Al Iverson's Bacon Rodeo

Say Hello to Zsa Zsa

2012-12-17T12:40:00.002-06:00

Here's our newest friend, Zsa Zsa, hanging out with Murray on the sofa. She's a tiny little Chihuahua, barely five pounds. She's nine years old. Her previous owners were forced to give her up as she doesn't play well with small children. So, we decided to adopt her, figuring a stable home would be best for her.

We've had her for a couple of weeks now, and she's slowly settling in. It took her a couple of days to warm up to us, and she's still in the process of warming up to Murray. So far, it looks as though she'll get there just fine.

She needs some help socializing, as she can be pretty afraid of new people. It's something we hope to work on in the coming weeks and months.

But for now, so far, so good. She loves to snuggle and her idea of the perfect day is alternating between napping and sitting on our laps.

You could have had a fan, but...

2012-09-22T12:03:00.000-05:00

I spent most of Friday evening at the airport in Indianapolis. American Airlines was doing that thing where they can't decide if they want to cancel a flight or not. So instead, every 20 minutes, they just delayed the flight by another 20 or 30 minutes. (See the snapshot from my phone? That's all the flight alerts my travel tracking app sent me last night.) Eventually, as I rather suspected would happen, the flight was canceled, so I went to reclaim my bag and make my way to a hotel for the night.

As I was collecting my things and figuring out next steps, I pulled up Hotels.com and found a hotel downtown that I'm familiar with, one I like, and it happened to be the cheapest option downtown this evening. So I call them on the phone, instead of booking via Hotels.com, because my hands are full and I'm walking, trying to get out of the airport. The hotel clerk, after bumbling through the process and putting me on hold multiple times, quotes me a price higher than Hotels.com ($169 versus $149). I ask her if she can match the Hotels.com price, meaning, can they come down by $20? She says nope, sorry, can't do that.

I asked to confirm: So you're telling me, that I have to go book online instead to save that $20, and then your hotel has to pay the booking website 20% of the booking amount? You can't just give me the same rate directly, saving me the time and saving you the booking fee? Nope, can't be done, she says. "Um, that's like, some third party thing, we can't match what they do." (Buh?)

OK, thanks, no point in bothering then. I'll go online.

By now, I'm already kind of miffed that the hotel wouldn't help me out. Last time I was stranded due to a flight cancellation, another hotel downtown had no problem matching that rate. It's a shame that hotel wasn't available this time around. I then decided that I don't really care where I stay for the night, I just want it to be as cheap as possible and somewhere downtown, so I can make my way to the Amtrak station early in the morning.

So while riding back downtown in the back of a taxi, I fire up the laptop, plug in the Sprint modem, and pull up Hotwire.com. Hotwire had a four star hotel in downtown Indy for only $113 tonight.

So I booked it. On the Hotwire website, they don't tell you the name or exact location of the hotel until you make the booking. And when I pushed the "buy it" button I found out that I had ended up with the exact same hotel that I had talked to on the phone. I got it for a full $56 less than what I was quoted on the phone, and they still had to pay the website for the booking. Yet, I was ready and willing to pay them $36 more directly.

I'm left frustrated by all of this. This hotel could have turned me into a fan by doing me a favor on a really stressful travel day. Instead, they turned me away, and then it dawned on me that if they're not going to be loyal to me, maybe I shouldn't bother being loyal to them.

Oh, and I was booked to stay at this hotel for a week next month. Now I'm starting to think I should cancel that and just use Hotwire instead. Treat me like a commodity, and I can do the same to you.

(Oh, and after getting to the hotel and checking in? I wanted to meet a friend for drinks, but I decided not to spend another dime in the hotel that didn't seem to care about me. So, we went down the street a block to the other hotel, the one that treated me better, but didn't have any rooms this time around. It felt good spending my money in their lobby bar, instead of at the first place. I'm a fan.)

