With the way we are progressing with our remodeling efforts, we will be ready to actually buy some new furniture and do some decorating in the next twenty to thirty years. With that eye on the future I have been thinking about how we should set up the interior of this house, and what would look good. This presents a problem for me. The house is something of an enigma. It was built in 1910, and is therefore contemporary with Arts and Crafts houses built in this area. The problem is that while there are a few real Arts and Crafts elements in the house, most of the house is something else. It certainly isn’t victorian, and it is too plain for something like Deco or Nouveau, so what are we left with? The house is almost certainly something sort of transitional in nature. As a result, all concepts for design seem wrong. I think that we will, in reaction to this wrongness, go a completely different direction, and head to a more modern design style, or at least mid-century modern.

My thinking is that trying to force Arts and Crafts stuff in here will look clumsy, but going in another direction entirely will look stylish and intentional. Really though, have you priced any of that modern design type stuff? It can get astronomical. I like Eames reproduction (in the sense that it is a new production chair, and not an original run) chairs, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be prepared to spend $4,000 on one, either financially or emotionally. There are some cheaper options available, naturally, but I don’t know if I can get close to the quality I want at the price I want to pay. The problem here is that I need to be rich.

You would be surprised at how few things change around here. So little in fact, that I have little inspiration to write much. I suppose I should get over that and create my own inspiration. I could claim that I am too busy with the new child and all, but it would be a lie. While it does occupy some of my time, there is still plenty left over to do as much writing as I could want.

We are getting a new air conditioner put in here, and while that may not be all that interesting to you, it is something that is sure to change my life substantially. Luckily, we are getting financing from SMUD at a rather attractive rate, otherwise I have no idea how I would come up with all that money at one time. It could be done, I suppose, but it would mean at least another hot summer without, so I’m happy it exists. We are putting in a high-end Lennox system, so I hope that turns out well. I imagine there will be rather regular maintenance issues to correct to augment the out of pocket expense to me, but it must be done. We got four estimates before deciding, but now I don’t really know why since we picked one that was far from the cheapest. I have a hard time picking something when I know there is a better attainable option out there. Did somebody just say iPhone?

For my upcoming trip, and for general use, I wanted a new, relatively inexpensive, camera. This way wife and I will each have our own. I want mine for taking hundreds of pictures of mundane things like bathrooms and building facades, while wife will want to take better pictures of family and friends. We have the Cannon SD500 which is pretty good for the point and click crowd. It has 7.2 MP while my new Kodak EasyShare has 10. The thing is, the Cannon takes far better pictures. There is clearly much more going on than mere mega-pixels. The Kodak’s images come out much grainier. Still it was cheaper by far, and should work fine for my purposes. I’m planning to step the resolution back to about 6 MP anyway as I only need my images for the web, and don’t plan on cropping or printing.

Our free cable finally gave up the ghost, so we were forced to come up with another option. After looking at my options (sadly SureWest doesn’t offer service in the downtown area with their fiber-opticness) I decided to go with DirectTV. I would rather have cable, but for the features I wanted the price difference was rather steep. There are a couple of problems with DirectTV though. Their DVRs require a land line to work, though I can’t tell why they would need it. My existing TiVo won’t work well with the new system and will only record one show at a time. So all that kinda sucks. There are also some features about the user interface that I am not a fan of, but I suppose I will get used to it shortly, as with anything else. Their much touted HD capacity still lacks any real punch, though that will probably get better over time. I got the HD package anyway to play on the big TV, but it offers only a limited number of extra stations.

I got my first iPod for father’s day. It is a Nano, and it is pretty cool. I am only using about half of the 8GB capacity though. I marvel at people who routinely fill a 20 or 40 gig drive.

In other sound news, I have added a Sony home theater in a box to my big TV. It is alright for an entry level system, and certainly trumps just listening through the television speakers. This dingus also has an iPod dock so I can plop my device there and listen to all of the music through the system, and control the iPod from the TV screen.

From this post it seems like all I ever do is buy things. Perhaps it is true. Not all of it is high-tech though. I recently purchased an old-fashioned push lawn mower and a manual edger. I also got a broom and rake instead of a blower or something. My lawn in pretty micro-sized so using any other kind of mower seems like overkill, and also less time efficient. I have yet to use it though. I will probably have to go over the lawn one more time with the electric equipment to get it to a place where manual mowing is less than a deathwish. Then I plan on doing it every four days or so to keep it well managed. I’m sure the neighbors will appreciate that as well.

Speaking of exteriors, the carpenters we hired are finishing up on the front of the house soon. They are sheathing the brick pillars on the porch with wood, thus bringing it back in line with how it might have looked at its origin. Or at least kinda close. We will then get on the schedule for exterior paint for later this summer, and the house will start to look like a real place fit for real people.

This post has been brought to you by the treasury department which urges you to keep the economy strong by buying everything you can think of.

