I finished the ceiling, and put a coat of semi-gloss white on the trim in the sticky cream bedroom. Covering over the varnish/oil paint/nicotine/Kilz is slow going, but we can see progress already. Not satisfied with that, I cut the ancient all-weather carpeting into quarters and tore that out; underneath was some highly flammable fiber-based padding that was left over from the Civil War. After inhaling several centuries worth of the dust of the Pharoahs trying to get all this crap into a couple of Hefty bags, I pulled the carpeting strips out and we swept up the dirt. The floor is pretty beat up but still in decent shape. There are a few spots where the floor took a beating from the bedframes, and a square by the radiator where someone cut the flooring to repair the pipes. Overall, the room looks warmer and (to me) larger in the sunlight. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow.
My Mom has been reading my log for the past few weeks, and her main comment is that I complain a lot. My apologies, mom; I’ll try not to bitch about everything so much.
In the meantime, I took pictures of the heater, thermostat and irrigation systems in the greenhouse this morning so that I could research the builders and figure out of they’re still in business, but I forgot the PCMCIA carrier at home. So, no photos of the party until tonight. Sorry, everyone. I did bust out the white trim paint and put a first coat on about 30% of the south window in the sticky cream bedroom this morning, and it looks pretty good so far. I have to return the 5-gallon drum of ‘white’ paint I bought a month ago, because ‘white’ actually means ‘sort of beige’ to Glidden, apparently. I have to look for ‘super-ultra-bright-gleaming-ivory white’ or some such crap like that. And try to get my money back for an open drum of paint- ha ha.
Oops, sorry, I was complaining.
This weekend was a busy one. Friday we stopped over at our friend Rob’s house to have some beers, meet his wife Karen and their kids, and do some quick surgery on his Mac. Rob and Karen have the two most beautiful kids on the planet, and a bathtub that seems to sweat soap bubbles. Thanks for dinner, guys!
Saturday was a lot of moving and cleaning and running. I don’t remember much about it other than that I slept very well that night. Oh, and the car broke down with a trunk full of beer and barbecue. I got as far as the Rt. 70 exit on the beltway when I noticed the temp light was at the red line, so I pulled over and popped the hood to find the main coolant hose spitting steam at the radiator junction. I closed it up with the Leatherman and filled the reservoir with coolant, but she continued to overheat, so I took short 10-minute breaks between each half-mile and made it to the Edmonson exit without frying a piston. I’m getting tired of this, and it’s looking like we may have to buy a used car sooner than we planned.
Sunday we finished up the preparations and got the house ready for the moving celebration, which was a lot of fun. Selected observations:
- Both Saranac and Sam Adams are making a very tasty Oktoberfest brew this year.
- Andy Nelson’s is the bomb. If you’re in the Baltimore area, you can’t do better Bar-B-Q than them.
- Our friends rock the world. Thanks everybody!
- Jen made Ghirardelli brownies for dessert, and they are still calling for me out in the kitchen.
- The only thing better than Andy Nelson’s for dinner is Andy Nelson’s leftovers for lunch the next day.
- And the beer left in the cooler-can’t forget about that…
This is a quick report for Jen, cribbed from a report on the Macintouch site (quietly thanking myself for donating money to Ric- it just paid for itself) about justifying Macs in a creative development environment. Some of the data is skewed towards OS9, and some of it is skewed towards the computer lab environment, but it’s all pretty good information. Her employer has her designing for print on the PC, which is about as comfortable (to me) as repeatedly jamming a stick in my eye. Anybody else have suggestions?
I bought some overpriced firewood at the Safeway last night to build a fire: $4 for a bag of “kiln dried” logs, which is roughly a dollar a log. Years of building fires at places like Assateague, Cub Scout camp, and various keg parties should have taught me how to construct a satisfactory blaze, but I was stymied by a pair of logs that refused to do anything but smolder. We’ll try again tonight.
The house seems to heat up well with the furnace on; the piping works very well throughout with the exception of the kitchen radiator, which seems to be on vacation. I walked through and closed all the storm windows the other night and that seemed to make a big difference in cutting the chill back. At some point I’m going to have to pull some of the plaster off the outside walls to see how much insulation (if any) there is. We also put the first coat of finish paint on the walls of the Sticky room, and when we got done we realized that we hadn’t sanded enough of the wallpaper sizing off. This morning I took the random orbital and sanded about half the paint back off to knock the texture down. I think it looks pretty good (alright, it looks like crap, but I see the possibilities.)
Thanks to Kristen for sending the Virgin Suicides soundtrack in with Nate.
Looks like my old employer, Cidera, is finally turning off the pipes. Interesting to hear what people say on the Fuckedcompany boards; it looks like there are more than a few ex-employees posting comments there.
Still no luck with the dyndns stuff. Frustrating.
Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture. I heard one of the new Outkast songs this morning on the radio: Hey Ya! was the most interesting song I think I’ve heard all year. I went to iTunes immediately when I got to work and bought it for $.99. I can’t tell you how many other times I’ve wanted to do this and haven’t been able to, either because Apple is behind on adding them to the available list or the artist/label refuses to license them. Too bad.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
I’ll never screw with Terminal commands I don’t understand.
*Whew.*
Take Two. I have OSX running on the iMac now, and along with about a gazillion other things I’d like to do with it (an iTunes server, internal/external file serving, scheduled backups, iPhoto libraries), I downloaded and installed a dyndns client (link) so that we can share files from the house. I tried this a year or so ago, and had no luck (OS9.2 on the 8500) so I’m hoping this will work more seamlessly on OSX. I currently have some issues with port mappings in the router and the firewall in OSX, but should be able to iron them out tonight.
Somebody scheduled some freezing weather for the first day of October, and I don’t appreciate it.
You Kids Get Off My Lawn! Dept. Memo to the guy who’s been parking his Volvo out in front of our house with the ‘For Sale’ signs on the window for the last two weeks: the house isn’t empty anymore, pal. Move it along or I’ll call somebody to tow it. Thanks. How about I park my Scout out in front of your house for a few weeks? Bet you’d love that.
??? Dept.: What the hell is this dick doing NFL commentary for? For the unenlightened, here’s some suggested reading.
NBC Sucks. Nice of the Leno folks to refer to Howard Dean as the ‘Presidential Wannabe’ in their promos last night, and helpfully booking him after the oh-so-important Catherine Zeta-Whatever. This morning Katie Couric, the poster girl for pink fluffy pom-poms, went after him like a pit bull in heat. I thought I was watching MSNBC for a minute. Interesting to see impartial journalism at work. (note: I don’t know anything about Dean or his politics, but it’s pretty obvious the suits at NBC have cast their ballots.)