Official-ness

Erin's Moving Day!
Originally uploaded by davem.com

Well, it's official, Erin lives with me now. w00t!

We managed to get our U-Haul from one of the most unorganized and dirtiest hardware stores in Ravenna, just barely got the U-Haul filled (see the photo!!), dodged a bit of snow, unloaded in the rain, and managed to get everything done in one day.

Still a bit of unpacking to do, but she's settling in now. What's next? Just wait and see ;-)

It's Fancy Feast Time!

Holy poop, YouTube!

Fun at home before NYE... oh how those cats hate me.

Nice.

See the middle finger in this one? Classic.





What you're seeing are pictures of the contents of two boxes that were in my garage. There are three boxes. None of them are in my garage at this moment. My ex-roommate took them when moving out of my house. The story this person maintains is that I gave permission to use my boxes for moving. Sure I did - empty boxes! And several empty boxes were taken and used.

But, these three boxes had the contents of my CD collection. Looks like this person placed some of their stuff at the top of these boxes so I can't see if my CDs are even still in there or not. Maybe they've been pawned already. The good thing is that I have a database of ALL of my CDs. I know what I lost. These pictures came to me from the ex-roommate this evening via cell picture message.

Today's episode brought to you by Crazy-Os. Get your free DSM-IV decoder ring in specially marked boxes!

Boxes

Why are these boxes in Bonney Lake and not in my garage? Hrm...







I'm beside myself with frustration.

The Two Month Nightmare is Over

The bunny boiler has left the building. The locks have been changed. Today is a happy day.

Of course, no story like this would be complete without a picture of a present that was left for me on my bedroom floor by this person. Totally awesome. Yes, that's moldy chinese food.

In other news, Erin got herself an iPhone. I was on hand last night to witness the occasion. There is picture proof, too, here and here.

A recipe

Two windows left wide open all day + heat cranked all the way up in that room = me having a justified feeling for having issued a 20-day tenancy termination, and now a little more justified for having issued a 3-day pay-or-vacate notice.

I fucking love this bullshit!

What. A. Year.

Well, folks, this has been quite the year. Let's take a little trip down memory lane...

January: Celebrated 6 years with my then girlfriend in Victoria. Watched her leave for India for 6 weeks before I left for India, myself. Started building a friendship with someone who was, at that point, only an acquaintance.

February: Left for India at the beginning of the month for four weeks in Bangalore for work.

March: Returned from India to a life that had changed a bit. Started socializing more with friends. Had a very fun and interesting welcome back party. Continued building friendship with the person who used to be an acquaintance.

April: Ended my six year relationship with my girlfriend. Road trip to Vegas with a friend, and on the return, San Francisco. Start friendships with several people and become part of a new circle of friends.

May: Started seeing someone I knew in high school. This did not last for long (see below).

June: The fit hits the shan and thus begins the worst summer of my life.

July: Yup, the fit's still in the shan and summer still sucks, but I took a motorcycle training course and I bought a motorcycle. Woo!!!!

August: The fit's no longer on the shan. I take a deep breath and life starts to simmer down. I turn 28. I take another road trip with a different friend - this time to LA to see the Price is Right, and through the Bay area. One of the best road trips ever! I got to go to Disneyland!!!! For the first time!!!!!

September: A minor crisis averted. And a long motorcycle trip around the Olympics.

October: Nothing much to report here. Did go to Oregon Trail Rally near Tillamook, Oregon.

November: Nothing much to report here. Did go to the Seattle International Autoshow.

December: Wild West Rally at the beginning of the month. Then, a trip to Connecticut to see my grandmother, whose health had been progressively getting worse. Then back home for a week, and then back to Connecticut for her funeral. Happy Holidays, yo!

A very eventful year. Ups and downs. But through it all, my friends have been there and I end the year with more friends than when I started. I love my friends. Being 3000 miles away from my real family, my friends ARE my family.

Going back to CT

My grandmother died today. I'm going back to CT for the wake and funeral as soon as I find out the dates for them.

Oh yeah, today really is a shitty day. There was a huge windstorm in Seattle last night - no power at my house right now. This means I get to stay in a hotel tonight because I have to have Internet access for work. I'm on-call. Fucking great.