Dog Park in Rogers Park

2012-08-23T11:55:00.004-05:00

Did you know that Rogers Park has a dog park? The Pottawattomie Park DFA (Dog Friendly Area) can be found at the far northeast corner of Pottawattomie Park near Clark and Rogers in Rogers Park. It's a bit hidden -- but don't be discouraged. If you're parking in the lot for the park, you'll want to come all the way back from the parking lot, to the far north end of the park, where you'll find the dog park area. It's just west of the Metra tracks. It's closer to Birchwood than to Rogers.

If you have a dog and live in Rogers Park, I hope you'll come check out the dog park! It's been open for almost a year now and it's never very busy there.

For more information about the Rogers Park dog park at Pottawattomie Park, check out the PPDFA website.

Please tell your friends! And please link to the dog park website from your website, if you're able. It'll help make it easier for other neighbors to find information about the dog park.

What's Cheaper at Family Dollar

2012-06-18T12:51:00.002-05:00

I'm a big fan of Family Dollar -- I'm not ashamed to admit that I shop there three or four times a month. But, after reading this article, I'm wondering if I need to check out an actual 99 cent store instead, if I want to save the most money possible.

This doesn't mean I'm done with Family Dollar, for sure. In the article, the author highlights the comparison items that turned out to be cheapest there, including Ocean Spray juices, Palmolive Dish Soap, Cascade Dish-washing Powder, Hefty trash bags, and Reynolds Wrap.

At Family Dollar, I personally tend to buy a lot of stuff like bags of little candy bars, toilet paper, facial tissue, and basic foodstuffs like mac and cheese, just about all of these seem to be cheaper than you could get from any other store. Some things, like gourmet mac and cheese and little candy bars, I've observed that Family Dollar charges less than half what a Target or a CVS charges.

New Verizon Option: Pay More, For Less

2012-06-12T11:44:00.003-05:00

Verizon Wireless just announced "Share Everything" data plans, going live on June 28th. Engadget has the details here or click on through directly to Verizon's website here.

The pricing is confusing, and really doesn't seem like any sort of a discount. I can't imagine anybody going for this. These plans are definitely not any sort of discount, from what I can see.

Let's do the math: I just paid $171 to Verizon for this month's access for two iPhones, with unlimited data, and 700 shared minutes. That includes about $10 for text messages (we found it cheaper to not have a text messaging plan and just pay when it happens) and $20/mo for tethering on one phone. It also includes a 10% discount that Verizon provides to employees of the company I work for, and about $20 of the bill is taxes and administrative fees. (Also, there's a "Nationwide - Line Access" fee of $9.99/month being charged for each phone that I don't quite understand. I need to call about that.)

So if I wanted one of these new shared plans, with a reasonable amount of data, here's what I'd be looking at: $40 per phone, so $80 per month, for unlimited voice minutes and text messages. (Great, it's unlimited, but who cares. We're not maxing out our voice minutes currently.) Then on top of that, I'd be paying, say, $70/mo for 4 gigabytes of data each month.

Four gigabytes is not a ton of data -- I am told that most people use between one and two gigabytes of data each month. Probably more if you're traveling a lot, and I do travel some. And iPhones have a lot of software and application updates, and unless you're careful only to run those only on wifi, they count against your usage. So basically, we have what amounts to a modest-to-average amount of data available for each phone, and we'd have to worry about overages.

So for not-really-a-win as far as data access goes, we'd pay $150/mo. And that is before tethering ($20/mo) and taxes (approx. $20/mo), so that brings us up to...$190/month.

It's like, for the privilege of paying extra, suddenly I get to worry about data overages.

Who would go for this kind of plan?

Why are cell phone plans overpriced?

2012-06-05T13:55:00.001-05:00

My wife and I love our iPhones. But the costs! Oh, the costs. We're paying Verizon Wireless nearly $200/mo for two phones. I make maybe one phone call a week. And most of the time wifi is available and I could be using Skype instead. I got rid of unlimited text messaging, bringing the cost down by, oh, maybe $20/mo or so, but it's just not enough, and I just can't find a cheaper plan for us on Verizon Wireless. So, I've started to look around. Our contract is not up for a while, but that's not going to stop me from at least looking.

