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Archive for the 'Personal' Category
SpinvoxI was watching the local news the other night and they talked about a service called Spinvox where your emails are transcribed as text messages. I got so excited when heard that. You see, I hate listening to voicemails. I sometimes know that the person just called to say “I’m on my way” or to say hi. But I still have that voicemail icon on my phone so I have to call my voicemail, listen to the voicemail and then delete it. Or what’s worse, people tend to ramble on the voicemails and you have to listen to the whole thing. So I went to the spinvox website (kind of a creepy site) and I saw that they are a UK company about to launch the service in the US. I emailed them and asked when it’d be ready and they told me that if I wanted I could be a part of their beta test in the US. I agreed and I received activation instructions. And you know what? It works amazingly well. I’ve had a couple of people call my phone and I sent them to voicemail. Less than a minute later I had a text message with the contents of the voicemail. For example: “Hi David. it’s Heather. Just thought I’d call & say hi. Talk to you later, bye.” Punctuation and all. Apparently they have a couple call centers with people who just transcribe voicemails as soon as they are recorded. I don’t know how much this is going to cost, but if it’s not expensive, I can imagine getting it. Now if they could only do the same with my voicemail at work …. Update 3/8/07: I’m allowed to “give away” 5 free accounts on Spinvox so if you know me, and I know you, drop me a note and I’ll tell you what to do.
1 year (and 1 day) in OrlandoI just came across this picture of me on the Intertubes which happened exactly one year ago funny enough.
I enjoy my normal selfJosh is addicted to World of Warcraft. Apparently people disappear from public life once they start playing and he is apparently not an exception. I’m so bored tonight that I thought I’d try it. I go on the website, download the downloader application and while it downloads I start reading the quick-start guide. It explains that the game has 2 rival sides and that if your friends play on one side and you want to be able to communicate with them, that you choose the same side. Alright, whatever. I go ahead and text Josh: “Horde or Alliance?” and he writes back “all on kel thuzad.” Er…. What?
My journey ended before it started.
La casaI’m almost done moving into my new house! The past few weeks were spent painting the walls before moving in any furniture and then slowly moving boxes and junk into the house. The final move will happen this weekend when we’ll move the couch, beds and other big things. What colors were the walls painted? A lot of colors! Now, I didn’t want the house to look like a circus, but I also didn’t want white walls nor did I want the same color through the whole house. So what I did was grab one of the floor boards and take it to Home Depot. There, I went to one of their magical color matching machines, stuck the floor board in it and tell it to match its color. Once it had the color of the floor, I told it to give me colors that matched that color. It selected several. Among all of the colors it showed, we liked this somewhat dark green:
That is a view of the front entrance hallway, kitchen and part of the living room. Two walls in the living room where painted with the dark green. One of the walls is shared by both the living room and the kitchen. The rest of the walls, in other words, the kitchen walls as well as the entrance hallway and the wall that you see on the right which goes all the way down to the bedrooms, is a very very light green, it’s almost white, but it goes great with the dark green that we chose. It’s impossible to tell on the picture, but trust me, it’s a super light green. The house also has a 1 foot wide ledge around most of the house. We painted that ledge in the livingroom/entrance area the same dark green as the living room. The ledge also wraps around into the kitchen, so we brought the dark green down a small wall in the kitchen by the fridge. This brings both shades of green together. Then we told the computer to choose colors that coordinated with the dark green. Out of all of the colors that it showed, we chose a greyish blue for the 2 “guest” bedrooms:
And a brown for the master bedroom
The ledge in the master bedroom is a brown 2 shades darker than the wall color. Both of those bedroom colors look really nice in person and they go great with the white baseboard, blinds, closet doors, etc. I know the pictures show some paint imperfections, but the paint was still a bit wet when I took those pictures and we then had to go around the house and do some touch ups here and there. Everything is looking great now and it’s ready to be lived in! I’m OKLast night several severe storms and even tornadoes came through the central Florida area. I of course slept through the whole thing, I’m awesome when it comes to sleeping through anything. Apparently there was some damage about an hour north of Orlando and a bit of damage also about half hour South of Orlando, but nothing in my area. I have received several calls and emails today, and I appreciate your concern.
D’oh!Apparently I filled out my W4 incorrectly which means that this is the first time I owe the government taxes instead of getting a refund. $400. It could have been worse, originally I owed them about $900 but after figuring out my moving expenses last year from Kansas to Florida, the amount went down to $400. Ugh. So I am going to fill out my W4 again and change my exemptions. Since it’s still early in the year, I should still be OK to get a small refund in next year’s taxes.
ExhaustedI have paint in parts of the body that I didn’t think were ever in contact with paint. That’s all I’ve done for several days now. Paint, paint, paint. The house has all white walls and I think that’s kind of boring so I wanted to give the house some color. I began by going to home depot with a floor board and I told a computer to show me colors that matched that floor. It showed several and I chose a very pretty green. Then I went ahead and chose a green 3 shades lighter. A couple walls in the living room will be the original green while the opposite wall is the lighter green. But the ledge that goes along the opposite wall is painted with original green which ties both colors together rather nicely. Then I told the computer to give me other colors that went with that green. I chose a nice mid-range brown for the master bedroom and a greyish-blue for the 2 other bedrooms. All that’s left to paint is the master bedroom. Hopefully I can finish that tomorrow and finally rest. OK not really, then it’s time to start moving things into the house.
Homeowner
Winter sucksBut not for me! It’s Christmas time, it’s 80 degrees outside, I’m wearing shorts and t-shirt, walking among palm trees, listening to Christmas music. In the meanwhile, there’s Colorado and half the midwest buried in snow. In the words of Nelson, HA HA! It’s so nice to know that I won’t have to deal with crap like this any more.
It’s a good day after allLots of good news to report today! - My laptop is ready for pick up after 3 weeks at the Apple Store for repair. UPDATE: Not only did they fix my laptop, but they gave me the latest chip, a core duo processor as opposed to the single core processor that came with it when I bought it. Yay Apple!
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