Suggestions for Laura

So ever since laura posted that horrible video clip of the "Taylor the Latte Boy", we've been singing it over and over again.. It is very annoying, and yet catchy at the same time.

However, I have a problem with Laura's example of running around the house singing "Hannah, the blackish pooch, I love her, I love her I loo-ove her.."
To me - that line just doesn't quite work. It doesn't flow nicely like "latte boy".. I mean c'mon "blackish pooch" instead of "latte boy??" Is "blackish" even a real word? OK maybe it is, but Hannah's just plain black; no "ish" about it...

So anyway... here's some suggestions for you to try instead....
(to the tune of "taylor, the latte boy" (obviously))

"Josie-- her Potty Ploys; We hate her, We hate her, We hate her."
"Rabbits, are not-a toy, bean scratches and bites and is mean."

and of course:
Hannah does not annoy; she'll fetch her bone, she'll fetch her toy.
Hannah, the shabbos goy, yes she 'll even work on the sabbath...
Oh, Hannah- she's not Bok Choy; cause what would we do with chink cabbage?
Oh, Hannah, she's such-a Joy, We love her, We love her, We love her...

Skip norton.. Try Avast

Ok, everybody make your nerd glasses comments and such.. It's time for another stupid pet trick.. errr.. tech tip.. whatever..

Avast Antivirus is free. And it doesn't clog your system resources.. and it has updated virus lists, etc -- and in most tests works as well as norton or the other popular ones.. But it doesn't cost anything.. So, skip the stupid subscription fees, and get free antivirus.... http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
One note -- The default setting is to annoy you with a loud sound file that alerts you "Virus DAtabase Updated!".. Turn this off if you don't want your computer screaming at you at 3 am.

On another note.. Free IM software.. I think most of us are using Trillian.. We tried out Pidgin for a while cause it works with Google Talk as well as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc.. But it was a crazy resource hog.. Used up tons of memory.. so, I wouldn't recommend it for now..

Shop Vac

I've been wanting to get a shop vac. I guess recently we've been doing a lot of cleanup from renovations, either our own or from the insurance clean up, and that means lots of messes to clean up.. And those messes have involved a lot of saw dust, broken tile, drywall dust, and other grime and gunk..
So I thought I had it all figured out.. After vacuuming the living room with Jenn's SEBO, I asked her - "Hey honey, mind if I use the vacuum to clean up the garage floor?" (knowing full well that the sawdust had soaked up the transmission fluid from the blazer, and was a nasty mess..)

Well, she didn't bite. She just said - "sure, whatever" in typical wifely "I'm listening, but I'm ignoring" fashion..... Oh well.. I went out to home depot and bought a shop vac anyway.. And boy does it suck!!! It picked up all that drywall, and insulation, sawdust, the cobwebs, and even a dead mouse!

So we finally got the treadmill moved back in to the basement so we can better participate in laura's fitness fiasco on snowy days like today... (and the cars fit back in tooo -- woo-hoo!)

Potty Time... ( excellent !)

The tile guys finally got the tile actually ordered (even if it wasn't what we originally picked) and installed, so we could start getting the bathroom put together. It's kept me fairly busy this week. Reminder of how it looked last week...

We filled the holes in drywall from the old light, painted the bathroom grey, and I installed this cool new light fixture..
(We painted the first coat Saturday, another coat Sunday, and installed the light Sunday)

The new floor tile looked really good - but they left the edges rough to the baseboard - so I had to add quarter round molding to finish it.
(Monday night I cut, stained and installed the 1/4 round)

Since the toilet was pulled out along with the flooring to dry out the sub-floor, we bought a new toilet.
I got it mostly installed Monday night, except that this potty is an inch taller than the old one -- so the supply line we had was too short.. Since it was about midnite by the time I was done with the trim and the potty - that had to wait til the next day.

Tuesday night we went to Lowe's and got the water line, so I finished hooking the potty up. (Then spent most of the evening fishing stereo wire in the basement and getting the theater hooked back up.)
Wednesday Night I touched up a few spots where the paint was goofed, and then installed this new faucet.
I think it looks prett decent.. Nowe if we can just get the shower door reinstalled, we'll be all set...

