Rain, Rain, Go Away I heard yesterday that we haven't had 3 days in a row without rain in Boston since April(!!). That is certainly abnormal. One side effect has been eerily healthy flowers in neighborhood window boxes and planters. Here's a sunflower plant just down the street that in the past few days has now grown taller than me (note the traffic signs for reference). This is not something you usually see in a city sidewalk planter:   ¶ 10:44 PM 0 Comments

  A Week of First-Home Fun

Audrey and I bought our first house in June, and all was going swimmingly, until last Monday.

First, after noticing it was growing unusually humid around the dryer, we discovered the dryer vent tube was completely severed. Who knew there was a company called "Dryer Vent Wizards" -- that does nothing but service dryer vents? Angie's List, that's who knew. So far the Angie's List membership has been one of our best purchases.

Replacing the vent line involved cutting holes in the floor and in one wall. The ceiling was feeling left out, but wouldn't be for long.

Next up was a wobbly toilet -- didn't seem urgent, but with dinner guests coming next week, I didn't want to take any chances. FYI, "broken flange" isn't something you want to hear from a plumber (also found on Angie's List). Because the basement is finished, they had to cut a large hole in the basement ceiling to get at the problem. Three hours and nearly $900 later, problem solved.

And then tonight while troubleshooting the icemaker that hasn't worked since we moved in, I was tracing the water line feeding it and found myself standing in a puddle near the HVAC system. Good times. Took a bit of sleuthing, but we traced the problem to the drain pipe, which was completely clogged with ... wet lint -- apparently resulting from the previous owner running the dryer with a broken vent line. Second-best investment in the new house: Wet/Dry vac. Sucked the drain pipe clear, and all is now well.

At least until tomorrow...

Labels: house

  ¶ 11:35 PM 0 Comments

  Wow, I guess we picked the right time to go back to grad school   ¶ 12:06 PM 1 Comments

  Taking Charge

Telling someone to "show some initiative" sounds patronizing. I suppose another way to put it is: "be your own best cheerleader -- to yourself, and to those around you". Still sounds hokey, but it's true. Here's two recent posts on the subject.

First, Seth Godin, on the difference between getting and taking:

Many employees do the same thing at work. They wait for a boss (hopefully a great one) to give them responsibility or authority or experiences that add up to a career. A few people, not many, but a few, take.

And Scott Berkun, who took the plunge of self-employment after realizing he'd really been waiting for his own permission to act:

No one will tell you what you’re capable of. No one told me to quit. No one told me to write books. None of the interesting things I’ve done started by someone telling me “you should do X.” or even “you are capable of doing X”. I’d been thinking about this for years but was waiting for some message from above to show up like the billboard in L.A. Story, saying “Scott. Now is the time. The universe has your back. Go do it”. But I’m still waiting for that. I’ve learned that not having support from others is not a reason not to do try something. I have to do the work, so my belief is enough.

  ¶ 5:48 PM 0 Comments

  I Guess You'd Call it a Freeze Mob

200+ people simultaneously freeze in Grand Central Station.

  ¶ 2:07 PM 0 Comments

  Beware the Chair

As someone who spends entirely too much time hunched over in front of my laptop, the occasional reminder to get off my ass more often is A Good Thing.

In a story amusingly titled "Our office chairs are slowing killing us", the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the dangers of spending so much time sitting down:

New Australian research shows that half-an-hour in the gym will not make up for the waist-expanding damage caused by spending the rest of the day sitting.

I should probably know better by now.

  ¶ 4:08 PM 0 Comments

  My New Security Blanket

When I was a toddler, like many other little boys, I grew very attached to a particular blanket, and insisted it join me just about everywhere I went. It was, of course a phase (unlike many adults, I don't still have the darn thing). But I've recently felt myself similarly exposed, this time when working without a particular tool: version control.

I'm not saying that I am as enamored of this particular technology as I was that square of cloth; just that when I find myself without it, I get anxious and worried, like something very important is missing.

I just started putting together a few slides for the opening remarks for tomorrow's TOC conference, and I'd barely gotten the first few slides sketched out when I felt a nagging sensation like I was driving without a seatbelt. (Or toddling without a security blanket for that matter.)

In reality, I hardly ever need to revert to an old version of a document. But having an infinite history of a project means the ability to work without the fear of irreversible catastrophe.

While I'm not ready to take things quite as far as some do in putting their electronic lives in version control, these days I rarely work on any document or project of significance without checking it into Subversion. The latest version of the Macintosh operating system actually includes a similar feature baked right in, so you get that same infinite history for free with the OS.

For now, I'm going to stick with Subversion, in part because I'm still running Windows, but also because SVN lets me access my files from anywhere. Sure beats a blanket...

Labels: tech

  ¶ 3:34 PM 0 Comments