Oddball Update

And another five days go by without an update on this site — what a slacker! Well, it’s been busy as usual. You were expecting some other excuse maybe? Anyway, here’s an update.

On Monday I attended the “community meeting” with the vice president of the homebuilder that assembled our humble abodes. This was to address the apparent design flaw evident in most of the 1,800 homes in the community. Namely, the flaw that allows water to seep into the boards directly behind the gutters, causing the wood to rot. This issue has been more severe for some people than others, but it seems to be a universal problem. The good news is, the builder has decided, entirely at their own expense, to systematically repair every home in the community. This is liable to take more than a year to complete, even though they said they intend to wrap it up before the end of 2006.

The builder will be repairing homes on the handful of streets with the largest number of complaints first, and after that’s done, they’ll go back to street #1 and work clockwise around the community. There are something like 40 streets in total. Our street is 21st on the list, and my parents’ street is 39th. The only thing we, as homeowners, have to do is sign a release that allows the builder to come onto our property and do the repair in the event that we’re not at home at the time. Sounds good to me.

A blueprint of the proposed fix was included. Now, I’m no engineer, and as such I have no clue whether the fix is sufficient or not. Some folks at the meeting, during the Q&A session, seemed dissatisfied with the proposal (one old dude, who apparently was a contractor “up north” for 30-odd years, called it “a Mickey Mouse piece of work”). But I mean, seriously, they’re going to fix everybody’s house, do it for nothing, and even provide letters or certificates to homeowners who require proof (for their insurance companies, buyers of their home, whatever) that the problem has been corrected. I’d say that’s a damn good start, at the very least — so why bitch?

Interestingly, at the meeting it came up that the current board of directors (the one that decided not to have anything to do with this issue at all) and the developer have known about the gutter issue for more than a year. That really rankled the crowd. Fortunately for them, the board elections are coming up at the end of the month — I dropped my ballot in the mail this week. If you don’t like it, folks, now’s your chance to do something about it.

In other news, I fixed KITT’s shifter linkage — now it shifts like a new car. Which, of course, is the only thing about the Formula bearing any resemblance to a new car whatsoever. During the builder meeting on Monday, my GTO also got rained on for the first time, and is now dirty as hell. I’m planning to wash it tomorrow night so it’ll be clean for the local car show on Saturday evening. I got my new shipment of Zaino and my special microfiber towels from Hawaii ready and waiting to be used. Yes, I am a nitpicking automobile snob.

I also have a couple more Oddball posts in the works that I should be getting online in the next couple of days, so keep an eye out.

Categorized as Life