Homeowners No More

For those of you privy to the more mundane aspects of the day-to-day stresses and strains of my family, I would like to announce that the house that was on the market since last November 27th is now officially no longer ours.

It perhaps didn't happen in quite the way we'd like. The outcome wasn't perfect. It is, though, the outcome we have, and I am grateful that it is finally at an end. For all its faults, this end is a relief, and one we needed before we could ever, ever move on unfettered.

Now the barking dog next door is someone else's problem.

Playing to the Crowd

You have to appreciate a group of people who see a need and then fill it. I was watching our local ABC television station, and as the last "ad" in a group of commercials, they put up video of a hummingbird feeding on a lovely purple flower and the text "Election Ad Break" at the bottom of the screen. Soothing music played in the background. It was wonderful.

Well played, local ABC affiliate. Well played. Thank you for giving us a break from the constant ads that all of us, whether we've voted yet or not, are sick of listening to.

Can't Take It Anymore

Let's just have the election already and get this OVER with. It gets uglier everyday.

Denver Question

Does anyone know of an independent computer parts/electronics store in the Denver area?

You know. Not a Circuit City, Best Buy, or Radio Shack. There are some smaller computer repair places, but the ones I've called don't seem to carry very many parts in stock. I'll order what I need if I have to, but I'd much rather go the instant gratification route if possible.

This is HILARIOUS

From this Wired article:

After seeings its videos repeatedly removed from YouTube, John McCain's campaign on Monday told the Google-owned video site that its copyright infringement policies are stringent to the point of stifling free speech, and that its lawyers need to revamp the way they evaluate copyright infringement claims.

So, the presidential candidate from the party that just introduced a US Copyright Czar post similar to the oh-so-effective Drug Czar post, a new post that will certainly be used to stifle Fair Use and fine people ridiculous amounts of money for doing the equivalent of making a mix tape is now crying that his videos where he appropriates music from artists that don't support his candidacy are being removed even though the use of the music is Fair Use.

Well, cry me a river. If you won, I'm 100% sure you'll sign every piece of legislation lobbied for by the RIAA and the big entertainment companies, regardless of any Fair Use considerations.

From his own "tech policy" (which mentions little to none of the concerns of the tech workers of America, I might add):

John McCain Will Pursue Protection Of Intellectual Property Around The Globe. Intellectual property protection is increasingly an issue for U.S. innovators operating in the global economy. John McCain will seek international agreements and enforcement efforts that ensure fair rewards to intellectual property.

Kids, this is code language for "Hey RIAA guys, I've got your back, so don't worry." It's not "Hey moms, don't worry about posting to YouTube that 17 second clip of your five year old dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" because I'll make sure that they understand Fair Use." John McCain didn't give a rat's about Fair Use until the music he used without permission caused his campaign videos to get caught in the copyright takedowns that his political party is a vocal supporter of. In fact, he still doesn't care one whit about the Fair Use rights of you and me. He thinks that he should get special treatment, and the rest of us should still be nickle and dimed:

[W]e believe that it would consume few resources--and provide enormous benefit--for YouTube to commit to a full legal review of all takedown notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by (at least) political candidates and campaigns.

So we're not ALL entitled to legal Fair Use. Just politicians. Let me know when we officially convert to a caste system so that I can read about which of my rights I get and which ones are only available to castes above mine.

This would all make me laugh if it didn't make me want to cry a single perfect tear of frustration.

No, Really..."No Thanks!"

I got an email from my cellular provider last week. Apparently they've been wringing their hands together, worried that my current mobile phone isn't everything my heart wants and desires. Now, I am on a very simple plan. A modicum of free minutes, nationwide long distance, and that's about it. No built-in text messaging plans, no web access plan, nothing like that. Nor do I really send text messages or use the web access built into my phone, and not just because it's not covered in my plan. I just don't use or need it. So there's nothing about my usage patterns that would make them think that I require a new phone or new packages to add to my service.

However, there is now a year left on my contract (I should have long since been out of contract, but there was some shuffling that went on last year before we moved and I knowingly consented to a two year extension to make them easier and less expensive) and I guess they're staying up nights fretting that I might leave once the contract is up. You know. IN A YEAR.

