Our front door is leaking…from the top. That is, we have a drip (or rivulet the past few days) of water that forms at the top center of the door and runs down into the house. It seems to form at the top of the wood frame inside the door and then drop onto the door itself and eventually either down the front of the door or the back of the door (inside).

We’ve consulted one handyman, and his diagnosis is that it’s because we don’t have an overhang above our front door (not a full awning, just a small overhang). As such the wood above our door has gotten wet for a long time (i.e., years) and is beginning to rot…and with as much rain as we’ve gotten the past few days, it’s acting like a sponge. My concern with this diagnosis is that…well, it’s not like we took the overhang off. There never was one. Why would any builder build a home without an overhang if this is the result? Wouldn’t everyone in our sub be having the same problem?

So…for the collective brain:

1) Does your front door have an overhang?
2) Have you ever heard of this problem?
3) What do you think the cause is?

The TV has one component input and two HDMI inputs (and a few others, but they’re irrelevant to this). The XBox 360 can output in HDMI or component. The AT&T Uverse can output in HDMI or component. Right now, the XBox 360 is hooked up via component, and the Uverse is hooked up via HDMI. The XBox is working great with the new TV; it’s gorgeous. The Uverse is the problem.

Initially, we hooked up the Uverse using RCA jacks. The result was that we had several picture ratio settings available via the TV and via Uverse, and no combination worked very well. If we set the ratio so that it filled the TV vertically or horizontally (or both), the AT&T menus would get cut off. If we set the ratio to “normal”, the TV picture was distressingly small, with black bars on all sides. After consulting the internet, we decided that what was going on was that Uverse was detecting that we had RCA and attempting to put out a standard RCA-ish type feed, which the TV was then having to modify and stretch. Even though we’d change the setting on the Uverse to 720p, it would then distort the feed in a way that the TV couldn’t show properly.

So, we bought an HDMI cable online for $10 (note that these sell in stores for $60+ for no good reason other than profit). Now, the Uverse menu looks fine on the TV and fills the whole screen. The actual TV image looks fine for normal broadcast. However, if the broadcast is in widescreen, it occupies a tiny portion of the screen. The TV does not give us a “zoom” option (although it did when we had RCA cables plugged in).

What I’m trying to figure out is whether it’s worth it to go online and buy component cables and hook up the Uverse via component and the XBox via HDMI. Will that fix anything? Is that better? I suspect that, since the XBox is spitting out HD, HDMI for it will be the same experience. Does anyone else in the readership have a similar setup and experience to share? The internet is somewhat useless on this, as we seem to be rare in that we do not have HD TV, nor do we want to pay for HD TV. (Neither of us think the benefit is worth the $120+ per year cost, particularly not in the bedroom.)

Changes that may affect you:
* If you have my number at vtext dot com or my name at vtext dot com as an address to send SMSs (texts) to, that address will no longer work. (If you just use my number as the address, that will work fine. It’s only if you’ve appended the vtext dot com to it that will cause breakage.)
* If you’re a Verizon Wireless subscriber, your calls to/from me have likely been free. That will no longer be true. Also, long text messages and picture messages you send may not reach me. (You’ll get an error from the network.)
* The nifty ringtone music you get when you call me will go away and be replaced by standard ringing. In fact, this may be the easiest way for you to know when the transition has happened.

For those who don’t know already, this changeover is a result of my new job, as my mobile phone is paid for by work. Thus, I go where they want me to go in terms of carrier. In this case, I just had to pick a GSM carrier.

1) When you put on pants that have a zipper and a top button/latch/hook, which do you fasten first, the zipper or the button/latch/hook? (Feel free to include an explanation of why if you have one)

2) I have 3 pairs of green pants, all in different shades of green. (To stave off the possible joke, none of them are jeans.) I’ll list the shades below, with HTML color codes for further clarity. What I want to know is what I can or can’t wear with each of them. For example, should I avoid wearing the color green?
2a) light grass green cargo pants (#33FFFF)
2b) dark green dress pants (#336666)
2c) cotton gauchos in a camo green (#666633)

Question 1 is going to resolve a bet between my DH and me. Question 2 is because I love all of these pants, but I’m puzzling whenever I go to wear them over what matches, so I end up not wearing them.

