Monthly Archives: April 2015

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Sticks and stones. I might be part of the last generation that grew up learning that sticks and stones would break our bones, but names would never hurt us. We’re also perhaps the last generation that will get to use the work “thug” to refer to a violent criminal. It’s not a surprise. When we live in a world where everyone wants to get through life without their sensibilities or little feelings being hurt, there’s not much hope. Personally, I refuse to be afraid of or intimidated by mere words… not even the one’s Carlin couldn’t say on television. I can’t help but think we’d all be better off if we’d collectively grow a thicker skin and spend a little last time being “offended” by every little thing that doesn’t fit in nicely with our own worldview.

2. Reorganization. I’ve been with my employer now for a little more than 12 years. In that time I’ve lived through six major reorganizations. Those are just the ones that impacted me directly. I’ve probably seen at least twice or three times that number happen. Of course there’s nothing wrong with changing things up to make yourself more efficient and effective. That’s good business. It’s just that when you do it on average every other year there’s no way in hell you’re making those decisions based on consistently assembled data… and when the next guy finds something he doesn’t like, we’ll just go ahead and shuffle the chairs again and see how everything shakes out. I’d never claim to have the right answers, but I do know that throwing darts and hoping for the best is rarely a management best practice.

3. Accusations. If your default answer to a different viewpoint on why things got batshit crazy in Baltimore is “you’re a racist,” it may be time to realize that other viewpoints may be legitimate – even if you don’t happen to personally agree with it. If that’s the only argument you can bring to the table, we’re well past the point of having a reasonable discussion. When that’s your answer to an honest, probing question, it’s safe to consider our conversation at an end. You don’t have anything to tell me that I need to hear.

Fence me in…

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Note: Yes I’m still keeping an eye on Baltimore. Yes I have plenty more to say. No I’m not going to throw it all out at once. No it won’t be an epic rant. Unlike a common street criminal, when I make my opinion known I want it to be well reasoned, articulate, and not hidden behind a mask. In that light, I now restore you to your regularly scheduled Tuesday post.

Roy Rogers sang an old cowboy song that twangingly implores listeners “don’t fence me in.” Not being a range rider, I have no such compunction about the value of good fences. After a call this morning from the contractor, in fact I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the supplies and manpower to get my fence off the drawing board and into the ground.

Given the terrain changes, visible rock outcroppings, standing trees, and undergrowth they’re going to have to deal with to get the job done, I’m paying through the nose for the privilege of sectioning off a little slice of my portion of the American Dream. I don’t begrudge them a penny of the price, though. They’re going to have some real work to do and fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective) “low bidder” materials aren’t exactly my style.

The fence is the only real construction project I’m planning to take on this year. The master bath renovation, patio pavers, and kitchen tweaking are all on the board, but (mostly) not on any kind of rushed timeline – or really on a timeline at all. They happen when I get around to and funds are available to dedicate to them. The fence, by contrast, is a quality of life issue. Being able to turn the dogs loose at 10PM when it’s pouring rain and staying high and dry on the porch is about as good as it gets. I’ve obviously reached the point in my life where I have mostly small, reasonable dreams.

Based on this morning’s conversation work is on schedule to start next week. Now I just need to live through the load of construction equipment, wire mesh, posts, and rails that will be occupying the driveway over the weekend and things should be all set. All in it’s a small price to pay for what I’ll get in return.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Meeting prep. It’s bad enough when someone wants me to sit in a meeting on a topic way outside my general area of expertise. If they could at least do a little prep work first, though, that would be terrific. Maybe get me the slides an hour or two in advance so I can speak on the topic like I have some semblance of a clue what’s going on. It doesn’t feel like that’s too much to ask before someone shows up asking a lot of questions about material I haven’t ever seen before. But if past experience is any kind of guide, it’s at least as hopeless as asking one of the dogs for the winning Powerball numbers.

2. Bridging the gap. I have to pass through one of those sleepy one stop light kind of towns on my way to and from work every day. The main route is bottlenecked by a bridge that has been in urgent need of repair for at least the last five years. Now that the state has finally gotten around to doing something with it, we’re met by the usual bane of construction everywhere. Before work started, the bridge was going to be open for the duration of the project. Shortly thereafter it was declared “worse than we thought” and promptly taken out of service – expected restoration time 4 weeks. Tomorrow is the end of the 4th week and the latest word is “wait two more weeks”. Then, maybe, we’ll be able to press one lane back into service for gods know how long. The detours, the improvised 4-way stops, the drivers who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground; those things would all be OK if in two weeks we had a good working bridge. Of course what we’re going to have instead is the end of the “preparation” for construction phase of the project and a bridge that will be open or closed on a completely unpredictable schedule for the foreseeable future. I get the distinct impression that I could be stuck in detours for the rest of my natural life.

