Well, I cleaned up a lot of loose ends yesterday; one of the major things is that I called the guy about the Wyoming Scout and let him know I have the cash ready; I was thinking about taking a week or so after the game is done and driving out to see the truck, but he mentioned that he’s heading out there in two weeks. What I think I’m going to do is send him out there with a handful of disposable cameras to take pictures of all the areas I want.

I also have a pretty good idea of how I’m going to work out the deck in the backyard; instead of just nailing a sill to the back of the house and attaching stairs, I’m going to build a platform off the sill about 3′ deep, and then attach the stairs to that. I think I have the other sections figured out too; there were some questions about how to anchor the supports to the ground, but there are some very simple galvanized steel standoffs made for 4’x4’s. I also know how I’m going to set up the stair down to the brick (when the deck is made level to account for the slope, the top of the support at the brick will be one foot off the ground.)

They started leveling the Superfresh by my house yesterday- it’s totally demolished and now they’re in the process of hauling the debris away.

I’ve been reading Don’t Make Me Think and getting a lot of very useful information out of it, along with some other links to places I’ve found in the last two weeks. I’m thinking that I’m going to test my family on the 10-20 system and see how they react to it, take notes, and write up a report for John when I get back. I know there are a number of improvements I already want to make on the interface and in the writing; going to Jakob Nielsen’s site and reading through the writing sections has me thinking. I also need to dig out my copy of The Elements of Style from the basement boxes.