I'm a huge fan of Grand Central's call screening features. It's irksome, however, that they make it hard to dial outward -- sending your GC number instead of your cell number as the caller id. To do so you need to first add the target number to your address book, and often I'm calling someone I don't intend to call again often.

I started scripting up a way around that when I saw someone named Stewart already had.

On July 29th, Kate gave birth to Sasha Megan Bauer Brase. Details and photos are on her site.

Comments

Is the Jerry Farber piece, an anthem of my youth, not copyrighted? Do you have permission? Where can I reach Farber? -- Some Random Person

Presumably you're referring to this, though I've no idea why you attached the comment to my daughter's birth announcement. I typed this from a blurry photocopy twenty years ago. If the copyright holder objects, I'll happily remove it.

Last year I read about home carbonation, and looking at the amount of club soda Kate and I buy it made sense. The only unknown was where to put the ugly tank that would be out of sight yet still convenient to use.

Months later coworkers and I were at the Red Stag, which carbonates their own sparkling water, and talked about doing the same at the office. I still didn't act until a friend got a soda club machine as a gift.

To look at this long neglected unblog one would thing I've stopped doing things, but quite the contrary there's been so very much doing of things that there's been no time for posting. In no particular order we have:

• Installed a home security system -- No particular need, but I've always enjoyed alarms and now our home has an RSS feed
• Installed an electric garage door opener -- No more brushing off the car in the morning after a snow. Granted it's still powered by an extension cord running from the basement, but hey so goes it.
• Installed nifty iButton electronic locks -- Now the same key opens every door to which I've got access including the Swarmcast offices.
• Un-finshed the basement -- wool insulation and moisture: a winning combination. The project included a fun trip to the city trash transfer station.
• Remodeled the kitchen -- I did almost no actual labor on this excepting some tile installation with Kate, the adding of rolley shelves in the pantry, and having to eat out for four straight months.

Add to those minor projects some time spent on general upkeep of an 85 year old home, scouts and a decidedly non-zero number of hours spent at work, and it becomes clear that what Kate and I need is a baby.

My company, Swarmcast, announced one of our first public releases today. Previously we've been primary selling to content providers, but now we're putting out a user facing free release. If you download our Autobahn Accelerator for iTunes you'll find your purchases from the iTunes music store come down three to ten times faster than they did before. We'll be adding support for lots of other sites (you tube, etc.) in upcoming weeks.

Between telecom troubles, warranty repairs, botched on line orders, and marriage related changes in insurance, mortgage, and bank accounts I've spent a lot of time on the phone with customer service representatives lately. Few issues get resolved in a single call and even fewer without a transfer to another office.

I put together a sheet to keep track of who I spoke to, when, how to get back to them, and what they promised me. Now I grab one whenever I'm about to dial a 1-800 number to talk to the almost-friendly, nearly-helpful people on the other end. Besides the convenience of being able to say "On January 21st at 3pm Janice, CSR number JA5692, told me she'd ship the replacement FedEx overnight," representatives seem on their best behavior when you start out every interaction asking for their name and customer representative number.

I forwarded a Simon Delivers order receipt email on to a friend, and he was able to view the order without being logged in as me. Turns out that if you have a Simon Delivers account at all they let you view any order. I created a quick web form to let anyone view any order using my account. Here's my favorite order so far:

I'm sure fixing this problem is simple as adding whatever the .asp equivalent of this is:

My favorite book in the Wren Hollow Elementary school library was The Gadget Book by Harvey Weiss. I must have checked it out a hundred times during the second and third grade and tried to build most of the half-practical projects it detailed. The best among them was the burglar alarm. It used wooden blocks, a door hinge, and a strip of metal to make a simple normally-open contact switch. It was the first electrical work I ever did and almost certainly shaped my interests and career path.

This one's dumb. We've got the same trash can that everyone who shops at Target has. The inner removable pail is handy for keeping spills from pouring out the foot pedal hole, but its air-tight nature creates quite the vacuum when you're trying to pull the bag out.

|http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=1-11/qid=1169524414/ref=sr_1_11/602-0868447-3796659?ie=UTF8&asin=B000JT7N7A|

After ripping the handles off yet another Glad bag trying to get it out of the pail I went to get a drill to poke an air hole in the bottom -- leak proof be damned. Next to the drill I saw a piece of 3/4" plastic tubing, which I ran from the top of the inner pail to the bottom.

Years ago I had a bad movie viewing experience I can't actually recall at Har Mar Theater in Roseville. As an experiment in how rumors spread and as mild revenge I decided that every time someone mentioned the Har Mar Theater I was going to let them know that once a rat ran across my foot while I was watching a movie there. It's not true, but I figured it was a story that people would pass on to friends.