First of the flooring projects

Click here to see animated sequence of the exciting tile process!

I got started on the upstairs flooring last weekend. Installed ceramic tile in the hall bathroom. It had some cheap, ugly vinyl flooring that was poorly installed and was badly marred. But other than that it was fine. (grin).

The room is only about 7 feet by 5 feet including the vanity but not including the tub. Something just over 30 square feet of actual floor to be done.

It took me one Saturday to take out the toilet, rip up the loose vinyl enough to be level and install Hardibacker. Then Sunday afternoon to do a dry-layout and install the tiles in the center. I worked from the doorway back because I wanted a clean "factory edge" at the doorway. That left nearly a full tile at the tub. Weekend number 2 Saturday to finish laying the tiles, these all needed cutting. I also did a tile "baseboard" all around the room except in front of the tub. Finally, a couple of hours on Sunday to grout.

Still to be done are the toilet re-install and vinyl strip down at the tub. Oh, and seal the grout in a couple of weeks.

New year, new layoffs, first business trip.

Well, that didn't take long. Yesterday my employer laid off between 5 and 10 percent of the staff in the business area I'm part of. I escaped another one. Not sure if that's 20 but it's somewhere around there.

I just booked travel for my first business trip of the year. Short jaunt up to Dallas for a customer visit. Out very early Tuesday, home Wednesday night. Southwest Airlines. Always a joyful experience. General seating, what fun.

Gert at top speed

There is a new dog park near us, a converted softball field in Pearland's Independence Park. We've taken the dogs a number of times. Once in a while Gert will feel the need for speed and take off at full gallop.

A couple of days ago, Alice was also there trying out her shiny new Nikon DSLR (Christmas present, of course).

The pics here are small clips out of the full images. Greyhounds have a "double suspension gallop". They completely leave the ground twice in each stride, once with legs together, once at full stretch. Didn't get a good shot of her at full stretch. She's just leaving the ground in the middle pic.

And in the last pic again just stretching out in a turn.

Alice did a nice job of catching these, the dog's going close to 40mph. When she does this, you have to spin around just to watch!

One very happy dog!

Capacity 1,000,202,240,000 bytes

I got a terabyte drive for Christmas. A Western Digital My Book, USB 2.0 external drive.

The first thing I did is move all my music on to it and make it the source for the SlimServer software that drives the Squeezebox.

Also got it set up as backup for the local systems. I run the free version of SyncBack for the moment. May switch to the pay version, it has some more options. I'm looking for a good three-way sync program. I'd like to sync up the My Documents tree between the laptop, the work home desktop, and the external terabyte drive.