256

Framing myself into a corner

Just trying to figure out how to frame the ductwork monstrosity into a simple but not prone-to-causing-head-injuries soffit. Steel framing really hurts my brain. I'm gonna sit here and eat a hot pocket and draw this.

Summertime

It's summertime and free time is at a premium. Jane still isn't unemployed as scheduled, but CPA cramming has begun. The pool is open and we've been fighting over the AC. The power has been out six times in the last 24 hours (accompanied by transformer booms and other wild electrical sounds) and I haven't made much progress on the basement.

I was able to get the front gutters cleaned, the back gutters fixed, the upstairs faucet fixed and the bathroom door now can close (an increasingly important thing around here). We went to Scott's birthday cookout, dropped in on Chris' birthday at El Vaquero, had a Father's day brunch and finished the day with a picnic at the pool.

Bobby's glad that he doesn't know what day it is, Joey is memorizing jokes, Ellie has to be throttled back on her summer workbook, and Fin walked halfway down the street all by herself without telling anyone she'd left ("I didn't cross the street." she said through tears).

Ahh, summertime.

Good news is that Comfest is coming, and the music schedule is posted.

Weekend

More money is spent. Framing has begun. I've got one and 3/4 walls done at the moment, as I've hit the complex framing around the gas and water meters. It is entirely within reason that the stud walls will be finished next weekend, and then roughing in electric, insulation and finally drywall. 105" diagonal screen here we come.

Head filled with random crap

Four straight hours of play and I'm getting better at FIFA 08. My thumbs are paying the price though.

I'm still not entirely sure how to frame box soffits with steel studs.

Screens are up. Storm windows are put away.

Jane's bike needs one of these, and a more round back wheel.

3 c-forms in a year leads to one very in trouble boy.

The blonde tornado is now down to a 1/2" buzz cut.

The bus has trouble running cold. My first project. Gotta remember how carburetors work.

Crew on top of league. Celtic won and Huns drew, so hope is still alive.

Head exploding with ADD. Gotta do twelve things.

Progress

Here's what we accomplished last evening. Yesterday morning was spent removing the shelves which were on the left.

The saws and WorkMate are in the driveway and Ellie's bugging me to start hammering pieces together.

Basement

Subfloor. It's the beginning.

I sense a great disturbance in the Force

One of the great, immutable Laws of the Universe, upon which I've based much of my sanity, was shattered on Sunday evening. At Colleen and Big Adam's (and Jonas') Superbowl party, my cousin Colleen presented Jane with not one, but two staple guns.

You see, there is a Law of the Universe that I am not allowed to posess a staple gun. (Brian just hit the comment button that his mouse broke). I've owned somewhere in the vacinity of 500 staple guns in my life, but don't have a single one in my house (except the one I borrowed from Brian). They just seem to wander out into the world of their own accord. Over the years, I've come to peace with this, and have neither mourned the loss of staple guns, nor sought for their return.

The return of one of my staple guns, along with the contribution of an additional staple gun has turned the world upside-down. I am now a man rich with staple guns (including those borrowed from others) and deeply tempted to brazenly display my riches.

Good thing that Lent is coming early. Perhaps I'll give up staple guns and return to my state of peace with the world. That, and that Brian should get over here and get his staple gun before the world collapses on itself.

Paintshaver update

Jane and I took out most of the lower half of the weathered side of the house yesterday. The contrast between the failing paint and the relatively thin coat of primer is pretty amazing. We haven't gotten the pump jacks yet, but I did buy an 8' expandable scaffolding stage, which we propped between two sawhorses and two ladders to work on some areas more easily than on a ladder alone. Just to give you an idea of how well this thing is doing, I emptied my 12-gal shopvac three times yesterday (when it was ~3/4 full). There was still a mess to clean up, but I'm guessing that ~90% of what I cut went into the vacuum.

We also tested an area of the shingles on the top of the house. There's much less paint up there, so it cut the paint right away. The shingles are much easier to gouge though.

Much more work in three weeks, when we'll have the ladder jacks and the sprayer.

