Without further ado, pictures. . .
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Starting finishing the basement
1st post in a LONG time, but we are doing stuff to the house. We've basically drywalled the basement. Some needs some more mud work, but given the mess that makes, we're going to wait at least until we get the pocket door for the bathroom (which will need drywall applied).
Without further ado, pictures. . .
Without further ado, pictures. . .
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
My house is on crack.
Wow. . .it's been almost a month since I've put anything on here. There's plenty to write, but work sucks, and time is nonexistent.
At least I've done my taxes. And instead of getting screwed, I'm getting a refund. Almost enough to pay my property taxes!
Anyways. . .for house stuff. . .
A couple of months ago now I discovered a crack in the outside of the foundation of my house.
Then it rained quite a bit, and I noticed the corresponding crack on the inside.
At first, the piece of sheet rock (left from making my closet) was hiding the crack. The tell was a puddle of water starting to form on the floor of my garage.
I called the contractor to have it dealt with; I don't know yet what the source of these cracks is. There are apparently tons of possible causes, but the direction that the cracks go is one of the signs, and of course, mine are the worst kind possible.
So far, no need for Permajack. They had someone come out and fill the cracks with some kind of urethane foam. The company that did it simply filled the cracks and left, with something like syringes still hanging out. There's also some kind of grey stuff that looks like epoxy slathered on the inside and outside of the house. I don't have pictures of that yet, sorry.
Anyways, I haven't seen any more water, which is good, since we've basically moved the office down there to make room for our next child's room. I still raised everything 3/4" off the floor though, with leftover parts from my fence.
I finally played a significant amount of drums in GHWT. And got a 2nd guitar. I'm getting better at both, yet still playing on medium (just graduated myself to medium on drums). Now my arms are tired.
And does anyone elses' vision seem to swim after staring at the screen for 10-15 minutes? Like the whole screen is wavering. Kind of scary. Only once has it gone to something other than the screen though, and it goes away shortly after I stop playing.
At least I've done my taxes. And instead of getting screwed, I'm getting a refund. Almost enough to pay my property taxes!
Anyways. . .for house stuff. . .
A couple of months ago now I discovered a crack in the outside of the foundation of my house.
Then it rained quite a bit, and I noticed the corresponding crack on the inside.
At first, the piece of sheet rock (left from making my closet) was hiding the crack. The tell was a puddle of water starting to form on the floor of my garage.
I called the contractor to have it dealt with; I don't know yet what the source of these cracks is. There are apparently tons of possible causes, but the direction that the cracks go is one of the signs, and of course, mine are the worst kind possible.
So far, no need for Permajack. They had someone come out and fill the cracks with some kind of urethane foam. The company that did it simply filled the cracks and left, with something like syringes still hanging out. There's also some kind of grey stuff that looks like epoxy slathered on the inside and outside of the house. I don't have pictures of that yet, sorry.
Anyways, I haven't seen any more water, which is good, since we've basically moved the office down there to make room for our next child's room. I still raised everything 3/4" off the floor though, with leftover parts from my fence.
I finally played a significant amount of drums in GHWT. And got a 2nd guitar. I'm getting better at both, yet still playing on medium (just graduated myself to medium on drums). Now my arms are tired.
And does anyone elses' vision seem to swim after staring at the screen for 10-15 minutes? Like the whole screen is wavering. Kind of scary. Only once has it gone to something other than the screen though, and it goes away shortly after I stop playing.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Car, not house, no pictures
. . .because I'm lazy.
But until I get some pictures of the fixed foundation cracks, this is what I'll write.
Back before Christmas, I got myself a slightly early birthday present - a new car stereo. My prior one had ceased ejecting CD's, and pulling them out with tweezers doesn't help them not to skip. I had thought better of Clarion - the thing was only 2 or 3 years old. Oh well.
So I ordered a new one from Crutchfield (not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but wonderful stories about their service and warranty from my friends/coworkers). It's a brand that I had never heard of, but it had good reviews, and the price was right. A Dual XHD6425 (I think that's the model number), for $129, free shipping, free mount kit, wiring adapter, etc. For an extra $50 I got a Bluetooth adapter to go with it.
HD Radio, Bluetooth, CD (mp3s), and mp3's from USB stick. Cheap.
This is the first car stereo I've ever installed myself, and sadly, the 4th in my Saturn in < 10 years. The one thing I've learned: the car/car stereo industry doesn't give one whit about standardization.
I had to disconnect the battery first. They suggest the negative terminal (easier to get to in my car), so I tried. It was like it was welded on. So I went to positive, and had no problems.
Then I had to remove the Clarion, and of course the folks that installed it didn't give me the "keys" that came with it. They screwed some stuff up too, but more on that later. Since I had a space mount kit, I just pulled the whole thing out.
The mount kit is basically just a plastic piece that fits into the dash. It originally had 2 plates in the middle of it with holes for the old tuning knobs (analog?). Those were supposed to be cut out with an razor knife - I ended up using wirecutters. Then the metal sleeve slides in, and of course, it doesn't slide in. So, Dremel to the rescue! You know it's a good project when you get to use a Dremel tool on something.
