Prayer Request For Jessi

This is one of those posts you never want to write, but thankfully there's a community we can reach out to in these types of situations. Thank you everyone for your prayers.

Today Jessi was diagnosed with two blood clots in her right calf. Thankfully, they're small and not at risk to move and become bigger issues, but it's still a concern. Jessi will be starting treatment tomorrow which is supposed to last 6 months. Hopefully, by the end of that time they'll be gone and Jessi will be back to normal. We're still learning a lot about the implications and this will probably result in life-style changes.

We were tipped off to something being up when Jessi's right leg was in constant pain with no physical difference between it and the left leg. According to Jessi, it feels like a muscle ache that gets worse when iced or stretched. We decide to see the doctor and it turns out that was a smart decision.

Again, thank you for your prayers and we'll keep you posted on what happens.

Let it Snow!

I am doing a few things around the house today and I opened up the blinds to water some plants and this is what I saw:




I haven't seen snow as think as this since I was living in Colorado! I love it! I felt just like a little kid running to the window shouting, "snow!!! yay!!!" There is a little girl running around in the snow outside our window now, in fact. Brings back the memories of life's simple pleasures. *sigh*

Enjoying hot coacoa and marshmallows,

Jessi

Getting Ready for Christmas

I have decided that my number two favorite holiday is Christmas. I love Thanksgiving the most because it is right next to my birthday, or in this year's case on my birthday, and because it is so much fun to get everyone in the same place and eat really good food. Christmas is similar because everyone gets together but the traditions and meaning behind Christmas are so special.

I think it hit me when we were putting up our Christmas decorations this year and I realized that they were MY decorations and not my parents. This is the first year I have really ever put anything up for my own house. It was really fun to go out shopping with James and make our home special and cozy and Christmasy.

I am looking forward to going to Colorado for Christmas to visit my family and also to begin new traditions and carry on old ones with my new husband. We usually eat Mexican food for Christmas at the Christian household. I don't know why, I guess we had just gotten tired of turkey and ham by then...and my Grandpa really loved the extremely spicy green chili my mom made each year. This year we are going to teach James how to make tamales...homemade tamales.

Even with all the Christmas hype, buying of presents, and the multiple fun traditions of the season...I have been reminded often this year of the meaning behind everything we have the freedom to do. It is not because of anything we have done or made for ourselves. It is because God loved us so much he renewed the relationship with us through his son. It was truly the beginning of our reason to celebrate when Jesus was born.

Enjoy the pictures!

Jessi

p.s. we have a balloon tree because we will be out of town for Christmas day :)

Thanksgiving Weekend

This thanksgiving Jessi and I flew down to Los Gatos, California to visit my family. It was an awesome weekend with the whole family. My parents really liked having everyone visit especially since this is their first year without anyone in the house. The weekend was marked by three main events: lots of eating, visiting my sister's college and cutting down a Christmas tree.
	My sister, Lisa, goes to San Fransisco State University. Matthew, Jessi and I went up to SF to check it out. The campus is very nice. There's some large trees in the middle of campus that helps hide the fact that the school is in the middle of a huge city. We also went to Twin Peaks which are a set of hills looking over the city. It was a little foggy, but there were still a ton of tourists checking out the view. We then went down the winding part of Lombard Street and drove around the Warf. Going over the Gold Gate Bride is up to $5, so we decided to simply view it from a distant.

Then we went out for our annual Christmas Tree hunting trip. This is the first year we've gone without Scoter. I won't lie, it was tough not having him around to "help". I threw a big stick in memory of him - then I told Jessi to fetch the stick... let's just say I miss Scoter. One of the fun part about my family is that we have no problem doing weird things and accepting it as normal. For example, we found three potentially worthy trees. In previous years we would simply pick one, but this year we decided to put it to a vote. At first we were going to do a secret thumb vote, but some family members had trouble with the concept. So Matthew, being the president of his fraternity, decided to implement Roberts Rules of Order to the process. The winning tree had to have 50% + 1 votes to win (or 2/3 majority, or 4 votes). We started down the path of making it a secret ballet vote, but quickly realized we didn't have paper or pens. Then someone called "Roll Call Vote" which means we had to go around the circle and publicly state our vote. It took a few rounds, promises were made, deals were brokered and we finally picked a tree.
We also watched Los Gatos High School win their football game, saw friends from church and generally relaxed. For Christmas Jessi and I decided to go to Colorado and hang out with her family. I'm hopping for a white Christmas.

