Thursday, 3 March 2016

DIY Custom DVD Storage

Our Entertainment Center situation was getting out of hand. We had an old TV stand meant for a 30 some inch tube tv, holding our 46" flat screen TV. On top of that, we have over 300 dvds, which my husband needs to display, on a shelf, in the living room. We wanted a new tv stand, but we needed something that worked with our DVD storage, or new dvd storage. After searching everywhere we couldn't find anything that could meet our needs. So we started looking into making our own storage. We found this post for making your own DVD shelving. I sent the Hubby off to Home Depot, $20 of wood and a $30 Kreg jig later, we had ourselves a plan. 

We mounted the tv so that the shelving did not have to hold the tv.  After that, we measured the space that we wanted to fill and built the shelves accordingly. We used common wood and stained it to our desired color.

This was the finished result: 


But we didn't stop there. 


Because we still had more DVD's to store, we decided to add towers on each side.


Again, we built them according to the space we had available.


All of the pieces are connected as one unit. It is pretty sturdy, but we used some L brackets to anchor it into the wall, just in case.  


We ended up with way more DVD storage space than we needed. So we have room to grow and until them we can keep our knick knacks up high where the kids won't destroy them! 

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

Shut the Front Door friends having playing infront of house

I am pretty much the laziest and most easily distracted person alive. Despite my failures in communication with blog friends and two completely defunct-through-neglect blogs not to mention this one, I'm starting another venture - Shut the Front Door.

Lately I have wanted to say more here than I can without fear of being outed or compromising my anonymity. It all sounds very dramatic when it couldn't be more pedestrian, as I really just wanted to talk more about job frustrations but don't feel comfortable doing so here. I'm friends on Facebook with people I work with, so that's out, and Twitter...well, what can you really say in 140 characters anyway?

It came to me recently that it would be nice to have a members-only online forum to take any similar concerns private so they were not readable to all of the internet. Yes, there are password-protected posts, but I'll be honest - not only can I not be bothered to do that on my own posts and notify readers of the password, but I never remember others' passwords either. Again with the lazy.

It will be a private forum, and all memberships will need to be approved by me. I want to make sure it is a space in which everyone feels comfortable to share freely without the accompanying paranoia that I get when I talk about certain things on my blog. It's obviously not a replacement blog, because lord knows I would never tend to that either if so, but on the odd occasion you feel the need to talk about work, marital issues, sexual concerns, or if you're worried that your cat is trying to kill you, come hither. There are comment functions, so you would be able to get feedback on what you are saying just as you would on your blog.

It will not be a place for talking about any bloggers in a negative way, so behave yourselves. I also do not intend for any detailed personal information to be posted there, so it's not as if anyone will be providing their addresses, names of places of employment, or even real names of spouses/kids/etc (unless you are comfortable with that). I suppose you could be anonymous based on the name you set up in the account, but I will need to know who you are in the initial stage (as in blog name or connection to this collection of bloggers)for membership purposes. That information would obviously not go beyond my inbox if required of course.

I've started this here. I have no idea whether this site is any good at forum hosting, so we shall see how it goes. If you go to the search box in the upper left of the homepage and type in "Shut the front door" the forum will come up with the option to join. This may work, or it may be a complete fucking disaster. We shall see!

It's so hard to come up with pithy subject titles which allude to the subject to be discussed without being obscenely cliche or cheesy. "Drowning", "HATE HATE HATE", "Grey", "Please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up with all the bellyaching" (and so on) were all considered and promptly binned. 

Well, I'm still in the United States, so let's start there. It's strange - there is so, so much I want to say in order for me to try to work out the shit if even just in my own head, but with the amount of things to say it all just becomes tiresome. Half the time I start venting to The Dude and just give up through sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical, and feel the need to retire for a 20 year nap. 

I started out in the let's-get-it-all-out mode not a mere 15 minutes ago (yes, it has taken me that long to get this far...shameful), and my head is now a jumble of half-constructed thoughts and random filler that I'll never be able to bring together in this post. I struggle a lot lately with a foggy head and the general inability to express myself coherently, which isn't exactly conducive to my working life either. 