Before we get started, here are three important things to keep in mind when considering these, or any other, cell phone provider and service plan.

Avoid WiMAX-based 4G. Sprint's current 4G technology is WiMAX-based (as opposed to LTE-based) andClear is the provider behind the scenes, coverage is poor and the network has seemingly always had issues. We've tried to use Clear WiMAX ourselves both with home service and mobile service. It's just not ready for prime time, and I'm not sure it ever will be. Right now, true LTE 4G is available only on Verizon and AT&T, and the iPhone 4/4S supports neither WiMAX nor LTE as of June, 2012. The take-away here is: Plan your life around 3G service for now.
Most of these services actually utilize Sprint's voice and data (3G) network -- which has been demonstrated to be slower than Verizon or AT&T's 3G network. That's not going to be a problem for most users -- you're not going to be downloading movies over 3G. For typical usage consisting of light to moderate web browsing, email and social networking, you'll be fine. Turn on wi-fi as needed before downloading anything big and beefy.
Don't believe the "unlimited data" hype. All of these providers will throttle or cap you at some point. For example, Virgin Mobile says that they will throttle you if you utilize more than 2.5 gigabytes of data in a month. Unless you're streaming Netflix over 3G, you're not likely to be impacted by this. The one thing I'll miss is using Skype over 3G, but that's a small price to pay for...a much smaller price to pay ongoing. Also, most throttle instead of suspend service. Throttling is much friendlier than capping, in that you still have access to the internet, just at a slower speed. Providers who cap you will typically cut you off right there and then when you hit the limit, requiring that you pay an extra fee for additional megabytes.
Jump on the Google Voice bandwagon! I ported my old cell phone number to Google Voice for a one time fee of $20. Now my legacy phone number rings through to me at whatever phone I specify. I ignored whatever phone number Verizon provided to me, and I won't have to bother with number portability in the near future. If I switch providers, it'll take me about ten seconds to go into Google Voice and modify settings so that calls reach me on the new provider instead of the old provider. This process is transparent to callers -- they have no idea that you've changed anything. Also, Google's handling of voice mail is fantastic -- I highly recommend it. It can SMS you transcripts of messages. It will email you transcripts as well, and it's very easy to play back messages by clicking on the link in email or in the Google Voice app on iOS or Android. Consider this: I've never even bothered to configure my Verizon Wireless voice mailbox.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, allow me to share with you the top five cheapest smartphone plans/service options out there as of June, 2012, as identified through my research.

Option #1: Voyager Mobile - http://www.voyagermobile.com/
Service plan costs: For an android smartphone, $39/mo unlimited talk, text and internet, including 4G. For a basic flip phone, $19/mo for unlimited talk/text. The details: You need to buy a phone from them, and if you want a fancy one, expect to pay up to $550. Android only, no iPhones. Shipping times are long, it might take 3-5 weeks for your phone to arrive. The 4G service is Clear Wimax, which sucks. (I would not bother buying a 4G device for this service - I think 3G is good enough.) Voyager uses Sprint's network. This is probably the way I'd go if I wanted an Android phone with unlimited service.

Option #2: Ting Mobile - https://ting.com/getting-started/
This is another Sprint reseller, run by internet company Tucows, based in Toronto. Good guys. Pros: They're hacker friendly, so while you do have to buy a phone from them, they don't care if you clone your ESN onto your personal iPhone, so you can use it on their network (if you know how to do that). They're friendly and responsive when it comes to answering questions on their web forums. Cons: The pricing model, while it can be significantly cheaper if you're a light cell phone user, involves doing your own math. They charge a base $6/mo per phone, then you add on various blocks of megabytes, texts and minutes. You could go data only with 1gig/mo for $30/mo. If you pick a large block of minutes (2000), a thousand text messages, and two gigabytes of data, you're up to $88/mo. Might as well stick with the post-paid plans if you're going to be a heavy user. Ting is another land of Android, no iPhone here. I probably wouldn't recommend Ting, unless you are a hacker or have unique pricing needs that might make the math more favorable. (Here find somebody else's thoughts on Ting Mobile.)

