The big 5-0!  You're not getting older, you're just...  Oh yeah, you are getting older

Fixed the Shoes link from the video post a few days ago.  I also made a change that I hope will help keep the site running more- it's down whenever I get home in the evening right now and I have no record of what caused the crash.

It snowed this afternoon.  Pretty hard, too, in great large flakes.  For a while it appeared that it may even stick, but in the end the recent warmer weather prevailed and it all melted before I left work.

Unfortunately, snow in the end is just more water, and even more of highway 14 is now covered.  The water threatens the southbound lane now as well, and from both directions.  I think I'll need to find an alternate route before this week is over.

It's raining again.  Actually, it doesn't feel like we've had any more rain this year than in other years.  What we did have a whole lot of snow, and now it's melted and the water really hasn't gone anywhere yet.  There have been near-continuous flood warning in the area for the past month. 

Our house is less than 1/2 mile from a small creek that feeds into the Rock river, and it's in the flood plane for that creek, but I'm not worried.  Several years ago the city started a project to clean up the nearby lake.  They drained the lake and did most of the cleanup, but then funding ran out and the lake has not yet been filled.  So before any serious flooding reaches our home we'd have to get enough water to completely fill that lake bed.  It also helps that floor level is about 4 feet above ground on the main level.

There are two ways all this water does impact me directly, though.

One of the flooded areas comes right next to highway 14, which I take to work every day.  For the past 6 weeks the water has come right up to the edge of the road and for the past 3 weeks it's covered about 5 inches of the 2 foot shoulder.  This morning it was into the north-bound lane about 8 inches, and it's still rising.  I might have an interesting drive home.

The other thing is that even if there's no flooding some of that water has the potential to seep into the basement.  I'd been lucky so far, but last August's record rainfalls proved that our basement is vulnerable.  This morning it finally started leaking.  I'm still not worried-- it's not a large leak and the water flows directly to the drain.  What does concern me is that every time water comes in, the leak is worn just a little wider and will be a little worse the next time.  But this one is small enough we have some time before it becomes serious.

Update: It stopped raining late this morning, so maybe the water on the road can recede some today.
Update2: It started raining again this afternoon.  On the drive home there was lightning everywhere, there were tornado warnings the next county over, and the half the opposite lane was under water.

I got some good news yesterday.  There was a 'Benefits Update Meeting' in the morning, and they announced that they were updating the vacation time for all employees.  Instead of 2 weeks as a base, everyone now starts with three.  Additionally, instead of gaining another week every 5 years you will gain a day every 1 year.  They also added a paid holiday and changed the way time off accrues so you have access to all your vacation right away every year.  The new rules take effect September 1, which will also be used as the annual roll-over date for when vacation time resets.

This means I should get an extra seven days per year vacation if you count the paid holiday, which is pretty neat.  Looking at the spread sheet it's showing that I will actually have an extra 8 days, but I expect that's probably a typo.  One other nice thing about this is that since things reset on September 1st I can take nearly all my vacation right away when the baby comes, because I know I'll have 3 weeks available to me right away after that.

Videos of Alice.  Enjoy :)

Dancing (4.8Mb)
Earmuffs (1.5Mb)
Jesus Loves Me (12.5Mb)
Mommy Shoes (1.9Mb)
Puzzle (21.5Mb)

All are in Windows Media Video format, since that's what I have software to make.  They're served up over our home dsl line, so certain times of day it might take a while to download.

Got the sandals out today for the first time.  I also moved the lawn chairs back to the front porch and hooked up the garden hose.  It's nice to see the weather staying warm.

I contributed my fix for the Project84Grass theme --on which this blog is based-- back to the project.  This constitutes my first real Open Source contribution.  Unfortunately, it's just a style sheet change, not "real code", and it looks like the project is not currently well maintained so the fix may never make it back into production.

We went to a Seder meal at church tonight.  It was fun.  Alice was very well behaved.  I am very sleepy, so I'm not going to write any more right now.

