Month: June 2007

Renovation update 06/04/2007

Arrrgh! I can’t *believe* that I forgot to take a “before” picture of the guest bathroom before we started work on it today!!!

We are not going to be nearly so bold with this aspect of our renovations as with the other bathroom. But we are removing the false ceiling, replacing the flourescent lights with can lights, updating to a better bathroom fan and replacing the counter, sink, faucets and medicine chest.

Add a little new wallpaper and paint and the project is nearly done 🙂

Here is the project just after Larry pulled out the ceiling and medicine cabinet

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Larry is sporting his camera-inspired “The Shining” look… 🙂

You can see the framework for the fan and light support over the counter here.

By the end of the day, much of the wallpaper was gone

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Here’s a nice view into the attic (above where the mirror used to be)

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A slightly more oblique view

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And here is the ceiling over the back of the bathtub (soon to receive a can light)

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and finally a view back toward the door (before it gets painted)

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Also, Sue from Atlanta Kitchen called and asked if we wouldn’t mind taking some pictures of our new master bathroom counter for them to keep in an album so I obliged and sent Hi res versions of the four shots below.

This one shows off the newly installed medicine cabinet cover that Tommy put in today. It needs a bit more work to protect the back of the mirror but it looks very attractive already.

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Pretty much all that’s left to do in the master vanity area is those medicine cabinets and to putty and stain a few nail holes in the mirror frame. Of course there are ALWAYS some other little touch-ups that need to be done but the end of the road is near.

It turns out that the mirror company ended up charging nearly 3 times what they quoted for the mirrors. Tommy will be contacting them to get that sorted out. I’ll need to get their name anyway just for my own records. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Here are the remaining pictures of the counter

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and

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and

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In my update from May 18th I mentioned that one of the Acrylic handles for the shower doors had arrived slightly mal-formed. I’m pleased to report that they (the company Maax) had a new pair of handles out to us within a week and the doors look great. Interestingly they sent us two handles which is good since one of them was slightly scratched. The other one was pristine.

Amateur Animal Kingdom

When I watched this I wasn’t really expecting much. Unless you have a LOT of time to wait or you go ahead and stage some kind of confrontation (or maybe just edit a bunch of unrelated scenes together) you are seldom lucky enough to capture this kind of footage.

It’s a little long at 8 minutes, but take my word for it, this is well worth watching to the end. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything this socially complex before in a safari-style video.

It’s kind of like “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” meets “Animal Kingdom” only with a Hollywood ending… of course I suppose that depends on who you’re rooting for… I won’t give it away.

**Updated 2009-10-10 **
The CollegeHumor version of the video mysteriously disappeared so I’ve “rediscovered” it on Youtube:


** End Update **

Trying OpenDNS

If you use the Internet, you’re using DNS (Domain Name System).

I heard about this listening to the Slashdotreview podcast a couple of days ago. OpenDNS claims that they can perform faster DNS lookups than can your ISP. They further claim they can correct typos (i.e. you type wikipedia.og instead of wikipedia.org) as well as protect you from known Phishing pages.

So I’m giving them a whirl. I’ve added the OpenDNS IP addresses to the formerly empty static DNS IP address section in my WRT54G router and am using it now.

Given the vagaries of the Internet, it’s not really possible to say immediately whether DNS resolution is faster than it used to be. I suppose that will end up being a qualitative judgment on my part after a few more days of use.

However I *can* say that the “type correction” feature is pretty slick. If you get the URL hopelessly wrong (i.e. leave off the extension entirely), rather than getting a “cannot be found” kind of error, you are directed to a search page that usually has the correct option very near the top.

I’ve played a little bit with the shortcut ability (i.e. I type “mb” on the address bar and it figures it out and sends me to http://marc-bourassa.com) although I *am* somewhat sketchy on how it know it’s *me* typing that shortcut. Dynamic IP addresses for home users is the norm. The FAQ doesn’t address this item.

Going to my other computers yields different results, my old Win2K laptop, when I type “mb” on Firefox’s address bar brings up wikipedia’s definition for “Megabyte”. On Mich’s laptop doing the same thing brings up the OpenDNS search results page.

Solution: It turns out that I need to be logged into OpenDNS. You have the option of remaining logged in until you explicitly log out, so that little mystery is solved.

I’ll play with this a little more and see if I have any issues.