Oddball Update

Nothing really important has happened in the last week or two — at least, nothing that I could craft a well-structured and thought-provoking article around. However, since it’s hard for me to ignore the therapeutic benefits of blogging about random life events, I’m posting a brief summary of such.

The leaking roof madness continues. The first contractor who came to check out the damage actually marked the potential trouble areas of my roof with hot pink spray paint, which apparently isn’t coming off by itself, so that’s lovely. His written quote then came a week late in the mail and was three times the amount of the next lowest bid I received — for the exact same work, based on both descriptions — so all I got out of calling them were some pink roof tiles that I’m going to have to replace. Thanks a load, Gulf Coast Roofing of Naples, Florida. Thanks an absolute load!

The lower bid, incidentally, came from the same company who actually built our roof to begin with, so they have built-in knowledge and credibility. They also handled the roof repairs in our community after hurricane Wilma, a fact I verified with the association president. The inspector they sent quoted me $575 to fix our roof, which they would then warranty against further leaks. The only trouble is, they’re making it extremely difficult for me to get the job started. The inspector missed his first appointment, but finally did show the next day. He was then supposed to turn in his report that afternoon so the office managers could get me a written proposal by email the next day, but that didn’t happen.

So I called them back and asked if I could just schedule the job. But I was told that they actually can’t schedule work until the inspector turns in his report detailing what needs to be done. “Well, he was here two days ago and I saw his written report myself. Hasn’t he turned it in yet?” I asked. Turns out he hadn’t. So the girl I was speaking with put me on hold and went in search of the guy. She finally came back and said she’d just received the paperwork and would enter it right away, so I’d get an email with the official quote later that afternoon. Guess what? I didn’t.

That was Friday, so I haven’t been able to do anything since. So tomorrow (Monday) I’ll be calling them again to see if, y’know, this company is actually interested in taking my money and doing some goddamn work — which will hopefully be done better than they’ve handled the administrative end of their business thus far.

I also called a third roofing company for an estimate, but after a week of calling and leaving messages and having no one get back to me — and then finding public records that the company had been sued recently for doing a shitty job on somebody’s McMansion here in town — I decided it was probably just as well that they didn’t return my calls.

It poured rain here again today, but there haven’t been any further leaks since the first day we noticed it — which was the fourth day of constant, drenching rains. My hope is that the leak will only manifest after continuous and torrential downpour, which doesn’t happen all that often.

In other, non-roof related matters, we’ve finally begun our next-generation product launch cycle at work. I helped launch the first entry in our new family of products this past Monday. The next release on the calendar is the new version of our best-selling product, so it’ll be a big one. No one is quite sure when it’s going to be ready for launch, but if I had to guess, I’d say around August 11th — two weeks from now. They do new builds on Monday, so it’ll probably be a Monday again.

Admittedly, perhaps that estimate stems from wishful thinking — because if it’s any sooner, it’s going to be hell for me to finish everything that has yet to be done for the release. Hopefully we’ll get a meaningful update at the weekly ops meeting tomorrow.

On the side job front, I’m in the process of closing out a rather big job that I’ve been doing since I came back from Thailand, so that’s good. This past weekend I also wrapped up an SEO and promotion project for a local law firm, which netted a quick $300 that immediately went into the “fix the roof” fund. I also have a couple of minor design projects still outstanding, but after that, nothing major on the horizon. If I want further work, I’ll have to go and get it — or put in extra hours at my day job, which honestly shouldn’t be that difficult given this new product release phase.

In personal matters, Apple and I are talking seriously about going back to Thailand in October, which is a bit earlier than our original plan. We realized that there isn’t really any reason for us to wait longer to start our IVF procedures, and the stress of the whole situation is making us want to just hurry up and meet this challenge head-on.

For me, this means stepping up my efforts to prepare everything for an extremely lengthy absence. I’ll be upgrading the TiVo HD so that it can store several months’ worth of recorded material. I’ll also be picking up a large (500GB or more) portable hard drive so that I can transport the entire contents of my workstation to Thailand, where I hope to set up a multi-monitor desktop machine. Using a tiny laptop for design work is a hair-pulling adventure that I can only deal with for a few weeks before I go insane. I had also hoped to unlock my iPhone so I could use it in Thailand, but since you have to have a Mac to use the only available unlocking tool for firmware 2.0, that probably isn’t going to be happening. Maybe someone in Thailand can unlock it.

