Last night, Tricia and I attended the Rochester Social Media Club meeting at Solera followed by the Rochester Twestival at German House.

My reason for attending these events is to get more connected in Rochester professional circles. I work from my home in Webster for my company based in Chicago, so I don’t get a lot of face time with pros at my own company no less others in industry. I just want to feel connected. For Tricia, this was an opportunity to get out and network for her business, and get some face time with her husband away from our 2 kids. Mission accomplished!

We met some awesome people. It’s refreshing to know that Rochester has such a vibrant and friendly professional community. The Rochester Social Media Club, lead by Susan Beebe, Mark Frisk and Nicole Black is a gathering of people interested in the use of Social Media especially Facebook, Twitter, etc. Really, it brings together people with a diverse set of professional skills and agendas. The best part about this group is that no one is pretentious, because really if you share a lot on social media, CAN you really be pretentious in the first place? Nope. I’ll hope that this is indicative of all Rochester business people. I think going to some of these events in bigger cities like Chicago would be a bit more uncomfortable than the people here make you feel.

On to the Twestival
All I can say about that is, what an amazingly well put together event for such a short period of time! There were bands, raffle donations, food, drinks, all in a top notch venue. It rivaled any charity event I’ve been to, and this came together in 2 weeks. Most organizations take MONTHS to put together something like that. Charity:Water for whom this event raised funds, could not be more worthy nor more creative with this whole Twestival concept. The only drawback is that it could have used a few hundred more attendees to justify the time and effort that Matt Ray and his team put into it.

Here’s why I think attendance was light.

1. Rochester to begin with is a small-ish market
2. The bulk of the marketing relied on Twitter whose adoption is still really small even when compared to Facebook. This will only get better next year, and there will be WAY more people that ‘get it’.
3. People may have thought it was more about Twitter, than about a great charity, great music, and people. It wasn’t. Twitter was just the tool that mobilized a great many people.

The Rochester Twestival was a great event that rivaled any other city for its ability to provide a vibrant professional scene that motivates people to want to live and work here. Events like this thrive only with consistency and word of mouth, so I’d bet that next year will be even more successful.

Kris and Tricia at the Rochester Twestival

ROC Twestival image by @MatthewRay

They say that the finishing touches on any DIY project take the longest. Doing the trim on our basement workout room was no different. I started the top trim over the Christmas holiday (I had already done the baseboard) and I finished a full month and a half later. As with everything else in this project, I did wing it a bit. A smart DIY’er should curl up with a good resource on how to install trim, I just dove right in.

Buying and Prepping the Trim
My goal for the trim was to purchase molding that matched the rest of the house without breaking the bank (if possible). It is a basement after all. I also wanted trim that was easy to paint and transport home. This dictated that my maximum length should be 12′ long to fit in my SUV and be pre-primed fiber-wood material for ease of paint coverage. I ended up with the following from Lowes:

• Wood Composite Base 3 1/2″ x 12′ x 1/2″
• EverTrue Primed Wood Composite 442 Casing 2 1/4″ x 10′ x 5/8″

Because of my lack of finished ceiling and unconventional wall approach, I also had all kinds of weird rough edges to come up with solutions for, not the least of which was how to finish the windows. My answer came to me after a lot of meditation. a 1×10 pine board painted in white was the perfect width to cover over the cement block and make a nice finished look for the window. So, I measured the room and windows carefully leaving a little extra for practice pieces, then bought all of my trim. Next, I painted all of it in semi-gloss white paint. It is much easier to get a good base coat on the trim BEFORE it is installed. I like to touch up lafter installing the trim.

Installing the Trim
Using casing for my ceiling molding was WAY easier to install than my crown molding project. There’s no coping necessary. You just use your handy chop saw and cut all sorts of 45 degree angles. The best part is that the casing provides a very finished look to the drywall where it meets my super cheap painted ceiling. You do need to cut various slots and other creative workarounds for pipes and beams.

One of the more tricky areas to figure out the ceiling molding

As for the windows, all I needed to do was provide a nailing surface for the 1×10 to be installed onto. This was simple on the side and bottom of the window frame because I had installed furring strips all around the window opening to hold up the insulation. The top of the window frame was only a little more tricky. I used 2×2′s to add to the floor joists up above to provide a surface that would have the top of the window frame just right above the window opening. The end result of the windows after finishing was this…

The window frame allows the windows to open, while providing a finished look

After installing molding with a finishing nailer hooked up to an air compressor (DO NOT do this project without it) I went around with painter’s caulk and spakling paste filling in the gaps in the corners, and all of the finishing nail holes. I then touched up the paint.

Presenting the Training With Tricia Fitness Studio
The grand opening of the workout room (fitness studio sounds much more impressive) was yesterday as Tricia noted in her blog entry. The photos speak to any other details that I my not have explained.

The mirrored closet has pegboard to the right to hold equipment and act as a vent for the de-humidifier stashed inside

A curtain separates the fitness studio from the rest of the basement. A TV is mounted to the ceiling near the treadmill

At the base of the basement stairs is a doorway I installed (pre-hung doors are pretty easy to do) that leads to a future basement bathroom.

I’m glad that the project is now complete. It’s a nice place for me to workout in too. I especially like to flip on the pink Christmas lights Tricia installed on the ceiling and go for a long run. They just make me feel liberated

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DIY Basement Workout Room: Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Step 4 | Step 5

Friday, January 23, 2009 was the first Pinewood Derby for Mason and me. After a few weeks of work, learning about saws, sandpaper, a little physics, tungsten weights, graphite lube, hobby paint, and many more things that no 7 year old EVER wanted to learn, we put Anakin’s Speeder to the test. Here were the results.

Mason with his Star Wars Attack of the Clones, ‘Anakin’s Speeder’ Pinewood Derby Car

This was a fun project to do together, and an exciting race. This is what scouts is all about. Hopefully next year, Mason can do a little more of the car, while Daddy learns a bit more about Pinewood Physics. We have way too many smart parents in our Pack, we’ll not be beaten for lack of preparation. See you next year!

If there’s one thing I can recommend to increase your productivity in 2009, it is to NOT obtain Guitar Hero World Tour. Over the holidays I drummed until I had blisters and strummed until callouses. In the ensuing 2 weeks of cold weather, I’ve made it my mission at night to play enough GHWT to unlock Ozzy’s Crazy Train. Tonight I completed that mission. The bummer is that I can’t play drums at night because it wakes up the kids. Without my accordion all I can do is play the gee-tawr, and play it I have.

Warming up the sticks

Happy cold weather everyone. What are you up to?