The Blog of Matt McCabe

The studio that is.

Just downloaded the free app Wordpress for iPhone.  Let’s see if it works…. Hey!  It does. Uh…now I guess I can write and publish posts from anywhere.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.

I also recently downloaded the app 1password for the iPhone. This is a cool app that remembers all your website username/passwords and autofills them for you.  This is especially helpful, dare I say essential, if you have some impossible to remember “strong” passwords.

The only hiccup with getting 1password to work was correctly defining the field names that it looks for.  On one website this meant looking at its source code to discover that the “Online ID” field was really called “j_username”.  This is probably an isolated case, and now that I know what to look for, it’s not that big of a deal.

Ah yes, that glorious day is upon us!  The addition is finished.  Last Thursday, the granite countertop was installed in Kristy’s office and the studio carpet was installed on Saturday.  Of course, we were out of town camping, so I didn’t see the finished product until Tuesday evening.  It was such a relief to see that it had been installed.  Like the crazed studio owner that I now am, I spent the rest of the evening assembling my Omnirax desk.

Kristy's Office

The studio, including the fabulous carpet! The photo really doesn't do my color choices justice. It really does look cool in person.

Ah...the desk!

Now the fun really begins…unracking and re-racking all my recording equipment.  And for those would be thieves out there, the security system is up and running!

I stumbled upon a free solution to my iPhone gripe of no tabbed browsing. It’s called Tabulate from Inventive Labs Gadgets. From their website…

Because it’s a bookmarklet, you don’t have to hack your precious Apple device to make it work – just follow the installation instructions in the sidebar. Then, when you’re browsing a page with lots of interesting links on it, simply invoke Tabulate from your list of bookmarks.

What that really means is that there are a couple of extra steps you have to go through to get it to work, but it does work! Nice.

Happy Birthday to me! To celebrate, I bought myself an iPhone. What a fun toy! However, I have a few beefs.

1) No tabbed browsing. Major bummer. I use tabs all the time in Safari.

2) No “rules” (aka filters) for incoming email messages via POP. I subscribe to a couple of email lists and I use rules in Mail to route them to specific folders.

3) No email threading. Makes it difficult to keep track of related posts to the aforementioned email lists.

4) Landscape view is only available in Safari. The advantage to the landscape view is that the popup keyboard is a little bigger. I don’t have fat thumbs, but the extra space between the “keys” makes for more accurate typing. It seems like this would/should be easy to implement across all apps, especially Mail.

What I love.

1) Clicking a phone number on a web page gives you the option to call that number.  Very cool.

2) Having Internet access anywhere. Yes, this seems silly. However, I believe this changes everything. Used this at Home Depot today to see if there were other styles of an in-stock lock set available from other retailers. Yes, there were. I still bought the lock set, but I was more confident with my choice.

3) Having a new super cool gadget.

Just spoke to the carpet store.  In a bold move of independent thought, they “reserved” the replacement carpet and inquired about a credit if I decide to keep defective carpet.  They claim the replacement carpet can be here by the middle of next week, so I said “yes” to the new carpet.  I just hope they can deliver!

They asked for a photo of the defective spot on the carpet to help expedite the claim and I figured I’d show it to the world!

Very CSI, don’t you think?

Wine aficionados should stop reading here. I’m not really into wine per se. In fact, I think the whole wine culture is a little silly and self important. Yes, I know I earned a living for a few years working for the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control - it was such fun busting all those 17/20s who thought they were 02s. Yes, I guess that makes me a little hypocritical. Anyway…

I’ve tried many a wine, and not until a couple of years ago, never found one I liked. They all tasted like, well, wine! However, one fine afternoon my in-laws served up a wonderful wine from Bonny Doon Vineyard and my whole world changed! Wow. I really liked it. Very light and fruity.

As my luck would have it 1) they no longer produce that particular wine, 2) I can’t remember what it was called and 3) we finished off our last bottle.

So, Kristy and I have started on a personal quest to find a replacement. We’ve tried a bunch. None of which we can remember! I’m particularly bummed that I can’t recall a wonderful Riesling (?) I had at the Boar’s Breath restaurant in Middletown. Anyway, now we are going to keep track!  

