Completed Projects!! #1 - "Book" Book Shelf

Thats right folks. Step right up and see the 8th wonder of the world! An amazing feat that may never be seen again in the history of the humn race!!!

A completed project!

[someone go make sure Josh is still breathing]

I have been wanting to do this project ever since I saw the instructable for it a long time ago. I believe I may have posted about it in the past (but am too lazy to search for it), but here is a brief description again: Basically, the project was to create a self supporting bookshelf from an existing book in such a way that the supports can not be easily seen from a normal viewing angle, thus making it look like the books were stuck to the wall without any support.

This past weekend, while taking some books back to the library I glanced through the old books they had for sale and noticed two that were a decent size, had good hardback covers under their plastic coatings, and one had a perfect title ;-). For $0.5 a pop, who could resist? So I picked up two that were the same size (my first attempt would be on the other one, just in case).

The process for building the shelf went like follows:

1. Measured everything about the book (outside and inside dimensions)
2. Went to the hardware store and found some suitables "L" brackets that I thought would work for ~ $1.50. I decided on a couple that were about 3" long and two screw holes per side. Smaller ones would have nice since they would have been hard to see, but larger ones would make it stronger and easier to use both screw holes. I decided to use two b/c I wasn't sure how sturdy they would be or exactly how heavy the books would be.
3. Decided how far through the book I wanted to mount the brackets (lower on the book meant that more of the book was supported by the bracket, but also meant I could only get a screw into one of the holes. I compramised and positioned the bracket in the upper half.
4. Outlined the brackets on the top of the page where I wanted the top of the bracket, and using a razor blade, cut out rectangles from the pages going down until the brackets could sit flush with the desired page.
5. Next I had to notch out the pages that would be above the bracket (so that it could sit flush with the wall) and the top cover slightly.
6. I had some small nuts and bolts laying around so I drilled out two small holes through the middle pages of the book and thread these through so that the inside part of the bracket would really be mounted to the pages instead of just glued.
7. I made up a mixture of elmer's glue and a bit of water (to thin it out) and painted this on every page so that they were glued together, with the brackets mounted in their correct posistions.
8. I let this dry overnight with a large stack of books on top to make sure that the pages were glued together and that any extra glue squeezed out.
9. The next day I found some pages I had missed so I used some clear tacky glue on the outside edges to fix these. This also helped to make sure that the sides were clean and smooth.
10. When that was all dry, I mounted them to the wall with 4 x 1.5" screws and I was done!

Yes it was a decent amount of work given the size and utility of the shelf, but I think it turned out great! Here are a few more photos of the finished product (the rest can be found here). Sorry I don't have any during construction (Em had the camera with her that weekend).

Some words of caution and things I will change for next time from the build:

• Given the weight and size of the books I have put up right now, I probably could have gotten away with just one bracket. The size ended up good; bigger and you might have be able to see it. If you took the time to find a stud to mount it to or used special dry-wall mounting brackets it would have also worked with a single bracket. As it stand, I can put a fair bit of weight on it without any worries.


• Cutting the parts out of the pages was time consuming but easy. I put a piece of cardboard under the pages where I wanted to stop, and it was pretty easy to cut through them. Drilling through the pages for the bolts was way faster than cutting, but MAKE SURE that you have everything lined up and measure properly before you do. Also MAKE SURE you have the pages lying flat like they are when the book is closed when you drill. I did it by myself so neither of these things happened exactly right and the holes were a bit on angle. Everything ended up ok, but it took a lot of forcing to have the book lay flat when closed.


• Glueing all the pages took a long time and was a pain. Thinning out the glue helped a ton when used with a small paint brush. The problem was that when you painted a page and flipped down the next one (while holding up the dry ones) the new page doesn't land flat like it should when the book is closed. Its pulled back a bit. Well, this is fine until you go and try to close the book and the pages can't slide anymore b/c of the glue. Luckily I was able to fix this. I don't know of a better way, but if anyone can think of one, let me know.


• Adding the bolts took some time, but really made the whole thing much more secure.


• Mounting the brackets lower inside the book would have made the page gluing process much easier since they the pages would have been suppored by the brackets instead of hanging below the brackets stuck together only by glue.

