The MacDeskBlog

Oops. It was pointed out to me this morning that today’s Waikoloa Sunset desktop is a duplicate. Sorry.

There are two things to learn from this.

First off, I’m pretty consistent in evaluating submissions. So, if you send something in more than once, I’m going to arrive at the same conclusion each time I look at the picture. This is largely because my criteria are at least 75% objective: is the resolution high enough and is the picture quality high enough? The remaining 25% is subjective: do I like the picture, will someone else like the picture, is it content that’s appropriate for MacDesktops, etc? I’ll generally arrive at the same conclusion looking at a picture in June as I will in December.

Secondly, I don’t always realize that a particular picture is a duplicate. Most of the time I realize it when I’m evaluating the pictures. Occasionally, I get through generating all of the sizes and notice before I actually queue up the copy. Twice now, I have actually posted the duplicate thinking it was new. With the archive growing ever larger, odds are increasing that I won’t recognize duplicates right away.

Please do not send me a particular picture more than once. If you send in a picture and don’t see it posted for a long time, please do not re-submit it in the hope that I’ll change my mind. Chances are very high that I haven’t even seen it yet! It takes me about 5-8 months to get through submissions (I’m currently finishing up submissions from last year!). Mind you, this is good. I get nervous when submissions drop off, as I have previously mentioned.

Keep those submission pouring in.

Office window

We were greeted with a pleasant surprise when we arrived at the house Sunday around noon. The windows which arrived on Thursday were already installed downstairs!
One of my dearest friends was in town for the weekend with his lovely wife and their three children (8 months, 3.5 years and 8 years), so Michelle and I blew off working on the house in order to spend Saturday with them. It was great to see them again. I miss the days when we used to play Mexican Rat Screw for hours. Ah, memories.

Side windows

The windows are really nice, and I am so psyched that they’re already installed. They do have some minor scratches on the paint, which is a bit disappointing. I contacted my Pella sales rep and he’s sending me some touch-up paint. Hopefully, that and some rubbing will take care of the scratches. If not, I’ll have to talk to him about a discount. We’ll see.

Rear windows

So, Michelle and I did spent Sunday afternoon working, after sleeping in a bit. I felt pretty ineffectual in my efforts to cut holes for the new outlets over the kitchen counter (damn that building code!). Eventually, I did succeed in cutting the holes, but couldn’t reach them from the outside to run the Romex (note both of the tall ladders laden with scaffolding in the picture of the side windows above … on the opposite side of the building). I did manage to run the new dedicated circuit for the new furnace, which gets installed Wednesday through Friday this week. I’ll take my wins where I can.

Baseboards are gone

Meanwhile, Michelle worked diligently prying the baseboards off the bedroom walls. They were tough suckers. They were also really nice, 1″x10″ 100 year old rough cut redwood, and I’m really sorry to see them go. Alas, they had outlet holes cut into them (some my doing, and some pre-existing) and need to be replaced. So, out they came with much prying and much forcing and a bit of splitting. She managed to clear them out of the front bedroom entirely plus two of the walls in the second bedroom. A good afternoon’s work.

I meet the Sears installer for the furnace in the morning. Steve is having emergency surgery to remove his wisdom teeth, so I’m expecting to lose him for the rest of the week. I need to get creative to fill in for him so the furnace installers can work.
I remember having my wisdom teeth pulled when I was home from college. The next day or the day after that, I wasn’t feeling the slightest hint of pain, so I held off on the pain killers for a couple of hours. Once I realized just how effectively they were working, I spent about an hour wishing I was dead until they kicked in again. We were spending the day at my aunt and uncle’s place in Sacramento where everyone commented a least a couple of times about my chipmunk cheeks. Ah, memories.

Half of my new windows arrived yesterday. All of the downstairs windows plus three upstairs windows arrived yesterday. I think installation will begin on Monday, though Steve may have started this afternoon.

Sears delayed the furnace installation by another day, because of a delay in their receiving it from the manufacturer. It’s still scheduled for next week, just at the end of the week instead of the beginning.

I’m probably the bottleneck for rough inspections, unless I manage to get through the remaining electrical changes all on Sunday this weekend. I’ll probably need part of next weekend too. We’ll see.

I had mediation (not to be confused with arbitration) with Woon on Wednesday. I can’t say anything about it beyond that. Our trial date also got rescheduled from early August to late September in order to accommodate the lawyers on both sides.