Posts Tagged ‘home repair’

2009: The Year Entropy Accelerated

By Chief Oddball on November 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

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As the ill-fated 2009 starts to wind itself down, it’s making it more clear than ever that it’s not going to let us forget how much pain and suffering it inflicted on us all. Some more than others, obviously, but by-and-large it’s been a pretty depressing year. My family in particular was hit harder by more cataclysmic events at once than at any point in my lifetime, with my dad losing his job due to the slowing economy, the deaths of two family members (just a month apart, no less) and a myriad of other problems besides.

Although Apple and I have fared pretty well in comparison to many other Americans — even other members of our families — we’ve still received a disproportionate amount of negative reinforcement from The Powers That Be. This week, in particular, was like a microcosm of that very idea, presenting us with one out-of-left-field event after another: breakdowns, unforeseen events, ridiculous instances of lightning striking twice. The Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to have conspired against us to accelerate entropy to an almost comical level.

I used to do a lot of bitching on this blog. Not so much anymore. But today is one of those days where I feel like if I don’t get it off my chest here, I’ll take it out on someone who doesn’t deserve it, so away we go with a little old-fashioned rant.

Forfeiting the Comcast Battle (But Not Quite the War)

My seemingly eternal struggle with Comcast over the billing and service for my TiVo HD came to an anti-climactic end early this week. (You can follow the history of the saga here.) After apparently getting a solution from corporate to the two HD service fees I was getting charged — one for each CableCARD in my TiVo — the celebration came to an abrupt halt last weekend when my second tuner lost all HD service. Again.

Sick and tired of it, I bypassed phone support altogether and filed another corporate complaint. This time, however, despite the corporate head office’s agreement with my position, the “corporate liaison officer” at our local Comcast department gave me a call to say there was nothing that can be done. In my area, she explained, the billing system requires that a separate HD service charge be assessed on each single-stream CableCARD. So, if I want HD service on both tuners of my DVR, I have to pay for it twice. And that’s that.

So I asked her, if Comcast would offer me a multi-stream CableCARD to replace my two single-stream cards, would I only pay one HD fee despite getting the exact same service? She said yes. Of course, Comcast still doesn’t have multi-stream CableCARDs here. As a result, I pay twice as much for the same service, because of their lack of equipment. Oh, that’s really nice; I’m so glad I could help. Is that extra money I’m paying you going to finance, say, acquisition of any fucking multi-stream CableCARDs, by any chance? (The woman did say that multi-stream cards were currently being tested and would be offered to us early next year, but I’ll believe that when I can hold one in my hands.)

As a consolation, the Comcast corporate liaison officer told me that they’re already crediting me for the extra $6.95 HD service charge by lowering our second CableCARD fee to $1.50, because it’s normally like 8 bucks. Huh? According to Comcast’s own CableCARD FAQ, the second card fee can be only “up to $2.05.” They’re saving me 55 cents, not $6.95. And if you check that same link, you’ll see that I wouldn’t even be paying a second card fee if I just had a multi-stream card. That’s another $1.50 I wouldn’t be paying if Comcast could offer current equipment.

But by this point I had had it. I’m sorry, I really had. I just can’t do this fucking song and dance anymore. I told the woman to just go ahead and restore service to my second CableCARD, and I’ll pay their extra $6.95 monthly fee. What else am I gonna do? At some point you have to recognize that it’s just seven fucking dollars. I will be hounding them next year to make sure I’m one of the first people to get a multi-stream card — assuming that wasn’t just a line of bull — but until then, I have more important things to deal with.

Speaking of which…I’m just getting started.

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Watering Hole

By Chief Oddball on August 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

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Apologies for the lapse in posting. Shortly after my Windows 7 installation, I fell into a tremendous task load — both at my day job and otherwise — which included a few up-till-midnight work evenings, working over the weekend, and the usual accompaniments. I’ve also been doing a fair amount of troubleshooting for friends and family, including the failure of my buddy Pooch’s video card, some issues with my dad’s new laptop, and the installation of new RAM modules in my grandfather’s desktop PC.

So yeah, I’ve been busy. Is there ever any other explanation when dust starts gathering around here?

