Consistency!

February 15, 2015 5:39 pm

Along with rewiring the house (and re-arranging furniture to put Heather in what is currently the office) I wanted to get all the switches, outlets, wall plates, etc. in the house to a common style.

When we moved in there were white and beige items with varying styles of outlets, outlet covers, rocker switches, and toggle switches.  Now (except for the garage) all of the switches and outlets are a consistent style (rocker switches) and color (white).

Had to replace 4 bags worth of stuff:

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But now we have these:

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Hooray!

House Rewiring

February 13, 2015 9:28 pm

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Crisp and clean.

Had all the telecom wiring in the house ripped out and run fresh.  Now every room has a network jack (CAT-6), a cable jack (RG-6), and a phone jack (CAT-5e).  And they all start in this box.

Now every jack in the house can actually be used if desired instead of the awful amalgamation of disconnected systems that we had before.

This makes me happy.

2007 Honda Civic Update

January 1, 2015 12:18 pm

It's been a while since the last update.

My Civic is now 7.5 years old with about 76,000 miles and still going strong with no significant repairs necessary.  There is some dead paint on the roof which is unfortunate.  There was a recall on it but I was crazy busy when the notification came and I didn't read it carefully enough.  I thought the recall was only for dead paint on the hood.  By the time I had gotten around to investigating further the warranty extension for the recall had expired.  I'm a little annoyed about that, but oh well.

There are some dents and dings in the paint in several places at this point and a couple of nicks in the windshield.  I'll be needing a new set of tires in the next few months (currently on the second set).  But I've had no issues worth really worrying about which is nice.

My overall average efficiency is 30.182 MPG which has held pretty steady over the life of the vehicle.

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Christmas 2014

December 31, 2014 3:49 pm

I started Christmas off with a nasty cold starting on the 22nd which didn't reach its peak until the 26th. But at least until the 26th it responded well to ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine. So I was able to enjoy Christmas Day still, but the 26th was fairly miserable.

Anyway, it was raining a lot leading up to Christmas which helped clear the air. So, unlike last year, we were able to have a fire on Christmas Eve. I found a 1080p HD video clip on YouTube of snow falling in some woods and we had that playing on a loop in the family room for most of the evening. Between the two it felt more Christmasy, at least if you ignore the windows.

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By Dickerson tradition we had wassail, little weenies, Wheat Thins, Triscuits, cheese, etc.  And then it was bedtime.  Heather gets up between 7:00 and 7:30 pretty much every day so we were counting on that happening.  But by 8:10 she still wasn't up.  Shortly after, though, we heard her little feet running down the hallway towards the living room (she usually finds me out on the couch when she wakes up).  Then she came running back down the hall and into our room excited and confused about what she'd seen in the living room.

During the night, some of the critters from around the house had gotten dressed up in new play clothes that Santa brought:

IMGP2451asHeather got a kick out of that.

But first, the obligatory family photo:

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A small gallery of our morning.  Heather loves the trains and has played with them every day so far.  Side note: reflective strips really screw up a camera's light meter, so you need to use the exposure compensation to fix it so all of your pictures aren't totally underexposed; luckily I figured that out fairly quickly and prevented all of our pictures from being useless.

After playing for a bit, Heather started combining activities.  She would place an obstacle on the train tracks, the train would derail, then we'd call the fire department, and she'd come in as Fire Chief Heather to put out the fire and fix the train.  Here's a video; it's adorable. (Or download it with this link, "right-click, save as...": Heather sabotaging and rescuing trains.)

It would have been nice to see some family, but we had a lot of fun and it's at least less stressful when you're just staying home. We're grateful for the time we get to spend together and for our safe and comfortable home.