So, I am playing around with Vista lately and over all it is looking pretty good except one thing.  It's trying to annoy us to death.    Check out this link which describes Vista's new and very annoying behavior.

I think Microsofts goal is to secure the OS with an endless stream of dialogs thus ensuring neither us or the hackers can actually get anything done.     Not only is there 3-4 dialogs involved in deleting a file but the new and "improved" User Account Protection now pops up all of the time to let us confirm various operations in the OS.    

Come on MS, if you make it this annoying to use the OS, we will just turn off the feature and negate your 5 years of work trying to secure the platform.

The house is coming right along.   The trim carpendars are almost finished with their work.   The closets are complete and most of the floor and crown moldings are in.     I stopped in yesterday and looked over some of the details and they look pretty good.   Lot's of little trim details such as the transitions around bullnosed corners. 

My favorite part of course is that my Server Room is looking great.   As you can see, it's relatively large for a closet and has cabinets for all of my printers, computers and other gadgets.   To the left, where you can't see, will be an AV Rack for DVD Players, TV Receivers and House Audio.    The goal is to have all of the electonics in the house is this room.  

Finally remembered to take my camera out to the house and shoot a few pictures.   I only got a couple because the carpenters were working.   They expect that they will wrap up their work early next week.    So far, the cabinets are in and most of the closets are complete....all except the server room.   Alene's secret room under the stairs even has a door (oops, that was a secret).   I am pretty happy with the kitchen cabinets.

However no matter how well the inside is coming along, the outside is a mess.    After having lots of trouble finding brick, it looks like we still have a problem.    We are using a used brick and it turns out a number of the batch isn't usable which is leaving us short some brick.     So, now we are kind of stuck nave to come up with a new plan....and here it is.  

1. Tear the brick off back down to below the windows.   It will become a waiinscot.   
2. The front two facades will still be rock as originally planned.
3. Above the wainscot will be  stucco.   
4. Porch will most likely be stucco or brick (depending on how much we have)
5. Archway on the porch will be brick

I think this will work and still look pretty good.  I think it might even look better even if it wasn't what we planned.

The house is coming along nicely.   The wood floors went in late last week and they look pretty good.   The bricks are also going onto the house now.   

The lighting problems are finally resolved.   We went with some relatively modern lighting.   I went with mostly black lighting fixtures with white glass shades.     We did go with a pretty modern blue pendent light over the island.      Hopefully it will all look good.

There are more pictures of the inside and outside if you click on the thumbnail.