Korey Atterberry’s Idle Chatter

Dear Homebuilder-

When installing an exterior door, don’t worry about using shims between the door frame and the rough opening for proper support. Three drywall screws on the hinge side only should be more than enough to attach the door into the opening. If not, the load-bearing ability of the exterior trim will suffice. When installing the header over the door, rather than sandwiching boards of the proper thickness to make a uniform piece the same depth as the opening, just fill the remaining void with a tube of clear caulk. That will make a great nailing surface for the exterior trim.

Additionally, rather than using expensive flashing and water-resistant building paper to form a proper drainage plane behind the siding, a whole tube of caulk between the brickmould and the vinyl J-channel should be good enough. After all, don’t all proper vinyl siding installations make use of lots of caulk?

Finally, when finishing the installation, why bother with insulation between the door and the opening - that’s what trim is for, right? When painting the trim, one coat of interior white paint should do the job. There’s no need to spend time with extra coats of primer. If, when removing the masking tape, some tape remains on the door, just leave it. I’m sure after ten years it will dissolve and fall off on its own anyway.

I hope these tips can be of value to you and help you cut costs to maintain your profits.

Sincerely,
Disgruntled Homeowner

P.S. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is how much more effort I put into doing things the right way building my kids’ backyard playhouse compared to the work of these “professionals.”

Previously, I posted about using ScheduleWorld for synchronizing my calendar to my Windows Mobile phone. Due to some problems I experienced, I withdrew my recommendation, but I’ve got something that’s working pretty well for me now.

I’m using the free version of GooSync, and in my testing it’s been very reliable. The free version is limited in three ways that matter to me. First, it only synchronizes seven days into the past and thirty days into the future. Secondly, it doesn’t automatically synchronize - you have to manually run the process. Third, the free version is only supposed to synchronize two-way (from server to phone and phone to server).

For me, these limitations haven’t proven too painful. My calendar doesn’t change often, so when I plug it in at home I just hit the sync button. No big deal. Also, I really don’t find myself checking my distant calendar when away from the computer. It’s usually more a question of “what’s going on this weekend?” Finally, I’m mitigating the risks of the two-way sync wrecking my Google Calendar with a bunch of testing and backups.

Before starting the calendar syncing process, I added a scheduled task on my PC to back up my Google Calendar to a file each day. In case you’re interested, I’m using wget to grab the .ics file for my calendar each day and saving it to a unique file name with the date. If you want to know more just ask and I’ll post about it.

Additionally, I ran several tests with test appointments to make sure that the sliding synchronization window worked as it should. What I tested is listed below.

• Create a new appointment on phone in the current date range
• Create a new appointment on phone before the current date range
• Create a new appointment on phone after the current date range
• Create a new appointment on Google Calendar in the current date range
• Create a new appointment on Google Calendar before the current date range
• Create a new appointment on Google Calendar after the current date range
• Rename an appointment on phone when the appointment originated on phone
• Rename an appointment on phone when the appointment originated in Google Calendar
• Rename an appointment in Google Calendar when the appointment originated on phone
• Rename an appointment in Google Calendar when the appointment originated in Google Calendar
• Delete an appointment on phone when the appointment originated on phone
• Delete an appointment on phone when the appointment originated in Google Calendar
• Delete an appointment in Google Calendar when the appointment originated on phone
• Delete an appointment in Google Calendar when the appointment originated in Google Calendar
• Create an all-day event on phone
• Create an all-day event in Google Calendar
• Create a repeating appointment on phone - yearly
• Create a repeating appointment on phone - 15th of the month
• Create a repeating appointment on phone - 2nd friday of the month
• Create an all-day appointment on phone
• Create a multiday event on phone
• Create a repeating appointment in Google Calendar - yearly
• Create a repeating appointment in Google Calendar - 15th of the month
• Create a repeating appointment in Google Calendar - 2nd friday of the month
• Create an all-day appointment in Google Calendar
• Create a multiday event in Google Calendar
• See if events created on phone are deleted as window moves
• See if appointments created on phone are added as window moves
• See if appointments created in Google Calendar are deleted as window moves
• See if appointments created in Google Calendar are added as window moves

