Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Stumped

In our neighborhood, the city decided to chop down a bunch of the beautiful trees that lined one of the blocks. I guess the tree roots were causing sidewalks to lift up, and possibly other damage. I hate that the trees are gone now, but there are now several piles of wood along the sidewalks for anyone to take. Some are good-sized stumps that can be used as rustic stools for sitting on, so we decided to take a couple. Damn those things are HEAVY! The first one I took was easily over 100 pounds, and I had a lot of trouble moving it with the dolly (the semi-flat tires didn’t help). The second one was more manageable, but still quite heavy. 

In order to lighten them up so we can actually move these “stools” around, I want to hollow them out. I started at first with a drill and a chisel. After an hour of making way too much noise and too little progress, I decided that a chainsaw would allow me to actually finish the job. Problem is, I don’t have one. So now I have to shop for one. I’m just going to get a cheap electric one because we’ve never needed a chainsaw for anything before, and I hate the noisy gas motors.

I’ve been looking at what’s available online at Home Depot, and notice that many of them have a safety guard at the tip of the chainsaw. It makes me wonder how I’m supposed to dip the chainsaw into the tree stump to hollow it out, and if I get one with no safety guard, am I going to end up hacking off a limb? Is there a better way to hollow out a tree stump?

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

House shopping again

So the economy is down and lots of people are foreclosing their homes. It’s never been a better time to buy a house, right? For those of us who managed to keep their jobs and not flush their credit down the toilet, house shopping is pretty attractive right now. So despite the fiasco we had a couple years ago with our last house (which we had to get rid of because it had a ridiculously expensive mortgage), we are looking at houses again. We’ve learned our lessons and will not be making those mistakes again. (And if we do, please kick me.)

This morning we stopped by a vacant house that the realtor was excited about. (Realtors hate short sales, so I guess any property that isn’t a short sale is exciting.) The area seemed okay - not scary, but not prosperous. The house itself… OMG I wish I knew what went on there. The lockbox that held the key had a broken switch so we couldn’t open it, but it didn’t matter because the boarded up door was busted open anyway. So we let ourselves in and the living room was decent. The kitchen… could use some work, but not terrible. Then we went to the first bedroom… holy crap WTF… look for yourself…

The walls… the carpet… even the ceiling… covered in utter filth! The bad photo I took doesn’t do the nastiness justice. What on earth were they doing in here?? Meth lab? Foster child farm? Auto repair?? It reminded me of those horror movies where a wicked cult is performing unspeakable rituals in a grungy little room. Who knows. Luckily only one room was like that. The rest of the house, though needing a lot of cosmetic work, was passable. We are actually going to put an offer on it (for less than the asking price). We’re guessing the damage is likely caused by numskulls who like to break into vacant houses to hang out, smoke crack or whatever. We spoke to a neighbor and he seemed friendly and content with the area, that it was better than it looked.  We’ll see what happens!

Friday, March 20, 2009

Not convinced about Twitter yet

So I’ve been Twittering for close to a week now… I seem to be in a completely different time zone from everyone else. When I get to work, there are a bunch of new tweets, but then during the rest of my day there are hardly any. I guess it’s a by-product of being in the Pacific time zone where you’re behind the rest of the world except Hawaii. I guess I need to give it a little more time. It’s like blogging, I was initially talking to myself for months. But considering how talking to myself is second nature anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem.

The other thing I’m hesitant to do is hook up Twitter to my phone. Distractions at work are nice, but when I’m home I’m pretty selfish with my time. I also don’t want tweets waking me up in the middle of the night. Sure I could put the phone on vibrate when I sleep, but then I’ll miss important calls too. I guess that makes me a Monday through Friday 9am - 6pm tweeter. What do we call ourselves anyway? I’ve used twitterlings, twitterers… hey how about twits? No maybe not.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Starting a Lesbian Social Network

I’ve been working on a project, inspired by an idea that my sweety had. It isn’t ready for visitors yet as there is still a ton of feature installing, configuring and customizing to do, but I can at least start sharing what kind of project it is. In short, it’s a social community site for lesbians. There are a few out there already, but none that are exactly what we had in mind. Shoe.org comes closest functionally, but it has international emphasis and is quite frankly an ugly site with teeny tiny print. We also found impulsivegirls.com, but it seems kinda skanky. There’s also lesbianchatzone.com, but there isn’t much in the way of localized functionality.

What I mean by “localized” is finding people who are local to you. The whole idea stemmed from the fact that we don’t really have any lesbian friends. Our social circle is basically my honey’s numerous family members. And while they are a great bunch of people, they are also turning a blind eye to our relationship. They accept me as a person, but they don’t accept homosexuality. It’s a strange and occasionally awkward situation, but we make do and are content for the most part. It would be nice, however, to have a nice little group where we could hang out and be ourselves. Where we could hold hands and be mushy with each other without worrying we might offend someone. We looked into Meetup.com, but really, we don’t know who these people are or what they’re like, and the meet groups are usually very specific in purpose.

If we could have a site where members could get to know each other a little better online, find compatible personalities within their areas, then we would feel more comfortable actually meeting with these people and organizing events of our choosing. Sort of a social network married with Meetup.com.  It’s a huge order as far as functionality goes, however, so I’ve got a LOT of work to do.  I’ve never done anything like this before, but it’s exciting.

I’m using Drupal as my base, and a lot of the add-ons are pretty easy to configure, but the customizing part is a huge pain since I’m not a PHP programmer. To start I’m going to have to settle with default layouts while I learn how this stuff works. I won’t bore you with any more technical details, but if you are familiar with Drupal and PHP and want to be involved with this project, contact me!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Adventures in Refrigeratorland, Part 3

I think they overbook their repair guys. My time window was from 8am to 12pm, and my boss kindly allowed me to work from home for that time. What time does the guy get there? 1pm. I asked for 8 to 12, not 12 to 5. WTF. Okay so shit happens, no harm done. This guy actually knows what he’s doing and said that the first guy had crossed some wires, which caused the compressor to stop working altogether. So after 5 minutes of fiddling, voila, cold air is once again blowing in my fridge. Halle-fricken-luja!

