Me.

So, thanks to a link from silmaril I'm perusing through Amalah's little corner of the 'net, being highly amused, and being thankful that I don't live in a cube when I laugh.

The downside here is that I'm tired, a bit phsyically exhasted, and not very focused, so on the introspection turns, with a vengeance.

I've come to realize that I don't post very often because I don't have much to say, and when I do, I'm usually not sure how to say it. There was a time I could write, and at least amuse myself, but I'm not even managing that lately. I miss usenet, where we could get in month long threads, drifting across 80 different topics on the way, usually spawned by a random side comment in the original post having nothing relevant to do with the actual point the author wanted to discuss. It was fucking awesome. It was also a way to keep those skills in practice.

The most excitement I've dealt with lately is a flat tire thanks to whatever put a 3.5" slice on the inner flat and sidewall of my right rear tire in the Lowes parking lot on Sunday. Thank you, asshole, who dropped an extremely sharp bit of something in a parking lot and left it there. I didn't have anything better to do with the $392.92 it cost me when all was said and done, really.

Oh, did I mention that I almost burned the house down? I guess that counts as noteworthy. The anti-Bob_Vila who used to own this house (in combination with the original contractor, who appears to have taken a few shortcuts) is going to fucking kill me yet. See, the reason I was getting my tire sliced in the parking lot at a Lowes is because I was buying a pair of light fixtures to match the one I put in the foyer after we had the ground floor painted (I replaced all the door knobs with handles, and all the light fixtures afterword, as mentioned in a long lost entry lurking somewhere in the archives), and I was attempting to hang it in the upstairs hallway.

That fucking circuit is probably the most overloaded and convoluted thing in my house, I think. One of the outlets in Evan's room, the ceiling fan in our room, the ceiling fan in the room robeli uses for her office, the light in the foyer, and the HOOD OVER THE FUCKING STOVE!? are all on this circuit, along with the light in the upstairs hallway of course, and I'm sure there are other parts of the house that aren't currently operational that I just haven't discovered yet.

In any event, the junction box where the light in the upstairs hallway is hung is a fucking plate of spaghetti. The box itself isn't actually mounted to anything, it's being held in place by the massive amount of wiring going into it. The old fixture was screwed directly in to the junction box, and the screws were tightened to force the fixture and the junction box to act as a clamp on the drywall that is the ceiling, thus holding it in place. There was no insulation in the body of the fixture, as there wasn't room. So, I tried to clean this up somewhat, and put a proper mounting bracket for the fixture on the junction box, tame the wiring so it all fit, and put the new fixture in place. For my next trick I went and flipped the breaker back on and hit the light switch.

Let there be light! And sparks!? And Crackling!? And SMOKE!? OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT as I hit the switch, run back down to the basement and kill the breaker. The wrong one, it turns out, since I head back upstairs, pull the fixture, and just because I'm REALLY fucking paranoid about electricity (because the alternative is to not be and have it fucking KILL you), come back down off the ladder and hit the light switch again. The hanging by it's wiring fixture lights up. So I turn it off, go back downstairs, and hit the correct breaker this time, and finish removing the fixture.

The mounting bracket that I'd carefully put in place is missing a chunk, and there's a whole lot of oily black shit on everything. This would be the carcinogenic by product of what happens when you burn a substance made primarily of nylon, which the insulation on wires happens to be made of. Turns out that in that mess of spaghetti, there was a wire whose insulation had been damaged when they tried to shove too much shit into this junction box (When the Anti-Bob put the ceiling fans in as best as I can tell), and my moving thngs around brought it in contact with the shiny new mounting bracket. The one that I'd carefully installed to insure it was properly attached to ground. The one that, as I mentioned above, is now missing a chunk. We're fortunate it wasn't one of the hot leads, or I wouldn't have known there was a problem after turning the breaker back on two floors down until I'd finished casually making my way back upstairs. I'm still sort of curious why, exactly, said breaker didn't do it's job and TRIP.

I feel an expensive visit coming on. It's a bill to be presented by the electrician I hire to check every last goddamned outlet, switch, and fixture in this fucking house. S/he can finish hanging the lights I bought while s/he's at it. If they have to tear out existing wiring, which they more than likely will on the one that just went poof, we'll be spend yet another couple thousand to have the walls we just had painted two weeks ago repaired and painted. Again.

I just want to know, what kind of FUCKING MORON does that kind of shit? Doesn't the thought of waking up with the house of fire and burning to death make them stop?

Oh wait, I posted a link last week that is a big fucking gallery of just how stupid people are about their own safety when the danger of death is right fucking there; long term nebulous death doesn't stand even a chance of consideration against that kind of idiocy.

This is my life. I live in Suburbia (Oak Hill, VA is the local PO, Fairfax is the county). Going in to the city is a stressful thing for me. There are too many people, too much noise, not enough greenery, and it's a pain in the ass to drive around in. You'd think out here it'd be easy and quiet, but no, the stupidity knows no locale, creed, culture, skin color, or level of education. It's more common than the nitrogen in the air, no matter WHERE I go.