Pirates!

Lately I've been reading headlines about pirates. Pirates! Are you kidding me? Yep. I guess they still exist and have been quite active lately. Here' are a couple articles that caught my attention from the LA times:

Indian Warship Destroys Suspected Pirate Ship Off of Somalia

Pirates Hijiack Another Merchant Ship Off Africa



The stores themselves are not that great, but it was my reaction that caught my attention. It went a little something like this:

1. Wow - pirates that's pretty cool.
2. No seriously, there's still pirates? That's awesome.
3. Man, they're getting a ton of money. How fun would it be to be a pirate?
   
4. Seriously, how hard could it be to become a pirate?

And then I realized something. I had a glamorized view of what a pirate actually is. I was imaging being a Disney Pirate. These pirates are probably closer to the Smokers in Waterworld - mean, violent, dirty, angry and not a ton of fun to be around.

It's actually quite sad and I feel bad for the sailors who get attacked. Still, I can't help fight this urge to smile every time I think about pirate attacks. Thanks Disney. How else have you done this to me and I don't even know it?

Watch Your Thoughts

I came across this today and thought I'd share it:

Watch Your Thoughts

Watch your thoughts, they become your words.
Watch your words, they become your actions.
Watch your actions, they become your habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

adapted from George Eliot

This gets right to the point of positive thinking. I'm not going to go as far as talking about "The Secret", but positive thinking does work and can improve your life. This is why businesses have mantras - they want employees noodling on their mantra in their subconscious.

This is powerful! We are such creative and driven people that even when we don't think we're thinking about something, we are. This begs a very important question: What are you doing to influence your thoughts?

Jessi and I created a dream board - a board with pictures of things we want to do or buy sometime in the future. We've also written down our financial goals in a place we'll see it every day. This feeds our thoughts, words and actions.

What are you doing?

Pictures are in!

After the long wait...the wedding pictures have finally been sifted through and I have made a file of the best of the best. Feel free to peruse the pictures and download/print any that you like!

Here's the link:

Wedding Pictures

I will be printing most of the ones on this page for a wedding album/scrap book! I am so very excited to get that started soon. I will post again to share the progress of that project later.

Jessi

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Strategy

Zuckerburg, founder of Facebook, was recently at a conference in the UK and was quoted saying that growth is Facebook's primary focus is growth, not revenue. Here's the link to the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?MLC=/connected/technology_news&xml=/connected/2008/10/10/dlfacebook110.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

I'm not sure how I feel about this strategy. Is it smart? He must know something I don't, because I don't get it. It seems that Zuckerburg is operating on one of two principles. Either he figures once he gets big enough he MUST be able to make a profit because... well... he's such a big website. I actually think this is what he's secretly hoping, but not telling anyone. More likely, he doesn't know how to make money withFacebook, but he does know how to grow Facebook, so he's focusing on what he knows. Fair enough... I guess.

The biggest problem with this stance is, of course, the money. As Facebook grows it's going to cost more and more to operate - cost he can't afford without significant revenue. The site already loads slow and, quite honestly, has enough bugs to regularly crash my browser. How does he expect to keep improving without sustained money? Maybe he's also betting that Microsoft won't let their $240 million investment go down the drain and will do what it takes to help Facebook financially.

The bigger problem for me is Zuckerburg's refusal to say he needs to face his revenue problems head on. Of course they're working on it by experimenting and acknowledging he can't just put ads on the site, but how is paying the bills not his number one priority? I guess if you're a private company you can do whatever you want...

Unfortunately, as the article describes, top people are leaving his organization and growth is slowing. Revenue, it seems, would fix these two issues. With revenue Zuckerburg can offer real incentives for people to stay and can afford to spend the money necessary to grow his site. Just think: if Facebook loaded faster because they had more servers and came out with more features because they had more engineers working for them, Facebook would continue to grow and thrive organically - exactly what he wants.

Bottom line: Growth is nice, but revenue is what sustains a business and fuels growth.

Marketing 101: Why Microsoft Shouldn't Offer Prizes Or Cash For Searching

I was reading the TechCrunch  blog and found this article: Microsoft Throws Prizes At You For Searching. The basic idea is that when you use Live Search Microsoft will give you tickets which, I guess, will be put into a drawing to win prizes. Oh yeah, and to participate you need install a piece of tracking software which is only compatible with Internet Explorer. Earlier in the year Microsoft came out with a Cash Back program that gave you cash back when you bought a product from an advertiser on Live Search. It worked like a mail-in rebate, with just as many hoops to jump through.