I rented FraggleRock through NetFlix, and Alice is just eating it up

Took yesterday off of work to go to a free Microsoft conference.  Got some free stuff, including a few pens (of course), a lunch box, and a free copy of Vista Ultimate.  So, of course, I spent yesterday evening installing Vista.  So far it's working much better than the buzz would lead you to believe.

I had some issue getting dasBlog to send e-mails with daily log results, comments, etc.  I got it working, but I had to enable Full Trust.  Since I trust myself, I guess that's okay.  I might at some future date try to enable the specific permissions needed for the site so I can go back to medium trust.

There was a glitch in dasBlog that would make articles show up multiple times in the search results.  I google around a bit and found a fix:  find SearchViewBox.ascx and set AutoEventWireUp to false.

Alice is staying with my folks tonight and Melody has chorus practice until late, so I'm home alone this evening.  So far I've used the time well: 

• Cleared the garage enough to put my car in again.
• Put out the trash, including a bunch of debris left over from last week's bath tub project and a few items that had been hidden in the yard for most of the winter. I saved some of the better boards for future use.
• Cleaned the litter box. 
  
• Broke up the old tub a little more to make it easier to put in a trash bin for next week.
  
• Spread just a little gravel back on the driveway that had been pushed into the grass by snowplows over the winter.  Unfortunately, the gravel doesn't rake well or pick up easy with the shovel, so that could turn into a much bigger job spreading it all later.
• Looked at the cleaning out the space in front of the basement window, but that's lined with brick two layers deep, so it will need to wait for some weekend time.
• Started to re-hang the gutter over the back door, but I'll need a bigger ladder.  I was hoping the step-stool would be tall enough, but I need just one more step- maybe another 6 inches.  I'm still planning to not buy a ladder anymore this year.  Instead I'll borrow one for this project.

So what does a guy eat for dinner when he's home alone?  Canned tuna.  It went well with the ramen I had for lunch.  You'd think I was back in college.

We took Melody to the ER tonight.  With mild chest pain.  Turned out just to be gas.

This weekend I need to get the garage cleaned out from installing the tub, so I can put my car in it again.  I also want to go get the new sink from Menard's (if it's still on sale) and do some other work to finish cleaning up from last week's project.  I think Meldoy wants to prime around the new bathtub this weekend, but that really needs to wait until it's warm enough to let us open up the window all the way and have a large fan in there to keep the air fresh.

Next weekend I'm planning to install the new power supply in my computer, along with new versions of Windows and Linux, so to prepare for that I need to choose a linux distribution, download it, and burn it to DVD.  I've been thinking of going RedHat this time.  They're almost ready to release version 9, and I haven't used it since 5 or 6.  The only issue is that 9 isn't quite ready yet, but the release date is close enough I may just wait a couple weeks.

And of course, every weekend I pay bills and clean out the litter box.

This morning I had the privilege of being the first person to use our new shower.  We still need to caulk the outer edge of the surround, and sand, prime, and paint around the outside, but it's at least usable now.  The water pressure is great, since we now stand closer to the head and cleaned out the valve a little bit.  I can tell that it's just styrofoam supporting plastic, though.  You can feel it compress just a bit while you stand there. 

We're debating the merits of getting a new shower head.  On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with the one we have, so why spend the money?  Also, I've heard statistically that shower heads are typically among the first things people replace when buying a new home, so it won't help sell the house later and we can't justify the expense that way.  On the other hand, we didn't replace the shower head when we bought the house and it's getting kinda old and gunky.  Also, now that the tub is higher the bottom of the head is at my shoulder level.  I'm at least gonna price out a few, and see what it will cost to replace it with one that matches the chrome in the tub and has a bend to raise back up over my head.  Knowing how much it costs will make it easier for me to resist.

I was going to buy a ladder this year with some tax return money, but to offset the costs of updating the bathroom I've decided it can wait.  The only project on my list for this summer where I really need it is fixing the gutter, and I think I can get that one done with the step stool.

