Extroverts Go Home.

I got a crazy busy morning today….so this morning’s thought has got to be a quickie. I heard about this on the way in to work this morning. Perhaps it made me angry because I was physically in the act of commuting to work.

Morning Edition did a piece about people who get to telecommute but get all bored and lonely working from home….the solution is to go out and find other people to work with. They don’t go and find people from their company to work with (which is good)….they just find random people to spend the day with (which I think is probably worse). They call it Jelly. I call it stupid.

As a certified introvert I don’t know where to start with this. It’s wrong on so many levels. I’ve been to telecommuting paradise and it is a rich land abundant in milk and honey. It drives me crazy to see these weak, sniveling, extroverts desecrate nirvana. Bah.

A Bit Early to be Ruining Christmas

Don’t you think Christmas gifts are best kept as surprises? I prefer to have no idea what my gifts may or may not be. Before you carefully peel back the wrapping paper (and fold it neatly) anything could be in the box. This is why I was so conflicted about asking Dawn if she’d like a particular item for Christmas.

I found an item that she might really like to have… or she might think is completely stupid. I could see how she could form one opinion or the other. Unfortunately it was a bit too expensive just to buy and hope for the best. I wanted to be sure she would like it. So I came clean and asked. She indicated that she would be very receptive to the gift. Which is great….or maybe it’s not. I’m not sure. All I know is that I’ve robbed her of one Christmas surprise. I suppose I’ll have to buy her an extra gift to make up for that.

Over Already?

Where the heck did the weekend go? It doesn’t seem like I got much done this last weekend. I remember prepping some pork wellington, going to a party, and working on the book shelves…but that doesn’t seem like enough memories to fill an entire weekend.

I made a bit more progress on the bookshelves. It doesn’t seem like I got a whole lot accomplished in the big picture. I think I got sucked into one of those steps that get mentally glossed over when planning. Cutting the wood gets a lot of time budgeted for it, assembling the pieces gets time…and in between those two I’ll quickly make sure everything is sanded. Sanding takes time…and how. So I got a lot of sanding done and started boxing in the smaller shelves.

Dawn and I visited Lowes again this weekend. We just needed to pick up some extra stripping compound (Dawn is stripping our bar stools so she can re-stain them to match the house). We decided to make the trip a little bit more dangerous by bringing some dishes along with us. We’ve been toying with the idea of getting a new dish washer. We really wanted to get one of the new fangled dishwashers that are really two drawer dishwashers. However after eyeing the floor models in the store we’ve been worried that they don’t offer enough vertical space to wash our larger plates. We bought a couple of dishes along to see how they fit in various models. The two drawer dishwasher got knocked out of the running. A KitchenAid model is now in first place. Great we got the unit picked out. That’s step one down the dangerous path of purchasing.

While we were there we decided to talk to one of the helpful employees about new counter tops. He gave us the Lowes spill, which is basically, “You don’t really want granite.” He was very helpful and laid out all the small steps we would have to take in order to find out how much they would really and truly cost.

More and more it looks like next year is going to be a choice between Scotland and kitchen.

A University by Any Other Name

People keep coming up to me and asking what I think about UAH trying to change its name. I usually respond “Wha?” I had been dismissing it as a strange rumor, but enough different people asked me that I took the time to look it up…and what do you know. UAH is trying to change its name. Kind of.

Evidently the problem is no one outside of the south east (or maybe just north Alabama) knows what the heck UAH is. Fair enough. The solution is to change UAH to UAHuntsville or UA Huntsville or UA-Huntsville depending on which source you read. This is supposed to make the university more identifiable.

I don’t understand why they don’t just spell the whole thing out if they want people to know who they are and use the acronym in contexts where people should know who they are. Isn't that the point of acronyms? In addition to that UAHuntsville seems like a cumbersome acronym. Aren't ancronyms supposed to be something that’s quick and easy? I guess technically it’s really a more of a pseudo-acronym then an honest to god acronym.

I don’t have a lot of sentimental attachment to “UAH,” but I’m having trouble understanding how the purposed name accomplishes the stated goals. The stated goals are to make it easier to recruit out of state students and raise name recognition. Fine, those sound like good goals. Does the new name do that? Maybe. There’s no doubt that UA is more nationally known….for its football team and partying. To me it seems like UAH is trying to ride on Tuscaloosa’s coattails, which seems a bit disingenuous.