I've had similar discussions about this with TalentMover. We're thinking about community tagging and how that can improve resume and job post matching by providing a human touch. After all, the accuracy of multiple human eyeballs is exponentially better than any algorithm an engineer could write. Anyways, we started to get into discussions about rewarding people for tagging more resumes than our minimum requirement (because more input provides more accurate results - like increasing the sample size of a survey). However, we quickly dismissed the idea for one very basic reason.

By offering incentives above and beyond the value of the product/service you are inherently saying: What I'm asking you to do is not compelling on it's own. If I didn't offer this, you wouldn't do it. Therefore, I need to entice you to do something you really don't want to do because the reward is not good enough. I'm admitting my product is at parity with, or inferior to, other alternatives.

This is really bad.

When your product/service reaches the point of parity, there are two options you have. You can lower prices, because you're no longer special, or you can improve your product/service to make yourself special again. Since search is free to users, Microsoft chose lowered their price to a negative number to generate business. This is not a sustainable business model for two reasons: 1) They're losing money and 2) Prices changes are the easiest thing for competition to match.

At TalentMover, we decided to improve the tagging process to make it easier, faster and more enjoyable. In addition, we're kicking around some other ideas to make tagging other resumes even more valuable. The point is that we decided to improve the service rather than lower our price and Microsoft should do the same.

I'm not 100% sure what this would look like, but improvements can be made on the quality of results and the ease of use. Microsoft could also focus on different ways to deliver search results (Not just in a browser?, Not as a list?). The bottom line is that to compete effectively you need to offer more than a discount for the same product. Until then, Microsoft is going to struggle with search. Hopefully, this is just a quick fix until Microsoft can actually offer something of value.

Heart Breaker

I was looking through some photos Lisa shared with me from her graduation. She took the time to scan in many pictures (Thanks!) for a memory board. This one in particular is just awesome. This is Scoter when he was just a little puppy. What a little heart breaker!


Oh, and this marks post 100 - I guess that counts as a significant milestone.

This is probably a good time to take a pulse on how we're doing in the rat race.

• Jessi is working part-time as a teacher so she can focus more energy on her business, Univera. Like any start-up it's a slow start, but Jessi is making progress. Thankfully we have a team in place to provide moral, tactical and spiritual support.
  
• We're deep in the process of looking at real estate (know of any good duplexes?). We've really only looked at 30 or so places, so we still have a ways to go. According to Dolf de Roos, the law of large numbers is 100-10-3-1: look at 100; submit offers on 10; have 3 actually considered; and buy 1. Our goal is to purchase something in '08 and with October just around the corner we need to pick this up.
  
• I still have an unhealthy level of enthusiasm for creating a profitable website business.
• I'm slowing down with Bob the Autographer. I met my goals for the company and don't think I have the energy to scale it to a level where it becomes a self-sustaining business. The rat race is about creating passive income and the economies of scale required to reach that level are quite daunting.
  
• 401Ks and IRAs are going strong
• We're both eating healthier and exercising more
• We've both been able to volunteer at our church.

Overall, I say we're making progress, though it seems slow from day to day. We have a great foundation set and we really need to start focusing on our projects to help them grow.

Top ten cookies

After dinner tonight James and I got into a discussion of our top ten favorite cookies. Not together, but we each had our own top ten lists...It was deliciously fun to talk about the best cookies in the world so I decided to share them. Here it goes...

Jessi's top ten favorite kinds of cookies

(Keep in mind this list could probably go on forever. These are just the kinds of cookies I could eat mountains of.)

1. Danish butter cookies with sugar crystalsThese cookies are so buttery and delicious. I find myself always saying, "Oh, I will just have one or two" and before I know it the whole tin is gone :)

2. hot peanut butter homemade

I pretty much love anything with peanut butter in it. My favorite food is banana's with peanut butter, but these cookies are so good when they are just falling apart. I like to wash them down with icy milk.





3. fudge stripe cookies


For store bought cookies these are probably the ones I buy the most of. I like them cause they are slightly crunchy but still smooth.







4. pecan sandies

Crunchy, sweet, nutty, great dipped in milk. Nuff said.





5. fudge dipped oreos

I actually haven't had these in years, but I remember as a kid always wanting to buy them and we only got them one of two times. And I probably ate most of the package by myself. I don't even know if they make them anymore...but I should look for them...yum.