Four important points about the PaintShaver:

• Don't mess with the Phillips-head screws inside the body. These are to set the depth of the blades at the lead edge of the tool body, and adjust the top-bottom bias of the cut. The blades should be below the body of the tool at the lead edge and cut a backwards-C shape in a piece of scrap wood when properly adjusted. The hex-head adjusting screw adjusts the depth of cut in the C. The vacuum fitting is designed so that the cutter should throw the majority of the waste into the vacuum. Once I got this re-adjusted the tool is noticeably easier to use. (reference photo coming)
• This thing eats blades. If you are buying one for any substantial use, get the extra blades.
• Forget the vacuum hose that comes with the Pro kit, it is too short to be useful. Buy a 1 1/4" ID hose for a pool vacuum. I got a 30' one for ~$35 shipped.
• BE CAREFUL!! I stupidly didn't wait for the blades to spin down all the way before placing my hand over the business-end of the tool to check to see that the vacuum was still sucking and tore the hell out of the meaty part of my thumb. I'm extremely lucky that I didn't have to get stitches or cut through anything important.

ecto says I'm listening to All Neon Like from the album "Bjork & Brodsky Quartet" by Björk

Paintshaver, the test run

If you enlarge the picture you an can see the first section of the house that I stripped with the Paintshaver. This section took ~30min, give or take for adjustment and learning time. I later spent another 30min finishing the courses up to the eaves. It now has oil-based primer on it.
Once I got the Paintshaver dialed in to cut the correct depth, and got a feel for it, this section went pretty quick. I did the higher courses from a utility ladder with a pretty wide stage. The Paintshaver is ideally setup for flat boards, though, and I've got a bit of bowing in the siding here. Some passes just cut a bit, while others cut as intended.

Alia iacta est.

Money has been spent. Equipment has been specified.

I'm going to strip the house down to wood and paint it.

Actually, nature and a new furnace have done some of the work for me. The house probably never had a humidifier inside before, and moisture migrating though the empty wall cavities has been causing the paint to simply fall off in chunks. The foam insulation that we had put in earlier this year now acts as a vapor barrier, preventing the moisture from moving though the walls, but the damage is done.

The plan so far is to use the Paint Shaver to remove, and vacuum up all of the paint. Then we finish sand out the gouges from the paint shaver, then spray oil-based primer, then two coats of gloss latex topcoat.

Piece of cake, right?

ecto says I'm listening to Southern Band from the album "SXSW 2007 Showcasing Artists" by Bang Bang Bang

Lazy Sunday

I play soccer with Shun and Neyssa at 5PM on Sundays, so I'm trying to take it easy so as to not show up for the game all looagy and overfed. Jane and 2-4 are at the zoo while Bobby and I laze around and watch the first topcoat of paint on the gutter of shame dry. The gutter, which runs the entire length of the front of our house, and is both badly hung and served by an undersized downspout, is very high on the list of things that we need to replace.

It isn't, however anywhere near as high as washing the black mildew off of the shady parts of the siding and sealing and painting the holes from the foam insulation that we had installed earlier this year.

The gutter screamed to the forefront though by deciding to throw large chunks of paint off and look like complete crap. Last weekend I scraped it clean and stripped what little paint was still sticking with a torch. Metal primer and a few coats of bright white and it's the prettiest thing on the house.

Much later in the day now. Message from the zoo people below the fold, be sure to check for major existential clarification by Joey.

It's Feburary....

...and we're clinging to the shreds of our SAD-reduced sanity. There's no narrative here, only bullet points.

• Fin was almost potty trained.
• Fin is on a potty training strike.
• When told what to do, Fin simply responds "no." and goes on with what she's doing.
• Fin does not want to be a big girl, she is content being a baby.
• Fin is two. She points this out, rather loudly any time anyone within earshot is having a discussion about numbers.
• Our house is insulated, and no longer freezing. This is a good thing, but does not bring the hours of daylight that we are so desperately missing.
• I have a MacBook.
• Jane has an iPod.
• I am occasionally allowed to use the iPod, as mine remains broken.
• Ellie uses it the rest of the time.
• It is the height of tax season, therefore not a good time for Jane to miss a lot of work.
• Jane has missed a lot of work, as the schools have been closed quite a bit.
• In addition to work, Jane is doing freelance tax work.
• Jane also volunteered to be part of a group project at preschool that requires hours of sewing.
• We're not discussing it.
• I can cover roughly 2.5mi in 30min on the treadmill.
• I almost die in the process. Numerous times.
• I'm not doing this enough.
• Soccer is on Wednesday nights. Good thing I'm impervious to embarrassment.
• The kids are stir-crazy.
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip sucks.
• Lost is really uninspiring.
• Heroes is wandering all over the place.
• Re-mastered and effects-enhanced Star Trek (TOS) are the favorite weekly show around here.
• CSS makes my brain hurt.
• I have no time to even imagine a re-deisgn for the blog.
• I spent ~4 hours on that on Sunday.
• February sucks.

