I’ve got some new pictures from the basement.  There was a post in the middle of the floor that held up the center beam.  The post was in the middle of what I want to become my TV room, so I decided it had to go.  In order to accomplish this, I needed to pour a new footing, and put in two new posts and replace the beam with a larger, stronger beam.

 

This is the footing and the new post.

 

This is the new beam with the old post now removed.

 

 

I then needed to jackhammer up the floor to add sewer pipe to what will become my new bathroom.  I had this done by Johanson Plumbing.

Here is the floor after the pipes have been laid and cemented over.

 

 

During this time, my tub which I had ordered a little while earlier arrived.  I wanted a big tub, one that I would fit well in.  So I got the 72” version.  I have to say, it is a pretty tub.

This is the tub.

I’ve decided to finish my basement, in this the first of probably many posts, I’m going to post some pictures of what’s been going on in my basement.  First of all, I am not responsible for the colorful floor.  That was from one of the previous owners.

 

The Window

First, I had to replace that itty bitty window with a proper egress window.

 

 

so I dug out the outside by window to make room for the new window and well.

 

 
I had to build a temporary wall to support the weight of the floor so I wedged 2x4s between the floor and the floor joists above.

 

 

This is another angle of the temporary wall.  I know it’s not pretty…

 

 

…but as you can see, it did the job.  I still needed to fill in that hole above the window and put in the well.

 

 

This is what the window looks like now from the inside, I had to put a piece of angle steel on top to support the weight of the floor joists.

 

 

This is what it now looks like from the outside.  Not too shabby.  I’ve still got a little to do with the surrounds, but there you have it.

 

Next time, footings and beams!

When I was young, one Sunday a month, we’d spend the evening with my Mom’s side of the family.  We’d play games and eat dinner and celebrate the birthday of anyone who was having one in that month.  We always looked forward to this when it was our birthday month, obviously because it’s always nice to get presents. One present in particular was the favorite.  My aunt Connie would make a giant heart shaped frosted sugar cookie with a  dollar bill lovingly tucked under the corner.  Not only was this awesome because it was something that you got for yourself, but because it was something your siblings did not.

When I was 18, I got back from a camping trip with my friends, and the first thing anyone in my family says to me, it was my brother Lance, he walks up to me and says, “Just so you’re aware, aunt Connie died this morning.” Whoosh, and holy crap.  Her death hit me harder than any I’d experienced up ‘till that time and since. It was one of the few times in my life that I’ve just wanted to seriously bury my head in the sand and cry.

Since then, much time has passed and you start to forget all the great things about the people in this life that you’ve lost. But one memory that always stands strong in all my immediate family and cousins, is that cookie.

Tomorrow is my Son’s 4th birthday.  This afternoon, my sister brought my son a present. It was a large heart shaped frosted sugar cookie with a dollar bill lovingly tucked under the corner. I almost cried.  My son, not much a fan of any food other than sugar, was so excited.  When he sat to eat some he said, “I need a fork.” We gave him his fork, and he proceeded to eat all of the frosting off the top, on cloud nine with this super cookie all his own.

I don’t know if my sister will continue with this, frankly I don’t really care, but I know that cookie meant more to me then  my son and my sister will ever know.  Just to bring back the memories, right now brings tears to my eyes.  Love you Aunt Connie.  Miss you, can’t wait to see you again someday, but not too soon.

This is my son’s cookie after he scraped the frosting.

We had a contest at work and the winner received a free iPad. Guess who won. That's right, it was me. I just downloaded an app for updating my blog from the iPad so this post is really just an excuse to try it out. So far, here are my thoughts on the iPad. It's a very expensive toy. Don't get me wrong, it's super cool, I just don't think it's $500 cool. To quote Apple "A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price." They are correct, I have a really hard time believing that it costs as much as it does. Here are the things I like about it:
1. it's size. For me, it's the perfect blend of big and small. It's large enough to not be annoying to watch movies on, yet thin enough and light enough to fit in the most crowded bag.
2. The touch screen. The screen on this is super sensitive and it supports multitouch for up to 10 fingers, which may not be good enough for this kid http://www.wimp.com/babyfingers/ but for most individuals, it should be just fine.