3. Unknown callers. I’ve been receiving a call from an “unknown” number once or twice a night for the last three or four days. Is there someone out there who sees a number is unknown and answers anyway? I don’t. Hell, I don’t even bother to answer calls when a number comes up that isn’t associated with someone in my address book. Usually those are a one-time occurrence. No message. No repeat calls. Wrong number. It happens. But the unknowns, yeah, they just keep on calling. I’m sure they just want to sell me something so they could save themselves a whole lot of time by just leaving a message and then knocking it off. Messages I’ll at least listen to eventually. Spamming my phone with missed and rejected calls, though, that’s not going to get you anywhere. Sadly, I’m sure they only do it because some reasonably significant percentage of people they dial take the call and give these asshats the time of day. That makes those people just as guilty as the tools who are instigating the calls in the first place.

Doesn’t play well with others…

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After spending more hours than I want to admit trying to get a little electronic gizmo that will remain nameless hooked up wirelessly, I’m finally calling it quits. Wired direct to the router, all is well and it works like a champ. Unplugged it just sits there blinking out a steady reminder of its failure to play nicely with my home network.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of the last ten years entrenching myself in Apple’s near-seamlessly integrated garden, but my tolerance for tech that has to be tinkered with is probably at an all-time low. It’s trite, but I want my gear to come out of the box and just work. Some might call that an unreasonable expectation, but those people are, for lack of a better word, simply wrong. There are any number of companies out there proving that tech doesn’t need to be complicated for the end user. Unfortunately there are even more in business that don’t seem to have much of any regard for providing an elegant solution to whatever problem their device is supposed to solve.

I was looking for a piece that would integrate into what I’ve got already with a minimum of fuss or trouble. What I found is a bit of kit that probably works ok if you’re willing to change or make compromises on the set up you have already. I’m not. That means instead of integration, I’ll be stuck with a standalone solution. In the end I’d rather have to manage two sets of controls and two apps than compromise on functionality.

Take that for what it’s worth.

Wet spot(s)…

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I’ve been waiting on a good hard rain to get a look at how water flows around certain parts of the yard. That rain was delivered early this morning, so I missed the live show, but it left plenty of evidence for me to ponder when I got home after work. The bit of diversion I did in front seems to have done the trick. It’s not a permanent solution, but it bought time. My little back yard diversion worked as planned, but also revealed that water wasn’t just sloshing against the foundation and door sill from an ill-placed downspout. The sidewalk slab in that spot has subsided enough to channel some amount of water flowing off the hill and through my back yard. Even with how hard it rained last night it didn’t appear to be what anyone might call a flood, but there was enough residual water on the garage floor nine hours later to make it obvious that it was something more than a drip… and explains why that door and sill were rotted to the point of needing to be replaced before closing. Correcting the drainage situation in that part of the yard has definitely jumped up a few spots on my list of major projects to undertake.

I knew coming in that this was a “wet” lot and a damp area in general. From walking around I’d be willing to bet there’s more than one underground spring within a quarter mile of the house – probably far closer. The basement block is nicely coated with Drylok, which seems to have done a respectable job so far. The corners I was most worried about appeared to be dry this evening, although there was one unexpected spot on the basement slab where hydraulic pressure looked like it was doing its thing.

None of it is cause to make me want to dig out the back yard tomorrow, but nobody likes being in the wet spot so it’s something I’ll have to make right at some point sooner rather than later.

Thirty years…

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This was the first weekend that felt almost settled in quite some time. There were a few household chores – running improvised drainage away from several downspouts, cutting the grass for the first time, tinkering around with a few other small-ish fixes, cleaning, laundry. The rhythm of the routine is starting to imprint itself on the new place. That would bother some people. I find it remarkably comforting. The weekend felt like a big step towards the place feeling more like mine and a little less like someone else’s. There’s still more distance to go on that score, but it’s progress.

I’m learning where the dog’s favored spots are and which parts of the floor creak no matter how softly you cross them. Like people, I’ve learned that no two houses sound exactly alike. Maggie and Winston have done a better job figuring out the house’s sounds than I have. Their random barks at things going bump is down to only once or twice a day. Me, on the other hand, my head is still on a swivel at anything that doesn’t sound familiar.

I’m trying to remember that I’ll be paying for this place for the next 30 years so there isn’t really any rush to knock all the things off my list at once. Maybe that means I’m growing as a human being. More likely it means I’m painfully aware of the all too obnoxious combination of limited time and limited finances. I’ll just let you be the judge of which scenario sounds most likely.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The first taste of spring. I’ve paid my dues and part of my reward has been “graduating” to a cube next to the windows. Usually that’s a good thing. Except this time of year when the weather finally starts shaking off the winter doldrums, things start greening up, and our courtyard looking more like an ill-tended park than a well-tended prison yard. It’s good to have a view of something, but once the rain stopped this week and the sun came out the view has mostly left me with a feeling that I’d much rather be outside working in the yard (or holding down a stool on one of my favorite deck bars) than sitting here working on version 43 of The PowerPoint Presentation that Will Save the World.

2. Being common. Pretty much everyone I know professionally carries around something called a Common Access Card. The theory behind the CAC is that it would be the one ID card to rule them all. It’s a good idea. Except that it’s not. Although it is ubiquitously common, it provides access to basically nothing. One way you know this is by standing behind a woman at the front door card scanner and watching for almost a minute while she tries to use it to unlock the doors. Even offering up a helpful, “Uh, I think you need to use you other access card for that door” was met with a furious gaze and a firm “No. You have to use your CAC.” Yeah. Fine lady. Don’t mind me while I reach past you to swipe my card so I can actually get to my desk.