I’m happy to report, at least, that all the jobs and tasks in which I’ve participated have worked out quite well. By comparison, this week has been positively relaxing, which of course I’ve enjoyed as it’s given me time to work on some important personal projects and even try a new video game or two. (Shadow Complex, by the way, is simply divine.) Apple and I, in particular, have both been mightily obsessed with one of those casual time-management games from PlayFirst Software — y’know, the kind of embarrassing ones that you’re afraid to admit you play to your Gears of War and Halo loving buddies, but which are addictive to the point where you need a chemical intervention to stop playing.

Anyway, the topic for today’s entry fell into my lap yesterday when we got our most recent water bill from the county utilities office, and it had completely skyrocketed far beyond the realm of believability. Normally we use anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water a month, for which we pay around $60. This month, however, our statement indicated usage of 12,000 gallons, and a $130 charge to match. We even got dinged with a surtax for excessive consumption during Phase II Water Restrictions (which, incidentally, I’m sure will never, ever be lifted again, since the county needs to make money.)

Neither one of us has changed our water consumption habits — certainly not enough to account for a threefold increase in reported usage — so I figured something had to be bogus. When I called the water company, they asked whether I’d done a laundry list of things that would have accounted for the usage, my response to all of which was a resounding no. (“Did you fill your pool?” the lady asked. “We don’t even have a pool,” I replied.) Their only other idea was that it could be a leak, so they suggested I read the meter, turn all the water off and then read it again in four hours to see if it had changed.

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Lockout

By Chief Oddball on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm

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I was just wrapping up a very productive day. At the “office,” I’d worked up a Flash video animation from start to finish and sent it off to my boss — all before anyone back home opens their email for the first time on Monday morning. I finished shaving (a once-every-three-days operation that I mostly like to postpone until I can’t stand it anymore), completed a rigorous workout on our in-home exercise machine, ate lunch, cleaned up lunch, took out the trash and watered the potted plants. Apple called at around 5:30 in the afternoon and said she’d be home soon, so we could eat dinner together. Having finished my work, I fired up the Xbox 360, connected to Xbox Live and made sure all of my games were up-to-date with the latest patches.

At length, the doorbell rang. This is Apple’s signal that she’s arrived home, so I can shut down everything here in the room (A/C and lights off, computer on standby, keys and cell phones in my pockets) and come down to open the door for her. This time, I was in the middle of starting a download of Street Fighter II: HD Remix — the free trial version — from Xbox Live Marketplace. If I waited until I finished this task before going down to open the door, Apple would be sitting out there for another couple of minutes. So I stuck my iPhone and the house keys in my pocket, turned off the air conditioner, and decided to run down to open the door and then head back upstairs to get the download going before dinner.

I went down, met Apple and brought the clean laundry into the house. (Each day, thanks to the housekeeper Apple’s family employs, we take dirty laundry to the print shop and we bring a clean load home.) I told her my plan and then dashed back upstairs to put the laundry basket in the bedroom, start downloading the game and then return to the kitchen. But for some reason, as I grabbed and twisted the bedroom doorknob, the door refused to budge.

For a moment, I thought maybe it was stuck. Back when it was raining here every day, the house’s wooden doors soaked up a lot of moisture and expanded, making it hard to open and close them. But it hasn’t rained in days. Further attempts to open the door made it pretty clear that it was, to borrow a phrase from Peter DeLorenzo, notgonnahappen.com.

In my haste to leave the bedroom, I thought, I must have accidentally pushed the locking button on the inside of the doorknob before closing it behind me. So I ran downstairs to tell Apple to ask her brother-in-law A — who had just brought her home — if there was a spare key somewhere to open that door. A had just left the house, though, so Apple called him, got the location of the key and we tried it. But even though we clearly had the correct key, and the knob was clearly unlocked and turning freely, the door was still not opening.

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A Taxing Week Indeed

By Chief Oddball on July 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

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Hard to believe it’s only Tuesday, after how taxing this week has already been. It seems like everything I’ve done so far this week has been met with an inordinate amount of complication and frustration. Even the simplest stuff…even stuff I’ve done time and time again. Everywhere I’ve turned in the last couple days, it seems that a spanner has been invariably thrown into the works.

