RimBlock

We had an under mount sink and stuck with the same this time. The sealant is under the counter top and so not visible for ours but the edges by the hole cut in the granite top do need a bit of extra care. A anti mould spray usually works fine. Any camera is fine Kobelala . RB

Congrats Mae, Do I need to find some more pics for you to filter now . RB

Either will be very good so it is just down to personal taste and aesthetics . RB

Measure the space, take the photo and measurements to the shop when you go to buy and check before you pay would be the best solution. We can possibly find a solution if what you buy doesn't fit . RB

Love the hive light. Looking very nice. Any more big view pics of the insides rather than details of specific items. Would be great to see how it is all coming together. RB

I would confirm the size and the requirement from the hanging brackets. Some speakers just have a hole on the back so you can put a screw or two in the wall and hang them directly on the wall. This is fine if you want them plush with the wall and have the clearance but you are unable to angle them to the listening position. Some brackets have a multidirectional arm and so you just need to confirm the clearance for the mounting plate (the bit that gets secured to the wall) and the space required for the arm to work as it needs too. Don't forget that , depending on the weight and size of the speakers, you could always secure them to the ceiling. Doing so for small speakers near the wall should be no problem. Either spread the load with a bit of wood inside the ceiling for the screws to grip in to through the plaster board ceiling or use plaster board butterfly fixings which push through a drilled hole in the plasterboard and then a screw goes through the mounting plate and screws through the fixing which opens up the back to make a big flat area behind the plasterboard which will distribute the load. RB

Thanks for coming. It was great to meet you and your family. Thank you very much for your generous gift for Jonathan. Thanks also to everyone else for coming and your gifts both old friends and new. RB

Thank you for your support to those who were able to attend. It was very nice to see you all there. Thank you also for you very generous gifts. RB

As is your right. Our opinions differ then on the sensitivities but as Elys husband I will of course respect your opinion here. RB

If you were offended then sorry Ely, I thought you would understand the meaning which seems to have completely passed Sleek and May. Of course for those who actually read the comments you will notice that I said I "would be grabbing my coat and hat", to which Ely replied "Wizards coat and hat" to which I replied ........... which for the more reasonable would indicate that it was me wearing said articles and not Ely but hey ho.... please jump to your own conclusions...... Sleek, I was not aware you were in a position to grade my relationship with Ely and her husband. Good to know you now take it upon your self to fill that role. May, please understand that I do not need to think of others in that way and thoroughly resent your insinuation that I am doing that. There is one thing in feeling you have to jump in and defend your friend when you mistakenly think she has been slighted but quite another to make the suggestions you have. I will say no more on the matter as I really do not want to turn Elys thread in to an argument. Rb

Removed. I am sure Ely would understand the intent but it seems others cannot. Not wishing to harm others acute sensitivities. RB

How long until they become the cats new fav toy . RB

That wouldn't be film art by any chance would it . It's ok, I was just getting my coat and hat anyway . There was an interesting study that linked the wearing of different lingerie to the mans fidelity, the theory being that by changing the outfits you are tapping in to his brain at a subconscious level and fooling it in to satisfying his subliminal drivers to 'spread his oats'. The studies conclusions were that couples where the lady has various lingerie and regularly wore them during 'intimate' time with her husband we much less likely to have him stray. Certainly less likely than the wife with her "What you think you are doin' hor, you think I'm not tired huh ?. You think get up early, got to work come home look after the kids easy one huh ?. Now you want be like this what like I am not dead tired a'ready.". . RB

Wah, so much travel, holiday will be packing and unpacking suitcases . RB

Can't see the pics here at work but we had a square top mount sink in the last place and that had the tap mounted on the sink. There were quite a few around but they were all square or rectangular. You cna see it in the pics of our old MBR toilet in the beginning of my blog. RB

It is hard trying to maintain a home like a show flat. It takes a great amount of discipline and hard work and can be achieved with just a couple of people living there if both are for the same mind. When kids come along, all bets are off.... , either that or the kids are brought up so scared of touching anything or making a mark that they stop being fun loving kids any more. When we sold our place we decided to make it look like a show flat and so uncluttered everything and took the 'us' out of the apartment. Half of our stuff went to my MiLs and it was great to have all the space again but it was like living in a museum... not so comfortable. Again, two people of the same mind then it is possible but still hard work. We, as a family, are a bit more free spirited and so tend to be a bit more messy. I like 'lived in' where you can see people live there rather than it is a cover from a magazine but I do hate it being too untidy, a state my kids often seem to manage with my wifes help. Very nice renovation you have done Ely. I am not sure I should show my wife as she may well get ideas about new shoe must haves again and it is the GSS and .. and ... and .... . RB

