Building a New Home? Putting in an addition?

Helpful tips to building a house, or building out a room, or adding a room. We built 2 houses in four years, here are some of the things that we did, and that our friends and neighbors told us they thought of.

- Paint before moving stuff in. Its less expensive, but if you cant make up your mind on the color until you move in, find a nice off-white instead of that horrible builder's white. Save money by not doing the ceilings, but if you can swing it, do those too

- Like decorating for the holidays. For the inside, make sure you have outlets near windows to place electric candles. Where you are going to put a tree..put a switched outlet. For the outside, ensure you have outlets on both side of your stoop, otherwise you will be running an extension cord under a welcome mat. You should have an outlet near where you plan on having lights. If you have a lamppost outside, make sure it has an outlet on it. This comes in handy for decorating, but also lets you use electric yard tools easiliy.

- Hoses...If you are a DIY car washer, place a hosebib run near your garage, carport, or driveway. If you dont get an irrigation system, take a good look at your new yard and place hosebibs strategic areas.

- Run ethernet everywhere you run coax, there are eithernet cable converts now for just about every other kind of cable.

- Switched Electric outlets above and under cabinets will allow you to place rope lighting, or cheap xmas lights for a soft glow.

- Dimmers everywhere

- The the master bedroom, we knew we wanted reading lambs on both sides of our bed, so we put electric boxes rough ins about 5 feet up on the wall. We avoid having lamps on our bedstand or a electric wire dangling down the wall from an wall mounted lamp.

- Figure out where you are going to have your desk, tv and so on...put cable drops near there.

- Surround sound system. Send speaker wire to the sides and backs before the dry wall gets in.

- Home run all your cable.

- Kitchen tvs are awesome, bathroom tvs are even better, you may not need a cable box . We just have those auxiliary tvs fed from other utilized cable boxes that feed tvs in the next room. works great.

- Smurf tube for wires you dont even know you need.

- Take pictures of all the rooms and walls in the house before dry wall goes in and also when wire goes in.

- If you know you are going to mount TVS have the area loaded up with studs so you have lots of easy options when installed your flat panel. Also run smurf tube so you dont have all the wires coming out of the tv and run down the wall

- get an irrigation system

- topsoil the yard

- Ceiling fan rough ins

Apple Rebate

I have a rebate for apple. I goto apple.com and search rebate. I get itunes recommendation. nice. real nice.

Oh Apple, Apple, Apple Apple

So I love my ipods, i dont think the interface is that great though...i would rather have directional arrow than that wheel...mostly while driving, when i glance down and just need to go down one more item, and i get end up moving 5 clicks, then i need to glance down again, very frustrating. but worse is that i can not figure out how to fast forward faster than holding down the forward arrows...it takes over a minute to get into the middle of my podcasts.

that is not why im writing today though. my issue is apple, so i love the hardware..pretty great stuff. as you have seen in my other post my imac is a solid vista performer.

but here is my experience trying to buy the software for my 2 kids. I have a second gen apple mini that the boys use to go onto noggin.com, play a nemo game, and so forth. i wanted to get them Kid Pix Deluxe 3, but it is $40 on apple.com and amazon does not really sell the same version from what i can tell, and the developer's website says there is a "universal version" which has a bunch of upgrades, but i cant tell if i buy the version (Kid Pix Deluxe Studio 3) at BestBuy for $10 if it is the same, it works under mac 8.1 or something, so can i patch it to the newest version which is still called Kid Deluxe 3? There is also a Kid Delux 4, but according the the posts on amazon.com, it sucks.


Apple.com. $40, plus $4 shipping, and 3-4 week shipping time. - so that is out..wtf? Ill pick it up at the apple store right? Stupid 20 miles away, but whatever, i want it in the next few days or sooner. I cant check the store inventory from apple.com??!?! what? why not? how hard is it for apple to do this? maybe all the back end inventory systems that are developed doesnt run on osx ? lame, i keep making the mistake that apple is a technology company. and why 3-4 weeks to ship software?? 3-4 weeks is for buying furniture, not software retail.

so i call the Tyson's Store to ask them if they have it....listen to automated message about early iphone folks who get store credit, and the whole phone tree...need to speak to someone...press 5. ring ring ring ring.... no answer. i hang up after a couple dozen rings. come on. even BestBuy answers the phone, shouldn't apple provide better service than BB? I keep making the mistake that apple stores are real stores, and not just pretentious outposts.

so i just want to get the latest correct version of a popular kids drawing program for the mac. i dont understand why it has to be so confusing and expensive. Universal v. osx v. os 8.1 editions of the same thing?? Is windows software this confusing? i dont think so.

Want to make a margarita?

1 part tequila
1 part triple sec
1/2 part Grenadine
3 parts Mike's Margarita drink

imac v. dell xps 710. Vista stability duel !

My windows vista stability chart for my Dell XPS 710. (reads 5.48) kernal_data_inpage errors. blue screens of death, my old scanner did not work. ugh! (yes i have the new drivers, and bios upgrades)























My imac's stability index (9.67), (first apple machine since my apple IIc) no problems. i dont like osx, but if apple can build better window's machines than dell..then count me sold.

the little wiggles ruined everything

I actually did not mind the kids watching the wiggles. But when they created "the little wiggles" segment, it was unbearable. could those kids be any worse actors? sorry little aussie kids, you sucked. (except little murray, you were not bad)

They moved on to Hi-5, which was fine by me, jenn, karla, and kimmie are super cute...sorry curtis and shawn, im a fan, just not in that way.

So Refreshing

I have a personal blog..too personal
I have a professional blog...too serious
Whiny Geek Blog...juuust right.

So now I have finally a place to be me. My first post is an excuse post. I am a horrible writer. I am actually quite distraught over it, especially since I appreciate good writing, and by that reader I mean engadget and gizmondo, very funny, and it looks effortless. Most of my posts will be complaining about how nothing has reached potential, so this should be fun. I guess my fascination with complaining about how everything could be better is just a reflection of how I feel about myself. This usually manifests its self in me only giving about 80%, and never really finishing anything, and that is why this blog will probably not last beyond this post, especially since after every 4th word or so I see a red line under my words, and I have to stop..right click..and find what I *meant* to spell, many times I have done such a poor job, the word I was meaning to spell is not even listed, that always makes me feel pretty stupid. Anyway, on with my whining.