I got an early birthday present today in the form of a new Yamaha DGX-640 “Portable Grand” keyboard.

Photo by Hannah Stober

There are a couple reasons I chose this model. I wanted something that would get played and sound good. The nice thing about a digital piano like this is that it’s designed to imitate a full-sized Yamaha grand piano that never goes out of tune. Of course it doesn’t sound or feel exactly the same, but neither does an older upright piano that doesn’t stay in tune and can’t be moved.

Secondly, I really just wanted a keyboard! I am a little ashamed to say this as there seems to be this idea that children should be classically trained on an acoustic piano, but if sometimes I could play jazz on a jazz organ, rock music on a vintage synthesizer, or even Bach on a church organ, that just means we’d play it more and have more fun and that’s what it all about. There were some models (YDP-181) that imitated an acoustic a little better in the same price range (but with less features), and professionally-oriented models (CP-5) that did everything better for a lot more money and a higher learning curve (maybe if I get better, someday…).

After all, while my daughter getting old enough for piano lessons was a justification, the reason we got this was because I wanted it! I took piano lessons from 1st or 2nd through 9th grade and kept practicing throughout high school, and only gave it up when I couldn’t take the piano with me on the plane to college. So, I’ve been wanting to get back to it for a while. And while there is a single button to get back to Grand Piano mode if she needs that to practice, if playing in a different voice gets her to practice more, is that wrong?

Maybe I’ll post some YouTube video but first I need to practice!

I feel there is a very different design ethic now that I have the GM car.

I saw that Chevrolet is doing a program to sponsor training for first responders to learn how to extricate people from their upcoming electric car with the Jaws of Life, etc.

There are two ways to look at it. Toyota finds ways to be Lean about everything, and it makes a lot of money, and makes GM look old and stupid.

On the other hand, GM over-engineers things. And so the Volt comes out years behind the Prius, for maybe more money. But for all that extra time they will actually have a car that is a lot more efficient. They are probably losing money because they do things like training for rescue personnel that might not contribute to the bottom line (but if you’re the one in a wreck, it’s good they did)!

Similarly, with our car, the way the radio is all integrated with everything from the driver’s side door to the OnStar system, it’s like – this is not the simplest, leanest way to do it. It has to be more complex and require exponentially more engineering to get right. But the end result is a car that might successfully argue against the “KISS” (keep it simple, stupid) principle. Which is really interesting to me, since I engineer complicated things professionally.

There are a few stereotypical use cases for mobile phones and similar wireless devices. The younger generation needs to text their friends. The older generation needs a phone only for emergencies. And, of course, the professional needs their “crackberry” to check office e-mail. I think a lot of people have a need for mobile communications without falling into one of these categories. I’ve always had a pretty basic cell phone and I finally decide to buy myself a Samsung SCH-i760 Windows Mobile smartphone from Verizon Wireless. I see my needs being somewhere in between the texting teenager and the e-mailing executive. I do need to keep in touch with work, at least by phone for emergencies, but simple e-mail isn’t a killer app for me. (By “killer app” I mean “application,” some restaurant recently used the term to refer to their appetizers.) Somewhat like the teenager, having a more advance mobile data device is largely a personal investment, although with somewhat different uses. The killer app for me is probably going to be online search, maps, and note-taking and web browsing.

The device does a little bit of everything. It has all the functions of a traditional PDA, with a stylus and capability to sync with a computer via a cable. There’s also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, without which typing messages, for me, would be a non-starter. The unique feature of this model is a separate telephone keypad with physical buttons; with the keyboard closed, you can use these to dial the phone; and with the keyboard open, you can use these when you need to enter numbers as well.

The phone supports Wifi, for faster/cheaper data when that’s available. There are a few options for e-mail. First, I was able to get to my company’s Outlook Web Access interface, it’s clunky yet might be the best solution for the times I need this. I was also able to sync with my office using the built-in mobile Outlook application, but I disabled this as it isn’t really what I wanted, and it seemed to keep initiating a data session, which, even though I’m on an unlimited data plan, definitely wasn’t what I wanted. Verizon also includes their own wireless sync system that I haven’t tried.

This is where not fitting into one of the stereotypically use cases presents a challenge. Want office e-mail pushed to your device, Blackberry-style? Fine. Want to be able to get access to all your information, personal or business, as you need it, combined in one place? Not so easy. I need to be able to keep my family and work calendars somewhat separate, but may need to access both of them. Similarly for e-mail, tasks, and contacts. So, I’ll probably keep doing a lot of the via mobile web browsing until I come up with a better solution; I’ll probably look at OggSync as I seem to be it’s target use case. I’d also love to find a program that gives me a “prettier” view of Outlook Web Access on a small without requiring my company to do anything differently on its server, or storing message on my phone.

