Now that my wife is heading back to work, I was able to upgrade her aging eMac into something a little zippier and bigger…
Category: General
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Curved Kitchen
Construction on the kitchen has finished… which is not to say renovation has stopped, there’s still a lot of painting to do.
Here, then, is the final cabinet arrangement along the east wall. Photoshop couldn’t quite cleanly stitch the 12 photographs together… the wall isn’t warped (at least not like this) and the countertop is actually flat.
It’ll never look this clean again…
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The Kitchen Progresses
It’s been a frenzied day (and last evening) of building IKEA kitchen cabinets.
Our handyman finished the sealing of the new tile floor and today marked the start of cabinet installation, so I had to get them ready.
I’m actually quite impressed with the ingenuity that IKEA has engineered into their cabinet system – with the exception of the backboard. That seems the rickety excuse, just nailing that flimsy faux-wood cardboard, or whatever it is on the backside. Everything seems engineered, the back just seems flung on there as an afterthought.
Still, after you build 9 or 10 of the things, you can crank them out pretty fast, assuming you’ve got the right ones.
We had a little comedy of errors with the ordering of the parts. I originally laid out the kitchen using IKEA’s kitchen planner software (Windows only – those jerks), and, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, had arrived at a workable combination – recognizing that my house wasn’t built in an era of standardized cabinet sizes. In the end, along the base we needed four 36″ cabinets and one 30″, unfortunately, the technician at IKEA didn’t download my project file, he just manually re-entered it off the print I had, and he got it wrong – he put us in for five 36″ cabinets. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice either.
They weight a ton, and my back is worthless these days, my wife is small. my usual fallback lifting person has a broken arm and I prefer not to get my 77-year old father to do heavy lifting, so we just had them deliver the stuff. Pity they wouldn’t bring it in the house, so we (and when I say, “we”, I mean my wife) ended up carrying it in piece by piece.
That’s when we discovered the mistake. To IKEA’s credit, they arranged for the right piece to be delivered and the bad one picked up the next day, which was Thursday.
This morning, I cracked the box open only to discover it was bright white, not the natural birch color of all the rest of the cabinets. This time calls to IKEA weren’t as immediately satisfactory, but they were willing to fix the problem, but they couldn’t do it fast enough. In the end, Irene had to take the bad part to the local store and they replaced it.
By the end of the day, all the cabinets are in place (although, they still need securing) and the countertop is being prepared. Tomorrow, we should have the cabinets secured, the countertops installed, the sink and dishwasher installed and functioning. We might not have all the drawers, doors and shelves in place, but we should have a working kitchen again – not a moment too soon.
We can already tell that the new arrangement is a lot better. There’s more cabinet space and the kitchen is more spacious. It’s going to play havoc on continuity shots on the next episode of Fusion Patrol: 1999, but I’ll just have to live with it.
Another thing that’s really exciting – we finally have an ice/water dispenser in our refrigerator! Our “new”: fridge, now over a year old, has a built-in icemaker. That’s nothing surprising in a modern fridge, but this house was built before such things were even dreamed of, and so the “fridge spot” is absolutely nowhere near a water supply. That has been resolved! Cold, fresh, filtered water. Ahhhhhhhh.
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Shooting reporters for the good of China?
When I first read this article, I thought the Chinese had come up with a clever way to get rid of pesky journalists in the run-up to their Olympic-committee sponsored propaganda orgy they’ll be having next month.
Three Chinese reporters attending a police briefing on the success of an anti-gun campaign were accidentally shot, media reports say. An officer picked up one of the weapons on show – a confiscated home-made gun – but it went off in his hand. [From BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Gun briefing backfires in China]
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Kitchens – Specifically
So, we have all that new-found (potential) income and Ikea only holds their prices stable in one-year increments, so, come June 30 prices on the rest of our kitchen cabinets were due to jump – or, possibly, be discontinued. In the last week of June we purchased the cabinets to complete our two-phase kitchen renovation.
The problem is the half gets complicated. First, we have to redo the floor, and while I don’t like tile, it is the most practical kitchen floor in this neck of the woods. So everything has to come out of the kitchen, cabinets, stove, refrigerator, freezer – everything.
We also have to deal with the soffits, which need to be removed, and some plumbing, which was inconveniently short-cut through there. Then, since we’re cutting into the plumbing, we’re getting water run for the refrigerator’s ice maker. After all that, we can put the cabinets back.