To be continued...

Well apparently there is at least one person in this world who reads my blog and wants to know how the Dell experience ended, so here’s the end of the story.

When we last left the story, I was installing Vista so I could prove to the morons over at Dell that this was a hardware issue and not a driver problem.

So I reinstall Vista and low and behold and holy crap, the problem is still there.  Was I surprised, no, annoyed, yes!  Back to Support I go.  Once again I have to sit through the “technician’s” diagnostic checklist that I already know will yield no results other than waste more of my precious time.  He does everything, even update my bios, and once again, it doesn’t help.  So he gets his supervisor who tells me, “Well, we can do one of two things…either you can send it back again, or we can build you a completely new system, and when you receive it, you send the faulty one back.”  Bet you can’t figure out which I chose to do.  The latter of freaking course.

This actually worked out ok for me, since I had originally bought the laptop from their refurbish site, and now I was going to get a totally new one.  So I got the new laptop, and it even came with a step up processor.  So now I’m happy.  I also was able to find a bluetooth card for it on ebay for $13.  Can’t beat that. 

Ok, so about 2 months and a lot of wasted time later, I have what I wanted and a little more.  I can’t really fault the company Dell for my issues, but their support and apparently their repair department need some major overhaulin’.  Once I was able to show them that it really was their issue, they were very helpful.  And 2 of the 5 or 6 people I talked to actually seemed knowledgeable.  So they weren’t all morons.  But it really was a pain, and will definitely make me think twice before purchasing again from them.

I’ve long been a fan of Dell.  Recently I purchased a laptop from them.  It’s a pretty sweet thing, with all that I needed and wanted and I got what I felt was a great deal. 

When the laptop arrived, I noticed there were what appeared to be little pieces of plastic between the LCD screen and the clear plastic cover that protects it.  I called Dell and they told me they’d send me a box, and I could get it fixed. 

So I sent it in.  And sadness followed until it returned.  Upon its return, I immediately noticed that the screen appeared to have a much lower resolution than my previous.  Now when I purchased it, one of the things I wanted was a full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel screen, which is what I had originally. This screen however was 1366 x 768.  Way less. So I got on Dell support and they wanted to try to reinstall the drivers and all that, I told them it wouldn’t help but we could do it anyway.  Low and behold, reinstalling the drivers didn’t help as it was a hardware issue, just like I told them. Then they tell me I have to send it back to get it fixed again.  Now I’m a little bit skeptical as they had messed this up once already, so I asked how I could be assured it wouldn’t happen again.  The representative then told me “I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

This gave me no comfort as I was sure that this agent would not be handling the repair, but I went along with it and once again sent in my laptop for repair.

Yesterday, I got it back.  The screen resolution now…1600 x 900!!! Better than before, yes, but still a far cry from what I wanted and paid for.  So back into chat I went.  This time, they weren’t nearly as helpful as before.  First, the agent tells me that because I upgraded to Windows 7, my warranty is void.  I tell her, that that is not true, and she proceeds to tell me that it’s a driver issue and that she won’t help me unless it has Vista on it like it was shipped.  I tell here that it is not a driver issue, that it is a hardware issue, and that they replaced the screen with the wrong resolution.  She then proceeds to tell me that it would be impossible for them to make a mistake like that.  She actually said impossible.  I then asked her to let me talk to someone else.

I talked to her manager who argued with me as well saying it was a driver issue with Windows 7, and he couldn’t help me any further unless I put vista back on the machine.  So I asked what would happen after I put vista back on and it still didn’t work.  And he assured me that it would work (these guys like to assure things they have no control over), because it was a driver issue. 

So here I am today, installing Vista.  Why? Not to get it to work right, but so that I can prove technical support wrong so they will fix my issue.  Needless to say, I’m beyond unhappy with this experience. We’ll have to see how it all plays out in the end.

I created a new blog template design.  Let me know what you think.

Leonard Cohen wrote this song and it has been covered many many many times.  But I really liked this rendition so I thought I’d share.  Enjoy