3. The yard. One of the reasons I liked the new house so much was that the yard took up a relatively minor space on an otherwise spacious lot. The rest is filled in with reasonably large trees and plenty of undergrowth. The house needs a few odds and ends, but I made my peace with living with it for a while to decide what and how to attack those. The yard on the other hand is probably only a few days – a week at most – from demanding immediate attention. Trimming shrubs, weeding front and back, new mulch, dirt patches to seed where gas and septic have been dug up, areas where grading pushes water towards the house instead of away from it, the eventual fence project, and the general mowing and edging. Assuming the yard stays dry some of those things are going to have to start this weekend with others following on shortly thereafter. I haven’t had the amount of time to plan the attack that I’d have liked. By the end of summer I’ll have it sorted out, but don’t expect progress to be coherent or consistent in any way. Sadly that means it’s going to take more time than expected to bring the outside up to my probably unreasonable standard of “finished.”

Lit…

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If there’s anything I can say about this house, it’s that when the previous owner built the place they were bound and determined to never want for lighting. At least in the kitchen. With 12 recessed light pots, two pendant lights, a hanging 4-bulb light 8 feet away in the “breakfast nook”, and a few recently discovered battery powered lights under the upper cabinets, kitchen lighting feels like it might have been something of an obsession.

The obsession isn’t quite as bad elsewhere in the house, but by my last count I currently need to stock up to 8 different styles and wattages of bulb. Not including anything on the outside. I managed with no more the four different types of bulb (including the outside) in Memphis and knocked that down to three types in the rental. Currently one pantry shelf is pulling permanent duty as my own personal lighting warehouse. That feels vaguely excessive.

Eventually everything is going to get swapped out with LEDs so I can screw stuff in and then forget about it for about a decade, but in the meantime I’ll spend half my time at home swapping out dead bulbs for live ones – and never having the style or size I need.

It’s just one more item on the list of micro-fixes this place needs to fully carry my personalized stamp of approval. If I’ve learned anything during my various trials of home ownership, that list never actually gets any shorter as there’s always “just one more thing” that needs doing.

An off night…

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One of the problems with blogging that no one ever seems to mention is that sometimes after sitting in front of a monitor for eight hours the very last thing you want to do when you’re home and settling in for the evening is once again set yourself down in front of the computer. Tonight is one of those kinds of nights. I’ve sat at my desk now three times since around 6 o’clock hoping that something would pop into my head, but it’s feeling like a lost cause – the rain drumming against the skylights is one of those sounds that may have a propensity to make me very, very sleepy. That’s a good fact to know, but not in any way constructive for getting anything done between now and lights out…

Which, of course is how you end up with a blog post like this one; a few lines offered up to justify how and why I just don’t feel like trying all that hard tonight. After a couple thousand posts, I’m going to go ahead and say I’m entitled to have an off night here and there.

The hood…

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I’ve been so busy talking about the house and the move that I feel that I’ve neglected talking about the neighborhood. The new place, as much as I might want it to, does not exist in a vacuum. That being said, this is about as decent a subdivision as I’ve really ever come across. Acre lots are the minimum, with most being a little closer to two. No more than 40% of any lot can be cleared. Translation: Even in areas where the neighbors are closer than you’d like them to be, there are still plenty of trees between you and the next guy so if nothing else you have the illusion of space.

It’s the kind of neighborhood where everyone (except me) is out jogging on Saturday morning. It’s the kind of subdivision where everyone’s trash cans hit the curb at 6AM on the dot. Except mine, of course. I’m the redneck neighbor who throws it all in the back of the truck and hauls it away myself. Everyone has a fire pit instead of a burn barrel. I wonder if I cut a 55 gallon drum in half if it’ll look enough like a “fire pit” to get away with it.

Since the weather was nice and I wanted a chance to eyeball the people living on my left and right, I took a bit of a walkabout this afternoon. In order proceeding from my left it’s mom, dad, and two kids; ditto; mom, dad, three kids; mom, dad, two kids; mom, dad, four kids. That’s where I stopped. I know this because house-for-house ever single homeowner was out doing yard work this afternoon and I tamped down my inner hermit enough to make introductions. It’s almost a company town, with at least one half of most of those couples working for the government in some capacity. The rest are commuting to Baltimore, Philly, or Wilmington. I’m apparently a rare an exotic species in my hood – single without dependent children. Other than that, I’m living the stereotype of exurban bliss.

My friends living in DC or Baltimore would probably find this place as deeply unnerving as I find those cities… but now that I’ve had a weekend of “living” here rather than just spending time taking things out of boxes it feels more and more like the only right choice. I’m over the natural uncertainty of transition and find that I really do like it here.

And I’m not just saying that because the HOA Architectural Control Committee approved my plan to put up a fence in 36 hours. Over a weekend. Clearly these are my kind of people.