On top of that it seems to me that it actually diminishes UAH’s standing. In most states a city name is tacked onto a university name when it’s a satellite campus. UA-Huntsville makes it seem like UAH is UA’s satellite campus. You know if you’re not good enough to get into UA you might get stuck at UA-Huntsviile.

Even if the above points don’t hold water here is the just plain bizarre thing. They are only planning to change the logo for some things. The new logo will be used for recruitment and maybe a “signature element” or two while the old logo will stick around for other things. How does having two logos, a split brand, help with recognition and confusion? It seems like that would actually be counterproductive to the stated goals. Unless that’s not the real plan. Maybe they’re just spoon-feeding the new logo to quell the sentimentalist.

Oh well. As a Friday bonus here’s a picture of Riblet tending to her coffee plantation. She spends a bit of time every day making sure her coffee plants are doing well.

Further adventures in woodworking

This last weekend had a lot going for it. There wasn’t a heat-wave in progress. I wasn’t feeling ill. It was a weekend we were at home. As such, I actually got some work done on my labor or love, the bookcases.

It’s been so long since I last got a chance to work on them due to illness, temperature, school, traveling, etc, that most of my seething hate for the project had subsided. In fact it was actually fun again! More importantly, I was able to evaluate my progress with a clear head and realize I was at a pretty important decision point. Most of the atomic parts of the first bookshelf have been assembled. There are a few connector pieces missing, but those have mostly been purposely postponed to make sure they are cut to fit the actual bookcase, not the one that only lives on paper.

After surveying my work-to-date I came to the conclusion that I might need to make small change to my plan. The original plan was to build a huge, free standing, backless, bookcase of Dawn’s design. I was at the point where I could just start assembling all the pieces and see what happened, but I beginning to have my doubts about free standing. Free standing seems unnecessarily risky. What happens if I get all the pieces together, and to spite all my careful measuring, my workmanship shows through and the errors all add up? The whole thing might be a wobbly, or worse yet, too dangerous to put books on. This thing is going to be of considerable size and weight and I don’t want Dawn crushed in an unfortunately bibliophile related accident.

The safer course of action seems to be assembling the bookcase in components. This will entail first assembling the outer frame (the two sides, and four major shelves) and attaching it to the wall. Once the outer frame is in place and secure I’ll go about filling up the outer frame Tetris-style with the remaining components. The advantage of this approach is that if any single area is too far off I’ll just have to replace that one section instead of the cursing and swearing and tearing apart the fully assembled bookcase with my bare hands. The probability of overall project success seems more likely, which is a good thing. If these bookcases don’t work out I think a little part of my creative soul might die.

Gobbling Not Necessary

One of our weekend home projects was to replace the exterior door knobs and locks on our house. The primary reason for doing this is the older door knobs were nasty. The finish was worn off the door knobs and they looked decrepit. The door knob at the back of the house was covered with some sort of black gunk which I always imagined to be death mold. I doubt it was actual death mold, but that’s not the mental image you want to conjure as your moving food in and out to the grill.

Of course there is also the added bonus of getting to change the locks at the same time. We didn’t change the locks when we moved into the house. From all neighbor accounts the previous owner’s ex-wife is a raving lunatic. It nice to know that there is now 0% chance of finding her (or the previous own for that matter) in the house one day because they discovered an old key and decided to take a look.

At Lowes I got a really helpful employee who claimed he used to be a locksmith. He dropped some door knob related knowledge that I suspect Dawn and I would have learned the hard way. Namely, that the door knob manufacture we were looking at made their knobs such that they turn freely on the inside even when locked. Meaning you can lock the door then come back later and freely open the door and then close it behind you only to discover you just locked yourself out. He recommended using the passive door knobs below and relying on the deadbolts for actual security. The upshot is you actually have to use a key to lock the door….so you can never lock yourself out.
Replacing the locks was a breeze, although I did have to drill a new hole in our front door for the new fancy handle. I had a little bit of trepidation on that count. It’s not like you can un-drill a hole in a steel door… or even really patch it. It’s pretty much new door time. However, measure 57 times and drill once seemed to work out in the end.