Let the moving begin...

Signed the lease for the new place today. Great, it's time to be REALLY broke now. We'll muddle through it. North Seattle just doesn't hold the appeal it once did, though.

Now comes the sorting, discarding, and packing. When Nicole and I moved into this place, we didn't really do much picking and choosing about what we brought. We were moving in together for the first time. We'd been living together, but she was living with my stuff. Now we get the ability to take stock of everything we have, bicker over what to keep, and then hopefully pare down what we bring into the new place. So far so good. We've got a growing pile of donatables in the garage.

I hate moving. But I like getting rid of stuff I have no need for.

Stupid lawnmower.

Mowed the front lawn the other day. Lawnmower ran OK. Not great, but OK. It only stalled once.

Next day, went to mow the back lawn and the damn thing won't run past what gas it's been primed with. Tried a new spark plug - it starts a lot easier now, but still won't continue to run after what's in its primer.

So, I drained the gas tank and checked to see if there were any blockages in the fuel line. Not as far as I can tell. Must be somewhere else. Not sure where, though. Air filter's a mess, but even without the air filter, the mower dies quickly.

This mower's in need of some work which I am ill-equipped to perform. Looks like I'll have to find someone to fix it for me. I'm no small engine genius... I work on cornputers all day long, dagnabit!

In other news, looks like Nicole and I have a fix on a new house in South Seattle. After the rash of arsons in the neighborhood (9 in the past two nights) we're quite anxious to move.

Hot in Herre, yo.

The spelling is intentional, for those of you hip kids who are up to date with the "lingo."

It's currently 93.5 degrees F in my living room. Yup, that's hot. It was so hot today that I didn't say no when Nicole asked for a ride to work. It's worth it to be in the air conditioned car for an hour or so. The heat's good for ya, right? Helps ya sweat out all the bad stuff? Hrm, I hope so. About an hour ago, I was very close to breaking down and purchasing an A/C unit.

Work's kicking my ass. This job is pretty tough, but I'm learning, and slowly but surely getting the hang of things. A co-worker of mine has mentioned a few times how just when he thought he was getting the hang of things, something hit him upside the head and put him back into a state of confusion. This is happening quite frequently with me. The amount of knowledge I'm gaining is good, though. It feels like when I first started at N2H2 - learning Linux administration, TCP/IP networking, Web technologies. Now, it's RADIUS, SSL, and Windows administration. I did some Windows administration in a lab environment over at N2H2, but now I'm doing a lot more and needing to know a lot more..

It's gotten to the point where I broke down and bought a PC for the house. It'll eventually do double-duty in Nicole's MAME cabinet, but for now it's my XP client for a Win2K domain I set up with 2K Server and Virtual PC for Mac. Gonna have to bone up on group policy, Dfs, ADSIedit, and a whole lot more.

So there you have it. It's hot in Seattle, and will be tomorrow, too. Sunday it'll cool down, which is good, because I'm going to be heading to the drag races in Auburn. Last time I went it rained and I think I only saw 4 or 5 races. It was a waste.

We're home...

So, two weeks on the road have brought us back to our humble abode in Seattle. It's great to be home, but now we have to return to real life and unpack our gear.

We came back to a different color house (the owners decided to paint it two days after we left)! Instead of the little red house we had, we now have a white house. I'll get photos up soon.

What really sucked is that when we came home almost all of the windows were sealed shut with paint. I managed to get the bedroom window unsealed, which gives us our window fan again (thank goodness), but the rest will be a chore. Fun fun.

As soon as we passed into Idaho, the Washington drivers slowed us down. I just don't understand why they don't understand the concept of stay right except to pass! I want to pass all of them, because yes, I'm in a hurry. Just move the fuck over and let me by. I won't tailgate them or flash my brights at them (although I'll think about it), so just they should stop it with the "2 mph faster than the next lane over" crap, and move over. I want to go fast!

Anyway, the road weariness is taking over and I need to get to bed. It's going to be so nice to sleep in my own bed tonight. It's nice to be back in Seattle. It's right where we left it.

And there was light...

It's so nice to finally see spring here in Seattle. What's not nice is that I have to be in bed by 9pm so I can wake up at 4am for work at 5am. Yeah, that sucks, especially with the long days we have this time of year.

