I hafta admit, I wish I had installed the comments system here a year ago. It’s been really interesting to write about different subjects and see what you’ve responded to over the last month, so I’m doing a little unscientific list:
- Online Personality Tests – 2 entries out of 3 got comments. (My Theory: everybody got tired of them, or you already got them in your inbox the previous morning)
- Working on the house – 3/4 (You feel sorry for us, and are secretly happy your houses aren’t broke-down like this one is)
- Wedding Information – 2/3 (You’re thinking, enough already…am I invited or not, you cheap prick?)
- Weekend Updates – 2/3 (Because it’s just so much more interesting than the rest of this crap.)
- Computers – 1/4 (This is you: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
- Trucks – 2/2 (Everybody loves trucks.)
- Booze – 1/1 (Almost as much as they like booze.)
- NASCAR – 0/1 (But nobody likes NASCAR.)
- Democrats 2/2 (OK, damn, this got some feathers rustled. Good to see you’re still awake out there.)
- Frigging AOL – 1/1 (And who doesn’t have a frigging AOL story?)
- TPS Reports – 1/1 (Or forgotten to put a cover on theirs?)
- Maryland Ham – 1/1 (Wow. I mean, this one got some people talking. Or maybe it was the beets.)
- Work changes – 0/3 (You don’t care where we’re employed, as long as we pick up the next round of drinks. Ungrateful bastards.)
So there you have it; that’s what people are talking about.
Pictures. Here’s some shots of the office in progress.
Daily Boardscan. Jen and I have a blue paperweight sitting in the foyer of the house taking up space: a rev C (slot-loading) iMac I bought a few months back in working condition. During the install of OS 10.3, I accidentally kicked the power cord out of the wall and (predictably) it went dark. Upon reboot, the machine made the needed clicks, whirs, and beeps, and showed nothing on the screen. Apparently I had blown the video board in my clumsiness, rendering the machine useless (this unfortunately is not the DVD model with the VGA out port on the back) for anything but anchoring a boat. What I’d like to do is swap it for the rev B grape iMac server, as it’s faster and quieter, but money and time have put those plans on hold. Anyway, after searching in vain for information online about this malady, I found this page with other folks having the same problems.
Music for working by: Chemical Brothers, One Too Many Mornings. Beautiful, driving, relaxed beats.
I’ll take this opportunity to bore all three of you loyal readers with the details of my weekend. Yesterday, as mentioned before, I cut the french door down but only fit it in the opening upstairs—hanging a door correctly is one of those jobs that sounds easy in theory but is extremely difficult in practice, something that demands a whole afternoon and a twelve-pack of beer. So instead I cleaned up the blue room and continued replacing the kickplates in the office, getting them all installed by nightfall. Jen and I were wiped out from both fambly and house, so we conked out early, sleeping through a standing invite for dinner with Todd and Heather. (Sorry, guys.)
Today I started in the office by cleaning up the framing for the windows, which had taken some pretty serious damage from the roof leak, plugging the hole, and then stripping the wallpaper from the ceiling. Let me just tell you, folks, there is no greater calling in life than standing on a ladder with scraper in hand, spraying hot water next to a live electrical fixture, all because some idiot decided that covering over cracked plaster with wallpaper was a good idea.
Among other things, I got this installed today. Kickplates are back in the office, and tomorrow I begin fixing the walls.
Anybody who needs a pretty wedding dress to wear for your special day, or just for going to the grocery store, please look here: Ebay item 2896753380.
Here’s something to look at participating in next week: Photo Friday. I haven’t been snapping a lot of shots lately (evidenced by the lack of entries for 2004 over there on the left), but with the advent of spring and an assignment, I think I can get out of the funk and start shooting again…
Music for working by: Boards of Canada, Music Has The Right To Children. Mellow, driving, melodic stuff that won’t distract you.
Huh. Y’know, I feel that I’m a pretty up-to-the-minute guy, but I had no idea that Baltimore had its own Craigslist.