2007

More Pictures: Not faster (the photo at left is from August), just more
More blogging: The goal was every day, but I've already blown that by missing yesterday.
Less Me: Going to be playing soccer, if anyone will have me, running and eating a little better.
More books: Better to go to sleep dreaming of Discworld than stewing about work.
More projects: Got tools. Got ideas. Need time.
More organization: Make it work better at work. Start it at home.

Free Lustron houses

Here's just a little window into my particular insanity:
This Treehugger entry set the whole thing off. It seems that the Department of the Navy is giving away 58 of the 60 Lustron homes on Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.

Sane people, if they even know what a Lustron house is, think "Ah. Interesting." and move on.

Not me. First, after sizing up my backyard, I start to think of people I know who have lots of land. Maybe it would make a nice guest house for someone. The link haunts me. I look up the Wikipedia entry. I look at enthusiast sites.

Nevermind that each Lustron house was delivered from the factory in a custom-designed semi trailer.

I put in a reservation at the library for the Lustron documentary. I plot out a trip to see the Lustron homes in my neighborhood. I look up Lustron tagged pictures on Flickr.

There are many reasons I'm not allowed to carry the checkbook. This is only one.....

Housecleaning, from Jane

Cleaning the house has been a constant battle around here, as you'd might expect. Jane and I have struggled mightily against our tendency to be "binge cleaners" that only make the house presentable before company comes, or when it gets so bad that we can't actually walk through most rooms.

Recently we've managed to get close to a maintenance level around here, and with Fin's lessening needs to walk around dumping everything she can find onto the floor we're in a pretty good place.
Nevertheless, we've been looking for tips and hints to manage a house with six slobs and thirty thousand Legos.
Now, understanding that, I've been trying really hard in the last few months to like the ParentHacks blog. It is an interesting site, fluctuating wildly between useful tips and discussions, and amazingly oblivious "hints" from the $800 stroller, disposable-everything, kids as excuse for wretched-excess crowd. Most of the posts are redeemed by the discussions in the comments.

Thursday, ParentHacks had a somewhat innocuous post about cleaning habits that ended with a link to this RealSimple article. Being a smartass, and knowing how RealSimple sets Jane off, I immediately emailed her the link. Once she was convinced that I was kidding by sending it to her she send me the following email she sent to her friends

Good news, and bad news

As you can see, the bath tub is done. Proper cement backerboard has been installed and tiles have been re-attached with proper thinset mortar. The whole thing has been re-grouted and all is well. Maybe now the plaster ceiling in our dining room will stop dropping chunks of paint. As you can also see, Jane wrecked her car today. Thankfully, everyone is okay. Joey got a bit knocked around by the impact, but was given a clean bill of health by the paramedics. He's been burping as loud as he can all afternoon, so we figure he's okay.

Oh Crap!

As I told Molly earlier tonight: If I find any of you attaching tile, especially tile in a bathroom, directly to plaster, I'll kill you where you stand.

This project started out, as a plan to re-grout the shower. I figured that there was a chance that some tiles would pop off, but I didn't figure that it would be this bad. The plaster, in some places was the consistency of cake frosting, and the oak lathe boards under the plaster are rotten, but it looks much worse than it actually is.

Hopefully, with some carefully applied bracing and cement backerboard, we'll be up and going in a day or two.

Thought I was gone, didn't you?

Nope, just flipping busy. Four kids, demanding end-of-fiscal at work, Jane in class four nights a week, and coaching soccer two of those.

Just a little busy.

Soccer is over, as the year at work so, we can breathe a bit now, at least for a few minutes before we host Thanksgiving two days after Ellie's birthday.

More, with pictures after the fold.

Jane says, "You'll have to buy more than one can of beer."

Bernie at IrishEyes found a nice howto for making moss graffiti. This seems much more fun than buying cheap beer to kill slugs for Jane, mainly because Bernie suggests using Guinness to feed the moss.

Now all I've got to do is find a place on my house to paint my moss. Maybe I'll do the house number on the porch steps. This should go along with my bizarre plan for a roof garden on the portion of our roof over the porch which I got from this month's This Old House.

ecto says I'm listening to Friend of the Devil - Lyle Lovett from the album "Deadicated" by Various Artists

Technorati Tags: 256, guinness, irisheyes, moss

Busy, in pictures.