Option #3: Cricket Wireless - http://www.mycricket.com/iphone
As of June 2012, Cricket Wireless says the iPhone 4S is coming any day now. They have their own network, but they utilize Sprint for 3G coverage. For $499 you can buy an iPhone 4S outright, then pay $55/mo for unlimited talk, text and data. They have a smaller network footprint, from what I can tell, so unless you live in a big city, this is probably not the plan for you. Perhaps not good for you, but maybe it's good for me. I'm intrigued by this. I want an iPhone, and I want inexpensive service. I'd consider this provider, though I don't know anybody utilizing them currently.

Option #4: Straight Talk - http://www.shopstraighttalk.com
This is TracFone Wireless behind the scenes, selling via Wal-Mart and online. No iPhone here, but a number of Android phones are on offer. You can pick up an LG Optimus Black for $329 and then for $45/mo you get unlimited talk and text, data/web access. I'm not sure who the provider is behind the scenes -- Tracfone is a reseller of service from Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T, so it might depend on which phone you get. This is the way I'd go if I wanted an Android phone and wanted the ability to be able to walk into a Wal-Mart to buy it, instead of having to wait to have it shipped to me.

Option #5: Virgin Mobile - http://www.virginmobileusa.com
In the US, Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint. So this is Sprint's network, and you're actually buying the phone and any service directly from Sprint. They have a variety of Android devices, and the prices seem reasonable. They have announced that the iPhone 4 and 4S will be available as of June 29, 2012. If their current plan pricing covers the iPhone, you can get unlimited data and texting and 300 minutes for $35/mo or unlimited data, texting and minutes for $55/mo. You can save $5/mo discount by signing up for auto billing, meaning you can have an iPhone live and on the air for $30/month with a nice amount of minutes and unlimited data. This might be the winner for me, personally, since it's Just Plain Sprint behind the scenes, and not some third party reselling me somebody else's services. I think this is the way to go if you want an iPhone. When my Verizon Wireless contract is up, this is the provider I'll be looking the hardest at.

Doing the math: Starting from zero, plan out how much you'll pay in phone plans and devices over, say, two years. On Virgin Mobile, you'll pay $649 for an iPhone 4S, plus $30/mo for two years, for a total of $1369 over that period of time. For Verizon Wireless, you can get the same phone (or maybe even with more storage) for $299, but you're going to pay perhaps $90/mo for two years, for a total of $2459.

Is this a joke?

2012-06-03T12:54:00.000-05:00

Is this a joke, or a fake review? Read it and tell me what you think. This guy took public transit all the way from downtown out to Lincolnwood to go to....Olive Garden.

He left Chicago, to go out to the suburbs, to go eat Italian food, at a chain restaurant.

Chicago, the land of a zillion fantastic Italian restaurants. Ones like Spiaggia, Osteria via Stato, Italian Village, Quartino, Francesca's, Prosecco, Frankie's, Gene and Georgetti and Carmine's -- and that's just of the top of my head, without looking anything up. (And that's just Gold Coast/River North.) There are probably more than a hundred more within walking distance of downtown.

You wanted a chain restaurant without leaving downtown? Try Maggiano's (which is pretty damn good). Or Barnelli's Pasta Bowl. Or Buca.

Instead...you took a bus and a train to go eat at an outbuilding of a mall in the suburbs. Really? REALLY?!

Hi, I'm Noodles!

2012-04-25T16:49:00.002-05:00

This is Noodles. He's staying with us for a while. We're fostering him for PAWS Chicago, giving him a break from life in the shelter. He's a good little guy who wants nothing more than to sleep on your lap. He might take a couple of days to get to know you, but he was sleeping on my lap within an hour of bringing him home, and he'll have no problem warming up to somebody given a bit of time.

If you'd like to learn more about Noodles (aka Borys), hop on over to Kate's adoption blog, the Foster Woof.

Bad Dog Owner

2012-04-06T11:04:00.000-05:00

Hey neighbors, watch out for this guy:

His dog killed another dog at Montrose Beach on March 17th, and he ran away instead of dealing with it. If I see him, I'm going to call the cops on him.

