Awesome. Going through the junk mail in an attempt to clean off my kitchen countertops, I noticed I've received my first credit offer for 'Half Light Imaging!' And a platinum card, too! Now, what to buy for my non-existent business ...



And then, in addition to that bit of fun, apparently my favourite company Wal-Mart is in hot water in WA (or this is just from a case that's been tried in other states in the past and it's finally reached class action status here) for not paying workers for their overtime and not allowing them to take lunch breaks. Can I just say *cough* ghetto.

I realized I sort of stopped blogging about my kitchen remodel. I think cos the end has been sort of anti-climatic. Maybe I was thinking it would be - bamn! - one day it's done. But it really didn't end up that way. Afterall, is it ever really done? No, of course not. So here we have, a chair.



Went by Dania last night and they were having a 20%-off anything in the clearance section. I picked out this bar table and chairs for this kitchen corner a month or so ago there and this is the chair - but they only had one in the clearance section. Well, better to save some money on one than none. I'll have to go back in a little while to get the other chair and, um, the table.

So it's basically done. No new appliances yet, which will be a big part of it. And I still have to finish hanging some of the cabinet doors.

So, just for fun, here's the same corner on Day #1 -



Now granted, that corner isn't actually finished. That's where the bar table and chairs are going to go, so I'll move the Ikea cart somewhere else. Amazing, really, what the 7" baseboards did to the place. Much, much better than the, well, vinyl cove (*cough* crap) molding that was there. These baseboards match the rest of the house and I love the way they contrast with the red paint. Still, duh, totally in love with that color.

OK, so that's about it on the kitchen for now. I'm sure I'll post a picture once I get the new fridge (first) and then the range (second), and maybe composite some before/after shots for fun but I have no idea when that'll be so ...

It's been fun. Overall, I'm impressed with the work I did and what I was able to accomplish in true "me" fashion - i.e. entirely on my own and teaching myself as I go. Mostly I read books. That seems to be how I learn best. The electrical was the most frustrating but the most fun. Drywall was OK - nothing exciting but I'm probably the most impressed with how well the drywall turned out given I had no clue what I was doing and you can't see a single seam.

After a bit of a hiatus, actually, I'm looking forward to getting back to work on the laundry room and the back bathroom before going to work on my bedroom tearing out a ceiling and two walls, electrical updating, painting, etc. and then finishing gutting the 'jack and jill' bathroom in between mine and Julian's room and completely redoing it from the ground up - all in '08. It'd be nice to get the living room and the outside of the house painted but I'll just have to see how far I can stretch my annual bonus and my tax refund. Oh, and new windows would be nice. And a new front door. And a new garage door.

Etc. ... etc. ... etc. ...

While running this afternoon, I saw the Olympic mountains for the first time in what seems like months. All covered with snow. That's it.

Apparently, reading Into The Wild has sparked a great deal of introspection for me. I revisited an article written by climbing legend turned Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. As the article relates to Krakauer's story, he writes:I think this succinctly sums up McCandless' desires to venture out into the wild and is a fine point indeed. Recently, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine after (I'm assuming) she read one of my blog entries where I stated my intentions of hiking the entire Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier alone in the winter (I always planned on doing it alone - I added the winter part for an element of surprise) and she gave me the impression she thought it was insane.

Simon Yates mentioned it, too, in Touching the Void–about needing to add an element of risk to his life to pull him out of the humdrum day-to-day. That was why he climbed. I'm not sure–now with our everyday, modern conveniences–that need has actually increased since a hundred or a thousand years ago (I tend to think that we have an inescapable need to feel alive through taking risks), but it is at least as necessary now as I'm sure it was in the past.

I stood my ground that I'd do the trip alone in the winter (granted, probably not this winter) for all of these very reasons. McCandless, despite those that opposed and scorned what he did, was onto something. Maybe we won't all cash in our savings, burn our possessions and tramp up to the Alaskan wilderness to see if we can sustain ourselves on berries and game that we can hunt and kill, but I know personally I will always seek some sort of adventure.

And I won't do it by hooking up with an "adventure travel" company.

With admittedly slightly teary eyes and a Placebo song in my head where Brian Molko sings

the call to arms was never true i'm medicated how are you?
let's take a dive
swim right through sophisticated points of view

I finished Into The Wild and I am - perhaps surprisingly so - less impressed with the main character's plight than that of the author himself, introspective on his own adolescent aspirations and recklessness and the emotions they brought - both low and high - as he reminisced about a solo, winter attempt on a peak in the Alaska Range.

