I replaced the door between my garage and back yard today. It was much easier replacing that door compared to the door I had replaced between the house and the garage. Probably because I had the experience of the first to make the second one more direct. I don’t love door replacements as a whole, but I learned a few things. The one thing I wanted to point out which may save some time and money: Many new doors have adjustable/replaceable weather stripping so that if you need to pull the weather stripping out of the crack they’re tucked into just about 1/16th of an inch – you can. If you pull it out that much to create a better seal you’ll have better energy efficiency AND not have spent $15.00 or more on new weather stripping. Pretty cool [or warm, depending on the season].
Category Archives: Too Much Information
You Don’t Know Percentages
When what you read is:
Debt increase by presidents: Reagan 186%, Bush 54% Clinton 41% Bush II 72% Obama 23%. /source CBO [from Twitter].
Does your brain translate it to this:
It turns out those percentages don’t add up to the actual national debt value, so the numbers seem wrong. But when someone shows you percentages get out your spread sheet or calculator to make sure that you’re not being had. If you say that Obama has had less spent during his presidency or that Clinton was a spendthrift or any number of other things based on percentages you’re probably doing it wrong. And yes, this is showing billions and trillions [the formatting isn’t quite right in the copy/paste].
Due to the compounding values of those debt numbers this massive expenditure of “only” 23% is rather ‘off’. Additionally Obama’s presidency is not over, so calling this one is a bit premature.
I say we call them all out for being fools with the financial resources. Additionally: congress(es) is (are) also responsible for this.
Communication Is Hard
At least that’s what they tell me. If you tell someone something enough times your job as a communicator will either get infinitely easier because they’ll finally get it. Or it’ll get much, much harder because the repetition causes the pith helmets and ear plugs to be put into place. I tell my daughters, “Think before you act,” about a bazillion times a month. I’m pretty sure they think it’s some mantra that my parents told me. It isn’t. My dad told me, “it is your mother and I’s responsibility to raise you to be an adult when you’re 18.” That worked out pretty well because I was a kid who was just looking for a place, a time, and a thing to be scared about. At 17 and 365 days I was scared of 18 because it meat adulthood.
I hope that my children one day learn to think before they act. I suspect it’ll be a lesson they learn throughout their lives. I also hope that when they turn 17 and 365 days they don’t panic like I did – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that I have more than one thing to learn.
Strange Day in Marriage Land
So Harry Reid has decided that prostitution is bad for Nevada (I think it’s terrible for marriages). And Obama thinks that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. If consenting adults… wait, you don’t suspect that these senators (one former, of course) are being inconsistent, do you? Nah, that’s impossible.
Insulation
This weekend I spent about 8 hours working on adding insulation to the garage roof (inside not outside).
I got the insulation because it was part of a rebate package.
I got the rebated insulation to complement the insulation I had gotten for the walls.
I got the insulation for the walls because I was going to drywall the garage.
I was going to drywall the garage because I got some new shelves and cabinets.
I got the shelves and cabinets because a guy I know kindly had some extras that were going to be thrown away at a job site.
No complaints, but these could be some of the most expensive free cabinets ever.
Why I Quit Facebook
I realized today that Facebook was not really my problem, but as a symptom I needed to move on. We had a good fling, me and Facebook. I realized I was not blogging in part because of Twitter & Facebook. For various reasons I’m keeping Twitter active (most of them professional). I also realized I was heavily distracted throughout my time as a dad, a husband, and as a brother-in-law (since my Sister-in-law has lived with us).
I was writing comments or responses to various folks, but then deleting them so as to not offend people who I had ‘friended.’ Therein lies the rub: if someone is your friend you want to care about them, but some folks were not friends, but acquaintances and I still didn’t want their facebook experience to be marred by my interjections on the site. Here on my blog I can be forthright, opinionated, and even make mistakes, but it is in my sandbox.
I should be blogging more now and I should be my usual spouting self, but I’m going to warn folks: I may reign all of my blogs into one central blog and quit the split personalities. That’ll mean religion, beer, food, programming and so forth in one place. I may even switch away from WordPress to experiment with other platforms.
I quit facebook so I could start relating with a few people more, rather than more people just a little. I’m back and I’m going to make an effort to spin things up to crazy, silly, funny, and personal. I don’t think anyone else should leave Facebook because I did, I’m just doing this for my own focus and purposes.
Too Much Information: News for 2010-4-14
In an effort to stay on top of news, I present to you: Too Much Information! A snarky look at how our news is not useful.
4 shot dead in Chicago home – because the fact they were shot is not enough, we need to know it was inside. A home. In Chicago. I wonder if they were shot alive in the woods in Benton, IL instead of Chicago if it would have been picked up [ED: I’m not trying to be callous about murder, I’m just weirded out by the odd specifics of the headline].
Russia pledges $50 mln to replenish Kyrgyz coffers – That’s health care generosity. I had no idea that the civil unrest in Kyrgyz was due to coffing. I thought that they were ticked at their president, but it turns out that they had a respiratory disorder. I feel better now knowing that Russia is on top of the coffee people of Kyrgyz.
Palin urges less government, lower taxes at Boston Common Tea Party rally – If I was charging as much as she is for ‘appearances’ and ‘speaking’ I would want to have lower taxes so as to keep more of that money. Also: does she like her tea strong like the British? Would that be ironic? British. Tea. Taxes. It feels historical somehow.
Google Adds Real-Time Twitter Archive Search – when I tweet I consider it 140 characters or less of throw-away rubbish. Now you can search for my rubbish and the rubbish of millions in real time. That’s like being on the receiving end of a garbage disposal. Yummy!