The LaGarde Family

Basement – Before

Basement – Midway

This weekend, I planned on getting some major progress done on making the basement into a finished space. My plan is to cut the basement in half. The two spaces would be an area for storage and laundry, and the other will serve as my office space for now and eventually a play area for he kids. I had been drawing up the plans and running them by Jack, a contractor friend of mine.

Unfortunately, it snowed on friday morning, which meant that my plans for trucking a bunch of stuff out of the basement to an auction place, wasn’t going to happen. Just a slight hinderance.

On Friday afternoon, another good friend, James, helped me get 60 2×4′s and 15 sheets of dry wall onto a trailer and down to my basement. I have to admit, I totally under estimated how much work that would be. I can’t tell you how thankful i am for his willingness to help.

On Saturday, Jack came over around 8 am and we started working on getting the 2×4′s anchored to the floor where we needed them. My Dad got there around 9. By noon we had pretty much all of the frame work up and ready for dry wall. Then after a lunch break, we finished putting up the rest of the dry wall, with the exception of an area behind the stair. We couldn’t do that because I didn’t have enough dry wall.

So, to wrap up this entry, all that is left is to finish the hangning the dry wall, finish wiring, then fill in the corners and seams of the dry wall and get that ready to paint. In january i will paint the room, and put a drop ceiling in with some recessed lights. Then all that is left is the trim and the doors to the closet and storage area.

I have some quicktime VR files of the before and as it is now if you are interested.

Basement – Before

Basement – Midway

I am so thankful for friends and family. Especially James, Jack, Ben (my dad), Mike and especially April.

More updates on this to come.

Hey all, As you can tell, we got snow this morning. About 5 – 6 inches.
I took some photos from my front door, and made a panoramic shot, part of which you can see in the header. But the complete photo is up under our photos. Feel free to check it out.

If you got snow as well, feel free to leave a comment on how much snow your area received.

Link To the Article
Second article on CNN

I found this article on slashdot.org, which is a great site, and I am totally excited about the possibility of this. I think the way Apple has been positioning themselves in the market, they are certainly poised to target the “media center” console and I believe they can do it with success. And dare i say it? Even better than Microsoft?

I think they will be successful for several reasons. First, the market view of apple currently is one of constant infatuation. I know infatuation eventually ends, but, seeing as how the ipod is still the number one selling media player by far, it certainly seems to be cemented into main stream culture. Their marketing strategy has been brilliant and will no doubt be one to go down in the books.

The second reason they could be successful is that they are providing content for their “widgets”, and not only that, but they make it incredibly easy to feed them as well. Yes, there have been portable video players before. But the big difference between those who have gone before and Apple is that they will provide the content, and they will pull partners on board to provide that content.

A huge evidence of this is in an announcement made to day by Tivo. They are going to provide support to get the shows you record onto your iPod. TiVo is no small player. It shows that there is enough market pull there for them to invest time, resources and money into getting that software and support going.

The last reason I think they could succeed is that they do make it incredibly easy to use their stuff, and not only that but their products and software is sexy as hell. Have you seen Front Row? ‘Nuf Said.

Ok, ok, i have to admit, i have been using Apple computers since 1997 when i went to art school and I am slightly biased. But I also know marketing and User design, and I gotta tell you – they are already rocking and have a great plan moving forward. The proof is that i own stock and plan to buy more because I believe so much in what they are doing. I suggest you do the same.