My Iced Tea recipe

So you like my home made iced tea, huh? Well, here's the recipe.

1 gallon water
4 black tea bags
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice concentrate (like "Realemon") or juice from one lemon.

 Boil water.
Add tea bags.
Let steep 6-12 hours
Remove tea bags
Add sugar and lemon juice
Stir.
Serve over ice and enjoy!

Acrobat Distiller/Normalizer joboptions AutoRotatePages settings and behavior

In the Adobe Distiller or Normalizer products, there is a joboptions file that controls presentation and conversion to PDF behavior.

I've been doing some research around the settings for the AutoRotatePages entry in this file. When editing the joboptions file with a text editor, the valid values are "None", "All" and "PageByPage". These correspond to the GUI editor settings "Off", "Collectively By File" and "Individually". 
In theory, the settings mean:

•  None/Off: Do not perform any automatic page rotation. 
• All/Collectively By File: Rotate the minority number of pages such that all pages are presented in the orientation of the majority of pages. 
• PageByPage/Individually: Present each page such that its native orientation is demonstrated 

In practice, it's a little more complex.

A PDF document has a default orientation that applies to every page. That orientation is either portrait or landscape.

One can give the impression of a differing orentation for a subset of the pages by using page rotation. For example, a Portrait PDF file may have pages that appear in landscape orientation by rotating it 90 degress clockwise or counter clockwise.

Additionally, using the Document->Insert pages menu item in Acrobat Pro, one can insert pages that are in a different orientation than the rest of the PDF. This is not accomplished using page rotation, but by defining the page dimensions (in points) for a page. It is not possible to change an existing page's dimensions, nor is it possible to add a new page with different page dimensions.

Consider this PDF (Portrait with inserted landscape pages)
After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, but page 2 and 3 are rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise
All: Same
PageByPage: Same

Consider this PDF (Landscape with inserted portrait pages) After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, with landscape pages rotates 90 degress counter clockwise
All: All pages are displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise
PageByPage: All pages displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
Analysis:
Page By Page setting does not work. It should show each page in its native orientation but it always behaves the same as "All".
All setting makes all the pages render in the same orientation, based on a majority of page orientation. This setting should be used in most cases.

End of May Basement update

The basement project is coming along nicely. Next I'll be working on the floor, including leveling some areas where there will be vinyl flooring and selecting the carpet and floor that we'll be using. In the last few days, we've sprung another leak near the furnace - I hope it's just the drainage water pump, but I may have to call my furnace guy over. On top of that, we have a tree coming down in the yard, some aluminum fascia work to be fixed, we have electrical work to be performed on the first, second and third floors, and we have to have insulation wrapped up. Oh, and I start teaching a new class format next week and I have a 100 mile bike ride for Tour De Cure on 6/10. Yikes.

Basement update for May 2012

Some tasty brownies

Mary Grace loves these, William doesn't. But I keep losing the recipe, so I'm placing it here. 1/2 cup melted butter 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup flour 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (a little less FTW) 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking powder Add eggs, sugar and vanilla to butter, mix. Beat in flour, salt and baking powder. Pour batter into greased 8" square pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes at room temperature and serve (preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!)

Cabinets installed!

Cabinets are in!

The kitchen.

The desk.

Painting has commenced!

The ceiling is installed (except for the panels I'll drop in myself once the lights are wired up) and we're starting with the painting.

If anyone is looking for a suspended ceiling or a swimming pool contractor, I highly recommend Ken Ferguson. Contact me for his contact information.