Everything propagates from phone to server and vice versa in a predictable way, so I’m happy with the results. In short, any change within the 7 day past to 30 day future window gets synchronized. The only items that get “deleted” are old appointments that you create in Google Calendar or on the phone - they are no longer synced to the opposite calendar when they are 8 days or more in the past. Likewise, if you create an appointment on the phone more that thirty days into the future, it will get synced to Google Calendar when the window slides forward to that date. Also, if a repeating appointment is synced to the phone, ALL instances of the appointment are synced on the phone. All-in-all, it seems like a good implementation, given the understandable limitations they’ve put on the free version.

Since I kind of use my main calendar (Google Calendar) as a historical record, it’s important to me that nothing ever gets removed from it. If I create an appointment on my phone, it won’t stay on Google Calendar after the sliding window of synchronization passes it. There are two choices for me to work around this: never create an appointment on the phone, or upgrade to the paid version of GooSync. Since I don’t create that many appointments, especially from the phone, I’m going with the first option for now. If I’m away from the computer and need to schedule an appointment, I just send myself an email. For now that’s working out OK. If GooSync would lower their rates, though, I’d revisit that decision.

In part 1, I described how I got email syncing to my new smartphone. In part 2, I addressed tasks, and in part 3, I struggled through syncing with my Google Calendar. Finally, in this installment, I finish up with synchronizing my contacts.

I keep my contacts in Gmail, and they don’t change very often. As a result, I’m really not that concerned with synchronizing exactly, but I just want to be able to take the contacts from Gmail and copy them to my phone.

At first, I thought I’d be able to find a way to export the contacts from Gmail and import them directly to the contacts application on the phone. That ALMOST worked. Gmail can easily export your contacts, but the phone doesn’t have a way to import them I could find. Google can export in VCard format and two different CSV formats. If you take the VCard format and copy it to the phone, you can launch that file through file explorer. Unfortunately, the mobile contacts application doesn’t like a VCard file with multiple contacts, so you have to split that file up and add each contact separately. I don’t have that kind of time or patience.

The next thing I tried was using SyncML like I did for the calendar. ScheduleWorld is supposed to be able to synchronize with Gmail contacts, but I couldn’t get it working. Also, I really only want to export from Gmail and import into my phone, not synchronize. GooSync supposedly can sync contacts in the same way, but its a pay service so I didn’t try that.

Finally, what I ended up going with for now is something that isn’t supposed to work. I installed Outlook 2000 on my PC and set it up to sync with my phone only for contacts. ActiveSync 4.5 isn’t supposed to work with Outlook 2000, but it seems to be doing fine. To get the data onto the phone, I exported an Outlook CSV from the Gmail contacts page and imported into Outlook. Once the phone syncs, all the contacts are on the phone.

I haven’t closed the book on this technique, since I’d rather not use Outlook, but I was pulling my hair out trying to find another solution. I can’t believe there isn’t another way, so I might have missed something.

In closing, I’m still shocked how hard to was to get all this syncing working. I can’t believe I’m the first person who has wanted to do this. I have high hopes that in the future the techniques and technologies will come to fruition, and I can avoid using four different techniques and applications.

Of course, a lot of these problems could have been solved by just using Outlook. If they would have included a copy with my phone, I might have just used that technique and saved a bunch of time. However, I’ve learned quite a bit in the process of researching, and I’m excited to see what comes of all of this.

In part 1, I described how I got email syncing to my new smartphone. In part 2, I pretty easily got tasks syncing properly. In this installment I’ll tell you what it took to get my Google Calendar synchronizing to my smartphone.