One of the cool side benefits of replacing the locks is the knowledge that I actually made it tougher to kick down our doors. I don’t actually know anyone who has had their place broken into by a master thief who picked the locks. I do know of a couple of situations where someone simply kicked in the door. The fancy lock doesn’t really help if someone kicks the door. The point that fails is the metal bracket attached to the doorframe that the deadbolt slides into. That metal bracket wasn’t being held on by much with the older locks. Check out how much beefier the new screws are that hold the bracket on.


Of course now that we have pretty new exterior door knobs they just make the interior door knobs looks ugly. The exterior ones are brushed satin nickel finish, the interior ones are crappy cheapo brass finish. Looks like I need to find a contractor pack of nickel door knobs so I can go through the house and replace the all of the other knobs.

Death Is So Cheap.

I had wanted to post about the many house related tasks Dawn and I accomplished this weekend...but I forgot the memory card with the photos at home. And what fun would a home improvement post be without photos?

So instead I'll give a quick review of the new video game I've been playing, Two Worlds.

I've heard this game described as "the poor-man's Oblivion." I think the description is apt. Two Worlds does not have as much polish as Oblivion so it ends up taking a beating when compared toe-to-toe with Oblivion. The first hour playing the game is rough, because you spend the entire time cataloging all the ways in which Two Worlds comes up short when compare to Oblivion.

The Awkwardness
I've read that Two Worlds was basically designed for the PC and ported over to the 360....and it shows. The menus for the game beg for a mouse, it's a bit time consuming hopping all over the place with a joystick. The map in the corner is near impossible to read because it so damn small. I suppose if it were on a monitor a foot away from my face it might not be so bad. The text in the game is tiny, the myopic need not apply.

The World
The world is huge. I've read that it's actually larger than Oblivion's. The visuals are nice enough, and there are lots of environmental effects (it rains). The place is covered with tons of vegetation...which is actually a bit of a problem. Fallen foes fall into the vegetation and are hidden. That makes it hard to find and loot them. I now have an immediate loot rule. I loot as soon as I drop someone. I don't care if I get hit once or twice in the back by his friends. I rather take the damage than forget where this joker fell.

The Loot
I actually think looting is one place where Two Worlds compares favorably to Oblivion. There is a huge variety of weapons and armor. So far it's been pretty interesting seeing what people are carrying. If they have a weapon in their hands when they are a live it tends to be in their inventory when they are dead.

Two Worlds allows you to "double up" items...which means if you find an identical item you can "combine" it with the one you already have to make a better version. I don't know how combining 12 pairs of identical boots makes a better boot...but it does. This actually keeps looting interesting...instead of sighing when someone drops something you already have you get excited because yours just got better. It also makes picking up a better item more of a decision. There might be a new sword...but since you've cobbled together so many basic swords you're basic sword is now better than the new sword..but if you cobbled together a bunch of new swords it would be better than your uber basic sword. I wonder how many new swords you're likely to find.....?

The other genius thing Two Worlds does in regard to looting is it also displays what your are currently wearing or using for comparison purposes when you look at another item. No more having to page to your inventory to see if what you just found is better than what you have. All RPG games ought to adopt this function.

Life Is Cheap
In Two Worlds you can't really die. If you die you just get respawned at the closest rejuvenation point WITH NO PENALTY for dying. Heck if you even walk by a rejuvenation point it will top off your hit points. I find fighting monsters way over my level on rejuvenation points to be very convenient. My hit points are constantly restored and if the monster deals damage fast enough to actually kill me I just respawn right there to continue the fight. Cheap? You bet.

Almost too cheap. I guess it comes down to what is more fun, the illusion of your hero making it through every fight without dying (but probably being forced to reload your game a bunch to maintain the illusion), or just respawning to continuing your adventure. I know one thing for sure, not having the reload the game penalty will lead you to take bigger risks.

Over all, once I got past the initial Two Worlds is not Oblivion thing, I've started to enjoy the game...which is a shame because I don't have the time to spare for Oblivion-sized video game time commitment right now.