The Bathroom Report: Day 12

Posted on by

It’s day 12 of the master bathroom remodel.  Plumbing and electrical rough in are complete. It’s also the second full business day of no work happening because we’re waiting on the county inspector to sign off on what’s been done so far.

I’m sure building inspectors do some kind of important work, but at the moment they’re at the very top of my shit list for being the reason there hasn’t been any forward progress on this project in two and a half days. Currently there isn’t even a date specified when the fine people from the county building will grace me with their presence. 

My enthusiasm for this project is, just now, at low ebb. The notion that the government should have a vested interested in when it’s ok to go ahead and put up drywall and stary laying tile in my bathroom would feel a bit farcical if it wasn’t so damned frustrating. Paying for the privilege of being hamstrung by slow-as-Moses county inspections is made all the more insulting because I’ve had to pay for the privilege of pulling the permits in the first place.

I’m a professional practitioner of the art and science of the bureaucracy. I know there’s nothing for it but to endure the process… but don’t for a moment think that I’ll be doing it with joy in my heart. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

Thrift Savings Plan. One of the non-salary benefits that makes federal employment at least nominally attractive is access to the Thrift Savings Plan, a low-fee 401(k) style defined contribution retirement plan. The TSP website has always been a little bit clunky, but with only five basic funds and five target date funds to manage, it didn’t need to be particularly complicated. And that’s where the Thrift Savings Board, the fine people who run the plan, decided to revamp everything. The transition to a new web interface and record keeping system started in May and by the 26th the process was far enough along that users were effectively locked out “until the first week of June.” Well, as predictable as it is, the rollout of these “new and improved features has proven to be absolute hot garbage. I’m one of the lucky ones that managed to set up a new log in without causing the system to crash… even though I still can’t do anything once I’ve signed on. With millions of account holders and $750 Billion under management, you might be tempted to think there would be an incentive to get this rollout right. You would, of course, have been 100% wrong. The Thrift Board and whatever contractor the picked to develop this wonder-system have delivered up a complete and total turd.

Inspection. My bathroom remodel contractor has spent the last week and a half working great guns to stay on schedule. They left around lunch time yesterday and aren’t here at all today because work is at a dead stop until the county inspector comes by to do his or her thing. That might be tomorrow. It might be next week. Per the project manager and a call to the county office, “There’s no way of knowing.” I’m sure these county inspectors are doing God’s own work, but letting bureaucracy grind a project to a stop without giving a date-certain when they’ll even bother to consider giving approval for more work to get done is infuriating on just about every level. It’s the kind of thing that leads people to decide government is the problem rather than being part of the solution.

The BBC. First off, let me say I love the BBC. They’re one of my top two or three go-to news sources and provide the lion’s share of what television I actually still watch. I use to be able to stream some limited live events from their website. Apparently, I can no longer do that, being met by a banner that says “This content is not available in your location.” By my location, I assume they mean across the waters in the United States. Hey, look, I know the Beeb has its own bills to pay. I’d be happy to sign up for a subscription or a pay a license fee or whatever. I know there are ways to circumvent all that, but I’d rather just hit an easy button, pay a few dollars, and get on with it on the up and up.

The first of June…

Posted on by

Way back on June 1st, 2006 I published my first blog post… on MySpace. A lot has changed in the intervening 16 years. For instance, well, MySpace doesn’t seem to be much of a thing anymore. I’ve also managed to get 16 years older, which I suppose is nice give the binary alternative. 

I’m not big on celebrating my own birthdays, but having something to say day in and day out for 16 years feels like an accomplishment worth noting. 

With 3,660 posts under the bridge, being loud and obnoxious about having an opinion is still something I enjoy the hell out of doing (most of the time). It’s not without some irony that I recognize it’s the job I’ve enjoyed most all these years and it’s also the one that’s paid me virtually nothing. It hasn’t proven to be a money maker, but relieving all this bile on a regular basis is probably the thing that has kept me a reasonable approximation of sane.

So that’s it. That’s the post. If you want to see where it all started, you can check out that very first post here.

