Blog Master G

Before:

After:

I’d highly recommend Perma Ceram of Albany for any enameling or tiling job. We plan to use them again to re-enamel our clawfoot tub at some point, too.

Yesterday I started to create a spreadsheet to track all the home improvement projects we’ve done to date, including date of project, what was done, the contractor we used, the cost of the project, and whether the contractor did a good job. I figure it will be cool not only for our own records, but for use in future appraisals and/or should we ever decide to sell the house. It will also be interesting to see how much we’ve put into the house (so far, not a whole lot, given what great condition it’s already in).

After having our house painted last week, it was the perfect opportunity for some deep cleaning on Saturday, especially with the family coming over for Easter Sunday. Saturday was pretty nuts in terms of how much we accomplished: Moved all furniture and rugs out of living room, family room, and kitchen; vacuumed and swept and Murphy’s oil soap mopped everywhere; and then all the standard cleaning, as well. It was easily a 12-hour day of cleaning. Fortunately, Jami and Hugh invited us over for a break and dinner in their backyard that evening.

Friday night I joined Alex, Cati, and others for the new movie, Thank You For Smoking (thoroughly funny and enjoyable), followed by a drink at Hollywood on Lark Street in Albany.

Sunday was a smashing success. There were 11 of us (family plus Cati) for the most excellent Easter dinner — ham (for those who partook), quiche, asparagus, salads, yams, potatoes, and other delights. Jen, with the help of her mom, did an awesome job preparing all the food. I helped out here and there, but mostly mingled and enjoyed some mimosas.

We were out cold the rest of Sunday, doing a whole lot of nothing after the exhausting weekend.

This morning some guys are here re-enameling our kitchen sink, which has some chipped plaster, especially around the right-side drain. I took a before picture, so hopefully the after will look fantastic.

I’m a big fan of Google and its products. I’ve been using Gmail since early on its life (since June 14, 2004; I’m currently using 927 MB (34%) of my 2714 MB); I experimented with buying AdWords for my blog in November 2002; I’ve had AdSense ads on my site since May 2004. So when I learned yesterday that Google had launched a calendar offering — Google Calendar — I was immediately intrigued (and always expected that they would eventually offer one).

The technology and feature set are excellent (drag ‘n drop events, quick create events, multiple calendars with sharing, keyboard shortcuts!) — if you’ve used Gmail, you’ll be comfortable with Google Calendar — and the design simple, intuitive, and clean. Of course, there’s an integrated Google search so that you can search your events. There’s integration with Gmail, so that if Gmail recognizes an event, you can directly schedule it in your calendar. There’s the ability to send email reminders to yourself, which is pretty standard functionality, including daily agendas. And lots of other good stuff.

The problem, however, is that I’m pretty invested in Yahoo Calendar. I’ve been using it consistently for nearly 10 years — since 1998 — and used to synchronize it with my old school, early generation Palm Pilot.

Google Calendar does give you the ability to import other calendar data and suggests breaking apart the CSV files by year, so I did that yesterday with my Yahoo data and ended up with more than 6,000 calendar entries. A couple frustrating things about the import process:

1. Recurring events are not designated as such, but are imported past and future — through 2037 — as individual events
2. The timing is off post-import (e.g., a 12:30pm lunch in Yahoo Calendar shows up as 3:30pm in Google Calendar)

I’ve also experienced some sporadic errors in trying to import some of my data to Google Calendar. The archives — and maintaining accurate data — are important to me, so assuming I can get these kinks worked out, I just may migrate away from Yahoo Calendar after 8 years of usage.

Stella and Happy play at Saratoga Lake on Wednesday:

Photo by the most excellent Niki Rossi:

It’s been a tiring week, and I just haven’t been up for blogging much. We’ve done things like clear everything out of our living room and kitchen in preparation for painting. The rooms look awesome. Once they were pink… now they are green — Light Sage, to be exact.

