Wild Blue Sky

What do  you get when you give a couple of us this stuff?

A big trench in solid concrete.  Oh yeah.

I bought some Killian’s today on my way back from Home Depot…. it sounded good after a hard evening of grouting.  The fate on the case and bottles says May0309… so I’m wondering if that’s a ‘born on date’ or a ‘best buy’ date.  And one of the bottle caps was mashed and not sealed right.  I’m bored, so I call the 800 number on the side for “Have any questions?”  (don’t judge me) to clarify and to make sure I shouldn’t drink the non-sealed one (ok, duh, but maybe I’ll get free beer out of it)
I call the number and get the “Thank you for calling.  Our call center is closed….” followed by normal days/hours and what have you.  At the end of the message, I shit you not, it says “… if this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1″  Really??  What… why…who??
The sad thing is, I’m sure someone called one time with alcohol poisoning or something stupid like that so they were forced to put that in there.

My dad picked one of these up a few weeks ago and we’ve used it for just about everything – cutting drywall, laminate, nails, tile grout.  It was awesome for undercutting the door jambs – put a bit of scrap flooring under the blade and go right in. Rockwell RK5101K Sonicrafter 37-Piece kit

Replacement blades that you’ll use the most of: Rockwell RW9122.3 Sonicrafter 1-3/8-Inch Universal End Cut Blade, 3-Piece
One of those will last you a good while.  One blade has done at least a dozen door jambs, lots of drywall, a couple nails (inadvertently) and a few plunge cuts through some pretty hard laminate.

Yeah yeah, so I’m going WAY out of order here.  I’ll get to the cause of all this later.  In the meantime, here’s now you take down a wall:

1) Find friends that know what they’re doing.  Buy them beer.
2) Find a wall you don’t like

3) Take out drywall!  That part is fun.  We only took it all off one side so we’d have less finish work.

This is not a load bearing wall.  So in this case we could just slap up a new opening, we didn’t really have to support anything (although we kinda did here, just in case the ceiling wanted to ’settle’ and crack)

4) Carefully remove drywall from the other side of the wall.  Again, we didn’t want to have to do twice the finish work, so just the opening was removed on the other side, not clear back to the next set of studs like we did on the side you see here.
5) Drywall, mud, sand, mud, sand, mud, sand, mud, sand

Isn’t that wall paper awesome?  Yes, big flowers.  That’s not a border, that what the whole wall looks like (under the paint)

6)  Find friends that like to paint.  Buy them beer.

Six easy steps.  Nothing to it.   For your reference – don’t try to paint a dark red.  It’s…. difficult.  Took tinted primer and 4 coats to cover it.  The first two coats were light, probably could have done it in three, but it took awhile to learn the trick

Floor & baseboards are next…. then it’s on to the kitchen.  Or maybe the bathrooms first.  Yeah, bathrooms first.  Stupid Home Depot – I registered for one of their tile ‘clinics’ last Saturday.  Show up and no employees even seem to know where the class is – bad sign.  So we finally find the place and stand around for 15 minutes until somebody says “I don’t think we have the manpower for the class today”  Ok, so why did I register?  You couldn’t make sure you had enough people or at least call/email and let me know you weren’t going to do it?  Jerks.  And at noon on a Saturday they had one poor girl trying to cover the whole paint department.  So asked some guy if he could help just grab the paint she needed and she’d mix/shake/whatever.  He came up with some lame excuse like “I don’t know where anything is here” and walked off.  Lazy shit.  I know where most of the crap is in that area, and I don’t even work there!  To top it all off, they only had their “U-Scan” lanes open… at noon on a Saturday!! Ever tried to swipe an 8′ 2×4 across a U-Scan?  Stupid Home Depot.

Ok so I have a couple credit cards – Capital One sent me notice on the two I have with them that they are raising my rate.  And not just a little.  One went from 11.9 APR to 17.9, the other went from like 7 to 16.something.  Chase did it too… up to like 17.2.  They all come with a “…. if you do not agree to the new terms call this number” blah blah blah… I called Capital One for one of them saying I didn’t agree, fully expecting someone to come on the line asking what they could do to keep my business.  Nope. Automated number, I put in my account and it said “Thank you, your card will be deactivated on May 15.
Wow…. not even trying eh?  It wouldn’t have taken much to keep me as a customer.  But no.  Whatever.

That’s it for right now.  I do have a story to tell of the house – flooded house.  I have pictures and stuff to go with it, so that will be awhile.  I am eternally grateful for all the friends and family I have that help me with this crap.  My dad has been awesome – I don’t know what I’d do without him.  All my friends… Evan, Bert, Andrew – you guys are the best.  While I’m thanking people, I would like to publicly thank Kelley for making my flower beds look awesome last year and I hope she does it again

It is kinda neat having the friends/family that I have – it doesn’t matter if their dad works at a green house; they’ve happened to install gutters / doors / flooring before; if they have tools and know-how to borrow because they’ve completely remodeled a 100 year old house.  It’s an odd feeling to have to decline an offer of help because you already have too many people.  I’m overwhelmed, indebted, and blessed.
The guys that pick up my recycling think I’m an alcoholic though, because most of my friends/family work for beer.