Finally, why not an iPhone? I could have done that, I suppose. For various reasons I chose to stick with Verizon, and Windows Mobile is something I still wanted to try out. Maybe next time.

Over the past week or so I’ve been spending my evenings and weekends prepping and painting our home office, a task that involved a lot of prep work, a new high-tech paint, and being mistaken for a pro.

The office is a unique little room, separated from the living room by French doors with lots of windows. A lot of houses in the area built around the same time have a “sun room” that projects out of the house, with windows on three sides, and maybe not heated well, but this room is a little different because it’s a regular room, not projecting out. Whatever the original purpose was, we use it a lot like the first-floor home offices present in a lot of better homes built within the last ten years, for paying bills, holding papers and computers, and we are even hoping it can be a place for grandmothers to stay once the baby comes. It’s one of those “old is new” things we really like about this house.

Another thing we like about the house is that, except in the bathroom and kitchen, it has its original plaster walls and ceilings. On the first floor the walls are textured. But, like any active octogenarian, it has some wrinkles, or more precisely cracks, and this room also had some water stains on the ceiling from what must have been a leak in the roof. Actually, the walls are in very good shape for their age, while the house has settled such the nothing is level the old plaster coming loose from the lathe is really cosmetic and worth saving both for its character and because replacing it with drywall would just be unneccessary. So, this is not really just a painting project but a mini-renovation and redecorating project to get the room in better shape, including patching the walls. Patching plaster is something I’m not very good at, though I get a little better every time. The basic plan is to widen cracks and remove the crumbly bits (down the lath in a couple areas) and fill with setting-type joint compound (“setting” in that it doesn’t dry per se but hardens from within after mixed with water, like concrete or, well, plaster), then sand smooth or until I can’t stand the dust even with a dust mask. Actually, next time I may try web going over the partly-cured plaster with a wet sponge, a technique I gave up on once in my last house before I knew to use the setting-type compound. I will say that I’ve gotten the mixing of the compound down, about 4 parts powder to one part water, which is a prerequisite skill as well. Fortunately the texture on the walls is rather random so it hides the patch work, rather than highlight it as some textured finished would, and this room was a good one to get practice on.

The leak in the roof scares me but it seems to be old, we haven’t see any evidence of an active leak and from what we know the house got a new roof a few years ago. The best home improvement advice I read once was to first try the simplest and least expensive thing that will work, which in this case meant painting over the stains with an oil-based primer. Then paint the ceiling. I love the look of a fresh, white, velvety-soft-looking ceiling.

It’s a small room and we wanted a deep color that would “pop” the room off of the living room, making it feel like a separate, cozy area and work well with the reddish gumwood molding and French door. We chose a pumpkin-like orange called “buttered yam” (second choice was “pumpkin pie”) and the color really feels like comfort food; it reminds me of being in my grandparents’ den (orange naugahyde sofabed and manufactured wood paneling on the walls, circa 1970). Our last experience with dramatic color was not good: red paint that didn’t cover and dripped off the walls like ketchup (Cheryl said like blood), and people though we’d attempted some decorative painting technique. This time I was prepared to use a special primer and as many coats as it takes. At first I’d dismissed Benjamin Moore’s new Aura line of paint as overpriced, but then I did the math: I’d need a least two $36 gallons (paint plus tinted primer) of regular paint, maybe I could get by with one $54 gallon of Aura for less? It might actually save money. I’ve found Benjamin Moore paints better than Home Depot’s Behr paints that I used to buy, and the fact that in this house there’s a store five minutes away with better service makes it the obvious choice in terms of getting things done. They paint salesman gave me the advice that, contrary to usual good painting practice, I should let the paint dry after cutting in the edges when using this paint. This worked well, and really shows the best part of the Aura paint which is the synergy between fewer coats and a fast drying time, allowing recoat in as little as an hour. We did need two coats but no more, resulting in four “batches” of painting and drying (cut in, dry, roll, dry, cut in second coat, dry, roll second coat) within about six hours. With other paint it would have taken at least ten hours (three coats with four-hour drying times) which means I would have been in painting mode all weekend and less time for the rest of family life; this is the biggest difference, plus I didn’t need that second gallon so I saved money, too.

Because of the woodwork, I also did a lot of masking with this job, using that plastic film with masking tape along one edge. In rooms where I’ve painted moldings, too, I’ve sometimes tried to “freehand” the edges, because all the masking takes more time than the painting and isn’t always perfect anyways, but in this case I resigned myself to spending more time prepping than painting and the results turned out pretty well.

Finally, I put a couple coats of Holloway House floor polish, as-seen-on-TV, on the floor. It’s not a substitute for refinishing, but at least it doesn’t just look neglected.

The best part of the whole experience? Going in to National Lumber in jeans, a t-shirt, and boots, the cashier at National Lumber asked me if I had an account, like I was a contractor. At least it looks like I know what I’m doing.

