Jerm's Insanity

Always, and i mean ALWAYS, wash your hands thoroughly between cutting up jalapeños and going to the bathroom.

SURE people have told me that before, and I’ve had poor experiences with rubbing my eyes, but wow. Just… wow. I think i’ve learned my lesson.

Congratulations Bill and Chrissie! Making me feel even older, my little brother having a kid, they (mostly she) made this cute little guy! Born last friday (4/20/07), 7lb 2oz. This picture taken within 24 hours of his coming into this world.

After watching “Thank God You’re Here”

Jerm: I wasn’t that impressed with George

Heidi: Which one was he?

Jerm: George Takei?

Heidi: OH! Han Sulu, right!

Jerm: …
Update:  Though i joke, i DO count myself blessed that she knows enough about the subject to even  know the names to mix up.

Here’s a conspiracy theory of a different sort. What if it weren’t the neocon establishment, Big Business, and Big Oil that were the great deceivers in the whole global warming debate? What if all the media-professed numbers were wrong? What if the nay-sayers have it right?

I’m not a scientist, but i consider myself a science buff. I listen a lot. I read a lot. I’m very interested in a multitude of scientific disciplines, but i leave the work to the people who really know their stuff and help to quench my fascination with what they come up with. So of course I’ve been very interested in the whole human included global warming/climate change debate. I’ve always fallen somewhere in the middle, opinion wise. Do i think we should be more careful about how we treat the environment? Absolutely. However i’va also been of the opinion that the earth’s climate does fluctuate and how do we know that this isn’t just a natural fluctuation? According to the video, we do know.

The title for this entry was borrowed from the video that i’m going to post a link to. It’s a long video, but worth watching. The Cliff’s Notes version goes something like this:

• Yes, the Earth is getting warmer, but it’s not our doing, nor is it the first warming, nor is it the warmest.. warming.
• Yes we dump lots of CO2 into the air, but it’s statistically insignificant compared to how much nature puts out
• Historically, CO2 levels DO correlate with global temperature, but close inspection of the data reveal that CO2 levels follow the temperature changes, not cause them.
• Global temperatures show a much better causal correlation with solar activity.
• Many scientists dissent with the popular conception of climate change, but the movement has gotten so powerful that they’re afraid to speak up due to backlash experienced by those who have.
• People have become religious in their global warming beliefs, and won’t even listen to opposing evidence.

There’s a lot if information in the video about where these numbers and ideas came from, plus a whole lot more. It’s very compelling stuff. The zealots will call it right-wing propaganda, but there’s a lot of social consciousness content in the video that should make you think twice about that. It’s certainly given me a lot more to thing about. I’m interested in hearing people poke holes in it.

I seriously recommend giving it a go. Just in case you missed it earlier, here is the link to the video.

Hot air, I tell you. And that’s how we like it.

I spent a very chilly saturday afternoon following the sage advice of my carpenter friend. On more than one occasion he pointed out what a big heat-suck my pull-down attic door is. Not only am i dealing with an old mechanism that is slightly misaligned (read: not a tight seal), but also a thing piece of plywood with folding stairs attched to it, and above that….. open attic space. Yes boys & girls, after all of that time reinsulating the place, there was basically an uninsulated hole in my cieling.

“Oh my!” I exclaimed, “what can i do?”

“Build a box, grasshopper,” spoke the master.

So build i did. And after much mucking about with trying to cut clean lines in inch thick styrofoam (SO glad i didn’t go with thicker stuff) and going through enough duct tape to make MacGyver wince, here are the fruits of my labor:

I installed shown box above the attic stairs and the result was actually quite remarkable. I installed it at about 10pm yesterday (it was about 12degrees F outside/in my attic) and once i set the box in place (myself at the top of the attic ladder, door fully open) i was actually warm. Closing it all back up there is now a marked difference in temperature (warmer) near the attic door. woohoo!

After months and months (checks history….) and months of bloggy abandonment, i’ve decided to break the silence by assisting the terminally unobservant by pointing out a bit of change in my blogginess.

After a few respsected friends of mine expounded upon the virtues of a blog software rather different from the one i was using, i decided to make the switch. Previously, i was using Google’s Blogger software. While this was quite a convenient solution, it lacked some nice functionality that wordpress does not. Additionally, even though i pubished to my own server, there were still parts of the layout dependant upon Blogger. Now, were Blogger as reliable as Google’s search page, that would not be an issue, but in addition to the issues often encountered when trying to publish changes, sometimes even just accessing the Blogger dependencies would fail and hang the loading of my site.

This was completely unacceptable, as my 3 readers deserve far better than that. So, here it is in its infancy. I’m not quite sure i’m happy with it, but i was through publishing on the old software and needed to get this working so that i may recommence leeching valuable minutes of your lives with my banter.