6. mexican wedding cookies

My sister used to make these when we were younger for potlucks and bake offs...they are so powdery and tasty. I think the recipe is pretty much butter, flour and powdered sugar...nothing bad about it.





7. warm, soft molasses cookies

This is probably the one cookie I am particularly picky about. I like them only homemade and they can't be overdone or underdone at all. It has to be the perfect thickness and chewyness and I only really like them just out of the oven. But if all those things are just right...it is totally worth it.





8. girl scout samoas

I know most people think I am nuts, but this is the only girl scout cookie I really like. That's all I have to say about that.








9. safeway cookies with inch of frosting

I can really only eat about one of these cookies before I feel sick...but it was totally delicious while I was eating it. I think it is the excessive amount of frosting on the top. I wish I could eat more...it is just too good.







10. circus cookies

Circus cookies...classic...I could eat a whole bag of these if I wasn't paying attention.






So, there you have it. The best cookies in the world according to Jessi Furlo.

Thanks for reading.

Jessi

Transparent Screens

Jessi was using Stumbleupon this evening and came across a cool slide show where this person had images continuing out of a computer screen. It's very well done and Jessi wanted to know how it was done. So, we decided to play around and following are our two results. Not bad.

Our first attempt:

Our second attempt:

Here's the link to the original art. His is much better.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/sets/180637/show/

Lasagna mania

Ok, I know that when I post I really post...this is the last one for now...I promise.

I was just going though some pictures on the camera and noticed some that James had taken of me making lasagna recently.

This is not just any old lasagna though...this is lasagna from "My Treasury of Recipes" Volume 2 written by James' Grandma Furlo. I was so excited to get the collection of recipes when James and I got married...I felt like I was truly being initiated into the Furlo clan. I did not however, fully experience the initiation until I actually opened the cookbook in order to cook something.

On first glance I noticed several things about the recipe and the cookbook in general that tipped me off that this was not going to be a "novice recipe".

Number one, after each line in the recipe it said "see instructions on attached page".

Number two, the red sauce to be layered in the lasagna called for "1 gallon of tomato sauce (pureed tomato could be substituted)" as well as several other things. At this point I stopped and thought to myself..."oh my gosh, how much lasagna is this going to make?"

Number three, there were no step by step instructions to be found anywhere...not even for other recipes in the book. James' response to this one was, "by the time you get to the level of cooking in my Grandma's cookbook she assumes you already know how to cook."


Having never made lasagna before I was a little worried by this time. I decided to throw all caution to the wind and try it anyway. After going to the grocery store and buying enough lasagna supplies for what seemed like would feed 30 people, I began putting the ingredients together. I am still not sure if I did everything "correctly" but the lasagna turned out to be delicious. We were able to share it with our good friends for dinner that night. And I can say with confidence now that, yes, I am truly a Furlo and can't wait to try the next recipe.

Thanks for reading,

Jessi

p.s. No, I will not share the lasagna recipe with you...you will have to become a legal Furlo (with proof) before you will get anywhere near these recipes...believe me, I know.

Art day

Since beginning to work part time I have officially claimed Fridays as "art days". This could mean a variety of different things but in general it means I get to research and do things related to painting, ceramics, sculpture and pretty much any other form of art that distracts my interest. On my first art day I researched pottery wheels and kilns. Let's just say I will have to wait a few more art days in order to save up for the equipment that I want. Which for the time being is ok since our apartment is kind of small and I really would like a separate art studio before I go all out.

I have currently been entertaining myself with two on going projects. One is a scrapbook of our trip to Paris...I must thank one of our good friends, Kellie Parry, for getting me into scrapbooking...I always watched from a distance when others put together projects like these while secretly hording paper memorabilia in hopes of someday making something great with it. I have started down the long and addicting path of scrapbooking and don't feel compelled to leave it anytime soon.

My other project is a series of miniature black and white acrylic paintings that focus on religious clip art. I noticed the clip art in one of the bulletins from James' church in California a while ago and I liked the idealized images that represented passages of scripture and messages throughout that week's bulletin. The images were simple, concrete, black and white and yet somehow they looked so broken almost like a puzzle that was not quite put together all the way.

Anyway, I just liked looking at them and thought it would be a fun project to capture some of them in paint for a small series. I am sure when I am finished I will notice more profound things about the images and how they go together, but for now it is just nice to be painting again. The pictures are a preview of two of the paintings I have finished so far.