I haven’t had too much serious trouble with my job, at least, although my work has had its own fair share of “why isn’t this working how it’s supposed to?” instances. Most of the complication has been related to bureaucratic, governmental and paperwork related headaches. We’re working through it, slowly but surely, but it’s frustrating when you just seem to keep running into a new roadblock every five minutes.

As I’ve described on this site before, Apple and I are still in the process of trying to have kids. This has proved difficult for us, so we’re going to need the intervention of In-Vitro Fertilization procedures. IVF isn’t such a big deal in this day and age, except that the process isn’t guaranteed to work the first time, is insanely expensive and isn’t covered by most American health insurance companies. In Thailand you can get the same quality care for a lot less money, so that’s where we’re going — but you still have to be prepared for the possibility that you’ll need to try several times before it works. Because there’s a two-month “cool-down” period between tries, success could come right off the bat, or take the better part of a year.

Because of this uncertainty, we’re going to need legal permission to stay in Thailand for as long as possible. For myself, I’m applying for a multiple-entry non-immigrant O class visa, which is perfect for foreign spouses of Thai nationals who want to visit their families. It gives you a 90-day stay for each entry over the course of a year, but if your last entry is one day before the year is up, you get a “bonus” 90 days. That makes it really more like 15 months total, if you play it right. Since you can only stay in 90-day increments, you have to make what’s colloquially called a “visa run” every 3 months. This involves crossing the border into a neighboring country, then turning around and coming back into Thailand, starting the clock over again at another 90 days. It’s been done time and time again by foreigners.

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Random Life Update

By Chief Oddball on July 27th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

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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.

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The Roof Gods Are, Apparently, VERY ANGRY

By Chief Oddball on July 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am

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This morning, the first roofing contractor I’d called arrived to draw up a free estimate. He tromped around on the roof for a bit, then basically attempted to explain the whole thing by saying that whoever built our roof did a shit job (immediately shooting his credibility into the toilet, unbeknownst to him). While no precise point of moisture entry was visible, he said that water was “probably” coming in around the attic vent, which the original roof builder had lined with concrete rather than the lead flashing they supposedly should have used. It was then running down the roof and rusting the screws that hold our clay tiles on, and some water was probably coming in the rusted screw holes.

Okay? Whatever; I’m not a roofer, nor do I have any clue whether to believe the Rube Goldberg explanation this guy is giving me. The only thing I really understood was that he recommended taking up 250 square feet of the roof back there to see where the problem was. Oh, okay! Let me head down to the bank right now so I can take out a loan. He said he’d get a written proposal to me in the mail today.

Well, I’m not made of money, so I walked around pulling my hair for a while before Apple was kind enough to calm me down and point me toward a course of action I otherwise probably wouldn’t have taken: Call the president of the HOA board and ask for advice. Seemed like going a bit above my station somehow, but hey, the board does work for us, so I gave it a shot.

It turned out to be an excellent idea. I was recommended to contact one person after another, and called each in turn, until I finally got somewhere: The original contractor who installed the roof of every home in this development. I scheduled an appointment for them to come out and give me an estimate next week. I figure if anybody knows this roof, it’s the people who built it, and I’m more likely to trust the recommendations they’d give me. And for the record, I don’t believe for a second that this company does a shit job, unless half the homes in this county have shitty roofs on them.

Now I’m just waiting for a callback to confirm next week’s appointment. Otherwise, that concludes the roofing excitement for the morning. This afternoon I’ve got to meet with our CPA to do a mid-year tax analysis and see if we should make any changes to our estimated tax payment schedule with the IRS. I also just got the green light on a side project that I need to start now — 6 hours worth, minimum; probably more like 10 — in addition to the two other open projects still on the docket.

I feel kind of stupid complaining about being busy, because this whole week so far has been very quiet. But I was easily frustrated by the roof issue and by the ongoing traditional lack of effective communication at my day job, which made the whole week seem like a living hell instead of the peaceful breather that it was actually closer to. Which sucks, because judging from what next week looks like, I could have used that breather. But it’s interesting, because sometimes being busier makes you feel more satisfied, in an odd sort of way.