It has been a long time since I have written anything at all. I seem to be busy, but I think I am still freer than the average bear. It is true that I will be a father any day now, and have all of the things that go along with that, but I still find myself wasting time. To be precise, I have a Wii console from Nintendo. If you are interested in games, and don’t consider yourself too old (as I probably should) it is the best system ever developed. The activity level is involving enough to make you get up and participate, but not so much to actually wear you out too much. I have had it for about a week, and have nothing but good things to say about it. We also had to buy a big TV to maximize the fun. I got a few games and am enjoying Super Swing Golf the most. It is hard enough that is will take me a long while to finish it. Wario Ware Smooth Moves is also big fun, and totally insane.

I did manage to build a cradle for the baby. I also got the wood to build a crib, but haven’t gotten around to that yet. Cradles are easier. It is really a Cratel anyhow, as I have made it to resemble a fruit crate for fun. I’ll go and take a quick picture for you all to enjoy.

There is a mattress that goes in this already, and I just have to shellac it to finish it up.

I also have finished the laying of the hardwood on the second floor, with a couple of spots left to be filled where an irregular piece is required. I’ll get to that soon though. It looks really good already, and I can’t wait till it is sanded, stained, and varnished. Those steps will likely wait a little while though. It looks like the next item on the agenda is the exterior painting. I can’t wait because this should have the greatest impact in the smallest time of anything we have yet done. I hope to be starting on the kitchen remodel by mid-summer.

There have been numerous things I have wanted to write about over the past weeks, but I can’t think of them just now. I hope to get back in the habit again. So many dreams.

Also, have you looked at the selling prices for Last Days of Disco? Absurd.

I have lots of plans.

First of all, how are you? It’s been a while since I have said anything here, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking of it.

Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, on to business.

I am currently working on the hardwood floor on the second floor. There is much of this to do, and it takes far longer than it seems like it should. I’m sure professionals would look at my work speed an laugh, but that is how it is, and I am doing it as well as my deteriorating body will allow. We are about a year and a few months behind on this, but that is how it goes sometimes. What is in now looks really sharp, and I think the whole project will be a success at the end, even if we did do the baseboards a little wrong. I’ll keep you updated on the project.

I am still as fat as ever, so no progress on that front.

My next project that I am just starting in on is the Wieland Archive. This will be housed at the appropriately named website and will contain a database of archival information. This will consist primarily of items my father has collected over the years, as well as pictures and letters. I think at the end the archive will contain in the area of 100,000 items or so. It may well be the most complete collection of anybodies life. Entering the information will take years, I suspect, so all the better to get started. I was thinking about using regular blogging software to handle all this, but have instead decided to create my own content management system to run it. It should be pretty lean, as few bells and whistles are needed, at least on the back end. I’ll still try and keep the front end pretty. I’ll let you know when the first version is up and running.

We got a 2005 Prius, and are quite happy with it in the first couple of weeks.

Over at EatMe I have put up the first part of my Thanksgiving dinner menu. I will try and get to the rest of it as soon as possible, for those of you who are interested.

I am currently running Firefox 3 alpha (which installs with the ominous name “Minefield”), and haven’t really have any trouble yet. The pages seem to load very fast, but aside from that there don’t seem to be many immediately noticeable changes, but of course most of my extensions failed to work. I am also running the new Thunderbird 2 Beta1. There are some front end changes in this one, and it seems to work well so far, but I am still very new to it. It is prettier for sure. They have also added tagging, which some people will love, but isn’t a feature I use all that much. I think Mail for the mac had it, but I don’t think I ever used it. My testing of MS Word 2007 continues, and I love it. It is really nice to use, and I may actually buy it when the beta runs out. I am going to download the new version of Open Office today, so I’ll be better able to compare.

Must watch more Christmas movies.

I would love to write. I don’t seem to actually do it though. I did however find a pretty good post about the thought behind story writing at Pixar from the TAG blog. I think this relates to good writing for anything.

We finally finished another room (except for the floor refinishing which will wait till all are ready to go) in the never-ending house work. What has been called the angle room before and is now destined to be the nursery is now pretty much finished up. Hold on a second while I go and look for before and after pics.

Here is one of the before pics:

I also made a whole set of the before pics.

Hold on, and I’ll go take an after pic from approximately the same angle.
And here it is:

You can see that there is still plumbing showing where that old sink was, and we are going to put a new one in there later, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out. Sure it isn’t perfect by any stretch, but it is about as good as we can do with our limited ability. I wish I was the type who worked easily with his hands, and has an eye for the way things should be, but it is not to be. Still, I’m not unhappy with the work, I just recognize it for what it is.

We are pushing to get ready for the flooring for early December and to be finished laying it before Christmas, and possibly even have it sanded and refinished in January, but that may wait a little longer. Since it is just us, we need to set arbitrary deadlines to help speed our work along.