House plan larger pictures

Here are some of the same pictures as before only you can click to make them bigger.

Electrical and furniture plan.

Floorplan only.

House update x2

Here are some more updated plans. Notice one bedroom has been changed into a music room. It can be used as a bedroom if needed, but gives Lori a place to teach lessons. 

This is the layer with furniture and lighting.

This is floorplan only.

3d view.

Kitchen and living room

Master bath and closet.

Movie/listening room

Master bedroom.

Music room.

Again, plans are not final and I have more things I want to change, but this is the latest revision.

Big ship

Elation

Elation is the ships name. We are leaving today and will be back on
Monday. We will spend one day in Cabo. There are 23 of us. We are
docked at the pier in San Diego. There is an aircraft carrier at port
and three submarines putting around. What fun!

We're going on a cruise

To Cabo San Lucas. Actually it's mandatory. We are attending a
company meeting. Today is the only day I will be in cell range, so I
thought I would post some pictures.

House update

We've changed plans. The house is now 1 story.

Here is the overview.

Here is the 3d view (plans are not final). Detail is still being worked out. The green area is the actual lot size and house placement is final.

Please tell us what you think!

This layout has everything we want and it's much cheaper to build.

Baby update

Lori had an ultrasound today. We found out the baby is going to be a girl! We had that feeling.  Everything looked good. The baby is about 4 days ahead of the original schedule, but the due date is still March 29.

Here are a few pictures and a video.

You can see an ear in this one.

Here is a side elevation.

The 4-chamber heart view.

Uh...

Too bad I don't know how to delete posts.

Slow day

Today I figured out that light travels 5,874,601,673,407 miles in one year. 

It was a slow day at work.

Leopard

I decided to upgrade to the latest Mac operating system "Leopard". Exciting huh.

Before:


After:

My Job

Here is a little glimpse at what I do for a living.

I work at Custom Installation & Design. We are a low-voltage company, meaning, we install lighting control, wired and wireless networks, security systems (including cameras) surround sound systems including dedicated theaters, intercom systems and background audio systems. We primarily cater to the residential market, but we also do commercial. We have clients in California, Wyoming, Nevada, Kansas and of course, Utah.

I am the bidding manager and system designer. The owner of the company takes care of the sales. After he meets with the new client, I get the plansets and scope of work from him. I then create a bid based on the scope of work. During the bidding process, I populate the planset with icons showing the location of equipment, LAN jacks, phone jacks, TV's, background audio speakers, door sensors, cameras, sirens etc. This gives everybody involved a graphical representation of what we are doing. This is a work in progress and changes throughout the whole job.

If there is a lighting system, I take the electrical layer of the planset, number all of the loads, note load type and wattages, then enter all of that information into the Lutron software. This gives the technicians the framework for ordering, programming and installing the rest of the system. This usually takes 1 day.

If there is a dedicated theater, I take room measurements and engineer the room based on what the client wants. This includes speaker location, speaker quantity, quality and type, number of subwoofers and the amount of amplification needed. I normally provide an acoustic
analysis and a plan for room treatments. Then the projector, screen and all source material need to be selected. All this equipment needs to go somewhere, so I design a rack for it to go in. Equipment creates heat, and if you have too much heat, your expensive equipment fails, so I do an analysis for thermal management. Oh, one of the first things I do is create a plan for the amount of sound isolation the client wants so the room can be built to spec. This often involves re-routing HVAC ducts and plumbing. This can take up to a week.

Along with Lutron lighting control systems, we also provide window shades, roman shades and drapery track. It is all part of controlling light. These shades are usually automated and they are pre-wired for along with everything else we do. Once the sheetrock has been installed, I visit the jobsite and take measurements and pictures of each window to receive treatment. We have a big book of fabric samples to choose from. The fabric ranges from sheer to opaque (blackout). Fabric type and window measurements are entered into the shade software, then I can request a quote from that. Lead time is usually 25 days from receiving the quote to shipping.

The other part of my job is to be a reference for our technicians. I do all the research for problems and provide solutions. I research new product and try to stay on the bleeding edge of what is new in the industry.

Some of what I've written probably doesn't make sense. I'm not really paying close attention to what I'm typing. I'm doing too many things at once right now.

There are a lot of things I haven't touched on, but this gives you an idea of what goes on at work. We only work Monday through Thursday, so I have three day weekends. I average 10.25 hour days, so all is good. I have a lot of fun at work, and that's how it should be.

Work

Tyler, since you are so anxious for a blog update, here is a picture
of my desk at work. It's not really that dim and yellow. I have no
excuse for the mess. My job is really fun.

House plans

Here is try #2.
Note: these plans are not final. There are probably things we will change. Materials are just there for looks. Part of the reason I'm putting these on here is for all of you to critique them. Tell me what you'd do if you were building this house. Length and width are set due to lot size. It is a corner lot with the front of the house facing West.