As I described earlier, I don’t have the proper version of Outlook for syncing through ActiveSync, but if I did, there wouldn’t have been a big problem here. I will admit that at this step, I started searching online for a good deal on a copy of Outlook 2007. Google has provided a piece of software called Google Calendar Sync which effortlessly synchronizes Google Calendar to Outlook 2003 or 2007. I tried it out with a trial of Outlook 2007, and it worked great. Syncing Outlook 2007 to the mobile device is a no brainer, so with the proper outlay of cash, the calendar sync problem could have been solved.

I found another way, though. I did some reading about SyncML and found it can do some neat things. I can’t say that everything is fully standards-compliant and well-defined, but I found a working solution. There are several SyncML server providers out there that let you sync your phone to their web application. Also, on many you can sync your copy of Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. to the server as well with the proper connecting applications. That’s half of the problem solved, but it doesn’t solve the problem of syncing to Google Calendar.

Thankfully, I found a free service that did. I set up an account on ScheduleWorld. The website itself looks a little unpolished, but the service works pretty well. ScheduleWorld provides you a calendar on their website and can synchronize with your Google Calendar and also works as a SyncML server. Using a plugin from Funambol, which runs on your Windows Mobile phone, you can sync the data from the SyncML server to the phone. It all sounds pretty complicated, but it really wasn’t that bad to set up, since ScheduleWorld tells you everything you need to know. I’d be happier if there was a way to point straight to Google for syncing, but maybe that will come in time.

UPDATE: Be careful with ScheduleWorld. For some reason, the web app preference to sync to/from Google Calendar keeps defaulting back to “2-way”. I wanted to sync just one-way (from Google to ScheduleWorld) to keep my calendar safe, but the preference reset itself and now most of my all-day events have been duplicated in Google. Likewise, the Funambol plugin is doing the same thing - resetting itself to synchronize bidirectionally with ScheduleWorld. If you fool with these tools, back up your Google Calendar first (by downloading the iCal file).

I’m going back to the drawing board for calendar syncing… I’m trying out the free version of GooSync and having some luck. It’s limited in the date range it synchronizes, but so far it’s working OK. I’d initially ruled out GooSync because of that limitation, but I’m revisiting it due to lack of other options. The results of my full testing are available in part 5.

In part 4 I take on syncing my contacts.

In part 1, I described what I was hoping to accomplish with my new smart phone. In this installment I’ll describe what I had to do to get my tasks synchronized to my phone.

The well-established way to synchronize contacts on a Windows Mobile device seems to be to use Activesync to synchronize tasks with Microsoft Outlook, but as I said earlier, I don’t own the proper version of Outlook and don’t intend to buy it. Besides, that’s not where I already keep my tasks…

I’m a huge fan of Remember the Milk, which is a great online task management application. It displays well on my iGoogle page, which is important to me. Thankfully, the fine folks at RTM gave me exactly what I was looking for in MilkSync.

MilkSync is an application that runs on your smartphone and synchronizes between the Windows Mobile tasks application and the Remember the Milk website. It works over-the-air or when in the cradle. Like I said, it’s perfect for what I was trying to accomplish, since it doesn’t require anything installed to the PC. Also, they were kind enough provide the ability to tell the application to sync whenever the mobile device is connected to the PC, so I don’t have to do any goofy tricks like scheduling regular syncs. Finally, they let you synchronize 2-ways or just one way or the other. Right now I’m only syncing devices from the web application to the phone, in case something goes wrong.

The only downside I’ve found - you have to be a premium member of the RememberTheMilk service in order to use that application, and that means a yearly fee. No big deal though. RememberTheMilk is awesome, and they deserve to be compensated for the value they provide to me.

Visit part 3 for my attempts at syncing my Google Calendar to my new phone.

Since my contract was up, I replaced my cellphone with an SMT5800 smartphone, which runs Windows Mobile 6.0. I’ve spent the last few days getting it all configured and syncing with my calendar, tasks, email and contacts. Frankly, I’m surprised how difficult this has been.