I've been working on catching up on some video encoding I've been doing - taking every episode of the Simpsons Futurama and encoding them in 3ivx format for my own personal use. I also finally had decent enough weather yesterday to get out and mow the lawn. And, I spent some time yesterday finding a replacement light bulb for the HVAC controls on the Bernenwagen. Cracking open the center dash is interesting, but I didn't break anything. That's a first!

Speaking of lightbulbs, I had to get one for our fridge, as its bulb had burned out.

I have a doctor's appointment today at 3:15pm. I'm not looking forward to telling the doctor that I didn't get the prescription he wrote for me because my insurance won't cover the drug. I don't have $160 for prescriptions every month or two weeks or whatever. So, I have to go get myself weighed today. Eeesh. My weight seems to stay constant, at right around 380. At least it's constant. The last thing I need to do is gain more weight.

I've been watching Manor House a.k.a. Edwardian Country House. I just love how we Americans can import a show from the UK intact, yet change the name to some Americanized oversimplification, a la Junkyard Wars (Scrapheap Challenge). In any case, Manor house reminds me a lot of 1900 House. I wonder, why do I have to watch the British take these trips back in time? Isn't there anything like that here in the U.S.? Do we have enough of a past to really know what life was like 100+ years ago? Did we have the same sort of class structures that early 20th century Britain did?

And finally, a question I submitted to the P-I's Getting There column got published on Monday.

Updates to the windstorm saga, Spring, Celebrity penpals...

The latest update: the fence has been repaired. There's still a hole in the house where the old meter used to be, and the gutters are still wide open, letting lots of water run down the house, onto the meter housing, and then into a puddle in the flower garden. Not sure when that'll be fixed, but at least people aren't staring at the bent fence anymore. Thank goodness. I have some pictures that I'll eventually post showing the progress.

Spring's rolling in up here in Seattle... yesterday it was sunny, somewhat warm, and dry enough to (finally) mow the lawn. It took me about an hour an a half, between picking up loose twigs, branches, and debris that had been blown onto the property, and between constantly emptying the grass bag. I managed to fill 2 30 gallon yard waste bags. Now the lawn looks great.

Ok, now for the celebrity penpal bit - I've been thinking about this for a while... I'd personally love to have one. I'm not too picky, either... he/she could be a local, regional, national, or international celebrity. He/she could be well known due to media, political, or another presence. I don't really care about meeting in person (unless he/she wants to :-), but a simple dialog would be cool, I think. Wil Wheaton, in my opinion, would probably make a good one (I'd be shocked, flattered, amazed and whatever if he responded to one of my journals (he's not even a fan), but anyway). I'd love it if the celebrity would take the initiative and invite limited people to email them, or interact with them on the Web. Besides, one has to wonder how many ACs, or regular posters on /. might be celebs, in one form or another.

Yes, I realize that the celebs value their privacy and probably don't want freaks stalking them, but hey, I'm a good guy.... I'll even help you with your computer, (so long as it's a Mac) I promise I won't stalk you. Promise... Scout's honor.

It's incredibly shallow and vain for me to post an all-call to celebs, but I'm comfortable with myself enough to do it. Call it celebrity-whoring.

BTW, I can only think of two celebs I've ever met in person... Anne and Nancy Wilson. When I went to AIS, we had the chance to record a song of their band the Lovemongers in one of the audio classes I was in. They were cool, I even got my copy of Dreamboat Annie autographed.

Now playing on my iMac:

Just to Keep You Satisfied by Marvin Gaye

Meanwhile, back on the homefront...

The tree is gone. I came home today and the tree cutters were just cleaning up. In addition, we got our permanent power connection this week. No meter, though. That must be coming a little later.

Next up is the fence. Looks like the gate won't be repaired, but that the fence will. Sounds fine to me. We never used the gate much anyway... nothing to keep from getting out of the yard. Also up is the gutters surrounding the electrical mast. Right now, water's just running down the side of the house, onto the meter housing and then down to the ground. Not a good situation at all. We need to find some way to cap the ends of the cut gutter and then shunt water away from the mast, into either side of the gutters. Also, I really really need to clean the gutters. They're beyond nasty. Perhaps I could convince the landlord to find someone to do it for us. I doubt it... they're spending enough on this house right now as is.