...and so, there I am sitting there watching TV when my wife turns to me.... "You know that seat you sit at on the sofa is a bit stinky." Well she couldn't have hit me harder if she had been holding a baseball bat.. The fact is that I am a fairly big guy and not being born in this climate I tend to perspire. We have fans downstairs so I am not dripping everyday but my shorts may be a little damp when I get off the sofa. As our sofa is cloth, the cloth cover is also a little damp (not wet, just damp). "Well my little rosebud", admittedly I didn't use quite those words, " I shall jump up like the loving obedient husband you have always wanted and wash them forthwith especially as my parents are arriving soon and we have the babies celebration.", yes I didn't use those words wither but I am sure you can imagine the sort of conversation that ensued. The result was that I pulled off the cover from the seat and back cushions where I usually sit and put them in the washing machine and turned it on. Without exploring with my nose, I was fairly sure I would need to give the foam cushion a bit of a wash. Now being the analytical logical genius I am.... I decided the best way to clean it was with clothes washing liquid after all, if it gets stinky sweat smells from clothes it should work with other things too right.... right ? So now I had the plan but needed to formulate a method to put it in to action. Where could I possibly apply clothes washing liquid to a thick foam pad (actually multiple layers of foam glued together) with lots of water to wash it all. The answer was staring me in the face, literally as I was standing next to the washing machine. I would use the downstairs toilet. With a good spray to clear any dust away first I then proceeded to lay the foam on the downstairs toilet floor. This idea was pure genius as it just about fitted perfectly and it would be much easier to get the cushion outside to the corridor when I can have it dry. A cap full of clothes washing liquid later dribbled over the foam and with water spray in hand I proceeded the do my finest impression of an Italian wine grape treader trying to get the juice from the grapes. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that even with my size 12 feet, I would have to do a lot of treading to get the soap absorbed in the whole cushion so I set about my work with a determination. Thirty minutes later I had decided that that would be good enough and it was time to rinse out the foam. It did not take long for another issue with my super genius plan came to light. Firstly, there is a lot of soap bubbles coming out of the foam no mater how much water I was spraying on to it. Secondly the drain hole is partly blocked by the foam and so any bubbles coming out with a squeeze was being sucked back up again when the pressure was taken off. Thirdly and finally, when I tried to lift the foam on to its side in order to better squeeze it and let the water drain away it was very heavy as.... yes you guessed it, it was full of soapy water. So there is me, with a bog heavy water and soap logged lump of foam on a soapy slippery floor in a confined toilet trying to bend the foam in half by squeezing it between my thighs like a female wrestler trying to suffocate their opponent. Water and soap poured out with each choking thigh squeeze, sloshing all over the floor as a slippery mixture then going down the drain with the bubbles hanging back threatening to never go away. My thighs got a good work out that day..... I finally dragged out the large chunk of foam on to the balcony and on to our bamboo poles and spent the next week squeezing the bottom edge where the water was pooling every time I went past. After about a week I felt it was finally dry enough to redress it in the covers and put it on the sofa. It was try to touch everywhere and so on went the covers and back on the sofa it sent. I sat on it carefully just in case of any nasty surprises. Nothing.. it was all good. A little later my wife, who was trying out that seat now it was cleaned and fresh smelling, even better than her side , asked me to come over to the sofa. "Honey, I think it is not totally dry yet." she motions to me as she gets up. The cushion has a big wet patch where she was sitting and on lifting it up there is a big wet patch on the wooden sofa. "oh." is just about all I could manage. Back outside the foam went. What had happened is that the water got stuck inside the foam blocked by the glue and different foam layers so only sitting on it for a while would push the water between the layers. We have since proceeded to walk up and down (me and the kids) with it on the kitchen tiled floor so as to push the water to the surface layer and then put it back outside to dry again. My kids love the excuse to jump all over the cushions and I think, three weeks later, we are more or less at the dry point, which is funnily enough about the time my mother-in-law stated it would take as she saw it and tutted . RB