I already keep much of this information online, so now I want to sync them to my phone. I’m an avid user (and big fan) of the following free online services:

• Gmail for email and contacts
• Google Calendar for events and appointments
• Remember the Milk for tasks

For a little background, I run Windows on my PC at home, but I don’t use Microsoft Outlook. Windows Mobile devices sync very well with Outlook, as long as you have version 2003 or 2007, but that software wasn’t included with my phone (I thought it used to be included with PDAs…) I do have Outlook 2000, but it isn’t supported by ActiveSync 4.5, which is required for my Windows Mobile 6.0 phone. The Outlook upgrade would not be cheap, so I’ve ruled that out. Also, I should point out that I don’t intended to get a data plan or use over-the-air (OTA) service in any way. I’m purely hoping to sync this data when connected to my PC, but as it turns out, most of my solutions will work well OTA.

For installment one, I’m trying to get my email on my phone.

Email wasn’t all that bad to set up, once I figured out which of the available options I wanted to use. My choices were:

1. Sync with Outlook via Activesync when docked
2. Sync with a POP server over the network when docked
3. Sync with an IMAP server over the network when docked

Option 1, Activesync, should have been ruled out right away, since Activesync 4.5 doesn’t support Outlook 2000, and that’s all I have. What was surprising, though, is that it never complained about that. I set up email synchronization through Activesync, and it ALMOST worked. I had some problems with text missing when replying to messages, so I moved on.

Option 2, POP access, wasn’t going to work for me. I use Thunderbird to archive my email, downloading from the Gmail POP server. The problem is, once the Windows Mobile email client downloads the messages, they don’t get downloaded into any other POP client (Thunderbird, in my case). POP doesn’t deal well with multiple clients grabbing messages.

Thankfully, IMAP access is working out for me. I set up the Windows Mobile mail client on my phone to access my Gmail account through IMAP. IMAP is basically designed for this case, happy to synchronize instead just download. It’s not perfect, since the Windows Mobile mail client doesn’t automatically sync with the server when docked in the cradle. I’m able to work around that software limitation, however, by scheduling regular sends and receives in the mail client. Note: I’ve DISABLED the OTA internet access for my phone, so it will not sync over the air, but if you don’t disable it, I’m pretty sure it’ll connect and run up your bill. When the scheduled run comes up and I’m docked, the email will send and receive. I wish I could find an automatic way to trigger that sync when the device is connected.

What’s interesting to note is that I don’t really have to have any special software on the PC when I sync. As long as I have Activesync to set up that internet connection for the phone, I’m in good shape. I don’t need any mail software on the PC.

Ok, the email problem is solved, at least well enough, so one down, three to go.

See part 2 for information about syncing tasks.

Spurred on by a related post from wyoming_1, I’ve decided to finally post the results of an experiment I tried recently to improve the gas mileage of my truck on my daily commute.

I drive a 2007 Toyota Tundra 4-door pickup with a 5.7L V8, so as you can imagine, my mileage isn’t great. My average overall mileage before my experimentb was 13.13 MPG. As the result of some driving style changes, I’ve achieved 16.7 MPG, which is almost a 30% increase! That’s an easy $20 a month on my commute alone.

First, a little background. My daily commute is 6.9 miles one way, with 10 stoplights and speed limits of 30 through 55 MPH. It takes about 15-16 minutes on average. That’s all the truck gets used for, not counting trips to Menard’s and camping trips, etc. I would classify my driving style as average compared to the other vehicles on the road - not terribly aggressive. For the record, we also own a Mazda5, one of the most fuel-efficient 6 passenger vehicles available on the North American market, but this post isn’t about my choice of a vehicle. It’s about doing the best I can with what I’ve got, and hopefully what I’ve learned will work for you too.

To get accurate results, I measured my mileage by dividing the number of miles driven on a tank by the number of gallons required to fill it. My driving patterns didn’t change (mostly just driving to work) and the weather was consistent before and during the test, meaning I used the air conditioner about the same amount. I filled up each time using the same technique on the same gas pump at the same time of day. In short, all I did was use the accelerator and brake pedals as little as possible. I did set some rules for my experiment, however, to make the adjusted driving style usable. After all, I’ll bet if I drove 25 mph everywhere I went I could get great mileage, but I wanted a practical technique.

