Monkey House

The Monkey House is undergoing renovation. It has been in one way or another since we bought this townhouse last August. The previous owners did not take great care of it and certainly never updated any of it. Luckily, despite negligence the bones are strong and we have the makings of a great home here.

Not sure if I’ll ever take the chance to describe each update (though the dishwasher story is a legend in my own mind) but here’s a short rundown of what we’ve done so far. Let’s call it a checklist for future memories of work done:

1. Painting (of course):
   • Main bedroom in dark brown and a medium (complementary) gray
   • Mama Monkey’s office (banana yellow; coincidence only)
   • Baby Monkey’s nursery (lime green)
   • Hallway including that god-awful tall space in the stairwell
   • upstairs doors
   • trim throughout
   • Ceilings…for each of those rooms…. oh how I hate ceilings
2. Baseboards in 2 rooms… 3rd on the way
3. Replacing switches and outlets throughout
4. Changed light fixtures in the kitchen, which included patching and repainting the ceiling
5. Installed new toilet in ensuite
6. New hallway light fixtures
7. Installed new Dishwasher
8. Changed out kitchen faucet and installed shutoff valves
9. Repaired garage door
10. Added Transition strips to all kinds of rooms that really needed them
11. Fixed (as best we could) bizarre choices made by previous owners
12. Pulled out reams and reams of caulking… folks, caulking is NOT the cure-all for every gap you see

This brings me to the real point of today: The Home Depot money-sponge.

You walk in there, and you can practically feel your pennies being drained out of their bank account one by one.

A few weeks ago, went in for… who knows what? I think it was some plywood and hardboard. Walked out with all that stuff, plus a hand tool (drywall saw), plus a power tool (DeWalt jigsaw). You could argue that I “needed” those things, but as I worked away on my project (using the jigsaw), I realized that I didn’t REAAaaallly need… the jigsaw. My lovely Stanley multi-purpose hand saw would have also worked.

Tonight, I walked in to get… a small amount of tiles (a $15 sheet) and some grout ($6 I was thinking). Walked out with a v-notch trowel (could have made do makeshifting something… I only need it for like, one stroke through the adhesive), adhesive (gotta have that PLUS the grout), grout, and a grout super-sponge (something other than a sponge would have worked). $45 for what in my head was going to be a $20 event. Now, I won’t claim this is the most expensive trip I’ve ever taken there, but it really drove home the point…

I have NEVER gone there and spent what we set out to spend.

But on the other hand, we also got great advice from a knowledgeable employee. I know we’ve all had the sales associate who didn’t know their stuff, but this is the third… fourth?… time that we’ve had expert help. Yeah, it was the expert that got me into the v-notched trowel (only another $3.50… she tried to find the smallest and cheapest one possible), but it’s also that expert who had me leaving the store feeling confident that we’d be able to pull off our first attempt at tiling.

So far? Home Depot is a bane to our bank account, but a boon to our renovation efforts. And not just for the merchandise.

OOoo Ooo!

I would by lying if I said I have completely purged my own workplace of this particular error. I’m working on it, honest! The question is:

Do I use “login” or “log in”.

The answer is surprisingly simple. Or at least, if you work it out in practical terms, it is simple… I’m going to throw in some good ol’ fashioned grammer(sic) terminology as well:

Login

Use “login” when it is an adjective (there’s the grammar term). This means, quite simply, use it when you’re describing something. “What kind of page am I visiting? Oh, a login page!” Note: if you prefer logging ON instead of IN, the same rule applies. “What kind of credentials are these? Oh, they’re my logon credentials!”

Log in

Use “log in” when you using it as a verb (terminology, yay!); ie., you are talking about the action of logging in. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad jumping-off point. You would never say in one word, “I am loggingin”… it’s always “I am logging in.”. By the same token, you would tell someone that they need to “log in”. Note: as per above, you would also tell someone to “log on”.

Log in at your login page.
Log on with your logon credentials.

Pedantic? You bet!

I spend a lot of time online. If it’s not for work, it’s for my own enjoyment. I simply like finding entertainment online more than I enjoy flipping channels.

As I weave in and out of the various sites I come across, I often notice typos or outright spelling/usage errors on people’s sites. Usually, these are small businesses who probably have a limited budget for marketing, and don’t see hiring an editor (or even a proofreader– not the same thing!) as a priority. 80% of the time (unless I’m on a mission), if I think the person might care to fix it, I drop them a line. I do not correct anybody’s informal language if I can help it. Lard knows there’s gonna be a bunch of it on this blog. In any event, most people are appreciative… particularly if it’s just a typo that had somehow escaped their attention.

But when I really get to head-scratching is when a site is owned and developed by a company with enough resources to get the job done right (ie. they can hire someone), and I see a typo in what seems to be priority-positioned sales or marketing verbage. If you ask me (and you didn’t), you’re going to have a hard time selling when your credibility has been crushed in one quick blow.

I mean, seriously. A typo I can live with. An informal site with informal language and some spelling errors, I can live with. But a serious website with some fundamental mistake like “Do things you’re own way”? Just about drives me batty.

It occurs to me that in a well-written blog, this is where the link or list of examples goes. Maybe I’ll get to that some day. Until then, how about some Bad English instead? (also gives me an excuse to see if I got the idea of Viper’s plugin right):

Like many things, this blog is late in coming.  It was too late coming to chronicle my time as a teacher in Mexico, my year in Northern Ontario in Kashechewan, a 1200-km bike journey from Ottawa, my blooming romance and subsequent marriage to the love of my life (she doesn’t know I plan to call her Mama Monkey on this blog… we’ll see how she takes to that!), or the first 6 months of Mama Monkey’s pregnancy.

But, better late than never.

As somebody with a certain degree of design acumen (or at least a reasonable sense of aesthetics), I thought the thing holding me back would failure in finding a non-generic blog theme that I liked.  After all, when I taught myself CSS and XHTML (polishes knuckles on t-shirt) to seamlessly integrate WP 2.2 into my website (gregdpettit.com) I had no excuses, right?  Well, after burning up my energy creating the site, I pretty much abandoned it and there it has sat for 2 years waiting to be something.

So, no, it wasn’t the theme holding me back.

That said, it looks like the cycle is beginning all over again.  I’ve installed 2.7.1 to my new domain here, and I thought, “just grab a decent theme and start blogging.”  Except, it doesn’t have my personal touch.  Even the header needs some CSS tweaks (let the height of the header be fluid) to get the original (crappy) logo I made to work right… no energy, no energy. On hold, on hold…sigh…

So What’s This Blog About, then?

I started blogging for the company I work for (blog.filecatalyst.com) and realized sometimes I would just want to ramble about random stuff. Some of the stuff that will appear here (assuming my beautiful wife never joins me in writing):

• Being a new dad
• Music (in particular, guitar playing and general home studio recording)
• Home Renovations
• Reviews of any damn thing I feel like reviewing
• The glory of Mutton Chops; one of the grandfather facial hair styles of the genealogy of beards!
• Having a pair of very different dogs in my family
• Being a husband
• Board games (my library is not deep, but my geekiness is profound!)
• Art
• Web Design

…and if I feel like doing here what I never did at my personal website….

• English grammar and usage
• Education and teaching

I know, I know… people tell me if I want a well-traveled blog, I either need a strong personality to carry it off (check out Mariel Hemingway from my blogroll), or focused content (check out Saunderslog.com). I have neither! But no matter, I will either find my niche, my niche will find me, or I will simply never have an audience. No problem!

Oo Oo Oo!
Greg