So, not really all that much to post. I guess outside work, there’s not a whole lot going on that isn’t hanging out at home, with the dog or random friends. Work’s actually going pretty well. I think we’re on the right track, and actually going to be making something that’s potentially quite good. I’ve got a prototype running with stuff I’ve hacked together with existing tech, and it’s actually fun to play. Stable enough that other people in the company can come by, check it out, and have a good time – more, they come back for more. That’s a really excellent state to be in for a prototype, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Got a bit of a cold last week which knocked me out for a couple days. Dealing with the f’ing city for permit stuff is a nightmare. Turns out, we can’t get any money of the $4,800 they charged us because the *previous* permits were “undervalued.” I went down to the city to ask how the F they can charge us extra for permits that have expired, but they basically said, “tough shit,” and that was that. It’s true the previous permits were undervalued, but they claimed that when re-opening expired permits, they do a revaluation as part of the process, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

So, fine – we’re out ~$5K, but more than that, it’s the last goddamn time I get permits for work done in our house. Fortunately, all that’s left is a remodel of the main floor bathroom, and I just don’t give a shit whether we get permits for that or not. Fuck those guys, “fair” or not.

The kitchen’s still awesome. Still getting a little used to the layout, and because the panel eliminated a couple units of cabinet space, the pantry area feels a little cramped, strangely, but it’s still pretty spectacular, and I don’t have any complaints about it.

We still need to paint. I keep putting it off, mentally, and as a result, end up putting it off in practice as well. We’ve gotta tape up, put some dropcloths down and knock out the primer and paint in a day or two. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but if we do that, it’ll be only the second room in the house that’s legitimately *complete* – the only other one is the downstairs bathroom. The downstairs bedroom would be as well, except for the window leak. Once that’s proven to be fixed, we need to repair the water damage, add trim to the window, then that one’s done as well.

Whee.

Been sort of tired recently as well. Maybe it’s got something to do with the sickness of the previous week, but I’ve been feeling kinda run-down. Just sort of a loss of momentum as well. There was a period where I was painting the Mini, doing stuff on the house, etc. It was good – these days, I find myself looking at webpages all evening, which is a totally pointless waste of time. I feel like I’ve got to take control of my time again, and make sure that I’m doing something – even something entertaining – just not something tedious and pointless. I’ve got a couple small things around the house that need doing – a vent cover in the downstairs near the window in the living room needs installing, the Mini still needs to get its last couple coats of paint on the roof, and the lawn needs some serious weeding.

Still, work’s going well – the project is finally satisfying, on the right track, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. The guy I was having trouble with before has worked out – we’re working really well together, and I’m perfectly happy to admit that while my frustrations about the work environment were legitimate, my judgement about his potential and his personality were incorrect.

Groovy.

Crazy day today. Took care of a bunch of errands, made a good double-batch of buta kakuni, had friends over for shabu-shabu & Rock Band, took Mobius to the beach, and made some headway cleaning up the spare room.

Of course, I also ended up falling asleep in the hammock in the mid-afternoon and as a result burned the living crap out of some balsamic I was reducing, but other than that, hey. Not too bad.

Played around with the iPod Touch that Ei-Nyung got for me for my birthday. It’s pretty incredible – so much functionality in such a tiny device. One interesting thing is that a couple of my friends have been working on porting Aura, our GBA game from a couple years back, to the iPhone, now that the SDK is out.

Kick ass!

So… the kitchen’s done… with one exception. The permit can’t be finalized, because the inspector found out there were unfinalized permits. Fun. Re-opening the permits today cost $4,800, and the inspector’s coming tomorrow to do the first round of inspections.

*sigh*

Still, on the positive side, the kitchen’s done (for the most part). On another negative side, there’s something weird going on with our fridge. It appears to be keeping things cool, but it’s reading out that it’s at 68 degrees. Which is obviously not refrigerator-like temperatures.

*sigh*

So, today’s been weirdly good and bad. On the positive side, it’s been ten years as of today since Ei-Nyung and I started seeing each other! And I’ll leave it at that. With more pictures of the kitchen.

Spent a couple hours tonight moving stuff back into the kitchen. There’s a couple minor issues – the first was that the refrigerator kept beeping, and wasn’t actually cooling down. This was curious, but after a couple minutes of exploration and a little disassembly, I found the door sensor hadn’t been reconnected when the delivery people reassembled the doors. Oops. Easy fix, and we’re on our way.

The second problem is that the plumbing below the sink is leaking. Nothing that can’t be relatively easily fixed, but sort of a bummer nonetheless. A quick trip to Ace in the morning should take care of that no sweat. Everything else is FUCKING SPECTACULAR.

