Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
do-it-yourself

attic project, part 1

Today, Brian and I removed the plywood ceiling from our front porch and replaced it with vinyl soffit. Doing this provided us with two benefits:
1. ventilation for the attic
2. a maintenance-free porch ceiling (no more painting! paint is my nemesis. but, somehow I always find myself painting something…)

Hopefully this will sufficiently ventilate our attic. If not, we’ll need to put vents in the fascia boards next year and that would not be a fun project to say the least. Today’s project took about 5 hours and we didn’t run into any issues (which is unusual for us), so we’ll call it a winner. Eventually, I’d like to cover as much wood as possible outside with vinyl. Up next year: fascia boards.

I’ve come up with an aggressive 5-year plan that will significantly reduce our remodeling “to do” list. I like to keep Brian busy–it keeps him out of trouble. Also, by the time I’m 40, I don’t want to still be dealing with all of this crap. I know there will always be maintenance items to do around the house, but if we could just get everything the way we want it, maintaining it wouldn’t be a problem. We’ve been working on the house for 8 years now and I’m more than ready to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

movies

anger management

Jake is staying at my parent’s this weekend, so Brian and I decided to do a “Margarita & a Movie” night. (Andy Lasky, take note!) Anger Management was on the tube so we watched that. Frankly I was a bit disappointed. It’s not like I’m a huge Adam Sandler fan, but his movies usually elicit a few laughs from me. This one just wasn’t that funny. I’ve always been a huge Jack Nicholson fan, but his character in the movie was just too weird–does he have to look insane in every movie?

The Flick Filosopher concurs: http://www.flickfilosopher.com/flickfilos/shortcuts/shortcuts17.shtml#anger

rants

annoyance, inc.

That’s what Atlantic Broadband should change their name to. While it is great that Brian’s ftp issue has resolved itself, we found out this evening that we can’t get any of our local channels through the cable box. Argh! We can get them if we bypass the box, though, so at least we can still watch them. I guess I’ll wait till Monday and see if this resolves itself, too. I’m not looking forward to talking to their support people. Given the level of support Brian got with his ftp issue, I imagine it will go something like this:

support: “Atlantic Broadband support. How can I help you?”
me: “None of the local channels are coming through the digital cable box. There’s a message that says ‘to order this service call 1-800-555-5555”.
support: “Hmm. Did you buy your tv from us? We can only support the cable box if it’s connected to one of our tvs.”
me: “No. Do you sell tvs.”
support: “No.”

Dish Network, anyone?

tech

lost in transition

Time to celebrate–Brian can ftp to his website again from home! Ever since Atlantic Broadband took over Charter in June, he has not been able to ftp from either pc at the house. Interestingly enough, I noticed in my blog stats that the pcs from our house were always showing up as IP addresses. But, other people on Atlantic were showing up as charterpa.com. Then, as of last night, both the pcs in our house and other people on Atlantic started showing up as atlanticbb.net. So, I told him to try it this morning. Lo and behold, it worked.

Of course, Brian contacted Atlantic about this months ago and they were absolutely no help. Since his website wasn’t hosted with them, they wouldn’t look into the issue. Of course, the weird thing is that he couldn’t ftp to any site on catalog.com, but all other sites worked ok. Either way, this was obviously a problem with Atlantic. I’m half-tempted to get satellite tv just so I don’t have to give them as much money every month. I’m not giving up my cable modem, though. DSL is not available at our house and I’m certainly not going to use dial-up.

music

america’s sweetheart

No, this isn’t another post about me, but rather Courtney Love‘s newest album. Brian wanted to purchase it because we have all of her other stuff. I was kinda on the fence because it bombed on the charts. But, he bought it and I’ve been listening to it for the past few weeks and I love it! At first I wasn’t so sure about it, but then the songs started sticking in my head–particularly the lyrics–and I got into it. The lyrics are ridiculous to the point of good. Courtney does her usual off-key singing/screaming. I don’t know what, but there’s just something about her voice that I like. If I had to pick a favorite song from the album, I guess it would have to be “I’ll Do Anything”. Don’t get me wrong, this is no Lateralus (the best album ever written. Period. by Tool). I’m sure I will tire of it sooner rather than later, but for now, I’m greatly entertained.