The repair guys have to pull the fridge away from the wall in order to get to the mechanical guts in the back. Today’s repair man used a white plastic slider to assist in this endeavor. Friday’s repair moron did not, which would account for the gaping hole ripped in the linoleum. The weasel didn’t even bother saying anything about it. No wonder he was in such a rush to get out. Now I have to get on the repair company’s ass for damage compensation. I mean, look at it!

Our erratic landlady is going to lay claim to our entire deposit just for that, I’m sure of it.

Well, at least now we can once again keep fresh food in the kitchen. Time to replace all that ice cream!

Monday, March 16, 2009

I would have preferred an ACTUAL Maytag repair man

So the refrigerator repair guy came and went on Friday. You know how the commercial shows the Maytag repair man being bored all the time because there’s nothing to do? Well it isn’t because the appliances don’t need repair. It’s because they contract the work out to third party repair companies who don’t give a shit. The guy came, replaced the part that was supposedly causing the problem, then immediately left without even sticking around to verify that it was working.  The only thing different now was that instead of going “click BUZZZZZZ click”, it would just click.

Before the guy came the refrigerator was at least marginally cold, and the freezer still had some frost. After the guy left, the fridge was producing no cold air whatsoever, and by that evening everything was defrosted. Asshole. He actually made our fridge worse! I ended up drinking a whole lot of chocolate ice cream in the form of milkshakes, only without the milk. It was just melted ice cream straight up. It wasn’t so bad actually, though it ended up being way more ice cream than I normally would eat in one sitting.

So I called Maytag again and they said the third party appliance repair company isn’t able to send another guy until Tuesday. *grumble* Luckily someone came over and rescued most of our perishables from a fate worse than death. (Decay and contemptuous ridicule is worse than death, right?) Well, at least now our freezer is completely free of questionable items. As soon as the fridge is back up and running, I have a LOT of grocery shopping to do! (To Maytag’s credit, they did agree to send us a check for $100 to cover all the food we lost because of this mishap.)

Friday, March 13, 2009

My refrigerator is melting

Yesterday morning my Maytag refrigerator started making curious noises. It would click, buzz for a few seconds, then click off.  There seems to be some kind of rhythm to it as it keeps doing the same thing every few mintues. Click-BUZZZZZZZZZZZ-click, but the fridge never stops running. I thought maybe it would go away on its own. (Not very logical, but hey, sometimes things do go away on their own.) Unfortunately when I got back from work there were water puddles around the fridge. Aww poop.

So I looked up the Maytag website and found their phone number for technical support. After giving them my fridge’s model and serial number, I found out that it’s part of a nationwide recall.  According to them…

Based on the information you provided, your product is included in this recall. An electrical failure in the relay, the component that turns on the refrigerator’s compressor, can cause overheating and pose a serious fire hazard. Safety is one of Maytag Corporation’s top priorities. We would like to insure that your refrigerator is safe to operate by arranging a free in-home repair with an authorized service provider.

I was so happy! Well, it’s a bummer that all my ice cream is now melted, but I was thrilled that I didn’t have to pay $300 to some repair guy to get this fixed!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Twittering

I’ve heard a lot about Twitter and how people love or hate it.  I personally have never thought about using it because I hear about all the pointless time-wasting yammering that goes on. Until today that is.  Today I thought, what if there’s something to it? If I don’t have as much time as I used to for making quality blog posts, then perhaps Twitter is one way to achieve the same thing, but with less time. From what I understand, there are those who use it like MySpace - an endless black hole of nonstop, pointless yakking. Then there are those who use it intelligently, for business contacts, staying in touch with those in your industry, and basically keeping others aware of you so that when an opportunity comes up, you are often in the forefront of their minds. Marketers also use it to keep themselves tuned into the general “vibe” of their audience. This is definitely valuable for any business.

So I’ve finally decided to give this Twitter thing a try. I am anti-social by nature, but perhaps if I learn to use this app intelligently, I can keep myself tuned in with the communities that I have things in common with. My first task… finding other Twitterers that I have things in common with. Most people use it with their friends, but I wonder how you find other contacts to broadcast to… people you might not necessarily know?  I’ll start with you guys. Any of you blog readers use Twitter? 

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Multilingual swearing

They say one of the first things people learn when picking up a new language are swear words.  When I was a kid and a friend was explaining how pig latin worked one of the first phrases I uttered was aa very gleeful “uck-fay ou-yay”. It didn’t occur to me right away why she looked offended. It just sounded exotic to me, and not like a swear word at all.

Growing up in a household with a Chinese mom and a Chinese grandmother, naturally I learned to speak the language. (Technically it was Taiwanese, not quite as useful as Mandarin.) But I never learned any swear words. It was kind of embarrassing when other kids would find out I could speak another language and they would often ask, “How do you say shit?” When I said I don’t know, they would be incredulous.  They would respond with, “What? Okay, how about fuck?” I didn’t know any of those because my mom and my grandma never swore, at least not in front of me. The closest they came to swearing was saying something similar to “idiot”, from what I could gather from the context. Very tame.

What is it about swear words that fascinates kids (and some adults)? I guess it’s the forbidden nature. We’re always being being told how bad they are. So when we are presented with an opportunity to swear in a non-offensive environment, of course we’re going to do it. It’s exotic yet bad at the same time. It’s just fun I guess.

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