We showed this video, which was part plug for one of our photographers and part cool because it showed what it's like on a photo shoot, at the color management conference in Phoenix as part of our REI color story (read 'Geek Is In'). Despite the part of it being a shameless plug for the photographer, it actually is a pretty cool little film.

This was our Spring '07 shoot in New Zealand.

My BBB case against Evans Glass Inc. continues.

This is their response, apparently by some guy named Matt Flath who may or may not be the General Manager. Response = lame. Refused. 12/13/2007 Receive Business Response Contact Name and Title: Matt Flath; GM
Contact Phone: 206-682-0180
Contact Email: MattFlath@EvansGlass.com
This project has been cancelled and product has not been ordered. When a contract is signed and credit has been run; all documents must stay on file for seven (7) years, we can not destroy any documents.
Although the cancellation had been accepted not always does it get to the installation departments in time. There is a check and balance system to make sure every job is measured in a timely manor and even if the job has been cancelled the person in the field will not realize this until he has returned with the measure.
As for a second measure, this should not have happened. It could have been an old message since we only need to do a measure one time.
Sorry for the inconvenience and good luck in your window shopping.

My response back: 12/20/2007 Received Consumer Rebuttal (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
This is unacceptable. I cannot possibly conjure a valid reason this business needs to retain my credit information for the next seven years. Again, I restate my initial request that this information be permanently discarded as - if it has not been made clear in my initial statement - I will not be doing business with this company.

~ Doug Scott, excerpted from an essay entitled From Here To There

Came across this in a book called Voices From The Summit I had read a year ago that, while now reading Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, I came to think of it and dug up the book to find this quote.

The song that started it all ...

An interesting little fact:

On average, every person on earth has 52 LEGO bricks.

So what are you waiting for - start building something!

There's a fight brewing on the Senate floor today. President Bush wants Congress to give immunity to the phone companies that helped him, well, spy on us. Now the Bush Administration and the telecom companies (read, AT&T) are desperately trying to conceal their crimes. AT&T has even hired a consulting company headed by John Ashcroft, Bush's former Attorney General, to lobby for immunity.

Now isn't that just wonderful.

~ response by White House aide James Connaughton when challenged on the quality of U.S. leadership by a reporter at a press briefing during the Bali, Indonesia convention to discuss how to reduce global warming emissions

Perhaps not surprisingly, this comment sparked outright anger along with some hilarious satire. I can only imagine.

In the end, after rewording the drafted roadmap to fit the language of the developing nations, country after country rose to support it. Not one voice among 190 countries was raised in support of the U.S. Finally, at the very end and after threats from the EU (European Union), the U.S. asked for the floor - and yielded.

The room burst into wild applause, and the Bali Roadmap was adopted. Now it will be a waiting game to see if any of what was adopted sees the light of day. I'm (somewhat) hopeful.

Thought this was a cool advert -

Designed this Nalgene bottle for our color management presentation. I was invited by the GATF conference manager to have REI do a case study presentation about our color at this year's conference in Phoenix. Turned out it's a pretty interesting story - how, over the last five years I've been working with REI - we've started from no color management to color managing our printshop, beginning to retouch and do our own prepress - then expanding to do all of our own prepress and now we have multiple proofers and RIP servers, color management every where you turn ... but I'm still the only retoucher. And QA tech. And color management tech. And scheduling/CSR. And page assembly tech.

But it was a good presentation - or so we were told.

Found this in my mailbox when I got home from Phoenix. Love how he translated 'aloha' for me. :)

So I have to travel to Phoenix this weekend for a color management conference. Just checked the weather for the trip. Oh, isn't this just beautiful.

And, for some reason when I typed in "Phoenix, AZ" to search for the forecast, the list NOAA provided me to narrow down my search was this -

Phoenix, (Maricopa County), AZ
Phoenix Acres Trailer Park, (Maricopa County), AZ
Phoenix Mobile Home Park, (Maricopa County), AZ
Phoenix West Mobile Home Park, (Maricopa County), AZ
South Phoenix, (Maricopa County), AZ
The Phoenix-Scottsdale Mobile Home Park, (Maricopa County), AZ

NOAA is apparently dialed into the trailer park scene down in AZ.

This just in:read: recycle an old jewel case to make your own packaging. Very cool.

This is a quite amusing little anecdote about two climbers turned 'male models' on a photoshoot for Backpacker magazine. Well, I laughed a bunch anyways.