A trip to Disney it ain’t…

Posted on by

The first week of June is usually the point in the year where I start taking time off in bulk. The first half of the year is for slogging through. The back half is for maximizing days not tethered to a desk or laptop. Historically, this is a week allocated for sweeping through antique and book shops ranging from Philadelphia to DC. After two years of Plague measures, 2022 was supposed to be a return to normalcy. Except, of course, that’s not how it has turned out. At least not for this week.

With a team of plumbers, carpenters, and electricians crawling around and under the house, stretching my legs like that is off the table this year. Sure, they’re bonded and insured and I’ve got cameras keeping an unblinking eye on everything, so I don’t strictly need to be here. Still, it looks like I’ll mostly be spending the week knocking around the house if only to answer random questions as they come up.

It’s not an ideal week of vacation, but after seven months of waiting to start, I certainly wasn’t going to delay further in the name of saving a cherished early summer tradition. Besides, I’ve got another tranche of time off coming up for the first week of July. This whole thing has been a bit of an exercise in delayed gratification. Why shouldn’t this be as well?

Fortunately, I’ve got a wall full of books I’ve been meaning to read and a list of odds and ends that need doing but never quite make it to the top of the list. There’s no time like the present to get after those things. Quite a few of those items got lined through today. If it all gets too tedious, I can always forgo a few vacation days, log in for telework during the tail end of the week. That feels like he worst possible option, but one never knows.

We’ll see how everything looks after a few days of just hanging out while other people stream in and out doing the heavy lifting for the week.

On movies, popcorn, and convenience…

Posted on by

I went to the movies this weekend. While at first blush there doesn’t feel like anything much unusual about that statement, it’s the first time I saw a movie in a theater since fall of 2019… so about two and a half years ago – in the Before Times. 

The good news is that the movie going experiences hasn’t changed much. The bad news, of course, is also that the movie going experience hasn’t changed much. The big pleather lay-z-boy style seating is a nice touch. The cost of popcorn and a Coke is still wildly overinflated. In a lot of ways it’s a bit of a time capsule to the way things used to be – something that hasn’t changed when so much else has done.

Watching Top Gun: Maverick on the big screen felt like a worthwhile reason to go back. It was exactly the flavor of 1980s nostalgia that I love. Plus, it’s every bit as good as (if not better, in some ways, than) the original. I guess you can do that when you’re not in a rush to turn out three or four sequels in as many years. In this case, 30+ years was not too long to wait.

Maybe the great and surprising disappointment was the popcorn. It was decidedly “flat.” That’s probably more my fault than Regal’s. I spent the two years of the Great Plague dialing in theater-style popcorn to exactly suit my taste. I’ve got it just about perfected now and as it turns out, my own concoction trumps the original inspiration rather than matching it exactly. I won’t claim to be too brokenhearted about that.

The other thing I learned from a two-year absence from the theater, is I really like being able to pause the film. I like being able to take a bathroom break, grab a refill, or top off the popcorn with a fresh batch without missing any of the story. The screen at home isn’t nearly as big, but the ease and convenience are hard to beat. I suspect that from here on out, seeing a movie in a building specifically designed for that activity is going to be reserved for those films that unabashedly take advantage of the full size of the screen. For everything else, the perks of watching from the comforts of my own living room outweigh whatever the theater provides.

The Bathroom Report: Day 5

Posted on by

When I looked in on the work yesterday, most of the walls had been stripped back to the studs, there we gaping holes in the floor, and materials were stacked across every open foot of my bedroom floor. The whole thing looked a lot more like destruction than construction. 

Today, though, something magical happened. The crew arrived this morning and started framing. I’m ok at reading the big sweeps of a floorplan, but I’m also notoriously bad at spatial awareness. This is the first time I could start really getting a feel for how things might look when all this is over.

It was also the first time I got a sense of how absurdly large the shower I asked for is actually going to be. I’ve always smacked shoulders and elbows into the sides of every shower I’ve ever been in, so I told the designed that was the number one thing I didn’t want in this new layout. She delivered on that request in spades. In my defense it also had to be pretty damned big so that I could get away with not having to deal with water getting all over the place since I also didn’t want a shower door or curtain. Giving up a linen closet and a foot off the walk-in closet finally feels like it might have been a good idea.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to have to walk through the bathroom to get anything out of my closet. It was a design I hated with an irrational level of ferocity. That issue is gone now with the new door cut in and framed. It’s seven square feet smaller than it was when this project started, but still would be room for me to double the amount of clothes I have and still have plenty of empty space left over. Making that trade off was a no-brainer.

