Multiple fronts [s]

Now that the downstairs floor is done, the floodgates have opened.

• Media room: Ty helped me return the couches from the upstairs. I affixed surround speaker mounts to the walls and tonight added some extender cables so there weren't wires in awkward places. The next step will be to change them to coax for a safer journey from the amp.
• Downstairs bedroom: It's slated for rental, but couldn't be until the floor was taken care of. This needs touch up paint and moulding, but it's close.
• Downstairs bathroom: Everything came out for the grinder. Sunday I primered and painted. I trimmed the walls and shower today, so now it's time to find a pedestal sink. I'm thinking maybe I can snag something from Dixieline that isn't horribly overpriced.
• Downstairs hallway: This could use a layer of paint, but the task isn't quite as small as the bathroom.
• Garage: Now that I'm not avoiding pools of drying epoxy, I can rededicate the car hold for vehicles and saws while the side room becomes storage once again. I'm thinking dark red walls in the garage, but leave the ceiling white. I snagged a couple sample colors and will be looking into that one. A big, awesome workbench is in the near future, but more immediatley I have to find a shelf to hold the sound system which as been pretty clutch so far.
  

I didn't have hot water for a couple days. The pilot went out, it would relight with the manual override button pressed but would wink out as soon as it was released. The internet said the termocouple was the likely culprit, it shuts off the gas when the pilot is cold for obvious reasons. I was happy to hear Depot carried Honeywell universal thermocouples.

No dice.

I called a repairman. He walked out five minutes later with the burner working and an empty generic thermocouple package in the trash. Stuff you, Honeywell, and your unnecessarily long 'universal' thermocouple that produces signal below my valve's threshold.



My blurry faced friend dropped by with his kid.

A couple fun one liners:

• For some reason I'm attracted to bikes.
• I love it when you take hallucinogens and help me pick fruit.

Anticipation is high for:

• Fast and Furious, released Friday, its first installment still tops the leaderboard. Obtw, even though the post is backdated, I just published the reviews of Gumball, Ronin, 2F2F, FFTD, DR2000, and Movin Too Fast. There are a couple flashes of brilliance in those reviews, not so much in the movies.
• I finally remembered to replace the propane.
  
• Connie bought lots and lots of Settlers of Catan.
• The White Lambda may return. This time, it could be personal.
  

Yard, tile, library [s]

One of these weekends I'll mortar some brick bases around the pillars. But at least I have a well supported deck.





Jon went after the tree that most overhangs the pool.



The hammer drill made short work of the downstairs tile. The next step is to grind off the thin set. If all looks well tomorrow/Thursday, I'll look into concrete stains.



Rfq has been graciously mailing contributions to the library which so far consists of engineering and mba texts. He's a shoe-in for having a collection named in his honor, but perhaps not the entire library. Should I become party to any groundbreaking bookshelf designs, I would be obligated to name the structure appropriately.

Touches of civility [s]

The rest of the blinds went up in a few short minutes - the difference being that they mounted inside a sill. That left enough time to put a few base boards down. I threw a few videos up for comparison.




They're not too far from the, er 'simulation'.

Today:
>>>> why is he jsamo?
>>>> he's suppose to be tsamo@...

>>> I think maybe he used to go by
>>> James back in high school. 'Ty' is a
>>> pretty silly name, so it makes sense.

>> don't make me go on the rant about
>> how some dumbass probably thought
>> that, upon seeing my name, ty is not
>> a real name and thus used my middle
>> initial. [friend]. well thanks a lot uno,
>> looks like i ranted anyway.
>> since we're on this subject, how come
>> you're not uno.d.ritchie@... isn't
>> there like some precedent for false
>> identification here? and the "d" is
>> for dumberson.

> haha ! dumberson.. haha!


I framed my door.


Upstairs west bedroom.




Upstairs south bedroom with a couple base boards.

Time lapse blogography [s]

So the ol' 1.6 Athlon setup finally choked. Hard to say what it was, I've failed to diagnose the problem hardware having independently swapped everything out. I'll revisit when I'm setting the box up as a terminal in the garage.

The new stuff:

• ASUS M3N78 Pro mobo. $100. Supports all the nice things, particularly sli and 1066 ram.
  
• AMD Phenom X3 2.3. $110. Three core, their second tier.
  