Overall, I was very pleased with how it came out and will try and do the other one soon. The jury may still be out on how asthetically pleasing they are or how well they go with the other stuff in the office, but I am please and Emily doesn't hate me :) Love you babe.

One thing somone mentioned I believe in the comments to the instructables page was that someone could add strong magnets to the inside of the book and mount another book (also with added magnets) underneeth the one mounted to the wall. That way, if someone came by and tried to remove the bottom one to see how they were mounted, the bottom one would slide away like magic with the others still hanging there. Funny idea, but too much for me ;)

House Hunt Part 2 - What I have Done, What I want to Do

Thanks for the comment Kooz. It perfectly transitions me into my next post: What I have done so far, and what I want to do in the near future...

Things I have done so far...

First, after a gracious offer form a relative, we got a copy of our FULL credit report and scores. Last year when we were shopping for a new car we did the AnnualCreditReport.com thing and received our report and scores. This "soft" pull was not very detailed but helped us ensure that there weren't any glaring problems on our report and an idea of where we stood. The good old Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 allows all Americans the ability to request this information once every 12 months for free. This is extremely helpful when researching any large purchase or credit application.

The report we received recently was a full "hard" pull. From what I can gather, "soft" pulls will not effect your credit score in any way and only pull the basic information. The "hard" pulls can effect your score if there are too many in a certain period of time (depends on each credit bureau's formulas). It is truly amazing how much information they have about you. Every piece of credit you have ever had, what your monthly payment are and have been, how many inquires have been made on your credit in the last few months, your exact balances, any late payments you have made or other interesting notes...... it goes on and on.

Luckily for us, and because of our anal paying of bills on time and not over extending ourselves, our credit report was squeaky clean. The only negative remarks on it (its nice, each bureau gives there scores as well as some reasons why they have been lowered from perfect) related to the length of our established credit history, the number of accounts it showed us as having with balances and the number of inquires we had recently.

None of these were really bad, but they were the only things cited as having lowered our scores. The credit history thing, we can't do anything about except let time pass. We don't really have that many balances, but Em's student loans are broken out into various accounts and our names are on some old accounts with our family (which is good b/c it greatly increased our credit history since they dated back a number of years). Finally, since we had moved and every utility and service runs a quick credit check to make sure you will pay your bills .... ours was slightly lower b/c of that (electric, apt. complex, home phone service ....)

As I said, overall they were great (the average credit score being around 770). Its good to know that everything is correct, up to date and looking good for when we apply for a loan.

The other thing I have done is to finally start tracking and looking at our spending and finances. Quicken to the rescue! After ~2 years of threatening to do it, I finally sunk my teeth into it just before the beginning of August and I have to say, I am loving it. Each weekend I spend about 20 minutes entering in transaction from the past week, making sure all of our accounts are up to date, etc. It gives me a good feeling having a much better idea of where our money is, where it is coming from, how fast its leaving and what kind of return we are getting on our investments. I will probably post more on this subject and related ones when I start my personal finance posts, but for now ... Quicken is a good thing. Its going to give us much better concrete numbers as to how much our expenses are and what percentage of that is needs/wants.

Next steps...

• Start putting together all of the information I have read and can find out about the various mortgage options out there, what the trade-offs of each are (pay more now or later, more tax deductions or not, less money down or higher payments....). I would like to have a good idea of this before I start talking to lenders so that for each one I can circle the ones they offer, and after plugging in there rates, be able to see the short term and long term impact of each.
• Research what programs are available in our area to help first time home buyers
• Keep looking around at homes in various areas to get a good sense of what $$ will buy you what in what part of town, what our theoretical price range can get us, and what kinds of features can alter the price of a home.
• Look into what lenders are our best bets when it comes to mortgages and try to better understand the buyer/seller/Realtor(s) relationships and services

My thought is to post an article about each of these as I get through them or at least find out some real information. I have many more things on my ToDo list, but those are the ones I want to work on in the immediate future. If anyone has any suggestions, would like more information, or thinks my thoughts are crap .... please let me know. ;)

House Hunt Part 1 - The Begining

I put together a fair bit of notes and thoughts I have about house hunting, what I have learned so far, what I am doing, what I need to do, etc .... but I think its a bit much for one post. Therefore, I am going to start out this series with a much briefer statement of intent and my initial thoughts on what I/we are looking for.