More info here and here.

This is a sad situation. And for anybody who would want to say anything about either dog or what somebody should or shouldn't have done differently; that's beside the point. The point is that this guy ran from the scene. And that is flat-out wrong of him.

Update: The guy has been identified as a Chicago police officer. What the hell was this guy thinking, that he could just walk away and that nobody would ever find him again?

Still No Internet

2012-03-28T11:49:00.000-05:00

RCN rewired some amount of the internal wiring in our building, and we had internet for almost an hour yesterday. It was glorious. It was also about 1.15 meg, says Speedtest.net. Apparently there is a signal problem on the outside RCN line that has to be addressed. They're working on that over the next day or two, they claim. We shall see.

I found where the patch panels are for cable, and I tried connecting us back up to Comcast, to no avail. I can't figure out why we can't get that to work. We haven't canceled Comcast service yet. Maybe the wire I think is Comcast isn't actually Comcast.

Today I ordered AT&T U-Verse, 3 meg for $19/mo. That magic is supposed to happen on Monday. We shall see.

Living in a cave in the 1950s

2012-03-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

So this is what it was like before the internet existed. Our internet (RCN) has been down since last Thursday. A week prior, we switched from Comcast to RCN, because we kept having repeated connection issues with Comcast and wanted to try something else.

Then, on Thursday morning, at exactly 7:30 AM, we lost the RCN connection, totally and utterly. A cable must be disconnected somewhere, as we don't even get the "night light" channel 3 TV signal. I call RCN, they send somebody out on Friday who spends a few hours tracing lines and trying to figure out what's what. He can't figure out which lead on the outside pole is ours. Not a surprise, since it took the installer forever to find it, because it's not labeled. The installer didn't label it, though. If he had, troubleshooting might have gone a little easier.

Both the original RCN installer and current tech kept asking where the splitter junction was located, and both were sure it should be inside my apartment. After again visually inspecting every closet a second time, I think we finally convinced them that we have no such device or panel.

No luck, he can't figure out what's up and has to leave.

On Sunday, a neighbor shows me the hidden rooms where various connection boxes live for phones and cable. The RCN tech returns on Monday, and our landlord meets us here to let them into one of the rooms with the panel. Except, the landlord's key doesn't work, he can't get the room open. I email the neighbor who has a key, and it turns out that he's out of town, so no luck there. My wife asks another neighbor who calls everybody on her contact list looking for the key, to no avail.

So the RCN tech can't do anything on Monday, either. Still down. After he leaves, I email the management company and ask them for help. OK, they can send out a maintenance man with the key to that room. Our building has a maintenance man? I learned something new today.

Now we're on to Tuesday -- today. Maintenance man stopped by, unlocked the room, and left. RCN tech is now here, and is running wires. Will we get lucky? Will we have internet again today? And if not, what do we do?

Should we call Comcast and ask them to come out and try to undo whatever happened here? Or should we call AT&T and get Uverse? Looks like it's available on our block.

Avoiding Pink Slime

2012-03-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

Even McDonald's has said they'll no longer mix "pink slime" into their ground beef. ABC News says 70% of ground beef you buy at the grocery store contains this gross stuff -- yuck. Looks like locally, the easy way to avoid it right now is to buy ground beef at Costco or Whole Foods. No word on whether or not you'll find it in ground beef at Dominick's or Jewel.

Google Voice for your Building Intercom

2012-01-22T17:54:00.000-06:00

This Apartment Therapy post has a pretty good and simple overview of how you can use your Google Voice # as the number you give your landlord or condo association for your entry in the security phone system. We've never actually had a landline, so we used this for our front door buzzer solution for a good long while.

