off day|day off

haha, that title speaks endless bounds to my current predicament. im quite pleased with myself for that one =]

yeah, no work today. we were busy all week last week, finished 3 jobs actually, but so far this week we've got nothing officially on the books. we have a number of bids out and such, but its a waiting game to see when we actually get one. in the meantime, still waiting on checks to come in from last week so... we're definitely playing the waiting game.

yesterday i got a ton accomplished and honestly, im drained from it. im actually kind of glad that i have the day off because to be frank, im feeling rather fizzled. so yesterday, i went to early church - per-yuge, came home and got laundry a-goin, - well, what was left over from saturday that is - then i cleaned the kitchen, then i cleaned the dining room, ate lunch at some point, talked to the wifester a little online before school, wrote my lesson plan for this week, wrote my assignment outline for this week, wrote my quiz for this week, laid out all the laundry on the couch in the parlor so it didnt get wrinkly, cleaned the entry way.... didnt make it to cleaning the parlor or to actually putting the laundry away.... i know, i know, im a terrible husband. but ill get around to it before she gets home. and even if i dont.... =P

then i ended up spending a couple of hours online chatting with one of my kiddos about music. surprisingly, she actually has pretty decent taste in music for a teenager, lol! most of the kids i run into these days listen to nothing but crap. and i introduced her to all the greats from when i was her age, hahaha! yessir - project86, mxpx, living sacrifice, SUPERTONES! ahhhh!!!! so much fun reminiscing... and then, i ended up staying up late enough that i got to chat with the wifester a litte more after school before i passed out for the night. hmm... maybe the late hour could have played into my lack of enthusiasm or concentration today. maybe. ;]

annnnyway... i suppose i could post a few "after" pictures of 2 of our jobs from last week [only afters, because i forgot the befores, oops...] if you guys are into that i mean... no? well alright, i mean i offered and all...

heh. i love being in charge of the blog. i get to have all these fun little conversations with myself, and ya'll [gasp!] just have to sit there and keep reading if youre actually interested in getting to the meat n potatoes. control complex? who me? never... just your average twisted sense of humor, irony, and satire all blended up into a nice delicious blog-smoothy.

alright, so enough benign banter, heres the pictures youre waiting for.

[job.1]

so i came on board with colin for the second half of this job. i think he got in a little over his head if hed actually done it on his own, but with my experience and aesthetic eye, we were able to pull it off way faster than either of us expected, although it was still a LOT of work. this bed was HUGE! colin had done a good bit of the hard part grubbing out the existing weeds and ivy the owner didnt want, and actually cutting in the main bed. of course, my "expertise" helped smooth out some kinks all around, and then we proceeded to acquire plants, mulch [damn near 5 yards! whew!] etc, and get everything in and laid out nicely. overall it was a bit of a grueling project, but we managed to pull it off i think. enjoy. [appologies for the image quality, theres only so much i can do with a cell phone...]

so you have to ignore the leaves in the beds, they were raining down continuously the entire time we were working, there was just no way to avoid it. no, the rubber bed liner edge was not my idea, and i wouldnt normally put something like that in because it ends up looking a little tacky, but you have to do what the client wants. and no, we didnt purchase the hastas like that, theyre in bad shape i know, but they were transplants from another part of her yard and colin had already dug them up before i got there. next time we'll try to be a little more careful... over all i think it turned out pretty well. its a little sparse, but the bed was HUGE and we totally blew our budget on plants, good thing we got em wholesale ;]

[job.2]

This one was much less glamourous. essentially a cleanup job for some existing "beds" although there werent really beds to begin with. so we weeded, removed some dead shrubs and some nuisance plants and cleaned up what was left, then we actually cut in the beds to give them a nice clean edge and mulched it all up. [this one only needed 1 yard for comparisons sake...] it turned out really well i think, i really should have taken before shots of this one, it was a serious mess... oh and see that lovely decorative grass on the end there? yeah, that thing hated me. my entire right arm is sliced and diced from wrist to ribs. those grass blades were like razors and i have what amounts to dozens of long papercuts all up and down my arms, they burned like friggin hell that day, but now a few days later, theyre healing up nicely and the pain is gone. =]

