Posted on by mwhybark

Gas Crisis, day 3

Still no heat, hot water, operable stoves or working dryers over here at Hard Luck Acres.

Friends of labor will be saddened to hear that three days into the bathing strike, forces greater than the massed will of the workingman (my wife) intervened to direct me to a cold shower – rimshot puhleeze!

Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

Of course, this would all go down the same week my folks are swinging by for their first visit to the house. I called and gave ’em the lowdown this afternoon. I hope we have all the mod cons up and running before they show up. My folks are tough – heatless homes and cold showers are no new events in their experience of travel – but if I recall correctly they are both over seventy and might prefer heated air and warm water.

Posted on by mwhybark

Stinker

Per Jon’s suggestion, the bathing strike plan is in effect.

I actually made a gas company phone person cry last night after she had told me there was no way for them to come out to turn the gas on (we got the repair done and it’s kinda cold). After she told me that it wasn’t possible for them to come out I pretended I was getting a hacksaw out of my toolbox as I rummaged around in the silverware drawer. I told her I was going out to the gas meter to hacksaw the gas company’s lock off the feedpipe. Then I told her I was reporting a gas leak and that would she please send someone.

She told me that she didn’t beleive me so I made more sawing noises.

In the end she told me that we needed a certificate of inspection from the plumber that did the work, something that the plumber evidently did not know, as he was puzzled why our insurance company would send him out on a gas line job.

So currently we have a new pipe but no gas to the house still. Viv is trying to get the city inspector to come out and certify it. It strikes me that the inspector can’t actually verify it unless there’s gas in the pipe, and that the gas company has told us they won’t turn the gas on until the pipework has been verified.

I did apologize to the poor woman, by the way, and I did not curse or speak impolitely to her. I still feel bad about it.

Posted on by mwhybark

Prima

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As you may have gathered, this is the stack o’ seventies speakers that arrived from that estate sale on Saturday. They had more speakers and some LPs too but I felt uncomfortable pawing though the deceased’s stuff.

There was a bocce set that I shoulda snagged too, though. Oh well.

This is also the first test of the Nokia 6620 for moblogging. There’s apparently no way to apply rotation to images stored on the camera, so when this post first appeared, the image was sideways. The image resolution is pretty low, too. Wonder if that’s configurable.

Posted on by mwhybark

Tape

One of the things that made it into my car at that estate sale was a vintage Sony tape deck with analog VU meters. Happily, it works just fine. I still have many many tapes from twenty years ago, often of LPs I had checked out of the library. It will be fun to pick through them and hear some stuff i haven’t bent ear to in about fifteen years, I think. First up: Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs.

Posted on by mwhybark

Gas

Yesterday Viv and I smelled gas in the house and called Puget Sound Energy to check for the source. The technician found a leak in a pipe that appears to lead to the kitchen. PSE then cut our gas at the meter until the leak is repaired.

We called an insurance carrier we’ve used for house issues in the past and they referred a plumber. Unfortunately, they were no-shows all day yesterday and expressed confusion over why they were called as opposed to a furnace shop when we contacted them.

It’s cold in the house without heat this morning. I worked in the yard all day yesterday – I’m rather ripe.

Cold canned beans for dinner tonight as we shiver under ragged blankets tented over a can of Sterno loom.*

*Hyperbole.

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Phoning it in

Happily, I have been able to get iSync to work with the substitute phone that Eric was kind enough to send to me, the Nokia 6620. Aggravatingly, the phone is officially unsupported by Cingular. This seems to be the source of some peculiar issues and flakiness in connectivity for data. Also, at first blush, there are some issues with the way that Opera renders GMail and other Google Services pages. I’m guessing this is some kinda AJAX javascript deal and that possibly the version of Opera on the phone needs to be updated.

Similarly, I can’t find a decent SMMTP/POP mail client in the apps on the phone. This makes sense as steering the phone user to operate the SMS client on the phone builds revenue for the carrier. The fuckers.

Finally, numeric keypad text entry is clearly proof that Satan is active in the world today.

Posted on by mwhybark

Amazing Grace

Yesterday evening as I stood outside at Greg and Stacey’s house, I heard a bagpiper in the far distance playing Atholl Highlanders (warning: iffily-timed midi file autoloads).

Today, I went to a neighbor’s house to peruse an estate sale, and obtained a number of things, including a decent Sony tape deck, a silent 8mm Bell and Howell projector for Spence if he wants it, a 40″ glass-bead projector screen with stand, and most importantly, a set of four of the weirdest 1970s speakers I have ever seen.

Grooved blue cases and bright red grille covers carry the promising JBL insignia. The grooves are designed to allow the cases to stack and interlock – the effect is tremendously Moonbase Alpha, if the bright blues and reds might not work so well in that monochromatic interior.

A bit of research reveals that the speakers are JBL L25 Primas. The foam components in the speakers are pretty trashed, dried out and crumbly to the touch. I have stacked them up in the basement awaiting testing and possible deployment in the basement room we hope to devote primarily to music.

As I loaded these items from the dead man’s house into my car, I heard another piper, this time performing Amazing Grace. I looked up, and at the end of the street, noticed a flotilla of cars parked in the nearby cemetery, presumably gathered in consolation and ceremony as the pipes wailed.

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Freeeeedommm

Yesterday evening I stapled 25 feet of chickenwire to the outside rails of our deck, to create an outdoor area for our cats. I inadvertently left a basement door open as I put away the ladder and tools, a fact i discovered as I prepared for bed a few hours later. One of our cats, an eleven-year old male who survived the transition from outdoor alpha male to indoor pillow critter after a full year of hiding in a closet, made his escape.

I slept in the living room on the couch last night so I could hear noises by the doors more clearly, and at 2 am, I was awakened by our other cat, Chloe, puking by the door. Suspecting that this was some sort of cat communication, I rose and looked out the door to the deck, where Simon sat patiently.

This afternoon, as I vacuumed the basement, Viv came downstairs to tell me she’d found the porch gate knocked askew and no sign of Simon. I’m considering a leash for the beast.

Posted on by mwhybark

800

1-800-Hanso.org

I called it, and got Hanson Sweepstakes. I wonder if i misdialed.