Why not take it to the next level, though? Instead of having our cell phones ring when somebody buzzes our front door, why don't we fake it to the max and pretend we have a home phone? Back in August, we bought this thing -- an Obihai OBi 100 VoIP Telephone Adapter. What does it do? It connects Google Voice to old school wired telephones. If you've ever know anyone who has Vonage, this is the same kind of deal. A landline phone plugs into this box. You also connect the box to the internet. Log in and enter your Google Voice username and password and boom, you've got a fake landline. Pick up the phone, get a dialtone, dial it like normal, and everything seems to work.

Now when somebody buzzes us from the front gate, our actual landline telephone rings. And when we miss somebody's buzz, we get an email from GV saying "Missed Call from Front Gate." It works pretty slick. We've actually got it connected to one of those cordless phone systems that has multiple handsets, so it gives us a landline phone both upstairs and downstairs.

Krunch Kretschmar: Over the line!

2012-01-13T18:13:00.004-06:00

So this guy Krunch Kretschmar, whom I've never met, is being sued by a woman for allegedly creating a fake blog purported to be written by her, and posting awful things to it. Things about her being on drugs and supposedly embezzling from her employer. He supposedly said to her, "Now every time a company for a job or someone searches YOU on google they will read my side of the story."

So, OK, here's my tiny little tribute to Krunch Kretschmar. Maybe when people search for him online, they'll find this post.

Read more at Boing Boing, or CBS Chicago, or the Sun Times.

It's Murray!

2011-10-29T21:53:00.000-05:00

We were pretty sad after losing Solly, but knew that eventually it would be time to bring home a new friend to keep us company. We planned on picking out a random adult dog from a shelter, but when we saw this little guy was an option, we had to go check him out. He's part corgi and part pug, just like Solly. We brought him home when he was just about twelve weeks old, which means he was born back in July.

We decided to name him Murray.

We were hoping that going with the same breed mix would land us a dog with as calm and laid back as our last one. Not sure how true THAT turned out to be, as now we have a puppy who loves to run around in circles at 100 miles per hour and chew on everything in sight, when he's not barking at invisible monsters. I'm thinking we should have paid more attention to the warnings about what level of effort it takes to deal with a puppy. But, we're managing. We love him, he loves his new home, and we're slowly training him to sit and stay and go potty at the right time and in the right place.

And thankfully, he falls asleep from time to time.

A Rough Week

2011-09-24T15:38:00.005-05:00

It's been a rough week. Last Sunday night, our dog Solly fell down the stairs to our lower level at about 11pm. He ended up spending the night at the emergency vet, and the next day the doggy eye doctor confirmed what we had feared, that the fall damaged his remaining eye. We decided that it would be too hard for him to try to recover from surgery at his advanced age (14 or 15), so we brought him home and spent the next day with him, making him as comfortable as we could, saying our goodbyes, then took him to the vet on Tuesday afternoon to have him released from his pain.

I can't begin to describe how sad this was for us. And still is.

He was a happy dog, and we had a lot of good times together. Lately he was wanting to snuggle more, spend more time close to us, and it made us so happy. He was an easy dog to please; we're lucky to have the beach, park and lake at the end of our block, and lately, we had been making an effort to take him down there a bit more often. I'm glad we did. The picture above is from just a couple of weeks ago when we went and sat on the grass together at the park, the three of us.

Kate adopted Solly from a corgi rescue over ten years ago. Also pictured there is Lucy, who left us almost two years ago. Dealing with that loss was also sad, but a bit easier, as the timing was more obvious and we knew it was coming. She had dementia for a while and really didn't have a clue where she was any more. But with Solly, he was still our little friend, and he still knew it.

Miss you, Solly.

Dumpster Diving for Furniture

2011-09-03T19:06:00.001-05:00

One of my many hobbies is irritating my wife. One of the ways I do this is by finding furniture in the alley and bringing it home. The pieces are invariably dirty and beat up, which makes it hard for her to visualize what we could actually end up with. But, with a little bit of sanding and painting, most of these end up working out very well for us. We've gotten quite a bit of stuff this way -- to date: a cabinet for my home office (which holds my printer very nicely), a bookcase for our spare room, a large dresser (which I now love), a wrought iron end table (which might have been a plant stand), and now this:

Our lower level has these weird ledges along the floor. We believe that the basement floor was lowered, but that they weren't able to go all the way out to the foundation walls. The result is a 10"-12" deep ledge along outside walls. We've been on the look out for stuff that might fit on the ledges and help us better use space. Here's what we came up with, in our main downstairs room. Everything under the bookcase (wall, footing) is part of our wall.

