Jeff Carlson (.Thought)

Decked

Deck Refinishing 3
Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson

When Kim and I first looked at buying our house, the home inspector pointed out that the deck was in pretty good shape but should be refinished sometime within a year. That was almost four years ago.

Each summer, I've vowed to take care of it, and each summer I've found myself in the middle of multiple work deadlines. By the time I get a chance to raise my head up, the calendar is pushing toward September and October, which are too rainy generally to be able to do the job. Meanwhile, the wood deck turned gray (or mossy green in places) and festooned with what appear to be barnacles.

Right now the weather is great, and although I've got multiple deadlines again, I don't see a letup until... September or October. So, I've been pressure-washing the deck all weekend.

Deck Refinishing 1
Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson

I've never pressure-washed anything that I recall, and I was dubious about whether it would do any good. But now that I've spent good chunks of the last three days aiming 1300 psi's of water at what seems like a huge expanse of wood, I'm converted. I want to pressure wash everything, just to see the grime seemingly vaporize at the end of my tight little white fan of H2O.

Getting out and working on the deck has also been good for my psyche. I spend far too much time in front of a computer, true, but I've also learned that I don't have much aptitude when it comes to home repairs and the like. It doesn't come naturally, and I find that I stick to things that do come naturally (which makes it hard to challenge myself, because it's so much easier to stick to the same groove). Although I'm not building a house, raising a barn, or constructing furniture, I'm still tangentially working with wood, doing stuff with my hands besides typing. And in a small way I feel connected to that idea of being "a man," of self-reliance and being naturally adept at handling tools. That's probably an over-generalized stereotype, but I felt it nonetheless.

Deck Refinishing 4
Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson

As I suspected, refinishing the deck is taking a long time. It's a raised deck, so I was underneath it this evening blasting moss off the underside. I'll give it tomorrow and probably most of Wednesday to dry in the sun, then start applying the finish. When I'm not working on my other projects, of course.

Moo.com Stickers!

This is so very cool. Moo.com, the company that offers small business cards and postcards that you create with your own photos, has just started offering stickers. I have nieces and nephews who are crazy about stickers. A book of 90 costs $10 (plus shipping, but that's free during July), which is no doubt pricey for stickers in general. But these contain whatever images you want.

Dear Indy Hipster Coffee Shop Near Where I Work

Radio personality and author John Moe posted a great open letter on his blog to a cafe near his work. I'm curious to know which one, of course, though what he describes isn't unique to just that one shop: Dear Indy Hipster Coffee Shop Near Where I Work.

I know you have a lot on your mind lately, what with the play you're directing at the tiny theater, the band you may or may not be in, and your busy scowling schedule, but maybe when I come by you could sometimes look at me with a hint of welcome. Like I'm not a burden. Maybe you could treat me like the one bringing the money, and really the activity, into this relationship. Because that's what I am.

Qwest Is My Hero Today

More specifically, Wayne B. from Qwest is my hero today.

For my Internet access at home, I use Speakeasy as my DSL provider. They've consistently been great, and I've had occasion to test them. Although I subscribe to their 768 kbps data plan, they've needed to throttle back my account in order to keep a persistent connection. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. Finally, though, it just seemed like my Internet at home was getting slower, or I was just getting impatient. (Writing about the Apple TV was especially painful when waiting waiting waiting to download movies and TV shows to test.)

So, I finally resolved to call Speakeasy and see what could be done, and if necessary, consider alternatives such as cable (which would likely mean Comcast, ew). A tech there had me connect my DSL modem directly into the phone box at the side of the house, which showed no speed bottleneck. Hooray! But that meant the problem was in my house's internal wiring. Boo.

Fortunately, I've had Qwest's line-checking service on my bill for months and months, so this was time to put it into effect. I set up an appointment (a block between 1 pm and 5 pm today).

You won't believe this, but Wayne showed up at 1:00. Maybe it was 12:55. (Our house is hard to find based on its street number, so most people get lost.) After touring the house and locating the phone jacks, the problem became pretty apparent: old wiring was interfering with the signal. The solution was to isolate the main portions (DSL, phone, and security system) using a new little switchbox so that everything worked just fine but kept the DSL line separated. Not only did this approach improve the DSL speed, it's all now much cleaner. I'm sure that if another Qwest person needs to access our phone box, it will be a hundred times easier to grok what's going on.

All the while, I shadowed Wayne as he explained everything. Not to the point where I can go out and reconnect or reconfigure things, but enough that I have a rough topology of what's going where. If Wayne ever tires of working in the field (which I doubt), he's the guy who should be instructing the next-generation techs coming up.

So, thank you Wayne, thank you Dustin at Speakeasy, and by extension high marks today to both Qwest and Speakeasy.

Behind the Scenes of Cool Sprint Ad

At the movie theater the other night, I saw a really cool ad for Sprint. What appear to be lots of people with flashlights draw all sorts of images, from flowers to giant fish to picture frames and more, all animated using stop-motion photography so that the flashlight beams meld together to create the shapes. You can view the ad here:

Well, it turns out that what you see is exactly what it is. The effects aren't computer-generated; they were created over a period of four nights by people with flashlights. The making-of video is really cool: