Fun With Craig

Anybody need a pine TV hutch?
It didn't sell the first time so
I put another ad up on Craig's List.
We didn't sell it the second time either but were offered some nice pearl earrings in trade. We were asking too much. So it now resides in the basement of Gilford's Floor Covering until we decide what to do with it next.

Yeppie

I bought a laptop yesterday. If anybody should have a laptop, it's a nerd like me. I don't know why I held out so long. I may be part of the "Yeppie" generation. Young Experimenting Perfectionist. Not so young anymore, but the rest of the definition fits which is a person who can't commit to a buying decision because there are 100 other good offers out there and the technology's changing minute to minute. So I threw my hands in the air and bought a Toshiba Satelite at Costco for about $1200 along with a way to go wireless when my DSL gets activated on the phone line next Monday. I concluded it would be a good way to be unconfined in the house. Downstairs in the entertainment room is a built-in desk where a full size keyboard, monitor, printer and scanner could reside and be hooked up to when I have to do some power computing. We also bought a little round nook table big enough for Joy and I to have our meals next to the kitchen. It sits up a little higher and with the chairs out has a diameter of about seven feet. We also bought a three-phone package (one for each floor) with an answering machine base. Saturday we took the rest of our crap out of the folks' house. Bags and bags of clothing we had to sort through to see if any was donatable to Goodwill, along with other things too small for the movers from three weeks ago. Joy worked her self to the bone cleaning the master closet at our new place to house much of the stuff. She's limping around loving the stairs.

The Pursuit of Cushy

I ordered movie chairs from Home Video Library yesterday. They'll take a couple months to get here. We've got lawn chairs in the interim. They are microfiber covered, cushy chairs you can lean back in with a fold-out footrest connected with wedge-shaped arms in between that form a slight arc and cover around twelve feet when put in place. They also have built-in cupholders for the drive. Leather was considered, but the brown microfiber seemed softer and warmer. We're obviously limited if we have a big group over but that won't happen often. The reality is that it'll be me and my three invisble friends most of the time. Getting Joy to actually sit down to watch a 90 minute movie start to finish is a monumental achievement. She takes her televised entertainment in random doses while puttering around the house. It usually takes the form of someone choosing between three ugly houses in which the potential buyers say the word "nice" 85 times, or it's a show about doing a complete kitchen remodel on a budget of $5. Our phone was connected yesterday but I don't know the number. Jeff, audio/video man, is waiting for parts so the house is still peacefully quiet. The Custom-Line people corrected the mirror alignment on Joy's vanity cabinet doors. I'm debating between getting a laptop or desktop, having donated my desktop to Mom. She does email and some surfing so an eight-year-old computer works great for her. The folks are due home from Palm Desert April 5th so Joy and I are making this weekend the big clean-up weekend, getting as much of our junk out of the basement as possible.

Confession

I'm a bit of a computer junkie. I love surfing the net, building and maintaining websites, keeping up to date on what's current in the tech world. I can even believe in the philosophy that humans are evolving into a better connected species because of the possibilities opened up through the internet. Having access to the knowledge trough out there makes us the most informed generation in history. You can also get really off-color jokes from friends and family, access to porn and bomb making and a whole load of things from humanity's darker side. You get what you want and what you choose to contribute. That's the key. You can sit on the sidelines and surf or you can become the source for some of the vast content out there. I'm at my most frustrated when I can't find an hour to put pen to electronic paper. So what's the confession part of this? Well, in that darker world of "file-sharing" I am a user and abuser. It's not something I'm particulary proud of. Computer technology can make the most upstanding of us into common criminals. I have downloaded my share of music, TV and movie files over the years. A file-sharing technology called Bit-Torrent allows this to happen. The expectations as a user of this technology is that you'll download something and pass it along. It's a beautiful thing. It's also unethical and illegal. You're ripping off the creators of the content the moment you click "download." The Bit-Torrent technology makes matters worse because you're not only stealing the property, you're distributing it to who knows how many people. So you're a drug user and a dealer blinded by the freely accessibly technology. HBO's mobster hit The Sopranos just started its sixth season. I've caught every episode over the first four seasons legally by renting DVDs at Blockbuster. When the fifth season came out on DVD, I tried out the Bit-Torrent and downloaded the 13 episodes over a 24 hour period and watched at my convenience during construction of our house. Last week, the fresh first episode of season six came down the pipeline without a hitch. No time to watch it, of course, but I'll save it for later. This weeks episode two was even easier. I'll just fill my hard drive at work with these episodes and watch them on my little computer monitor after hours when I have 13 hours to kill. That'll make total sense because when I actually do get the time to watch them, the whole sixth season will be available on DVD and I'll be able to watch the shows at home on the big screen in surround sound in a comfy chair with some popcorn. Six at night Wednesday, I get a call from my internet service provider. It seems the second episode I downloaded (and distributed) had a program attached called Media Sentry. It figures out who has been using Bit-Torrent for this particular episode and alerts HBO, who in turn hires somebody to call all the internet service providers out there to alert them about certain offenders on their networks. "We have been contacted by HBO. They'd like you to stop using Bit-Torrent to distribute their copyrighted program, The Sopranos." The tech at my ISP went on to say that they weren't shutting off my service but I'd been given a warning. It felt like lead mobster, Tony Soprano, had just broken my legs. I also felt like a 12-year-old boy who's Mom just caught him sneaking a peak at Playboy. I really had no idea you could be monitored that way by your ISP. What else do they know about me? Anyway, the lesson's learned and the silly habit's been broken. Maybe it's time to join the solid citizenry who actually buy HBO and Tivo the episodes, or actually walk into a music store and buy a CD. Old habits really are difficult to break. I've had a history of pilfering intellectual property. Just look at my Mad Cover Site. I had an early battle with Mad's lawyers on that one, but that's another story.

Overwhelmed

I wanted to show you what we woke up to over the weekend. Now if we just had the time to sit back and enjoy it. While still moving into our place we're on a deadline to get my parents' basement cleaned up before they get home on April 5th. We're supposed to get phone service this week. We have no computer or television at home (it's actually been nice to have it so quiet). It's amazing how you become dependent on these electronics. We're also having a new roof put on our store. Black tar dust is filtering through the cracks in the ceiling.

Doing the blog thing...

Now that Joy and I have been into our house for one full week, I realize I miss updating the site I kept up for nearly 15 months. Also, the site was pretty one-sided without a lot of feedback possible from viewers. Using this "blogger" website, you'll have an opportunity to publicly respond if you want. Hoodcourthouse.com didn't stray much from the topic of us building our house in Sandy except when Joy's cancer popped up a couple times, so I hope to stray a lot with this forum. Along with updates on what we're doing around the house, there'll be the trials and tribulations of running a small family floor covering business, maybe a touch of Mad Magazine collecting, movie and music musings, and even some opinions you might want to challenge once in a while.
Doug