I've been working on the site again, and I've cooked up two new themes for Halloween. You can always switch themes using the links at the bottom of each page.

The first one is called "Trick or Treat". It's a cute little theme in the spirit of the season. It shares the normal Barnyard BBS feel.



The second one is a departure from the usual style. I went as "evil" as possible for this one. I call it "Midnight".



God bless Pagan holidays.

A wonderful discovery from the far east!

Last year when we visited China, I became quite sick during the trip. I discovered from some of the locals that there was a wonderful remedy that they used. I used it during the trip, and it worked out wonderfully.  As fair as I'm concerned, it's the best cough and cold medicine in the world.

About a week ago, I thought about it again. I wondered if I could get more of it, since it was all natural and very effective.

I found it.

Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa (wikipedia link, great article)

I scanned some of the materials from the box for your enjoyment. Here's the part that I overlooked when I was in China... It's not made in China, it's made in Hong Kong. That's an important distinction, as Hong Kong has a larger English speaking segment of population. That's why the product has about 50% English on the box.



I scouted the local Asian grocery stores without much luck, but I found it online. I didn't have any prior experience with AsiaChi.com, but I was very pleased with their service. I ordered three of them from their site, and am very happy with it. Here's the Nin Jiom page at AsiaChi. Note: This is the 'Family Size' and is bigger than it looks. It should do you a long time. I ordered three simply because I was paying shipping anyway, and they weren't that expensive.

Update:

 I've found it at Asia Supermarket, in the Chinatown section of Philadelphia.  143 N 11th St, Philadelphia, 19107. (215) 928-9888.

I realize that the site has been quiet for a while. I have been quite busy with numerous projects, including the...

The Bamboo Flooring Project

For Jessawick's birthday, we decided to lay a new floor in the office. It had the same carpet since we bought the house, and it was getting a bit worn. And by worn, I mean foul.

We both love bamboo, so that's the way we went. We found a beautiful natural bamboo flooring at the local flooring place.

Demolition was the first (and worst) part of the job. Jessawick ripped up a lot of the carpet during the day while I was at work. After the carpet (and pad) were removed, we needed to remove all the tack strips and staples from the floor below.



As you can see, the carpet was placed over the existing hardwood floor. The hardwood itself was in pretty bad shape. We had to pull lots of staples out and clean it up before we could start laying the new flooring.



On a side note: Dyson vacuums are amazing. We have the "yellow" model. I think it's exceptional. It pulls stuff out of a rug that will terrify you. Much more effective than anything else we've owned. We used it extensively in cleaning up the floor.

I decided it was in our best interest to rent a pneumatic nailer for the job. I had never run a flooring nailer before, so it was a new experience. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, a flooring nailer is a special air-powered nail "shooter" that holds the floor in place as it fires a nail into "just the right spot". The rule. I highly recommend them.

At this point, we had a room that was ready to go. Our checklist:

• Clean room
• Moldings removed
• Lots of bamboo flooring
• Hammers, nails, etc.
• Tapping block (for beating the floor into place without damaging it)
• Big rubber mallet (for tapping block and air hammer)
• Flooring spacers
  
• Pneumatic floor nailer (and nails)
  
• Air compressor
• Table saw (with 60+ tooth finishing blade, important!)

As with any project, the exceptions took most of the time. The regular sections of the floor were very quick. We spent most of our time making the custom fits in the closet and around the doors. The nailer was great. Words of warning: you can only use a nailer on the center of the room, you must do the first two and last two rows by hand (the nailer won't fit).

Here's the room at about 60%. We moved the saw back onto the completed section to make room. We kept the vacuum handy to keep the dust down. In retrospect, I was much happier wearing the dust mask than not.



We ended up needing to work on it Sunday as well. It's not that it took all that long, but we weren't really prepared, so we didn't work quickly on the first day. We ended up needing to buy more materials because we didn't include the closet in the original specification. Oops.



The floor ended up looking really nice. This wasn't the end of the project though. We ended up painting next. After that, we installed nice fresh moldings throughout the whole place.

Our frog was not pleased when we transported the molding home from Depot. He was rather smushed. That's a technical term.

My new Nikon D80 arrived today. I haven't had a chance to learn everything about it yet. However, it is already clear to me that it's a big evolution from the D50. It gives much more precise control. It also includes several new options for me, such as wireless flash control (commander) and double exposure.

This is a terrible example, but here's my first double exposure (fidgeting in the living room).

I just noticed... The Photo Gallery now contains over 1,000 pictures. Admittedly, a lot of them are from the wedding, but it's still a huge milestone.