Category: Rochelle

News and activities related to my wife.

DHI 55-57

Daily Home Improvements: Let there be light, enabling a paper trail, and the silence of the fan.

DHI 55: I went around the house with a ladder, replacing burnt out light bulbs. Sounds trivial, but we have these low-voltage halogens in the hallway, and each one of them has four screws that need to be undone and then redone in the process of changing. And the screws have a tendency to break. I did three of those, and one regular light bulb in the office.

DHI 56: Rochelle bought a lovely new toilet tissue holder for our redone water closet, and I installed it. It looks wonderful, and it makes the bathroom genuinely finished. No, really this time.

DHI 57: Rochelle’s computer is three years old, and one of the CPU fans started making the death rattle sound that means it’s about to stop working. Besides being incredibly annoying, sound-wise, when the fan dies the CPU overheats, usually with permanent consequences. So I scavenged another Slot 1 CPU fan from one of the hunk-of-junk computers that I have strewn around the house, and replaced the dying fan.

Out With the Old…

Tonight Rochelle found what must be the oldest thing in our refrigerator, some sliced pickled ginger in sweet vinegar. The package says it expired in 1997. Which means Rochelle has had it longer than she’s had me.

Tonight Rochelle found what must be the oldest thing in our refrigerator, some sliced pickled ginger in sweet vinegar. The package says it expired in 1997. Which means Rochelle has had it longer than she’s had me.

We threw it out.

DHI 51-54

Daily Home Improvements: Computer hardware installation, software installation, a little home safety, and a little world safety.

DHI 51: We ordered a new LCD display for Rochelle’s PC, but to make the most of it, you need to connect it to a digital video interface on the graphics card. Rochelle’s existing graphics card was too old to have even heard of DVI, so I bought her a new one off of eBay. It came today (before the new display!), and I installed it in her PC. So now she can use her computer in 800×600 pixels, at 16 colors (that’s colors, not bits), and 60Hz refresh rate.

In other words, it currently sucks to be using the new card. I am trying to download the correct drivers from the ATI Technologies web site, but they’re totally fucked up, and every download link gives the same two-word error message: “Not Found”. Not helpful. Not impressed. ATI sucks. (For now, anyway.)

DHI 52: More computer work for Rochelle, installing Quicken 2003 onto her system. Another DHI will surely be getting together this weekend to work on initial configuration of our accounts, especially for online access and automatic downloading of information.

DHI 53: I reattached the smoke detector to the wall. We had detached it for the paint stripping work, because the heat gun kept setting off the alarm. We’ve been done with the paint stripping for weeks, but only this morning remembered we’d detached the detector. Oops.

DHI 54: I made a contribution to fund ads advocating inspections over war. If I help improve our country, my little corner of it will be better, too.

I’m not done with the week, yet, but wanted to post the link to MoveOn.org earlier, in case you wanted to help fund those ads, too.

DHI 44-50

Daily Home Improvements: The water closet is finished, a VCR hookup, debt service ends, this blog officially moves, window washing, and undoing a previous DHI.

DHI 44: I moved a few dozen books from other bookcases to the new shelves in the water closet. We’ve decided on themes for two of our three shelves, but neither theme completely fills its shelf, so there will need to be some rethinking done.

DHI 45: I connected the TiVo and the VCR, so that we can transfer shows off of the TiVo to tape, for long term storage. Strictly for personal use, of course.

DHI 46: I paid $300 to the MasterCard, which sounds like a daily chore, except we just transfered all bill-paying responsibilities to Rochelle, and that $300 will completely pay off our credit card, leaving us with no non-real estate debt for the first time since our wedding/honeymoon/bathroom remodel (which was followed closely by the stock options fiasco/stock market meltdown, which was followed by 3 months of unemployment each). Now that’s a home improvement!

DHI 47: I finished moving this weblog to aldoblog.com, moving the appropriate files from one location to another, and setting up some redirects in Apache to make links to the old site continue to work. In the process I discovered I had not completed the DNS configuration for the aldoblog.com domain, so I finished doing that, too.

DHI 48: I collected more books to move into the water closet, this time all of our travel books. I found a couple more SF and food books to move, too.

DHI 49: I stripped off an old photo that had fused to our front window, cleaned with Windex, and then scrapped off the glue residue and the accumulated grime of 11 years on Haight Street with a razor blade. The front windows are now about 90% more clear — I can’t wait until tomorrow afternoon when the sun is shining through them, and I can see the improvements the best!

DHI 50: After much research (scanning log files), and even more dithering, I turned off my server-side spam filtering software, because it is apparently occasionally dropping random messages. This basically undoes one of my prior DHIs, where I implemented the anti-spam measures. Which kinda sucks, but then, how often do you get every home improvement right the first time?

DHI 41-43

Daily Home Improvements: Loan applications, some domain twiddling, a little cash, but otherwise a week where I came up short.

