Category: Family (page 6 of 14)

May 31, 2010

I am now the pool boy

What a fun couple of weeks this has been. We’ve opened up our pool and the whole family is enjoying it. It been a huge project to get to this point.

Last November, my wife and I had an in ground pool installed and we’ve been scurrying to get it fully operational for the Memorial Day weekend. We started the vetting process to select the company back in August of 2009 and for each portion we spoke with 4 or 5 companies. Lily wanted to make sure we got a good deal as well as what we wanted.

With all the construction, the pool has a layer of dirt and sand on the bottom. I’ve put in the pool roomba (it climbs the pools walls!) but Saturday I vacuumed out the whole pool. I got almost all of the sand on the bottom but I also stirred up some sand too, so I’ll be vacuuming on a regular basis for now. The water is clear but the remaining sand is hiding out in the corners and it bugs me.

With any pool construction, you need to deal with at lots of companies. The pool company, the landscapers, the fencing company, and the sprinkler company. This is going to sound like one big product endorsement, but I want to say thank you to all the companies involved.

The construction was fast and well done. We used a company called Swimking and they’ve been great. I’ve called them, and they have patiently answered my questions and came back to deal with some small adjustments. I’ve never had to deal with any pool so I’ve had lots of questions. There have been minor things and they sent someone over to sort it out quickly.

I’m in IT and while I can visualize what people are describing very well, I’m no good at designing a layout. Our plantings and garden work has all been done by Cappiello Landscaping. The owner Joe described a really good-looking plan, told us what plants we were getting etc. But seeing it in place is fantastic. Joe’s company works fast and efficiently and in a few days they transformed a construction site into a great back yard garden. The whole layout with the pool works great.

We selected Continental Fence to install estate fencing where you can see it and black chain link where you can’t. I was afraid the surrounding the pool with a fence (NY state safety code, and its a good thing too) would make the pool area look small. But the reverse happened and the effect makes the pool look bigger. It took Steve’s company less than 2 days to put the fencing in and it looks great.

For the in ground sprinkler work, we use Dean’s Sprinkler Service. We’ve been using Dean’s company for about 5 years. Dean and his guys chase down every sprinkler head, tunes the system with the gardener. And Dean personally drops by on his day off and makes sure the whole system is working. I can’t say enough good things about Dean: he explains what and why he’s doing something and gives you a lot of options to work with.

Once the pool is all cleaned up I’ll post photos. We started using the pool already but there are still some more things to complete.

March 20, 2010

“I hope they don’t bring back segregation”

The things kids say. On the radio this morning me and the kids heard about that public announcement someone aired in a Walmart. Some jerk used the PA system to make a racist comment.

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP/ 1010 WINS) — An announcement at a Walmart store in New Jersey ordering black people to leave brought chagrin and apologies Wednesday from leaders of the company, which has built a fragile trust among minority communities.

A male voice came over the public-address system Sunday evening at a store in Washington Township in southern New Jersey and calmly announced: “Attention Walmart customers: All black people leave the store now.”

via Announcement At NJ Wal-Mart: ‘All Black People Leave Store Now’ – 1010WINS.com .

There are always an available pool of morons in any public place, and I seriously doubt that Walmart had anything to do with that. And now Walmart is locking down the PA system at least in that store.

But what struck me was what my 8 year old said when he heard that.

Him: I hope they don’t bring back segregation.

Me: How do you know about segregation??

Him: Dad. We learned about that during Black History month.

Me: Oh.

I should not be surprised at all, and I’m glad that my kids school teaches about that. But at 6 AM on a Saturday morning, I’m not ready to hear things like that from my kid’s mouth.

March 13, 2010

Model train show

Today was a miserable day weather-wise but had one good thing going for it. The next town over had a model train show and the highlight was a N gauge train layout. It was a fun display and I took almost 300 photos. I shared 40 of them over here on Flickr. I also learned of a couple more train museums to visit in Long Island.