Maybe I’m totally self-absorbed here, but I think that Dave may be calling me out on my link and comment yesterday about voting Democrat. Let me talk a little more about it, and if I’ve missed his point, feel free to comment below and tell me. What I’m asking for is not a simple knee-jerk reaction to the current administration, but a course of direct action against it. Would I enjoy and support a viable three-party system in this country? Sure. (Will I vote for Nader? I don’t think he’s a viable candidate this year.) Do I think that Democrats are just as wishy-washy, underhanded and slimy as Republicans? Of course. But I also think that anybody who believes our current president is doing anything besides promoting the agenda of a few very wealthy organizations is kidding themselves. Say what you will about the previous Democratic administration—they had progressive foreign, economic, and environmental policies, and for all their warts, I believe they made my life better. I don’t see anything like that with the current administration—I see lies, fear, and fascism in the guise of “Homeland Security” and patriotism.
Would I like to see a fresh crop of idealistic public servants reshape our government? Of course. Will that ever happen? Read your history books. In the meantime, I’ll take the next best thing.
There had better be a beer or two in my immediate future, because I am in a foul, foul mood.
Required Reading. Vote Democrat.
Crap, Part 2. One of the other joys of being able to field one’s own minor-league kitty softball team is the collective pile of fur they leave behind. Actually, it’s not one big pile—they can’t be bothered to clean up after themselves, of course—but an inch-thick layer throughout the entire house. We are constantly running the vacuum cleaner, chasing after dust bunnies the size of grapefruit, but as soon as one clean swath is made on a horizontal surface, it is covered by more fur. (Or, a helpful cat, who will then commence shedding like Pig-Pen from Peanuts.)
So it was inevitable, of course, that our washer drain would become clogged with the winter coats of five nervous cats and begin backing up into the utility sink (let’s all just savor that word for a minute: utility sink. Do you know how great it is to be able to work in the basement and wash one’s hands without having to run back upstairs to the kitchen? I’m in heaven here, people). I busted out the pipe wrench and attempted to pry the cleanout drain cover off a hundred-year-old iron pipe, with predictably negative results, and then tried running a snake down the sink drain. I’m sure that sink snakes work for extremely talented people and drain-cleaning professionals, but for me the process resembled fighting an agitated ball python in a puddle of sewage.
We called in a professional. This morning Mike rang the doorbell as Jen and I were getting ready for the day, and I ran downstairs to let him in the basement to deal with our balky pipes. Within about five minutes the drain machine was turned on and off, and Mike came back upstairs to present me with a bill for $140 and a sheepish smile.
Thankfully, he disposed of the clog, which I’m sure was the size of a bowling ball.
Funny Bunnies. Just click here. You’ll thank me.
that picture of the cameo I promised. Ain’t that just beautiful?
What A Bunch Of Crap. One of the drawbacks to having five cats is the combined, um, output to deal with—we passed a veterinarian’s sign on Saturday which cheerfully reminded us, “YOUR CAT WILL EAT 28 TIMES ITS WEIGHT IN FOOD YEARLY”. We’ve been collecting about three weeks’ worth of output due to inclement weather, and it’s now time to get that out of the basement. Let me explain a little about our trash service: They won’t pick up anything weighing over 20 lbs., which makes most trash cans useless. (One cat will foul 20 lbs. of litter in a week.) Historically, our truck averages a pickup time of about 10:30am or so, which means I usually put the trash out as I leave for work and return to find the cans strewn about our driveway.
This morning, I hauled nine bags out to the curb at 8:30, knowing I’d have plenty of time before it was collected. I left for work an hour later, passing the magnificent pile of cat poo, and drove down Frederick Road looking at…my neighbors’ empty garbage cans.
On a positive note, some good samaritan came by and collected the dead opossum carcass from our front lawn, so I didn’t have to deal with that.
Office Space. The office is now officially wired, which means I can start replacing floorboards and cleaning up the mess I’ve made. One power line, two data lines, one phone line, and one cable line. Halleleujah, amen.
So, to recap, here’s the weekend:
- Jen has several irons in the fire for a new job; our friends came together and found some promising leads, and the Washington Post has a ton of current listings.
- The invitations came out very, very well. Save the Date cards went out Saturday. (free offset printing is awesome.)
- Jen and I have introduced her sister Annie to the joy of sushi and Sapporo. May the road to alcoholism and raw fish be a happy one.
- The spring dinner was much, much better than last year. (They ran out of carryout. Sorry folks.)