Jessi

The haircut

Hi...

I guess it has been a while. You might go as far as to say that I am a new person since the last time a wrote. I got married. I am working part time. I got a haircut. That's what this post is supposed to highlight. So without further ado...pictures of the finished product. That's if for now. I better add some more blog posts to make up for lost time.

A World Without Microsoft and Apple

Sometimes I really feel like I'm slow to pick up on things, but then suddenly it hits me and strategies other companies have been working on make complete sense. I mean, I always thought the strategy was a good idea, but I typically didn't see the undeniable compelling reason for the strategy... until later. Today it revolves around the World Wide Web.

The web is an amazing thing. Yes, it's amazing because of all the user generated content, the copious amounts of tutorials, the ability to buy something from the other side of the world and much more. However, the most amazing part is that they're all built off the same language: HTML. Unlike current operating systems, everyone uses the same language when programming a website. Sure, sites get to HTML differently, but in the end it's all displayed exactly the same. That's amazing!

Thanks to this standard, this means is that if you create a product that can display HTML, you can display web content. That's why there's Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera and many more browsers. However, we're also starting to see browsers on other systems as well, like our cells phones, Unix and our gaming consoles.

This means that you don't need Windows or OSX to view web sites.

Furthermore, as bandwidth becomes faster and web programming becomes more advanced, we'll be able to do more and more within our browser. We can already do everything Microsoft Office offers (though not as feature rich... yet) and even Adobe has aPhotoshop capable website now. Eventually, we'll be able to do 90% of we normally do on our computer within a browser, and then the device we use won't matter.

Furthermore, the browser itself might become antiquated for something more robust. Widgets are already starting to blur the browser line and I'm willing to be that something else will come along which will act as the tipping point for the death of our Microsoft-Apple Duopoly.

So as the web becomes more advanced, I fully expect to see competing operating systems that only offer a browser. I expect Microsoft and Apple to specialize in high-end programs while people do regular activities on a myriad of other devices andOS's. For consumers this is awesome.

This is why the strategies of these companies suddenly makes sense:

Microsoft wants to establish itself on the Internet. They realize that the value isn't in the browser, as I just showed, but in what people view through the browser. Now, I don't think Microsoft is executing their strategy very well, but I like where they're headed.

Apple is trying to establish their operating system on other devices with iPhone and AppleTV. They've also created MobileMe which is an attempt to bridge the gap between their operating system and the web. I think they'll do a good job establishing an ecosystem for media, but beyond that I'm not sure.

Google realizes that they are rooted in the web and are trying like mad to create similar applications found on desktops. They want to be that driver of change in the hopes of neither Microsoft or Apple catching up. This is partly why Google is making Android - they want to show people that it's about the applications and they can be operating system agnostic.

Of course, then there's XML which is an open-standards way of saving data. Imagine this: I can view my data (say, email) on any web page that will accept my data (Gmail,mobileMe, MSN , etc.). Then the competition will be for browsers that perform the best and websites that let me work with my data the best. I should be able to flow freely between browsers, websites and devices without any change in my data.

Obviously, current website owners, and operating system owners, don't want this to happen because there's value in hooking customers in. Of course, this raises an even more fundamental question: Who does the data belong to anyways? Gosh, this sure sounds like the same question the music industry is facing...

What I do know, is that the web is enabling standards to be set which will enable data to be shared freely. This will promote innovation to improve web applications because they can't lock customers in, but instead must genuinely offer a better product consistently. As applications get better our dependency on Microsoft and Apple based applications will decrease. Good-bye Duopoly.

For consumers this is the best outcome. For businesses, it's probably scarier because it's not as easy, but it'll be good for them too.

An Internet of Things

The latest tech concept I've heard is being coined as "An Internet of Things". The basic idea is that items in our lives will, in some way, become connected to the Internet. The items will share and store information via the Internet. It's actually a very exciting idea. So, let me give a couple of examples to help explain the idea.

Your TV
An obvious item to be connected to the Internet is your TV. Yahoo is currently working on an idea to bring widgets to your TV. So you'll be able to watch your favorite show while a news feed, weather, clock, and stock ticker are across the bottom. That's a cool idea.

Let's take this to the next level. When you see a commercial you like (those of you who haven't discovered DVR yet), you can click a button to have an email sent to you to print off a coupon or simply serve as a reminder for the commercial you saw.