....As if four kids isn't enough:

We lead tonight with the basement, otherwise known as Planet eBay. I've been photographing, describing, and shipping my crap out to make room for the eventual family room/home theater project. As you can see, I've got my work cut out for me.

Not tonight

Might have posted tonight, but I replaced my neighbor's sump pump instead.

ecto says I'm listening to No Myth from the album "March" by Michael Penn

Dammit! Two weeks again!

We'll just make a list. The following kept me from posting in the last two weeks:

Not completely gone

Just busy again, as if I didn't expect it.

Thursday we had a conference with Bobby's first grade teacher, who had mostly glowing things to say about our little ball of weirdness. One thing that caught my attention was that Bobby has a rather hard time writing in his journal. It seems that he spends so much time thinking out what he's going to write that he never gets much written.

Bobby subscribes to the secret O'Shaughnessy Motto, "If you can't do it perfectly. Don't do it." This sounds sounds nice to the glass-half-full types, but I can tell you, it leads to a whole lot of "Don't do it." because the bar for perfectly is set very high.

In other news, we spent most of the week after the election playing round-robin stomach flu. The high point of the season was arguing with Ellie over my refusal to give her any food, lest she throw it right back up. Ellie, despite losing the ability to keep food in her stomach had not lost her appetite. After repeatedly explaining to her that if she ate the Macaroni and Cheese she wanted, she would barf, she looked me straight in the eye, pointed at the microwave (where she thought that the unfinished serving of mac&cheese she'd left on the table after throwing up the day before was still located), nodded and said "Mm, hm. I eat macie cheese. I barf."

Last week, everyone survived me going back to work. Thankfully life minus MBA Program, minus Accounting classes, minus pregnancy, minus 2 soccer teams, plus baby comes out somewhat positive. Fin weighs in at well over 12lbs. now, and grunts a lot.

Today, we finally got to the leaf pile, much to the relief of the neighbors, I'm sure. We got the entirety of the old oak's leave this year, and as you can see the boys had plenty of fun with them. While I was quite content to leave them out and let them blow into anal-retentive-yard-guy's front yard, Jane was starting to get nervous. In a new twist this year, we borrowed an old (read, insanely unsafe) chipper-shredder from a neighbor and managed to plow the leaves down to nine bags and three trashcans. It was quite nice to spend the day using the 5hp death machine. I even managed to fix it to make it run a bit better. Jane contributed to the mood by declaring something called "Just call me a woman, but.." and asked if it would have just been easier to bag all of the leaves without the machine, and buying gas, and getting it running, and the mess and the noise and so on.

She didn't like the leaf pile either.

And finally, Joey is now four, which means that:
Joey will buckle himself up.
Joey will wipe his own butt after using the toilet, instead of laying on the floor and yelling for help (without any warning, mind you, which has lead on a number of occasions to Joey falling asleep on the bathroom floor waiting for assistance).
Joey got to see The Incredibles, which was awesome. During the scene where Dash finally gets to use his powers, Joey, Bobby and Adam were all on the edges of their seats yelling and cheering. We must see it again, and again.

Okay, enough for now, I'm going to bed. After spending last night in three beds (mine, Ellie's and Joey's) I'm hoping for a peaceful night.

ecto says I'm listening to Prayers For Rain from the album "Disintegration" by The Cure

DAMMIT!!

Why does my asshat neighbor have to FUCKING BLOW DRY HIS LAWN WITH A TWO STROKE MOTOR (think a chainsaw, but louder, and constant) every damn time he mows his lawn. You know if he was primping his lawn to move, I'd have no problem, but this weird sort of vanity is normal for him.

Oh, well, more slugs and dead mice over the fence to him......

ecto says I'm listening to Round Song from the album Luxor by Robyn Hitchcock

Breakfast Nook Pictures

As promised. Jane's wonderful paint job on the breakfast nook, with a shot of her desk and the cupboards above. Soon, the rest of the kitchen, but not this weekend.

ecto says I'm listening to Clean Steve from the album Eye by Robyn Hitchcock

Good sharp tools

It happened far too slowly to notice, but my three-year-old reel mower had become as dull as a bowling ball. I was ripping grass instead of cutting it and working far harder than I needed and having the thing choke and jam up on my lawn.