We had some issues with getting the tub surround in securely and sealed properly.  We're pretty sure those are solved, but we have to wait 'til tomorrow for the glue to fully set.  Then we can finish caulking around the edge and get everything tidied up.  That means no shower until Tuesday morning, but we should be able to give Alice a bath tomorrow evening.  I'm taking off work tomorrow to help finish up, because I won't be able to shower, and because I'm getting sick (persistent sore throat).

All in all it looks pretty good.  It could be better, of course: they sent the wrong color tub (flat instead of glossy) and we didn't know until it was already set, and we had to do a lot of work to adapt the surround to our house, since it was designed for a trailer.  It also needs some more paint, and we'll have exposed sub-floor for a little while until we have time to come back and do the rest of it.  But it's definitely NOT the eye-sore it was before.

It turns out that our old bathtub was made of concrete.  We never knew for sure before yesterday, but had thought it was either all ceramic porcelain or cast iron.  The truth finally came out when we removed it yesterday.  I'd never heard of a concrete bathtub.  Unfortunately, we had to demolish it to remove it, so I don't have any pictures.  It was one heavy beast.

The new tub is not as deep as the old one, but we compensated by placing the overflow drain as high as possible.  We'll still lose as much as an inch of depth, but that's okay because it just means we save a little water .  Even though it's not as deep it's higher, because it sits up in the air a little.  Work is progressing well:  The tub is in place --permanently, with floor-leveling cement holding it there-- but not hooked up yet.  Drywall is up around it it, and the mud is pretty much done.  While the mud dries we'll hook up the plumbing and get supper.  Then we should be able to sand it, wipe it down to clear the dust, and hang the surround.  With luck that will all happen yet this evening, so I can get things cleaned up tomorrow afternoon.

One of the other programmers moved on for greener pastures last week.  Another programmer took his old cube, since it has a window.  I took his mouse.  As you can probably tell from the title, it's wireless.

So far I'm non-plussed.  There's no thumb button that tells your web browser to go back, and the scroll wheel is frustrating- it feels like the wireless connection just drops scroll actions now and then.  Of course, it's still less frustrating than my old mouse, which would actually go backwards nearly as often as not, so I'm keeping it for now.

For the first time this year I was able to take my daily walk without the need of any extra clothing.  I was able to do it with just a sweater yesterday, but it was a sweater I keep at my desk for when the office gets cold.  Today I was outside with just jeans and a polo. 

It looks like it's gonna be a nice weekend.  A great chance to get some work done around the house .

I found this link on Vox today.  It's an obvious spamvertisment blog (a blog created just to advertise a product), but I still thought it was worth sharing the link:

http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/free-audio-bible-download

PS: Did I just coin the word "spamvertisement"?  Probably not.

 

Melody's Reader's Digest arrived, as well as a tupperware order for her chorus and a power supply for my computer (more on that some other time).

There's a pretty good snow/rain mix coming down right now, with the snow in great large flakes.  It's even sticking in a few areas.

I found a shovel (spade) at Menards for $3, and it's only $.99 if I can find the mail-in rebate coupon in one of their flyers.  I also picked up a garden hose, since it was nearly two dollars less there than we had seen them elsewhere, and some nails so I can hang the shovel in the garage.

If I get time this weekend I'll use the shovel to spread out some of the gravel that's beens scraped off of our driveway by snowplows.  It probably won't happen this week, though, because of the bigger project we're tackling...

Dad and Jacob are coming over tomorrow evening, and we're going to start work replacing the bathtub.  It's exciting.  I'm concerned that it may be just a hair too big when you include the drywall, but we have some ideas for getting around that problem if it becomes an issue:  either attach the tub surround directly to the studs with no drywall behind or use some paneling as the backing instead of drywall.  No matter what happens, it should be a lot nicer than what's in there right now.

Melody will be in Nebraska with Alice, visiting Jaci and Joy while all this is going on.  She was going to get some before-and-after pictures, but unless she did that yesterday it looks like she missed her chance for the before shots.

I spent some time today rigging up a customized banner image using Paint.Net.  I think it came out pretty cool, considering I know nothing about image editing.  I also set an account up for Melody so she can post too, though I don't know if she will since facebook and live journal work just as well for her.  But I at least will use this space to blog about family news and events.