I want to talk about why I miss England, and how I possibly don't miss it as much as I think I do. I want to talk about how I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans (except the ones reading this blog) completely lack a sense of humour and are fake, back-stabbing assholes. I want to talk about how, contrary to what your fair selves indicated previously, I really am fucking up my kid's life with startling aplomb. I think I may have said pretty much that exact same thing last time, but I'm running on fumes here.

There is good news amongst all of the talk of dark days and gloomy thoughts - I have now reached the end of my 6 month probationary period at work, so I am eligible for prescription cover. Thus, I will be hot-footing it to my doctor's someday soon to beg for sweet, medicinal relief. The bad parts of life keep elbowing into the sunny slivers which occasionally peek through, and it's not fair to The Dude and P. 

Fingers crossed that my next post is not a muddled, confused mess. I don't expect to be jumping out of bed in the morning desperate to go to work, but I want to be able to function like a real human again. I want to write on here, comment on other blogs again - all the stuff I used to do before in The Motherland. You know, before I was crazy that other time. God willing and the Creek don't rise.

Future connected with Training: Combating Obesity or Combating Being hungry

I have been following with curiosity the particular discussion regarding the future connected with education.

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Some people criticize existing academic establishments, implying them to present small in terms of authentic coaching, understanding that authentic mastering takes place beyond your class, by means of basically doing. "Nobody finds how to build a system in a pc scientific disciplines class. inches "Nobody finds how to build a company within the entrepreneurship program. inches

Others usually are lamenting which by means of moving in order to training-oriented techniques, i am sacrificing the ability to present deeper education, with issues which can be definitely not valuable. Whom is going to review beautifully constructed wording in case it has not any roi? Whom is going to teach books when there is not any demand because of it?

The two of these criticisms appear to be forcing inside two diverse information.

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Actually, we should instead address two diverse requires:

A single will need would be to actually attempt to democratize education, attempting to acquire the content with the prime lessons along with allow it to become obtainable along with there for all people. Those who wish to find out equipment mastering, can now acquire lessons from prime tutors, as an alternative to requiring you to read the book. Men and women can now progress the careers effortlessly, and never having to register in order to costly amount plans.

Another will need would be to protect the particular breadth connected with education, protecting the idea from marketplace aids. That will need would like to protect the particular design where by learners throughout their education get encountered with varied grounds, no matter if you will find there's marketplace along with demand intended for these grounds.

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That tension reminded everyone regarding the discussion with regards to genetically altered ingredients.

Size manufacturing connected with meals virtually solved the issue connected with world being hungry. A few years in the past, there is a real difficulty with world being hungry. Famine has been a real difficulty in several regions of the planet, because of the incapacity to provide adequate meals in order to supply the particular expanding population: deluges, droughts, diseases had been disrupting manufacturing, producing shortages. These days, the particular advances inside agriculture let the considerable manufacturing connected with grains along with meals: whole wheat along with rice kinds are actually powerful, proof in order to diseases, adaptable to numerous diverse areas, and permit people in order to supply the planet.

The advances which solved the issue connected with world being hungry, finished up developing various other difficulties. Ready-made carbohydrate food along with causing weight problems, diabetes, gout symptoms, and a lot of various other "luxury" diseases inside the formulated world. The poor inside the formulated world will not be death since they are hungry. They may be death by means of hungry themselves from important substances of their diet.

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The parallels usually are striking. The MOOCs, Khan Academies, along with Program code Academies with the world will be the genetically altered ingredients for all those moving into the particular "third world connected with education". These lessons most likely are not the most wholesome, and so they might not provide all the "nutrition" for his or her education. Nevertheless, the choice intended for a number of these persons inside the "third world connected with education" is just not Stanford vs. the Coursera MOOC. It is practically nothing vs. the Coursera MOOC. Presented the choice, acquire the particular MOOC without notice.

The ones that are now living in the particular "developed world connected with education" can be pickier. They will often gain access to the particular genetically altered MOOCs, however should they can afford the idea, the particular organic, artisanal, in the area acquired education can be probably a lot better than the particular mass produced MOOC.

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Farm pets intended for lessons (pun intended).