Oh yeah, and a browser is mandatory.

This could all be achieved though a set-top-box, but eventually these should just be built into the TV, allowing me to do the following at a minimum: Watch and DVR TV. Download movies, TV shows, pictures, music from anywhere. Display widgets, photo feeds from anything with an RSS feed. See who else is watching TV and share items with them. Basically, combine the TV with Xbox Live and AppleTV. I'm waiting.

Your Car
I believe this is already starting to become connected to the Internet, but just imagine the possibilities. For starters, there should be a website you can visit which displays data your car has been sending to a server in the cloud. It provides you with statistics such as: how far you drove, when you drove, average trip length (time and distance), what the weather was at the time, etc. You could learn when you like to drive, under what conditions and so on. Let's take it a step further.

When you fill up with gas, the amount you paid, how much gas you got and what your mileage is should be sent to the server. You could then view stats around gas costs and use. When your miles/gal drop below a certain threshold (you get to set it, not just the manufacturer) you get an email saying it's time for a check up.

Furthermore, other diagnostic information should be sent to the server: Tire pressure, spark plug timing, etc. You could set an alert to send you an email to get your oil changed every 3,000 miles (or whatever interval you set), and you should get a txt message on your phone so you'll get it when you're in the car, when you actually need it.

How cool would it also be to connect your car's GPS to the Internet? Lost your car? Use your phone to locate where your car is. Also, be able to view on a heat map where you travel the most. If you have a smartphone, write a quick review of a store you visited, which will be paired with your location.

So, imagine you take a trip from Michigan to California. You could write a review at each Harley-Davidson dealership you stop at. Friends could subscribe to your trip and follow you. They'll know where you're located, where you're shopping and sleeping. They could leave comments (maybe?) on an automatically generated blog of your trip (to be set as a widget on their TV). Then, if they ever decide to take a similar trip they know to ask you and could potentially view your stats of the trip too. You too could analyze your trip on a myraid of statistics. Beautiful.

Even More
Another great device that makes sense to connect to the Internet is your refridgerator for your shopping list. Here is where RFID tags can come in handy to identify what food your missing. To a limited extent your washing machine and lights could also benefit. What else makes sense to you?

Soon, some of these concepts will start to be a reality, which is pretty cool. Though, this does introduce a new concept/problem to be covered at another time. It's the idea that to enable greater personalization requires greater transparency, or less privacy.

Quick Video from the Jordan River

A friend of mine spent a couple weeks in Israel. He traveled all around and even got to play some basketball while there. He's posted many videos, but this one really struck me and I wanted to share it. So... Here it is.

Red Lights Without a Phone

So the other day I left my phone at my apartment. Jessi had a conference call and my phone was the only one that could conference all five in (yeah, iPhones rock, but you knew that already). Anyways, because of this I had to drive without it.

While driving, I noticed the red lights were extra long. Gosh, they were taking forever to change! Then I realized that I've actually gotten into the habit of checking my phone while stopped. I figure I'm not moving and I get bored easily. I read a few emails, twitter, check on blogs or do whatever.

I guess I didn't realize how pervasive this phone has become in my life. Honestly though, I'm not sure if I should be concerned or excited. On one hand, I'm able to be more productive and do small things I normally wouldn't take time to do. On the other hand, I'm constantly plugged in and distracting myself (even though I'm stopped). What do you think? Is this a good or bad thing?

Vertical Storage

So I ran my idea about one surface for all activities by Jessi and... well let's just say we came up with a compromise. Now I've got another idea. Let me know what you think.

I got this idea from airplanes and the way they handle storage. Their main problem is a lack of space and I'd argue most people have that same problem. So... how about this:

What if storage was built into the ceiling and floor? You press a button and a shelf comes out of the ceiling or pops up out of the floor. This way, you won't need to have shelves up against the wall - effectively creating more space. Yes, your house might be a little taller, but it's so much easier to build up than expand sideways.

I don't think I'd make the shelving hydraulic, but instead use counter weights - mini elevators if you will. I'm also not sure how many I'd have. You could, theoretically, have then all over the house, but maybe in the middle of the room would be best (because you'd put other stuff near the wall). Maybe I should go watch Back to the Future II again to get more ideas...



PS. For you worriers out there, I'm not blogging while on my honeymoon. When I write, I tend to write a few at a time (I can't control it). So I schedule them to go live at later intervals. This one happens to make sense in the middle of our honeymoon.