Some of you may be aware that the bathtub in our guest bathroom has had a dripping faucet and it has since we moved in back in 2004. Well, it's been getting worse over the years and basically was mostly a matter of me just grimly ignoring it. Since Karin and I don't use that shower (we have one in the master bathroom) it only comes up when we have guests or when the cleaning service turns it on to clean. But last year Karin's dad told me that fixing the leak was probably pretty easy (I had a rap about how I didn't know what I was doing and all of the pipes were old and probably on the edge of breaking, blah, blah.) so I had recently decided that I'd take a peek before her folks visit this year for the holidays.
Turns out that replacing a faucet valve isn't all that bad, although I'll contend it's a little more difficult than I was lead to believe and needs some special tools. But then I got all aggressive and pumped up on my badass home-repair self. Short form is that I ended up replacing all of the fixtures in the bathtub: the handles, the valves themselves, the shower head, the tub faucet itself, and even the little plate that covered the emergency drain. It turns out the valve that needed the washer "replaced"? It had no washer whatsoever. WTF?
Then, completely out of my brain with home-fixit powers I attempted to remove the "unremovable" shower head on our shower. This was less successful and I ended up breaking off the pipe inside the next joint back. (Now that I've been able to look at things clearer I believe the ball joint on the neck pipe is threaded on the pipe. I was trying to remove that ball when I broke the neck pipe.)
After some careful consideration I decided to try to very carefully remove the tile had the hole for the shower neck pipe exited. This was a mistake really. Karin had made great strides at removing the grout around the tile, but she realized that at the end of it all it's still mortared to a backboard. D'oh! This left me stymied for a while and it was much later when Karin and I realized that wait a minute - that shower pipe is inside a wall. The other side of that wall is in our bedroom and that's just drywall. Well, I know how to make a big hole in drywall. I even know how to patch said hole(s) afterward (which is probably the more important bit.) Sure enough I was able to go into the other side of the wall, find the elbow bend with the bit of pipe inside, and try to remove it. It was well and truly stuck and what I actually managed to do was unscrew the pipe connecting the elbow to the T-joint where the hot and cold water feed into a single pipe. Ah well, I can make a hole down there too. Three smallish holes later I had found both ends of this pipe and had a nice clean threaded pipe end I could use to run new pipe forward.
So as of this writing both showers have completely finished plumbing again. In our shower we only replaced some pipe and the shower head since the valves and handles are fine. Karin and I have been using the guest shower while we repair the grout in our shower (it takes three days to cure the grout), and then we need to caulk around the new neck pipe. Once that shower is back in operation then I can caulk the new fixtures in the guest room. And I still need to patch the drywall, I'm going to put up the first coat of putty this afternoon. But both showers are working much better than they ever have before. I am a plumbing wizard! Fear me. And when Karin's parents visit this year I don't have to be ashamed of the bathroom we provide. (The drain is still a bit sluggish but I gotta save something for 2009. Plus drains mean getting into the crawlspace — that's a whole 'nother thing.)
Read moreThe Kindle
Amazon pulled a fast one on me. A while back they sent me this email which said roughly "Hey Amazon Prime subscriber! You buy a lot of books. Look, we'll send you a Kindle for a month to try it out. If you don't like it, send it back and we'll refund up to $50 worth of Kindle purchases. If you do like keep it and we'll charge you in a month." So of course I shook my fist at the heavens and used the Kirk-voice to yell "AMAZONNNN!!". Then clicked the linky thing to get my hands on a Kindle.
I've read several books on the thing, transferred a bunch of back issues of Jim Baen's Universe, and then switched a couple of my SF magazines (Asimov's and Analog). I like it quite a bit overall. I read Neal Stephenson's Anathem on it as my first book so that was a nice long piece of text for testing. Several things struck me about it during that first book. First, having the ability to search the text for Stephenson's made up words was great. Second, it was a lot easier to carry the Kindle around than one of Stephenson's doorstops. Third, the electronic ink screen is fantastic. I found the flashes when the page turns (the display has to cycle so the whole screen goes black, then the new page draws) distracting for the first couple of hours but it became one of those things that I just mentally edit out and now I don't notice it anymore.
For some reason I really thought the Kindle was larger than it is. In my head I firmly thought it was about a legal pad in dimensions. I think that's because the little carrying case looks like a legal pad to me and Amazon never has any scale elements in pictures. I took a picture of it next to a paperback and a hardback book to show a better idea of scale.
