OK, here's a challenge for you creative people out there.

There is absolutely no book with any wild ideas about the fun things you can do with and to an unfinished basement. Here are some of mine, but I'd like to get as many ideas as I can before we draw up plans.

It's a very large basement -- the footprint of a fairly large house -- and it has a walk out. The ceiling is probably 10' above the floor at present, so we can put in a drop ceiling and still have a lot of headroom.

Ideas so far:

• Leave 3-5 feet of the perimeter unfinished and use it as a roller rink. This could be neat, as the path would take you through the rooms of the basement.
  
• Take a section, maybe 15 x 15 and make a fake ice skating rink out of it using that plastic fake ice.
  
• Take a section for a combined guest room and music room. Drum set, marimba, upright piano, etc go in there along with a couple of futons on which you could sit, or which could make into beds for guests down there.
  
• Home theater / media room.
  
• Party kitchen area: small fridge, microwave, dishwasher, cabinet with dishes.
  
• Storage space for sure.
  

What would be really cool? Help!

I celebrated my birthday today. It was great. I got to work out in the morning, came home to a great omlette made by the family. We all went ice skating in the afternoon and then my in laws took us out to dinner. It was a great day.

Welcome back Wash U students. It's good to see the campus jumpin' again.

The Blast played its summer playoff game last night, and I'm proud to report victory. We beat the team whose name strikes fear all across our land (Team 12). They even had a secret weapon last night: the much feared but now sneered goalie Cavin.

The game was exciting, with Blast leading most of the time, but Team 12 rallying to tie us. Then, while short handed, Frank Karfs got a breakway one-on-zip against the aforementioned Cavin, and scored. Things got tense in the third period as we drew penalties and had to play with two in the box. But we held them and won.

We even got simulated-gold trophies to commemorate our victory.

Well to continue my saga of the bad display, things got ugly. The local company did send it off to Apple, who looked inside the computer, concluded it had been abused, and then asked the local company to contact me to find out how I would finance the $500+ repair bill.

I write that they looked inside to find the abuse becuase there was no abuse outside. Somehow, we must have reached inside the display, snapped the brace, and severed the power chord to the display's backlight.

Needless to say I was miffed.

So I called 800 800 APPL again. I waited 20 minutes to get to the first (non)help person. He told me that we must have abused the iBook (after all, Apple's notes about the iBook said as much). I asked him if he could see signs of abuse on the computer. He said the computer wasn't physically proximate to his venue (well, not in so many words, but the computer was probably on a different continent from his). He told me he would transfer me to customer assistance, and that I should hold on until they pick up.

I endured 10 minutes of "please wait" messages played every 30 seconds or so, and was connected to the next help person. She reviewed the notes on my case, assured me it was my fault, and said she tries to see my side on the issue here.

I asked her how she could be sure the unit wasn't shipped defective since it broke so soon. But it was shipped on May 26, she tells me. I got it June xth, and we pressed it into service mid-June. It broke around July 18th while we were on our RV trip. She asked why I didn't phone in then. I told her the batteries in my cell phone weren't up to the 45 minute wait necessary to deal with Apple on what should be warranty repair. She started to soften, but wanted to consult with the technical people to see if my explanation (shipped defective) could hold water.

While I waited another 10 minutes on hold, I started writing a much meatier and malicious missive than the one before you now. She evidently couldn't get through to them. She returned after the obligatory 10-minute wait, and told me she will consider the unit defectively shipped, making this one-time exception on the warranty for me. She went on to say that if I were to ship it back with liquid spilled on it, she could do nothing for me.

How insulting. So she still didn't really believe me, in spite of not being able to see the unit or ask a technician about it, but she is thoroughly convinced that I must have abused this thing for it to be in its broken state.

Thank you, thank you, Apple, for this one time making an exception and honoring the manufacturer's warranty. I can see why you have such a devoted following.

The pictures are here . Someday I hope to put in comments...

Has anybody out there read or care to comment on Al Franken's book Lies and the lying liars who tell them. While it claims to offer a balanced view of the right, it's of course somewhat lopsided. But he makes his points well and the book is downright funny in (many) places.

The display of an iBook I bought two months ago just bit the dust, and so I called the Apple support number to find out how and where to get it fixed. I had to wait 20 minutes until somebody could help me, but it just took a few minutes after that to find out that there's a place in Clayton that does repairs.

It turns out the Clayton place had to mail my iBook to Apple for repair but they expect it back in 10 days.

Then I went to the Apple Store in West County Mall to pick up something for my kids. I noticed they had no their wall "3 day turnaround guarantee on repairs". I asked the cashier if I could have brought my iBook here instead of Clayton for repair, and of course the answer was "yes". So, I asked, it would have been reayd in 3 days right? Well... no, because they are so swamped with repairs they would have sent it to Apple like the Clayton place did. But what of their posted 3-day turnaround guarantee? Well, the guy says, that's only if they have parts and the labor staff to do the repair. I didn't see any such fine print on their sign, and pointed it out to the cashier, but he didn't seem to get my point.

I'm back from our month-long RV trip and I'll post about that in a little bit. I was encouraged to find that I had many comments left in the blog since I departed, but then deflated to see that they were all spam. Well, I didn't get past the first page or so of them but the appear to be all spam.

Executive summary: DOC lab has new carpet, RV trip was fantastic, we have probably found a new house, our summer hockey season is going well and we are headed for playoffs, some funding has come through for me, the best NSF proposal I've ever turned in was declined. Film at 11 (oh, sorry, 10 -- I'm back in the midwest)