We’re all taking a breather for the long weekend, but next up will be the plumbing and electrical rough in. Then we’re off to the races with wallboard and what feels like absolute acres of tilework. 

As week one closes, I know we’re nowhere near the beginning of the end, but I feel confident we’ve at the very least reached the end of the beginning.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Root causes. What the actual fuck is wrong with people? Twenty-six years ago, when most of my cronies and I were about 18, we had ready access to both rifles and handguns. We weren’t particularly well supervised back then and yet we somehow managed not to seed our world with chaos and mass murder. Back there and back then, it was the sort of event that was a true rarity. It’s why I struggle with the idea of blaming the tools people use when it happens now. The first semi-automatic rifle made its appearance in 1779. They became widely available on the consumer market in the closing years of the 19th century. It wasn’t until well into the back half of the 20th century where the commonly described “mass shooting” starts to become a thing that happens. That history is also why I struggle with laying the blame for these events at the foot of the gun. The technology hasn’t changed. It was as readily available in 1930 or 1960 as it is this afternoon. A basic semi-auto was more easily available then given the lack of background checks, permitting, and laws governing who can and can’t possess a firearm that came into vogue in the 80s and 90s. If we assume it’s not access that’s changed, we’re left to consider what factors have changed that lead to these events taking place now more than ever before. That’s a conversation that requires nuance – and since that’s not something that comes in a form of a good soundbite, we’re not likely to see from the political class, the media, the pros, or the antis.

2. Age of adulthood.  One of the first things I read on Twitter this morning was a call to raise the age at which one can purchase a long gun. I saw multiple tweets calling for the age to increase from 18 to something else. Suggestions were 21, 25, 26. Fine. We already declare other “adult” decisions out of bounds for 18-year-olds. If we’re going to be intellectually consistent, though, we need to go further. Eighteen should no longer be considered the age of majority across the board. Raise the age to buy a car, rent an apartment, or sign any kind of contract. Raise the age for enlisting for military service.  Raise the age to sign up for credit or a loan. Raise the age of sexual consent. And for God’s sake, raise the voting age. If those between the ages of 18 and twenty-whatever are too chowderheaded to make responsible adult decisions then just go ahead and delay all the rights, privileges, and opportunities of the adult citizen. Let adulthood start at 45 or whatever other arbitrary age we collectively decide is the right one. We seem to already have a generation that can’t manage to “adult” until they’re in their 30s, so just codify it already.

3. First reports. There’s an old saying about first reports always being wrong. When complex, fast moving events are happening I just assume that all of the details are bogus beyond the basics of where and what. Expecting a second-to-second timeline as events are unfolding is a fool’s errand. I’ve got at least one news feed running in the house pretty much from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed and how often the first details are wrong is pretty much an article of faith here. I’ll cheerfully call out Texas public safety officials if it proves out that they failed to follow local policy or in some way failed to respond appropriately, but I won’t sit at the keyboard and condemn them based on early reports and what people think they know. I’ll be swapping over to financial news until the story – and the reporters – get past the breathless, “breaking news” phase.

Slice and dice…

Posted on by

Over the last three months or so, I’ve been spending time with a local dermatologist. Fortunately, he’s not treating me for anything traumatic or catching, but we’re working through a pretty large number of skin tags that have annoyed me for years, but that I’ve never had the time, inclination, or, frankly, the ready cash to do much about. BlueCross is very clear that it’s the kind of thing they consider cosmetic, so anything done along these lines has to be fully out of pocket.

I would tell you that I’m not vain, but that’s obviously not entirely true. I have plenty of vanities, they’re just generally not the physical kind. Whatever else it may be, I’ve long considered my body just the meat suit responsible for hauling my brain around from Point A to Point B. As long as it’s managing to get that job done, it’s good enough. These little tags we’re working on now were starting to be an issue even in my general disinterest. 

