Month: June 2007

Back to renovations after almost a week of clients

On Monday, I managed to slap together the first of the framing for the outer walls. That was also the first day of client meetings, and we had a lot of material to cover.
Yesterday was the last day of meetings, so I did manage to get home and continue with framing the walls.
I made a bit of progress, getting one section of wall complete. The long weekend has started, though, and I’m hoping to get through the rest. There’s a lot riding on all of this being done by the first week of August, so there’s a lot of pressure for me get cracking…

The new K2 ain't much better…

To add to my existing woes, I thought I might be “smart” and update to the new K2 to try and fix some of the issues that the new WordPress brought down upon me.
At least the annoying bug with the WordPress widgets was fixed. But now:

  • My sidebars are horribly screwed up I’ve had to remove the archives list because I can’t get the SmartArchives plugin to work with K2’s widgets
  • The Archives list is by month+year combination, instead of the block design I had previously
  • My list of pages appears on EVERY page, and not broken down per section (it used to be that only the Photos pages would appear in Photos) I’ve had to find another plugin called Subpage Listing that puts a simple comment in the page posts to provide a list of the subpages per page. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a start…

This just serves me right for not checking first to see what the update would do before I did it.
Ugh.

Another case of really bad customer service

You’ve heard me rant about both [[Calgary Transit sucks|Calgary Transit]] and [[Air Canada sucks|Air Canada]]. They have their cases of really missing the ball on serving their audience.
As much as I complain about them, they’ve got nothing on this case of just screwing someone over.
Continue reading “Another case of really bad customer service”

Basement floorplan, version 3

[photopress:Basement_Floor_Plan3.gif,thumb,pp_image]
Here’s what’s different:

  • Office and mechanical rooms swapped (this was done because the boiler can’t vent up a chimney — too low-temperature, so the condensation from the exhaust would completely rust the thing out; on the bright side, we get to use the void upstairs because of the change)
  • The previously compact tub is now a walk-in shower (custom-built, of course) and a bit of rearrangement in the bathroom, with doors relocated
  • Windows added to the right-side wall (though because I can’t find an installer, they’ll have to wait until a subsequent renovation phase; there’ll eventually be a third window where the stairs currently are)

This is what we’re now going on, and the plates to handle the outer and load-bearing walls are now in place.

Plates in, first framing up

So last night I was in quite the rush to get home and get back to working in the basement. I’m trying to make the most use of time possible to try and get everything into place before the floor heating pipes are laid — that’s literally when everything else needs to be out of the basement.
I have a funny feeling that I’m going to have a few more nights like last night for the next month or more.
Continue reading “Plates in, first framing up”

The building supplies arrive

On Saturday, I scooted around doing a number of errands. One of them was ordering in the materials I need to frame and insulate the basement. Part of this is in preparation for the heated floor, part of this is to actually make the basement liveable.
Rona delivered the bundle yesterday while I was at work (Alex was at home, thankfully, since Rona kind of screwed up the delivery by forgetting one roll of vapour barrier and the toilet), in a huge bunch that they very nicely placed on the front lawn. But it couldn’t stay there.
Continue reading “The building supplies arrive”

Yoshirolla Kilomantra mayhem

Okay, I know, I’m probably doing something I said I wouldn’t be doing. But I have to admit, this is already pretty cool.
When I [[Yoshirolla Kilomantra|put out my first post]] a couple of days ago, I shot to the top of a list of one for “Yoshirolla Kilomantra“. Google indexed my site right away, and I appeared on the other SERPs pretty quickly. Cool, but in the grand scheme of things, really dull — what fun is a competition of one?
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Flying the Zip Line at Canada Olympic Park

(Updated with videos!)
Team building is one of the important things you have to do when you have a group of significant size. Especially when they’re of different specializations and tend not to intermingle regularly.
That is what brought us to Canada Olympic Park (COP) this afternoon to experience a truly unique feeling. Basically, screaming death at 100 km/h. (It was supposed to be golf, but the killer rainstorm we had earlier this week washed us out.)
Continue reading “Flying the Zip Line at Canada Olympic Park”

How interactive marketing fails because of technical architecture

Interactive marketing is a branch of advertising that aims to involve people directly in marketing materials, providing an avenue for engagement that’s just not possible with print, radio, or television advertisements.
In most cases, “interactive marketing” means “websites”. Interactive television (iTV) is also emerging, though in limited markets at this point. But the issues are similar, if not the same:
How you build something is just as important as how you designed it.
Continue reading “How interactive marketing fails because of technical architecture”

Mozart on roller skates

Some of you might have already seen the Audi commercial. Pretty neat.
Even neater, when it comes right down to it, is the guy who thought of this in the first place. (I’m not certain, but I think he’s also in the Audi commercial at the beginning.)
Watch him play Mozart on roller skates. This is creative thinking! (Although the making of the Audi commercial is pretty cool, too.)

Creative writing challenge

Last night seemed to be one filled with sequels to previous dreams I’d had. Very odd.
In one of them though, I was in an English class being taught by John Houseman. (Don’t ask, most of my dreams make no sense at all.)
His challenge, which I now pose to you: Write a sentence without using any letters with vertical elements. (Hey, he wanted a full 2,000 word essay!)