Main Floor, no electrical


Top floor, no electrical


Main floor, 3D


Top floor 3D


Exterior, view from corner



Kitchen (for the women)


Garage (for the guys)


Main floor, magnified


Top floor, magnified


Please leave some constructive (ha!) comments for us to read. I think it will be interesting to hear what you think. If you want to know what the four black round things on the screen wall in the theater are, I'll tell you later.

Oh well

I was going to have a big long post tonight about the house plans and such, but blogger's photo attaching doesn't work right now. Oh well.

In the meantime, here are a few videos of my favorite pianist, Vladimir Horowitz:

Variations on a theme from Bizet's Opera "Carmen"

Scriabin's Etude in D-Sharp Minor, Op. 8, No. 12: Patetico

And last but not least, Consolation No. 3 by Franz Liszt:

I'll write more when I can attach pictures.

I have to go; the wind is blowing like mad and the power has flickered on twice. Good thing I have a great battery back-up!

Weekend

Lori Decorated for Halloween today. She made some clever ghosts from plastic bags, sticks and strings. Total cost: $.99 She's so crafty!

It was a nice day yesterday, so we pulled some weeds. We're both really sore. We must be out of shape (7' weeds don't help either). I washed the mower inside and out and made a big mess.
I came to the realization that the mammoth truck I have been nursing along will never be used to its full capacity and it must go. Lori's car just turned over 175,000 miles, it leaks oil, needs a new front u-joint, four tires and that juice from raw buffalo steaks sucked out of the carpet in the back. It's not getting any younger. When we take trips with that car, I wonder if it will be the last. I think it's time to sell the truck. I sold a little 4-door Prizm to get the truck. It got 45 mpg. The truck gets 12. I love the truck, but we wanted something 4x4. This truck is two-wheel drive. It does have four doors though. But it's a dually. I don't have a 5th wheel. It's really good at clouding entire intersections with black soot like a choo-choo train. But it smells. At least the A/C works. I have posted a for sale ad on a diesel forum I visit. Here are some videos of the exhaust for potential buyers (they want to hear this sort of thing. The truck has an aftermarket ATS non-wastegated turbo, 3" exhaust, and no muffler. It sounds great if you're into that kind of thing). Note; you're supposed to be listening for the turbo-whine. That's the purpose of the video.




While I'm putting videos on, here's one I made while sucking up the weeds we pulled up. I did a 540 at the end just to make sure you get motion sick. I was driving with one hand. YOU try driving the thing:




We also saw this huge, weird worm thing (turns out it is a swallowtail caterpillar that has the ability to "evert a forked glandular process to emit an odor that is distasteful to predators" It really does stink, but it was fun to poke it in the head).
















Well, I think that will be all for now. We have to go deliver some cupcakes to the neighbors. They look like little pumpkins with faces on

them. They are strawberry flavored, and we're giving them a little cup with orange frosting so they can mess them up themselves.

Bye for now! Kevin + Lori

Test post from iPhone

I wanted to test this feature, so here's a random photo I took today
during lunch. I'm posting this via email from my phone. Neat eh?

Insert Clever Title

Well, time is passing by, and we have less and less time here in this house. We have been living here at the Simkins house since earlier this year. We have been house-sitting for them while they're on a mission in West Virginia. I have been working at Custom Installation & Design for about a year now. I am over system design and project bidding. I've been looking for a job just like this for about five years. (In fact, I've been wanting to work at Custom Installation & Design the whole time.) We've been extremely fortunate and blessed.

Lori is teaching piano a few days a week and she's taking a class at the local college while maintaining cub scouts, a few church callings and many books. She's also pregnant. In the event that she has any free time, we watch our new favorite show "Corner Gas" the witty Canadian show full of dry humor and no plot. It's great.

Like I said before, time is passing by, and we have until August next year to find somewhere to live before the Simkins get back. The housing market is in a slump, and things are looking good for us. Construction costs are going down and don't look like they're going to rise for a little while longer. We're using Chief Architect to design the house. The lot we're going to build on is narrow and not really deep, so the house will be tall and skinny.

Well, due to an extremely fatiguing day at work, I can't think of anything else to say. Maybe later this week I'll give you some ideas on how to properly isolate any room from frequencies from 250Hz to 5000Hz using viscoelastic material, mineral wool panels, isolation springs and, if you're lucky, 5/8" and 1/2" sheets of sheetrock. I can't wait (and maybe if you're lucky, I'll tell you how to properly locate up to four subwoofers). Stay tuned.

Congratulations

You've stumbled across the Kevin + Lori Murset's page. Although a veteran of the internets, this is a first for me.

As you may already know, Lori is expecting a small child to arrive in March/April 2008. We think it will be a girl, but that's yet to be determined. Lori is about 3.5 months along and doing fine. She's going to the doctor tomorrow for a checkup. We're really excited to see whether the baby will be a little Lori (harp-playing angel) or a little Kevin (think Calvin of the Bill Watterson cartoon "Calvin and Hobbes").

I'm going to leave out some information so I actually have something to write about later. This will be a journal of sorts for both of us and we hope you'll interact a little. We haven't been in contact with a lot of you lately, so help us out. Have fun!