So, for the last three appointments, we’ve been trying to kill them with blistering cold. That has met with some limited success. Looking at the progress to date, the doc wasn’t happy – and in honesty nether was I. So, today was the last round of that approach. In three or four weeks, instead of the fancy cryo gun, we’ll be going with the more old-fashioned lidocaine and razor blade approach. As I understand it, where freezing is more akin to using a smart bomb, the razor is more like stepping up to wholesale carpet bombing.

Just now, well into this process, I’m willing increase the pain threshold in exchange for a shorter duration of effort. Sometime towards the end of June, I guess I’ll subject myself to a bit of slice and dice for purely cosmetic purposes. It turns out, my vanity isn’t as well controlled as I liked to imagine. 

The Bathroom Report: Day 1

Posted on by

Seven years after moving in despite my hatred for it and just shy of nine months after signing the contract, the master bathroom remodel is underway. There’s been a steady stream of dismantled parts and pieces getting schlepped down the hall, out the front door, and to the comically oversized pink dumpster that’s now posted up in the driveway.

All things considered, the crew that’s here doing the demolition work has been surprisingly good at keeping the mess contained. That said, I’m glad I had the foresight to abandon my bedroom for the duration of this project. There’s a shocking amount of equipment, supplies, and random stuff being staged in there. Trying to sleep in the midst of that wouldn’t have given me a moment’s rest.

Walls have come down. New doors have been punched through. The cabinetry was folded, spindled, and mutilated. And it looks like a right disaster area. I’m trying to remind myself that this is, by definition, a process and that it has to look worse before it can look better. 

The tub… the tub that almost stopped me from buying this place… remains unscathed for the moment. It’s sitting under the windows in an otherwise empty room as if mocking me by its continued presence. It’s the one thing left when everything else is gone. I’m confident, mostly, that it won’t survive the hammer blows tomorrow, though.

There’s inevitably going to be about 30 days of intense grumbling here, but don’t think for a minute I’m not happy to finally have this project underway. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Random IT issues. I was issued a perfectly decent laptop a month or two ago. When I shut it down Friday evening and tucked it away for the weekend it was running just fine. For some reason, when I booted it up on Monday morning, I found it had turned into an underpowered and sclerotic piece of shit for no obvious reason. Opening files or programs took minutes. Some, like VPN never did work. I managed to limp along using webmail for a while, but eventually that too stopped working. After some begging and pleading to pull my helpdesk ticket forward in the queue and making an unplanned trip in to the office for our IT types to poke and prod at it a bit, the issue “seems to have resolved itself.” Look, I’m thrilled and happy to be able to function again, but I have no confidence at all that this has been a one-off incident and won’t now start happening at the most inconvenient possible moments.

2. Jorah. Before anyone gets up in arms, let me explain… I love my sweet, slightly neurotic boy, but the least little unanticipated sound sends him rushing the front window in a fit of barking rage. That’s fine enough, if not something to be outright encouraged most of the time. Where this tendency of his gets us into trouble is when the people across the street are in the middle of a major project to re-landscape their front yard. Then, it’s constant noise and movement that draws his loud and undivided attention. This, of course, does not bode well to how he’s going to respond when all the banging and foot traffic is coming from inside his own house. Yeah. That’s gonna be some good times.

3. Erdogan. Turkey’s president is threatening to torpedo the application of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. He’s accused them both as being “home to terrorists.” I’m not an expert on Turkish terror, but since it’s Erdogan doing the talking, I can only assume what we’re seeing is a good old-fashioned shakedown. Now that Turkey’s president has planted his flag, I’m expecting that way below the radar, someone from the State Department will swoop in with a big bag of cash or a novelty-sized check, and for reasons that aren’t discussed in front of the media, Turkey will quietly reverse its position. Failing that, there’s always the option of going with a stick – where the U.S. will have to threaten to withhold something that Erdogan wants in order to get his capitulation. Maybe it’ll be a combination of the two, but letting the tin pot dictator of Turkey dictate terms to the rest of NATO just feels like bad policy overall.