I didn’t renew my Costco membership this time. Not that $50 will break the bank but I have a hard time believing
that it’s really buying me convenience and savings. I think it’s time to take a look at my motivations.

We never went to these stores growing up; my mother preferred to shop in small quantities as she needed things and was more concerned with the week’s grocery budget. I liked to help her with the shopping but she was never wanted to pick the large sizes of things if they cost more, even if I was proud of my arithmetic skills in understanding it had a lower unit price. Today I guess they’d call her way “just-in-time inventory management” on a household scale. When we went to other people’s houses I was always envious of their well-stocked pantries. I can really wound up about little details sometimes, and not having the right plastic bag to pack my sandwich in or something would really bother me. I resolved to do things differently when I grew up. In shopping, like so many other things when you’re starting a family, you have to deal with tension between doing things you own way now that you’re the grown-up and being faithful to the way your parents raised you.

We had tried Costco once before we had a baby (we got a free promotional membership when a new store opened) and immediately rejected it. We didn’t have room in our small apartment for anything in bulk sizes. When we joined again we were in a larger condo, with a new baby. We’d been going to Target on almost a weekly basis to buy diapers and formula (at the back of the store, so you have to walk by everything else). It was around the time of the 2004 Presidential election and I remember hearing things about how despite Target’s cachet, Costco was more of a blue-state retailer, in terms of how it treated workers or something — I don’t remember exactly, it seems like there was a red state/blue state analysis of everything back then. Anyhow, having a family with children involves a certain amount of routine that makes it more practical to buy things in bulk.

This is the essence of the game: there are really very few things that it makes sense to buy in club sizes. I can easily count them on my fingers: toilet paper, trash bags, Ziploc bags, laundry soap, Diet Coke, juice boxes. The best part about Costco, by far, was never running out of these items (fulfilling that childhood dream I mentioned above). Wandering around that big store, though, it seems like a waste of time to go in and buy just those few things. Almost every food product we’d tried at Costco resulted in wasted leftovers; even nonperishable and frozen food loses its appeal eventually. I’ll admit there are a couple things – a coffee grinder; a large chromed-wired shelving unit – that I got a deal on at Costco and continue to enjoy. But far more often a trip to Costco ended with shopping time gone and a long shopping list remaining. If Costco helped save money it was as much by allowing us to buy cheap groceries at Trader Joe’s once the non-grocery items were crossed off the shopping list. (I give a lot of credit to the people who run main-line groceries stores like Shaw’s; they don’t get any respect but at least make an honest business of selling people things they actually needed.) The other side of the game is that you are supposed to pretend that you are buying at wholesale prices intended for business-to-business purchases; the membership fee is a bit of legal fiction that makes you “technically” qualify as a business. The whole thing seems offputtingly undemocratic to me – what do you mean my money is no good here if I’m not a “member of the club”? It’s true that the selection of products sometimes includes variations you won’t find at other retailers, including some things that resemble common food-service supplies; but the products at Costco are clearly intended to be sold to consumers, at least as much as they are at any other retailer. At my last job they bought break-room snacks and supplies at Costco, but we were a small software company; we didn’t buy computers there any more than restaurants confusing using Costco with Sysco.

What finally did Costco in for me was napkins and then plastic wrap, and then some funny business with a computer printer. (Oh, and diapers.) While it’s great to know that you can get a case of commercial-grade napkin-dispenser napkins when you need them, we stopped seeing the ordinary store-brand white household napkins. Then, while I’d had some great Costco plastic wrap, heavy duty, with a nice cutter, that I’d originally bought in a package of two 750 square foot rolls, the same product was now packaged in a single 3000 s.f. roll, that wouldn’t fit in my drawer. (The drawer that was a carefully considered part of the kitchen I’d just renovated for tens of thousands of dollars!) Then I was looking for a new computer printer, and in doing some research realized that Costco (a) had a different model number for the same HP printer you could buy elsewhere – it was actually a better price at Costco.com but felt sleazy and (b) it was $5 more in the store than online. Regarding diapers, while we aren’t buying them at the moment, Costco stopped carrying Pampers in favor of the store brand (or Huggies). All are adequate but we liked Pampers, and the bottom line in all of this is that if Costco isn’t going to be the go-to place for certain categories of household supplies, then they aren’t going to be a place we go to at all.

At least not for now. Actually I’m thinking of joining BJ’s instead. They advertise smaller sizes and, at least in our particular location, are closer to other stores in case they don’t have everything we need. The warehouse clubs like to advertise themselves as a resource for frugal households, but really they’re just a new way someone’s invented to part consumers with their money. But really it all boils down to making the never-ending need for toilet paper and juice boxes somehow interesting, and at 1000 words I can at least say it’s been interesting.