Here's what that bookshelf looked like when we found it in the alley.Very dark wood, rough finish, but very sturdy.

It took days to pull this off. Lots and lots of sanding and filling. This is real wood, but it was probably something some guy hand built and hung on his garage wall 40 years ago. Lots of nicks and dings, and I ended up adding a few of my own, including accidentally ripping a chunk of wood off when trying to remove the cross-beam. Oops. But yesterday, I finally got it bolted to the wall, and applied the last bit of touch up paint and sanding, and today we've got a nice looking bookshelf that almost looks like a built-in.

This was almost too big of a project -- I'm not sure I have the patience to go through this again, but for sure, I'll keep an eye out for something else good in the alley, just in case.

My Rogers Park office was nice...

2011-08-02T13:16:00.003-05:00

...but the view from my new office downtown is nothing to complain about!

Home Reserve Furniture: I'm happy.

2011-07-16T14:52:00.003-05:00

Check out this chair! We ordered it online from Home Reserve furniture. It cost $219, including shipping. It actually came in the box you see to the right and we had to assemble it ourselves.

There were a lot of pieces of strand board to assemble. It's a bit rough around the edges (literally), meaning there was a fair amount of sawdust to clean up when we were all done. It's not very easy to pull the fabric over the finished frame -- that took a lot of grunting and swearing. A few of the bolt and screw holes weren't drilled all the way through, but that was easily enough dealt with.

One lesson I learned (that I wish somebody had told me before purchasing) is that a stripy fabric like this makes it very obvious when you don't have the fabric positioned perfectly. That will be an ongoing project to wiggle bits into exactly the right place, I think. Also, there is NO WAY you could assemble this without a power screwdriver -- it would take about a million years to put all the screws in. With a power screwdriver, assembly took just about two hours.

There are a lot of people asking online if Home Reserve furniture is nice, so allow me to add my voice to the chorus: On day one, after assembly, we're very happy, and I'm already thinking about buying another chair and an ottoman. It's average sized, seems comfortable, and seems entirely as-advertised. It is not as squishy as a big overstuffed chair you'd buy from a furniture store, but you'll still be quite happy with it.

Here's the chair in various stages of assembly.

Beat Radio how-to from 1998

2011-06-23T11:32:00.003-05:00

Back in 1998, I volunteered to help out with Beat Radio, a dance music radio station with an interesting history. It started in Minneapolis as a pirate radio station on 97.7 FM, until the FCC showed up one day to seize the equipment. Then later, a network of radio stations was looking for a buyer and needed content, so the Beat Radio guy got me and a bunch of other folks to volunteer to help fill the network's airwaves with dance music. For more on the history, check out www.beatworld.com.

My tiny part in this adventure involved learning how to run the board at the radio station and becoming a radio DJ. Yesterday, while unpacking boxes at our new apartment, I found my notes from my 1998 training on how things work, mostly focused on Beat Radio's original Sunday night schedule.

After Beat Radio relinquished most of its control over the former Radio AAHS Network, the network hired a few of us directly to do whatever we wanted. I filled my time with Radparker Radio. A bit later, the stations were finally sold to the "Catholic Family Radio Network" and our time came to a close. I was invited to continue on as a board op for the religious network, but I declined.

Dog Found at Loyola Beach

2011-06-17T09:14:00.005-05:00

Bark Bark Club reports: FOUND DOG! This pretty girl was found on Thursday 6/16 around 5 pm at Loyola Beach near Albion. She had on a red harness with no tags, is very well behaved, and seems to have had puppies at some point. If you know anything about her, please contact Dan at (616) 291-6808 or by email at dmeidema@luc.edu.

Here's two other pets found recently, more information at EdgeVille Buzz.

