The Bathroom Project

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This project has gone so wrong I’ve built a webpage just for it – see

http://www.thewebgal.com/homework/bathroom.html

A few years back, Emma was in the half bath just behind the stove in the kitchen and she noticed a dark spot on the ceiling. When she reached up to touch it, her hand went right through the surface, into wet plaster! Thats how we found out we had a problem with the tile around the tub in the upstairs bathroom.
I pulled the old tile down and found another layer of tile under that – 2 rows deep! I’m a fan of HGTV and all the renovation shows, so I knew I could save some money if I did the initial demolition. Break out the googles and have at it! I stripped the wall down to the bare studs, then packed it full of Fiberglass insulation to keep the room comfy.

We spoke to various contractors and got bids, and finally signed a contract with one firm May 18, 2005. It was our first experience with contractors – and its been like all the home remodeling gone bad movies you ever saw …

They came in and did some initial work, but its been a comedy of errors (but …it ain’t funny!).
We wanted to get the fixtures (tub, toilet and sink) in an offwhite color – so when their estimator wrote up the the contract he said “offwhite, almond/biscuit – any color but white” .

So of course, when they brought the new tub, it was white. Fortunately, we noticed while it was still outside, before it was installed, so we reminded them of the contract and had them take it back and exchange it for an almond tub.

New Alternative Radio for the DC Area

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Who are these folks, what is their background – what do THEY mean when they say “alternative” ..
They are just starting their website at
http://www.alternativebroadcasting.org/

Have you been complaining about the radio stations in the Northern VA/DC area for a while? Well, so have we and we’ve decided to do something to fix the problem. Alternative Broadcasting will be one of the few non-profit, locally-owned radio station this area has seen in. Our objective? To rescue Northern VA by providing an alternative to the highly commercialized environment of radio in the area. Not only will Alternative Broadcasting bring you everything you loved about the late 99.1WHFS, but we also plan on providing all the genres derived from rock, including punk rock, emo, screamo, prog rock, metal, indie, ska, Brit pop, classic rock, and even music from local bands! Will any other station offer you that kind of musical diversity?

Alternative Broadcasting will be launched in early November from right here on our web site! However, we’ll need your support to get our commercial-free station on the FM airwaves. Wanna help? Have some spare change? Make a donation by visiting our Donate page. Every penny counts and it all goes towards making Alternative Broadcasting a reality. Together, we can bring the DC area the kind of radio station it really deserves.

Test Posting

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Just a test to see how the new config for Movable Type 3.2 is working here!
OK – I did have to rebuild the system with the all new default templates.
Then once i was on the new templates I hacked the new design to bring in some features of the old site (like the Blogroll) – and tweaked the page design to make it my own … but once I did, everything seems fine!

Cozy TheatreVision

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TV Room showing indirect light via LED light rope

Thats Teddy – our guard cat, scowling over everything! (click image to enlarge)

This is a small room downstairs, with a lovely view out the large windows to the left. But with a cozy futon and the light rope, its become a really comfy theatre room! Note how crisp the Channel 9 HD news broadcast is – and this is a daytime picture. Thats why we choose a CRT instead of DLP or a projection set. Plus, it fits the scale of the room

Look at the small “trays” I built on the walls near the ceiling – these conceal a long string of LED light rope that runs around 3 walls of the TV room. At night, even with the lights on, its not a distraction to the TV/movies.

34″ Phillips Widescreen HD CRT –
We’ve got an OLD pair of L36 decade JBL speakers (circa 1974) in the front, 2 more recent small JBLs hang from the ceiling in the rear, and a Sony subwoofer sits off to the side. AV/Sound control is handled by a JVC AV Receiver (a few years old now) and JVC components make up the rest (CD, DVD, Casette tape and VCR).

Oh – the shiney white lump next to the cable box is an Apple airport express, so I can use the Mac up in my office to feed music like a huge jukebox.

Got Profit?

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Since we got the Phillips Widescreen HDTV in March, we have been watching a lot of movies. Of course, network TV is more inane than ever in widescreen – We’ve never found any reason to watch “reality” shows. I did put up an old but very good UHF antenna and rotor to get the Over-The-Air (OTA or Broadcast) stations from Washington and Baltimore. There are a few shows sent in HD (even a local news show in HD!), there just isn’t that much we want to watch. And our local Blockbuster doesn’t have much of a selection. Sure – they have the latest Adam Sandler movies, but when it comes to the classics, or even old Hitchcock films … nada.

So, on a whim, I joined Netflix last month to see what they had.
Good move – I found out they have 40,000 films in stock, and they are always adding to it. Lots of classics and independant films – and more recent films that I didn’t get to see when they quickly passed through our local art-film house. I finally got to see one of my long desired wish list films – “Fitzcarraldo”! Oh, that was such an excellent film … Klaus Kinski as the dreamer having the natives drag a steamboat up and over the hillside between the two rivers – amazing stuff. And they have episodic TV shows – we watched the first season of “The L Word” during a number of nights last month.

But last week, I saw a show listed that I never thought I’d see again, something I only saw a few episodes of once, when it first aired on FOX TV back in 1996. I added the 3 discs of the show to my Netflix queue, and today – I got disc one of “Profit”.

We watched the 2 hour Pilot at dinner, then watched the next episode “Hero” after the 8PM showing of “The Daily Show with John Stewart”. Great stuff, very dark humour, yet its still hard to believe they thought this would play on broadcast TV 10 years ago …

NoBlog Entry?

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Yes, its been ages since I posted anything here – mid-July Emma went off to Calgary for a week for the UFMCC World Conference – I stayed behind and fed the cats, watered tomatoes, and sweltered … gahh!