Work on that started today. Apart from one mishap when the water got turned on for the house but the (disconnected) kitchen supply lines weren’t closed – which I noticed when the water started pouring under the door into my computer room. – it’s gone pretty well today.
But the house is a mess, and we’re going to be eating out for the next week, at least.
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Life – In General
Life is a series of vignettes. Some longer than others. At times they may feel like they’ll never end, and when they do, you know they’ll never come back and you might feel a little maudlin.
And so a new vignette begins. Since 2002, just before Michelle was born, Irene has been a stay-at-home mother. We both felt that these early childhood development years are too important to entrust to day care. It hasn’t been easy, financially. I can easily understand how others may not have that option although it is often a question of lifestyle choices.
James is now three and has been attending a summer pre-school as a trial run. Starting next month, he, like Michelle, will be in school full-time. Next week, Irene goes back to work as a kindergarten teacher. It’s a good job. The hours are good, it’s near our house and near the kids’ school. Most importantly, we’ll be able to begin reversing the direction on our debt.
Still, my kids are getting bigger. Some days I think they can’t mature fast enough. Other days, I want them to stay my little kids forever.
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Blogging? What? Me? Ok, just a quick iPhone post.
I’m sick as a dog this weekend. (Come to think of it, my dog doesn’t seem to feel well, either.)
Still, while I was sort of healthy on Friday I upgraded my iPhone to the V2.0 firmware and am pleased and horrified to report that the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync stuff worked flawlessly. Now (Yeah) I can get important e-mail from work wherever I am and also (Oh crap) I can get all the rest of the junk e-mail from work wherever I am.
The firmware upgrade was far from smooth, and my phone was bricked for a few hours while the iTunes servers creaked and buckled under the strain, but about 4 hours later it kicked in and completed the upgrade without a problem.
Battery life seems to have taken a hit with the new firmware, but that might be because I’ve been playing with the phone a lot more over the weekend. (Lying in bed sick, with a new toy, what else have I to do?) This may be similar to when I first got the phone. The first weekend had terrible battery life, and I had to charge the phone twice a day, but once the novelty wore off, putting it on the charger at night was sufficient.
Yesterday and today have been two-charge days, but that might be Super Monkey Ball, too.
One thing that has changed is the Google Maps functionality, presumably because the 3g models have “real” GPS (not really, try using it where there’s no phone signal).
First, it’s more accurate, although, owning to being stuck mostly in the house, I’ve only been able to test it in a couple places, but the accuracy target is much more refined and the crosshairs are closer to the actual location. (See the picture, prior to the upgrade, my accuracy circle would have covered half the screen or more.)
Second, on the old firmware, the button on the lower left was a press once and release button, that pinpointed your location. Now, the button stays depressed and, periodically updates the location. Presumably this is from the GPS-enabled models, but it’s been carried over into the older ones too. That also seems to burn more battery juice (until I learned I needed to hit the button again to turn it off.)
The Apps store is cool, and I (like thousands of others) have now been admitted to the iPhone Developer program. I’m not as far along as I’d like on that, but I’m getting there.
There are quite a few nifty programs, so far I’ve only purchased Sega Super Monkey Ball, Electronic Arts’ Sudoku and Connected Flow’s Exposure – which is a nifty Flickr browsing program. I’ve also grabbed several free apps, including AIM. NetNewsWire, AP Mobile News, eBay AOL Radio and WeatherBug
It is cool finally being able to extend the phone without having to risk jailbreaking it. The future is here, we finally have mobile computers in our pockets. The significance of this development cannot be overstated.
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Taipei 101 Swings
This one has been floating around the ‘net for a bit now, but it’s worth a look.
I’ve been to the Taipei 101 and seen this thing and it is impressive. A massive counterweight that helps stabilize the building. Still, when you look at those cables (bigger around than a person) and those massive shock-absorbing legs that it rests on, it’s hard to imagine that it could move at all – but move it does.
This video was captured by a tourist who was in the Taipei 101 when the big China earthquake happened some 1,100 miles away.
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One More Thing About that Ticketing Thing….
Reuters => Huge Demand for World Twenty20 tickets
LONDON (Reuters) – Organisers of next year’s ICC World Twenty20 in England said on Monday there was an unprecedented demand for tickets.
Fans swamped telephone lines early on Monday for the event which will be staged next June at Lord’s, The Oval, Trent Bridge and Taunton.
It’s possible I didn’t need to be up at two in the morning, but it sounds like it was a good plan.
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Doctor Who – The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky – Review (Spoilers)
Sontar Ha! Sontar Ho! Sontar Hum!