Eric’s Journal

One of my goals this summer, in addition to getting married and getting a new puppy, was to remodel the laundry room in the garage.  My friend Dave offered to help, and we thought it would be a fairly simple project of replacing some water damaged paneling and flooring.  As we began to pull off the paneling, we discovered that damage was far worse than we had anticipated.  The sheet rock was crumbling and moldy, and the sill and several studs had been devoured by insects.  The window was barely held in place, and Dave worried that the wall wasn’t supporting the roof, so we decided to rebuild the entire wall.

Fortunately, Dave already owns a pair of house jacks so we were able to support the roof.  Working on and off (it is summer vacation after all), the rebuild only took a few days.  The trickiest part of the process was rebuilding the window.  Since we wanted to reuse my vinyl siding, we had to get the window exactly where it was previously.  To make matters worse, we also had to recreate an oddly shaped window frame in order to get the customized flashing to fit right.  Dave used the phrase gumption trap a few times.

After a couple of days of trying out different ideas, Dave was able to figure it out.  Meanwhile, I demolished the interior walls that were also water damaged.  After the window was installed, it took only a short while to install the remaining siding.

Now that the wall is complete, I’m going to hold off on rebuilding the laundry room until after the wedding.

Filed by Eric at 11:02 am under Life in General
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Last night while grilling some garden burgers, I didn’t notice that a wrapper to a slice of processed cheese had blown off the table. It didn’t take long for our new puppy, Hurley, to find it. While chasing him around the yard to get it back, I couldn’t help but think about the lolcats and their ongoing quest for cheezburgers.

Filed by Eric at 1:21 pm under Hurley, Life in General, Photography
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We went to the King County Adopt-A-Thon today and came home with an new puppy.  He is a mix of a Labrador Retriever and something else that the rescue kennel was not sure about.  We haven’t settled on a name yet, but so far we like Hurley, Wilson, Caesar, Gordy, or Indy.  If you have an opinion or another idea, please leave us a comment.

Filed by Eric at 7:21 pm under Hurley, Life in General, Photography
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So far this year we have had about one day of Spring-like weather. It is currently hailing and snowing as I write this. Here are some pictures from yesterday’s snow storm.

Notes: this gallery was created with the new “Gallery” feature in Wordpress 2.5. It doesn’t look my theme is compatible with 2.5, so it doesn’t have the previous/next feature to navigate the photos, but I still think it is pretty cool.  The first three pictures were taken with my new camera phone.

Filed by Eric at 12:14 pm under Life in General, Photography
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…in with the new. After owning my house for just over two years, I finally had the back door replaced. I remember telling my friend Anne that the old plywood-clad door wouldn’t last long, but despite offers from my friend Dave to help install a new one, I never got around to doing it. Finally, I decided to throw some money at the problem and have one professionally installed. It was far more expensive than I expected to pay, but I’m happy with the purchase.

Filed by Eric at 8:09 pm under Life in General
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Yesterday, LeAnn and I adjusted a setting on her firewall that opened up some features on her TiVo that we previously had not been able to access. This includes a few games, movie previews, and a built in podcast player. Of course, the first thing I did was tap in the feed url of my blog on the remote, and it found my one and only podcast post. There is also a directory of feeds similar to ones that top the charts at the iTunes Store.

I think this is cool feature heading in the right direction, but the usability still has a long way to go. First, typing in a long feed url letter by letter into the remote is a pain, and once the url ran off the screen so we could not read what LeAnn was typing. Second, and surprisingly, playback lacks the ability to pause and bloop-bloop (rewind/fast-forward) that you would expect to be the same as watching TV recordings. Third, I couldn’t get it to access this video podcast, but I’m not sure if this is due to the fact that the site uses Feedburner.

Still, I think this is great step in bringing web 2.0 into the living room, and from what I’ve heard the Comcast DVR doesn’t yet have anything like this.

Filed by Eric at 5:54 pm under Arts and Entertainment, Life in General, Technology
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Work was canceled today because of snow, most of which fell several days ago but it took my employer an extra day to close schools. Thus, I was forced to venture home yesterday through a thin layer of slush that caused major traffic backups, an ordeal that lasted 2.5 hours. Conditions got pretty scary during the final mile after exiting the freeway, where I passed at least 5 stalled cars. Needless to say, I’m very glad to be staying home today.

View more photos in my photo gallery.

Filed by Eric at 2:05 pm under Life in General, Photography
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