MUCH cleaner than it was, let me tell you... =]

alright, well, i think thats all ive got for now. im just hanging out, watching a little tv, maybe a movie, reading some, and potentially - if the motivation comes along - working on some school stuff... but i doubt it. haha, after all, the title speaks for itself, lol! thinking maybe chinese for dinner... anyone wunna go to red pepper? or is there a better chinese place in cincy i need to try?! do tell ;]

hope you all have a happy week, feel free to comment if you feel so inclined. =]

i dont have a witty sign off this time, sorry. ill try harder next time round.

"i'm all jacked up on mountain dew! i will come at you like a spider monkey!" - official landscaping quote of all time - thanks to my former landscaping crew, you guys are awesome!

ju-ju-just.dance.dance.

wow... so its been almost 2 weeks. my bad. so much for blogging more often...

okay, lets get to the recent events. well, as recent as the time table is from your perspective anyway.

[last.week]

not a whole lot happened to report about during the remainder of the week but there is a little.

im foggy on what day it was, but nearer the end of the week than the beginning, karen found a couch on craigslist that she just fell in love with. so far we've had kind of a love/hate relationship with the 3 piece set we got off craigslist some months ago - in that we love having furniture, but its huge, bulky, heavy, and not really in line with our style or the style we're going for in our rooms... at all. but it is comfortable, and it was affordable, and well, its furnishing - so the rooms arent exactly empty anymore. however, theyre a lot closer to overstuffed with these monstrous pieces... but i digress. so karen found this couch that she just fell in love with. it was waaay more in line [okay, ill say it, perfectly in line.] with our style and the feel we were going for in the parlor, and it was listed for super cheap, so karen talked me in to going and picking it up after work one day. well lucky for us no one grabbed it first and she struck a deal with the woman selling it [who was quite friendly by the way, we liked her.] and actually got it for 5 bucks cheaper than she was listing it. anyway, we got there to get this thing and it was even more perfect in person - its gorgeous. so anyway, we brought it home [so much lighter than the other ones!!!!!] and got it into the parlor and instantly, we loved it. it just works with the room. its kind of an orangey-salmon color and dont ask me why, but it really ties the colors in the room together a lot better than the cream [or dingy brown slip cover] color of the couch we have now.

so tied to that, i insisted that if she got a new couch she had to get rid of the old one - theres just not enough room for them to live in harmony. she agreed and posted it on craigslist. since then weve had a couple of people come by and look at it, but so far we still have it... the weather hasnt been helpful, i'll say that much. its been raining a lot lately and no one wants to move a couch in the rain [myself included.] but tomorrow [saturday] is supposed to be a beautiful day out and saturdays are the best day for craigslist, so hopefully we can get rid of it this weekend.

other than that... theres nothing too noteworthy about last week that i can remember.

[last.weekend]

well i believe ive posted at some point in the past that we had a few problems with our electrical when it came time to do the inspection. it wasnt that we did stuff wrong, just that there were more code requirements than we knew about that we were going to have to meet, and there was more wrong that the inspector discovered during his inspection. anyway, when it was all said and done we had a nice list of things we still needed to do and the more major of those things being that we needed to replace our main service line and meter - of which i am no where near qualified to take on with my fairly limited "expertise" [ha!]. so the bottom line was that we were going to have to hire an electrician for at least part of what we still had left to do and i was dreading having to do that.

from my limited understanding of the profession, electricians are expensive. and as i started to make phone calls to get estimates or quotes or someone to even come out to look at it, i found this limited understanding to be quite true indeed. i was getting numbers anywhere from 1000 to 2000 bucks to do the work, a lot of them didnt bother going out to look - they could handle it whatever it ended up being and if it was more than what i described on the phone they could give me a price once they were working on it [ha, right!] - or charged a fee to come out and look at stuff before theyd even give you a quote... all of these things were not making me very happy, or to be more honest were frastrating the hell out of me.

