The Core Dump

Been spending a fun few days powering through on getting the house back in order—it was well past time.

The majority of time was spent getting the books back on the shelves, and do it right with alphabetical filing, so I can actually find things when I’m looking for them. What a concept!

Strangely enough, I’m much faster at going through the alphabet when I think it in Swedish rather than English. Guess it’s just better “wired in” in the native tongue.

Here’s what two of the six book cases look like now:

Click for larger version

The astute reader will notice that the alpabetization looks a bit off: The titles are split up into non-fiction, fiction, and Swedish. And the Terry Pratchett titles on the second row are there because they fit the space. Can’t not have some anarchy in there, can I?

Soundtrack: “Graveyard Shift” by Uncle Tupelo

Much like wife-beater-in-training Anakin Skywalker turning into iron-lung Vader, the Flooring Project is now completed, and there is not a square inch of wall-to-wall carpet or linoleum to be found at Casa Core Dump.

Happiness.

Not having workers underfoot (or just not showing up, or showing up and then leaving to go to another job) is marvelous.

Speaking of Vader, I feel adequately prepared to go view ROTS after reading this review. It’s all about expectation management.

Soundtrack: “Metal Heart” by Garbage

The flooring is done, the workers have left, the house is in a state of utter disarray, and the stress of last week’s activities seems to have monkey wrenched my immune system, so I have that jiggly feeling of a fever coming on.

So what better way to waste some precious time that could be spent organizing the house than by shoveling some silly bits onto the intarweb?

Thusly, some random observations:

• Listening to the radio in the car, was aurally assaulted by Gwen Stefani, who seems quite concerned about the world’s sneaking suspicion that she may indeed be a hollaback girl, whatever that is. So I thought I’d do her a favor and pass on the word that she is as a matter of fact not a hollaback girl. You’re welcome.

• Kick yourself if you didn’t watch or Tivo Saturday Night Live last weekend. Will Ferrell hosted, Queens of the Stone Age performed. Ferrell did his Cow Bell dude all the way through the Queens’ first song. Sublime. Surely a capture must be floating around somewhere?

• Jay Pinkterton is a demented individual, and this piece made me snort coffee through my nose. Long, but oh so worth it.

• Am experiencing cognitive dissonance regarding Revenge of the Sith. Will it be good or will all hope once again be crushed by Lucas’s money-grubbing, artistically bankrupt way? Oh, woe is me. If only that whole franchise hadn’t been branded into me at such an impressionable age. It’s not right to care that much about a movie that’s marketed at McDonald’s.

• Phoenix broke the 100 Fahrenheit mark for the first time this year. Let the annual shunning of the blistering orb of pain begin. UV index holding steady at 10. Fair-skinned people spark like forks in a microwave.

• Watched five minutes of CSI: Miami a few days ago. Stunned and appalled at what passed for dialog. Turned the TV off quickly before they could start butchering the concept of plot.

Now it’s time to creep off to bed…

Soundtrack: “Blackened” by Metallica

Now, I may not be the brightest bait in the box, but one thing that’s completely blind-sided me about going from wall-to-wall carpet to laminate flooring is the acoustics. Basically, wall-to-wall carpet by its very nature is an excellent sound dampener, while laminate does very little to quiet things down.

I’m not a serious audiophile by a long shot, but just sitting here in the study listening to the usual tunage through iTunes is downright weird—there’s an echo in the room now, and the color of the sound is much more brassy and hollow than it used to be. It’s not enough to drive me nuts or anything, just a reminder that whenever you make a large change there will be unintended consequences.

As a side note, I remember hearing about a particularly interesting engineer at Volvo when I was growing up. This man apparently took the Engineer™ stereotype way outside the envelope—the kind of guy who took the day off to bring his car in to the shop and then stood behind the mechanics all day offering sage advice. Yes, that guy. Far as I heard, he never actually got punched in the face, surprisingly enough.

This particular Engineer™ was a somewhat compulsive audiophile and ended up remodeling his living room, making it a quarter-inch longer so that he could get a perfect standing wave from his sound system.

All I’m saying here is, I’m pretty far from that kind of scary devotion to sound, but the difference just from changing the flooring is pretty amazing.

And now it’s on to getting the home entertainment rig back up…

Soundtrack: “Glamourous Glue” by Morrissey

Ah yes, the Evil Computer Infrastructure is back online and now seated on laminate flooring, which means that the Evil Empire is once again unencumbered by earthly constraints.

Looking at the to-do list, it seems we’re a bit behind schedule on World Domination, which has wreaked havoc with the Ruling With an Iron Fist action item.

Hmm. Obviously corners will have to be cut.

But in all—or at least some—seriousness, the Laminate Flooring Adventure seems to be sailing toward a safe harbor, with most of the work done. This is a very good thing, as it means we can actually start using our house again.

