Ramblings of a Martian

We filled out the online refi application with becu tonight. Submitted it. And got back an approval in less than 2 minutes. Freaky.

So. Today was spent installing the new disposal. Too many trips to the hardware store. Too much stress and strain and swearing. But it's in. dishwasher is running. sink drains well. Nothing leaks except the faucet, which we'll look at replacing tomorrow.

Still unaccomplished:

• Reinstalling windows on Rukbat for lunar__angel (4 weeks overdue?).
• Reinstalling linux on Rigel (I'm thinking Ubuntu Edgy Eft) (1.5 years overdue).
• Upgrading mysql on Vodopan (I'm thinking perhaps switching vode to Edgy as well, as gentoo's frustrating me a little in terms of getting mysql 5 out of ~x86) (6 months overdue).
• Finish hooking up the A/V equipment in the new entertainment center, including rehanging all the speakers (1 week overdue).
• Cleaning the library, including reorganizing the bookshelves (several years overdue).
• Cleaning the bunker. Again. (always overdue)
• Burning the house down (7 years overdue).
• Killing the entire human species, en mass (16 years overdue).

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucking fucked fuck.

The toilet isn't draining properly. I plunged it, still no joy.

Hm. Ok, no, it's draining, just REALLY SLOWLY.

Go downstairs to listen to the pipe, see if I can hear where it's clogged.

Oh.

There's a puddle, about 7" deep at the back wall (there's a sudden slope), extending about 10' out, into the piles of laundry. Thankfully, the laundry is mostly in baskets. Thankfully, the water is clear, except for the floor detritus floating in it. Unfortunately, the sump pump drains into the sink, which is not draining, so much as leaking onto the floor.

Shit.

loree and I are going to the Monaco for the night, what with the enjoying going to the bathroom and all.

I'm glad I didn't buy the RAID yet...

The home improvement run continues. Statewide is doing a thing this month wherein they're giving a special discount on any window contracts signed before the end of the year. So Gavin came out again tonight, priced out the windows in the bunker (which we've long since decided was the next phase of window replacement), and gave us a new estimate. Between the $458 extra off for doing it now and the various other discounts he's already put together for us brought the total price down from $11+k to $7,888 after taxes. A total of 8 windows in 6 openings, including uncovering the window in the north wall that some previous owner covered over (really. from outside you can see the window, and thru it to the inside of the wall.). Two solid windows for the little openings, two double hungs, and two twin double hungs (two windows in a single large opening, like we have in the sunroom).

So this will be a very good thing. Should take care of a lot of the thermal problems in my office, and make it possible to move the servers up there (as soon as we take care of the electrical problem). And hopefully I can throw the next round of stock options vests at it pretty hard. 10 year financing is nice on the monthly payments, but paying them off will make it easier to do round three (I'm quite keen to get the bedrooms done next). Or we could start looking at redoing the roof (which desperately needs it, and the estimate we got for it would include recreating the original roofline on the existing structure, which should seriously help the house's value). I'm thinking new front/back doors are next, tho. Desperately need them.

So, people showed up (thanks kerri_tgrl, evildave, cow, and ron!) and we got started around 3, finished a bit after 4. Some cleanup work left to be done, but it should be good enough for the permits.

Loree didn't let me help much, but I still hurt a lot.

So, the guy from Jorve came back to talk to us, with a proposal. They can't do metal at all, no way, he talked to three guys. But, they can fix the roofline on the dormer, restore the kneebraces along the front, replace the three-tab with a new 50-year composite, etc etc blah blah, for about $25k. Which is a lot better than I was expecting. We can afford it, but we've decided not to. We'll pay for the hot tub work as soon as possible, pay off the joint credit card, then focus on saving up for the gazebo and throwing money towards the windows as convenient. Then do the roof next year.

