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Chank is having a font sale. Stock up today! $10 for a great Type 1 font is cheap.

People who know me know I rarely go anywhere. Local friends still tease me about something I said a few years ago, only partly in jest, that most days the furthest I got from the house was to the end of the driveway to get the mail. That was one of the few tasks of an average day that required me to don shoes.

My life is not so home-centric any longer, because I get out to the gym at least three days a week, and to breakfast twice a month. Still, I don’t do what most people do all the time, which is drive to work.

Occasionally there is a need for me to be somewhere in person. Sometimes the prospect of becoming presentable and driving 60-100 miles is attractive, as a change of pace and an opportunity to get stuck in traffic three times in three hours, suck down some exhaust fumes, and at the end sit through a meeting that, if its essence were bottled, would outsell Sominex at 24-hr drug emporia. But, other times, I just don’t want to leave the house.

This week there is the added glamour of being able to tempt the fates. Will someone blow up the bridge just before I get there? While I’m on it? Or after I’ve crossed, to leave me stranded in a city of terror-crazed maniacs until I’m able to cross two more bridges in a grand loop that might, a half-day later, lead back home, assuming no more airliners have fallen from the sky?

So I did cross the bridge today, although not near rush hour and therefore not, as far as anyone can say, with much risk, aside from the usual risk that someone coming the other way will dribble some cereal on his tie, or cut himself while he’s shaving, and in a spasm of shock, cross the centerline to mow down the first four or five other commuters who serve to slow him down. But that risk is somehow easier to accept — after all, those guys don’t mean to kill anyone. They’re just trying to groom, or finish their breakfasts.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” There is a corollary to that expression: “People who live in stone houses shouldn’t.”

You might have expected the corollary to end “shouldn’t throw glasses.” Well, that’s dumb. Nobody should throw glasses; I don’t care what kind of house they live in.

People who live in stone houses, shouldn’t. Period. Unless everyone else lives in a stone house too. Because if you are the only one in your community who lives in a stone house, there won’t be a contractor within 100 miles who has any idea how to work on it.

“Oh, your house isn’t wood?” they ask, but not until they’ve seen it, because… why would they ask?

All we wanted to do was install some new windows. Any $20/hr apprentice carpenter can cut a hole in a wood-framed wall and install a new window, but we can’t even have an existing window replaced. Guys who own glass shops come by and tell me they’ll sell me the windows, if I want to install them myself. “If I had the tools, the skills, and the confidence to cut enormous holes in my house and install replacement windows,” I ask them, “do you really think I would type for a living?”

After weeks of searching, I found a general contractor who was willing to take a chance. He bid on replacing a few windows, and although we pretended we were shopping around, we’d already mentally agreed to pay whatever he asked because he was the only chance we’d have to get the work done before winter.

A few weeks later, the windows arrived, and the general contractor came by to introduce the guy who would actually be doing the installation. “I’ve never done anything like this before” is the first thing the guy says to me. Note to everyone in the construction industry: this is not an ideal way to build customer confidence.

He did an excellent job, though. We quickly ordered three more windows and begged the contractor for another bid (which is a 3-week process, even in this economy).

Finally the new windows arrived, along with the contractor and two new guys who will be doing the installation. (General contractors, generally speaking, don’t do too much actual work. They mostly drive around and oversee the $20/hr guys with toolbelts and paint on their jeans.) “This is Rodney and Gabe,” says the contractor, motioning to two guys with toolbelts and paint on their jeans. “They’ll be installing your windows today. I’m going to Disneyland.” And off he went.

Rodney extended his hand. “I should warn you, I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m a carpenter.” What a shocker.

So, it seems likely that whoever coined the phrase “it’s going to get worse before it gets better” was talking about home remodeling.

Here’s a photo of my post-postmodern concrete slab floor, minus the nasty shag carpet we’ve removed for ritual burning.

You know, we’d planned to install tile, but the stains and cracks on the slab are beginning to grow on me…. maybe this will be the hot new interior design look of 2002, sort of an industrial/rubble look… Ahh, excuse me, there’s someone at the door — no doubt the photo crew from Architectural Digest.

(Yes, the turd-colored vinyl is coming out too.)

This is one of the coolest uses of the web I’ve seen in a long time: a visual plot of weather data for San Francisco. Data comes from an informal network of weather stations around the city, plus published weather data.

When I lived in the City, people always talked about “microclimates.” That’s a fancy word that describes how the unusual geography of the area causes weather to differ dramatically from one neighborhood to the next. As I write this, there is a 25-degree disparity between the Zoo and the “Sunset Station,” located ~2 miles away.

Kudos to Aaron and sfweather.org for building such a useful web application!