We’ve done a lot over the last few weeks to make our financial situation as paper-free as possible, so that we can manage all of our paychecks, bills and money transfers over the Internet — and therefore can continue to function in Thailand without much trouble. There are only a couple of exceptions, mostly minor ones, so this should not be a problem. Getting our taxes prepared at the start of next year will probably be the biggest challenge, but hopefully all of the paperwork can be mailed to us in Thailand and we can mail it back expeditiously enough to make the deadline. Apple’s employer makes her W-2 available online, so that’s a big bonus.

We still want to take a few days’ vacation all to ourselves — preferably in Disney World — before the whirlwind starts. It looks like September will be the month for this. Apple and I talked this morning about moving that up to August, but I don’t think there’s going to be time. Between the roof repairs and my parents’ next trip into town in the second half of the month, the only week we could take off is probably going to be the same week that our best-selling product launches at work. It wouldn’t be much of a “final vacation” if I were stressing over work the entire time, not to mention defeating the purpose — I’m planning to make this an actual vacation, where I actually don’t work or even take a computer with me. Because I have no PTO, I usually I get about 4 or 5 “real vacation” days a year, and even then, only because I put in a few extra days on the weekends to cover the lost time.

I am actually looking forward to getting back to Thailand, though. The more I go there, the more I wish life in America resembled life in Thailand. If we lived there, we wouldn’t have to worry about housework, washing dishes or clothes or anything like that. Medical care is easy to come by and affordable even if you don’t qualify for the government care program (which, sensibly, is available only to Thai citizens). You can feed your entire family for just a few dollars a day. Cell phones are cheap, don’t require contracts and you only pay for the calls you make, never for calls or texts you receive. You rarely have the feeling that people are out to get you, as I so often do at home. And it seems like, somehow, there’s always more time for me to enjoy the pleasures of life, sink into a good book, or spend time with family while I’m there.

Living in America, by contrast, I feel like I’m “on call” at every minute. I can’t be in front of my computer anymore without feeling like I should be working if I’m sitting there, which has precluded me from doing much writing, game level designing or much of anything else I used to do — it just feels wrong. The fact that in Thailand I’m physically separated by half the globe’s worth of time zones is incredibly freeing, as it allows me to compartmentalize my day in a very concise fashion. If I need to have a meeting with someone Stateside, I just stay up in the evening and get together during their morning hours. This leaves me free during my days to get the email from overnight and then work on my tasks without distraction.

It really is life’s secret combination — pull down your income in a rich, first-world nation and then spend it in the third world. Even in times like this, when the U.S. dollar is so weak, it still goes a very long way in a place like Thailand.

And now, to end on a more fun note. Last night, after becoming frustrated with my inability to put together a decent Wolfenstein level, I turned to YouTube to look for something interesting to watch. I found an astonishingly brilliant series of Star Trek fan films, created by some very dedicated nerds (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) down in Texas.

Called Starship Exeter, this particular series is set in the TOS era and focuses on the adventures of — you guessed it — the starship Exeter, a Constitution-class ship just like Kirk’s old Enterprise. The crew has built a faithful recreation of all the old TOS sets, and they look amazing. The ship shots are the closest I’ve seen to the original Star Trek’s model shots, without the fake appearance that modern CGI often has. And unlike many other fan films I’ve seen, the effects, writing and sound editing are very good too — the original music even has a ’60s TV show vibe to it! The acting, often the weakest link of any fan film, is this one’s weakest link as well…but it’s still better than most fan films I’ve seen.

It apparently takes months and months to shoot each act of a single episode of Starship Exeter — likely because these folks may be doing this on their spare time — but it’s like going back in time to my childhood. They’ve done a magnificent job.

Take a look at the first part of the Starship Exeter episode “The Tressaurian Intersection” on YouTube here.

Tagged as home repair, Life, Randomness, Starship Exeter, Thailand + Categorized as Life, Randomness