 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
  |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
My Almost-daily Journal |
|
| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
 |
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Home Improvement Projects Sometimes home improvement projects are fun. Most of the time, they're a pain in the ass: I either break something worse than it was, my hands aren't small enough to fit into a tiny area, it takes ten times as long as originally anticipated, or I don't have the right tools to do the job. Today, I was able to put 1.5 projects behind me: the leaky kitchen sink and the leaky basement toilet. The toilet was a no-brainer. I was actually impressed at how fast I was able to complete it. All it needed was a new flapper. I almost bought the entire internal guts, but I opted to try just the flapper first. It worked. It's a minor victory. The kitchen sink is another issue! Do I need to remind everybody of the carpenter ants? Those little demons tortured me for over a year: coming and going whenever they felt like it. Orkin did a little ethnic cleansing for me and it only cost me around $400. I know now why those wood-devourers wanted to ruin me: they are attracted to rotting wood! Rotting wood? I have rotting wood in my house? Yup. Rotting. My kitchen sink is/was a sieve. It has been leaking for years. I even remember seeing the leaking coming into the basement. I never knew where it came from. I always assumed it was the dishwasher. Now I know. My family room that sits adjacent to my kitchen was an add-on. It actually sits on a slab. Those black demons probably got inside the house from under the slab since somehow they could smell the dry-rotting wood. Well, after years of leaking slowly, the elbow trap finally opened up for me causing all the dishwasher water and sink water to just go through my kitchen floor and into the basement. Under my sink is so water-logged and dry-rotted that there's not a straight piece of wood to put my cleaning supplies. I'm terrified to see what the flooring underneath the linoleum looks like. I actually think that the dishwasher might fall through into the basement any time now. Behold, I bought a plastic J-elbow today, as I attempted to be Joe Plumber. It wasn't an easy job. Is it ever? I could barely fit underneath the sink to get to the elbow, and most of the pipes underneath only allowed me about an inch movement with a pipe wrench. The old elbow was so gone, that it actually just broke off. Oh my gosh... the stench was awful! I know now why I'm not a plumber. I couldn't hack the smell and the nasty grime. Anyway, after about an hour of trying to get the old pipe and nuts off, I finally got the plastic J-pipe to install. Can you believe that it actually lined up perfectly!? I was amazed! I guess they make those things standard. It's logical, which surprises me. After wrestling another 30 minutes of trying to tighten down the shit-end (the end going into the sewers), I tested for leaks. It leaked. Surprised? For some reason, I didn't expect anything else. They say to only tighten plastic pipes by hand. Shit, this thing had another two turns left in it and I couldn't do it by hand (it was in the worst position possible to allow for hand tightening). I finally got the fucker tightened as much as I could without busting my wrists, and I did another leak test. Voila! No leaks. So I left the water on for about five minutes to see if I was actually leak-free. I wasn't. It leaked, but water wasn't coming from the elbow. Fuck! Where else would it be coming from!? I had to contort my body to fit under the sink even more than I already was to find this leak. You know what else leaks? The faucet leaks! Fuck! So after all that work, I still have a leaky kitchen sink, and continuing dry-rotting of my kitchen floor. I guess it's time to gut the kitchen. I'm terrified to find what the floor looks like. Who knows, I might find some queen carpenter ants taking a hiatus (I hope the hell not), or a floor that's ready to cave in. I don't even have the fortitude to start a home improvement project like this! Shit, I want to sell this house before Danielle and I get married. And we're getting married in May. At least I'll have that to look forward to. The Future of Audio Blogger I've been thinking about ending my audio blog subscription with Blogger. I don't even use it anymore. It was a nice novelty while it lasted. For some reason, I'm not too keen on leaving audio commentary about life when I'm not at the computer. When I'm bored enough to send an audio blog, I'm usually driving. And, if anybody else has ever owned a Jeep, talking on a cell phone while driving is next to impossible: 1) It's too damn loud to even think out loud, and 2) My Jeep is a manual, has a lift kit and huge tires... driving requires two hands and full attention to the road. So, if I ever get around to it, I'm going to post my last 12 audio blogs to I don't cancel without using what I've already paid for. It's only three bucks, so it's not like I'm going to break the bank, even if I cancelled right now. But there's something about throwing money away, even though it's only three bucks. Shit, I throw that out in bottles once a month. I don't know what's wrong with me. The Future of Free Blogger Right now, I'm typing this blog using Blogger's servers. I log into their site, type my blog, hit submit, and then the Blogger servers write a file to my webserver. It kinda defeats the purpose of having your own dedicated server. Why not just load an application on my server, and avoid going through a third-party server? Peter pointed me out to an application called Movable Type. It's a free application that resides on your own server. From my initial review of the application, it looks pretty promising. It even has a feature built-in that will pull blogs from other applications like Blogger. My only problem is that it took me a long time to dial-in my template. I think my Blogger template integrates seamlessly into my website. I hope that creating a template is just as easy in Movable Type. It would be nice if my current template could be migrated without extra work. I'm still a firm believer of the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!", so I'm not ready to jump on the Movable Type bandwagon just yet. To get up close with the app, click here: http://dinofilias.com/type/ posted by Dino at 9:29 PM (permanent link) |