1) the phone availability is irrelevant (that is, you aren’t going to get to choose what phone you have, so which phones each carrier has doesn’t matter…to put a finer point on it, don’t pick AT&T because they have the iPhone)
2) cost of service plan is irrelevant

Our insurance is perfectly willing to cover this newly found damage (yay for Allstate), even though it’s been well over a month since the last repair was done and 6 months since the flooding. However, we need to get an estimate, and I have no idea what kind of service person to call for this. Carpenter? General Contractor? Handyman?

Any ideas?

Because my work has required me to become a part of several social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) and because I’m looking for other work, I’ve also established a GMail address that is in no way linked to this site (versus my other one, which is tk at gmail dot com). Because that address gets frequent e-mail, I’ve been using GMail more often than I have previously. It’s made me really come to like GMail.

My domain e-mail has also been known to have problems, and when it does have problems, it is not always immediately apparent. I’ll be sending mail having no idea that the recipient isn’t getting it and vice versa. At one point, any e-mail sent from the webmail was not getting to people, but e-mail sent from T-bird was. Weeks went by before I found out and thus pinged my hosting company as to WTF was going on. GMail is far more reliable.

However, I also have some pride in owning my own domain, and in the 99% case, I’m usually happy to be publicizing my domain via handing out my e-mail. It has on more than one occasion served me well that someone I gave my e-mail to then navigated to the domain. I nagged a husband that way.

I see my options as threefold:
1) Start transitioning friends and family to the (tk @) Gmail address. Set up T-bird to IMAP with the GMail address. Use tk dot org e-mail only for mass e-mails and the like (e.g., when I sign up for e-mails from commercial sites, order confirmations). This removes the problem of directly exposing people to my domain. It’s not like I’d
2) Switch tk dot org over to using Google Apps For Your Domain (GAFYD) for e-mail only. Then, I get the power of G on my tk dot org addresses, mostly…but GAFYD is often behind standard GMail in terms of features. I’m not even confident it has IMAP. It also doesn’t fix the 1% problem.
3) Leave everything as is.

So far, every time I’ve had this discussion, I’ve settled on option 3, as much from inertia as anything. Any thoughts from y’all?

Click for larger version.

Anyone read Japanese well enough to translate? I can only make out the hiragana, and that’s not enough to know what’s being said.

So, it presents this dilemma as to when to freecycle and when to donate. Me personally, donating doesn’t please me. We did a donation of stuff yesterday to Goodwill, but it didn’t make me feel good the way freecycling does. When I freecycle, I know that the person who is getting the item wants it and will likely use it (or give it to someone who will). The person has gone to the effort of coming to me at my convenience to get the item, which proves some level of commitment. Oh, and I’m lazy, so that I have to do nothing but post and manage some e-mail to get my stuff gone makes me happy. When we donate stuff to other places, it requires effort on our part to bring the stuff to somewhere and/or to package the stuff up, and the donation is at the convenience of the receiving party. Thus, it does not appease my lazy side. It also represents no commitment on the part of the recipient and thus I have little trust in their interest in my items. I suspect that some percentage of the stuff that I give to these places will get trashed or misappropriated. In the case of our Goodwill donation, it will go through some level of processing and then go to a shelf where it will sit for some period of time with a price tag on it, waiting for someone to be willing to buy it. I don’t love the idea of my stuff getting sold (even for a good cause) instead of going freely to a person who needs it. Freecycle (my groups at least) strictly manage re-sellers. Re-sellers have to state that their plan is to re-sell the item in their request for the item, and if someone is caught re-selling freecycle items, they get banned from the group. There’s also the personal interaction that helps me to know that the item is being used, not sold. For example, I freecycled Scott’s old (really old) ski boots yesterday, with his permission, and the woman who picked them up was thrilled with them, tried them on as soon as she got home, and dropped me a note letting me know that they fit perfectly. That’s pretty cool to me, and it makes me happy to know that our stuff isn’t going to waste or ending up in a landfill (at least for the time being).

Unfortunately, we need every bit of tax help we can get, so I’m going to have to suck it up and start donating instead of freecycling. With that in mind, how do you decide when to freecycle versus donate? Is it a pure valuation of the item? Do you only freecycle items that you can’t easily donate? Or is there some other criteria you use?