Welcome to my private revolution.

One of the swell things about moving from a rental situation into an ownership situation is the security deposit. I just i just laid out thousands of dollard for down payment, closing costs, rennovations, utility activations, etc… but a few weeks after moving in, i got this great little security-deposit refund check that’s kinda like reaching into an old pair of pants and finding $550.

Stay with me.

Having been in normal rental situations for most of the past 6 years, there’s been this was of cash that i put up as security for the first apartment and, not beging the sort to really wreck a place, has gotten moved around ever since. Having not seen this money in so long, the return of it feel like found money, a windfall (ok, a light breeze-fall), soemthing that should under no circumstances be used for such pedestrian things as paying off debt. No, this moeny should go toward something indulgent.. something geeky.. something like a pair of 20.1″ LCD monitors… yummy

yes, i know full well that money would have been “better” spent on, oh i dunno, paying off debt, or socking away for a rainy day, or a really nice hooker… but damnit…. w/o buying these heidi would have had to go back to her 14″ CRT.. the HORROR!! think of heidi!!!

So we moved in.

Wait.. backing up…

We got done in time. Our drop-dead date for getting moved into the house was Oct, 1. Anything after that and there would have been a most-unhappy second month of paying both mortgage AND rent.

The final 2 weeks were utter craziness. I was going to the house at 730am, working on it until 9, going to work, going back to the house after work, and more often than not, working until after midnight. Ceiling drywall is a bitch even with the lift and took us far longer than expected. Then the taping went slowly. The trimming was a lot more work than we had ever imagined. The painting took for ever. The day that we had 4 extra people to paint, we coulnd’t paint. My camera broke. The cable guy put his foot through the hallway ceiling (3 days before move-in) and I nearly had to dispose of a body. On Friday the 29th, the night before the move, Herr Carpenter and I went to Home depot at 9PM to get tack strips, carpet padding and a kicker. We learned as we went… managing to get done with 1 bedroom and the living room before 1am. In the morning i managed to get the office done just before the first load of stuff came from heidi’s apartment. It was madness i tell you.

Things have calmed a bit since then. The mad rush has subsided. Heidi had been diligently emptying boxes and getting the kitchen functional. I’ve been finishing up the wiring and the other bedroom and getting the livingroom (read: TV, DVR, etc..) functional.

The place really started to feel like home when i was sitting on the couch, with the tv across the room, talking to a friend of mine. Suddenly it was my space an i had a guest, as opposed to having helpers assist with the project. This was a huge divergence from the feeling i had while carrying boxes in, “why are we bringing boxes in here? this isn’t a place to live.. it’s a thing that we work on.” Suffice to say, the ammended thought came with great releif.

Anyway, the one big thing that was still missing from all of this was the office. It has until very recently been a respository for everything that hasn’t had a place. A large junk heap awaiting dispersal. I’ve had the laptop&wireless to check email with, but every proper geek needs their workstation. I was missing my computing spot. A desk with a chair and a proper keyboard and non-laptop monitors. After deciding that the office is just far too small for even a hacked-up version of the O’Sullivan desk that i picked up at Staples, CousinDave and I constructed my a mighty-fine desk out of wood scraps. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it’s big, functional, and by god it’s mine.

Greetings, dear friends, family and anyone else so blessed as to happen upon my blog. It has indeed been quite a while since my last house update. Actually, i guess it’s been quite a while since an update of any kind. Sorry about that.

Jerm Status
We’ve been exceedingly busy with the house. The past week or so has been filled with (literally) 18 hour days. On tuesday, for instance, having gotten back from working on the house at midnight the night before, i was back and workin at 730am. I got into the office by 9:15, then was back at the house from 5:45 until about 1am. The upside of this is that we’re making exceedingly speedy progress, the downside is that the fatigue is really getting to me. It was only because we left the house by 11pm this evening that I’m awake for any time after getting home, and a complete miracle that i have the brainpower to write coherantly (for me, anyway.)

House Status
As of this writing we have 2 of 3 bedrooms and the kitchen ceiling completely painted. These rooms are awaiting carpeting. The other bedroom and livingroom are primed, ceilings and trim mostly done, just waiting for the wall expanses to be covered.

We passed our final electrical inspection today and will be likely be getting our final building inspection on monday. The nice lady at the building department mentioned that we can indeed move in before then so we’re not completely screwed.

I’m sitting at my desk at work. A few moments ago, my brilliant expat Puerto Rican coworker sayd to me, “Jerm, let me tell you, if I had a lot of money, I’d be down in the Carribean.”

Me: “You WERE in the Carribean. You left.”

Her: “Oh. Right.”