Me.

So, thanks to a link from silmaril I'm perusing through Amalah's little corner of the 'net, being highly amused, and being thankful that I don't live in a cube when I laugh.

The downside here is that I'm tired, a bit phsyically exhasted, and not very focused, so on the introspection turns, with a vengeance.

I've come to realize that I don't post very often because I don't have much to say, and when I do, I'm usually not sure how to say it. There was a time I could write, and at least amuse myself, but I'm not even managing that lately. I miss usenet, where we could get in month long threads, drifting across 80 different topics on the way, usually spawned by a random side comment in the original post having nothing relevant to do with the actual point the author wanted to discuss. It was fucking awesome. It was also a way to keep those skills in practice.

The most excitement I've dealt with lately is a flat tire thanks to whatever put a 3.5" slice on the inner flat and sidewall of my right rear tire in the Lowes parking lot on Sunday. Thank you, asshole, who dropped an extremely sharp bit of something in a parking lot and left it there. I didn't have anything better to do with the $392.92 it cost me when all was said and done, really.

Oh, did I mention that I almost burned the house down? I guess that counts as noteworthy. The anti-Bob_Vila who used to own this house (in combination with the original contractor, who appears to have taken a few shortcuts) is going to fucking kill me yet. See, the reason I was getting my tire sliced in the parking lot at a Lowes is because I was buying a pair of light fixtures to match the one I put in the foyer after we had the ground floor painted (I replaced all the door knobs with handles, and all the light fixtures afterword, as mentioned in a long lost entry lurking somewhere in the archives), and I was attempting to hang it in the upstairs hallway.

That fucking circuit is probably the most overloaded and convoluted thing in my house, I think. One of the outlets in Evan's room, the ceiling fan in our room, the ceiling fan in the room robeli uses for her office, the light in the foyer, and the HOOD OVER THE FUCKING STOVE!? are all on this circuit, along with the light in the upstairs hallway of course, and I'm sure there are other parts of the house that aren't currently operational that I just haven't discovered yet.

In any event, the junction box where the light in the upstairs hallway is hung is a fucking plate of spaghetti. The box itself isn't actually mounted to anything, it's being held in place by the massive amount of wiring going into it. The old fixture was screwed directly in to the junction box, and the screws were tightened to force the fixture and the junction box to act as a clamp on the drywall that is the ceiling, thus holding it in place. There was no insulation in the body of the fixture, as there wasn't room. So, I tried to clean this up somewhat, and put a proper mounting bracket for the fixture on the junction box, tame the wiring so it all fit, and put the new fixture in place. For my next trick I went and flipped the breaker back on and hit the light switch.

Let there be light! And sparks!? And Crackling!? And SMOKE!? OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT as I hit the switch, run back down to the basement and kill the breaker. The wrong one, it turns out, since I head back upstairs, pull the fixture, and just because I'm REALLY fucking paranoid about electricity (because the alternative is to not be and have it fucking KILL you), come back down off the ladder and hit the light switch again. The hanging by it's wiring fixture lights up. So I turn it off, go back downstairs, and hit the correct breaker this time, and finish removing the fixture.

The mounting bracket that I'd carefully put in place is missing a chunk, and there's a whole lot of oily black shit on everything. This would be the carcinogenic by product of what happens when you burn a substance made primarily of nylon, which the insulation on wires happens to be made of. Turns out that in that mess of spaghetti, there was a wire whose insulation had been damaged when they tried to shove too much shit into this junction box (When the Anti-Bob put the ceiling fans in as best as I can tell), and my moving thngs around brought it in contact with the shiny new mounting bracket. The one that I'd carefully installed to insure it was properly attached to ground. The one that, as I mentioned above, is now missing a chunk. We're fortunate it wasn't one of the hot leads, or I wouldn't have known there was a problem after turning the breaker back on two floors down until I'd finished casually making my way back upstairs. I'm still sort of curious why, exactly, said breaker didn't do it's job and TRIP.

I feel an expensive visit coming on. It's a bill to be presented by the electrician I hire to check every last goddamned outlet, switch, and fixture in this fucking house. S/he can finish hanging the lights I bought while s/he's at it. If they have to tear out existing wiring, which they more than likely will on the one that just went poof, we'll be spend yet another couple thousand to have the walls we just had painted two weeks ago repaired and painted. Again.

I just want to know, what kind of FUCKING MORON does that kind of shit? Doesn't the thought of waking up with the house of fire and burning to death make them stop?

Oh wait, I posted a link last week that is a big fucking gallery of just how stupid people are about their own safety when the danger of death is right fucking there; long term nebulous death doesn't stand even a chance of consideration against that kind of idiocy.

This is my life. I live in Suburbia (Oak Hill, VA is the local PO, Fairfax is the county). Going in to the city is a stressful thing for me. There are too many people, too much noise, not enough greenery, and it's a pain in the ass to drive around in. You'd think out here it'd be easy and quiet, but no, the stupidity knows no locale, creed, culture, skin color, or level of education. It's more common than the nitrogen in the air, no matter WHERE I go.