- Jen’s folks were very cool this weekend. On our wedding day, she will be wearing a beautiful set of cameo earrings brought over on the boat by her great-grandmother. (Picture to come.)
- You already read my gloating about the doors.
- No, we weren’t on the ferry that capsized. (Mom, we got your message, but couldn’t call you last night. We’ll be in touch.) Trivia: I’ve never been on a water taxi in twelve years as a Baltimoron.
- Lest you thought we were expecting our guests would camp on the lawn, we have narrowed the hunt for hotels down to two. How much is too much for a hotel room these days? (Courtyard Marriott wants $90/night for a brand-new King bedroom with breakfast.)
- Rob and Karean came by to show off their new Powerbook and I showed them how to use their iPods; they took us out to dinner at the Trolley Stop. Behind the bar there is a picture of the 2000 Memorial Day Parade in Catonsville, featuring the front of our house.
- BG&E now believes us when we claim that the doctor no longer practices medicine in our house. (The guy looked at me like I was a child molester, though, when I showed him the old exam room.)
Free doors
On our way to run about fifteen million wedding errands this afternoon, Jen and I drove past the church we’re set to be married in, and she pointed out something on the other side of the street: two wooden doors leaning up against a tree in front of an old Victorian. Cranking my neck around to look, I saw the words ‘FREE’ scrawled on the other side, and she got the car turned around in three seconds flat. We loaded the booty into the back of the Saturn as mass let out and church bells rang: a six-pane French door and a huge one-pane front door, both with intact glass, hinges, and hardware. The front door is about an inch and a half thick, and it sports a brass letter slot as well as an ornate plaque reading ‘Roselawn’.
The best part about finding $1,500 worth of wooden doors on the side of the road is that they’re both oversized—the French door, minus about an inch on the sides and top, will fit perfectly in the Blue room doorway leading out to the atrium. And the front door will fit in place of the original, so we can use that for a sunporch down the road.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.stuffed ham, oysters, candied yams, bread, and beets, 3.6.04
Salon has a great article on the train wreck that is CSI: Miami, AKA Melodramatic Line Readings With David Caruso. News to me: Gary Sinise, one of my more favored actors, makes yet another wrongheaded career move to star in CSI: New York. Stop the madness!
House Progress. I’ve been able to run wire throughout the office, which sets us up with enough plugs to run an entire Home Depot lighting department. Still to come are the runs for cable, phone, and ethernet, but for the time being I’m fitting the baseboards back in place and beginning to button up the far side. This morning I made the top hole in the sill plate to start dropping wire down to the basement, so hopefully that will happen towards the end of the week.
Album Of The Day: Dinosaur Jr., Where You Been. Taking me back to 1992.
Speaking of music, I’ve found a reasonable solution to my WMA -> MP3 problem: convert at a higher bit rate. If I go up to 192kbps, the sound improves dramatically—no more hollow, compressed singing-into-a-pint-glass sound. It’s not great (I’d hate to see the second-gen wave compression) but it does the job.
So yesterday evening I get a call from my fianceé, who was stumbling around our house in the dark, tripping over the cats and wondering why there was no power. We live on a grid in Catonsville that is about as twitchy as a crack whore; a child sneezes in Minneapolis and we lose our electricity. I think it’s safe to say that in six months I’ve dealt with more blackouts in this house than an Irish dockworker, so I was ready to light the hurricane lamps and wait out the repairs, but she told me all the other houses on our grid still had power….?!? At this point I became confused, because when half my bank account recently disappeared with an audible thunk, I knew the current bill had been paid. Jen called BG&E to find out what the hell was going on while I drove home. As it turns out, the good doctor, who has been dead and buried two years, still has an open balance on his account. This problem is exacerbated by BG&E’s insistence on listing his account at the ‘2nd floor’, while we are listed as the ‘1st floor’. The CSR looked at our records, put Jen on hold, then came back and admitted their mistake—they saw activity on his account, and decided without notifying us or realizing that there’s only one meter to shut the power off at 2:45 yesterday afternoon. (It’s a lucky thing the temperatures are still in the 40’s, because if that 12-pack of beer in the fridge we just bought had skunked, I would have been apoplectic.)