Category Archives: Free Programs

Finished in the bathroom

Free Programs, House,

Nasty old bathroom

When I first started this blog, I mentioned the bathroom on the top floor of our house.  During my vacation around Christmas-time 2007 (yes, 2007!), we decided to tear out everything in the bathroom and start over.  The house was built in 1939, but I am pretty certain that the bathroom had been there since 1743.  Anyhow, we pulled out what appeared to be 265 year old nasty and started over.  Of course, nothing in the room (or the house for that matter) is level or square.  Welcome Warren to the story.

Nasty old bathroom Nasty old bathroom

We had installed bamboo flooring in our place in TN and had a box of it left which we brought to WV when we moved.  Of course, I measured and determined that we needed one more box…rats.  So we ordered one more box and started about re-flooring the bathroom in bamboo.  If any of you have ever installed solid wood floor, you know it is pretty easy – if you have a level and square area in which to lay it.  No such luck in our place.  Actually, it is still not hard, even with a mobius strip-like room…it just takes a little longer.  That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Bathroom nirvana!

So last weekend, I finally finished the last of the work in the bathroom.  That’s right, a mere 393 days later and the bathroom is finished!  Now the floor got installed in one day, but I had to wait a year to…uh…make sure it settled properly.  It is such an incredible improvement over what we had.  As I looked back over the pictures of the original, I am shocked…mainly shocked at how awesome I am for fixing it!  Well, actually, I am shocked at how awesome my wife is for living in the craziness until we got it done!  Bathroom nirvana!

I guess I am on a cute little program kick the last few days, but here is a program that will tell you the number of days between 2 dates or the date a certain number of days from today.  That’s how I knew how long it took me to get the bathroom finished!  Anyhow, as always, this program is free, but not to be used for anything but fun.

Brought to you by the letter T

Free Programs, Fun,

I follow Evil Twin Wife’s blog, and she recently participated in a fun internet meme.

It’s actually called “Brought to you by the letter…” game.   Here’s how it works…

You leave a comment on this post, and I’ll assign you a letter. You write about ten things you love that begin with your assigned letter, and post it at your place. When people comment on your list, you give them a letter, and the chain continues on and on. (I copied that from her and she copied off someone else, so… feel free to rip it off again).

I got the letter “T” so here is my list:

Turtles – turtles are the strangest creatures…they are armored and primitive but always seem so fragile.  I always stop when I see them on the road and move them out of the way…I love to help turtles.

Toenails – actually, I hate toes, toenails and all things feet…except I love to tease the kids.  Abigail in particular always asks me what we are having for dinner.  I always answer “toe nail soup and an earwax sandwich”

Toadstools – well, the non-poisonous ones.  I am just starting to learn about edible mushrooms…I really dig hunting mushrooms

Tahitian Treat! – Enough said

Taffy – Saltwater taffy is so awesome, but I only really like it when I am at the beach.

Tybee Island – One of my two favorite beach locations is Tybee Island, GA.  We’re going there this summer assuming the economy doesn’t implode on itself

Truffles – I don’t think I have ever found a truffle I didn’t like.  These are some of my favorite.

Tinkering – My grandfather was a tinkerer before me and I think I have picked up his tinkering addiction.  I prefer to reinvent the wheel whenever possible.  Even better, I like to over-engineer wherever I can!

Thera-gesic – I go to the gym pretty regularly and lift weights which, of course, leads to sore muscles.  Thera-gesic absolutely saves lives!
Thank goodness for Theragesic

Temperature – I like it hot.  When I lived in PA, I thought I would die if I ever got hot.  Moving to Tennessee broke me of that.  I came to love the heat in Tennessee.  Hey, that reminds me, I also love Tennessee.  We moved to Nashville shortly after we were married to attend graduate school at Vanderbilt.  For some reason we stayed when we finished school.  So, Emily and I sort of grew up together there.  We were pretty young when we got married so we had no idea about life on our own…we discovered it and each other in Nashville.  Anyhow, back to temperature…I still love the heat.  I have mentioned before that my office has 8 server computers in it which generate a lot of heat.  It typically runs 80+ deg F during the day.  I love it that way though.  My co-workers call me a lizard…they say I need a rock and a heat lamp to finish out my habitat.

“T” is a pretty easy-going letter.  One would think that it would be simple to come up with a list of stuff starting with “T” that one likes…I mean genuinely likes.  It’s harder than you’d think.  I am surprised and how hard this was.

So, if you want to participate, leave a comment to that effect and I will give you a letter.  You can leave a comment and not participate too.  Also, if you want to spread the fun, I wrote a little program to generate random letters so you can be fair in passing out letters to your respondees.  Choose from the bigger-but-with-better-images version (6 mb) or the smaller-but-with-poorer-images version (300kb).  As always, these programs are just for fun and not to be used for any nasty purpose or to be sold…

Woot!

Free Programs, Technology,

Woot-offThis is sort of silly but there are a few websites I check every day…even on weekends.  One of the first is www.woot.com.  They typically sell one item per day.  If/when they sell out of the item, the site is locked until the next day.  Now, that may seem pretty dull but the deals are typically pretty great.  They also have hilarious product descriptions, a funny podcast and goofy comments on the blog.  But the really exciting part is when they have a woot-off (usually once a month…you’ll see the sirens and the yellow progress bar during a woot-off).  During a woot-off, which can last 1or more days, they sell one item until it is gone, and then they move on to another item.  I suppose it is a purging of the items left in the warehouse that either didn’t sell during normal woots or were purchased in smaller quantity.  Anyhow, it is a ton of fun for me to watch the progression of items for sale during a woot-off.  The problem is, many items sell out in a matter of minutes.  I can’t sit at work all day refreshing a webpage waiting for the next item.  Of course, I can’t sit all day at work during a woot-off and miss any items either.  Faced with a problem, I thought, “hey, I am a computer programmer…I own this!”  From that, “woot watcher!” was born.  I wrote a little application to check the site every 30 seconds and look for changes.  When it finds a change, it pops up a message with the item title and cost.  I can choose to ignore it or view the item.  Now, there are others who have written similar applications, but I like having control over how my version works. 

You can download my program here.  When you click the link, it will prompt you to run or save.  Just save it to your desktop (or wherever you want) and have it ready for the next woot-off!  Please drop me a comment if you download.  I am just curious if anyone else likes woot or “woot watcher!”.  Of course, you download this at your own risk.  I make no warranty for the program or your system.  Please feel free to virus scan it.  It works well for me but I can’t be responsible if it sends your Windows 95 machine over the edge!