• Limit engine speed to 1500 RPMs (that’s my engine speed in overdrive at 60mph - this figure won’t be appropriate for smaller engines)
• Always obey the speed limit
• Drive at the speed limit on extended stretches
• Don’t upset other drivers (except those who are being jerks anyway)

While following those rules, I was able to employ the following techniques and tips:

• Use the brakes as little as possible.
• Coast as much as possible, especially to red lights.
• Don’t brake at turns any more than you have to to remain safe. Preserve your momentum!
• Accelerate at a rate of 1.5 MPH per second. That means it’ll take you 20 seconds to accelerate to 30 MPH. This is very leisurely, about like a loaded semi.
• Use cruise control.
• Learn the timing of your usual traffic lights. There’s no point in speeding up to a light that you know is going to stay red for a while. Try to roll through on green no matter how slow you’re going.
• Choose a time of day where traffic is conducive to this driving style. For me, 7:15am is great and 7:00am is awful.
• Choose multi-lane roads when possible so impatient drivers have a chance to go around you.

Here are some other observations from my experiment:

• Most drivers are content to fall in line behind me instead of racing around me.
• Even in gear, I can coast a long distance with only a minimal loss of speed.
• If I start at 30 MPH, I can coast the last four blocks to my house, around two corners and into my driveway, losing only 10 MPH.
• Lots of drivers think it’s a race like to win the race to a red light, but we usually all meet up on the same red lights anyway.
• When you drive a vehicle that can do 0-60 in under 6 seconds, it’s hard to do it in 40 seconds at first. After a while you get used to it, though, and it’s actually relaxing.
• I’ve only had one driver get mad. I was in the rightmost lane out of three at a red light. He was behind me and expressed his dissatisfaction with my acceleration in a variety of ways. He was about 60 and drove a silver VW Turbo Passat. I haven’t forgotten his license plate number yet.
• My new driving style has added less than a minute to my commute.

There are some other techniques I’d like to explore to improve this figure further, but so far my results have remained consistent. I’ve got a ScanGauge II on order. Once I get it I’ll be doing some more experiments, such as the controversial use of neutral and different tailgate/tonneau configurations.

I’d encourage you to give some of these tips a try. If your results match mine, your savings will be the equivalent of today’s $4 gas dropping to less than $3!

I’m in the middle of a rather large project, so I decided that I’d go for a “quick win” (as they say at work) to get something posted here. I wrote up a quick page about the DIY drying rack I threw together. It literally took longer to write the page than to build the project.

View the Cloth Diaper Drying Rack project page for more information.

When searching is what you need to do, Google is hard to beat. For this reason, I wanted to mirror my local email archive onto a Gmail account. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve already archived all of my mail locally in Thunderbird. I set up a second Gmail account for my archive, in order to keep my old archive mail separate from the current mail. Since I have mail from several accounts funneling into Thunderbird (including from my main Gmail account), uploading all of this mail back into my main account would be confusing and result in duplicate messages being sent to Gmail. Likewise, I don’t want all of the old email addresses found in my old mail cluttering up the address book of my main Gmail account.

Despite the fact that Google now supports IMAP, it hasn’t gone as smoothly as I’d like. For those of you who don’t know, IMAP is a protocol that lets you upload, download and synchronize mail from your client application (on your PC) to a mail account stored on a server. In theory, I should be able to just set Thunderbird to use my Gmail account using IMAP and upload the mail that way, but in practice, Gmail isn’t very cooperative.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

1. Drag and drop my whole mail folder structure from the local folders to Gmail over IMAP in Thunderbird
2. Upload the mail folders using Outlook instead of Thunderbird
3. Upload each mbox file to Gmail using IMAPSize
4. Move the messages from another IMAP server to Gmail using imapsync

Basically, each attempt encountered problems during the upload. For some reason or another, the transfer would abort, but the problem was always on the server side. I did some reading, and I discovered that Gmail doesn’t officially support uploading via IMAP. Apparently I’m not the only one having problems with this upload.

Now, for what it’s worth, uploading from Thunderbird to Gmail was working, albeit sporadically. If I uploaded small enough chunks infrequently enough to keep Gmail’s servers happy, the upload mostly worked. The good news is that Gmail handles duplicates pretty well. Say you have a folder of 1000 messages, you try to upload it, and it croaks after 400 messages. If you try to upload that folder again, it will NOT duplicate those 400 messages. If you’re patient, just upload one folder at a time using this method.

I wasn’t patient enough for that, so I used another technique, which may or may not work for you. Through my web host, I get to set up IMAP accounts tied to my domain. What I did was pretty simple:

1. Set up a new account IMAP on atterberry.net
2. Upload all my mail to THAT account via IMAP (which wasn’t as picky, since it’s not Gmail)
3. Set up my Gmail account to download all the mail from that atterberry.net via POP
4. Wait!

All that processing just finished a couple of hours ago. Now I have a great searchable archive! I also like the way Gmail assembles the individual emails into conversations.

Now, to keep my archive up-to-date, I need to copy any new mail that I receive in Thunderbird to this archive Gmail account. Since this is usually pretty small, I’ve had pretty good luck uploading to Gmail directly over IMAP.

In the previous post, I described my method for archiving my old email in Thunderbird. As promised, here are some notes about cleaning up your inbox in Thunderbird.

Removing duplicates

One great tool I like to use is the “Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)” Thunderbird extension. To use the extension, you must first set the options, then you run it on a folder.

To change the options for the duplicates extension, go to Tools > Addons, find the extension, and hit the “Options” button. You’ll see the dialog shown below:

Setting these checkboxes changes the criteria for comparing two messages. The more boxes you check, the more sure you can be that any duplicates you find will actually be duplicates. I like to start by setting all the checkboxes. This takes some time, but it’s very safe.

To run the extension, right click on a folder and select “Remove Duplicates.” It will crank away for a while then show you a dialog on which you can review and delete the duplicates found. I right click on my “Mail Archive” folder, since that will compare all messages in the subfolders within the archive.

After that pass, depending on how you’ve handled you email in the past, you may need to run the duplicate remover with different options. If you do this, you’ll likely eliminate quite a few more duplicates, but you should always preview the emails in this step before deleting anything. Try turning off the following criteria, one at a time: number of lines, body, message ID and folder. I found some duplicates with minor differences in those areas due to the different ways the messages had been handled in the past. Turning off the folder criteria will find duplicates in different folders (which is nice), but be careful to keep the copy that you’ve filed properly.

Whitelisting

Another technique I found VERY effective in clearing out my email backlog was to set up a “whitelist” in Thunderbird. Basically, I add every valid email address for a real person I’ve communicated with into an address book and set up filters to move messages around based on whether the sender is in that list.

Now, you probably wouldn’t want to add all of these email addresses to your regular address book, but Thunderbird allows you to have multiple address books. I created a new one called “Whitelist” and didn’t put a lot of effort into keeping that one neat or fully filled out. The whitelist address book will contain any email address, current or old. You probably only want active email addresses in your normal address book.

To build my whitelist, I went through my folder of unsorted mail (sorted by sender), and previewed messages from anyone I knew. For each new person, I right-clicked on the email address and chose “Add to Addressbook”. I didn’t bother filling in the person’s name, since it doesn’t really matter for this technique.

The next step is to set up a filter. Create a filter that you can run on your unsorted mail folder like the one shown below.

My filter moves all whitelist email to a folder called “Whitelisted”. It runs both when new mail arrives and when I manually run it on the unsorted inbox folder. With this setup, I can refine my whitelist. If I add some more addresses to the whitelist, I can rerun the filter until I’m left with only junk in my inbox.

After all this processing, I’ve separated my good email (from real people) from the mass mail, etc. At that point, I can move the good email to the archive and take care of the other mail however I see fit.