Used to be, I preferred one Big Box Hardware chain over another. As the owner of a 99-year-old house, I am intimately familiar with each chain, their particular quirks, and the brands they both carry. I’ve spent days of my life walking the aisles, searching the shelves, or tying large loads of stuff down in the parking lot. I’ve easily spent more than a year’s worth of my current salary on their merchandise. And living in a large metropolitan area, I sometimes take for granted that I am spoiled for choice. Within 10 miles of my house there are two different locations for each chain, and they vary in size and quality. I have carefully studied what one location might offer differently than another within the same chain; some will cut wood or offer rolls of sod while others won’t. Some have a better selection of high-grade framing wood, or a particular type of molding when others don’t.
I guess it’s my fault that the local Home Depot, then, has colored my opinion of that chain. It’s small, cramped, and poorly lit. The management has clearly stopped giving a shit about keeping it clean; the parking lot is a rubble-strewn wasteland. The second-closest one in Ellicott City is modern, clean, and organized, so we prefer that location when we’re not in a hurry. Our local Lowe’s—just 1/4 mile down the street from the crappy HD—is usually clean and well-stocked, so if I’m pressed for time I’ll go there first. They also have a larger selection of appliances, and in years past I’ve had good luck with their service.
When the microwave oven crapped out right before we left for Portugal, I knew I would have to replace it quickly when we got back, so I jumped on the Lowe’s website and found a good candidate. After clearing it with Jen I placed the order and was told it would take a week to arrive. When a week had come and gone, I checked back and it told me it would be another week. So we waited. After the third delay I got fed up, as there was no clear delivery date offered, and the CSR on the phone couldn’t give me any information, so I canceled it. While I was on hold, I jumped on Amazon and found the same microwave for $80 cheaper and free 2-day delivery.
Fast forward to this past Monday: I set up a delivery order through Lowe’s for drywall and supplies to my FiL’s house in Southern Maryland. There is a Lowe’s location 2.5 miles from his house. I selected Friday (today) on the website and placed the order. When today’s delivery time had come and gone, I checked on the order and found that it had been bumped to September 20 with no explanation and no update. After calling the online number, the CSR could not change that delivery time, so I canceled it. Calling his local store to try to rent a truck tomorrow morning, the phone just rang and rang. Calling back to the main customer service line, it just rang and rang.
What the fuck, Lowe’s? How hard is it to do simple shit like this? 30 years ago the local hardware store could deliver stuff to a job site the next day. Where are these supplies coming from, Idaho? If Amazon can drop-ship a microwave in two days, how is it impossible for you to get me one within the same month?
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. Oasis are reuniting for a tour after splitting up and throwing chainsaws at each other for fifteen years. I think I’ve always been Team Noel but I haven’t followed all of the drama that closely. This would be a great show to see live, I think; I just can’t rationalize $200 in Ticketmaster surcharges and battling for a 5% chance to actually be able to buy a ticket.
It’s a lovely slow news week here at IdiotCentral, as I’m up in New York visiting the family, sitting on the couch and basically not doing much of anything. Going through the Dropbox archives and cleaning up my files I came across a set of shots from Bimini in 2003 that weren’t color-corrected, and decided to do that very thing. They were shot in a time when RAW images were a new thing and I wasn’t shooting in that format yet; these are from one of my dive team (which explains why I’m in them and not behind the camera). I got them as JPGs which means my ability to correct them is limited, but I think these look better than they were.
Wow, I’ve never thought of this situation quite this way, but it totally makes sense: John Stoehr argues that Biden let the press corps define him and his campaign (He’s too old, he’s confused, etc.) by making it about vibes and not about substance. Kamala is not giving the Washington press corps unfettered access, engaging them if and when she chooses, thus refusing to let them define her the way they want to. And it’s driving them nuts.
Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.
Now that she’s in the race, her campaign is being judicious and strategic about what she says to whom, and it’s working.
This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her moral and democratic obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency.
I got sucked down a rabbit hole a couple of days ago by a YouTube interview with the Smashing Pumpkins about recording Siamese Dream, and that led me to other songs he’d recorded for Gish, and now I have Tristessa on repeat in my head. Gish is a fantastic album, one of my desert island discs, and one I need to source the remastered version of to re-rip to MP3. My copy is tinny and treble-heavy, and I’d like a version with more of the bottom end restored. Anyway, this tune has a great groove and I’ve always loved it.