So, Sedna's keyboard started getting weirder and weirder. Up, Right, Backtick, and F12 aren't performing their designated funtions.. they're acting like I hit an entire COLUMN of keys at once.. frex, ` gives me F2, 2, W, S, X, Command. So, uh.. yeah. I took her back to the genius bar. The guy tried booting off their harddrive, to see if it was a software problem (I'd already verified it wasn't, but sure). So, he can either order a new keyboard, and when it arrives we try it and see if that's the problem - but if it's the logic board, we get to wait again - OR we can send it in and let the repair folks fix it. The turnaround on sending it in is likely faster than ordering parts into the store... and I /can/ live without her for a while.. so, fine. Send it in. $310 in free warranty service, whee. 5-10 business days (it's frequently been less, but he can't promise anything better). so, I'll miss her, but hopefully she will come back happy and ready to work.

Meanwhile, I picked up an Airport card for Cygnus (the mac Cube). She liked it. Of course, she still doesn't have a working CD drive, so I gotta do something about that. I'm thinking of buying an omnidrive (read/write cd and all dvd formats).. somebody sells one made for the cube for $350ish. Dunno if I really need to write DVDs on the cube tho (how many machines do I /need/ to be able to write DVDs from?). I just need to be able to, say, install Panther (Cygnus has Jaguar right now).

In other news, we reinstalled two of the air conditioners. I'm upstairs in my office /right now/. That's right, 6pm at night, and the upstairs is habitable! I'm actually a little chilly, 'cause the AC is in this room, and I'm not fully dressed. It's right around 70 in here, as opposed to the high-80s/low-90s it's been getting to.

Doing phase two of the windows will help a lot on the heat problem up here (phase two being all the windows in my office, along the front of the house), but the AC is battling successfully for now. We might need to add the windows in my guest room (south wall) to phase two, to really take care of the thermal issues up here, but we'll see. The Gazebo Issue is looking up, and we're not expecting it to cost as much as I'd feared, so we might be able to afford phase two this summer.

On the other hand (as the lights flicker from the AC kicking on), we might want to throw that money into redoing the electrical system. We need to do that anyway, since we want to move the server room upstairs (from the dining room into my office) eventually, and the electrical system just /will not/ support that. The UPSes are the only reason the AC doesn't pop the breaker every time it kicks on, and adding another UPS to the mix with a dozen computers on it is not my idea of a good plan.

Anyway...

We got our new windows. They're very nice. I took pictures while they were installing. We got rid of the crappy cheap warping casements and got twin double-hungs in both openings. PLUS, they created proper sills and framed them out VERY nicely to match the rest of the house. All we have to do is paint them and they'll be totally faboo.

Sunday, I woke up a bit after 7. First in the house. Mucked around online, played some xbox, then around 1130 or so loree and dana were awake enough to go to brunch. We went to Alki, of course. Then loree and I went to look at open houses, then to fry's.

There's a new house a block away from us. 3500 sqft, 2 months old, central vac, 3car garage, security system, intercoms, two floors, sound views, nice landscaping... Really nice. $600k? There abouts.

Then there was the 5000sqft on caphill. $900k, three floors plus basement, not much lawn, nowhere to put the hot tub except on top of the garage. but really very nice. Good location too. It'd be great for two or three couples.

Then there was the ex-garage for the giant grey tudor on aloha. The garage lot was separated in the 80s, and turned into a house. The location is wonderful, the yard is PERFECT - has a great place for a hot tub.. with a hot tub already in it - but the house is about half as big as we'd need. Loree commented that, if she decided to leave me, it'd be perfect.


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Today started really sucky, but got better. I had to reboot my work machine 5 times in the first hour. I think that's a personal record.

Dinner palns got scrubbed, came home and installed a remote-controlled deadbolt on the back door. It works! Then checked my tax paperwork... turns out I made $145,111 from amazon last year. I think I'll stop complaining about the $5k pay cut for a few days.

Then the DSS reciever screwed up in the middle of west wing again. Need to call and yell at them about that.


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