so last week i started asking around the office [after failing on my own accord] if anyone knew a good electrician or even a fair one that was affordable. luckily, i hit the jackpot. one of the architects at my office has a good friend thats an electrician and passed on my information to him. soon enough he called me and arranged to go out and have a look [for free, woohoo!] at the situation while karen was at home. he did so and she discussed with him to some degree the problem and the list of other things we had to do, and he went on his merry way. well we didnt hear anything back immediately, but on friday of last week the architect told me that the guy had lost my number and so i gave it to her and he called me pretty shortly after. so we discussed what he saw, and cleared up exactly what i wanted him to do, and he gave me a quote for the work... and it was WAY cheaper than any of the other idiots id talked to! well it turned out hed had a cancellation saturday morning and so we scheduled for that time - problem solved!

so saturday morning came and he arrived right on time and got to work. before hed gotten there i had been working away myself for almost an hour. the stove[range] line that was in the house when we bought it was actually service cable, and during the inspection the inspector decided it was oversized and needed to be replaced with a smaller and different kind of wire but also informed me that the one there would be sufficient to replace the service line outside. so kind of bittersweet in that it would have to be replaced, but awesome that we already had the materials for the electrician. [which helped save me some money!] so anwyay, before they got there i was busy unhooking the line from the circuit breaker, the stove, and starting to pull it out of the floor joists. luckily when dad was here we'd disconnected the stove line that was going to the second floor [part of the old multi-family situation] and the wire going to that one was the right kind and there was enough of it to run as the replacement line. so anyway, the electrian and one of his guys got there while i was in the middle of pulling the service wire out of the joists and took over for me while i got started running the replacement line for the stove.

i wasnt entirely sure what all they did for the first couple of hours while i was busy down in the basment doing my own thing, but around noon i started checking up on things with them and theyd made huge progress! theyd already installed a new meter base and were prepping the replacement service line to go in. and well, before i knew it they were doing those things as well. at about 1:15 they were completely finished installing the new service line and we had power up and running with no problems!

and if that all wasnt enough, the guy was really nice and walked me through the entire list from the inspector and talked me through the ohio code stuff that my dad and i didnt know before, and showed me how i needed to complete everything to get approved in the final inspection. he gave me all kinds of tips and said that if i ever had any problems or questions or anything to feel free to give him a call and hed be glad to help. so yeah, thats a great contact if i ever have more electrical stuff going on, and in the end it only cost us $400! thats pretty drastically different from $2000 in my book! [checkbook that is...]

anyway, the rest of the day saturday we spent going to homedepot to get the supplies i was going to need to work on some of the other electrical stuff and then i actually did some of that as well. karen worked on school stuff trying to get ready for classes to start up on monday and grilled hamburgers for dinner. [yeah, they were the frozen kind this time so we had much less difficulty, haha, they tasted awesome though!]

sunday we went to church, the grocery store, and the gas station as usual and then it started raining again and the day got very grey and dreary and gross and... we basically said screw it, got in warm-comfies and snuggled up infront of the tv. =]

[this.week]

well nothing too exciting has gone on during the week. karen has been going to all her classes and started her new job on campus so shes getting adjusted to all of those. and then wednesday night i took off the door to the balcony on the second floor and replaced it with a sheet of plywood because karen needed the door for her studio project this semester and it was a piece of crap anyway. [and again, heavy!] we took that up to her studio along with a nice load of supplies and such.

ummm.... lets see... what else.....