My son could have stayed there all day. The N gauge trains are about the size of one of my fingers and the detail was surprising. I shot most of the event with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens and some shots with my Sigma 30mm f/1.4. I prefer to not bug people with a flash so most of my shots have a narrow depth of field. It’s a shame that I did not use the flash since the detail on those sets was amazing.

The Nikon 50mm is on loan and I am definitely getting the newer Nikon 50mm f/1.4G.

March 6, 2010

MINI Cooper fan problem

This is me charging my 2006 MINI S.

The battery was dead and I just assumed (HA!) that it was drained from being unused for months. Nope! The electric fan behind the radiator was not turning off. I charged the battery, went for a ride and when I left the car parked the battery was drained again.

You can read more about it here. I tried the “tap the black box” solution and it didn’t work for me. For now I have disconnected the fan and will have to take the car to the dealer.

February 24, 2010

And the snow thrower is back

A few weeks ago I dropped off my snow thrower at the Sears repair location in Melville. On Friday I got an automated call from Sears saying it was done and I could pick it up. The original plan was to pick it up this Saturday. But since tomorrow there is supposed to be a snow storm, Lily and I left work early and got it today. We had to since they close at 5 PM.

There was no charge on the repair. I had been using it when the oil cap came off and I ran it for a few minutes. I found the cap and kept going. Later on the engine seized and the snow thrower just was not working. I told this to the Sears repair staff and expected to get charged.

The unit looks cleaned up, the side height adjusters were replaced, and the back blade was adjusted. I started the thing up as soon as I got home. It’s not quite as good as new but it sure looks like it was well worked on. And if we get snow tomorrow night I’ve got the gas and I’m ready to go.

Those guys at Sears do good work and I sure can’t complain about the price.

February 15, 2010

Year of the Tiger

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the Tiger and Sunday was Valentine’s Day too. What a dilemma: do you pay attention to the New Year or to the made up Hallmark holiday? That was solved in seconds and we went to celebrate the New Year.

This has been a busy weekend. On Friday I met up with some old friends who I have not seen for a while. That was great fun and I spent more time catching up and only took a handful of photos. We ate at a place on Bowery Street called Kens Asian Taste.

Saturday we headed to Flushing for errands and to meet up with the in-laws. We drove to Flushing and I thought it was bad. Sunday I would see what a bad driving day is in Chinatown. In the late afternoon we headed over to my brother-in-law’s place and had a great dinner. You know the family get together that everyone crowds around the dinner table? It was like that and we all had a good time. The only down side was that I forgot to bring my camera and Vonage box. Every year the in-laws call China and the Vonage box would have been useful: China is one on the unlimited calling to countries.

Sunday was the day we all headed to Chinatown. Instead of driving we took the LIRR to Penn station and then the IRT. Good thing we did; the place was a car disaster area.

Lot's of people in Chinatown

Afterward we walked around looking for a place to eat. We ended up going to Hester Street, down to Elizabeth Street and Canal Street, and back to Hester Street once again and went to XO Kitchen. The wait for the table was over an hour. That’s not too bad since over at Gum Fung people said they were not letting any new customer in. They stopped handing out numbers.

Next stop was the Empire State Building. We had heard that they had some sort of Chinese New Year display and wanted to see it.

It was a little disappointing. It was Valentine’s Day also, so after relaxing for a few minutes we all headed home.

February 11, 2010

Well I sure taught the snow who’s boss

All day yesterday it snowed from around midnight to at least 11:30 PM. Several times I went out and cleared the driveway. Around the end of my second pass I noticed that the oil cap came off on my snow thrower and oil was burning. I shut it down and replaced the cap.

Later on when I went to try the snow thrower again, the damn thing would not start. The motor is stuck and will not budge. This weekend I’ll get some oil and hope that I did not permanently damage the engine. The idea is that oil is cheaper than a new one and seriously, I just need it to work this season. That is a lot of drive way to shovel.