The tile looks awesome, the sink is HUGE, there’s tons of closet space, the lighting is bright and cheery, the new fridge is huge, and there’s space for everything we need (and probably then some). Oh – the other weird detail is that the stove isn’t level. It tilts slightly forward. I’m sure it’s not a big deal, and Monday those guys can level it out, but it is a touch odd.

We ended up sticking an old Altec Lansing set of speakers & a subwoofer into the cabinet above the microwave – so if you want to listen to music, you can hook up an iPod and have at it. Sometime over the weekend I think I’m going to drill a hole into the adjacent cabinet and run a wire with a connection, because the only real problem is that it’s all mounted kinda high. If the iPod, at least, could be mounted lower, it’d be much more accessible. It actually sounds decent even with the cabinet doors closed, which makes for a really eerie effect.

Yeah, I know – pictures – but I didn’t want to post the end result without a really good shot of the kitchen in bright light, and that means it won’t happen ’till tomorrow.

There’s still areas that need to be painted, so it’s not “finished” finished – we need to do a really good job masking up – there’s a lot of stuff to screw up if we do a bad job of that. Oh – one of the last details that needs to be hooked up are the living room lights and the pendant lights above the bar division between the living and dining rooms. Not that big a deal – probably ten minutes of work, but it hasn’t happened yet.

So, Jim & Co. are coming back out Monday for the last of the inspections and to finish up the last bits, then we’re off to the races! Good times.

Things are close to being done. One thing from today: the glass tile looks AWESOME.

I don’t actually think it’s proper to cast Hillary as a demon, but this is a pretty funny use of a quote from Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series, and it does to some degree sum up how I feel about Obama, and why I like him more than any of the other people running this cycle.

So… that’s our new kitchen faucet. I think it’s the most badass faucet I’ve ever seen. Ridiculous? Oh, hell yes.

The kitchen’s coming along quite nicely. It’s actually so far along that it’s doubly frustrating that we can’t just move all the appliances in and start using it. But, there are things still to be done.

We’re picking up the tile for the backsplash tomorrow, then Monday, they’re supposedly gonna start tiling the backsplash, moving in the rest of the appliances, and finishing up the granite – the sink still needs a pretty serious cutout. Then, they sand the drywall (I have NO IDEA why this step comes so late in the process). Supposedly, they’re gonna be done by Wednesday, which is just astonishing to me.

The stuff that’s in is gorgeous. The cabinets look great. We’d picked out four samples of granite from Granite Expo, went to a couple other places, and saw that most places have exactly the same types of things. We fell in love with a honed black granite (matte finish), but the only way to get it was through a specialty store, and the cost difference was almost $3K, so we passed. Ended up going with a style of granite that we *didn’t* have a sample for – a little risky, ’cause we hadn’t seen it in the kitchen light – “Black Pearl,” I think it’s called – and it’s *awesome*.

We’re getting a mix of green clear glass subway tiles for the backsplash, which we’re picking up tomorrow morning. Ended up getting a pretty good deal for the tiles. Then we need hardware from IKEA for the cabinet handles, and we’re good to go. This feels insane – like there’s no way it could actually be happening. We’d been talking about redoing the kitchen for years, but I thought it would be still longer until we actually did it.

If things actually do finish up reasonably, and nothing untoward happens in the next few days, I hope I’ll be able to write a really glowing review of this guy – ’till then, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

So, all the appliances are here, sitting in our living room. The stove, microwave, dishwasher and refrigerator all arrived intact. I was really worried that in the process of delivery, things would get bashed up. Given how messed up a lot of the stuff at the Sears Outlet was, it seemed like a lot of damage was quite realistically possible, and since we got almost all floor models, if they got bashed in, it wasn’t as simple as, “Okay, fine – please bring another.”

Fortunately, everything came through a-ok. The range IS a big upgrade over the old stove. The old stove was wonderful – reliable, powerful – I had no complaints about it except the space on the stovetop. But the new one is CRAZY. It even has a built-in probe for cooking meat! You just plug the probe in on the inside of the stove, and it reads through the main stove interface.

The refrigerator does have “self-closing doors” to some respect – not in the same way the expensive LG model did, but if you close the door almost all the way, you have to overcome a spring latch that then closes the door the rest of the way. So it’s not just the standard seal that keeps the thing shut, which is nice. The dishwasher, which was a floor model, looks substantially better here than it did in the store. In the store, it had some “wobble” in the stainless steel front, but in our house lights, that irregularity is imperceptible.

I’m really excited. Tomorrow, we’re going out to pick out tile and settle on a granite color, and grab some small light canisters to install above the sink.

woo!