How I Roll

Stephen and the Colberts

As posted at Godsend Productions.

 I really like the Fail Blog.

 

Scrapbooking Fail

 

Adlink Shortcut Fail

Final Sales Fail

Safety Fail

Utility Commission Fail

Security Fail

Naming Fail

Design Fail

Signage Fail

BBQ Sauce Fail

Marni and I wandered into Home Depot and Lowes yesterday to take stock of some appliances that we knew that we would need (namely a washer and dryer). When looking at the different options, it *still* seemed that LG's new ones were among the top in terms of performance and savings (which is why we are looking at new appliances)...but also in terms of initial payout. HD is about $200 below MRP, but I'm going to hit up some of the local shops that sell LG appliances to see if I can get a better deal there (as well as buying local from a mom-and-pop appliance shop instead of the Walmart of home do-it-yourselfers).

7.4 cu.ft Ultra Capacity SteamDryer™ with TrueSteam™ Technology

4.5 cu.ft. Ultra Capacity High Efficiency SteamWasher™ with Allergiene™

They are, of course, much more expensive than most of the washers/dryers that we could get, but I also like that they are both Energy and Water conservation models (which helps on the utilities that we are not used to paying since we've been apartment-bound). The Dryer that I'm looking at is also a gas model, which means further savings (so far at least) compared to Electricity. Were I to get the Jenn Air drop-in range, I would jump at gas there as well. But that's for *way* down the road. The electric range in the house is a nice one and will definitely get us by--even if I do prefer the front-controls to the ones on the back of the range.

We priced lawnmowers as well and I found a Toro Recycler that would easily work (I had two key requirements which were the easy-clean hose attachment and mulching). I'm planning on that for the spring, though, since it is getting to the end of the lawnmowing season and I know I can beg and borrow until then.

After the inspection tomorrow, we are planning on hitting as many places as possible and going aisle-by-aisle to find the items that we will need to move in. Oy vey!

Well, this weekend counted up the three theatre weddings of the summer! The first was Marni and I's wedding in June, then Ted and Trina's in August, and finally Cassandra and Nicks this last weekend. Marni and I are attending a non-theatre, family wedding next saturday as well. We also ended up at a birthday BBQ with Regina for her daughter Jitaya's birthday last night, which was a ton of fun!

I didn't get many pictures (and the ones I got were really bad for the most part because the iPhone camera combined with my shaky hands makes for bad pictures!), but I did get a few.

Feeding the Cake

They were sweet when feeding each other the cake, which was par for the course with the weddings this summer! No messy cake fights. I guess I do still have one wedding left to attend...

Dance

Cassandra and Nick are such a pretty couple. As you can see, another photographer was stealing my thunder. She actually had a camera and was trying to edge me out of the competition.

At Nick and Cassandra's wedding, there was a girl (one of Cassandra's sister's friends) who was wearing a long shirt as her outfit. The pictures don't really do it justice since she was part of a group each time I took a picture (rather than a focused close-up). But it was a fun outfit that caused many a jaw to hit the floor. It didn't hurt that she was stunningly beautiful as well.

Shirt Girl

Here's a better one of her.

Shirt Girl

It was, of course, very fun to watch the reactions of the wedding goers as she did the electric slide around the room in a shirt that was seemingly threatening to ride even an inch high enough to shock the world. She was an expert at deftly managing it, though it was obvious that as soon as she walked into the room, many many guys' eyes were on her. I had to take a picture because it is one of those things that I not only do not get to see everyday (ie. not everyone gets a run-in from the late 60's shirt-dress fashion re-trending), but something that people wouldn't usually believe unless they saw it. I really wish my phone took better pictures and that I could have gotten pictures of the people's faces! She even dove to get the bouquet.

I wish I could have gotten pictures of Regina and Jitaya, though. Jitaya was as beautiful as ever (especially when she had the microphone and was suddenly self-conscious about singing "Who Let the Dogs Out"), and Regina was stunning as always. Cutest Mama/Daughter combo in existence! (And Regina caught the garter as well!)

The wedding was a blast, though, with much dancing and fun to go around (as well as a chocolate fountain and lots of nummy food. Ted and Trina's wedding had excellent food, too. Kinda made me sad that we couldn't afford food at ours...but not sad at my pocketbook now!

Nick was appropriately happy with the whole event (and more so about running away to Canada, I'm sure!).

Pleased Nick

I wish I could have gotten photos of Ted and Trina's wedding since it was absolutely beautiful as well. All-in-all, it's been a pretty great summer for weddings! Next summer should be nice as well, with Rob and Virginia and Jamie and Wayne on the wedding block!

This Calling

Chiron

Two Weeks

We have accepted the counter-offer from the sellers and are meeting with the inspector on Tuesday morning to find out the laundry-list of everything wrong (and maybe a couple of things right) with the house. Hopefully there won't be any big show-stoppers along the way. So now instead of simply dreaming (as I was before and still am), I'm also trying to think of things we will need. Marni's already got a list (imagine that; it's like she's organized or something!).