After that, just matching up colors on wires, and I amazingly got it all right the first time.
My only complaint is that I can't have the time on the display and any other useful info (station, song title) at the same time.
About a week later, the eletrical system in my car starts acting funny. . .it kind of just shuts down. And this get progressively worse over the next week.
I finally take it in, and apparently the negative terminal of the battery was crossthreaded and torqued in, actually loosening the connection inside the battery. They had to destroy the batter to remove it. My fiddling must have made it a little worse, but luckily, in the end, it wasn't a major problem.
So now I have a cool new stereo in my car :)
But until I get some pictures of the fixed foundation cracks, this is what I'll write.
Back before Christmas, I got myself a slightly early birthday present - a new car stereo. My prior one had ceased ejecting CD's, and pulling them out with tweezers doesn't help them not to skip. I had thought better of Clarion - the thing was only 2 or 3 years old. Oh well.
So I ordered a new one from Crutchfield (not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but wonderful stories about their service and warranty from my friends/coworkers). It's a brand that I had never heard of, but it had good reviews, and the price was right. A Dual XHD6425 (I think that's the model number), for $129, free shipping, free mount kit, wiring adapter, etc. For an extra $50 I got a Bluetooth adapter to go with it.
HD Radio, Bluetooth, CD (mp3s), and mp3's from USB stick. Cheap.
This is the first car stereo I've ever installed myself, and sadly, the 4th in my Saturn in < 10 years. The one thing I've learned: the car/car stereo industry doesn't give one whit about standardization.
I had to disconnect the battery first. They suggest the negative terminal (easier to get to in my car), so I tried. It was like it was welded on. So I went to positive, and had no problems.
Then I had to remove the Clarion, and of course the folks that installed it didn't give me the "keys" that came with it. They screwed some stuff up too, but more on that later. Since I had a space mount kit, I just pulled the whole thing out.
The mount kit is basically just a plastic piece that fits into the dash. It originally had 2 plates in the middle of it with holes for the old tuning knobs (analog?). Those were supposed to be cut out with an razor knife - I ended up using wirecutters. Then the metal sleeve slides in, and of course, it doesn't slide in. So, Dremel to the rescue! You know it's a good project when you get to use a Dremel tool on something.
After that, just matching up colors on wires, and I amazingly got it all right the first time.
My only complaint is that I can't have the time on the display and any other useful info (station, song title) at the same time.
About a week later, the eletrical system in my car starts acting funny. . .it kind of just shuts down. And this get progressively worse over the next week.
I finally take it in, and apparently the negative terminal of the battery was crossthreaded and torqued in, actually loosening the connection inside the battery. They had to destroy the batter to remove it. My fiddling must have made it a little worse, but luckily, in the end, it wasn't a major problem.
So now I have a cool new stereo in my car :)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
One small house add on
On project that took me a couple of months to get around to was hanging the dart board. I needed a good place to hang it, and a good thing to hang it on (backing). I had one I purchased from Walmart years ago, complete with the wooden case, but it was falling apart, not really a good board, and the case was more hassle that it was worth.
So looking around the house, I dug out some scraps leftover from the construction and made a new backer for it.
1 piece of 3/4" plywood, a matching piece of fairly thick carpet, both cut in something kind of like a square (probably more of a rectangle), a couple of pieces of corner molding and some finishing nails, and a couple of long screws, and I had somehow manage to build something that didn't suck and almost looked decent.
The only thing I purchased special for it was the molding and finishing nails. I tried to miter the corners of it using a saw (with no miter box), and when that got to be too much of a pain, I went to mitering with a dremel tool. Probably a good thing you can't zoom in on this image too much; the corners look better this way :)
A few small screws hold the carpet to the plywood, plus the finishing nails go through the molding and hold it around the edges. It's attached to the studs in the wall behind it via 4 2" screws. It's not going anywhere.
The carpet is fairly thick (Karastan if anyone cares - expensive stuff), and presses tight against the board, so it doesn't rotate too easily either.
So looking around the house, I dug out some scraps leftover from the construction and made a new backer for it.
1 piece of 3/4" plywood, a matching piece of fairly thick carpet, both cut in something kind of like a square (probably more of a rectangle), a couple of pieces of corner molding and some finishing nails, and a couple of long screws, and I had somehow manage to build something that didn't suck and almost looked decent.
The only thing I purchased special for it was the molding and finishing nails. I tried to miter the corners of it using a saw (with no miter box), and when that got to be too much of a pain, I went to mitering with a dremel tool. Probably a good thing you can't zoom in on this image too much; the corners look better this way :)
A few small screws hold the carpet to the plywood, plus the finishing nails go through the molding and hold it around the edges. It's attached to the studs in the wall behind it via 4 2" screws. It's not going anywhere.
