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It took a few months but our side entrance is finally done! Well, apart from cosmetic clean up. It was a serious pain, but at least it’s done and we saved a ton of cash doing it ourselves.

I can’t thank Nancy’s brother enough. Without him, I would have had a wet basement all winter for sure. Love ya brother! Seth and Rob too; they did grunt work and helped me with the concrete. And of course Nancy; she helped and put up with my constant frustration.

I messed up with the base foundation of the concrete, but I’ll fix that in the spring. I’ve had enough for now.

Anyway, on to some pictures.

What we inherited:

Part way through:

Finished!

As is my personal tradition, I went to Streetsville for the Remembrance Day ceremonies. I have been going every year since I was 13 years old and I have noticed the diminishing ranks of veterans. It’s humbling.

This year there was a special moment when the father and sister of Marc Diab placed a wreath at the cenotaph: the crowd began to clap. It wasn’t expected and it was touching. It was awesome to see so many people pay tribute and understand what sacrifice was made. (Marc Diab was a soldier from Mississauga that was recently killed in Afghanistan.)

To those that have served and are serving: Thank You.

I don’t know what this little guy is thinking, but he is lucky I am in a good mood, and that I really don’t feel like going to the vet tonight…

If this was the country he wouldn’t stand a chance.

There is a side entrance of my house that is incomplete. Meaning, there is a door, but not much else besides a hole in the ground. This is what I inherited:

They dug down enough to put the door in, but left it at that. They also left a big pile of dirt, stone, and screening on the other side of the house for me to deal with. Since the city knew about the door, I had to go through the building permit process and get a permit and approval to finish the job.

Normally I wouldn’t have been able to keep the door because the houses are so close but because they are linked underground, the house is considered a semi-detached. So, all is well and good. (Unless you ask my neighbor,  they hate the fact I am keeping the door. They wanted me to brick up the door.)

So I have just completed digging enough for the footings. Four feet down from the landing under the door. Eight days later and seven trips to the dump, I’m finally done this stage. Hopefully the inspector is fine with what I have done.

One thing I have learned so far; it is not easy trying to do this by yourself. Working with red clay is not fun. Next time, I’ll ask for help.

The digging is done and I am glad!

A story was recently posted on Slashdot about a credit union in the U.S. that allows one to interact with their financial accounts via Twitter, including checking account balances and transfer funds.

What are they thinking? It is possible that this is secure using SSL and direct messages, but how many people out there know how to use SSL? What happens when someone mistypes what they want to do in Twitter and they set their current tweet to something that contains financial information? Would you want the whole world knowing that you have X amount of dollars to transfer?

I do not see the reasoning behind this at all. Where is the convenience?

So how is this mobile? If your phone can send and receive text messages and you’re on Twitter, you’re in! tweetMyMoney uses Twitter’s Direct Message feature to return the account information you request.

Don’t they have telephone or online banking? Why add the extra layer?

I just don’t get it. What’s next, a Facebook online banking app?

Wow.

I know this is pointless and vain, but I had to jump on this before someone else did! Also, I know one shouldn’t post their plates online, but there isn’t any privacy these days anyway.

So, here are the new plates. Not bad, eh?

Nancy, her brother, and I went on a trip up north ATVing through the back country near Bancroft, Ontario. I had an excellent time and I figured I would share a few pictures.

We spent four nights in two hunt camps that were left unlocked, (thanks to those that are out there that own them!) and the last night we spent camped out in a tent beside a beautiful lake.

I can’t wait to do it again!

Click the image above for the whole set.

This is what my cold storage room looks like at the moment. Great eh?

I had a backup in the clearout, so after calling a plumber and the city I decided to tackle the repair on my own once it was determined that the problem was inside the house. My brother (in law, soon to be, whatever) and me replaced the piping where the collapse occurred. That was an exercise in frustration. It’s quite a long story and I can’t be bothered to type it all out.

Four trips to Home Depot later and thinking we fixed it, we flushed the toilet and found that there was a trickle of water beside the newly replaced pipe.

Fuck. Me.

More piping to replace.

This is two months into owning my first home. The last time I felt like this is when I got my ass smacked and someone in some weird outfit yelled, “It’s a boy!!”.

Yep, welcome to the world!

(Yes, it could always be worse. I’m not complaining.)

It took longer than I expected, but I have released the first version of EPDMNotification Reminder. (I can't figure out a good name for it.) The application provides SW Enterprise PDM administrators with the ability to resend notification reminders.

Currently with EPDM, a user or group is only sent one notification per file or assembly when a transition occurs. There is not an option to resend the notification. With this application, one is able to set a reminder and a notification is sent after the user specified time.

This goes without saying: backup your vault and ConisioMasterDb databases before using this application. It does make changes to your database by adding triggers to two tables, as well as adding a few tables to the ConisioMasterDb database. If you’re at all worried, don’t use it!

You may download the application here: EPDMNotificationSetup.zip (1.02 mb).

After 6 weeks of looking for a house, visiting 25+ homes, we finally found the one that fit. I couldn’t be more stoked, and I can’t wait to move in. The perfect neighbourhood, the prefect house. Something we can call our own.

I couldn’t be happier right now! Woohooo!!!