Today, they started to "make dirt" according to my son.  They dug all all of the holes and set the posts in concrete:


A few hiccups, though.  We originally were going to have a pergola about were our concrete pad is.  However, we expanded the original deck design to cover the whole patio and we couldn't keep the pergola without a post in front of our backdoor.  But the most important for us is to have the right design.

Also, the wood arrived late.  I guess one of the guys at Lowes was sick and they were backed up.  But here is the delivery:


So tomorrow, they start framing bright and early.

As always, follow the progress @ Deck Remodel

Today I was doing some yard work and was trying to kill off some weeds.  I was using RoundUp and ran out.  I found a simple homemade recipe online today and tried it out:

• 1 gallon of White Vinegar
• 1 cup of Salt
• 1 tablespoon of Dawn or dishwashing soap

It costs about $1 to make and worked a lot better that RoundUp did.  About 2 hours later, everything that I sprayed with the homemade stuff was totally dead.  The weeds that I sprayed with RoundUp looked unaffected.

What is nice about this recipe is that it is safe around pets and children.

Ever since we bought this house, we have had a major problem with our back yard.  A walk was put it with cheap "indoor" railings around it.  It was unsafe and an eyesore:



In addition, we have a concrete patio next to it that was ok but could use a make over:


We decided to get the whole back of the house redone.  Tomorrow, the deck remodel begins.

Follow the progress @ Deck Remodel

I thought this was a cute picture of my kids taken a nap:



I call it "2 Left Feet"

My daughter sang the ABC song for her Kindergarten graduation:

Thursday night, I installed the beta Office 07 on my laptop.  Still a little bumpy, still trying to get it running right.  Anyways, I was very interested in what new "tagging" features or equivalent that Outlook 2007 might have.  Initially, I was a little disappointed but still evaluating it.  I read a few people's impressions on this topic and came across the whole "Getting Things Done" approach.  I am very interested in this topic and will research more about it. 

While visiting 43Folders.com , I came upon ThanksNo.com. 

Hi. The person who sent you this link is a friend who likes you a lot but who wants you to respect their email address, their privacy, and their time.

Chances are, this person asked you to visit this page because you did one of these things:

• Forwarded a funny story, a virus warning, or a photo that you enjoyed
• Sent email to lots of people using the “To:” line (instead of the “BCC:” line), thereby exposing your friend's email address to strangers
• CC’d your friend unnecessarily on something you had sent primarily to someone else

In any case, you might want to go back and have another look at the email they’re replying to. They asked you to visit here because, while they love getting one-on-one, personal messages from you, they really don’t want to receive more messages like the one you just sent. Cool?

You’re not a bad person, and no one hates you, but it would be valuable to learn the very personal preferences of your friends, family members, and co-workers before including them in unrequested email or choosing to expose their private address to people they don’t know.

Thanks for understanding, and if this same thing ever happens to you, feel free to reply to an email you don’t want by pasting this in

The basic message is don't forward me crap...I have enough to read and do.

I sent one these messages a few years ago to friend.  It got to the point where I stopped reading his email because it was just forwarded crap.  One time, he sent me some important message...like he's visiting or something.  I didn't read it until after the time had past.

I shared this site with my wife.  She is definitely a vicitim of this topic.  Sometimes, she is a recursive victim.  She wanted to add:  please don't forward me anything that you received from someone else and I was also copied on.  For example, her grandma will forward some email to her and her mom (not BCC'd).  Her mom then forwards it again to her without taking the time to read the initial distribution list.

Regardless, I did enjoy the footer with respect to the warranty of the site:

It is provided in the hope it will be useful, but it is offered on an as-is basis and without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

I wrote a vb.net program a few months ago that leverages CookComputing.com's XML-RPC library.  I just upgraded to using Framework 2.0.  The upgrade wizard did an ok job with the migrate.  It did find a few items but it wasn't too bad.  My biggest offending issue was some background threads that were not updating form elements via invoking on the main thread.  I knew about this issue but I was just lazy...and this was utility for me.  However, it forced me to make it threadsafe...which I think is a good thing. 

After fixing up my code, it wouldn't run when calling a REST API.  I used an interfaced approach with the API call.  When I called to generate the proxy, I got very non-descript error message.  Did some quick research and found that there is known bug with the framework 2.0 and the library as to how it uses reflection not marked as Public.

From CookComputing.com:

In May I reported to the MSN Product Feedback Center a problem with .NET 2.0 beta 2 which broke existing XML-RPC.NET applications. The bug report was later marked as fixed, in particular "This bug will be fixed in RTM milestone.". Unfortunately the problem still exists in the release version of .NET 2.0.

Therefore any applications which create a XML-RPC.NET proxy based on an interface which is not declared as public will fail on the call to XmlRpcProxyGen.Create.

I just recently changed my domain registar from Dotster.com to GoDaddy.com.  I did this mainly because Dotster started to charge for the DNS manager...$10 per year.  During the transfer, I got this email from Dotster:

We’d like to encourage you to stay by offering you reduced account pricing. If you choose to take advantage of this offer and cancel your transfer, we will permanently reduce your registration, renewal, and transfer pricing. Your new pricing will include $8.95 registrations and renewals along with $7.75 transfer pricing. We DO NOT charge an ICANN fee, as most other registrars do. The new pricing applies to the following TLD’s - .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, and .us. Just click on “renew domains” below to take advantage of this offer and cancel your transfer. The new pricing will apply to all future registrations and renewals as well, and is effective immediately.

This actually frustrated me even more.  So in order to get the cheaper rate, you have to threaten them to leave.  That's is not a business model that I want to be a part of.  If they can offer that rate, then it should be the normal rate.

My daughter's speech teacher was killed this morning at 3:30 am.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is investigating a fatal accident that took place on I-275 south of SR 125 in Union Township, Clermont County, early Sunday morning.

Police say Kathryn Haumesser, 27, of Amelia, was driving a 1997 Saturn in the northbound, right lane of a construction zone around 3:30 a.m. when she was struck by an oncoming pickup truck head-on.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2006/local/02/26/275_fatal.html

Not sure what we tell our daughter.  very tragic.

It has been almost 9 years since I brewed my last batch of beer.  Tonight, we bottled an October Fest beer.  Here's the wife capping: 


And the boy packing: