I bought some new locks to match the new door handles we put in a few weeks ago (all antique brass looks much better than an antique brass handle and a scratched-up old brass lock).  I want all the locks to be keyed alike (as they are now), and I thought the easiest thing would be to rekey the new locks to match the ones we already have.

So I bought a rekeying kit at Home Depot, on the assurance of the salesguy that I’d be able to use it to match my old locks.  I should have known better. 

The kit is easy to use, even for a mechanically-challenged individual, but they only supply pins of the lengths necessary to match the key in the kit — and our existing lock happened to have some pins which didn’t appear in the kit.  So I couldn’t do what I wanted, and the kit goes back to Home Depot on my next trip.  No wonder their earnings disappointed Wall Street!

The painters were busy today — except for a little touch-up, they’re done.  I was shocked when I got home and saw it — the vanity looks bigger with solid-colored walls.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that the existing yellow tiles in the shower really go with the blue paint we chose — but that may just be the shock of the new.  Time will tell.  And I suspect that replacing the shower tiles may be more hassle and expense than painting…and might lead to the desire to do more than just a cosmetic update to the bathroom.  This way lies madness.  Maybe  I should upgrade a computer instead….

SiteMeter’s having some problems with their reporting programs — I keep getting “script timed out” messages when I go to look at the reports for this site.  I feel like I’m missing critical information about how people are finding me, which is interesting, since I didn’t have that information until yesterday.  I think I miss the Merc less than I do SiteMeter!

We got off to an early start this morning so that we could do the last bit of cleanup before the painters were scheduled to arrive.  We failed — the painters arrived at 8am (promptly on time, which I hope is a good sign) and I still had about 30 years of Analog to move out of the living room.  But since they were neatly piled up, it didn’t take long to move them — and Jeffrey seems to be very interested in them now that they’re visible.

When I left the house, there were painters working on at least three rooms, and I could hear wallpaper being ripped off the bathroom walls.  I wonder what it’s going to look like when I get home?

Our Merky Nooz carrier is still protesting, so we didn’t get the paper this morning.  Given what else we had to do, that was probably good, but I’m getting tired of not having a paper.

Scratching an itch

The really observant among you will note the Site Meter graphic on the left side of the page — James Vornov‘s discussion encouraged me to install it.  Now that I’ve had it running for a few hours and can see some of the results, I’m intrigued — most of my vistors have come from a Userland page (Scripting News, the Updates page, or Weblogs), but one person was looking for pictures of tulips and I’m 18th on the Yahoo/Google list of results for that query (interestingly enough, if you do the same query on Google itself, I’m the 36th result).

I still don’t know what good knowing all this will do, and as Al puts it, “I’m just awfully glad for your company”. 

And here’s my privacy policy:  I collect personally-identifiable data if you choose to join the site.  I do not distribute this information to third parties (however, the site member list may be publically viewable).  Other information, such as that gotten from Site Meter, is looked at for interesting nuggets, and it’s quite possible that I’ll post unusual referrer entries, but I will not post a correlation of such entries to visitors.  Site Meter may, however, do so; it is not under my control.

Wine of the Day

Today’s wine is Bonny Doon Winery’s Pacific Rim Dry Riesling, and it is a repeat — we had it in Chicago and enjoyed it, so we decided to try it at home, closer to the winery.  Tonight’s bottle is a 1998, and went very well with spaghetti.

Baby, It’s Cold Inside!

The painters made good progress today; they did the living room, our bedroom, and the patches of new drywall in Jeffrey’s room and the office (we got rid of the remains of the non-functional intercom system), as well as at least two ceilings.  The bathroom is still very much a work in progress (I suspect they’re going to be back with a steamer to attack the wallpaper more seriously).

To reduce the fume level, we’ve got the windows open; of course, tonight is also the first chilly, rainy night of fall (61 degrees Fahrenheit, dropping to around 50), and so it’s getting a bit nippy inside.  We’ll have to close up at bedtime and put up with the fumes, I think.

The painters all the furniture in the bedroom, and in the process, they reunited us with some long-lost possessions.  I now have my missing Gore-Tex glove — unfortunately, I gave up on finding it about two years ago and threw away its mate.  More usefully, they unearthed some photos which must have slipped behind furniture, including this one of Jeffrey at about 18 months, enjoying one of his favorite foods (and one he still enjoys, though his eating technique has improved over the years).

That pretty much sums up today and tomorrow — Yom Kippur is over (thanks to the Rileys for the splendid break-the-fast), and the painters are supposed to arrive tomorrow morning.  We are not ready, despite Diane’s best efforts (my efforts so far don’t qualify as “best”, I’m afraid), and so this must be a very short posting so I can help.

The Merc ‘fesses up

Apparently yesterday’s “severe production problems” were actually due to a protest from the carriers about the price of gasoline and an increased workload.  The protest continued today, at least for my carrier.  I wonder if we’ll get a paper tomorrow.

Why didn’t I try that 16 years ago?

Ever since we moved into this house, we’ve been annoyed by the nails the previous owners had left in the living room wall.  Since they painted the house just before selling it, I assumed that the nails were well and truly imbedded in something and would be hard to take out, and so we put art on the wall in spots picked to cover the nails as best as we could.

But with the painters coming tomorrow, I decided it was worth trying to get the nails out so that, perhaps, we could have a nice-looking wall at the end of the process.  So I dug out my pliers and discovered that the nails were firmly imbedded in not much of anything — they came out with almost no effort.  If I’d only realized how easy it was, I’d’ve done it years ago!

It’s almost time to start thinking about dinner so that we can finish before Yom Kippur begins and we head off to Kol Nidre services — by this time tomorrow, after fasting for a day, it will be all too easy to think about dinner!  In theory, fasting is supposed to help you concentrate on the meaning of the day, but I find that, at least late in the day, it distracts me; my body is very interested in letting me know that it hasn’t been fed or watered and wants my attention.

I just looked at the online edition of the Jerusalem Post and read that the chaplain of the Israel Defense Forces has given permission to break the fast to all soldiers involved in fighting on Yom Kippur.  May no one have to use this permission.

The search for color

We spent part of the afternoon looking at houses our painter had done, in hopes of finding one with a color we’d like.  We found two that are reasonable shades of blue, but neither of them was The One.  I guess it’s back to the sample books.

Severe Production Difficulties

I got up this morning, went outside, and there was no paper on the driveway.  I looked at the neighbors’ houses, and, as far as I could tell without my glasses, they didn’t have papers either.  And when I got through to the Merc’s customer service number, the recording told me that they’d had “severe production difficulties” last night and that they were not going to be able to deliver papers to those who had been missed — I guess that they decided it was more profitable to fill the news vending machines.

Fortunately, the most important section of the Sunday paper is delivered on Saturday, so we already had the comics.  And Dave Barry’s column is available online, and Dan Gillmor’s is usually covered by his weblog, so I’m set there, too.  But it is interesting to see that the Merc’s website doesn’t mention today’s problems at all.

Deciding … Better

I can empathize with Hal’s decision to put blivet on hiatus until he can get his thesis done.  I know I find weblogs, newsgroups, and web pages to be exceptionally attractive as distractions — as if I needed any more distractions in my life!

As the gates begin to close…

Back tomorrow night, most likely, after break-the-fast.  May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.