"...she's got a deep hole and she just needs to have it filled..."
Sometimes it's worth watching VH1's trashy Saturday afternoon programming, as illustrated by this actual quote from 'Britney Spears' Secret Childhood'
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Bathroom Renovation - Part 5, I HATE Geometry
I have always loved old homes. They have so much character! I was really excited when we bought our house because, despite the fact that it's a little small (quaint!), it has fun little details like cut-glass door knobs, real plaster walls, archways between rooms, and hardwood floors (currently buried beneath carpet, next project???) However, after the last week of working on the bathroom I'm starting to hate some things about old homes... namely, the fact that after 60+ years of existence, there is no such thing as a level/plumb/square surface ANYWHERE in our home!
Normally this does not pose a huge issue, but in the case of installing paneling and moulding it becomes a huge issue. Figuring out the angles to be cut becomes a 3-dimensional task. Instead of taking for granted that the floor is level, the corners meet at 90 degree angles, and the wall surface is straight (ie: not concave or convex) I have to figure out random angles in every direction and account for every stupid little imperfection. It's probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to do.
I had some serious flashbacks to high school geometry class - drawing pictures of triangles and polygons, and trying to figure out the angles of the corners. I even tried to use the vague recollections I had about solving such problems, but realized that high school geometry does not really teach you to think in 3-dimension. At least not that I can recall. but I loathed math in high school so I'm probably suppressing lots of useful knowledge to my own detriment.
Fortunately, after lots of trial and error, I'm pretty much done with this step. I have one last cut of the baseboard to make and then touching up the paint where the nails went in. But here is a preview...
Normally this does not pose a huge issue, but in the case of installing paneling and moulding it becomes a huge issue. Figuring out the angles to be cut becomes a 3-dimensional task. Instead of taking for granted that the floor is level, the corners meet at 90 degree angles, and the wall surface is straight (ie: not concave or convex) I have to figure out random angles in every direction and account for every stupid little imperfection. It's probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to do.
I had some serious flashbacks to high school geometry class - drawing pictures of triangles and polygons, and trying to figure out the angles of the corners. I even tried to use the vague recollections I had about solving such problems, but realized that high school geometry does not really teach you to think in 3-dimension. At least not that I can recall. but I loathed math in high school so I'm probably suppressing lots of useful knowledge to my own detriment.
Fortunately, after lots of trial and error, I'm pretty much done with this step. I have one last cut of the baseboard to make and then touching up the paint where the nails went in. But here is a preview...
By this weekend we should be putting the toilet and sink back in! Yippee Skippee! Plumbing will bring a whole new pack of issues, but I'm accepting that in advance.
Honk if you love cookies!
Have you ever been so stoned that you crashed your car into a tree? Then did you get out of your car and see there wasn't actually any damage from the accident—not so much as a scratch on your bumper? Then did you notice that there also wasn't any tree? When you were finally able to calm down and get back in your car to drive away, were you embarrassed to realize that all along it was the air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror?
Me neither.*
~~~
A few things...
There's also this nice bit from the MentalFloss blog: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15303
I wonder if 'Hachiko' was the inspiration for the most heroic dog ever, Seymour Asses.
Me neither.*
~~~
A few things...
Lots of fun this last weekend, traveling in pretty much every direction for a bevy of cookouts and parties. Good to see everyone, and to eat copious amounts of foodstuffs gratis.
I got a call this morning from one of the temp agencies with a possible employment opportunity, so I'm pretty much just sitting here next to the phone waiting for a call.
There's also this nice bit from the MentalFloss blog: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15303
I wonder if 'Hachiko' was the inspiration for the most heroic dog ever, Seymour Asses.
Makes me tear up just thinking about it.
Finally, John Warner on McSweeneys has provided the following advice on getting the most important response from your students: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/5/15warner.html
*(joke shamelessly stolen from Brian Beatty)
Friday, May 23, 2008
It's a slow news week...
The struggle for the rights of oppressed high-school failures to wear pointy cardboard hats has been taken to court. Because, you know, when we don't like a public policy, the only person who can help us is a Common Pleas judge.
"Their argument is we have no right to grant this request," said Donald Domaneck, acting as his own attorney. "But we're not coming from the standpoint of whether you have a right or not. We are asking you to consider the circumstances. The kids have worked hard. The law responsible for this policy is unfair. Are we being sensitive to the feelings of the kids or acting like a robot?"
Call me insensitive, but does anyone else really think that his kid had perfect attendance and a 3.5 GPA? It's been a while since I took the Graduate Exams (at least I think I took them, but I honestly don't remember), but they weren't terribly difficult. I can understand having a rough time and not getting it the first time, but the Tuesday article noted that these students have failed the exam multiple times.
