I'm watching more and more on the internet and most of the time I can avoid commercials altogether this way. I'm glad I put the money toward DSL rather than cable or satellite. It's curious when people talk about what's effective or not in advertising. It's hard to know what really *will* work. It's interesting how some of the best known ads did nothing for sales. For instance, the Apple Macintosh "1984" ad is talked about to this day but didn't achieve anywhere near what they hoped and it's dubious whether it did anything for sales. Publicity, yes, sales though are the desired result. And many people who never saw them in their lives still know and talk about the now infamous "Burma Shave signs" but Burma Shave is long gone. Interesting too. Unique and relatively cheap advertising, had people talking up the product name, name recognition was there and even had people *looking* for the ads! (Not unlike the "Hillside Singers" Coke commercial where people called the stations asking them to play the commercial!) But unfortunately for Burma Shave, few people would buy the product. Seeing hospitals advertising is totally repugnant to me. Prescription medicines, CAT scan procedures and otherwise is likewise annoying. Any supposed "professional" advertising is laughable to me and they lose credibility AFAIC. In a way it's kind of sad to see. One of the big name well-known, high profile attorneys for criminal defense can't get a case these days and is essentially ambulance chasing now. Lately I just haven't seen many memorable commercials, that is memorable in a positive way. I guess the one where the cat gets the bloodhound to help find the litter box is shake your head OK. I do enjoy some of the foreign commercials when they do shows with them as the star. Many places have less uptight people so they can have more fun with them. I really laughed at the German "need glasses?" (Brille notig?) commercial. And the political commercials have already started. Heavy advertising for Wisconsin here lately. Although I realie that the market area includes portions of Wisconsin, we seldom would get it in the regular elections. Suggests to me either the elections are extremely urgent (to the parties) and/or ad rates have dropped. In a few months it'll start heavy political ads nationwide so I'll need to change batteries in the remote to keep up with changing channels. One good thing about the state "shutdown". No more commercials about how "the other side" won't listen to reason - call them and tell them you want __________.

Lavon, the other dog isn't a Papillon. He's a large dog, like a brown and white border collie or something similar. Thanks Ont gal! I didn't even think the first dog was a chihuaha, it looks bigger. But the second dog is gorgeous.

Update: Today the building owner brought in a air-duct cleaning person to take a look and prepare an estimate. I didn't make a great first impression. I didn't know it was the owner. When they came in, I made a face and said I thought we were going to do testing first and that I wanted new ducts rather than duct cleaning that makes a mess. The owner retorted "i've been doing this for 50 years...I have many buildings. I know what I'm doing...". Jeez. Building owner does not make an HVAC expert. And not updating a 30-year old system and letting the building get to this state doesn't speak to his landlord credentials! Although, I do commend the responsivness and willingness to fix the problem. I tried to make nice when I figured out who he was. I had told my boss earlier air-duct cleaning was the last thing I wanted after stories I read about it making a mess of the office, but I guess he didn't mention it to the owner as I requested. So the 4 of us (owner, boss, me, airduct rep) had in depth conversation about the issues. The airduct cleaning guy said it is very rare to find mold in this type of scenario but they do look for it and will clean it if it is minor or stop and report it otherwise. When I told him I had read multiple stories about office air-duct cleaning leaving a mess behind, he replied that those companies failed at their job. He assured us there is no mess or disturbance left behind. He described the process in detail, but I zoned out in the tech talk. I didn't hear that they cover or clean all surfaces. They claim the technique cannot generate extra dirt. hmmppph. We talked about air-quality testing (which he does not do), and they were unclear if it would serve a purpose. To me, test then treat seems to be the natural order. One would want to know the particulate count b4 and after cleaning, right? I surely do. It is still up in the air what we will do. My boss said maybe he will pay for the testing if the owner won't. He seemed to agree with me that testing first was the right thing to do, but yet he still seems inclined to use dust on surfaces as a metric. I said its the stuff you can't see that the testing is for. Is it? I don't really know. Meanwhile, I bought an air purifier for my bedroom. Its on order. I can't wait to see if I wake up less congested. Meanwhile, the heater hasn't kicked on much or maybe at all this week. I stopped taking my inhaler last week to see if coughing came back this week. The temps have picked up a bit and we get a lot of afternoon solar heating. I almost wanted to put the A/C on today it was so warm. So it might be difficult to assess anything once heating season dies down.

Would a ginger stain work? The first is a photo of the red oak floor in it's current state. The second photo is the sanded bow window sill.