Me.

So, thanks to a link from silmaril I'm perusing through Amalah's little corner of the 'net, being highly amused, and being thankful that I don't live in a cube when I laugh.

The downside here is that I'm tired, a bit phsyically exhasted, and not very focused, so on the introspection turns, with a vengeance.

I've come to realize that I don't post very often because I don't have much to say, and when I do, I'm usually not sure how to say it. There was a time I could write, and at least amuse myself, but I'm not even managing that lately. I miss usenet, where we could get in month long threads, drifting across 80 different topics on the way, usually spawned by a random side comment in the original post having nothing relevant to do with the actual point the author wanted to discuss. It was fucking awesome. It was also a way to keep those skills in practice.

The most excitement I've dealt with lately is a flat tire thanks to whatever put a 3.5" slice on the inner flat and sidewall of my right rear tire in the Lowes parking lot on Sunday. Thank you, asshole, who dropped an extremely sharp bit of something in a parking lot and left it there. I didn't have anything better to do with the $392.92 it cost me when all was said and done, really.

Oh, did I mention that I almost burned the house down? I guess that counts as noteworthy. The anti-Bob_Vila who used to own this house (in combination with the original contractor, who appears to have taken a few shortcuts) is going to fucking kill me yet. See, the reason I was getting my tire sliced in the parking lot at a Lowes is because I was buying a pair of light fixtures to match the one I put in the foyer after we had the ground floor painted (I replaced all the door knobs with handles, and all the light fixtures afterword, as mentioned in a long lost entry lurking somewhere in the archives), and I was attempting to hang it in the upstairs hallway.

That fucking circuit is probably the most overloaded and convoluted thing in my house, I think. One of the outlets in Evan's room, the ceiling fan in our room, the ceiling fan in the room robeli uses for her office, the light in the foyer, and the HOOD OVER THE FUCKING STOVE!? are all on this circuit, along with the light in the upstairs hallway of course, and I'm sure there are other parts of the house that aren't currently operational that I just haven't discovered yet.

In any event, the junction box where the light in the upstairs hallway is hung is a fucking plate of spaghetti. The box itself isn't actually mounted to anything, it's being held in place by the massive amount of wiring going into it. The old fixture was screwed directly in to the junction box, and the screws were tightened to force the fixture and the junction box to act as a clamp on the drywall that is the ceiling, thus holding it in place. There was no insulation in the body of the fixture, as there wasn't room. So, I tried to clean this up somewhat, and put a proper mounting bracket for the fixture on the junction box, tame the wiring so it all fit, and put the new fixture in place. For my next trick I went and flipped the breaker back on and hit the light switch.

Let there be light! And sparks!? And Crackling!? And SMOKE!? OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT as I hit the switch, run back down to the basement and kill the breaker. The wrong one, it turns out, since I head back upstairs, pull the fixture, and just because I'm REALLY fucking paranoid about electricity (because the alternative is to not be and have it fucking KILL you), come back down off the ladder and hit the light switch again. The hanging by it's wiring fixture lights up. So I turn it off, go back downstairs, and hit the correct breaker this time, and finish removing the fixture.

The mounting bracket that I'd carefully put in place is missing a chunk, and there's a whole lot of oily black shit on everything. This would be the carcinogenic by product of what happens when you burn a substance made primarily of nylon, which the insulation on wires happens to be made of. Turns out that in that mess of spaghetti, there was a wire whose insulation had been damaged when they tried to shove too much shit into this junction box (When the Anti-Bob put the ceiling fans in as best as I can tell), and my moving thngs around brought it in contact with the shiny new mounting bracket. The one that I'd carefully installed to insure it was properly attached to ground. The one that, as I mentioned above, is now missing a chunk. We're fortunate it wasn't one of the hot leads, or I wouldn't have known there was a problem after turning the breaker back on two floors down until I'd finished casually making my way back upstairs. I'm still sort of curious why, exactly, said breaker didn't do it's job and TRIP.

I feel an expensive visit coming on. It's a bill to be presented by the electrician I hire to check every last goddamned outlet, switch, and fixture in this fucking house. S/he can finish hanging the lights I bought while s/he's at it. If they have to tear out existing wiring, which they more than likely will on the one that just went poof, we'll be spend yet another couple thousand to have the walls we just had painted two weeks ago repaired and painted. Again.

I just want to know, what kind of FUCKING MORON does that kind of shit? Doesn't the thought of waking up with the house of fire and burning to death make them stop?

Oh wait, I posted a link last week that is a big fucking gallery of just how stupid people are about their own safety when the danger of death is right fucking there; long term nebulous death doesn't stand even a chance of consideration against that kind of idiocy.

This is my life. I live in Suburbia (Oak Hill, VA is the local PO, Fairfax is the county). Going in to the city is a stressful thing for me. There are too many people, too much noise, not enough greenery, and it's a pain in the ass to drive around in. You'd think out here it'd be easy and quiet, but no, the stupidity knows no locale, creed, culture, skin color, or level of education. It's more common than the nitrogen in the air, no matter WHERE I go.