Let's get judgmental for a minute - if you really want to help your kid, Mr. Domaneck, sit down with him or her and help them prepare for the summer exam. So far, you spent several days protesting and in court. Wouldn't those days be better spent? And this is coming from a person who's sitting on the couch watching a dog nap.
"Their argument is we have no right to grant this request," said Donald Domaneck, acting as his own attorney. "But we're not coming from the standpoint of whether you have a right or not. We are asking you to consider the circumstances. The kids have worked hard. The law responsible for this policy is unfair. Are we being sensitive to the feelings of the kids or acting like a robot?"
Call me insensitive, but does anyone else really think that his kid had perfect attendance and a 3.5 GPA? It's been a while since I took the Graduate Exams (at least I think I took them, but I honestly don't remember), but they weren't terribly difficult. I can understand having a rough time and not getting it the first time, but the Tuesday article noted that these students have failed the exam multiple times.
Let's get judgmental for a minute - if you really want to help your kid, Mr. Domaneck, sit down with him or her and help them prepare for the summer exam. So far, you spent several days protesting and in court. Wouldn't those days be better spent? And this is coming from a person who's sitting on the couch watching a dog nap.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Yes, you should all be gasping collectively!
Per usual, I found something that made me pissed off enough to make a blog post about 5 minutes after I finished a long, boring post.
According to the DDN (motto: "technically a newspaper"), a number of parents protested outside the Dayton Board of Education to demand that their children be allowed to walk for graduation, even though the children had failed to pass the Ohio Graduation Test. The argument these parents seem to have (at least according to the 2 parents who were quoted) is that the kids have the requisite number of credits to graduate, and therefore should be allowed to pass. To quote:
Whether we agree with the policy of the State Test or not, this is the same sort of excuse-making I get to hear from my (undergraduate) students - they worked hard, completed the assignments, why shouldn't they get an 'A' (or at least pass)? But it's not like these exams (or my own grading policies) are a surprise; every student and parent knows that they need to take these exams to graduate. If they don't meet the established requirement, why should they be allowed to march? Is there a 'right' to walk at graduation? Would these parents support a student who passed the exam but never attended a single class his senior year, then decided he wanted to walk because he fulfilled every other requirement?
If the parent's want to protest, that's fine. I'm glad they support their children (in a fashion). But then this quote shows up, from a parent named Mr. Domineck:
To give a little context, the DDN article notes that Kettering schools allow students to walk even if they haven't passed the exam (the state law is that each school board can decide on its own whether to allow such students to march).
The matter of potential class/gender/race-based bias in standardized testing is certainly debatable, but to bring it in here is, frankly, bullshit. The majority of DPS students have passed these exams; I don't have the percentage of students in Kettering that failed to pass, but we can at least agree that there are in fact at least some who do so.
As often is the case, it seems like the last refuge for a filed argument is to claim victim status.
This ends your irregularly scheduled rant...
According to the DDN (motto: "technically a newspaper"), a number of parents protested outside the Dayton Board of Education to demand that their children be allowed to walk for graduation, even though the children had failed to pass the Ohio Graduation Test. The argument these parents seem to have (at least according to the 2 parents who were quoted) is that the kids have the requisite number of credits to graduate, and therefore should be allowed to pass. To quote:
"Parker said her daughter earned 21 credits, was a good student and worked hard
to try to pass the test."
Whether we agree with the policy of the State Test or not, this is the same sort of excuse-making I get to hear from my (undergraduate) students - they worked hard, completed the assignments, why shouldn't they get an 'A' (or at least pass)? But it's not like these exams (or my own grading policies) are a surprise; every student and parent knows that they need to take these exams to graduate. If they don't meet the established requirement, why should they be allowed to march? Is there a 'right' to walk at graduation? Would these parents support a student who passed the exam but never attended a single class his senior year, then decided he wanted to walk because he fulfilled every other requirement?
If the parent's want to protest, that's fine. I'm glad they support their children (in a fashion). But then this quote shows up, from a parent named Mr. Domineck:
"The standards are unequal and it is unfair to kids in the city, white or black,
who don't have the resources of a Kettering."
To give a little context, the DDN article notes that Kettering schools allow students to walk even if they haven't passed the exam (the state law is that each school board can decide on its own whether to allow such students to march).
The matter of potential class/gender/race-based bias in standardized testing is certainly debatable, but to bring it in here is, frankly, bullshit. The majority of DPS students have passed these exams; I don't have the percentage of students in Kettering that failed to pass, but we can at least agree that there are in fact at least some who do so.
As often is the case, it seems like the last refuge for a filed argument is to claim victim status.
This ends your irregularly scheduled rant...
Coin collecting’s a lot like life; it stopped being fun a long time ago.
