Had jury duty last Monday. Got a bunch of reading done. There were five trials. I wasn't in the groups of about 80 or 100 jurors called for the 10 and 5 day trials, then the other three the defendant plead guilty, settled, and went to a non-jury trial. Ah well. I guess it was for the better because on Wednesday I came down with the bug that ( Read more... )

Glorious weather this weekend ( Read more... )

I've been outdone ( Read more... )

For the fun of it, I've created a simple cipher and encoded a message with it.

If you're interested, take a crack at it. If you solve it, reply with a comment encoded in the cipher or a similar one. I've included a hint to make this easier. I'll state the hint explicitly if commenters desire, but want to leave it implicit for now.

( The Ciphertext )

DS1: "I think I'll share one of my cousins with [DS2]"
Me: "Only one?" (He has two 1st cousins ( Read more... )

My weekend:

Taxes filed
more than half of the kitchen floor stripped, deglued, filled, and sanded

( Cradle photos )

So after two days of using the brute force method of removing vinyl tile and getting the blisters to prove it, I have found the easy way to remove vinyl flooring. A wet towel and a hot iron. Heat it up and it peels right off. It's faster, neater, and less painful. Everything you'd want in a removal tool ( Read more... )

The first time I used that phrase was summer after my sophomore year while I was riping up the vinyl in ET's dining room as the first step in replacing the floor with strip oak. That was a fun summer. The phrase comes back to mind as I am in the process of ripping up the vinyl tile in our kitchen. Plans aren't quite so ambitious this time, we're ( Read more... )

I seem to have the kiss of death for computers this week. e-t.org died on me. Then while getting our laptop set up to be a temporary e-t.org, the hard drive died. And it's not me being staticky as I was updating the laptop remotely from astra's laptop. (Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be messing with her laptop...). Well, I've ordered a new desktop. A ( Read more... )