(Note to cellular providers: if you all didn't suck at least a little bit on service, pricing, and general customer service, you wouldn't have to use contracts to lock people in. They'd stay on their own. It's a terrible way to do business, it truly is.)

So I ignored the email last week. I don't want a new phone. This one calls people when I type in numbers and press send, and it lets me talk when other people type in my particular numbers and my phone rings, and that's all I'm really looking for out of, you know, A PHONE.

Apparently they were so concerned with my lack of immediate contact when they made their generous offer to charge me money to replace something that still works fine and lock me in for three more years instead of just one more short year of my life, and they sent me a text message to alert me to this wonderful deal that awaited me. In the text message, they lovingly described what I was entitled to indenture myself to, and then at the end, they included a brief, annoyingly txt-speechy description of how to reply to the unwanted text message to tell them that it was, shockingly, UNWANTED.

I worked out the instructions and replied back to get them to never text message me again, and I got a CONFIRMATION text message that I had to reply to AGAIN to confirm that I didn't want such vital messages as "please give us $79.99 so that you can throw a working piece of equipment in the trash in the name of keeping up with everyone else's pieces of beeping plastic."

I replied to that one, and my phone has now blessedly stayed silent. FOUR text messages to say, "No, thank you," and get them to actually go away.

It could be worse, though. They could have had a telemarketer call me and insinuate that I'm a dinosaur because I don't want a phone that will play MP3s at me and show me my email and generally annoy me because the main function of the phone has been nearly lost in the morass of other functions that are built into the damn thing, and the whole thing will cost me three or four times what I currently pay per month.

In fact, I think they would have done that, but I already opted out of marketing calls. That's what must have gotten them so concerned. They must think only a terribly depressed person wouldn't want to hear about their amazing offers. I really should be grateful that they care.

Really, I think I'll see if another company has better coverage out here among the horses and switch when my contract's up next year. So THEY can annoy me with emails and calls and text messages anew, I'm sure.

Let Me Help You Out

I have two suggestions for a couple of websites. I see no better way to voice them than my sparsely-visited blog, because surely word will get back to them somehow, right?

1. Alton Brown. Your personal website and the Food Network website offer no way to contact you. You seem like a personable guy, so I can only assume this is because you feel you would get too many comments to respond to personally, so you've left off a contact link to keep people from being disappointed.

That's too bad, though, because I have a really good show idea. I define "really good" as "I need the hell out of this information, and I think he's the right guy to present it." I mean, yes, it's full of self-interest, but...well, it's really just full of self-interest.

I (somewhat) recently moved to a location that is considered "high-altitude". All my life I've vaguely noted the high-altitude directions on the recipes that include them, but it never occurred to me that one day, I would be the one needing them. Baking here is a mess. Pretty much anything with a mixture of wet and dry ingredients seems to be affected, and nothing seems to come out quite right, even when you have high-altitude instructions. Cookies are flat. Brownies too. I haven't even attempted a cake or bread or something a little more complex, but I can only assume that they would also be affected by the curse of the mountains.

Yes, there are other sources that lay out the concepts behind high-altitude cooking, and I've tried to get into several of them enough for the information to sink in. It's either my usual state of sleep deprivation or the fact that they're as boring as plain white rice, but I can't stick with any of them long enough to learn anything.

What I figure I require are puppets and skits and some sort of illustrative use of styrofoam balls and yarn. Surely, if Alton Brown can't teach me how to make good cookies at altitude, it is a lost cause.

But I can't ask him to do this show, because there is no known way on the internets to get a message to him. If I had a homing pigeon, I would use its services. If anyone reading this post can find a link I couldn't find, I will bow to your superior internet kung-fu if you take pity on me and leave it in the comments.

2. Very simply, to all brick and mortar store websites: you are not allowed to have a website unless I can go there and find out when your store is open. If you have a store locator and there are no store hours on each location's individual page, you fail and you have to start again. In this information age, I shouldn't have to pick up a phone and derail one of your employees just so they can tell me that they'll close tonight at 7:00. That is 20th century thinking, which would be great if that was the century we're living in, BUT IT'S NOT.

Let me know when your outsourced website vendor figures their shit out and puts ALL the basic info on your website, because that's when I'll bother to go there again. When I make a wasted trip to your site, all you do is teach me not to waste my time in the future. In this economy, I don't think you can afford to do that. Just some love from me to you.

Craftiness

I finished two projects recently, making some new toys for the B out of some pretty basic supplies.

Project 1: Lower case letter puzzle



We have a Melissa and Doug upper case letter puzzle that helped me teach her the upper case alphabet pretty quickly, but I'm always worried that we'll lose a letter or two and you can't get replacement letters for those puzzles. As much as I love our Melissa and Doug puzzles, I decided to try to make a basic one that would be easy to make replacement parts for if something went missing in the depths of the house that only a two-going-on-three year old can find.

I used clear packing tape, a cardboard box, one sheet of green construction paper, a sharpie, a pen, a pair of scissors, some glue, and an exacto knife. I drew the letters with a sharpie on the smaller pieces of cardboard salvaged from the old moving box that had come apart, making them nice and round and easy to read. Then I cut around the letters, trying to make the silhouette of the piece look as much like the shape of the letter as possible without getting too ornate. (Because then making replacement pieces would seem difficult when it's time to make them, and the likelihood of getting it done would be lower.)

Then I took the two long sides of the cardboard box body and cut them to the same size. I put the green construction paper over the piece that would be the "bottom" of the puzzle and taped it in place. Then I laid the cut-out letters on the piece that would be the "top", trying to arrange them evenly from side to side and top to bottom. I drew around the pieces with the pen and then used the exacto knife to cut out squares that were just larger than the pieces. (I used all the scrap cardboard under the piece to keep the exacto knife from cutting, for example, the carpeting, or my leg.)

Then I glued the two pieces together, the piece with the holes on the top and the piece covered in green construction paper underneath. I taped the sides for good measure, and ended up using the packing tape over the top (cutting out the holes with the exacto knife) just to make it more durable.

I drew the letter in each hole so she could match up the shapes of the letter pieces with the puzzle, and she was ready to play!



Total cost: We actually already had all of the parts I used for this project around the house. It was probably about a dollar's worth of tape, a little bit of household glue, and then a cut-up moving box that had fallen apart under the weight of the items in it when I tried to move it from one place to another in the garage. So basically, this one was free because of what I had around the house.

Project 2: Felt play food



I saw a post on the CRAFT magazine blog where someone had made some play food out of sheets of felt, and I thought I'd give it a go, especially since I finally got the front bedroom, where we are storing a lot of boxes and things, straightened out enough to set up my sewing machine.

For this, I just got some different colors of felt sheets at the craft store and then cut out food shapes freehand. Then I went to the sewing machine and sewed them together with appropriate colors of thread, stuffing some with polyfill to make them puffy and leaving others just a flat two-ply of felt.


Left column: bread slices
Top right: bacon
Bottom right: pepperoni pizza slices


Top: carrot
Middle: lettuce
Bottom: tomato, slice of cheese


Left to right: orange, banana, apple, watermelon



Total cost: About 8 sheets of craft felt at 20 cents each: $1.60 + tax. One bottle of puffy fabric paint for the tomato: $1.49 + tax. I also want to go and get a bottle of orange to make lines on the carrot, a bottle of black to put seeds on the watermelon, and white to put a little shiny highlight on the apple and the orange. I already had the polyfill, but that's not too expensive if you needed to buy it, and I already had a set of different colored spools of thread that came with my sewing machine when I bought it. If you didn't have the colors of thread you need for the different foods, that part could add up a little because those spools of thread are always more than I think they'll be whenever I look at them in the store. But still, a lot less than buying play food from a store, and most of that stuff is plastic and not really as fun to play with than fun, soft, squishy food.

So there is a record of my recent craftiness. Both projects were fun and the B seems to enjoy the end products, so it seems like time well spent.

Blech

Why are my glasses getting so schmutzy lately? I don't remember cleaning them this often before, and finding so much crap on them each time I clean them.

Is it the altitude? Am I messier than I used to be? Am I fussier than I used to be? Did something else change?

I just don't get it.