Bluetooth at Home

2011-06-09T16:22:00.003-05:00

Few statements can be considered more exciting than the following: Finally, I have a use for bluetooth at home!

OK, I'm lying, but still.... We stumbled across a very simple and satisfying solution to an annoying problem. In our new apartment, we have fairly poor cell reception. Believe it or not, with Verizon, not with AT&T. The phones work, but calls drop pretty regularly if you're not actually near a window.

A friend of ours has AT&T and mentioned buying a microcell to solve that problem -- but that's kind of expensive and it irritates me that I have to pay so much to solve the cell provider's issue. So, here's what we stumbled upon instead: The Cobra PhoneLynx Bluetooth Cell to Home Phone Connection System.

What does it do? It connects to your fancy smartphone over Bluetooth, and then it connects to whatever regular telephones you have. We've got ours connected to a cordless phone system with two phones and two base stations. When we're at home, we drop our iPhones into their chargers, conveniently located by the window, where they get great reception. Then, if a cell phone rings, the house phone rings. The house phone is thus an extension for your iPhone. Since the cell phones remain near the window, reception is always great. And the thing supports two phones/two bluetooth connections. Caller ID tells us if phone #1 or phone #2 is ringing.

Wasn't sure if we'd find this all that useful, but it turned out to be a life-saver that we use every day.

And when you pick up one of the cordless phones, you get a dial tone. Dial like normal, and your call goes out over your cell phone.

Alive in Rogers Park

2011-06-04T10:24:00.003-05:00

Well, we found our fabulous new dream apartment, right here in good ole Rogers Park. Have already connected with a couple of neighbors online and at the corner bar -- and they seem ecstatic that we're replacing the college kids who had a drum set. (There's a diaper-wearing story to be told over beers sometime.) More on how we got that apartment later, but for now, here's a picture of our fabulous new, huge patio.

You can't really tell, but I had just spent a couple of hours sweeping up all the dirt and detritus, followed by a good hosing down. Confirmed: the drain works. Can't wait to load this up with chairs and be able to sit out here drinking wine after dark.

And the deck above it is ours, too.

SMS Spam from 714-363-6375

2011-05-15T11:32:00.003-05:00

I am logging here that I got SMS spam from 714-363-6375 at 8:51 am on Sunday, May 15, 2011. The spam: "Need fast cash in your bank account within 1 hour? Get an instant payday loan now! Text YES for more info, NO to be removed from su.rvey"

Damn spammers.

More fun with Sprint 4G/Clear Wimax

2011-05-09T19:19:00.003-05:00

Just a couple of months ago, I made the jump to Verizon Wireless, right after they launched the iPhone 4. And let me tell you, I'm loving it. Verizon's network footprint is crazy huge -- way better than the 3G coverage I was getting on my iPad (AT&T) or any of my previous Android phones (on T-Mobile). Recently I had began to use tethering on the iPhone, using its 3g to connect my work laptop to the internet so I could work at the coffee shop (which had horrible wifi) or while on the road. After a while, I decided to see if my work would spring for a modem for me, so I wouldn't have to pay for that out of pocket.

They did, and I ended up with a shiny new Sprint 3G/4G modem a couple of weeks ago.

I've been using it mostly in my neighborhood (Rogers Park) here in Chicago, and the 3G connection is always solid, if a bit slow. But the Sprint 4G connection? Always poor. ALWAYS. Every single time I end up having some problem. The thing drops me after 10 minutes (or 10 seconds), or just doesn't connect at all. And when it's working, the time it takes to establish a connection is painfully long. It takes so long, I can visibly observe my fingernails getting longer before it establishes.

As you might already know, Sprint 4G is really Clear Wimax. We tried it as our home internet connection about a year ago, and immediately switched back to Comcast.

Now, it's a year later, and Clear Wimax 4G still sucks. It is just flat out the worst connectivity I have ever experienced ever. How is Clear still in business? How is Sprint still tied to this dog of a technology? Can somebody explain it to me? Who PAYS for this? I'm getting it free courtesy of my employer and I STILL want to return it.