Masquerade... ...into the wild blue yonder.

It might surprise you to know that there are families out there that did not spend most saturday mornings cleaning the house while the Phantom of the Opera blared throughout the entire house. No, I don't mean they listened to "Porgy and Bess" or "West Side Story" instead. I mean they didn't listen to any music at all.. Or worse -- they listened to Country and Western.
Jenn came from one of these such families. Musicals were for weirdos. So about eight years ago, as we were cleaning out our junk - we came across my CD of the original cast of Phantom. Maybe I was just embarrassed to be one of those musical weirdos, so I just tossed it.. But as I recall, she looked at that CD and said "What do we need that for? You don't ever listen to it anyway..."
>>>> fast-forward to a week ago >>>>
So we went to see the Broadway Across America production of Phantom last week... and Jenn loved it... as a matter of fact -- she can't stop singing it.. The only problem is, it comes out something like this:
( to the tune of "Off we Go (Air Force song) ):
Mas-que-rade, dah-dah de daah daah daah dum!

Laundry Room Renovations

Blogging for Pete
I thought I would share with you how busy I had Pete this weekend.
With everything tore out of the basement I thought it would be a great time to add a few things in the laundry room. Some things to make it a little nicer - because we spend OOH so much time in there..

Pete added cabinets and hung drywall (which makes a HUGE difference). He had to route some wires for the theater that were dangling around - but it's all stuff he wanted to do anyway.
And on top of all this - He installed a new light in the kitchen for me. I wanted a new light in the laundry room, but we decided to replace the kitchen and move the old kitchen light downstairs. Pete ran into a problem though, when he pulled the old light - we could see where it had sparked across and was a little burnt. IT COULD'VE BURNED MY HOUSE DOWN -- so against my pleads to put it back in (grin) he threw it out.

tip of the week...

Since everyone has started editing blog templates and such, I just wanted to share another tip about a very useful program: Notepad++ This program is open source -- so it doesn't cost anything. It is the swiss army knife of text editors -- very useful when editing your html templates, css, etc. It has built in syntax highlighting for a number of scripting and programming languges, and tab-based editing of multiple files at once. It also has useful features like a "find in files" which lets you search for text in multiple files.
I know.... who cares about text editors... but coming soon -> pidgin vs trillian, and avast vs norton

Joyce sent us this magnet, and I was very amused...

Pete Versus the Furnace

So as part of this whole frozen pipes thing, we had water damage to our furnace. On the 26th of December, the furnace tech was here all day trying to rebuild it for us. The insurance said since repairs would be ~1800 and a new furnace would be ~2600 - they would only cover the repair. And since I couldn't get a commitment from the tech on what it would cost until he had torn it apart -- I couldn't just pay the difference and get a new one..

So here it is. Back together and running.. The problem is -- the blower fan runs all the time. You would think that we would notice this sort of thing pretty quickly, but with a dozen industrial drying fans running in your house - you don't neccessarily notice the noise from your furnace. I think we were just happy that the temperature was consistent.

So this past Friday, they finally took the last of the fans out - including the two that were in the furnace room... and it became obvious fairly quickly that the stupid thing was running all the time. Man it torqued me off. We paid over $1800 to have this stupid furnace rebuilt, which took the guy two days by the time he got all the parts in and got it back together.

After I called and let the furnace people know how unhappy I was that it was running all the time and they screwed it up and they better send someone right away to come fix it.. I decided to take a look at it a little closer. This is when I discovered the Fan/Limit Switch.

Here's the original one. Pretty impressive, huh? This thing has a thermostat that reaches into the furnace to the actual heat exchanger, and measures the temperature there.. If it's hot enough, it turns the fan on.. If it's cooled down, it turns it off.. and if it's too hot -- it shuts the whole thing down.

Am I the only homeowner out there who isn't familiar with the fan/limit control? How was I supposed to know that the new one could have a little push switch that says "pull auto/push manual". I sure felt like an idiot when I had to call them back and cancel the appointment because I had "figured it out".