Here’s what you’ve tried (and remembered) so far…

Hess Sauvignon Blanc 2007 - A Lake County wine.  We didn’t like it.

Trinity Oaks Pinot Grigio 2006 - Decent, but still a little winey.

Fetzer Gewurstraminer 2006 - Ahh, we both would have this one again. Not perfect, but close.  Just a tad winey.

Nothing much happened this week.  My level of frustration about the FRICKING carpet is extremely high.

Our contractor, who was supposed to bring by a sample of some carpet he had “in stock”, and thus could install ASAP, totally flaked.  First it was Wednesday, then Thursday, and then I gave up.  

So, today I decided to call the carpet store and see about returning the defective carpet and purchasing something they had in stock instead.  I learned that I can’t return the carpet, I can only exchange it for the same carpet (which will take approximately two weeks).  I asked if they could give me a discount for the damaged carpet to make me “whole”.  I mean, honestly, there is going to be recording equipment on every square inch of the carpet.  The answer?  The spineless carpet dealer has to check with her “rep” and the company back in Georgia (of course they were already closed).  Huh?  Whatever happened to making the customer happy?  It’s not like I’m asking them to give me the carpet for free.  

I hereby declare that Customer Service and Independent Thought are dead in America.

The only glimmer of hope this week was that I ordered a new desk for the studio.  Jonathan at Omnirax was awesome.  The desk should arrive on Thursday.

Oh, I should also mention that our new air conditioner stopped working! Okay, that’s being a little unfair. It managed to cool the air at the vent to 73 degrees and blow it into the house at about half the normal velocity.  

Check out the ice build-up on this valve!

CoolAir came right out, took a look at the problem and ordered some new valves.  They were back mid-morning the following day and had the AC up and running again in less than an hour.  Now that is CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Yes, the post is late.  We’ve been in Michigan.

The carpet for the studio arrived, but was defective.  It could take up to two weeks to replace.  Argh!  Kristy’s room has been painted.  That’s about it.

We are in the home stretch!

The big news this week was that our wimpy HVAC system was replaced! Luckily, we only had to endure one day without AC (it was 86 degree inside by about 8 pm). Although it’s only been in the mid to high 90s, the new AC is able to cool down the house, instead of just slowing down rate at which the house heats up. The real test will be those lovely 105+ degree days we get now and then.

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Our home was brand new when we moved in and we didn’t really give the HVAC system a second thought. Everything should be perfect, right Mr. Lake County Building Inspector?  Well, Rose Heating & Air from San Rafael did an absolutely crappy job.  First off, they installed a hydronic heating system (a forced air system where hot water provides the heat). We quickly realized that you could not take a hot shower if the heater had been running within the last hour. After about 6 months of bickering, they came out and installed a second water heater, turning our garage into what looked like a science laboratory.  This helped, but it was never ideal.  In the summer, we realized that the AC was completely undersized for the house. It was never able to cool down the house or even maintain a set temperature. It would kick on at about 1 pm and run until 8 pm when it was normally cool enough to open the windows. It was not uncommon for it be be 83 degrees inside by the end of the day.  

So, going into this project, we knew the HVAC system was undersized. What we didn’t know, until Mike from CoolAir looked at our ducts, was that the incompetent folks at Rose Heating had undersized a lot of the ducts (6″ instead of 8″). In addition, the return and two supply ducts were pinched off to almost 2″ of space, seriously restricting airflow.

Moral to this story, even if your house is new, hire someone to inspect everything. Don’t count on your County Building Inspectors to catch the problems. They probably won’t.

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Here’s the old condenser and the new condenser (it’s almost 3 times bigger).

Ah yes, in a move of pure insanity, I decided to paint the studio myself.  It seemed like a great idea until I started, then the dread set in.  I hate painting.

Here’s Kristy’s room.  Notice the lovely walnut floor and a preview of the paint color on the wall.  It’s gonna look sharp!

Next week - carpet in the studio, paint in Kristy’s room and all the other miscellaneous things that need to be done.  Oh, and I will be ordering the acoustic panels for the studio.