I hate legalese. It’s far too complicated for the average person, and frankly, I think far too complicated even for the people who are supposed to be completely on top of it.

Figures that a technology firm would race to the rescue. Red Hat, distributors of Linux, decided to make their SLA more service-oriented, by reducing it to plain ordinary English.

Now that’s refreshing. Thanks, Red Hat!

It is said that it is easier to destroy than it is to create. However, it is not said that it is also more fun. I wonder why?

This morning, we started the first part of our house renovation: tearing apart the crap that’s in the basement. As you’ve seen in pictures already posted (see Ugh. Moving again.), the basement was a renovation gone wrong.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Today, I found out it was several renovations gone wrong.

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Not quite two years ago, I had the pleasure of riding trains from St. Petersburg, Russia all the way to Hong Kong. Quite the experience, let me tell you.

One part of it was riding the Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow to Ulan Ude, where the Trans Siberian effectively becomes the Trans Mongolian, as we cut through Mongolia to Beijing. The trains (as there are many that ply the line) vary from relatively nice (the one from Krasnoyarsk to Urkutsk was pretty nice) to pretty cruddy (Urkutsk to Ulan Ude), with various points in between.

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I’ve ranted about this topic before. I’m loathe to see that nothing’s changed, and it’s only getting worse.

Back in the old days, a patent meant something. It meant you’d spent time, money, and a lot of effort to innovate. To discover something (be it an object or process) that gave you an edge of your competitors. You patented it so you might be able to make your investment back, and be able to block competitors from using your idea for a certain period of time.

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A List Apart, one of my fav industry mags (even if it is only on the web) has put together a pretty neat little survey, to try and figure out what our goofy little industry looks like. And to hopefully garner a bit more respect for it, too.

It’s not just for the artistically-minded, it’s also for programmers, project managers, even the geeks-gone-wrong like me who’ve ended up in “leadership” positions.

If you make websites for a living, take the time to fill out the survey. Make your mark!

A few measurements, pencil, copy of Visio (on the company laptop, admittedly), tape measure, and a lot of time and patience leads to something moderately useful.

We’ve got a first draft at a floor plan. For the basement, that is. The upstairs is another issue which we’ll deal with later. For now, we’ve got our first fish to fry. It’s not perfect, though — there’s a few things we have to take into account. (more…)

We’re almost completely moved into the house, and while it’s still cluttered, we’re already looking to renovating the basement.

We have to renovate, really. The basement isn't set up for what Alex and I need. We want another full bathroom, and a spare bedroom (yes, we have three already, but when you’re thinking of having two kids…). Plus an office. And heated floors.

Then factor in the fun stuff: 1950s plumbing, wiring, and heating. The stuff is ancient, inefficient, and insufficient.

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