The Wife's been hogging the blog spotlight with all this jibber-jabber about home improvement for the last few weeks. Just like I need to have a stare down with the Dog every few days, looks like it's time to re-establish my blogging dominance...
After barely surviving the last week of April (somehow writing 73 pages of papers in a single weekend), I'm finding my schedule depressingly empty recently. I've managed to completely strike out when it comes to finding work this summer - no available classes to teach, various HR folks telling me I'm overqualified to be a security guard, etc. It's kind of a downer when people at a temp agency look at my resume, make me take a 2-hour-long clerical test, then tell me I'm overqualified.
So I've been hanging out with The Dog a lot. We've taken some w-a-l-k-s (just in case Dog reads this, I don't want it getting excited), caught up on netflix and DVR (I'm about halfway through Battlestar Galactica's season 3 and have all of season 4 waiting on the DVR), and actually gotten some work done around the house (including starting a bonfire that ended up smelling suspiciously strongly of ganja).
I'm seen a handful of movies that I'll grant micro-reviews here. No Country For Old Men was actually better than I thought it would be; I haven't read the book (I got through about half of McCarthy's The Road and got bored), but it was a very impressive bit of filmmaking and storytelling. I don't really agree with folks who claim it's a Western, but I'm no Kent Anderson, so who knows. After several semesters of badgering, I finally watched The Player - it was certainly interesting, but I might have gone into it with too high of expectations (plus I had a hard time getting over early 1990s fashion). I sat through all 180 minutes of The Good Sheperd, and came away thinking that I still don't buy Matt Damon as an old man. I watched the Quentin Tarentino half of Grindhouse, and while I'm still not a fan of 1970s-style horror-thrillers, I can appreciate what QT was trying to do in Death Proof; whether I actually watch Rodriguez' half, who can say. I Am Legend was indeed much more faithful to the source material than The Omega Man, but it completely fell apart about 2/3 of the way through the movie (right after the dog gets it); since it was on Netflix, I never saw the variant ending, so maybe things were better there. One pleasant surprise was Spike Lee's Inside Man, which had remarkably few cameos from Lee and was actually one hell of a heist movie. Along with catching up with old BSG, I watched the entire season (about 210 minutes) of Frisky Dingo, an old Adult Swim show by the guys who did SeaLab 2012 - it's insanely funny, especially when you can watch it all as one continuous story (instead of watching 15 minutes each weekend).
Since I actually went to the cinema to see it, I guess Iron Man deserves its own paragraph. While I'm a big comic-book dork, the character is so non-mythical (compared to Superman, Batman, maybe Spider-man) that I really didn't care if Jon Favreau took liberties with the established story. I was quite impressed with the way that Tony Stark (the 'secret' identity of Iron Man, you non-nerds) was given some psychological depth and development. A few other critics have pointed this out, but I thought it was definitely worth repeating - the film makes the armor actuall seem heavy. It moves relatively slowly and deliberately, the opposite of the fluid acrobatics of Spider-man. It makes logical sense, given that it's a massive collection of metal plates, hydraulics, and circuitry. I move slowly, and all I'm wearing are New Balances, bluejeans, and a machete. Plus, if you're not impressed with the acting from the entire cast (especially Jeff Bridges, who might be my new god), you have no soul.
Finally, I must end with fairly sad news - the Enquirer announced today that the Bengals released Odell Thurman after he skipped the voluntary minicamp last week in order to attend his grandmother/caretaker's funeral. This brings to an end not only the widely fluctuating career of Thurman (April 2006-May 2008), but dooms my treasured Thurman jersey (Nov 2006-May 2008) to a premature demise, with the possible brief post-mortum appearance at StraightCashHomey.
On the rare honest emotion - take a moment today and pour one out for Isaac Klosterman, who was killed last weekend in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident.
After barely surviving the last week of April (somehow writing 73 pages of papers in a single weekend), I'm finding my schedule depressingly empty recently. I've managed to completely strike out when it comes to finding work this summer - no available classes to teach, various HR folks telling me I'm overqualified to be a security guard, etc. It's kind of a downer when people at a temp agency look at my resume, make me take a 2-hour-long clerical test, then tell me I'm overqualified.
So I've been hanging out with The Dog a lot. We've taken some w-a-l-k-s (just in case Dog reads this, I don't want it getting excited), caught up on netflix and DVR (I'm about halfway through Battlestar Galactica's season 3 and have all of season 4 waiting on the DVR), and actually gotten some work done around the house (including starting a bonfire that ended up smelling suspiciously strongly of ganja).