We are looking to buy a 2+ bedroom 2+ bath house in approximately 10 months when our current lease will be up. That means (from my rough estimates) we will need to officially really start looking for a house in the late April time frame (so that if we find a great house, we don't have to pay for rent+mortgage for very long).

Some features that at least for the time being are top on our lists of needs and wants (seperating the list will come in the following months) are:

• garage (at the very least covered parking)
• decent size house and lot (doesn't need to be too big, I have never lived a huge house)
• big enough yard for a dog to run in (I can't wait until we have Rudy or Truman ... yes we have names for the dogs we want before we have them ;) )
• we prefer older and more unique homes to your standard Suburbia ranch or two story. A small interesting house with some character is what we want.
• going along with the last point, we are thinking to live much closer in to the city than where we both grew up (out in the suburbs). I wouldn't have guessed this one growing up, but I really like the community atmosphere and the age of older neighborhoods.
• we plan on living in the house at least until the our future kids are ready for kindergarten, maybe a bit longer so school districts are a factor but not a for sure limiter

My/our main goals for the meantime include getting a better understanding of various areas of town, what $XXX,XXX will get you in each area, what we can comfortably afford, how much home improvement projects will really cost in dollars/time/sanity, and decide on what specific things we have to have in our first house and what things we would love, but don't need.

My intention, given the positive response everyone gave, is to document what I find out, what resources I am using, and what things we get right and wrong.

For now I will leave you with some of the resources I am currently reading. My next post will hopefully talk about what we have found out so far, what we are in the process of doing and some of my questions about different mortgage options (Alex, your first step is to remember how to spell it ;-) ).

• Resources I am using (books, websites, RSS)
• -- Idiots Guide To Mortgages - currently reading, less detail but good
  
• -- Tips & Traps When Buying a Home - Third Addition by Robert Irwin - I couldn't finish this one. Right out of the gate they were pushing houses as investments and that you can/should borrow as much as possible so that you can get a good return. Had a few good tips and traps to watch out for (especially when it came to home inspections) but I didn't want to find out.
  
• -- http://allfinancialmatters.com/
• -- http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
• -- http://www.doityourself.com/
• -- http://blogs.move.com/first-time-home-buyers
• -- http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/
• -- http://www.smartmoney.com/
• -- http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/buying-a-home
• All of the above links are to sites whose RSS feeds I subscribe to that have had house buying, mortgage or home repair articles lately. I read all of the pretty much everyday and they usually have some really good advice. As with anything, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but they often agree on things or at the very least give me insight into something I need to read up on.
  

Google Reader Subscriptions

If anyone is interested, here is a link to my current Google Reader subscriptions in whatever format they export to. I would suggest glancing through the XML and finding the ones you like before importing them all (there are ~120).

Let me know if you find any of them interesting.

** Also, there is a link on RegenMyToolkit about how I don't have to clean anymore ;)

*** Anyone have any idea what is going on with the spacing of the text on my blog? Ever since I switched templates it keeps fluctuating mid post and I am not doing anything different that I know of.

Thanks. Big posts later, links for now.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback and the interest. I already have some notes about things I want to post related to our house hunting adventures and personal finance stuff (two things that have become fairly important to me over the past year). I will be posting them in the next day or so [warning.... the first couple are shaping up to be some very long posts ;) ].

In the mean time, and while my PC builds our application for deployment to dev, here are some links that I have been saving up that I thought were interesting. Enjoy.

• Thank god Emily isn't a nerd.
• I have always wanted a large mirror in my bedroom that with a flip of the switch, would become a TV (first seen in a Popular Science years ago). Lets hope they can get the prices down.
• These could result in some really cool photos ... assuming you had a nice flat surface to spin it on and it had a timer so that you could get away before it started recording (otherwise you would be a big blur in the most of the frames.
• Safety First! .... just not sure I would trust it not to engage while I am outside if my home only had one real entrance (e.g. my current apt. only has one door and I am three floors up so no windows are accessible). Assuming you had some other way in, even if it meant breaking a window, just in case it was engaged while you were outside. Neat though in its simplicity.
• Funny read about why you shouldn't get hung up over not getting a job. I wonder if Emily has any Dutch in her? ;) Might be helpful to know in the future. BTW ... Did I mention my parents were dolphins? Wanna hire me?
• I want to be reincarnated as a dog! Sit all day, maybe chase my tail for a bit, eat some food, inherit 12 million dollars, rinse and repeat. That would be the life!

