Well, that was short-lived. After setting up a second Insta account for the Travelall, and having it deactivated for “violation of community guidelines” with no further explanation, I couldn’t find a way to either contest the deactivation or restart the account. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t get back into the account at all through Instagram’s backend, and it didn’t recognize my cellphone number as a valid cellphone number (?). This could be because I don’t share my cell number with Facebook, which owns Instagram. Maybe the robots decided I wasn’t me, even though they probably know more about me than I do. So I deleted the whole thing, and I’m going to try to build it again.
What is still unclear to me is why it was deactivated in the first place; neither of the images I shared there had appeared in my main feed, and the text in the description was new. Did someone flag my account? Did the robots decide I was a clone of myself? Have I pushed humanity one step closer to the Singularity? We will never know.
I’ve had the groove to How to Handle a Rope going through my head for the last four days. It’s a great groove—tons of low-end bass matched with a filthy guitar sound that’s perfect for driving a car very fast down a lonely stretch of highway. This tune was on my “Driving” playlist across multiple long-dead iPods back when we ripped our own CDs and made playlists. I miss this era of QotSA very much: guitar, drums and bass in a room thick with bong smoke and few fucks to give.
It was a pretty quiet weekend here, but I’m still trying to get warm-weather things done before the cold weather hits. I did some work on the door cards I got up in Massachussetts to get them ready for paint. They were covered in about three inches of grease and dirt, so I played a hunch and used Easy-Off oven cleaner to clean them off. When I had all the crud removed I could see where the rust lived. Originally I was going to sandblast them but I figured that would take forever, so I just used the wire wheel to remove all of the bad stuff. Meanwhile I covered the back sides with Rust Converter to keep them clean.
Friday afternoon I went to the local Sherwin Williams Automotive and had them match and mix a quart of base color from the beat-up original door panel on the truck. I had them match from the area behind the door escutcheon, which hadn’t been dulled by UV rays over 60 years. After some back and forth I used some of their paint matching chips to get as close as possible in the sunlight out in front of the store. The best price I could get was on a quart of base coat in satin, which is going to need a final clearcoat at some point in the future. But the difference being roughly $200, I was happy to go with the more inexpensive option.
On Sunday morning, I cleaned everything off with acetone and got my table ready to shoot everything. All four panels needed two light coats for good coverage—the base was a lot thinner than the other paint I’ve been shooting.
Then I shot the heater box and heater cover. Everything flashed very quickly and within two hours was more than dry to the touch.
I hung all four-door cards on the truck to keep them out of the way and make sure they didn’t get scratched up in the garage.
Meanwhile, I was working on new mounts for the west coast mirrors. What I decided was to mount these using existing holes in the doors. There were, over time, about four different mirror installations on the truck, one of them being perfect for the mirrors I have. I bought four regular steel bolts and pushed them through the back sides of the doors to weld in place. Then I ground the backsides down as much as possible to give clearance for the weatherstripping and doors.
The passenger side still needed to be worked on: all the old holes had to be ground out and welded over like I did on the driver’s side. Then I cleaned those up, feathered some filler over them, and sanded it smooth. As of Sunday evening, both mirrors are hung on each door with a quick coat of basic rattle can red over everything.
The Sherwin Williams guy told me about some inexpensive clear coat I could get on Amazon much cheaper than in his store, so I’ve got that in my cart for next weekend. It’s a satin finish so it won’t be as dull as the original cards, but if it protects everything I’m not going to complain. And when the heater box is finished, I can reinstall that and get more of the stuff under the dash completed, which is one of the fall projects on my list.
I fucked around with Instagram the other day to add another account to my profile (or profile to my account?) for the Travelall, figuring I’d build up some followers there and see if I could funnel traffic to the YouTube channel. I’m experimenting with how all this stuff works based on things I’ve learned at work, and if I can keep making $20/mo. on T-shirts, I can at least pay for my hosting bills. I made the account and posted two pictures, both shots of the truck I don’t think I’ve shared on my regular channel before.
Anyway, I got a notice this evening that the new profile was deactivated. What? But I could reactivate it by logging an appeal. So I followed their steps: I entered their CAPTCHA code correctly. They asked for my email address, and they sent me a code; then they wanted my phone number—and the system broke. It didn’t recognize/didn’t like my cell number for some reason. The help pages are less than helpful and basically just point back to the app and tell you to verify through that, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to see if I can get it to work then. In the meantime, I changed my Meta/Instagram password, figuring someone may have tried to brute-force into my account for some reason; hopefully that doesn’t break their system further.