What an amazing differenece today when I brought the mower home from the shop with a razor sharp blade and mowed the very long back yard with little effort.

Damn, sharp tools are the best.

Last fall, after a few attempts to sharpen the thing myself, by running it backwards while coated with valve grinding paste, I headed to the internet to look for a guide on how to sharpen reel mower blades. I found this page, a wonderful discussion of the One True Way of sharpening reel mowers. I came back a few times to find out the questions I needed to ask to find someone with the tools to do the job right. After about the fourth time, I finally noticed that the guy who made the page was local!

I finally took the mower to him last week and what I got back was amazing. This thing just slices through the lawn like it never has before. Good thing too, as I should be mowing twice a week, now that we're in monsoon season.

Our Tree

Before:

After:

This is our new Saucer Magnolia from Oakland Nursery here in Columbus. It is the only tree on our property, hopefully the first of many.

Sadly, planting the tree did nothing to alleviate the current placenta glut in our chest freezer. Jane suggests that we have a midnight ceremony with the garden out back...

Revelation

Interesting discovery this morning: There is absolutely nothing for me to do in the morning when the power is out.

In the words of my wise father, "At least the toilets don't run on electricity."

Our Neighbors Love Us

That is if by love you mean that our unmowed backyard, littered with kids toys and now featuring a wonderful redwood fort/swingset, meshes beautifully with their bamboo, raked gravel, arched bridge, fountains, concrete Michaelangelo's David and meditation gong that they decided this morning to extend the seven foot high privacy fence all the way to the back of the yard without saying a word to us. Interestingly, this comes a mere two weeks since I re-assembled the fort right next to the non-privacy section of their fence.

To provide a contrast, the fort came from the best neighbor in the whole damned world, who lives on the other side of our house.

Okay, Okay

But Ellie would like to remind you that you are taking valuable Daddy time away from her, and she'll make you pay, somehow.......

I'll quickly wrap up the last week or so:

Whoa!!!

Snowball's blog got a great re-design by CSS goddess Colleen. Take a look, and say, "Hey! That looks nothing like a TypePad site!"

Kinda reminds me that a redesign is in my future.......as soon as the playfort is built, I build screens for the front windows, I build Jane her home theater in the basement, I rebuild the engine I've got in the garage for the camper, and some other crap.

Hmmmmm, Maybe I'll just farm it out to Mark.

ecto says I'm listening to The Acoustic Motorbike from the album The Acoustic Motorbike by Luka Bloom

Ug, sick

Well, I was sick, so was Bobby. Kept us up all night Saturday, and knocked out all day Sunday. By association, it also knocked Jane out, as she spent Saturday night taking care of the two of us.

I've made it to work, although my internal thermostat is all wacked out.

On Saturday though, we got a good start on building the fortress of solitude in the weirdo closet/room upstairs. The lighting and storage thingies Bobby and I bought Saturday afternoon sit waiting for us.

WHOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!

It's official!! The original Star Wars trilogy is set for release September 21. In addition to not having to shop much for Jane's Birthday, it looks like we'll need to speed up the plans for the home theater.

Rambling update

This three nights of school a week thing is starting to get to me, and I get the easy part (staying home with the kids).

It is Thursday night, the first night that Jane is home all week, and we managed to get some things finished. For instance, Ellie has a door on her room. This should make naps and other assorted sleeping tasks much easier. The closet door is still in progress, but well on its way.

Bobby is finishing out his week as "Very Special Friend" at school tomorrow. I, through some miracle of scheduling, am going to join him for lunch. He isn't terribly enthused. He is taking his talking Anakin Lightsaber, his Transformers Energon Star Saber and, I believe a book to be named later to show off as his most prized possessions.

My SIM chips from Cingular finally showed up, and they are sitting in our unlocked phones right now, waiting for Cingular's network to find them. I stayed on the phone for ~40min with them while the guy and his supervisor tried to figure out a cryptic message on their screens. Par for the course for me, as I'm deeply cursed with any sort of customer service, and had packed Ellie in the sling to walk her to sleep while I was on the phone. Nice guy though! He was surprised that I hung on so long and gave me a free month of service for my patience. I hope this bodes well, but I'm not overly worried as I don't have to sign a contract with them.

