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I really enjoy this Saturday Night Live clip.  It’s a classic.

I’ve been mucking around trying to get iSync to sync my Google Calendar to and from my Sprint Centro.  Finally, I decided to skip going through iCal and just sync my phone directly to my Google Calendar using GooSync.

It works pretty well. I had to nuke a bunch of duplicate items from other calendars in iCal, but that was really my only issue.  Now Jessica can add events to my calendar and they’ll appear in my phone.  Email invitations get added to iCal, which syncs to Google, then to my phone.  Nifty!

Jessica and I own a lot (that is, a parcel of land) around the corner from our house.  It’s a full acre and we’re responsible for the upkeep, like mowing and such.

I tried push-mowing it once last year and didn’t get very far. After a couple of hours, I figured it would probably take another four or five hours to mow. Luckily, a friend gave me a riding mower for free; I only had to get it running.

I got the mower running, but the land is still a half-mile away. Once a week I drive the mower down the street, garnering strange looks.

So, I’ve started looking at sheds. 

Questions

Pre-built or build myself? It’d be nice for the building to appear magically one day and be ready to use, but is it worth the premium I would pay?

Materials? Wood. Plastic. Vinyl-covered steel.

Foundation? Do I put in a pad? Level off the ground and put in a raised floor? Install piers? The more permanent options mean that I wouldn’t be able to move the building later.

Size? Size and cost correlate, so I’m stuck between not wanting to run out of room but not wanting to spend $4K on an out-building.

Amenities? Seriously, I never knew sheds had so many options.  Lofts, skylights, solar lights, extra wide doors, and so on.

Next

I’ll be collecting options. I do want to get this done in the next few weeks as the mowing season approaches.

I'm ripping out drywall because it smells like pee.

I took this picture in progress. I ended up ripping out all the drywall along the stair to the left as well as some more on the main wall.

We’ve had an issue with the pee smell for several years, partly from our own cat and partly from the previous owner’s dogs, we believe. When it gets warm and humid: eww.  We’d tried painting the plywood, but that didn’t do the job.

After removing the drywall, I could see on the back where the urine had soaked in and spread up, which is pretty nasty.  Also, there was a lot of sawdust and hair trapped below the drywall, between it and the subfloor.  That sawdust absorbed some of the stink as well, so a good scrubbing with a wire brush knocked it off hopefully.

I’ve let it dry out a few days now and I’m going to apply a couple coats of Kilz soon, then I’ll patch-tape-mud-sand-paint the areas that I’ve cut out.

Siftables

A fellow from the MIT Media lab demonstrates “siftables”: little block-like computers that can interact with each other.

Some of the examples he shows are:

• two blocks that are colored paint buckets that can ‘pour’ (he physically lifts and pours) into a blank block to change its color
• a word game that’s like Boggle or TextTwist, where you have a set of letters and have to make words out of them.  Instead of writing or typing the words, you arrange the blocks.  When they get close enough to each other, they check the dictionary and make a noise if you’ve made a word
• a game to help kids learn language.  The blocks with images on them and picking up the block and showing it to the screen puts that object into the scene.  You could show a dog and it would appear and bark, a cat would meow, and putting the blocks together makes them talk to each other.

Very cool innovation in how people interact with computing.  Check out the video linked above (~ 7 minutes) if you can to see the rest of the demos.

Vista Media Center help

I set up a Vista Ultimate machine to work as a media center.  I have it hooked up to the TV using a DVI-to-HDMI cable and the sound runs into my stereo system.  It works pretty well and I’m in the process of transferring all the TV shows and movies and pictures to it.

Jessica and I went to watch something the other night, though, and Media Center didn’t have the codec. So, this site was very helpful in pointing out two programs that help you with container and codecs:

• Guide to Codecs in Vista Media Center
• Programs from article above:
  • Haali Media Splitter: so you can open other video containers besides .AVI
    
  • ffdshow (this version recommended): a codec bundle so you can play lots of different video and audio types

I’m still getting the hang of the media center, but I think it’ll be helpful and fun.

I’ve been kinda quiet on the webpage lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading a lot.

Specifically, I’ve been reading and listening to lots about the financial crisis.  I’ve got some comparison ideas I’d like to put together, but here’s my favorite news article about the bailout so far:

You try to live on 500k in this town

Apparently, some New York bankers may not be able to afford their lifestyle if their bank accepts bailout money and becomes subject to the proposed $500,000 executive compensation cap.

My heart bleeds for thee, New York bankers.