Once we get the fence and gutter fixed, I'll post pictures of the progress since Dec. 27th. Fun stuff.

They're baaaaack!

Our landlords are back in the states, after being in Korea for the last three weeks. They came by today and surveyed the damage at the house. They even relit the pilot light on the furnace. We'll see how long that'll last. I wish I would have seen how they did that, so I can do it myself next time it goes out (I'm sure there'll be a next time).

Overall, things are getting better here. Even without the furnace, we used space heaters around the house and they did a great job of heating the place. Sure, it takes a while to get the place heated up, but once it's warm, it's warm. And, the cat loved laying in front of the oil-filled radiator out in the living room.

DCLU came by on Thursday and did their inspection of the electrical work. Now it's only a matter of time before City Light comes out and puts a meter on the house. It sure is nice not to be metered :-)

Nicole and I are looking at getting another cat, a friend of sorts, for Asha. I hope they get along. We saw a couple real cute cats at the shelter today.

Went out to see Two Towers on Friday night. Oh my God. That was incredible.... much better than Fellowship. I still have yet to see Harry Potter, but I hear it's good. I spent this three-day weekend catching up on TV watching, and managed to catch Disc 3 of Band of Brothers, and Bringing Out the Dead. Band of Brothers is great. If you liked Saving Private Ryan, go rent Band of Brothers, or catch it on HBO (if you haven't already). Oh, I also spent a small amount of the weekend working on my friend's XP box, just doing a little preventative maintenance on it - defrag, chkdsk, virus scan, etc.

Back to regular life....

Our flight out of SFO was delayed Friday night by about an hour and a half. Alaska called me while we were out at Alcatraz. No biggie. We caught the flight, and made it back here okay. But, now it's back to normal life and all of the crap that comes with it.

The pilot light had gone out on the furnace. At a rate of $234, we called a tech to come out and relight it for us. Well, it's out again this morning, and I'm not calling anybody to relight it. I'll just go find a decent portable heater and make do until the landlord gets back. I can't afford to dump any more money into this money pit of a house. I'm stretched thin as it is.

The guy who relit the pilot light yesterday told us of the condition of the furnace: it's 27 years old, it's possible that there's a rusted out heat exchanger tube, and we should get a new furnace. Oh, and the kicker is the estimated efficiency of the furnace - 60%. Most modern furnaces nowadays have an efficiency rating of 80-90%.

Well, at least we have electricity, right?

Ah, sweet relief....

The cable's been reconnected. What a wondrous day. This means no more dialup Internet, or antenna for TV. I'm very happy.

There's still the matter of fixing the gutters, fixing the fence, and removing the tree, but apart from that we're moving right along. The electrician is almost done with his work, and soon we'll get our permanent electrical connection from Seattle City Light.

Nicole and I are off to San Francisco on Monday night for Macworld. I can't wait, although some of the rumors I've read have not been very encouraging. If Nicole's Sidekick works fine from within Moscone center, we'll probably update this journal in real time. Neat-o, eh?

First, there was power. Then, there was cable.

The electrician's hard at work, City Light's hooked up a line from the utility pole, and by the end of the day, we'll have a temporary power connection. The Seattle DCLU (Dept. of Construction and Land Use) will be out Thursday to inspect, and on Friday, AT&T will be by to fix our cable line and the neighbor's. Monday or so, we'll get a permanent connection from City Light. All in all, things are moving right along. The tree still needs to be removed, the fence needs to be repaired, and we'll need to figure out something to do for the gutters. The electrician has to put the new electrical mast up higher, so he has to cut the gutter to do it. I'm sure we'll figure something out for that.

If I get a hot shower tomorrow, I'll be one happy camper.

Update, 20:58 PST - Power's been restored. The connection made at the mast is only temporary, but so far we've got all of our lights and heat back. We're limping along on dialup, and cable will be reconnected on Friday. We should get our permanent power connection sometime next week.

1900 House soon no more

Woooooooo! We finally got an electrician and bid for work. Repairs start later today. Hooray! Soon, perhaps in a couple days, living in our house won't be like living in the 1900 House.