Heading off to bed, which should be nice, as I'm not nursing the beginnings of a stress migraine as I was last night. Not to break my first rule and talk about work, but I went in after somehow managing to sleep that migraine off, ready to kill or quit, and left in high spirits.

ecto says I'm listening to Get Behind The Mule from the album Mule Variations by Tom Waits

Sunday

Semi-productive today:

First coat of polyurethane on Ellie's door. Hope to have it up tonight. May she nap in peace. (Right now, she's in our bed though....)

Getting ready to shut the power off to replace the kitchen light fixtures. Not buying new ones at the moment, just using the old ones from the living room and our bedroom where we put fans. Going to put one in Ellie's room too, as I broke the globe on hers putting the storm windows in.

More later. Finished level two on Simpsons Hit and Run. I'm going to have to look for some easy, two-player, E-Rated games for they boys to play together. I think that Joey is feeling left out. Snowball mentions Tak and the Power of Juju which seems interesting.

In booty news, Joey's booty is better, so much so he whipped it out for a good shake yesterday when Shun visited. Whapo! Straight to the corner.

ecto says I'm listening to Indian Summer Sky from the album The Unforgettable Fire by U2

Mmmm Bluetooth streaming audio....

Via MacCentral: XtremeMac has announced a Bluetooth streaming audio doodad. Now your docked iPod (or hopefully your iTunes-equipped mac) can stream audio over Bluetooth to another device, like a home stereo.

More microwaves for my house

Holiday overload

That about sums it up. This was, by the way the twisties from just two Rescue Heroes figures. There are millions of people in third-world toy factories fully employed twist-tying toys into plastic. Man, they don't package things like they used to!

Well, most everything is over. The last task of the holidays is to take the next five days that I have off of work to wean Ellie from nighttime nursing. That means that I get to wake up and soothe her back to sleep, and that I should be putting her to sleep. I usually do that in the sling, but my back is killing me right now, so I'm doing Joey duty, lying in the bottom bunk with Jane's iBook while Duncan crams his way between us and Bobby snores above.

The previous week was great.

The Farnsworth House is saved with the help of NPR

The National Trust for Historic Preservation managed to purchase Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in Illinois. According to this Washington Post story they didn't have enough money to pull it off on the morning of the auction, but someone who heard this Morning Edition story kicked in enough money to pull them over the edge.

Looks like I've got another landmark on my list of things to see.

Issue 78, in which Molly talks smack and Jane and Dave Barry find a link for Snowball

Rather than waste my time reading Dave Barry's weblog, I let Jane read it. It helps keep up my reputation as a ruthlessly efficient person who doesn't spend time diddling around on the compu.......... oh, wait a minute.

Either how, Jane just jumped on my computer and brought up this page. It reminded me instantly of Snowballs's post about ugly Christmas light displays. I think that we should all contribute to both Santa and Snowball's quest for the ugliest display.

In related Christmas light news, Molly, who is not flying in from Oakland this year to set up my parents' lights at 279 decided to talk a little smack about both my weblog and my house:

From: Molly O'Shaughnessy
Subject: lights
Date: December 12, 2003 12:41:54 AM EST
To: bob

and you talk trash about my lights. put these up on your blog and let your 2 readers vote. tie-breaker: we made our own wreath. did you make your own wreath? HA!

Okay, here is Molly's house (and wreath), it is a little blurry because of an earthquake out there in Oakland, or maybe she's shivering in the 60 degree weather, or maybe she's shaking after braving the steep heights of her roof......

Christmas Lights

Not bad for ~$10 of lights from Home Depot. The key, you see, is to buy them from the clearance rack in early January.

I wonder how things look in Oakland?

Too busy to blog

Quickly:

It is nice out, therefore I must rake leaves, wash the cars and clean out my car.

Ellie is one, as of yesterday. Pictures soon. Can't believe it's been a year.

Only one trip to the ER since last entry. I'm never allowed to leave town again.

Details of airport experience coming.

Howto on iTunes playlist -> TypeList coming soon.

Found an RSS aggregator for my Clié. Post coming.

Thanksgiving dinner at 279 is no longer going to be soup and pizza. Darn.

Bobby has been playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater4. He's walking around singing AC/DC's "TNT" all day now.

