Rob Lifford

We had a garage sale last weekend. It was really nice to cut back on clutter and acquire some cash in the process, but our garage was such a densely-packed maze of stuff before we started setting things out on the driveway that we actually forgot to set out a few items that we’d planned to sell. It’s all for the best, we hope, because these items include two pieces of antique furniture and one likely collectors’ item, and we think we probably would have accepted too little money for them at the garage sale. We still haven’t done the research we feel like we need to do to price them appropriately (before we stick them on Craigslist), but feel free to make us an offer we can’t refuse — check out the items on the new for sale page.

Bumper sticker spotted in the neighborhood on this evening’s stroll:

In case the title needs explainin’… dotlet = daughter in the family vernacular.

Anyhow, there’s new Violety goodness in our Yahoo! Photos account:

• Added more photos to the June/July album I started a few weeks ago. Seems I’d forgotten all of June. Ahem.
• Started an August 2005 album too. Here’s a teaser, a result of one of Granny Annie’s first games of dress-up with her granddaughter:

Speaking of my Yahoo! Photos account… when are they going to bring in all the cool Flickr features that I’m waiting for? It’s been a little over five months now since they bought Flickr, but so far there’s not much to go with their statement that “Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features.” They’ve allowed me to merge my (barely used) Flickr account into my Yahoo ID, but so far that really doesn’t even do anything. I know these things can take a lot of time, but I’d really hoped they’d have at least announced exact plans by now (or maybe they have and I’ve just missed the news?).

I started sticking all my pictures in Yahoo because they’re partnered with my ISP, so the storage is unlimited, plus they allow Violet’s grandparents to order high-quality prints easily and have them delivered quickly. But Flickr’s got all the cool geek-friendly features and a much nicer interface… I can’t wait to see if something really cool comes out of the buyout eventually.

Well, moving to a new system was too much temptation: I had to redesign as well. I still haven’t decided what the front page is going to be, and I still need to assign categories to most of the blog posts and redirect old some URLs & the old feed, but the blog now lives at rob.lifford.org — dive on in.

Time for a change. Last night I installed WordPress here on greasy elbow, exported all my posts from Blogger, and imported all my comments from BlogBack. I was amazed at how easy the entire process was, especially considering that BlogBack is not the most widely-deployed 3rd party comment system… the whole thing worked out so well because BlogBack allowed me to export my comments in an open XML format called Comment Archive and Interchange Format (CAIF), which in turn allowed me to get the comments into WordPress using a script that was created for importing Haloscan comments. Hooray for open formats.

When I was around, oh, 11 years old I guess, my family took a trip to Niagara Falls. I will never, ever forget what my dad uttered the moment we all laid eyes on the star attraction of that famous tourist and honeymooners’ town:

“Holy SHIT, a lotta water!”

Pardon his French, but he was playing to an audience of two adolescent boys, and he thought we’d find it absolutely hilarious. We did, of course, which is why I still recall it as if it were yesterday. We laughed and laughed.

Why am I telling you this today? Because last night — and again today — I had occasion to utter those same words myself, upon seeing our kitchen floor, and much of the rest of our house, flooded by a malfunctioning washing machine.

We’re not laughing tonight.

There seems to be no real damage to any belongings besides the house itself, which can be handled, and Violet is still the cutest thing in the universe, so I suppose we’ll survive. “Water remediation devices” (fans on steroids) have been deployed, homeowner’s insurance provider contacted, washing machine repairman who said it was fixed after the first flood tarred-and-feathered. Life marches on, albeit with soggy feet.

We really, really hope you and yours have had a more pleasant past 24 hours, though.