DHI 41: I filled out my portion of the mortgage loan application we’re working on to refinance the house. The amount of money we get from lowering our interest rate is staggering (mortgage math is crazy!), but we regrettably have to plow it right back into the house.

You see, our house is more than 100 years old, and the foundation is original, and brick-and-mortar. A new foundation is going to be $75,000, a very scary number…but not as scary as having our house slide out into the street!

DHI 42: I finally got around to configuring aldoblog.com, so that this blog can move to a shorter domain name and URL. DNS now resolves (primary and secondary name servers), Apache recognizes it as a virtual host, and some initial redirects are in place to make the transition seamless. I still have some work to do, moving directories around, and setting up the real redirects, to move y’all over to the new location. That’ll have to come this weekend, though, when I can focus for a couple hours straight.

DHI 43: I coughed up $100 for our contractor when Rochelle was short of cash to pay him one evening.

The rest of my DHIs didn’t happen this week. I was too tired, or too lazy, or both. I plan to get back on track this coming week, but I haven’t yet decided what to do about the shortfall…

A New Hope

While I moved the BeBoxes out of the parlor, I have not actually moved them out of the house, the ultimate goal. So, while I technically avoided having my systems thrown out on the street, I haven’t finished the project, a fact Rochelle reminded me of just this evening. We discussed it, and now I finally have the motivation I need to move along in a hurry: Lust.

I’ve written previously that, while I moved the BeBoxes out of the parlor, I have not actually moved them out of the house, the ultimate goal. So, while I technically avoided having my systems thrown out on the street, I haven’t finished the project. Indeed, Rochelle reminded me of this fact just this evening, and wondered if I was planning to keep them in my office for another year.

The good news is, I have another motivation for making progress. We’ve decided that we get to upgrade our computer displays to LCD screens. Rochelle’s is ordered, and should arrive early next week. Mine, though, remains on the Wish List, and will stay there until I’ve earned the money to buy it. By selling off the BeBoxes.

So hopefully, what fear could not accomplish, a little (a lot!) technolust will.

Champagne Tasting

Yesterday we hosted a comparative champagne tasting. We selected six bottles of wine, three pairs, and put them in paper bags to serve them blind. We tasted and compared each pair, paused to collect ourselves, and then moved to the next. The bottles ranged in price from $30 to more than $120. The winner was a surprise, even to us.

Yesterday we hosted a comparative champagne tasting. We selected six bottles of wine, three pairs, and put them in paper bags to serve them blind. We tasted and compared each pair, paused to collect ourselves, and then moved to the next.

Since Rochelle and I knew which wines we’d chosen, and I knew which was which from opening the bottles (in spite of the bags, the caps told all), it wasn’t a completely blind tasting for us. But even so, there was quite a bit we didn’t know, and had to really go on taste, rather than knowing the label, or how expensive the wine was.

This was a once-in-a-blue-moon event, because the wines were all outstanding (most were received as gifts). We’ll not hold another such an orgy for a long time, I’m sure!

The wines we tasted were:

A: Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé
B: Gosset Grand Rosé
C: Dom Pérignon 1995
D: Dom Pérignon 1993
E: Veuve Clicquot Brut (yellow label)
F: Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame 1995

I won’t attempt to post tasting notes, because my palate vocabulary isn’t that developed. As a group we were disappointed with the rosés, we theorize because they would have gone better with different food. In the middle pair, the Dom Pérignon 1993 was preferred over the younger vintage by most, but the aspiring Master of Wine who attended said that 1993 was not a very good year, and felt the 1995 was better.

In the final pair, and for the tasting as a whole, people were very happy with the standard Veuve Clicquot which was, at $30, the least expensive wine in the group by more than $20.

I was partial to La Grande Dame, but again, I knew which it was, and so I don’t trust my judgment. I am looking forward to someone stepping forward, and hosting a similar tasting where I can be a guest, and prove my choice wasn’t a fluke. Still, at $120 or more a bottle, I don’t know how I could justify drinking La Dame over her country cousin.

Viva la Veuve!

DHI 34-40

Mucking about in Mac OS X, fun with water, more gas, desktop action, FM broadcasting, curtains for Rochelle, and a party!

DHI 34: I updated software on my Mac, on a second hard disk that I’ll transition to, once I get all my stuff moved over. I did a small part of it today. Pretty lame, but sustaining a daily pace for these tasks is turning out to be a killing pace. Plus, when I get finished, I’ll be able to disconnect the very noisy hard disk in my Mac, making the office quieter, which will be a major improvement.

DHI 35: We had the missing gas line replaced yesterday, providing gas to our groovy vintage heater once again. But, the alterations to the gas lines required cutting off the gas for an extended amount of time, and blowing out the gas lines. Once hooked back up, our contractor re-lit the pilot light, but there was air in the lines, which caused the pilot light to go out on our hot water heater. In the middle of the night. Cold bath the next day. It took quite a bit of figuring to realize that it was air in the lines that caused it to go out, and make it hard to re-light, but I did eventually get the pilot re-lit.