Weekend victories

Well, the new furnace comes on Monday, so we spent most of the weekend turning our disaster area of a basement into a workable space for the installers. We are having the new furnace installed in a different location so that we can build the home theater/family room in the front of the basement. In order to do this they'll have to re-do all the ducting, which should cover our semi-clean basement in a fine layer of dust. I'm closing off the night by draping all of my computer equipment with sheets.
All told, we nearly filled our trash can (which sucks, as we forgot to take it to the curb on Friday), took two recycling runs, nearly broke the shredder, and will have made two runs to COSI's Gadget Cafe.
Surprisingly, we were pretty much done by the end of the day on Saturday, so I got to go out and fill eight leaf bags from our front yard. Nice exercise if you can get it.
You'll also note from the photo above. Joey is not wearing a Batman outfit. This is the first day for maybe two months. Tonight he's sleeping in normal jammies, albeit the ones he refers to as the "Green Goblin" jammies.

Bat Update

Found at least one.

UPDATE: I'm a dumbass (not news to most of you). Link fixed.

Where the hell are my bats?

Confirming what everyone in the area already knows, local health officials report that the mosquito population is 50 to 100 times what it should be.
For all the care we take to keep unneeded chemicals away from members of this family, I'm ready to bomb the neighborhood with pesticides. The kids got eaten alive over the weekend, and we haven't let them out since. I had to kill five mosquitos in my car before driving to work, and looking out over the yard at 8:30am, with dew still on the windshield, I could see tons of 'em flying around.
As soon as they are gone, my bat box project goes into full swing. In the mean time, I might take up smoking.

A little work on 256

The house, not the weblog.

Yesterday, semi-urgent plumbing, as the cold water knob on the shower only would let a trickle out. This made showers not very fun. Quick trip to Schriener's Hardware on campus and about 5 minutes of work and we're all set.

Today, finishing Ellie's doors. The room is done with the notable exception of refurbishing the windows, which is a longer term project, and touching up the ceiling where the water came in.

Which leads to the next part of today's work: Roof forensics. During the last few weeks of Biblical-proportion precipitation we discovered a few weaknesses in our two-year-old roof. Seems that the flashing around the kitchen stack is leaking (that's what went into Ellie's room) and there is a mysterious leak in the large dormer over our bedroom. It is streaming down a beam, so I can't catch it in basin like I did with Ellie's leak, and there isn't an obvious source. Might have to find a pro on this.

The last part of the day is beginning to clean the garage. Getting the doors out and Dad's huge ladder will be a great start, but I've also got two VW Diesel engines to deal with and a closet-sized steel cabinet.

More later, with photos maybe.

There were signs of a struggle

This was the result of "playing HotWheels"
We really mess with the neighbors' Feng Shui.

That's why there are professionals

Well the electrician was out this morning, and much to my relief, I was wrong in my diagnosis. Strange though. He said everything was okay, but listened to me enough to run down my troubleshooting steps with me. What I'd done was measure current from the ground in the light switch box to a floor fan that was plugged in in the hall. I got 120v, but thought it was coming from the switch.
It was coming from the fan.
It seems that Jane was close enough (or touching the fan) and it shorted through her to the switch box.
As it turns out, the circuit that was in the hall was shorted out and had power through the ground. It seems that the light switch in the bathroom had a little clip come loose and short the box to the hot screw on the switch. It had probably been there for years. Montgommery's soloution was to put tape over the screws on the light switch plate, probably because he zapped himself in the bathtub.
Oh well. That's $86 well spent. Now I've got to ground that circuit out properly.

Ug

What a weekend. First, five hours round trip in the car to go to the Ziegler picnic. Not bad by itself, but it set a nice foundation for the rest of the weekend. We got to see nearly everyone we wanted, took some pictures which I'll post as soon as I can get to my computer (more later)
Sunday started out nicely. I got to sleep in with Ellie till nearly ten. We didn't plan to do much during the day and pretty much lived up to that plan. Early in the afternoon though Jane screamed from upstairs, not the usual 'Ellie bit me' or 'Ellie just knocked skulls with me' scream either. Seems that she had gone to turn up the ceiling fan that we just put in our bedroom and took a huge jolt from the switch plate.
I shut off the circuit and tested it (in the process blowing apart my cheap voltage meter and having to buy a new one) and sure enough, there was 120v coursing through the box and the the plate. Somewere in my wonderful 85-year old wiring a little piece of wire that is supposed to be insulated is touching the metal jacket that contains it.
Sadly, we're way past my level of expertise here and we've got to call a pro. The other fun part is that that circuit has our TV, our living room, our porch and all of my computers and network stuff on it. So I'm posting this morning from Jane's iBook on dialup.

More later....