I’m back online today after being away for 2 months.

I cribbed the March design for the time being until I can get back to designing a new interface, and pick up Perl again to put the whole thing in a database.

I’ve spent the last two months working in the basement, mainly; not too much time in front of a computer other than looking for and applying for jobs. The search was a disappointing and depressing one- a ton of design firms here in Baltimore have tanked and nobody else is hiring at all right now. My inquiries into the field have gone for naught, and I took the risky, and some would say inadvisable step of taking a job with a company outside of my expertise- a computer gaming company. I’ll be working for Breakaway games as of Monday the 16th. I’m optimistic, and excited, because this company has work for me at least until next year, and they seem like they have a lot of irons in the fire. I think gaming is a good place to sit and wait out the storm for awhile.

The basement has been a very helpful outlet for stress, worry, and general mind-resting; I put myself on a budget each week for about $50 of supplies, and that figure seemed to put enough raw materials into my hands so that i could blow through a week of work or so. Luckily I was in a place where all I really needed were screws, paint, and 2×4’s, so the minimum amount of budget actually went a long way.

I got the whole ceiling primed and painted, as well as the walls down to the drywall level. After I cleaned that up, I studded in the walls along the side and the front wall, and ordered a new vinyl replacement window for the front of the house. I’ll struggle with that for a day or so when it comes in at the beginning of next week. The closet is also roughed in, and I have a pair of louvered doors in mind to close it off. I’ll probably add a fan of some kind to vent the room out the back when the computers are installed- that’s down the road a bit.

I’m at a place now where I had the electrical contractor come in for an estimate, and it left me with a great feeling. Hopefully I can get the whole thing done for under $1,000. At some point I’m going to post pictures, but for now it’s offline- no more digital camera, and I have a roll of film halfway through to be developed and scanned. At this point, looking roughly at the bills and my bank account, these last two months I’ve spent about $1000-$1200 on other, meaning food, entertainment, gas, and the basement. My total bills for the basement to date (well, total bills for home improvement period) are roughly $750- that’s including the pre-layoff bills from January. At some point I’ll add up the bills beginning May 11 to date and see what i put out in total. It’ll be interesting to see what I actually went through in dollars and cents. This weekend I file unemployment for the last time.

I also had the Scout looked at by Baltimore Body Shop, and it was disappointing- it only confirms what I was thinking before. I’m going to have to save, look for and buy an already restored Scout at some point, and relegate Chewbacca to parts truck/rainy day driver. it breaks my heart, but that’s what i have to do. The cost of the new tub, work to swap them, and other assorted shit will be prohibitively expensive.