This weekend was a busy one, mainly because it was Jen’s birthday. So that meant it was good busy. We started off Saturday morning with a walk down the street for coffee with the dog, and circled back home to shower and change. I had several surprises planned so I told her to dress casually and I’d take care of the rest. I drove the girls into Columbia and we stopped at a new health-food restaurant for breakfast smoothies, and then I dropped her off at a spa on the lake for a manicure and facial. Finn and I went over to the giant thrift store and then a used book store to kill time; I could easily have spent another hour looking through CDs.
Jen emerged from the spa with a healthy complexion and pretty pink nails (one of which caught on the zipper of her purse and had to be repaired later). We got a brief lunch at the Whole Foods and then drove into Baltimore and Second Chance to find a matching lockset for a closet door I just hung in the bedroom; the door came without hardware so we browsed the bins of old guts until we found a match, and then pored over a giant display case of crystal doorknobs until we found a matching pair we liked with setscrews.
Second Chance is expanding, and they’re growing their collection of Old Baltimore artifacts: they have the original City Pier signage from Fell’s Point (the City Pier is now expensive condos, which was invevitable, I suppose) and the small U from the Domino’s Sugar sign in Locust Point—which is probably 10 feet tall and very impressive.
By then it was too late to do anything else before dinner, so we headed back home and took our time getting ready. I had reservations at a Spanish-menu restaurant in town, and it wasn’t until we pulled into the parking lot that I realized it was in the building I used to work in before I moved to WRI. Dinner was delicious even though the place was a bit overwhelming, and we left feeling stuffed and happy.
Sunday we took our time getting up and moving. After walking the dog I took Jen back to the spa to have her nail repaired and we went back to the smoothie place to try out their sandwiches, which were also healthy and delicious.
Back at home, I gathered my tools and pulled our failing 20-year-old microwave off the wall above the stove with Finn’s help. When we got it out of the way I disassembled a wooden baffle in the upper cabinet covering the vent hose and measured the cabinets once, twice, thrice, and four times before being comfortable with the position and orientation of the mounting bolts and electrical cord. Saying a prayer, I drilled three holes in the cabinet and had Finn help me heave the new unit up into place. By some miracle, all three holes lined up perfectly, and we had the new unit powered up in place in minutes. I re-assembled the baffle with the nailgun and covered the hose back up.
From there, I cleaned up the kitchen and all of my tools and headed upstairs to pull the closet door off its hinges. The house is out of square just enough that the bottom of the door scraped the floor when it was about halfway open, so I put it on sawhorses and trimmed 1/4″ off the bottom. Back upstairs I rehung it, tested the swing, and then installed the new(used) lockset. Finally, I thinned out the paint and brushed a final coat of high gloss white on both sides. It’s the first time we’ve had a door in there since we moved in, and it took a little getting used to. But it looks good, and it fits the house. It feels good to knock these projects out quickly. And it’s nice to have a little less chaos inside the house. Happy birthday, Blondie.
Back in 2007 I wrote about the Martin Mars flying boats and how there were some proposals to move one of them from British Columbia, where they have had a long and storied career as water bombers, back to Baltimore, where they were built. Well, that didn’t exactly pan out, but they are finding new homes: The Philippine Mars will be returned to flight status and moved to the Pima Air and Space Museum for permanent display. Similarly, the Hawaii Mars was just flown from its home on a lake in rural BC to the Victoria International Airport, where it will be on permanent display. I watched the livestream of the flight and it was pretty breathtaking, even though it was low-resolution and laggy. I’m glad to see these two amazing planes were so well-preserved that it was cost effective to get them flying again, even if they didn’t get one back here to Baltimore.
File this under my paranoia is increasingly justified: New cars are increasingly spying on us and reporting our driving habits to insurance companies. Some of the carmakers don’t want you to disable this reporting feature, and make it difficult to shut off. This article details how to shut off the reporting for most modern makes; apparently Honda is of medium difficulty, but this is something I intend to take care of this weekend.
I called the dealer. He talked to some people at Honda and called me back. If I wanted to shut off the data sharing, I’d have to download Honda’s HondaLink app, which came with its own 14 pages of unreadable terms and conditions.
That was my only choice, he said. He also said I was the first person to ask him how to do so. I reluctantly downloaded the app, but couldn’t figure out how to shut it off from there. Finally, a day after downloading the app, I was able to shut off the data sharing in my car (confusingly, I had to do so in the car and not on the app, but only once I downloaded the app). It only took me a month.
I paid for the product, yet I have become the product.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.