The Major's Home - General Happenings category

Christmas 2009

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:04:00 GMT

All of the holiday photos from 2009 are in the Photo Albums. Have a look! I've also updated several other sections while I was at it.

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Master Lock Rocks

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:19:00 GMT

Unlike my Time Warner experience, my communication with Master Lock was outstanding to the point they have a lifelong customer for any lock needs I will ever have.

In June '09 I purchased a set of three vinyl-coated weatherproof locks for our pool gates, we only needed two however the convenience of the same key set plus a spare lock was a bonus.

About 30 days later the first lock failed with all loss of the ability to turn the key. Last week, the other two followed suit. This lock set was only about $20, but darn it, I expect things to last.

I called Master Lock to see if something could be done and explain the situation. I was on hold for less than 30 seconds, and the lady the answered knew the model number of my lock by description only. Further, I learned that all their locks carry a lifetime warranty. Without skipping a beat she took my name, address, phone number and informed me three new locks are on the way.

All of this with no questions asked. I didn't need a receipt and I didn't need to send the locks in as "proof" they were broken. Thank you Master Lock.

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Happy Birthday Rachel & Samantha

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:53:00 GMT

Birthday party pictures are up in the photo albums for anyone interested!

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Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:58:00 GMT

I'm a little late to the party on this, but I'm glad I discovered Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. It seems during writers strikes, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame is not idle. Done on a shoe-string budget and released on the web only, this 45 minute 3 act musical is hilarious. You can watch it right on-line at the above address too.

A DVD is in the works as well as a sequel. You can also purchase it on iTunes (the video as well as the soundtrack, which is also fantastic, BTW.)

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Fan Edits

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:46:00 GMT

Recently, I've been checking out the fan edit community. These are fans that are otherwise unhappy with a movie in it's original form or even a Director's Cut. These folks love their movie of choice and re-edit it such that it's seamless, professional, and ready to burn back onto DVD. While not a movie critic by far, I've watched the following as an owner of the original:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The 5th Kind Edition. The fellow that did it put in every cut scene, deleted scene, and other material back into the movie. At a whopping 2 hours and 48 minutes, it is quite a ride with every bit of back-story back in it. If anything is bad about it, it's almost too long.

Dune The Alternate Edition. This is a re-cut of the original 1984 version with deleted scenes as well as scenes from the Extended Edition back in. I've always been a fan of this version of Dune, but found it lacking in certain areas. No more! A lot of the back story and scenes from the book are included making it a much better flick. 2 hours and 43 minutes of coolness.

Star Wars Revisited. This is the grand master of fan edits. While not longer than the original, the creator redid most of the special effects, and fixed a ton of continuity errors and nitpicks totaling 156 changes in all. Oh, Hans shoots first! Need I say more? He's currently working on The Empire Strikes back and I, for one, start drooling when thinking about it.

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Roomba Revolution

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:54:00 GMT

Based on a trustworthy recommendation and some research, we purchased a Roomba, made by iRobot. It is quite possibly the most useful gizmo we've ever purchased. This little robot vacuum is a wonder. It is about 15" round (a good size dinner plate) and about 6" tall. It can do almost everything your normal vacuum does for cleaning a floor, and here's the list of what it can do above and beyond that:

Because it is basically a 6" roving disc, it can get into plenty of places that your regular vacuum can't easily. Under the bed, in and around tight spaces, and under anything taller that it's height.
It has really decent edge cleaning. It has a brush that sticks out of the right hand side that spins and knocks debris in front of its main pickup. Part of its algorithm is to detect edges and run that "sweeper" along them.

On top of that, it is really quiet. If it's in the same room as you, turn up the TV an extra notch. You'll never know it is in the same room as you.

With the included "Lighthouses" is virtual wall mode you can confine it to areas where you don't want it to go, or put them in lighthouse mode and they'll keep the Roomba confined to the first room for about 35 minutes, then allow it into the next room you want cleaned for 35 minutes, and so on.

Cleaning it is a snap, and even with a shedding dog, emptying is only needed once per run. I suspect as we will eventually schedule it to clean automatically, emptying will be every few runs as it will stay on top of the build up. Oh, and when it is done it homes in on it's recharge dock on the floor and starts to charge itself for the next day. Groovy.

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Dead Wipers

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:43:00 GMT

I'm driving home from work this Friday and about half way home my windshield wipers start going slower...and slower...and stop. I'm pretty sure my wiper motor is dead. Time for a trip to Potsdam Tire & Auto to get what I'm sure will be at least a couple hundred in repairs done! If it were Christmas I'd put a new wiper motor on my list!

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Merry Christmas

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:27:00 GMT

Merry Christmas all, the Christmas photos are up in the albums.

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Comments Fixed

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:34:00 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I didn't realize the comment system for the blog was broken. It should be fixed now. Sorry if you wanted to leave a comment and couldn't!

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Back To Normal

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:47:00 GMT

The site is back after a big server upgrade and a switch over to a new blog engine. Pebble is quite a powerful Blogger application and a snap to setup. The longest part of the downtime was for me to design a custom theme for Pebble to match the web page.

Pebble does these entries differently, but better. Changes are: 1) This front page will now show all new blog entries in all categories. 2) Individual categories such as Humor, Steve's Gripes, and Tech notes still work from the left side menu or the Categories menu to the right and do a search on the entries with an excerpt from them. Just click the title to read the full entry. 3) comments are on and available, but are spam filtered and need my approval for others to see them.

Enjoy!

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