On the first floor I was able to get an electrician to do the rough in and on the second floor I have the mantle base finished. I will try and get the mantle finished this week sometime this week and start hanging drywall downstairs next week. Here are some pictures:
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we've been told and some choose to believe it
I know they're wrong, wait and see.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that
and someone believed it,
and look what it's done so far.
What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
All of us under its spell,
we know that it's probably magic....
Have you been half asleep
and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that I'm supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
La, la la, La, la la la, La Laa, la la, La, La la laaaaaaa
I ran across a version of rainbow connection today and it brought back memories of my youth. I actually got choked up a little bit thinking about it. Someday we'll find it.
And what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we've been told and some choose to believe it
I know they're wrong, wait and see.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that
and someone believed it,
and look what it's done so far.
What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
All of us under its spell,
we know that it's probably magic....
Have you been half asleep
and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that I'm supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
La, la la, La, la la la, La Laa, la la, La, La la laaaaaaa
I ran across a version of rainbow connection today and it brought back memories of my youth. I actually got choked up a little bit thinking about it. Someday we'll find it.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Jesus Christ I feel like shit
I don't know what is wrong with me. Whenever I get a cold it is never one of those whoppers that just takes you out for a couple of days. The colds I get are those where you just feel like you stayed up all night drinking and fell down a flight of stairs. Nothing that would excuse not going in to work, but certainly not well enough to do anything fun. I've felt like this for the last couple of days. Please, please, please go away Mr. Cold. RICOLA!!!!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Groucho Marx
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Chinese Proverb
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
Unknown
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC after reaching puberty.
Unknown
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but is always polite to traffic cops.
Unknown
A priest advised Voltaire on his death bed to renounce the devil. Replied Voltaire, "This is no time to make new enemies."
Irish Toast
May those who love you, love you... and those who don't, may God turn their heart, and if he cannot turn their heart, may he turn their ankle so that you will know them by their limp
Unknown
Low Brow is the man who can fart the national anthem.
High Brow is the man who stands and puts his hand over his heart.
High Brow is the man who stands and puts his hand over his heart.
Thomas Szasz
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition, half of 'em are even dumber than THAT.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Umberto Eco
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Richard P. Feynman
Of course you only live one life and you make all your mistakes and learn what not to do and that's the end of you.
Richard P. Feynman
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
Raymond Chandler
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
Lady Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
Elbert Hubbard
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Dr. Seuss
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
Clint Eastwood
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
Bertrand Russell
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
Arnold Lobel
Books to the ceiling, Books to the Sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them
Steven Weinberg
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Stephen Jay Gould
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Sir Julian Huxley
Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.
Noam Chomsky
Regarding censorship: It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.
Kate Sheppard
All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.
John Cage
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
Andre Malraux
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Robert A. Heinlein
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Paul Dirac
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Norm Papernick
Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.
Kurt Vonnegut
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Kurt Vonnegut
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Ken Kesey
I've never seen anybody really find the answer, they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
George Bernard Shaw
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Doug Larson
There must be a happy medium somewhere between being totally informed and blissfully unaware.
Albert Einstein
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Tideland
I've been a fan of Terry Gilliam for quite a while. From Monty Python, through Brazil, to 12 Monkeys. I find his vision and sense for the absurd to be amazing. He never fails to make me laugh. The first time I heard that he was adapting Don Quixote for the screen I was elated. When I heard that it had fizzled a week into production I was crushed. I watched enthralled as he knowingly became a reflection of Quixote in the documentary of that film Lost in La Mancha. I am a Gilliam fan because I know that he consistently swings for the fence. Whether he knocks it out of the park or strikes out, you never know, but I don't think he's ever just "phoned it in". I was surprised when I came across Tideland. He made it in 2005. I'd never even heard about it. Like me it seemed to only be popular in Asia. Well, I decided to give it a try. It is the story of a girl (Jeliza-Rose) of about 8 or 9 whose been raised by her abusive and neglectful junkie parents. It starts with a scene where Jeliza-Rose cooks up a dose of heroine for her father (Jeff Bridges) to shoot up. This got my attention. A few scenes later Jeliza's mother (Jennifer Tilly) dies. Jeliza's father panics and flees with Jeliza. They go to his dead mother's abandoned farm house. There they setup house. Not two scenes later, you see him shooting up again. Jeliza goes off and plays by herself while he quietly overdoses. He was such a neglectful parent to begin with that she fails to realize or at least acknowledge this for the rest of the movie. The next 30 minutes of the movie involves her interacting with and trying to gain the attention of his rotting corpse. That gets us about 45 minutes into the movie. Things only get weirder from there. Let me just say that the events of the rest of the movie are hard to describe. Her father is eventually taxidermied by the neighbors and she is rescued when the train that runs by her house is dynamited by those same neighbors.