The electrician told us our wiring appears to be of 1930s vintage. To get our wiring up to code, he'll be re-wiring much of the fusebox, electrical mast, etc. Our system never was properly grounded (we only obtained a ground when we got a cable hookup in August), so he'll be fixing that too. He's going to be one busy man, but here's hoping that we'll have a fully working electrical system within the next couple of days.

Are there no good electricians?

Ugh, the electricians I called yesterday never showed up. And, I can't get them on the phone. All I get is voicemail. Wonderful.

I've called a couple electricians today. Because it's Sunday, they want an extra fee for Sunday work (so far, anywhere from $125-200 on top of their normal rate), plus one charges an extra 20% for their work. Instead of $1900 to fix the damage, one told us it'd be $3500. I think we'll be spending another day sans electricity.

I've opened up a claim with my renter's insurance. Hell, it's worth a shot, and it might give us a little bit of financial backing to actually get someone here to fix the house.

Well, time to conserve precious battery life on my PowerBook.

Pictures of the carnage

Still no word from the electricians. I called another; they wanted $1900 to fix the damage to the house. I can't afford that, so I'll have to wait to hear from the first electricians I called this morning.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the carnage. Enjoy!

Now you're cookin'... with wood heat!

Last night was a little eventful. Before Nicole and I went to bed before 8pm, I stoked the woodstove as full as I could get it. As I was soon to find out, this was a big big mistake, as I also closed the damper too much, and smoke started filling the house. Eventually, the smoke alarm went off and Nicole and I spent a good two hours airing out the house and watching the fire. I also went to the store and got a new set of fireplace tools, as our set was missing the scoop, and because I set our sweeper on fire, accidently. Just to be extra cautious, I picked up a fire extinguisher.

No more wood for us. I'm sticking to the 3-hr firelogs, as they produce good heat and good consistency. And, as another little trick, I've put a pot of water on top of the fireplace (it's an insert) so that we'll humidify the house a bit. The hope is (and it seems to be working) that as the house gets more humid, it'll hold heat. And because it'll be more muggy in the house, it'll feel warmer. Here's hoping.

Seattle City Light came buy late late last night after we went to sleep and detached the power line from the pole. They left a friendly little note letting us know that we'll need to have our electrical mast reconnected before they can hook up the line again. We're waiting for the electrician to come by right now. They said it'd be sometime between 3pm and 5pm. It's now 5:26pm.

Who knows when we'll get our electricity hooked back up. We're also going to have to have the cable TV/Internet line re-strung, as the tree took out the cable line. Ugh, and not to mention the big ass tree that needs to be hauled away, or the fence that needs to be repaired/torn up. I'd like it repaired. It's a nice fence.

Always fun. I just wish the electrician would show up soon so Nicole and I can go to my work and cook our dinner up. Our refrigerator is truly an icebox now, with three 10-lb. blocks of ice between the freezer and fridge compartments.

Never a dull moment around here.

Thar she blows!

Ah, what a day....

Today started out like any other day, with the exception that I took Nicole to work. That's a bit different than what normally happens. It was a slow day at work, what with a lot of our school customers being gone for the holidays. So, Nicole and I get home this afternoon, and there's a cop car at the end of our block, blocking off the road. Uh, what the hell?

I look a little bit further, and our big tree that's in front of the house has been blown down by today's wind storm. Damn, talk about exciting. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a loss of power to our little house, as the power lines went through the tree. In the process, the electric meter and AT&T cable box were ripped off of the front of the house.

I'm typing this right now from my PowerBook, as it has two batteries, and our phone line's still intact. I'm dialed up using my mom's dialup account, and I actually pulled out a 46667 connection. Not too shabby, all things considered. I've taken pictures of the carnage, but I won't be posting them until I can get to a broadband equipped location. I think I"ll be going to work tomorrow, at least to charge the PowerBook and upload those pictures.

Thank goodness we have a fireplace. Without it, it'd be much colder in here, right now, even if the fireplace is taking forever to heat this place. Also, thank goodness for a very nice Seattle City Light guy who came out here on his own time to snip the live electrical line that crossed the street. I don't have to worry about getting jolted from the downed line in my front yard anymore.

I just hope the landlords get back to me soon. I really really really want to watch some TV right now.