The Nas tale continues... I had a brief flirt with Windows Home Server 2011 but have been seduced by Windows Small Business Server. Like all good succubus it offers so much and drains you dry. Windows Home Server (WHS) 2011 allows you to set up a basic sharing service to your PCs and media players and allows add-ons which give a bit more functionality although these are pretty limited at this time. Windows Small Business Server Standard 2011 (SBS) gives you a cut down version of the big bad Windows Server 2008 r2 plus Exchange 2010, Sharepoint Foundation 2010, Windows Server Updating Services 3 and Windows Fax Services. So what does all that mean.... Well SBS 2011 will setup and allow you to have you own 'Company' website on the internet (limited by your ISPs bandwidth), an internal network 'Company' website, Shared collaborative documents, an email server so coupled with a domain name you can have as many email accounts as you want whilst having it collect all your email from all the other email web accounts (like gmail/hotmail/yahoomail) and give them all to you in one place. It allows you to login to your website and access your webmail / calendar. You can even do remote access so you can login to your home PC from anywhere with an internet connection and control it as if you were sitting in front of it. The Server update services also downloads all the updated for the PCs and the server and applies them for you rather than each PC having to go and update themselves. Having a local copy of the updates makes them quicker to apply and you only have to download them once. Although a lot of the features are very over the top for a home network I do like a few of the features. The ability to share a calendar with my wife and kids that is accessible on the internet but which is password protected. Accessing my email from one point from home or over the internet. Having profiles on our 3 machines so if my wife logs in to the laptop and saves some camera photos, when she then logs in to the second PC with her account the photos are already accessible for her without her needing to save them anywhere special like a shared drive. Not being able to do this is a big source of frustration for my wife and therefore she becomes a big source of frustration for me. As you can see, SBS 2011 is tempting me like a scarlet woman flashing a hit of her stocking tops but just like that scarlet women, some work has to be put in to see the benefits.....and some initial outlay. The down side. WHS 2011 costs around US$110, SBS Standard 2011 costs around US$815 + you have to buy seats if more than 5 machines / users connect to it. One seat extra is around US70. So I downloaded the trial for SBS 2011 and installed it, patched it and now have it running...... very slowly. Again the scarlet woman has you in her boudoir but is showing you the sleepy eyes and need a little something to get things going...a drink perhaps of in the case of my server, more memory. So I have another 8GB memory on the way from the US which will take the machine up to 12GB. The price is about half of what Sim Lim are asking. Hopefully this will make the system easier to administer as it is so slow from the server. Streaming my media is fine though. I still have the explore under the petticoats to get the user shared pictures and desktops sorted out and then I can work on website. I have bought another domain name which I will let out after I have configured it and got it working. Luckily like a sailor on holiday, the first 30 days are free...after that I will have to pay for the software. There is a way to get it legally, sort of, though for a much cheaper price. Technet is a Microsoft scheme which allows subscribers to try new and old Microsoft products in a non-production environment. This means you can use the software for testing and learning at a fraction of the price of buying the software. A standard subscription is S$278/year and gives access to most of the Microsoft catalogue. For only SBS 2011 it would take 3 years to get up to the purchase cost but that is not including the Windows 7 Pro software on the three home PCs which are also available. It is more like a rental of the software but with restrictions on its use. Just like ditching the scarlet lady from being a mistress with a big present every now and then for a wife with little gifts of love and very limited choices of what you can try when you want to play around with the fun stuff.... . So we will see how it goes after the new memory arrives... I cant wait to get my hands dirty again .... on the Nas boxes insides you dirty minded people . RB

Ok, If someone takes the weight of the tv, is someone else able to unscrew the two side handles which are used to hold the tv in position wither tilted forward or back. Pics 2 & 3 the black plastic screw-in handles. With luck, unscrewing them and taking them off will allow the TV to come away from the part of the bracket mounted on the wall. If it does then a photo of the part left on the wall will help. Pic 1 is pretty unclear as the camera has focused on the top edge of the TV rather than the bracket. I appreciate it can be difficult to get it to do what you want though . RB

Ok, for today I think I will put in 3 updates.... Firstly for those of a technical disposition, the continuing saga of the Nas box.... Secondly, for those of a non technical disposition and who are still awake.... the promised sofa cushion washing experience... Lastly, for those who can stop laughing after the previous two... My wish list as of now. What with a couple of people asking about what we would find useful for the Babies first month gifts, it got me thinking "What would I like for us/myself" as you have to have a goal right to work towards. Due to this I am going to list my wants as something to work towards for now. These will obviously change as time goes on. So without further ado...

No problem. Still need your email for the Babies first month invite. Can email me at Rim_Block@hotmail.com if you prefer as you seem to be having PM issues. RB

I am guessing some are willing to pay good money too..... . So for this zoo, where are the fish . I used to have a goldfish I won at a fair when I was young and we put it in a bowl with a hair net over it to provide some protection. We put it on the kitchen counter top. Next morning we came downstairs to find my one of my parents cats (was living with them as was still going to school at the time) sitting on the counter (never allowed due to hygiene reasons) next to an empty bowl with a look of "you can't prove anything" on her face. I didn't try to win any more goldfish at the fair after that. I did buy some fish for my girlfriends younger sister (was 18 at the time) and an air pump and small tank as she loved fish. All the fish kept swimming in to the air stream and committing suicide launching themselves out of the tank... I think me and fish are not a good combination. Hey, with a balcony that size, how come you haven't ordered the inflatable jacuzzi I linked to in the internet shopping thread. Seems like a perfect place for it . RB

You overdosed her when you were preggy and now she has already experienced enough for her lifetime . For the last two kids, my wifes tastes completely changed and were also different of each childs preggy period. Wife blames hormones... funny how she doesn't accept that when hubby wants to go to the bedroom for some fun.....then hubby must control his hormones . Rb

Well we didn't want to put the durian with all the sai talk . My wife also likes but not me so much. Even if she just puts it in the fridge, my butter tastes of it after a night. Durian puff was ok but don't like the stringy bits in the fruit and the smell is an acquired taste RB

Open an account with someone like Photobucket.com (free) and upload the picture. They will bive you a link you can use to access the picture. The best link to use is the image link which is the third on in the list under the photo after you have uploaded the picture. RB