Telling it like it is

I went down to Kwal-Paint this morning with the little tin of paint I found last night. It still had the formula on it so the guy was able to just program his R2D2-like paint machine and 5 minutes later I had a 5-gallon bucket of the stuff. I masked and painted the walls on the stairs today, and now it's dry, the colour is identical in tint and sheen. Phew. Looks much better.

Gart Sports are having their annual 3-day Sniagrab this weekend (that's Bargains, spelled backwards). For those who don't mind shopping for skis on a sunny, 35°C day, this weekend is the time to get some killer bargains. I need skis for this season, or rather, needed skis. Mike met us down there this morning and half an hour later we came away with a pair of 168 Atomic Izor 5:7's, with bindings and poles. Cost new : $572 with tax. Cost to me : $381 with tax. Suh-weet! So when it actually starts to snow, and the ski resorts open up, I'll have everything I need for this year, all paid for in the middle of summer. Nice.

I got home tonight to find a huge amount of the painting downstairs done. The thing was that the paint was drying a different sheen and a different colour to that already on the walls near the stairs. Tres weird. Once dry, it had a matt finish and a creamy yellow tint. We put it down to being older paint and left it at that, until I left for the evening. As I was locking up, I looked at the siding on the house. Crapola! That was the same damn paint we now had on the inside! Problem was that when we bought the house, there were two giant tubs of paint left - light and dark. The dark is the stuff upside and the light, I'd assumed, is the stuff downstairs. Only the light stuff is what's on the outside of the house. So I went digging in the basement and found a tiny can of paint with a smear on the outside that looked the same as what was on the walls. Turns out the colours are close - really really close. Like about 2% off in the CMYK spectrum. The real kicker was the sheen. So t...

The basement is nearly finished! All the texturing is done on the ceiling, and most of the ceilings are painted. Some of the walls are finished too. I reckon it'll be done by the end of the day today. At last we can have the house back! I went tentatively looking for lightbulbs last night for all the new recessed lights we've got to fill. Home Depot only sell the bulbs I need per-bulb instead of in bulk. To do that would cost over $100 in bulbs. I checked out Sam's Club and CostCo - they both sell the bulbs in bulk at nearly half the cost, but I'd need to join up for $50 a year which sort of ruins the plan (as we'd never be buying anything else from those places after the event). Lowes looks promising - I'll swing by tonight, and I'll have to give our local lighting supply shop a bell too. Apart from the sticker shock of needing to buy over 20 reflector bulbs in one go, I'm glad it's all nearly over. Our cat is certainly pleased too - she went downs...

Mmmmmm. DRM-stripping goodness. For ages now, JHymn has been unable to strip DRM from itunes6 files. So with no end to this debacle in sight, and because I don't like being held hostage by Apple and it's nazi-like grip on downloaded music, I took a step sideways. I killed my old itunes account and uninstalled itunes6. I found a copy of the itunes 5 installer on the 'net, despite Apple's desparate attempts to remove all traces of it, and installed that. I then set up a new account, and started from scratch. Now I'm using itunes 5 again, JHymn works properly, and I can strip the DRM so I can use the music I bought legally anywhere I want. Nice.