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6 entries tagged with 'home'

Fixing Stuff

So, like Matt, I too did some repair work on a laptop. In my case, however, I had to replace the keyboard on a 2008 MacBook (it lost a battle with a bottle of water). Just like Matt, I used the completely awesome instructions from iFixIt. Their teardown instructions, besides being highly detailed, leave lots of whitespace next to each step. This space is perfect for affixing a piece of double-sided tape, to which you can stick all the tiny screws as you remove them. I forget where I learned this little trick--I wish I had learned it much earlier in life.

While I've used iFixIt for parts in the past, like Matt, I was able to find my replacement keyboard cheaper elsewhere. $160 for a used keyboard was a bit much to stomach. I ended up taking a chance on eBay and found one for $30. I figured at that price, I could afford the risk.

After completing the repair, the only thing I have to say is have good eyesight and patience. If you're no stranger to taking things apart and fixing them, the MacBook is well engineered for disassembly. However, the screws are tiny and numerous.

Movie Shows, Rental Woes, To Where Quality Goes?

On these pages, I usually attempt to avoid the whining and complaining that often constitutes personal blogs. Every once in a while, however, I indulge myself. You have been forewarned: this is one of those times.

Where can one go to rent a good movie? Notice I said good. The state of video rental is abysmal. While I wrote off Blockbuster years ago, the local Movie Gallery isn't any better. If it wasn't a big budget, popular release within the last ten years, you will not find it on the shelves. Sometimes you are just in the mood to watch Singing in the Rain or an old Alfred Hitchcock flick. Best of luck finding it. Every once in a while, we luck out and stumble across an old movie on AMC--but that is rare occurrence.

I am going to wax nostalgic for a second and dredge up some memories involving the old Adventure Time movie rental in Rolla, Missouri. As college students living less than a mile away, we took advantage of their last-hours specials (an hour before closing, all movies were a $1) and their drive through window (they were located in an old bank building--you could drop off movies using the old drive-through teller window without getting out of your vehicle). This store held racks upon racks of almost any movie you could imagine. The only drawback was only a small percentage were in DVD format. As what happens to most good businesses, they were put out when another rental place opened (Family Video) which didn't offer anything significantly different from the already existing Blockbuster. As Rolla isn't large enough to support all three, Adventure Time lost out to the glam and "Guaranteed In Stock" pap peddled by the other two.

Today, when I walk into a Blockbuster or Movie Gallery, I see wall upon wall of the same damn movie. The movie industry has become no better than the music industry in their unrelenting shoveling of tripe. Make it big, market the living daylights out of it, and eventually, they'll forget there are things out there besides Mission Impossible N+1.

In an attempt to redeem myself, I'll share what actions we've taken to adapt to this arid, desolate desert of entertainment. After all, complaint without action is despicable. For the most part, we simply do without. That is correct. I've lived in Huntsville for three and half years now; it was not until late last year I finally saw a show¹ at one of the theaters. Generally, we watch educational-type stuff on television (Food Network, DIY, Discovery, History, HGTV). Occasionally, we get wild hairs and rent one of those movies that everyone says "You haven't seen THAT?" when they learn that I haven't ( Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I'm looking at you). We could certainly do the Netflix thing, but it wouldn't pencil out out for us, considering our consumption rate. I've heard that the public libraries often have decent video libraries, for those looking beyond the "Guaranteed in Stock" shelves. This week, we plan to see if the rumors are true.

I'd like to see some Charlie Chaplin flicks, dammit.

¹ Incidentally, it was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; we were still disappointed by the experience.

How to Remove a Prehung Door

I do not presume this to be of interest to many, but here is one of the many time sinks of the recent past. If you look around the doorway, you will see that there are actually four doors in a hallway four feet long--one door on every side. Since Laura has been living in this house, the frontmost door has been off the hinges and left standing in the garage.

Of course, we decided, something must be done about this. The first, path-of-least-resistance action was to use woodfiller to fill in the cutouts for the hinges. The hope was that the prehung door frame turned cased opening would look acceptable.

It did not.

This left us one recourse--tear out the prehung doorframe, drywall in the opening, and add new baseboard. This was accomplished in a week-long project, encompassing entirely too much sanding and drywall dust (that stuff gets everywhere).

Here are some photos for you to enjoy.