DHI 36: While the hot water heater contained cold water, I drained it, to get the silt and stuff out of the bottom. Apparently you’re supposed to do this a couple times a year. So I did it.

DHI 37: Cleared off one side of my desk of the crap piled up there. The other side will be harder, a weekend DHI for sure.

DHI 38: I hooked up a $4 antenna to the stereo in the front of the house, so now we can listen to the radio when we’re in the office working on the computer. Or, hey, maybe someday we’ll have another party, and people can sit in the parlor, and, like, hear music!

DHI 39: I helped Rochelle hang curtains that our decorator picked up for us. We had to replace the old curtain rods, which were far too flimsy to support the heavier velvet curtains he picked out, so that was most of the work. It would have gone a lot faster, but both batteries for our cordless drill were dead.

DHI 40: We threw a small party at our house, our first in nearly a year. (We plan to do better in 2003 than we did in 2002.) This was a small gathering (10 people) with a focus on tasting fine champagne (more on this in a post tomorrow). Of course, there was a lot of cleanup and so on beforehand, but the DHI is really for inviting people into our house and making sure they had a good time. That’s a home improvement, in any sense of those words.

DHI 27-33

Magazine reorganization, another basement disposal trip, long efforts on the computer, sanding, and more.

DHI 27: I pawed through my stack of unread technical magazines, unwrapped all of them from their plastic, threw out all the ad inserts and CDs, and grouped and sorted them. They’re back in the same bin that held them previously, but there’s less stuff there, and it’s at least organized. Culling out the junk will have to wait another day.

DHI 28: Rochelle and I took a large sheet of particle board down to the basement (we had been using it to firm up our bed a bit, to see if that would help my back problems; wasn’t helping, don’t want it in the house).

DHI 29: More magazine sorting and purging, this time from the pile under my nightstand.

DHI 30-31: Long, long efforts spent on troubleshooting my MySQL database installation. I finally resorted to downloading the binary installation from the mysql.com web site, and replacing my existing installation with the pre-compiled version.

DHI 32: Migrated the database for this weblog from my desktop Mac to the server, so that I can actually shut down my Mac without disabling my weblog.

DHI 33: I spent 45 minutes doing the “polish” sanding on the wainscot in the water closet, as my (very minor) contribution to Rochelle’s efforts to finish that project.

Missing Mate

Yesterday Rochelle did a load of laundry, and this morning I was putting my items away. I came upon a single sock, and couldn’t help but ask aloud “Why is it that I only lose socks when Rochelle does the laundry?”

“Why is it that I only lose socks when Rochelle does the laundry?”

Yesterday Rochelle did a load of laundry, and this morning I was putting my items away. I came upon a single sock, and couldn’t help but ask aloud the above line.

Which of course is unfair, it’s totally unreasonable to immediately blame one’s spouse for a missing sock, when it could easily have still been in the laundry hamper. So, while the trail was fresh, I went down to our basement — where we have the washer and dryer — to look.

Found it. In the dryer. Waiting for its mate.

DHI 20-26

More CRAP improvements, getting rid of boxes of stuff, a dozen items of clothing, and rearranging all the BeBoxes to give Rochelle most of her parlor back.

DHI 20: I emptied a box in my office, from the pile of many next to the office door. I cleared and sorted the nearly three inches worth of papers I accumulated in my last Java class. And I threw shit out.

DHI 21: Killed another box; it’s by the back door, waiting to be taken to the Goodwill pile in the basement. Among the things discarded are a couple of old messenger bags, a padded shoulder bag for my also-discarded StyleWriter printer, and a slew of baseball caps I culled from my collection.

DHI 22: I put my old ADB keyboard away in the dressing room, cleared out a large pile of old mail, filed some other papers, and cleared off the entire surface of the footlocker in the office. Then I moved the two plastic bins on top of the footlocker, for a later effort.

DHI 23: I culled from the back of my closet, getting rid of a pair of slacks, a couple sweaters, and a bunch of sweatshirts, none of which I wear anymore. (I did my shirts a while back, before 2003 got started. My closet’s ready for me to buy a few new items!)

DHI 24: Emptied a box of miscellaneous computer items. Kept the interesting items (a few lights parts), and will give the rest away (a very old scanner and a very old, semi-working inkjet printer).

DHI 25: Cleared off the sofa in the parlor of all my stuff, and a few of Rochelle’s items, too. The sofa is now actually usable for the first time in 10 months or so.

DHI 26: Moved all but one BeBox out of the parlor. Packed up all the crap I had littered on top of our bar. Consolidated a dozen shipping boxes, and prepared them for storage in the basement. Rochelle almost has her parlor back!

We also paid the interior design consultant Rochelle found, for the week’s worth of work he’s done with her, including amazing progress on the water closet and the lovely new arrangement for the back deck. Our house could actually be pretty cool in another month or two!