Wow, this looks pretty cool. DJI is releasing a $200 drone that shoots 4K 30fps video and will fit into a pocket. The DJI Neo is a simplified handheld drone that will follow a set of preprogrammed commands out of the box (follow, hover in place, orbit overhead, and zoom) and then come back to the point of origin to land. If you shell out an extra $129 for a controller you can send it up to six miles away—but you’d probably have to go get it, as that would most likely tap the battery.
Again, I don’t shoot enough to need a drone, but this would be a fun toy to play with for a weekend.
If you’re going to have something stuck in your head, make it a good something. Earlier in life, Bowie was always a complete mystery to me; I love his music, but high school Bill had no entry into what he was singing about or what any of it meant; all I knew was that 70’s Bowie was scary and there was still something strange and mysterious about Let’s Dance-era Bowie. A good song is still a good song, and this one is a banger. Fun fact: Luther Vandross is one of the backing vocalists.
A follow-up to my Lowe’s rant from Friday: I rented a truck from their local store (cheaper than U-Haul) at 6AM with my brother-in-law and loaded it with all the supplies unavailable in Southern Maryland. We drove south and stopped off to pick up a drywall hoist right before the bridge in Solomons, making it to the FiL’s house by 8:30. By 9 we had all the supplies loaded into the garage and got straight to demolition.
What we had to do was pull down and replace 5 sheets of drywall that had gotten water-damaged from a leaky roof. This was complicated by the fact that the garage, while much cleaner than it had been two years ago, was still full of stuff, and that the original drywall on the ceiling was hung with 4×12′ sheets. (I remember seeing 4×12′ drywall sheets years ago at an old-school lumberyard, but not anytime recently). We started in the middle and worked our way to the front, getting three and a half sheets hung by 2PM, then made a dump/lunch run. After eating—and a very well-timed ice cream sold by an honest to god ice cream truck—we got back at it and hung the final two sheets. Then we raced back over the bridge to return the drywall lift before the rental store closed, returned to FiL’s house to replace two sheets on the wall, repaired his overhead shelves, and put everything back in the garage. We hit the road at 7:15 and made it back to Lowe’s by 9:30 to return the truck.
It was a job worth doing, and my BiL was super helpful the whole day, but it absolutely wrecked me. I was pretty useless on Sunday, mainly puttering around the trucks and doing some small jobs in the garage. While the drywall hoist was absolutely the best possible thing we could have rented, all the ladder work and moving stuff from one place to another took its toll on me. I’m glad it was a three-day weekend because if I had to go back to work today, I would have been a zombie.
But the garage should be good for a contractor to come in and install an automatic door and opener, something it’s desperately needed for years now, and it will be useful for tool storage and supplies. And that will unlock the ability to get other things done inside the house, which is also desperately needed.
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?
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.
By all accounts, the recent Jane’s Addiction tour has been canceled after Perry Farrell attacked Dave Navarro in the middle of a song, and had to be dragged off the stage. Reading some first-hand accounts from fans who posted video of that show, the consensus is that the band sounded fantastic but he sounded like shit, was drinking heavily through the whole show, and was dropping verses in the middle of songs. His wife immediately went on social media to attack the band, and today they announced the tour was dead.
Having read about him and his treatment of the rest of the band I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m bummed out for them. I would love nothing more than (and would, frankly, be more interested in) the three musicians touring together with a guest vocalist, just to hear them play live together.
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.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.
Super. Apparently AT&T left all of their customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location data out on a cloud server somewhere, and “criminals” downloaded it. The timespan is from May—October 2022. Guess whose network is AT&T? I submit: the true criminals are the fuckheads at AT&T who continually leave this shit out on cloud servers for anyone to stumble across and download.
Countdown to useless, lawyer-enriching class action lawsuit: 10, 9, 8…
File this under It’s About Fucking Time: the Baltimore County School system will allow cellphone bans in their classrooms starting this coming year. Our daughter wasn’t allowed to bring her phone to school last year for various reasons, but I’ll be glad to have the rest of the students hang theirs up too. I’d link to some of the appropriate local news channels here, but they’re all behind paywalls or not even reporting on this.