At least it’s Friday, and the good news is that my day job’s email inbox is empty for a change. Apple has the day off, and this evening we’re going to try a new sushi bar and Teppan grill restaurant we’ve heard about. Both of us have to work this weekend, unfortunately, but I’m going to see if I can do all of my tasks on Saturday so I can have Sunday off. That’s the day my dad gets here for his impromptu Florida vacation, so maybe on Sunday night we can watch a movie on the big screen TV or something. I need to take a trip over to Blockbuster and see what’s on Blu-ray these days.

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The Roof Gods Are ANGRY

By Chief Oddball on July 15th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

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Yesterday, we finally received our “government stimulus check” in the mail — a cool $1,200. In retrospect, I should have realized then that something bad was about to happen. It always does, you see, whenever we come into some large sum of money.

So today, naturally, we got our dose of karma-balancing payback. I should preface this by saying that it’s been raining here for the last week straight, and in the last four days especially, it’s done nothing but pour down this unrelenting, drenching rain. It was at precisely the same moment this morning when Apple and I both looked up at the ceiling in our bedroom and blurted out, “What is that spot up there?”

There was a weird discolored spot on the ceiling right above the bed. I felt it. It was cold and wet. Not coincidentally, there was also cold, wet stuff raining out of the sky outside. That’s a great big whopping dose of Not Good. So I get a huge ladder, crawl up into the attic access over our bedroom and start poking around with a flashlight. And then I see it: Water dripping off the pointed end of a crossbeam. About one drop every two seconds.

There’s just a small portion of wood that looks wet, right where the beam comes to an end, and for the life of me I can’t find any other wet spots anywhere in the attic. But it’s been dripping long enough that it’s soaked into the insulation in this one very precise spot, and has now made a corresponding spot on our bedroom ceiling. Actually, there are four spots, all right near each other, one bigger than the other three. I have no idea why there are four. There is only one drip point.

Anyway, I called a local roofing company that does free estimates, so they’re coming out at 9 in the morning on Friday. For the meantime, I’ve stuffed a folded towel up in the attic, right beneath where the water had been dripping. Since the attic does not have a floor, I can’t put a bucket up there for fear the weight would…well, cause an even larger problem. It’s since stopped raining, thank God, but we’re likely to get some more off-and-on between now and Friday.

Based on the downward angle of the dripping beam, the water is probably entering at an elbow-like corner of the roof, where two planes intersect. A typical leak location. Hopefully it will not cost a fortune to fix. I really don’t have a fortune right now.

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Let It Bleed

By Pooch on April 29th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

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“Yes we all need someone we can bleed on…”

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of driving out to BFE to get my first glimpse at the new house of my (and Chief Oddball’s) best buddy, Reaper. Of course, since the house is a bit of a work-in-progress, this was no open house; I was expecting to be put to work somehow. Sure enough, once I got there, Reaper and his father were about to head out to Home Depot, and tasked me with removing light fixtures from the exterior of the house. I finished that up rather quickly, then sat around and waited in the sparsely-furnished house for Reaper and his father to get back. While I waited, Reaper’s fiancee arrived, and quickly we began to clean up the yard a bit; amongst the garbage we found outside was:

  • A shoe
  • A whole bunch of aluminum cans (including two which seem to had exploded)
  • A tampon applicator
  • Lots of discarded cigarette wrappers
  • Lots of discarded dipping sauces from Burger King and McDonald’s
  • Electrical cords
  • Some other stuff you probably don’t care about

As we picked up trash, Reaper and his father returned from the hardware store; one of the things they picked up was a new water heating unit to install in Reaper’s basement, as the pre-existing one was garbage. Since Reaper and I were the big, strapping men, we got to haul the thing into the basement (luckily, the house is built into the side of a slope, so there’s a sliding door above ground we were able to take it through). As we set the heating unit down, I noticed the electrical control box for the house’s security system attached to the side of the stairwell that led upstairs – “Somebody could hit their head on that,” I noted to myself. A further note: the water heater itself was situated alongside the same wall as the staircase leading upstairs. This very well may play a part later in the story.

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