At the end of my trial month I would have said something like "Well, I really like it, but it's really pricy. I can just barely justify it and I'm a serious book lover." But then I got all sick and found the real killer app for the Kindle. There was I was, feeling too crappy to do anything but lay in bed, not tired enough to sleep and feeling sorry for myself. But wait, I have a Kindle! I can buy brand-new, only-in-hardback fiction over the wireless store and have a new book practically instantly! I bought both Saturn's Children by Charles Stross and Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi and killed a couple of yucky days, happily alternating between reading and napping.
It's cheaper than buying hardbacks, I'm no longer filling a bookshelf with big-ass hardbacks that I don't really want after the initial read, and the text is searchable, clippable and generalyl all digitally fantastic.
Now of course, the store only works in the US, but that doesn't bother me. You can convert PDF files and drop them on the Kindle via the USB cable, and it's native format is actually Mobipocket format so in my case I had .mobi files I used to use on my Palm Treo (You can download stuff from Baen in mobi format for example.)
You can overwhelm the PDF converter. Wizards now distributes Dragon and Dungeon magazines in PDF format. They are fairly graphic-heavy and are laid out in landscape with multiple text columns and sidebars. The PDF converter mangles these. The text isn't flowed from the columns properly so the columns get all jumbled in going to the Kindle. (If you do a text select in Preview the same thing happens, so I think the text isn't really flowed properly in the files themselves and that's what the converter picks up on.
I haven't messed with the MP3 player or the web browser. The screen is monochrome, so I'm a little dubious about a digital subscription to something like Discover or Scientific American where you need to read complex graphics. (On the other hand, maybe Wired would be much improved if you took away the neon colors and silly fonts ....) Flipping pages is slow because of the graphics refresh and if there's a graphic on the page there's a noticeable hiccup in page turning. Some of the books seem to be poorly proofread. I bought The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on it (let's face it - my 20+ year old paperback copy is going to fall apart some year) and there are many passages where two words are runtogether. (See what I did there?) The library is oddly inconsistent - although you can get Hitchhiker's and some of Adams's other books like The Meaning of Liff none of the other Hitchhiker's books or either of the Dirk Gently books are available.
Something is weird about public domain books. I tried to get The Wizard of Oz and there are literally dozens of copies of it on the store, often things like all 15 Wizard of Oz books in a single file for only $0.99, but they look like they are all crappy conversions of the Project Gutenberg texts with no real Table of Contents. I'd rather pay a buck or two a book and know that I'm getting something that's had some quality control applied. I suppose I could convert the Gutenberg texts myself but this is the point: I'd rather pay to have somebody do a good job. On the other hand, look at what I'm bitching about. I can put all 15 books of the Oz series on a device the rough size of a paperback book with a long multi-hour battery life, search 'em digitally, read them on a screen that comes damn close to paper (for text anyway) and I'm complaining about table of contents and chapter stops. If you love reading, this thing is from the future. It does have a bit of that iPhone-like "Gee whiz" feeling when I grab it and casually search for that HHTTG quote I want, or check wirelessly to see if there's a new issue of Analog.
So I ended up getting my Christmas present early. It's expensive for what it does, but I sure enjoy reading on the Kindle.
Read more
At the end of my trial month I would have said something like "Well, I really like it, but it's really pricy. I can just barely justify it and I'm a serious book lover." But then I got all sick and found the real killer app for the Kindle. There was I was, feeling too crappy to do anything but lay in bed, not tired enough to sleep and feeling sorry for myself. But wait, I have a Kindle! I can buy brand-new, only-in-hardback fiction over the wireless store and have a new book practically instantly! I bought both Saturn's Children by Charles Stross and Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi and killed a couple of yucky days, happily alternating between reading and napping.
It's cheaper than buying hardbacks, I'm no longer filling a bookshelf with big-ass hardbacks that I don't really want after the initial read, and the text is searchable, clippable and generalyl all digitally fantastic.
Now of course, the store only works in the US, but that doesn't bother me. You can convert PDF files and drop them on the Kindle via the USB cable, and it's native format is actually Mobipocket format so in my case I had .mobi files I used to use on my Palm Treo (You can download stuff from Baen in mobi format for example.)
You can overwhelm the PDF converter. Wizards now distributes Dragon and Dungeon magazines in PDF format. They are fairly graphic-heavy and are laid out in landscape with multiple text columns and sidebars. The PDF converter mangles these. The text isn't flowed from the columns properly so the columns get all jumbled in going to the Kindle. (If you do a text select in Preview the same thing happens, so I think the text isn't really flowed properly in the files themselves and that's what the converter picks up on.