Little Things and Questions

Nothing too interesting lately.

"Rented" V for Vendetta from the library the other night. I thought the movie was just ok. It had what I can only describe as about 3 different decent movie plots in a single movie without a whole lot of closure. I guess I just never really felt convinced in any of the character's emotions; I never found myself really rooting for or against them. Not bad, just not great. I would have to put Jarhead into that same category. Another library rental, gotta love free. It was ok, but didn't give a whole lot beyond the "here is an alternate view of what war is really like" like other movies have done. Better emotional acting though.

Last week Emily took the Sonata in to a body shop to be looked at. At some point a month or two ago, someone decided that our car wasn't quite complete and that a small scratch on a lower door panel was just the ticket to finish it off. Well, according to the first place we took it, that little scratch requires $100 in stuff and $400 in labor to fix (take apart door and refinish whole panel?). Which sucks. I need to have it looked at by a few other places before I am ready to fork over that kind of cash to get a 3-4 inch scratch fixed. I DO want it fixed b/c its pretty deep and I would prefer to spend money now than have to replace a door or get a ton of rust replaced later when the paint starts falling off. But $500 bucks!? I was thinking more like 200 and they could just clean up the scratch and fill it in. I don't mind a small color difference or blemish .... I just don't want my dark blue car to have Rust Red racing stripes!

This past weekend Em went down to the lake for a bachelorette party which from all accounts was a great time for everyone involved. I stayed home and had a busy weekend of errands and small projects around the apartment (putting up some of our SnapFish photos, finally finding room for some of the junk in the office, researching safety deposit boxes, a small project that will remain nameless until I have photos and a know it worked ;-) ).

A quick aside about safety deposit boxes. Its something I have wanted to get for quite some time given that we have a large number of documents in our apartment that would be a huge hassle to replace if there was a fire/theft. It turns out they are quite affordable. Our local bank branch, who we have our checking through and who is all of ~300 yards from our apt., has them ranging from about $30-$70 a year with a 3" by 10" by "long" one at about $45. Thats the one I am probably going to go with since it will mean that we won't have to fold any of our documents. Anyone else have any experience with safety deposit boxes or home fire safes? That was the other option I was considering, but this is convienently located, safer from fire and theft than our apartment and allows me to have copies here and the originals there for dual locations in case of an emergency.

...................

This week is shaping up to be a busy one. I have been having a ton of meetings at work while I attempt to get as much knowledge from the other developer before he leaves as well as several meetings with our users about all of the things they want to change with the app before we start '08 programs.

...................

I want to post a ton of house hunting resources I have found and my thoughts/questions on the whole process but this post is already pretty long, and I don't have any of it really put together, so everyone will have to wait for that. Actually, would anyone really be interested in reading about that kind of stuff, or am I just thinking its interesting b/c its interesting to me? I don't know exactly how many people read this, I can get close estimates from StatCounter and feed burner but not fully and most of you probably read it out of curiosity but not really interest. I guess, if you have a minute and don't mind .... if your a reader and might be interested on my thoughts on Em's and my house hunting adventures and/or personal finance stuff I have been reading and thinking about. Leave a comment. Please.

Big Work Meeting

I had a rather important meeting with the head of our office today over lunch. Most of you who read this blog probably already knew this, and probably already know how it went, but for those of you who don't ... here are the details.

** To those of you who don't, please don't take offense.
I asked a few people for their advice on the meeting and the rest of you are family **

Today's meeting was centered around a few concerns I had regarding my career growth, my professional growth while on my current assignment, and some questions & comments I had about some office activities.