TARP is obviously working.  I applied for a HELOC a few weeks ago, here was JP Morgan Chase’s response:

Thank you for your recent application for a Home Equity account. We regret that we are unable to grant your request for credit at this time. This decision is in no way a reflection of your credit – it is simply indicative of the current housing market and the decreasing equity in most homes.

Really.

First – they’re right, it’s not my credit.  My credit is spectacular.  Secondly, I wasn’t asking for much at all – pay off a few higher interest bills and have some left over for a new dishwasher and water heater.  I have a credit card issued by them that has four times the amount available that I was asking for.

So let’s recap:  A few years back they started lending to anyone and everyone with barely a second glance at their credit score.  Surprise, this didn’t work out so well for them.  I’m simplifying, but then people got creative with these bad debts and sold them as not so bad… that with some bad calls by Greenspan and his boys and we’re at today.  You could argue that a good part of our problem started with the banks lowering their standards.
So because they were greedy back then, now I can’t get a loan from them.  So they’re losing even more money because they’re not going to get that interest I would have paid them.  Brilliant.  And I end up giving someone else more in interest and can’t buy a new dishwasher and water heater which is probably costing a few more people their job… which means they won’t be buying anything extra for Christmas this year.  And TARP was supposed to ‘free up’ some money so banks would start lending again.  Obviously not working.  Screw the banks – “They made their bed…” comes to mind.  Fire them… fire them all.  Give me the money – I’ll create jobs and lend it.  I’d lend it for next to nothing, but you’d better have a damn good credit score.

The subprime primer

Back in October I was forced to replace my furnace.  My insurance was awesome about the entire thing.  Love them.  They went after The Stupid Company’s insurance and must have done pretty well because I got 60% of my deductible back.  I got a newsletter from The Stupid Company.  It has the president’s name on it.  I’m guessing I can find an email address or phone number and have a little chat with him.  At the very least, I’d like a refund on the service I paid for.  Heh… that might just be fun.

Anyway… to my point.  The Trane salesman, as nice as he was, made some big promises.  He sold me on the  Trane XV80 – two-stage, variable speed fan, whizbang whatever.  I’m pretty sure he claimed that move to that one (I was only looking at the 80% ones anyway) would save me like 30% on my utility bills.  I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to save me that much, but 15% would be nice.  I can’t speak for the savings on the electric because I haven’t been paying much attention and that’s harder to call.  But the gas savings has been nonexistent.  Actually, I think it increased a little.
2/08 – CCFs: 99 – Heating Degree Days: 1194 – Days in Billing Cycle: 32
2/09 – CCFs: 102 – Heating Degree Days: 1190 – Days in Billing Cycle: 29
So the weather was about the same, and I actually used a little more gas in a couple less days.  Not complaining, it’s a perfectly fine system… just proof that companies throw around statistics and promises that don’t really mean anything.  Not that we’re surprised, right?

Still need to cover the $85 headlight change, new roaster… never put up the ‘after’ pictures of the landscaping.

Ignore this part… just trying something.  New Comfort Heating and Cooling New Paris

Actual conversation at Blockbuster

“Yeah, I’m exchanging the mailed one for this one… the mailed one is broken.  I didn’t know if you guys had to mark it or something”

“How did it get broken?”

“Uhh… I opened it today and it was cracked from the center to the edge.  I’m not sure how it happened”

“Umm… ok… yeah.. whatever.  I don’t know what to do with it.  I don’t care.  I take that back, they don’t pay me enough to care”

Now I’ve been places where it’s pretty obvious that people don’t give a shit about their job (the Quizno’s downtown is a great example) but I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with an employee where they verbally state it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had one of those jobs before – but I at least tried to hide that fact to non-coworkers.

For my PS3 peeps: Killzone 2 at Amazon for $52 – no tax, free shipping.  Use code KZ2SAVE5 to save $5 to get that price.  As a bonus, you get some exclusive outfits for Home (whoopee)

Are you serious with this garbage?!  You put Pacino and De Niro in the same movie… the same police drama movie… and this is what you end up with?  Are you kidding?!  I don’t turn movies off, but I almost did on this one.  They weren’t even trying – they stuck two big names on the marquee and figured people would buy it.  If a movie is bad, for me it’s normally the story.  Here it was the acting.  I’m not sure if you blame the director in this case or not… I just don’t know… I just know it was a waste of time.  Pacino was probably even worse in 88 Minutes, but that story was just stupid too.  C’mon guys, if you aren’t even going to try, just hang it up.

As a funny ha-ha:  I was writing this while waiting to talk to someone at Barracuda support(I’m not so impressed with their web site firewall so far) and I was trying to Google “imdb righteous kill” to put the link up there.  The finally came back to the chat window and it took focus.  I didn’t notice because it was on my other monitor.  So I sent them “b righteous kill”    I’m sure Nadia has a good story to tell her coworkers now.  Or I’m getting the cops called on me.  Or maybe I’ll get really, really good fear-inspired technical support.  Awesome.