I haven't messed with the MP3 player or the web browser. The screen is monochrome, so I'm a little dubious about a digital subscription to something like Discover or Scientific American where you need to read complex graphics. (On the other hand, maybe Wired would be much improved if you took away the neon colors and silly fonts ....) Flipping pages is slow because of the graphics refresh and if there's a graphic on the page there's a noticeable hiccup in page turning. Some of the books seem to be poorly proofread. I bought The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on it (let's face it - my 20+ year old paperback copy is going to fall apart some year) and there are many passages where two words are runtogether. (See what I did there?) The library is oddly inconsistent - although you can get Hitchhiker's and some of Adams's other books like The Meaning of Liff none of the other Hitchhiker's books or either of the Dirk Gently books are available.
Something is weird about public domain books. I tried to get The Wizard of Oz and there are literally dozens of copies of it on the store, often things like all 15 Wizard of Oz books in a single file for only $0.99, but they look like they are all crappy conversions of the Project Gutenberg texts with no real Table of Contents. I'd rather pay a buck or two a book and know that I'm getting something that's had some quality control applied. I suppose I could convert the Gutenberg texts myself but this is the point: I'd rather pay to have somebody do a good job. On the other hand, look at what I'm bitching about. I can put all 15 books of the Oz series on a device the rough size of a paperback book with a long multi-hour battery life, search 'em digitally, read them on a screen that comes damn close to paper (for text anyway) and I'm complaining about table of contents and chapter stops. If you love reading, this thing is from the future. It does have a bit of that iPhone-like "Gee whiz" feeling when I grab it and casually search for that HHTTG quote I want, or check wirelessly to see if there's a new issue of Analog.
So I ended up getting my Christmas present early. It's expensive for what it does, but I sure enjoy reading on the Kindle.Neat!
CNet has a neat photo gallery up showing ten years of the ISS. It's easy to forget how much it's grown over time. And while everyone is focusing on the whole water recapture deal, maybe remember that it's a pretty significant development in human history? (I may have some minor quibbles about the ISS, but damn! It's a permanent habitat! In space!)
Read moreWrapup
Hey all, I'm back from the dead! And I DID manage to finish my NaNoWriMo novel despite the sickness. To sum up how sick I was, without going into disgusting levels of detail: I haven't exercised in 18 days, we cooked a full Thanksgiving spread, which we're still eating leftovers from and this morning I've dropped over 3.5 pounds since the last time I weighed in with Wii Fit.
Anyway, that's not the point. This is the point:
Go me!
You may expect a resurgence in blogging frequency, back to my previous half-assed, lackadaisical sort of updating.
Read more
Go me!
You may expect a resurgence in blogging frequency, back to my previous half-assed, lackadaisical sort of updating.OMFG
(I know, I know. It's been over two weeks since my last post. NaNoWriMo conspired with the worst illness I've had in years to make highly behind on things. This still continues and will for the rest of the month, but this had to be posted today.)
So local friends will know about the two ugly, yipping dogs that moved in next door. The ones that bark when we're in the yard, the ones that bark if we're talking at the dining room table with the window open, the ones that now bark at me when I'm in my garage. The ones, that instead of training them to not bark an adult that hears them will yell at the kids, who then yell at the dogs, who ignore the kids so now we have two dogs and two to four people now going full blast. Yeah, those dogs. We love them so.
I was eating a late lunch when I looked up and saw one of those dogs in my back yard. Turns out it dug under the fence over behind the jasmine. Well. I chased it around the yard a few times for comedy styling and by then I could hear the kids yelling for the dog so I went next door and told them to come get their dog. (In hindsight I should have opened a gate and chased it to the gate and out, but I didn't realize it wouldn't go back to the hole it dug. Stupid dog.)
So then I had to get out some potting soil and a bag of mulch and cover up the hole on our side. I made the neighbor make some weak-ass attempt to cover the hole on their side but I think it's all loose stones over there and pushing back a bunch of small rocks by hand isn't going to deter the dog. (When I found the spot I went over and told her I knew where the hole was and asked if she wanted me to show her and she said "No, I know, I'm fixing it now." It only took her five minutes or so to find it after that so I'm pretty suspicious that she was lying, but hey, she did something, so I'll call it a win.) I used a shovel to tamp down the soil on our side, so the dog would have to at least dig through packed-down ground.
I don't think it will come back anytime soon, it was pretty scared by the time it got out of our yard. Of course, I can't say the same thing about the other dog. If we're lucky it will at least dig under some other side of the fence next time and be somebody else's problem.
Maybe in the spring I'll think about putting some of those root guard sheets down by the fence line. It's too late in the year for that kind of big garden project now.
(And back to NaNo. Away my typing minions!)
Read more