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So as each day goes by I find another program I need to install onto my poor new computer. Today that program was iTunes or as I like to refer to it i’mgonnareallyinstallatonofcrapyoudon’tneedTunes. This program has become so bloated over the years that it’s almost like it’s own little operating system.

Thankfully somebody took the time to figure out how to do a minimal installation of it for those of us who are trapped and have no other choice but to install it. Using the link above and after downloading and expanding the file using winrar this is what I typed for Win7 exactly.

C:UsersDennisDesktopiTunes64Setup>quicktime.msi /passive

C:UsersDennisDesktopiTunes64Setup>itunes64.msi /passive

C:UsersDennisDesktopiTunes64Setup>applemobiledevicesupport64.msi /passive

C:UsersDennisDesktopiTunes64Setup>appleapplicationsupport.msi /passive

So far so good. Sad that all I want to do is drop a few new mp3′s on it and I have to install all this crud. My creative zen is over 4 years old and all I have to do is plug it into any computer and it’s just there like a flash drive. I like my phone but you don’t see Honda telling me how to drive my car after I bought it.

Connor got some Joke Glasses today as a reward for pooping on the potty. Though the pictures were pretty cute.

I like to think of myself as a fairly technical person and I rely on my computer (which I call my main rig) probably a little to much. I’ve had this Dell Dimension 8300 for almost 5 years and have done just about everything I can to keep it running as best I can. Changed the case, upgraded RAM, new hard drives, new PSU, new CPU cooler, new video cards. Heck I ran the same installation of XP for 5 years…that’s pretty impressive in itself.

So when I finally took the plunge and ordered a new computer (Dell XPS Studio 8100) I knew that I was in store for a lot of pain moving all my programs over. I try to do so much it’s just not an issue of installing new stuff (although this computer is 64 bit not 32) but it’s also an issue of customization. Not to mention this is my first time playing with Windows 7 so there’s a learning curve. I mean I have Vista Ultimate but don’t use it a whole lot (it’s on a test machine dual booting with Ubuntu). Point is after using a computer for so long you kind of feel attached to it. Heck I almost feel bad using this new computer.

I got Outlook moved over with all my rules and stuff, got IE and bookmarks, heck I even got my VNC server installed so I could accept incoming connections from my Ultra VNC SC program. The next main thing on my list of what to do was get my widgets over, especially my RSS aggregator “NewsStand”. So I copied over my widgets directory from my old Hard Drive, installed the latest and greatest Yahoo Widget program (no…I don’t want yahoo to be my default home page or search engine, thank you very much) and fired up NewsStand to see all my feeds were gone.

After thinking about it for a little bit I came to the conclusion that NewsStand (which doesn’t have an export feature) must store the feed information within the registry somewhere. So I tried loading the hive from my old HD but in the end it was easier to just put the HD back in the old machine and search for a known feed URL (kotaku in my case).

Found it in HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareYahooWidgetEngineWidgetsNewsStand. Basically there’s a field called “feeds” that contains every RSS feed in a single line. All I did was select all, copy the data to a text file and then go to the same location in Windows 7 and copy it in (overwriting the default feeds present). I could have just readded them all myself manually but honestly that would have kinda sucked. I think they should really add an export option if possible but at least it’s good to know the data wasn’t lost.

Here’s an example of what the data looked like in the registry:

 
  http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot” updateFrequency=”15″ userTitle=”Slashdot”/>  
  …

Gotta say even though I precut all the tile this still kicked my butt. Working with such large tile was much harder than I thought in such a small room.

Oh and here’s what I did with all the left over mortar

I try to avoid “ism’s” in any of my posts but all this stuff about burning a Quran is driving me nuts. Hell throw a Bible or a telephone book on there…..it’s just pieces of paper with no intrinsic value. People get all about not respecting these texts but don’t seem to care to edit out the horrible act’s within any of them dealing with intolerance, torture, assigning genders to subservient roles, etc. So hypocritical it just makes me sick.

Books that advocate mudering somebody just because of what they think or daming somebody to hell just because of what hole they stick it in don’t warrent protection in my book.

/baby with the bathwater I know
//never posting about religion again if I can help it.

So in the last post I had decided to use Schluter Ditra as the uncoupling layer for the bathroom tile project. I finally got some time to install it the other day and while I was mixing up the latex modified thinset it occured to me….how well can this stuff bond when the floor is a god awful mess? So I took some time to belt sand the subfloor first to get all the paint (from the original builders) drywall mud, and who knows what else.

Once I got that done I mixed up half a bag of latex modified thinset (bad is 50lbs) I started to put down the Ditra that I had precut yesterday. I have to say that I came out very lucky with the entire bathroom being only one square foot smaller than the 54sq foot roll of Ditra I bought.

There’s nothing really amazing to putting it down honestly, just spread it out, use the right size trowel and when your done make sure you press down on every single last square inch of it. I used a 1/4″ trowel I wasn’t mudding with to press down on the corners and all over. Really wanted to ensure a good bond to the fleecing on the back so I used all my body weight.

And actually I had so much mortar left over from installing it that I decided to skip dinner and get the bullnose tile up:

Really hoping to get the floor tile in this weekend….

So I spent most of last week working on the bathroom tiling project and was finally done with the shower stall. I had moved onto the floor but ran into some difficulty with cutting the floor tiles. They’re so large they don’t fit on the tile saw very well so it’s kind of hokey to work with them. Anyways we had decided on a pattern and I was almost done with the tile cuts when Sunday finished up.

So Sunday night comes and I’m talking about the project online with some people and a rather serious oversight is pointed out. There is no decoupling layer. Now I wasn’t aware of this necessity but usually when tile jobs are done they put down a seconday layer (which is why most retro fit tile jobs are super high and you have height differences between floors….which looks like crap in my book) now the reason for this isn’t structural per say…that’s why I didn’t see a need for another layter of sub flooring.

What it comes down to mainly is that ceramic tile doesn’t share the same expansion properties that OSB subflooring does. Even if it’s 3/4″ think like ours is and screwed to 16″ joists with minimal deflection you still have a shearing force going on that will probably result in destroyed grout seams in 5 years (or worse case scenario cracked tile).

Now I’ve seen 1/4″ plywood used and heard about cement board being used as well (hardibacker). Both of those options might work but the additional hight would kill the transition to the Pergo. So I looked at another Schluter system product known as Ditra. Basically it’s supposed to allow you to tile over just about damn near anything and create an almost “floating floor” type scenario. Plus it’s sold off the shelf at Home Depot so I could just go and pick some up. So that’s what I did:

So we’ll see how this works. Another benefit of it is that it’s very thin….only 1/8″ so your not going to find anything else out there to decouple that’s as thin. With any luck I’ll get it installed some night this week so I can finally tile this week end. I’m a little upset about the delay but it’s better than having a grand worth of tile crack in a few years.

Today I managed to get the curbing done for the master shower. It’s a mixture of 6.5″ bullnose tiles and left over wall tiles we had. Hopefully not to bad for my first time, although I am worried that the belt on the wet saw is starting to go on me. Saw a 10″ wet saw on sale at Menards for $250 the other day. It’s insane to think that 10 years ago this wet saw cost a grand.

It’s hard to believe that I started working around 7am today and this is all I got done. The mosaic’s on the ground kicked my butt not to mention the custom cuts for the bottom run of wall tile and the drain.

The shower tray ones are only in there for a test fit but at least it looks like everything is coming along. Just need to mix up a fresh batch of mortar tomorrow and figure out how to cut a hole in the tile for the shower handle. A masonry drill bit didn’t even make a freaking dent in it.