The carpet is fairly thick (Karastan if anyone cares - expensive stuff), and presses tight against the board, so it doesn't rotate too easily either.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Off white Christmas
With all the snow we've had (basically 3 days in a row of it), it got to where I had nowhere for the snowthrower to throw it.
Then of course, it warms up (and rains). Almost all of the snow (over a foot) is now pretty much gone. Our once invisible Christmas lights in the yard out front are now visible again.
Santa brought me Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii) this year. It's the set that comes with the drums, mic, and guitar. I've only played Guitar Hero one time prior to owning it, and was somewhat hooked, but could never convince my wife that we should buy it. We played it for 4 hours straight the first night we had it, mostly swapping out between guitar and mic (because drums are a little loud, though obviously not as loud as the real thing). It's an interesting setup. . .
I was kind of surprised that there was a base drum pedal included, but more surprised to see a MIDI input on the drum kit. As far as I can tell, there's a piece of software for PC that you can use a USB to MIDI connector and adjust the sensitivity of the drum set. From what little I know of MIDI, that's kind of odd, but I guess I don't know that much.
Of course, another odd thing I discovered was an RJ11 (telephone) jack on the guitar. I haven't even googled to find out what that's for yet.
It's got a pretty good mix of songs, though there's a bunch of european stuff that isn't in English, so it's a bit annoying on the vocals. I'm still playing on guitar on beginner, working up through medium, but we've played through most of the career part already. There's a couple of things you have to "buy", but we have to earn a bit more money for that.
You can also use Wii points to buy individual songs (supposedly due to the way the Wii download stuff works it can't get groups of songs, which means some stuff that's available for XBox 360 isn't for Wii, since some bands apparently want to force bundle songs - according to the message forums for GH. Stupid limitation. They could have basically made it a tarball and untarred it on the receiving end).
And you should see a 2.5 year old on drums. . .and mic. . .and guitar. . .all while we're trying to play those instruments as well.
Then of course, it warms up (and rains). Almost all of the snow (over a foot) is now pretty much gone. Our once invisible Christmas lights in the yard out front are now visible again.
Santa brought me Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii) this year. It's the set that comes with the drums, mic, and guitar. I've only played Guitar Hero one time prior to owning it, and was somewhat hooked, but could never convince my wife that we should buy it. We played it for 4 hours straight the first night we had it, mostly swapping out between guitar and mic (because drums are a little loud, though obviously not as loud as the real thing). It's an interesting setup. . .
I was kind of surprised that there was a base drum pedal included, but more surprised to see a MIDI input on the drum kit. As far as I can tell, there's a piece of software for PC that you can use a USB to MIDI connector and adjust the sensitivity of the drum set. From what little I know of MIDI, that's kind of odd, but I guess I don't know that much.
Of course, another odd thing I discovered was an RJ11 (telephone) jack on the guitar. I haven't even googled to find out what that's for yet.
It's got a pretty good mix of songs, though there's a bunch of european stuff that isn't in English, so it's a bit annoying on the vocals. I'm still playing on guitar on beginner, working up through medium, but we've played through most of the career part already. There's a couple of things you have to "buy", but we have to earn a bit more money for that.
You can also use Wii points to buy individual songs (supposedly due to the way the Wii download stuff works it can't get groups of songs, which means some stuff that's available for XBox 360 isn't for Wii, since some bands apparently want to force bundle songs - according to the message forums for GH. Stupid limitation. They could have basically made it a tarball and untarred it on the receiving end).
And you should see a 2.5 year old on drums. . .and mic. . .and guitar. . .all while we're trying to play those instruments as well.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Hell Freezes Over
And the Eagles are back together. . .of course, that was years ago.
On Dec 12th, we joined most of the state in a terrible ice storm. It started late Thursday (when I got this picture), and went on through the night. Most of the night, my wife was kind of worried due to what sounded like gunfire. The next day, we saw that it was branches of trees throughout the neighborhood finding their way down into the street.
We had the power flicker a couple of times, then the dogs woke me up just before the final power outage at 6:30am.
For the morning, we just chilled out without power, which is more difficult than you think when you have a 2 year old who wants to watch TV or play video games.
We eventually decided to go out to McDonald's
to get something to eat. That in itself was a challenge. . .most of the roads were blocked with downed power lines and branches.
One thing we did do was build a gingerbread house. Something I've never done before. We ended up with something rather decent looking (I guess it's easier when you're working from a kit).After not being able to get food from McDonald's (because the power was out), we just gave up and went to a hotel out of town. We ate McDonald's there instead :)
Most of the surrounding area has been without power since Friday. We were lucky enough to get it back Saturday morning, but most of the people in the hotel were there for the same reason, and numerous others I've heard this morning we out to eat or whatever for the same reason. Some people aren't expecting power for a while yet. I guess we're lucky in that it's a small town with municipal power.
Despite all of the destruction, I haven't seen a damaged house or car (lots of sheds though). 3 roads I could see from my house were blocked. It is amazingly beautiful, too. . .ice coated trees really sparkle in the sunlight. Here's a couple more pics.
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