John Luis Home Solid Wood Closet Organizer

My house has small closets - 58" wide and 24" deep. Two of the three have no doors on them and are trimmed in a way that makes it difficult to hang standard closet doors. So I wanted to get a system that would optimize the space and look good. After researching a lot of options online, the John Luis appeared to be good looking and highly customizable. Three days later I was unpacking the large box and planning my installation. Now that it's complete, I wanted to capture my impressions of how it went together and the final product.

Fit and Finish
As advertised, the shelves, racks and supports are all solid wood. They're made of pine and finished in either a deep burgundy color that they call Mahogany or a lighter stain they call Maple. In my opinion, naming the different finishes after specific hard woods is a bit misleading. It would be easy to think you were buying a solid mahogany or maple shelving system when in-fact it's made from the less expensive and softer pine. 

I found the burgundy stain to be attractive and the pieces were well-covered. The finish seemed a little soft and marred fairly easily, though. Fortunately, the manufacturer includes a magic-marker style touch-up tool. It comes in very handy and I was glad to have it after nicking different pieces during the course of construction.

On initial inspection, I found the pieces were well-made and in good condition except one of the 24" shelves which had pretty large dents in it. They were made after the finish had been applied and in a position such that they would show if I had positioned the shelf low in the rack. Instead, I simply positioned it higher up so I couldn't see the dents. Problem solved. A couple of the shelves had knots in them but they were'nt loose and the stain and finish cover them nicely. Still, I'd prefer clear lumber.

The hardware is well-made and it all does the job it was meant to do. There are plenty of screws, brackets and assorted pieces. I found the drywall anchors especially useful since the configuration I used had me attaching shelves to the wall where there were no studs.

Assembly
Let me start by saying this is not a quick or easy project. It's more like a renovation than a simple installation. And doing it with two people would make it easier. Having said that, though, I would have had little space for anyone but me for most of the project.

I've never assembled a closet organizer before so I can't compare this to other similar systems. I have, however, done extensive home renovations, woodworking and some general carpentry so I was well-prepared with the tools for the job. The instruction manual says you need:

    * Pencil  
    * Tape measure  
    * Level  
    * Screwdriver  
    * Saw

I'd say that list represents a bare minimum for getting the job done. Here's what I used and I think it would be difficult to do it with less:
   
    * Pencil   
    * Tape Measure
    * Gum eraser        (We all make mistakes.)   
    * Drill and driver   (Doing this job with a handheld screwdriver as is suggested in the manual would bring a grown man to tears.)   
    * Chop saw           (Or a crosscut sled and a tablesaw.)   
    * Flashlight            (My closet is not lit so this was essential.)  
    * Small and medium-sized level (A small level for front-to-back and a longer one for levelling the long shelves and vertical supports.)   
    * Spackling compound & touchup paint for the walls (Again, we all make mistakes. Additionally, you're bound to mar the walls during the installation.) 
 
I probably spent 8 hours from the time I opened the box to the time I finished cleaning up. I found the instructions clear and easy to follow. But I'd caution anyone who isn't used to taking measurements, calculating distances, marking and drilling walls, and marking and cutting lumber to pay close attention to every step outlined therein. And be careful to use the exact screws called for in each operation as some are too small or too large for certain steps. And don't skip the initial planning step. It's key to a successful installation.

Final Outcome
I'm very happy with thje way the closet looks and at the vastly expanded capacity. (I now have a whopping 20 feet of shelf space and 60 inches of hanging space.) The whole thing is sturdy and functional. It was worth the effort and I plan to install one in at least one other bedroom closet.

Facebook Investor Whiners

I find it laughable that people bought FaceBook (FB) at over 100 x earnings and are now crying foul because the stock hasn't gone up. At this writing, Google (GOOG) sells for less than 18 x earnings,; MicroSoft (MSFT) is under 11 x earnings; and Apple (APPL) costs less than 14 x earnings. They are solid performers in the same space as FB and are fairly priced. What would make a rational investor buy any stock at such a high premium as FB has been, and still is, selling for? I'd wait until it gets under 20 x earnings before I started to consider buying.



Update: 8/16/2012 - Yesterday I bought FB and its PE is still over 100, but it's close to half of what it was at IPO. I'm hoping that the company can capitalize on its 900 million users.