There are a couple of things that we'll need before winter sets in (should everything come through okay). The first is hoses, because there's enough heat left in the afternoons to kill the lawn if we don't water it. And as much as I hate yard work, it's something that I can do relatively easily with no real problem. Except that we don't have any hoses or anything since we live in an apartment (and we donated all of the working hoses back in the day when we were packing stuff in the Fremont house so we didn't have to store it in our already over-crowded storage unit). So, hoses and basic sprinkler equipment. They also have a hose reel in the front and back yards.

Oscillating Sprinkler

I like these sprinklers because they seem to cover more ground somewhat evenly than other sprinklers. They also work well regardless of the water pressure (within reason, of course).

Never Kink Hose

I don't know if it works, but I hate fighting with hoses...and it has a five year guarantee on not kinking.

And since we have to water the lawn, I'm going to have to mow it at some point before the season ends (and then once spring heats up the green). So I've been looking at a couple of different mowers, but really like the Toro SuperRecycler Mower.

Toro SuperRecycler Mower

One of the things that I like about it is that it has a mulch mode which spreads cut grass evenly under the mower (and not making me pick it up as often unless it gets really long) as well as multiple bagging options.

Of course, we're also going to have to get a washer and dryer since that's the only appliance that is not included in the house. We are looking at paying through the nose for a good, energy and water-efficient washer and dryer. I'm leaning towards the LG Electronics 4.2 Cu. Ft. Ultra Capacity Front Load SteamWasher and the LG Electronics 7.3 Cu. Ft. Ultra Capacity Electric Dryer with TrueSteam Technology. While I would like a gas washer, I would have to pay to have a gas line rerouted and I don't know if we can afford that cost on top of those two expensive pieces of equipment.

Then there are all of the other costs like cleaning supplies that we don't have but will need a ton of, paint, stain and sealant for the hardwood floors, time to rip up carpet in the old part of the house and chemical strip the glue from the floors, buying light bulbs, light switches, outlets, nails and screws, and all of the other associated things that you never think of until you have to buy them.

I'm a dreamer, of course, and I sure wish I were more of a realist sometimes! I've spent a goodly amount of time thinking about the house that we put an offer down on. It's the one I blogged about the day before yesterday, and it is a very nice home. But I keep thinking of the "down the road" type things that I want to do.

(more...)

Well, I got quite a few great responses to my post about houses on MySpace, all of which were very, very helpful in looking at the house we were considering. The low-price and rental material was obviously tantalizing to someone since they snatched it up before we could even get in to take a look at it (which is actually a good thing considering there were several houses tens of thousands of dollars higher that we gave a firm "oh my Gawd...NO!" response to and I'm sure that it would not have been an exception). So we're looking at one that is twice the cost, but also twice the house--not necessarily in terms of size but in terms of being ready to move into and fully functional from the get-go.

Front of the House

This is the house that we are currently looking at (as per inspection, mortgage brokering, etc). It's a nice little home that actually will fit all of the stuff we currently have in our roomy apartment (well, our sofa would have to lose its Chaise but that would end up in a reading room so that we can lounge and read all asprawl).

(more...)

So I'm using Google Chrome and testing out WordPress, Joomla, etc with it...and it seems to work very, very nicely. In fact, it is quickly becoming my favorite browser (and that's only from a few hours of using it!).

When it comes to browsers and usability, I tend to like the simpler side of life. I do wish it had an AdBlock option by default, though. I'm sure it will be added quickly enough either as a plugin or as a splinter project called something crafty like Ad$FAIL.

One of the features that I really like as a web developer (you never suspected I was so crafty, did you?) is the Inspect Element feature. It's quite a handy feature, being able to see how each element fits into the page (and how it is being interpreted by the browser; which is even more handy). It's not as full-featured as Firebug from my little bits of testing, but then if casual game development is on the lower tier of game development, I'm a casual web developer (if even that).

I've had it crash a couple of times on different pages, though not on ones I expected it to crash on (Joomla or WP WYSIWYG editors). One was Plurk, most likely because the AJAX pipeline was kicking the hell out of the JavaScript VM in some manner. But a reload fixed it as it re-instanced the tab. The other was on MySpace, most likely because of some horrible coding mechanism embedded somewhere in one of the awful stylesheets I saw.

When it comes to Browser UI, I'm a minimalist and like it to look shiny (it is minimalist but not shiny). Moving the tabs to the top makes sense from the application POV (file folders should be shown like that), but it also takes me a bit more time to get it there. It does, however fit a great usability guideline of having an infinite ceiling since I can jam my mouse up and not have to target a "tab top".

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to do a bit more playing with and actually give it a real test-run. I did find the auto-installer interesting and kind of nice. I kind of hoped that none of the malware sites would pick up on its techniques. "You don't have the right codec to watch your pr0n...install now!"