I'm seen a handful of movies that I'll grant micro-reviews here. No Country For Old Men was actually better than I thought it would be; I haven't read the book (I got through about half of McCarthy's The Road and got bored), but it was a very impressive bit of filmmaking and storytelling. I don't really agree with folks who claim it's a Western, but I'm no Kent Anderson, so who knows. After several semesters of badgering, I finally watched The Player - it was certainly interesting, but I might have gone into it with too high of expectations (plus I had a hard time getting over early 1990s fashion). I sat through all 180 minutes of The Good Sheperd, and came away thinking that I still don't buy Matt Damon as an old man. I watched the Quentin Tarentino half of Grindhouse, and while I'm still not a fan of 1970s-style horror-thrillers, I can appreciate what QT was trying to do in Death Proof; whether I actually watch Rodriguez' half, who can say. I Am Legend was indeed much more faithful to the source material than The Omega Man, but it completely fell apart about 2/3 of the way through the movie (right after the dog gets it); since it was on Netflix, I never saw the variant ending, so maybe things were better there. One pleasant surprise was Spike Lee's Inside Man, which had remarkably few cameos from Lee and was actually one hell of a heist movie. Along with catching up with old BSG, I watched the entire season (about 210 minutes) of Frisky Dingo, an old Adult Swim show by the guys who did SeaLab 2012 - it's insanely funny, especially when you can watch it all as one continuous story (instead of watching 15 minutes each weekend).
Since I actually went to the cinema to see it, I guess Iron Man deserves its own paragraph. While I'm a big comic-book dork, the character is so non-mythical (compared to Superman, Batman, maybe Spider-man) that I really didn't care if Jon Favreau took liberties with the established story. I was quite impressed with the way that Tony Stark (the 'secret' identity of Iron Man, you non-nerds) was given some psychological depth and development. A few other critics have pointed this out, but I thought it was definitely worth repeating - the film makes the armor actuall seem heavy. It moves relatively slowly and deliberately, the opposite of the fluid acrobatics of Spider-man. It makes logical sense, given that it's a massive collection of metal plates, hydraulics, and circuitry. I move slowly, and all I'm wearing are New Balances, bluejeans, and a machete. Plus, if you're not impressed with the acting from the entire cast (especially Jeff Bridges, who might be my new god), you have no soul.
Finally, I must end with fairly sad news - the Enquirer announced today that the Bengals released Odell Thurman after he skipped the voluntary minicamp last week in order to attend his grandmother/caretaker's funeral. This brings to an end not only the widely fluctuating career of Thurman (April 2006-May 2008), but dooms my treasured Thurman jersey (Nov 2006-May 2008) to a premature demise, with the possible brief post-mortum appearance at StraightCashHomey.
On the rare honest emotion - take a moment today and pour one out for Isaac Klosterman, who was killed last weekend in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Bathroom Renovation - Part 4, Attack of the Grout
So we finally got to the grouting... Grouting is not as much fun as the rest of this project has been. It takes a lot of muscle to smear it in between the tiles and then A LOT of scrubbing. Oh, and it's terrifying. When you start working it in you pretty much cover everything, and then your beautiful tiles looks like this...
After letting it set up a bit you start to scrub it to get up all of the excess grout...
After letting it set up a bit you start to scrub it to get up all of the excess grout...
And finally, after hundreds of buckets of water (thanks Husband) it starts to look pretty again...
It's not fun. My hands were tinted black for about 5 days from all of the grout contaminated water that I was working with as I cleaned the floor over and over again. And the thing is, I still feel like it's not quite clean. Blah!
Next step... Beadboard and moulding. Yay mitre saw!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Bathroom Renovation - Part 3
After a short lull in the productivity department we finally made some progress on the reno this weekend. I actually got the painting done a little over a week ago and boy is it bold! I mostly love it, but I'm slightly intimidated by the boldness of it. Clearly I can't think of any other word than "bold" to describe it so how about a picture so you can judge for yourself...
I figure of any room in the house to go a little crazy with color, why not the bathroom? Besides, everything else in this room will be black or white. A splash of color is really neccessary.
Below is a close up of our wonderfully vintage-looking new tile. I've been coveting this tile for months and months and I'm so happy it's finally mine!
And partly because Husband is finally home full-time and I'm sick of sharing one bathroom (and NO the urinal does not count!) Stay tuned for further developments...
I figure of any room in the house to go a little crazy with color, why not the bathroom? Besides, everything else in this room will be black or white. A splash of color is really neccessary.
Below is a close up of our wonderfully vintage-looking new tile. I've been coveting this tile for months and months and I'm so happy it's finally mine!
After a frustrating trip to Lowes on Friday to gather more supplies, we actually got to working on the floors on Saturday. We laid the backer-board, did a dry fit of all of the tile, made the neccessary cuts, and finally got out the trowl and mortar and got them all down on the floor...
And partly because Husband is finally home full-time and I'm sick of sharing one bathroom (and NO the urinal does not count!) Stay tuned for further developments...
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