Asus Transformer Review

In recent years I've watched co-workers, friends and family smuggly brandish their iPuds, iPlods and iDontCares whenever they had the chance. In my mind, these folks were slaves to the latest tech fashion and I saw no reason to hop on the bandwagon. Hell, you couldn't even get to the file system on those things. How could you do anything useful with them?

When Android tablets started started gaining ground, I still wan't thrilled. Sure, you could move files around like a real computer, but still, why bother? They seemed gimmicky and they were just trying to catch up with the iPad.

Then a friend gave me a reason that ultimately lead to my buying the Asus Transformer. He suggested that it would be great to carry all of one's sheet music around on a single device. With dozens of fake books in PDF files on my PC, each holding hundreds of songs, I knew he was right. I envisioned placing the tablet on a music stand and instantly calling up any sheet of music that I own. It seemed like the perfect application and I started reviewing the available Android tablets.

About six months ago I bought the Asus Transformer because of  the keyboard and the glowing reviews I read. With 32 G of memory I figured I'd have plenty of capacity for my music and anything else I'd want it for. And the detachable keyboard and various connectivity ports overcame my biggest objections to other tablets.  After using it for a few months, here's what I've found:

First the good stuff. The Wifi always works great. I can easily locate and connect to any network within range, and automatically reconnect next time I power up. It's a simple thing, but it works well. Also, Bluetooth connectivity is a breeze. I just enable it and select the device I want to use. Works great every time. The keyboard is good to have, but I find that I wind up using my laptop if I have any real work to do. Not because the Transformer's keyboard isn't useful, but because of the shortcomings listed below make the tablet a poor choice for doing most tasks.

Now for the not-so-good stuff. My biggest gripe is that the platform is unstable. Apps freeze or close up regularly, including Gmail, which I would expect to be better behaved on a Google operating system. The Android browser, Stumble Upon, and the Kindle App regularly freeze or close unexpectedly. (It might be coincidence, but I can't help but notice that all these apps exchange data over the network.)

The next biggest problem for me is that the web connection is s-l-o-w. When I'm at home, the router is never more than 40 feet away and I expect to get the same network performance as I get from my laptop.  But I frequently give up on a web page because some simply take too long to load. I'm using the browser than came with the the machine and even if I don't have anything else running, network response is generally slow and sometimes its downright glacial.

Speaking of slow, response to page swipes, tilt actions and other gestures suffer from mild to severe lag, depending on what app I'm using. Even the screen orientation doesn't change quickly when I turn the tablet on its side.

Another major problem, is the fairly frequent freezes and crashes. Everything, including Google apps like Gmail, will freeze up from time-to-time. I have 26 gig of free memory, so I'm using less than 15% of the total system capacity - so I can't understand why the thing has such a hard time managing resources.

And sometimes, when the machine has sat by itself for a while, rather than going to sleep, it goes into a constant cycle of going to sleep and waking up. It doesn't let you have control - it just keeps going blank and then the splash screen comes on. The only way to stop it is to hold the power button in for a while until it finally powers down.  It's maddening if you pick it up and expect to do something quickly.

A less egregious issue is that it always asks which application to use for opening PDF file. Or music files. Or videos -  even though I check the 'Use as Default' option every time. And also, I can't uninstall the NetFlix app and I constantly get reminders that there is an update available for it.


Pros:
Nice to carry tons of sheet music and other material in a small package.

Cons:
Slow, buggy, unstable. Barely useful for even the most basic computing/network tasks.

The Bottom Line:
Great to have a small devic ethat holds all my sheet music and othe rdocuments. But it isn't stable or powerful enough to handle even teh simplest computing tassks.

The Global Socio-Economic Ramifications of Taking a Hot Shower

For years I lived with a hot water heater that, along with my furnace, was fired by oil. And every time I turned up the heat or ran the hot water I felt a pang of guilt. Not becasue of the high price of oil, but because petro dollars fund terrorist regimes and contribute to so much corruption worldwide.

So now I live in a house with an electric hot water heater. And for the first few months I lived here, I was very cautious about running the hot water. But it just occurred to me that my electricity comes from a wood-burning power plant in Newigton, New Hampshire. And that I can take hot showers, do laundry on the 'hot' setting and use hot water whenever I want without being concerned about the global socio-politiclal-econmic-terrorist-funding ramifications in doing so. How liberating! In fact, I've taken the electric space heater out of the basement and plugged it in so now I'm heating part of my house with electricity, too. Woo hoo!