The meeting went very well. Ideal would have been a raise effective immediately. That didn't happen. But the next best thing did .... I confirmed that I am on track for a promotion around the end of the year that should come with a pay increase that will put me on track with my work, had all of my questions answered, confirmed that I will be helping out with our new college recruitment program and will be able to attend the NoFluffJustStuff conference again this year (this time in STL near the end of Sept.). So thats good. I still have to wait till the end of the year for the reviews to go through, and I have to do a fair bit of prep work and paper work before hand ... but thats the normal process. All in all, it was a good day. :)

Snapfish Deal & The Case of the Multiplying Blogs

http://www.SnapFish.com

SnapFish, a photo and film printing site supported by HP is running a great special right now and through the end of August. All new members (sign up for free) get 30 free 4x6 prints and if you enter in the promo code AUGSHIP07 you get free shipping on your entire order.

I uploaded 30 photos for the 4x6 prints a couple more for 8x10 and paid a total of 5 or 6 bucks. They were shipped the next day and were here in about 3 days, delivered. My only complaint, and its fairly minor, is that one of the 8x10s had a minor bend to it when I got it, but other than that, perfect. The prints look great and you can't beat free. Em and usually use Kodak's website which usually has great deals (and they send out special deals/promos about every week by email).

One other thing. If anyone gets pics from them and decided to try the matte finish, let me know how they turn out. From what I could tell you had to get your entire order in one finish or the other and I knew I wanted glossy for the prints so thats what I got. I may just have to sign up for another account and get 30 more free and try them matte.

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Also, as the title implies, I have started a 3rd blog. Really, its the same amount of blogging (although hopefully more) just divided into 3 websites instead of one with lots of tags. I like how it separates the different kinds of posts, you may not agree, but all well. They are my blogs ;). Plus, if you use some sort of RSS feed reader, what do you care :-p.

The latest blog is focused on food and food related thoughts. I hope to post some reviews of local restaurants, my attempts at making new dishes, recipes I like, etc. Plus, Josh has asked me for various recipes of mine numerous times now and I almost always forget to send them to him before he needs them. Finally, it will get me to write down some of my recipes so I don't have to try and remember how I did it every time. Just some food for thought ;-). Why don't you munch on that for a while!

Ok, I will stop.

New template and new blog

If your not reading this in an RSS reader, you will see that my blog looks different. I was playing around with templates when I realized I hadn't backed up my modified one (like they tell you to do) so I have settled on this one for the time being. I like the color, but still not the fact that all but a couple of the available templates are based on 800x600. I mean who really still uses that resolution!? Or more importantly who that I know who also reads this blog uses that resolution? That would be no one to my knowledge. I mean, my work LCD is a 19 or 20 inch wide screen with a resolution of about a billion x million.

As the title suggests, I also have a new blog to go along with the new template on this blog. Yes I am a follower (of Kevin this time) and have started a tech-centered blog at http://regenmytoolkit.blogspot.com/. For the one of you who gets the joke, Ha! For the rest of you rest assured its a funny one, but you would have to have worked with BillingCenter or ClaimCenter to get it and I am not sure thats worth the laugh.

As I briefly stated on the BForum, I had been toying around with the idea for a while now (as opposed to just tagging my tech related posts differently) but decided to take the plunge this afternoon while I waited for my app to rebuild. My intent is to post more well thought out and descriptive posts about tech related subjects over there (programming languages, iMac stuff, all around nerdy stuff....) and to push myself to really think about it and write out my thoughts. Hopefully some of you will find the stuff interesting and hopefully I will keep it up so that there is stuff to read.

Wish me luck. We all know I am "project prone". :)

Chicago pix

I have posted some pictures from our recent trip to Chicago for friends and family to look at. If anyone is interested, all of the ones I put up can be seen here.

Before I leave you, faithful reader, with a sampling of some of my favorites ... I feel compelled to tell you that I made some minor adjustments to a few of the photos. Almost all were cropped, but I went the extra mile and fixed white balance, lighting and some coloring on a few to make them closer to what we actually saw, or how I had hoped they would turn out. I am always torn on whether or not I should adjust my photos beyond cropping since its technically changing to picture. But I always end up deciding that as long as I don't change the content of the picture (add new or take away pixels), and that my intentions are just to make a better looking picture that I can still call my own ... its all good. You can be the judge.











