Bathroom Renovation update

Well, Jason got the toilet in and most of the floor done. He is waiting until he makes sure the toilet isn't leaking before putting the rest of the tile in. We have tested it out and it seems it is not leaking! YAY! I am so proud of him. He replaced all it's parts and everything. He hates plumbing but did it anyway...for us. Such a sweety! As soon as we get everything done I am going to take a pic.

Bathroom Renovation

Yesterday, since we had sick kids, we(um...Jason) spent all day working on our downstairs bathroom. I had already taken all the wallpaper down and we had a tough decision to make on whether or not to re grout the floor tile or just pull it all up. In the end we decided to pull everything up...oh boy. Our floor had sunken in a bit because of our house settling so we were hoping that by re-doing things we might be able to correct the problem. Jason put in new sub-flooring and he did a great job!! We actually put it down on top of the old sub-floor because there was enough space to do it. It looks really good right now. Last night Jason also primed the walls. Today he is planning on painting and puting down the linoleum tiles. Then all that's left is the trim work, sanding and painting the cabinets, installing the new sink and faucet, and putting up the mirror. I can't believe how fast things are going. Oh, one more thing... we haven't put the toilet in yet so that is a crucial step! LOL Jason is going to replace the guts of the toilet before he puts it in. I am so proud of him. God has really given he the skills to do these things because he will tesify that this stuff is not what he does best. I will update on how today goes.

Linux Journey- one week in

So, what I am using in Linux to replace my favorite windows programs? I have a short list right now but I am sure it will expand in time :) Be forewarned that I haven't used these long so my opinion may change.

Gnucash - A Microsoft Money replacement. I really like this program but I need to learn how to download transactions from the bank. This is not crucial but it is nice. Right now I can manually click whether or not something has cleared. The one thing that I don't like about it is that I can't select multiple transactions within an account. This means that I have to go through and click clear on each transaction. It also means that you can't assign an account/category to multiple transactions at the same time.

OpenOffice- A Microsoft Office replacement. I am very happy with this program. I haven't dived into the "Word" aspect of it as much as I have the spreadsheet but I am satisfied right now.

Gimp- A replacement for Photoshop. I gotta tell you, I LOVE my photoshop but I am extrememly pleased with the Gimp. It has many of the bells and whistles that photoshop does and it is free! The only draw back is that it does have a learning curve.

Evolution- A replacement for Outlook. I really can't say anything bad about it except for the migration aspect. It was a trial getting everything migrated over from Outlook to Thunderbird(another email client that doen't have the calendar like Evolution does) and then to Evolution. Especially if you are not dual booting. Thankfully I have this computer set up on a network with a folder share to a windows based system.

I have several other programs in the cue to try out and I will update on my progress/opinion of those soon.

What's been going on??

Well, it's been almost an entire month since I last posted and I am sure my dear step mother is anxious to get an update so I thought I would start back so that I wouldn't have an even longer update to give :)
For the last 2 weeks we have been doing very little schooling due to sickness. At first it was just a fever and now we have children with sore throats. I think we are on the up now though. Poor Andrew, every time he drinks he says "Owie" and cries. He has had a terrible time sleeping. It seems this summer has been kinder to us regarding sickness(even though we seem to be sick alot..LOL) so I am hoping this winter will be easier than the last to.

Aside from health issues(including pregnancy) we have been working on the house. I have been constantly getting rid of stuff so that we can sell when we are ready. We are actually looking to downsize(we get drop dropping expressions when people hear this) to a smaller home in the next year or 2. We have also been working on the downstairs bathroom. We have stripped the wallpaper off and last night Jason tore up the floor. It was tile-awful looking tile! So the bathroom is going to be a huge project for us! I just wish I could help more but because of the pregnancy I am left with stripping wallpaper and decluttering-poor Jason!

I have also been working on our computers. I have installed Linux on one and am going to install Linux as a dual boot on the other this week. I have been studying up on it and trying to migrate things over because we foresee in the future that there will be a need for us to use open source software. I am so glad I have a hubby that knows about all this stuff and can teach me!

I am not sure what we are going to do today since we can't go to church. We will likely have a family service together. I am bummed that we will miss getting together AGAIN with the other family we meet with every Sunday night to have "home church" with. We enjoy it so much. They have been moving the last couple of weeks and now we are sick.

I haven't posted in a while any pics because my camera doesn't work anymore. I can use my camcorder but it's so much more difficult. I will try to get some pics up soon though.