haha, alright ive tortured amanda enough i guess. ;]

well over the weekend our dear friend amanda [whom ive mentioned on a few occasions past] moved back to cincinnati after being awol for the last few months. [well, really shed just moved to cleveland temporarily for an internship, but you say potato...] and on mondy night she decided to have people over to celebrate being back home in the nati - and we were invited. so after work we went to amandas and had a long night of friends, food, lots of laughter and stories and lively conversations about various topics. we had a great time, and a little wine, and by the time we ended up leaving it was damn near midnight, lol! [oh and did i mention there was a puppy? haha, that alone was tons of entertainment throughout the night! it was amanda's roommate - who is also very cool - caity's new puppy, a cocker spaniel mix - mom youd have loved it! - and it was pretty stinkin cute. "pay-trick" and i played with it for probably the first solid hour, haha!] anyway, we had a total blast [thanks manda!] and a rough morning the next day after not nearly enough beauty sleep ;]

and while we're on the subject of amanda, we're also going out with her and a group tonight for wine tasting again! i know i mentioned this sometime past, the wine tasting at whole-foods. anyway, its starting up again for the spring and tonight is the first night, so karen and i are pretty excited about that. im sure itll be as much fun as it was last time around. =]

alright... so... with that, i think youre pretty caught up on the past. as for the near future... ummm...

[this.weekend]

well as i said its going to be gorgeous outside tomorrow so im sure we'll try and get some house work done if we can.

i know karen has lots of homework to work on this weekend and shes planning on doing a lot of that, so it might throw a wrench in our house stuff.

i am definitely hoping we get rid of that stupid couch this weekend.

theres still bookshelf stuff left to be completed, so i might work on that some.

the electrical is still around, so i might work on that some more.

we need to replace the door out to the balcony at some point, we might attempt that this weekend.

church on sunday and the normal sunday routine.

oh, and a new development -

yesterday i got a flyer [flier?] at work about an architecture competition in cincinnati through the usgbc [http://www.usgbc.org]. well, actually its national, but starts at a local level and cincinnati is one of the locations. anwyay, after reading all the information about this competition i started to think it was pretty cool and i might actually want to do it. i talked to karen about it, but she is too busy with school stuff to work on it at all... but its a pretty big competition project and i kind of wanted to team up with someone. so i emailed my buddy mike from grad school who just happens to live here in cincy as well [see the post about the new years eve wedding for more on mike...] to see if he was interested. well as it turns out, he got pretty excited about the competition and thought we could come up with a pretty cool entry so we decided to do it! so yeah, thats pretty cool. that will definitely take up some of my spare time over the next 14 weeks [the deadline] but hopefully we'll have a cool entry to show for it. [i know we'll have fun, haha!] so anwyay, this weekend at some point we're planning to meet about that and start brainstorming, visit the site, etc. so... eventually i may have another update on that, stay tuned.

um, i think thats about it that i know of. hope youve all been well and have plans of your own for the upcoming weekend! miss and love you all!

reconstruction[the.conclusion]

picking up where we last left off...

sunday.

sunday was another fun & exciting day of work, although there wasnt quite as much destruction... for the most part anyway, lol!

we got started fairly early again, meeting the masons out at the house around 8:30-9ish to get them access to whatever they needed and get ourselves started on the day. yes, we missed church on sunday [blasphemous i know, but i doubt god will sweat it much, hes got bigger things to worry about im sure]. so first things, finish up the hanging fixtures for petes sake!

well one of them we decided not to modify, the aqua colored one, we just loved it the way it was so we didnt mess with it. we've got plans to design the room somewhat inspired by the fixture, so while karen was putting finishing touches on the fixtures we were messing with, i got started on installing this thing. 

now to preface this, i had never in my life until this point wired up a hanging lamp [or much of anything else for that matter]. but thanks to some awesome d.i.y. books my amazing mother-in-law sent us, i was confident in my ability to decipher brightly colored step by step graphics [lol, isnt that what i do all day at work anyway?]. so i got out the new ladder [yes it is alu-min-ium-as they say 'down under' - and that did worry me a little], my pliers, screwdrivers, etc. and got started. 

