Memo to household

Subject: Impending doom house-cleaning

For various reasons, the Starport's residents all need to do some major cleaning soon. The kids are getting new beds, so they have to clean their rooms to the point where they'll fit. The chaoswolf probably has the most to do here. It looks like her desk will end up in the master bedroom, replacing the one I kludged together for the flower_cat mumble years ago.

And then the front part of the house is getting new water pipes. In order for that to happen, I'm going to have to remove the shelves from the wall next to the front bathroom. That's the wall that has my computer books and my main workstation. Floor-to-ceiling shelves, of course. Piles of stuff on the floor. What fun.

Finally, there's the back bathroom, which will be getting a new tub, new vanity, and basically a total makeover. No telling what is going to be involved with replacing the drains -- the crawl space is unuseable, so it will have to be either dug out (at vast expense) or they'll have to go in through the floor. We were planning to replace some of the flooring, anyway.

Did I mention re-painting the outside? I thought not. Oh, and the gardener starts work sometime today.

Note to political bloggers

Reporters Without Borders has published a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. It's all available online, either in PDF or HTML. Includes chapters on How to blog anonymously, Technical ways to get round censorship, and Ensuring your e-mail is truly private.

Required reading for political bloggers and whistle-blowers; lots of good info, mostly introductory, for others.

Hey, we have a yard!

The gardener was here today; did an amazing amount of work clearing weeds and debris (and the Banksia, which the flower_cat says she doesn't want anymore) out of the back yard and along the driveway. Still lots more to go -- he'll be back tomorrow.

Saturday we're going shopping for plumbing fixtures, weed cloth, and who-knows-what-else at Home Depot.