Remember the deal on Levolor blinds I mentioned way back? Looks like the promotion is still good! Our new home needs 7 sets of blinds, so I ordered them through Levolor and bought them all for $334 with free shipping. That would’ve been over $600 at my local big box hardware store, and I would’ve had to make two trips and waited all day for them to be cut!
So, if you’re still needing some amazing blinds at an amazing price, shoot me an email or leave me a comment. You can get 50% off, too!
Thursday night Raleigh’s ESS Lounge will be hosting another fundraiser for the Children’s House of Raleigh, the wonderful Montessori-based preschool Hallie once attended. Featured are a wine-tasting, fashion show, and silent auction. Advance tickets are 20 bucks and you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.
Come out and support a great cause and have fun doing it at the ESS Lounge!
Last night’s rain was what we Southerners call a frog strangler. I don’t have my weather station set up at the new home, but if I did I’m sure it would’ve clocked rain rates above 5 in/sec. I’m sure we got at least two inches of rain in under 3 hours.
The good news is our roof kept the attic completely dry: the first time since we moved in. The bad news is we had a river running through our backyard: so much rain that our fence was buckling from the weight. Water streamed through the cracks up to two feet from the base of the fence.
Continue reading
The Janet Cowell campaign commercial I mentioned is now available on YouTube. The first few times I watched I actually missed our scene. Then I realized we’re on the bottom of a split-screen part. Its not much screen time, but considering how Travis was making faces and our nerves were getting a bit shot, the scene is better than I expected. Regardless, it was a lot of fun!
Look for us 19 seconds into the commercial across the bottom of the screen when the announcer says “improving our schools.” Blink and you might miss it: we’re there for less than half a second!
I’m told that one of my photographs appeared on Wikipedia’s front page yesterday. The “Did You Know?” section showed a fact about Raleigh’s Long View Center and my photograph from the article was included. Alas, I didn’t get to see it on the front page because I just found out about it this morning.
I feel famous. If anyone knows how to display the previous day’s Did You Know page, let me know!
I voted early on Friday, stopping by the downtown Wake County building around 2 PM. On the sidewalk I encountered both Democratic candidates for the District 16 N.C. Senate seat being vacated by Janet Cowell: Jack Nichols and Josh Stein. I can’t tell you how wonderful they both are, because they are both excellent candidates. I voted for one and I suggested that Kelly vote for the other.
Continue reading
Kelly and I were discussing neighborhood traits last night. I’ve always thought the thing that brings neighborhoods together is the sidewalks and front porches. This creates interaction, where you see your neighbors.
Kelly pointed out something that I never before considered: that two-car garages inhibit neighborhood interaction.
Continue reading
I wanted to get set up where I could easily record and digitize video, so I purchased a Neuros Recorder-2 this week from Buy.com. The Recorder-2 is a tiny MPEG-4 recorder which records video straight to a CompactFlash (CF) card. Its the size of a deck of cards and it is awesome.
Its designed to snarf video from any composite video source. This means it has no TV tuner in itself. However, hook it up to your VCR, satellite TV receiver, or video camera and it will compress anything its fed to an MPEG4 file silently and professionally. You can choose resolutions from 176×144 at 15 frames per second (fps) to above-VHS-quality 640×480 at 30fps. It records sound in 128Kbps mp3 stereo, too.
Continue reading
BoingBoing mentioned the “Mosquito” anti-teen-loitering device which drives away teenagers with sound frequencies that only younger people can hear. Curious about the state of my own hearing, I decided to use The Google to find some samples to play.
Behold TeenBuzz.Org, and its collection of “mosquito” ringtones designed to allow students to discreetly hear their cellphone ringing without the teacher catching on. While clever, isn’t that what the “vibrate” setting is for?
Continue reading