But I have a feeling I’ll need to buy a replacement snow thrower instead. If that does happen I’m sure I’ll keep the next one in good shape…

February 7, 2010

8 bags of garbage

My family and I have been living in our house for over 5 years now. During that time, I have cleaned up my junk in the basement a couple of times. Our kids? Not once. Our basement looked like an organized mess. All of their toys (mostly broken) were piled up against the wall.

That changed today. This morning Lily and I started small and just kept going. We ended up throwing out eight 45 gallon bags (I could have sworn we bought 55 gallon drum liners but they weren’t). The kids helped too, so no hysterics.

What made me a little depressed was that the 1/144 HG Gundam models that my son made were damaged and had parts missing, so he decided to toss them out. Not all of them, but the four that he tossed were ones that I was proud of him working on.

Here are some of the models he tossed today.

It’s not really a big deal, and each one was broken. But I was a little sad at them being tossed out so casually.

The deal with my son is that if we clean out the old stuff, I’ll get him a Lionel O gauge set. Right now he has an HO scale set but with all the space we cleaned out, we can get another folding table and set up a bigger set.

Geez, I really am getting old and sentimental. You are supposed to get attached to people and not things. That is something I am trying to teach both my children so I can’t really be unhappy about them letting go of things.

December 13, 2009

Christmas tree 2009

I put the tree up last week but only today did the family put on the bulbs and tinsel. This year we could not find the glass spire for the star so we used one that we had that lights up.

It looks good and I’m very satisfied with it.

October 14, 2009

Funny how things turn out

We picked the pool company (again) and finally signed the contract last night to build a pool in the yard.

It’s funny how this worked out. We were ready to sign the contract with a different pool company on Monday then something happened… I was ticked and didn’t want to use this company. You see, we picked this first company because the day before we discussed with them and agreed on a price with discount. Being a finance person, I put all the numbers onto a spreadsheet and expect the total to be X. The guy started to put all the numbers down on his contract sheet but didn’t bother with the discount that we agreed to the day before. When I pointed out to him that he missed the discount, he started by telling me ‘but I included this and that for free’ and wanted to see what the other company is giving me in the pool package. He also made a math mistake by somehow tagging on an extra 10K to the total price. He did realize his own mistake and fixed it. By then, I was soooo ticked that I didn’t want to deal with this anymore. So we called it a day.

Then, I called the other company and spoke to the sales guy and asked him to give me a better price and throw in some of the options that the first company was giving for “free”. Of course nothing is free, you are paying for it one way or the other. It’s included in the price. Free is when you don’t need to pay anything and they still give it to you.

That was Monday Columbus day where we were all taking a day off. My plan was to sign a contract on Monday so we can start the process of getting a permit from the town while I am away for 10 days starting on Wednesday. Well, things didn’t quite work out on Monday so it leaves only Tuesday.

Tuesday morning before 8:30, the first guy called a few times but I was still upset and didn’t want to talk to him. Work was busy and didn’t get to speak to the second guy until afternoon. Finally got the numbers and they looked OK but 10% more than the first guy. The truth is we can’t really compare the two companies solely base on the total cost because they are providing two different options. Since our house is on a slope, we need to have retaining wall built for the pool. The first company suggested using a lot of boulders for retaining wall (turns out the guy bought a lot of them and need to use them somehow) so the price is cheaper by more than 10% for the wall. The second company suggests building retaining wall using interlocking block system and won’t even suggest using boulders.

From the beginning, I was not comfortable with boulders and kept asking if they may roll down the hill. I am also not too crazy about the natural unfinished look of using boulders. I much prefer retaining wall with the finished look. So I got what I wanted (as always).

The funny thing was I got what I wanted only because the first guy didn’t give me the discount (it was less than 5% of the total price). I ended up paying 10% more but got what I wanted.