well needless to say, anything new with no real prior knowledge has a learning curve [much like the installation of new door hardware], and this was certainly no exception. after a long series of trial and errors [mostly concerning the damned length of the chain vs. the length of the wires, grrr...], a multitude of redos, and a dash of making the friggin thing fit; not only had i installed the aqua fixture, but i had also wired into it one of the other lamps [that we decided wasnt worth the hassle to disassemble in order to modify] in the same box and they were both functional! score! i hadnt even electrocuted myself! =] and karen was a great helper, i assure you. she was a champ at holding the fixture over her head on the little step latter for endless lengths of time while i cursed at the stupid chain links, wires, caps, plaster, and other uncooperative elements - this lamp had a freaking attitude that would rival some family members of mine, lol! ;]

not to mention during some times when i didnt need her help [while i was on the ground splicing wires or experimenting with some part] she had snuck off upstairs and finished disassembling the last studs in the attic that we'd left the night before - double score!

so in the end, the first lamp[s] took a few hours to get up, but i/we was/were successful and i took a step back admiring with pride this thing that i had accomplished. until i felt a tap on my shoulder. hm? i turned to face my wife whos standing there looking at me like im an idiot and holding the fixture that goes in the entryway, lol! we werent finished, this was no time for taking a break, and she wasnt about to let me forget it, lol! ah, wives... so i clambered up the ladder to inspect my next victim. well the entryway fixture was a slightly different situation. there was no nice little electric box pre-installed with all the trimmings and ready to go. this was two wires hanging out of the ceiling, daring me to mess with them. ah, i see. well that was fine by me, no biggie. a half an hour later with the help of my trusty drill [god, i love that drill!] i had this thing wired up, installed, and ready to test. flip that switch baby! *insert awkward silence and darkness* hmm... well what the hell? i know i wired the damn thing right... 

so i climbed back up, switched the wires, try it again sweetie. nothing. shit. alright what am i doing wrong? i switched the wires back to the way i knew they were right and ventured down to the basement. had i tripped the entryway at some point? well when i got down there all the fuses were in order and nothing was out of place, so i thought id just reset a bunch of them and see if that worked the kink out of the system. so i start flipping the switches back and forth and then i hear karen hollering through the floor above me "its on!" sweet! "but..." shit. "but the lights in the parlor[as we've decided we're going to call it from now on] turned off when this one came on." huh? how is this even possible? i have the fuse switched into the off position and the light in the entry is on, while the lights in the parlor are off like theyre supposed to be. wtf...? so i flipped it back to on, they switched back obviously, and i went back up stairs scratching my head...

well, luckily, two of my cousins are electricians by trade, and this is obviously an electrical problem, so i made a few phone calls and called up cousin wade. after his initial shock of finding out id not only bought a house, but did so in cincinnati, with my wife? wife? lol! where has he been lately? haha. anyway after that he talked me through a few things and we discovered that some idiot had wired a 3-way switch wrong and while its not a real fix, we did figure out how to manipulate the switches in a way that we can turn the entry light on and off at the switch we want to control it. good enough, thanks cousin wade! 

well after i got off the phone with wade, i was perturbed with a light switch that im guessing the same idiot had installed up-side-down, and decided to fix it right quick. heh, up until this point i hadnt shocked myself at all when i was actually handling the wires, but of course on the simple task of removing the face plate and flipping the switch right-side-up, i managed to get myself not only once, but twice, lol! yes, thank you, i appreciate the applause. moving on... 

so after i "fixed" the light switch, we moved onto the dining room fixture. this was another one that karen had finished modifying that morning,and possibly my favorite fixture of them all, i might add. im afraid the pictures of these guys dont do the mod justice, but you'll see eventually when we get some better ones. so anyway, back up the ladder, score, this one was in great shape. an even better box to work with than the first one, and the lamp had tons of chord to work with. this one went up like a breeze, 10-15 minutes tops. the only part that took any time was figuring out the two switches in the dining room to get the thing to turn on and off, lol! its a little redundant to have 2 switches that operate the same light on opposite sides of a 12ft space, but nothing surprises me in this house anymore, lol!