Gilliam begins the movie with what feels like a plea to be understood. He says that the story is told through the eyes of a child and he asks that we set aside the qualms and prejudices that we may have built up since we were her age. He then admits that for those who view the movie, there will be three groups. Those of love it, those who hate it and those who don't really know what to think of it. I guess I fall into each of those categories. I love it because it is so Gilliam, and you can tell that he is swinging for the fence in this one. I'm not sure I hate it, but it isn't his best work. Finally, I am a little confused, but that may just be that it was late and I was sleepy and distracted while watching it. Anyway, if you are a Gilliam fan this might be one for you. If you aren't a Gilliam fan you will hate this. Finally, if you don't know who Terry Gilliam is, please watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Twelve Monkeys or Brazil or Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail first.
Gilliam begins the movie with what feels like a plea to be understood. He says that the story is told through the eyes of a child and he asks that we set aside the qualms and prejudices that we may have built up since we were her age. He then admits that for those who view the movie, there will be three groups. Those of love it, those who hate it and those who don't really know what to think of it. I guess I fall into each of those categories. I love it because it is so Gilliam, and you can tell that he is swinging for the fence in this one. I'm not sure I hate it, but it isn't his best work. Finally, I am a little confused, but that may just be that it was late and I was sleepy and distracted while watching it. Anyway, if you are a Gilliam fan this might be one for you. If you aren't a Gilliam fan you will hate this. Finally, if you don't know who Terry Gilliam is, please watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Twelve Monkeys or Brazil or Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail first.
Russian Proverb
The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
Robert A. Heinlein
Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.
Robert A. Heinlein
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert A. Heinlein
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Robert A. Heinlein
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense
Robert A. Heinlein
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
Robert A. Heinlein
I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape.
Kurt Vonnegut
Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!
Isaac Asimov
I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance
Bob Dylan
Disillusioned words like bullets bark, As human gods aim for their mark, Make everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark. It's easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred.
Nelson Algren
Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
Matt Groening
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.
James Baldwin
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
J. W. Nienhuys
It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating us in a stupid way.
George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Aristotle
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Will Durant
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Sir William Drummond
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Plutarch
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
Mark Twain
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
George Santayana
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Frank Herbert
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
Blaise Pascal
Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
Blaise Pascal
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the things we know that ain't so.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Slowly removing each of the roadblocks
Bit by bit I'm getting each of the million little tasks out of the way that are part of the remodel on the first floor. This weekend, I got the underlayment in the bathroom finished. At this point there is a total of 2 inches of plywood covering the joists in the bathroom. Why so much? Well, the floors are so uneven in this house that there was a 3/4 inch difference between the living room and the bathroom. That leaves the following things:
- Hang bathroom door
- Rewiring of the spaghetti mess that goes into the three breaker boxes in our basement.
- Rough wiring for the bathroom, kitchen, laundry and new fixtures in the dining room
- Rough plumbing in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry
- Hang drywall
- Finish drywall
- Install new windows
- Install trim
- Install cabinets
- Install dish washer
- Install counter tops
- Finish plumbing
- Finish electrical
- Paint
- Install hardwoods
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
George F. Will
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
Thomas Jefferson
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Walter Kerr
Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.
Voltaire
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly, that is the first law of nature.
Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Terry Pratchett
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Stephen King
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off."
Stephen King
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Robert A. Heinlein
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
Patrick Henry
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
Marquis D.A.F. de Sade
The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.
Hunter S. Thompson
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Emo Philips
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
Dennis Ritchie
//UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
Dalai Lama
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Chapman Cohen
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
Ambrose Bierce
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Alexai Sayle
Americans have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift" ... they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git".
Albert Einstein
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
William Ellery Channing
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war, then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
Voltarine de Cleyre
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
Poul Anderson
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
Mario Cuomo
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us.
Haile Selassie
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Galileo Galilei
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
Frederick Douglass
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.
Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Stephen Jay Gould
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
R. Buckminster Fuller
Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
Monday, July 02, 2007
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