Ooh, not to sound too stalkerish, but I did enjoy you chatting about film and stuff, so I shall look forward to that.

My kitchen issues are too bourgeois for words. Basically, we had an extension done ten years ago at which point we pulled out the old kitchen which was falling to pieces (literally) and I knocked together a temporary replacement using the existing carcases with some new doors and stuff we managed to get cheap. It was OK enough to last much longer than expected, but Mrs WilliamA recently said, 'We ought to treat ourselves to a nice new kitchen before Christmas.' So off we went to Wren where we invested an unfeasibly vast amount of money, and probably our future security as old retired people, into a new kitchen. The man at Wren said, 'Our installers are a bit expensive.' We agreed when he said £4000 to install it. I've been tasked with that. What I didn't appreciate until we'd signed on the line and a bit after that was quite how much DIY was involved, or the ridiculous level of accuracy (level to within 1mm per metre) the worktop installers require (I'm not doing the worktop). They come tomorrow to make a laser template. I have one day to finish and a LOT still to do. It's literally down to the wire with our pension pot at risk. My stress levels are high. 

Good luck to you! Post photos when you are done so we can oooh and ahhh!

Today we're expecting Ashley, a templater from Xena Quarz at 3:00 pm. He will fire his laser cannons all over the kitchen (nj) and hopefully smile a lot and leave. There's dozens of things still to do, but once he's done his template we can't alter the structure in any way until the worktop is fitted. I'm looking forward to the not doing things bit. Then there's another load of activity to fit all the finishing parts. 

It's been interesting in a way that I'm not especially glad to have experienced. I've done tons of plumbing, wiring, basic carpentry etc over the years, simply because we didn't have any money to get somebody else to do it. But there were things that cropped up in the last 8 days where I had my head in my hands (literally) because I simply hadn't got the first idea how to do it, but I had to find out and then do it straight away, and it had to work.

This is how it looks right now. It'll be a bit tidier for Ashley.

It's going to be awesome. Are you able to use the kitchen at all or doing loads of takeout?

Cooker works, and there's a sink not too far away so we're still making food. Have seen a few Taco Bells and Pizzas though.

We've done a ton of The Expanse ones now. I really enjoy doing those. Not stalkerish at all to watch something I upload publicly for people to watch :D

The kitchen stuff sounds (very) stressful but hopefully there'll be a nice sense of satisfaction once it's all done, having done a lot of it yourself.

 

I love the green tiles.

There were more. I had to strip off a couple of rows because their laser thingy doesn't work with a tiled surface. Don't ask me why. I tried to avoid it. I even suggested that if it was to do with reflection or something, I could just put a coat of chalk spray over them, but I was met with an implacable "computer says no" attitude to every question which didn't involve me in a lot of extra work. Now I have to wait for the worktop to go on and fit the tiles back again.

Yeah, looking back on the expanse, I know Miller was a bit of a corny character and not especially original, but he was also my favourite. I thought the scenes where he, or a version of him, returned as a robot drone were excellent.

Oh yeah. I think that's part of what makes him so enjoyable. He is both the the most cliched down on his luck world weary noir detective and... in love with a girl who thinks she's a space station. And an alien projection into his friend's mind. And all the rest.

It's a credit to the writing and acting that he doesn't *come across* as corny while absolutely being corny.

My absolute favourite is Bobbie though. She's so brave when she defects.

I haaaate running into that attitude. At least *try it*, like.

Apropos of nothing, I used to run into that issue with clients that felt I should be able to to do x, y, and z stuff that were out of spec, and out of scope. I would advise them that going down that road would incur 'unknown' additional costs (for I am not a mind reader, unable to parse out some ill-defined, changeable fantasy and come up with an estimate). They usually didn't go for it. In some few cases they did, and I got several days or even weeks of billable work. One cat felt we should be able to produce a computer game like Madden Football (this was ~1995), with a team of 3 people, none of whom were programmers (the platform was Macromedia Director) for a few thou $$$. We made a game to graphically demonstrate our capabilities. The idea was dropped.

Madden in... Director? Wow, haha. I made a sort of Pac-man thing in Flash once, that was complicated enough for me and that was years later when Director was already obsolete.

Ever mess around with mTropolis?

I have no idea what your first and second sentence means. But it looks like it will be wonderful. Post again when its done :)

It was interesting for about five minutes when I watched him, but then rather dull. Ashley wasn't one of life's great conversationalists. He set up a tripod with a little box on top: the laser. Then he put 3 tiny paper targets around the kitchen. The rest of the time he spent on a tablet thing, taking dozens of photos, endlessly tapping in information, occasionally putting a little piece of yellow tape down and pointing the laser spot at it. Sometimes he put little pins on stands down and pointed the laser at them. Mainly he tapped, photographed, and said nothing. It took a long time, nearly two hours. I went and did something else, but I could hear every click and tap. At the end of the day, after he'd gone, he emailed me a detailed plan of the various worktop pieces. Apparently this is accurate to less than a millimetre. One piece will take 4 men to carry. Apparently.

I never even heard of it! Looks like one of those things that could've been great if the industry success cards had been dealt slightly differently.

It got bought out and killed by rival Macromedia (Director).

yeah, who then copped the same treatment themselves from Adobe on a bunch of stuff. So it goes, I suppose, the biggest fish.

Concentration, monopoly, yadda