Ok, I guess I should give a few quick details of the trip, and explain the last photo. We went to Chicago for the weekend to celebrate our 2 year anniversary. We drove up on Friday morning, parked the car at Katherine's apartment (talk about a prime location on S. Michigan Avenue) and took the El to our Hotel. We stayed at Hotel Blake which was right off Congress in the hear of downtown. Great modern hotel, good room, good service, great rate from Expedia. That night we ate at a cool Tai-Chinese restaurant and walked all the way from out past the John Hancock building to our hotel down Michigan Avenue and through the various parks, etc.

Side story, about the spiders .... Em, Katherine and I went up to the observatory level of the John Hancock building to check out the sites just as the sun was starting to set. The view was great and the fog was just starting to roll in. I wish I could have gotten some better pics, but the lighting made it hard. But I digress. As we are looking out the huge windows, Emily suddenly tells me to backup. I do and see her pointing to a spider about as big as a quarter on the other side of the glass about 6 inches above my head. If you know me at all, you know I HATE spiders so I wasn't pleased. I was even LESS pleased when we came to realization that on ALL of the Western facing windows ... there were countless spiders outside. I mean, in any given 10x10 window, you could easily count 20+. It was FREAKY. Honestly, when we went to the outside portion of the level and I saw a few on the inside side of the mesh, I about had a panic attack. Spiders SUCK. I have no idea why there were so many up there (what would they eat? or why they don't just kill them all) but who cares.

The next day we got up, walked through Grant park, watched the sail boats and took in Shedd's Aquarium and the Planetarium. That night we had a GREAT dinner at a restaurant in the same building as our hotel, Custom House. Mmmmm roast leg of lamb, braised beef short ribs w/ horseradish cream puffs, purple peruvian potatoes, and a wonderful sampling of 3 homemade icecreams. Sunday we got up, spent several hours at the Field Museum (you could spend weeks there) saw the famous Sue (most complete TRex statue known), and headed for home.

Wow its been a long time

Instead of talking about how long its been since my last post, here is what has been going on...

• Emily and I officially moved back to the 'Louie.
• I finished work in Cincinnati on a Friday, started work in STL on Monday.
• Its been a pretty big adjustment being back "home", being close to family, being far away from Ohio, being far away from my home for the last 4+2 years.
• I started working out on a semi-regular basis (averaging 3-4 times a week) at our Apartment complex fitness room.
• We found out that there are a fair number of stupid people living in our apartment complex, but we still like it.
• I am still trying to figure out the best route to and from work .... getting used to STL drivers again .... not enjoying the shutting down of I40 for the next million years.
• I have had a few meetings now with the STL office my company. All in all, many things are different, many are the same, all good people ... I am happy with the transfer.
• I found out that the main (and only other one besides myself) developer on my application at my new client is leaving in 2 weeks; leaving me the sole developer going forward into '08.
• Emily and I spent a weekend in Chicago for our anniversairy. We had a blast hanging out with Katherine, doing all the touristy stuff and just walking around downtown.
• My cousin had twins (a b and a g) the other night!
• I have been reading the Dark Tower comics I posted about earlier (including the latest, thanks Bill) and they were amazing. I can't wait for the next arc? to come out. Oh and according to the great inter-web, Stephen King sold the rights to do a DT movie to the producers who did Lost. Who knows when anything will come of it, but its a cool idea.
• Em and I went out on our first house hunting trip the other weekend (not so much house hunting and information gathering ... what kind of $$ gets you what kind of house in different areas, what areas have houses we like, what is important to each of us in our first house .....) Everything went well, only problem now is that we still have almost a year to wait. ;)
• I had a three day class on Test Driven Development with a great teacher for my client. Really great class. Really interesting topic. I would like to post more of my thoughts about it at some point.
• I have finally gotten into a routine with our finances and feel like I have a better handle on where or money is coming and going. Its only taken me 2+ years, but Quicken is finally getting used. I am happy to report that our net-worth is going up :)
  

Oh, and about a thousand other things. I have a busy couple weeks at work coming up so we shall see with what frequency I will post but I am glad to have gotten that one out of the way.