A Tale of Four Coffee Makers

There are two things one should not be without in life:

1. Someone to love
2. A drip good coffee maker

I've been fortunate enough to find #1, but believe it not, #2 is still work in progress. I've had little luck with coffee makers in my life. My first, a 12-cup Mr. Coffee maker with full digital readouts, bit the dust after a scant four or five pots. While they were spread over 3 years (this was before the onset of the addiction 4-cup Cuisinart. The color was nifty (matching Laura's Kitchen-Aid stand mixer) and the price was right. Unfortunately, that the extent of the goodness of device. By the end of the brewing cycle, the coffee would literally be boiling within the carafe. While our unit might have had a defective burner, I believe the metal carafe simply conducted heat too well. To boot, it would randomly leak along the plastic ring/spout. We chalked this up to expansion/contraction of the metal carafe. All in all, quite a poorly engineered device. I wouldn't recommend this coffee maker to my worst enemy.

Thus began the Quest For A Simple 4-Cup Coffee Maker Lacking In Suckage. We were flabbergasted at just how few 4-Cup models are available. Apparently one or more of the following apply to the average coffee drinker:

• has a bladder the size of a basketball
• prefers to create a coffee reduction sauce by letting it sit on the burner all day
• lives in house of n coffee drinkers where n > 3

None of these apply to our consumption habits. We like to make an entire pot (~4 cups) split between us to enjoy on the way to work. For you mathematicians, Laura has a 2-cup a day habit. I, however, often tend to drink one or two more cups at work (but rarely after lunch). I will often skip coffee completely on the weekends (I like to think this indicates I'm not addicted). In short, a 4-cup maker is plenty for us. We just wanted something simple: glass carafe with a molded pour spout (the plastic lid just sits atop the opening) and an On-Off switch--none of the fancy, schmancy alarm clock, multiple brew, Press Here For Oral Sex buttons.

In this vein, we found precisely one model: a $19 Mr. Coffee.

It would have tickled us pink to locate a 4-cup model that brewed into an insulated carafe (sans burner = sans bitter), but we settled for the glass. So be it. At least I won't feel too bad when it gives up the ghost in three years. A coworker quipped that he wants to get a new maker, but his current one is over twenty years old and just won't die. Makes me glad I live amidst today's everything-is-fucking-plastic, planned-obsolescence industry; little things like quality and craftsmanship will never hamper me from possessing the latest and greatest.

A Place For Plants

Coexistence

In preface, I grew up on a hog farm in rural TN. Our closest neighbors were a quarter of a mile away, the livestock vastly outnumbered the humans, I mowed a yard the size of a small animal preserve, and our house was home to much more than bipeds. When dense woods border your property in all four directions, more than the occasional insect will wander aimlessly into, onto, or under your house. It's a simple, hard and fast fact of rural life.

I am not a squeamish person. My soap is not anti-bacterial, and I will eat something that fell onto the floor (as long as there's nothing visible on it). I figure that I'm outnumbered by several orders of magnitude, so an erradication of all bacteria, insects, etc is not only an impossible endeavor, but a foolish one. Besides aiding in the development of resistant bacteria, I am (perhaps naively) a believer in the cliche that which does not kill you, makes you stronger. Whenever possible, I try not to take any medication for common colds, flu, etc. My body will eventually get over it, and I will be stronger for it. (Rest assured, the moment I get SARS or typhoid, you can bet I'm hauling ass to my local hospital. I'm not stupid.)

Coexistence is a part of life. I can't kill all the germs in my house, and (hopefully) they can't kill me. Humans have done pretty well thus far, and I'm not looking to be able to fabricate semiconductors in my living room.

Which brings us to the spiders.

Given, spiders aren't my one of my favorite multi-legged critters. My squeamishness increases as a function of their size. But as I mentioned, growing up in the middle of the Tennessee outback, spiders were everywhere, often including the house. Quite frequently, while watching a movie in the basement, a late-arriving arachnid would scurry across the floor in front of the television, prompting a PAUSE and a search for a shoe.

I don't mind the occasional cobweb. It happens. Coexistence, remember? But what I do mind is spider poop. Yes, arachnid dookie. Leave an active cobweb in the corner for a time, and you will soon notice little black dots on your baseboard--which don't clean up very easily. I'm a tolerant guy; I am all for coexistence--even for spiders.

But just don't defecate on the baseboard.

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