Paul's Down-Home Page

(No, it’s not on fire). Longtime readers may remember that our roof didn’t have tar paper underneath the shingles. I finally got around to hiring a competent roofer (Adam and the gang at Integrity Roofing), and guess what? There is tar paper under the shingles. Too bad we didn’t find that out until we had part of the existing shingles off. This posed a difficult conundrum:

• If we replaced just the shingles that had been removed (and the peak shingles, since they need to be removed to replace the roof vents), we’d have a patchwork-quilt-looking roof. This leads to lower resale value, which isn’t a big conern right now. However, ut takes 10+ years for the shingles to weather out, at which point…
• The existing roof was laid in 1991, and it has a design life of about 20 years. By the time the new shingles look like the old ones, it would probably be time to replace the old ones altogether. Making things worse,
• We need to replace or repair the roof over the breakfast area, leading to the patchwork problem again. And…
• Now I can afford to repair the roof. In four or five or ten years, I might not be able to, and I don’t want it to hurt our ability to sell the house later.

So, Adam’s merry men are busily upstairs pulling down the shingles and re-reroofing the house. I am resigned to the idea of buying an upgrade that I really didn’t need but that might come in handy later. Maybe I need an iPod to cheer me up. Yeah, that’s the ticket…

To the tune of You Are My Sunshine:

During the night time
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I’d bought a new iPod
When I awoke, though,
I was iPod-less
So I fired up iTunes instead

I suppose it’s a little scary that I dream about buying technostuff instead of flying, or being naked in front of an important audience, or books. I also, unfortunately, would have about zero use for an iPod, as cool as they are. I’ve been getting good use out of BeBopper, an MP3 player for my phone. Maybe when I’m rich and famous I’ll buy an iPod anyway, just because I can… nah.

John’s anniversary gift is extremely cool, but I think Arlene topped it: she got me a Crossbow. It’s like a Bowflex, but about $1400 cheaper. Supposedly it gives you much of the same benefits as free weights, and anything would be an improvement over my current physical condition. Thomas is particularly excited, and David went on at length about how I would look better “just like the real people in the Bowflex commercials”. Oh joy.
Tim and I set it up on Labor Day (actually, Tim did all the work while I yelled at Dell over the phone), but I haven’t been able to use it until today thanks to a combination of residual vasectomy soreness, laziness, and overscheduling. Today, though, I got up at 0515, dashed off a quick workout plan, and hit it. I feel great! The unit is solidly constructed (see why) and gave me good resistance throughout the range of motion. I need to buy the lat bar, because when doing pulldowns or raises with the individual cables it’s hard to keep the cables stable.
I found out that ICON offers a manual with a six-week workout plan; I’m going to order a copy when I order my lat bar. In other news, the running battle between the Bowflex and Crossbow trademark owners continues; the latest is that ICON can continue to use the “Crossbow” name despite the earlier injunction that found it confusingly similar to “Bowflex”.

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Scoble says a Krispy Kreme wedding cake is going too far. I say, where was this bright idea twelve years ago when Arlene & I got married? As a matter of fact, we had to settle for a traditional cake this past December when Julie and Paul tied the knot. Time to plan to renew our vows, I guess. Just remember: one doughnut per guest, please.

So that’s what they call it. From this story in the New York Times:

Because of wiring problems and general aesthetic concerns, the right and left rear speakers in a surround-sound system suffer from what those in the home-electronics business call low spousal acceptance, which means that at least one household decision-maker vetoes their installation.

So, by that criterion, not only do my rear-channel speakers suffer from LSA, but so do the HD TV set (which also suffers from “low Aunt B acceptance”) and the Xbox (partially compensated by high child acceptance). Fortunately, the TiVo has high spousal acceptance, which sort of makes up for the other two– at least until I get an HDTiVo, if and when they ship.

My evil plan to get a Google search rank of #1 for “Stampin’ Up!” has been foiled so far, not least because they maintain their own site for demonstrators: stampinup.net. Unfortuantely, the page throws an error when you load it. They’re apparently offering sites for their demonstrators (example), which I guess makes good business sense. I’ll have to find some other way to achieve world stampin’ domination.