• PNY GeForce 9800GT. $160. Listed for a whole lot more. The gig of video memory should help with photo editing.
  

Of course, Fry's gave me the X3 2.1 and I didn't realize it until they'd closed. I had to stop by the following day and recover the 200,000,000 hz they owed me.

The near-term purchases include a sata disk, another two cheap gigs of ram, and maybe a new display.

And, well, I'm borrowing Curt's monitor, the power supply is sitting on the case, and there are boards sprawled about my desk area. But at least everything is functional.

The hiatus is explained, now rewind.



Thanksgiving was good. The new house accommodates well.



I snagged Madden '09 for entertainment purposes. My dad picked it right up and Jon wouldn't be separated from the game, save for by real football. There's not much to say about it - being an EA franchise - except it's generally enjoyable, graphically unimpressive, and Cris Collinsworth follows Madden's act very closely.



Taboo was a riot, particularly the last round where Mom, Connie, and I netted several points from Mark, Jon, and Erik.





The hallway floor went in fine. 'How did you overcome the itis?', you might ask. Well I peered in the fridge and made a glorious connection:

1. Red Bull
2. Orange juice

Iced and stirred together, pure genius. It's like Sunny D with stimulants.



The stairs are the only remaing hardwood to be done. You've come a long way, baby. The constructon tiredom led to my second genius (derived re-)invention: post-Thanksgiving pizza.

1. A fresh pizza from Round Table: the canvas.
   
2. Leftover turkey piled on top.
   
3. Mashed potatoes piled on top.
   

Delightful.

Thanksgiving weekend also saw d'Chris's d'Brickapult claw its way from the grave to a winning record and fourth seed in the Medieval Gridiron playoffs. Similarly, Santos surmounted the impossible and overcame a large point differential to knock James out of contention. It's been a white knuckle end to a unimpressive season.

This weekend I'm up against Potats' team, which is predicted to beat mine by 25 points even after his tight end netted zero on Thursday.

Sunday also featured the long-awaited return to the water. It was pretty good-sized, but rides were characterized by straight drop-bottom turn-close, so not exactly elegant. It's phenomenal how life on land maintains absolutely zero of the muscles required for paddling.

A few quotables:

• Schooled three little college guys. They seemed not happy to lose to a girl.
  
• Go Raiders! ... We're horrible. Marty! Marty! Marty!
• I heard you put Rob and Dave against the glass.
• I am ridiculously addicted to yr blog. Will you please update it more often?

Epilogue:
I'm a firm believer in giving the people what they want, so I'll break you off one more piece of culinary revelation.

1. Sirloin burger with ample Dorchestershire sauce. You probably don't have that, so you can substitute Worchestershire sauce instead.
2. Leftover turkey.
3. Fried onions.
4. Sourdough.
   

Getting there [s]

The 'rents came down this weekend. Mom bought me the taxadermed animal I wanted so badly.



Cement board, tile saw, sealer...



The media room has a long way to go. But Justin's gaming chair has found a good home.



The chandelier aglow.



Upstairs bathroom preparations. Copper green on the studs, plywood on the studs, roofing felt on the plywood, cement board on the felt, tile on the cement board.



For this one I'm going with some 16x24 travertine pieces. The lighter color is key for not making the tub look freakishly out of place.

Entryway floor [s]

Turning the corner gracefully on the hallway floor proved challenging. So we knocked off the entryway area pretty quick (two or three hours). It went well with Jon on the nail gun, Curt on precision sawing, and Connie and Krista picking planks. The ledge into the living room is being obstacular, the remaining gap is just larger than the width of the nosing.



But yeah, it's nice.

Floors [s]

The flooring has begun. I don't have any shots other than the following:



However, rest assured Jon and Dave have it down to a science. The hallway leading to the master bedroom is done. We'll probably cover a lot of ground tomorrow, so to speak.

Bobby mowed down the remaining junipers, I sealed and tested the shower, and everyone plus Connie finished the fireplace.



And we managed to squeeze in some cards/Chop Stix/boba...



... and a little pool shenanigans.

Last of the painting, start of the flooring [s]

The hallway, stairway, and unnamed area adjacent to the kitchen is ready to be primed. And that will be the last of it.

I bought the flooring for the entryway, living room, dining room, and hallway. Installation will probably be this weekend, as the trim pieces make their way down from Oregon.