I write this at 12:15pm (1:15 eastern) on Thursday, just under 3 hours to go under the MLB trade deadline. I’m writing this because I’m deeply confused as to the media attention of a potential Manny Ramirez trade from the RedSox. Quite simply, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Updates after the jump
First an update of sorts. We are moving into the house. I’m very excited about it. I think it’ll really be awesome for us. There’s a long road of repairs and cleaning to do before we move in (at the end of Sept) but I think we can get it all done in time.
So, to that end, this weekend was mostly moving and cleaning. We moved the grandparents to a nice “cottage” style place a couple weekends back and now all of their furniture from their apartment had to come back to the house. So, we moved all morning on Saturday and filled the one room that we’re not redoing top to bottom with furniture. Then Sunday we spent most of the day cleaning the kitchen and utility room which was a huge undertaking. So, now we have 1 room out of 9 clean and habitable again. The house had sat vacant for nearly 6 months, one of those months with the power turned off, so you can only imagine what the un-emptied freezer and refrigerator looked like. Needless to say we’ll be replacing those two appliances pretty quickly.
Next we’ll be pulling up the carpet throughout the house (hence the piling of furniture in a single room) and putting down new carpet and new tile. Then we’ll start the cleaning/packing process for the next month or so. Everything has a history and is important to the family, so everything needs the utmost care and attention, but we also need to make room for all our things as well as our furniture. So, family members will take what they want and we’ll probably end up storing the rest in the attic or putting it out for a yard sale at some point. Then everything that’s left will get a good coat of paint, a scrub down or both. Then we move in! Huzzah!
There’s already an office/study that Lauren and I can share for our computers and work area, and two guest bedrooms on top of that, so I can have the ever popular “man space” complete with comfy leather chair, TV, xbox and mini-fridge. I’m looking forward to that. I’m also, rather surprisingly (to myself) looking forward to having a garage. I’ve never had one before. None of the houses my parents owned had one, I haven’t rented one at any of the apartments down here, and now all of a sudden I get this huge garage which is nearly a 3-car size, for both cars plus a whole “work bench” area full of tools and whatnot. The manly “I need to fix things” instinct has taken over.
So, that’s whats going on with us. We’re in full on, 100% cleaning house mode. We’ve got a long road ahead but I think the pay off will be huge. I’ll post some pictures when I have a second to take them.
Matt out.
I have this terrible problem in that I can’t actually make decisions about the design of my own website. Every single wordpress theme I look at has potential but there’s something major about it that just rubs me the wrong way. Or, it has a lot of potential but there are so many little things that need to be changed that it’s not worth the effort. Then there are the themes I start designing myself, which always fail to match up with the picture in my head. I’ve done 6 PSD layouts in the past week. I’ve yet to finish one. I did a new/tech/sleek looking one but it was too “corporate” feeling. Then I did a grunge one but I don’t know if I actually like that style. Then I started a “space” one but nixed that because it was too trendy. So, I can’t find what I want, I can’t customize something to be what I want and I can’t make what I want from scratch. I don’t know if it’s “artists block” or what but it’s driving me up a wall.
We’ve got a nice new theme working. Found it over at SmashingMagazine and took a few minutes to customize it. Got rid of the weird “kid” illustration and added that little shield logo. Swapped out some graphics here and there. Added a “featured” category and a “featured” column to the left, which will highlight what I consider important posts. There’s still a few kinks to work out, like the little corners being a level above the photo lightbox overlays and the categories spilling over in the bottom footer, but I’ll get it figured out. So, whatcha think?
For nearly 3 months now I’ve been sans cell phone. I’ve actually been torn between enjoying being completely “off the grid” and being able to call people in a pinch. Well, it couldn’t last forever and now with my wife’s AT&T contract expired, we’re free to get away from the great devil phone company and get us both phones at a company that doesn’t suck the souls out of it’s customers.
That would be T-mobile. Sure, they’re not 100% perfect, but I’ve never dropped a call in the Houston area on a T-mobile phone. AT&T on the other hand, drops calls for my wife nearly every day.
Now my biggest hurdle is the phone itself. It seems that, following a complete removal from the T-mobile website and store fronts, my phone of choice, the Motorola KRZR K1, is either discontinued or being replaced with something else. I’m actually kind of upset about this. It was the perfect phone. It was the single most hackable piece of technology I had ever used up until recently when I got my DS. It was great. You could put just about any java game or app on there, load it up with MP3s as ring tones, all sorts of stuff, all with minimal effort. I’ll be very disappointed if there’s no equivalent to replace it.
That brings me to the lack of suitable other choices. There’s really only three that I’d consider in my price range. From Motorola, the W490 and the ROKR and the Samsung Katalyst. I used to really like Nokia phones, but the Nokia selection that’s available to T-mobile is really kinda weak. The Nokia 6263 is really the only thing I’d consider from that camp, and that’s more of a last resort sort of option. Actually, so is the Katalyst. Crackberries are right out. Not even going down that road.
That leaves me with a phone that’s a step below the phone I want, or essentially the same phone only in a form factor I don’t like. Awesome choices huh?
Then of course, there’s stories like this here and here. 16 new phones for T-Mobile coming in July/August. Crap. Now what do I do? Wait another month? Granted, nearly half of the announced new phones are Nokia and most of those are “budget” phones that will probably replace the current “free” phones that come with new plans, but still. Point is that new phones are landing this month and I’d be pretty pissed if I got a phone tomorrow only to find out that it’s discontinued and replaced with something else by Friday.
I hate phones. Can’t we just go back to parchment paper and carrier pigeons?
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