Getting the Evil Computer Infrastructure back together yielded a few Teaching Moments. Number one of those is, When you put all of your computer equipment and the many, many cables associated therewith away, no matter how stressed, pressed for time, and tired you are, “Thou Shalt Organize Thine Cables With the Holy Rubber Bands. For if Thou Simply Throwest Thine Cables in a Big Honking Box Willy-Nilly Thine Cables Shall Be an Utter Mess and Thou Shalt Hate Thineself Whilst Unwrapping Them.”

Methinks that one belongs on a stone tablet somewhere.

Strangely enough, in a few days I’ll be able to think and blog about something else than this…

Soundtrack: “Obstacle 1″ by Interpol

There has been more drama regarding the flooring installation, which I am way too tired to retell at this point, but it looks like things are moving in the right direction. The office is now achingly close to being ready for the computing infrastructure supporting my Evil Empire to be reactivated, and we have high hopes the Laminate Adventure will be over by tomorrow night or Saturday.

At which point the Tile Adventure can commence.

Ended up having to make an Ikea run for more laminate tonight, necessitating two runs as the Accord with the tremendously over-large subwoofer in the trunk simply will not take much payload. Ended up spending the equivalent of a Mac Mini in extra flooring. Not that I mind. Who needs a Mini, anyway? People with wall-to-wall carpets, that’s who.

In the meantime I do have a bunch of book reviews queued up and hope to write and post them once things return to normal.

Today is day two of the laminate flooring adventure, and what should we come home to but to find out that the work crew did not show up.

No call, no nothing. Just didn’t show up.

Oh joy. So the house is in a complete uproar, just like last night.

Had a somewhat tense conversation with the contractor, who was absolutely fuming about the absence of his crew. He’s going to throw in some freebies to make amends, but it’s not about that, just about getting the service we’re paying through the nose for. (Oh yeah, this kind of stuff is not cheap.)

Nobody knows why they elected to not show up today, but it seems not unthinkable that it has something to do with today being Latino stick it to the Man day.

Hey, I’m all for people being treated fairly, but I am not for wild cat strikes, and I’m most certainly not for having my house being a construction zone for longer than it has to.

It’s just never easy, is it?

Am able to post this by leeching off my neighbor’s wireless from the old iBook, as all my networking equipment is scattered all over the house. So thank you neighbor, whoever you are, for leaving your access point wide open.

Incidentally, being a terminally curious sort, decided to visit 192.168.1.1 and yep, default Linksys factory password. One day I’ll triangulate and figure out who the neighbor is and offer to lock their gear down for them. In the meantime, they seem to be protecting themselves the ghetto way by powering the device down at night, so I’d better stop rambling and post this.

We’re having the wall-to-wall carpet in the entire house replaced with laminate flooring this week. According to the contractor, the entire house should take about six days. We are extremely excited about this—two puking cats and a toddler are not synergetic with wall-to-wall carpeting. Plus it will be infinitely easier to get rid of cat hair, dust and all the other allergenic matter that assembles, lives and flourishes in wall-to-wall carpets.

The contractor will move the furniture around as needed, so we don’t have to worry about that. However, we had to move all breakable items into storage and empty all shelves so the furniture can be moved around.

You know where this is heading. Yes, we had to take all the books down. Turns out, I have a lot of books. A lot a lot a lot.

So now my back hurts.

We also have to break down the computers and move them out of the way. So after I post this, Monolith is getting packed away for a few days, leaving us with naught but portable computing until the study gets its shiny new flooring installed. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days, we hope.

A friend of mine enjoys personal technology to an unusual degree. He decided for some reason that using a projector to display movies on the wall inside his house just wasn’t immersive enough, and built an outdoor entertainment center.

Click the image for larger version

He uses a 4,500 lumen projector to drive it, so it gets plenty bright enough once the sun goes down.

Click the image for larger version

The patio is equipped with surround sound, natch.

I asked him whether he’d had any problems with his neighbors complaining, and he said, “No, it seems they’ve gotten used to it. Sometimes they’ll go sit on their roofs and have a beer when we watch movies.”

Ah, living without a home owner’s association.

If anybody wants more specifications or any other info about the setup, send me an email and I’ll forward it.

Soundtrack: “You Love The Thunder” by Jackson Browne

The eternal quest to sink all of our disposable income into the house continues at Casa Core Dump.

One of the things that have annoyed us ever since we moved in was the range—it’s one of those cheap jobbies like you get in an apartment, with the loathed heater coils that are such a pain to clean. Urgh. But now it has met its demise, and sits outside in the driveway depressing neighborhood property values while we wait for it to be picked up and hauled off to wherever old stoves go.

The old stove. Not quite sexy enough.

It has been replaced with this stainless steel wonder of kitchen pr0n:

So shiny.

Oh yeah, glass top, baby. This is the way to fly. We have now achieved 100% stainless steel among kitchen appliances.

And yes, that’s a “Powered by Red Hat” sticker on the toaster next to the stove.

Soundtrack: “Feeling So Real” by Moby