Last night I did things like catch up on this week’s episodes of Big Love, 24, and Lost. It’s really starting to feel like it’s officially spring around here. The grass is getting greener by the day, we fertilized and did more yard work over the weekend, and it’s been warm enough to stop wearing socks and coats. I even took the dogs to Seth and Niki’s place yesterday for a swim in the lake (them, not me). Stella loves to swim and had a great time. Niki took what I know will be some great photos, which hopefully I can share here soon.

We’ve decided to paint our house inside and out. We’re painting the whole first floor, office aside, which is basically three rooms: living, dining, and kitchen. The living and dining rooms are currently a salmon, peachy pink color and will soon be Light Sage. The kitchen is currently mocha and will soon be Fuzzy Sheep. We’re using Pittsburgh Paints. We’re excited, especially because the inside will be done within the week. The outside probably won’t happen until early June. Along with the outside painting, we’re also getting our backyard ramp converted into stairs, and the 80-year-old chimney repointed to a proper angle. Good stuff.

Great video: You’re an Asshole (thanks, Uncle Michael, for the link).

Awesome bipedal dog: Faith the dog (thanks, Jami, for the clip).

I first discovered and wrote about Mozy back in December. Since then, I’ve been helping with their beta testing, providing the company with feedback along the way as they’ve improved their most excellent (and FREE!) online backup product. It really does kick some ass — after the initial setup, you can just forget about it, knowing that your most important data are being automatically and securely backed up whenever your computer is idle — and I’d encourage you to sign up for a free account (in exchange for the occasional email ad directly from them) or a paid account (only 20 bucks a year and no ads). If you sign up via this link (or any I’ve included herein), I’ll get a bonus +1GB of storage for every 4 referrals. And once you’ve signed up for your free 2GB account, you can refer people to increase the size of your account, too.

Here’s some more encouragement from the guys at Mozy:

Hey, I’m not worried about hard drive crashes or losing data accidentally because I’m using Mozy.com to backup my data. It’s super simple to use, and it’s automatic and free.

Just click on this link to sign up. If you have any trouble setting it up, I can help you out, and if you think you are too busy to get your backup solution in place, don’t come whining to me when your computer crashes. I’m just trying to help you out here. Really.

On the surface, having three or more wives might seem like a good idea for some people. But there’s far more than meets the eye, as HBO’s excellent new series Big Love explores. It follows the lives of a Utah polygamist, Bill Henrickson, and his three wives and many children. The family lives in three adjacent houses on a quiet suburban street, and Bill moves between the houses, spending rotating shifts with each of his wives, Barb, Nicki, and Margene.

I’ve watched the series since the first episode, and although it’s hard to watch at times — Bill’s enemy, who also happens to be one of his fathers-in-law (Nicki’s father), Roman, is the leader of the polygamist compound and has many wives, one who isn’t even 16 and proclaims in one episode, “Obedience is the greatest freedom of all!” — it just gets better with each episode.

I know it’s unpopular to say, but I don’t think Sopranos is the best show HBO’s ever had. When it was on, Six Feet Under was far superior. I watch Sopranos just to keep up on it since it seems like everyone else watches it and it is a well done show, but HBO has had far better series. It’s too early to say with Big Love, but I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

This past Sunday’s episode of Big Love examined power — the hierarchy within the family and the relative position of seniority of each of the wives within the family. There are some interesting dynamics at play, and a hell of a lot more to having multiple wives than one might think.

So if you’ve ever considered having more than one wife — for the record, I couldn’t be happier with the one perfect wife I’ve got! — or just want an excellent HBO alternative to the Sopranos, tune to Big Love.

Niki was right — my last blog entry was pretty lame — so I thought I’d spice it up with some photos from the highlight of this weekend’s party extravaganza — which included two nights out on the town, a chill backyard BBQ, and a dinner last night with the in-laws — and from which I still haven’t really fully recovered. If you were at the party, be on the lookout for a link with the entire photo album. If you’re reading this and weren’t at the party, let me know and I’d be happy to send you the link (if I know you).