: http://localhost/php_test.php

Safari dutifully printed the code without parsing the PHP, so I knew it wasn't working. I do know that PHP is preinstalled on OS X but not configured to run out of the box, so I did some looking.

Following directions here, I opened the http.conf file in Pico (I'm a dork, yes)

sudo pico /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

and uncommented (remove the #) the following lines:

# LoadModule php4_module libexec/httpd/libphp4.so
# AddModule mod_php4.c

I went back to the Preferences, turned off Personal Web Sharing, and turned it back on (thereby restarting Apache without having to resort to 5 minutes of Google searching and arcane Terminal commands). If all was done correctly, Apache should now be loaded with the PHP modules on.

Reloading the php_test.php file in Safari, I got a happy PHP config page (you'll know it when you see it).

OK, so next I have to see if I can talk to MySQL with PHP. I'm coming clean here and admitting I'm using a copy of PHP & MySQL for Dummies, which doesn't really get into the issue of passwords and root users until Chapter 5, and then it sort of glosses over things. A simple fact it took a while to find is that MySQL starts up with a superuser of "root" and a blank password. (I think I already knew this, but then forgot it). Anyway, I used a script found here, and changed the following lines from

$host="hostname";
$user="mysqlaccount";
$password="mysqlpassword";

to

$host="localhost";
$user="root";
$password="";

All this page will do is talk to MySQL and return a list of variables, thereby confirming that it's running and available to connect.

When I loaded the page in Safari, I got the dreaded "Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/mysql/mysql.sock'" error. As much as the Idiot here can figure out, this is some issue with the OS X install of MySQL and the pathways it uses.

Looking around the web, I found this page in Apple's forums which seems to fix the issue. In a nutshell, I followed the instructions at the bottom of the page to create a symbolic link to the lock file, like so:

cd /var
ls

If there's no directory in there named "mysql", then do this:

sudo mkdir mysql
cd mysql
sudo ln -s /private/tmp/mysql.sock mysql.sock

Then, I reloaded the mysql_up.php file I'd made earlier, and I got the result I was looking for: A table with a bunch of numbers that made no sense (variables). but the important thing was that there were no errors, which meant that PHP was talking to MySQL.

Now, I just need to learn how to program so I can use this shit.

Posted on May 9, 2008 7:17 PM | link to this entry

Distracting Myself.

My pop is now off the ventilator, with a tracheotomy tube, and sitting upright, which is a great sign. He's writing things we can actually understand and itching to get out of the bed; most of all he wants to EAT.

This is a revisit of the postcard Jen and I bought months ago, and for this one I decided to overlay the old with the new to see the changes 100 years will make. It took a little finagling with depth of field and a bit of Photoshop work to get the postcard light enough to see, but the results are worth the effort.

Posted on May 9, 2008 12:52 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

May 8, 2008

Hospital Visit.

I'm currently upstate visiting my Dad, who's recovering from surgery on his ticker. He's currently waiting to get the stupid tube taken out of his throat so he can talk again instead of us having to struggle to understand his handwriting.

Posted on May 8, 2008 5:14 PM | link to this entry

May 7, 2008

Super Cream (night).

Posted on May 7, 2008 12:08 AM | link to this entry

May 5, 2008

Dear Heirloom Tomato.

Taking full advantage of the somewhat clear weather, your mother and I did some window shopping at Valley View Farms in preparation for the garden we're planting this year. Given all the gnashing we're hearing this spring about rising food prices, we're refining last year's approach and planting cash crops to save some money. After doing the week's shopping, we returned home and made ourselves 4 lbs. of steamed mussels over tomato-garlic sauce with a side of homemade peasant bread. You really like shellfish, little tomato, because when your mother smelled the broth cooking, you started jumping around in anticipation.

The weather was just too good on Sunday to stay inside elbow-deep in insulation, so we spent the entire day outside, catching up on yardwork, gardening, and cleanup. After an obligatory lawn mowing, I chopped the front hedges back to a respectable height, trimmed the two monstrous bushes by the front door, dismantled an ancient rotting picnic table and got it ready for disposal, moved a pile of wood back to the cradle on the far side of the yard, trimmed several large dead branches from our cherry trees, and wrapped several more branches in netting so the birds don't eat all the fruit.

It was at this point that hubris got the better part of your father, and I pulled up about thirty feet of old busted-up concrete sidewalk on the west side of the house. I'm hoping that by the time you're ready to walk around outside I'll have pulled up the rest of it and replaced it with grass, but I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

Thankfully, your mother was smart enough to start some brisket in a slow cooker early in the day, so we threw together some cornbread stuffing left over from Thanksgiving and inhaled almost the entire thing for dinner. You seemed to enjoy that too, because I spent five happy minutes with my hand on your mother's belly feeling you kicking in there.

Posted on May 5, 2008 10:10 AM | link to this entry

May 3, 2008

TechShop

Check it—an episode of BoingBoingTV with a cameo by my friend John, about TechShop, a Silicon Valley community tinkering space. Instead of a normal tool library with hammers and drills, this is a shop with stuff like CNC plasma cutting machines, full-size hydraulic presses and three-dimensional printers. The last time I was out in San Francisco, I met up with John for dinner, and he was telling us all about this place—this is yet another reason I would love to move to California.

Posted on May 3, 2008 11:35 AM | link to this entry

Evening.

Last night, Jen and I took advantage of the warm weather and clear evening sky to take a long walk around the neighborhood, stopping to smell the last of the blooming plants, shrubs, and trees, say hello to the people we've met along our route, and finish the walk with a cone of chocolate ice cream. Sometimes the greatest pleasures in life really are the simple ones.