Published December 13th, 2005
in General.
A lot happened today. Lastly, the texturing:
Well, they said it would be messy, and it was. But it turned out nice, and used 2.5 little hoppers of mud. There is also so, so much innuendo that’s just very tempting to mention about the process, but you can make that stuff up yourself easily. The texture style, by the way, is called “knife-over”.
At the beginning of the day the thermostat in my hot water heater failed again (luke-warm shower). It was tricky to get the pilot to re-light, and it kept going out. But I left it heating and went to work.
That afternoon my server began emailing me frantically that there was a problem in the garage, and that it wasn’t getting any power measurements. “Hmm, strange”, I thought. So I ssh’d in to find out the problem and a few seconds later the connection went dead. Filled with visions of exploded garages, I went back home, watching for the fire truck.
It turned out that PG&E had had an outage: the first unplanned one at my house in about five years. Unfortunately, when my server sees the power going down it turns off the USB: which means it doesn’t measure power any more (sigh). Since the power was out for two hours, and my UPS only lasts about 20 minutes, I decided to shut the system down. I also ripped out the thermostat and left the heater turned off. (The new thermostat seems to be working, though the pilot line had to be tightened more that I liked to get the compression seal to stop leaking. Steel line with a brass 7/16″ fitting and what looks like a copper collar: go figure. Always test gas fittings!)
Published December 11th, 2005
in General.
Several years ago, when I built the media room, I made a screen by removing the texture from the wall and skim coating a flat surface on it. It worked pretty well, but I’m moving the room upstairs which means I have to re-texture the wall. This should be straightforward: it’s about 40 square feet with a knife-over pattern. But in the hardware store, with the pump-action texturizers, there is no indication of how much area the texture will cover. This is annoying, because the refills are excessively overpriced in comparison to regular drywall mud (I guess because they’re heavy and expire and, well, just because).
Here’s the quiz for today: a big refill holds 2.2kg of premixed and yields 150–200 sq.ft of texture. A small refill holds 220g of premixed. The kit holds 260g of unmixed, which (on the back) should mix up to make 1.5 hoppers worth. A small refill looks like the same size as a hopper. So what should I buy to cover 40 sq.ft if a big costs $12, a small costs $5 and the kit costs $15 but I need the tool anyway?
Published December 10th, 2005
in General.
Today we moved Sara’s bulky furniture to my house. She had rented a 10ft bed truck—of course they gave us a 16ft bed which was harder to maneuver downtown where she lives. But we got it loaded up with junk…
…which we took to the dump. We did manage to fit nearly all the furniture in there too. I’ve got to say, my house is looking more like a home now, with furniture drapes, area rugs and a dining table in the formal dining room. The bedrooms have beds now too, though I think I’ll stay in the kitchen until I finish skim coating the screen in the master bedroom. (Which is another story.)
Published December 9th, 2005
in General.
Sears was selling stuffed penguins with a big white space on their tummies. It had to go on my door at work with the note “A very Debian Christmas”. (I’m gradually migrating from Red Hat 9 to Debian—it doesn’t try too hard to hold your hand. B-)
(By the way, the magazine page above the penguin is an old IBM advertisement of a stock exchange with the overlaid caption “Punch card reader for Linux”.)
Published December 9th, 2005
in General.
I’m living in the kitchen at the moment. (The carpets have been cleaned, Sara is about to move her furniture into the house, and the cat is quarantined in the kitchen. It makes sense. Really.) However these northern California nights can sometimes be a bit chilly, so I got some rope lights ($1/foot at Home Depot) to warm my bed. Pilgrim the cat loves it, as do I.
I’ve been having second thoughts though, as some of the tube has now melted, and I’d never live down being on one of those “how stupid can people be” TV shows. But it is really cosy.
Published December 8th, 2005
in General.
So, I had to put something on this curiously-named web site. It’s not really about fury (in fact I’m mostly calm and collected). It’s about wit, decorum and maintaining composure in the face of outrageous circumstances.
Enjoy this little WordPress site. At the moment it’s really very small.
