The bathroom remodeling debacle continues

badly hacked up vanity
(Click to enlarge)

While installing a vanity yesterday, our man forgot to put the feet on it (even after Emma mentioned he’d need to screw on the legs before installing it). It was too low to lineup with the pipes – so he hacked it the back of the unit to MAKE IT work …
…what craftsmanship!! What a tool!

More on my Missing Car

I originally bought the 2000 Civic SI car in May 2000 – we were still renters then – and I wanted a sporty small car to commute in. My commute was about 40 miles daily, and I wanted a car that got reasonable gas mileage, but had passing power at speed on the interstate (part of my commute is on 495, aka the Washington Beltway) . My previous car, a red 1990 Honda Civic SI, had over 120k miles at that time. The 1990 Civic SI was a hatchback model, a little sport-wagon, a very sensible car design I adore.
(See my Car-buff page for more on sportswagons. )
The 2000 Civic SI was a 2door Coupe body, not the hatchback style I prefered. But we needed another car, and because the previous SI had been so solid and reliable, after a bit of comparision shopping, I bought it.

Continue reading

About that Sony DRM thing …


No Sony for Christmas  Logo

Click the graphic for more info

Sony’s inspired attack on legitimate purchasers of their music discs has inspired me to stay away,
even tho the spyware/malware installed by the rootkit discovered on some of their discs has no effect on MAC users like me, its odeous and offensive and needs to be STRONGLY discouraged..

Send a distintive message to Sony for this holiday Season …don’t buy ANY Sony “CDs”

Just say NO to the new Kate Bush album (her first in 12 years!) on Sony …

Just say NO to the newly remastered Bruce Springsteen Born To Run 30th anniversary CD with 2 DVDs.

I was planning to buy both as Christmas gifts – but Sony won’t get my money this Christmas!

Someone swiped my car today!!

Talk about a different way to end a day at work.
I walk out of the building at 2:45 – and find an empty parking space where I left my car!
Seems that some slimeball snatched my car! (a 2000 Honda Civic SI).

Called the police, called Emma for a ride home, called my Insurance company …
went home and made some more calls – then Emma took me to get a rental car until this settles down a bit.
Its a bit early but – Merry Christmas … ?

Archival Audio work in OS X

small view of my desk with old Denon turntable, iMic adapter and Powermac

Last year Emma gave me an iPod for Christmas – its been great for trips and such, but I have a collection of 300+ albums that I don’t listen to much anymore. I recently saw an ad for a gadget that I hoped would make my older music more accessible. Last Tuesday it arrived. After all the turkey and family time, I took a little time for myself and cleared my desktop – and hooked up my
new Griffin
iMic
. Its a small adapter about the size of a York Peppermint with a short USB cable on one end, and a 1/8 headphone jack at the other (they even provide the stereo Y cable for a turntable)

Continue reading

The Bathroom fiasco continues

The next installment of the seemingly never-ending bathroom renovation job. The owner of our contracting firm called to say they had the next bunch of hardware and would be out Friday to “finish” the bathroom. This was good and scary at the same time – the last time someone promised to finish in a single day it was a royal mess of sloppy grout work, peeling paint and a broken vanity cabinet – not to mention using white fixtures when we had repeatedly specified off-white ONLY. Needless to say, that rush job was to be redone … but we hoped for better this time.

MCC of the Blue Ridge, Roanoke

One of the results of Emma’s ordination last year is that she is asked to come preach at various MCC churches around the area. She had been invited to preach at the MCC in Roanoke, so we drove out Route 66, got on I-81 and headed south. Its 240m miles one-way, but our 2000 Civic Si does great on the highway, so a bit over 3 hours later, we pulled into town.

MCC of the Blue Ridge (MCCBR) was holding church in a store front facility until a local Methodist church went on the market and though a bold plan and a lot of “god’s blessings”, they found themselves the owner of this glorious old church building.

Exterior View of MCC of the Blue Ridge in Roanoke VA
More pictures follow …

Continue reading