at this point we decided to take a quick run to grab some food and run to the hardware store to get a few s-hooks and a plant hook for the second light in the parlor so we could properly hang all these things where we wanted them. a quick check on the masons [moving on fantastically! we had half a rebuilt wall!] and off we went. lunch was the local taco bell, because neither of us had had it in a while, or felt like cooking, and it was 3 doors down from the local hardware store. lunch was delicious, as usual, and the hardware store was fast, and we were home before we knew it, with everything installed and adjusted to our liking. and now the moment youve all been waiting for!

luckily you can see them all if you get at the right angle, heh. 

well, at this point we decided we better move on to other things on our to do list for the day. we hit the grocery store to re-stock the kitchen cabinets for the week, and by the time we had dropped those off at home it was slowly starting to get dark. we went back to the house to see how things were coming along and then milled-about the house trying to decide what else we wanted to tackle in the near future while we waited for the masons to finish up. not too long after we'd assessed the future rehabbing situation, they were finished and we went about paying them and closing up the house for the day. the wall looked great! see for yourself!

happy with the days work and ready to get on with the rest of the day before it was pitch black out, we left them to finish cleaning-up and went on our way to continue the night. 

we ended up doing laundry [no, not yet with our own washer and dryer, we still need working plumbing for that to happen... soon though, this weekend even!] and went home to quickly put away our clothes, get dressed and primped, and have a very, very, short dinner. ...why you ask??

because we went to a concert! lol! i know, on a work-night too! oh, that crazy wife of mine... so sunday night we went to see girl-talk[definitely not parent, grandparent, or closed minded people appropriate - but killer music if youre into this sorta thing]. one of karens absolute favorite bands! ...well... its really more like a guy, a few turn-tables, and a laptop. its kind of an electronica/dj situation. but we had a total blast! karen got her dance fix for a while and we sweated buckets in the dead center of the throbbing crowd as we danced for hours and had a great time. it was a ton of fun, a great concert, and im pretty sure i saved the life of a crowd-surfing girl who i caught from hitting the ground and tossed back up onto the wave of arms, lol! it was so much fun! however, by the time we left we were soaked to the bone with sweat and it was like 34 outside, lol! needless to say we froze all the way home before a quick shower and then jumping in bed. i think i finally drifted off to sleep a little after midnight, but it was totally worth it. if for no other reason that to see the joy beaming off my wifes face. she had the time of her life and im glad i got to be there to share it with her.  =]

well. i think... yeah, thats it. l0l! youre caught up now. yesterday was a total snore of a normal work day, today is proving to be much the same. the only real beacons of excitement in our week are a friend of karen's birthday dinner tonight and the plumber coming on friday to fix our plumbing!! so stay tuned for more updates, go vote in the lightning round if you still havent yet, and ill touch base with you soon!

concluded!

ipod.101

so my friend claire is having issues with her computer dying. =[

[something ive gone through a LOT in my days for those of you that know the whole story] and along with that shes lost all her music - major bummer! luckily ive always had my music backed up to my external harddrive, but for those of you that just have it on your ipod and dont know how to get it off, theres hope, and im here to help. i was inspired by her and a friend of her's dilema so i thought id lay it out pretty detailed for you guys - in hopes that you have some basic knowledge of your os.

so for those of you with pc's, heres how it works. [im afraid i dont have a mac, sadly, so im no help there, but maybe someday] theres a program you can download online, usually just from download.com and for pc users its called igadget. [or irobot, ipod transfer, etc. - they all do about the same thing]

1.download the free trial version and install it. now, theres a catch. they want you to actually use the software but with the trial versions they only let you transfer 1-3 songs at a time. ha, right! ive got 30 gigs on my ipod! so the trick is that it also installs a fix to your os for the ipod to let your computer recognize it as an external harddrive.  

2.open windows explorer and under your folder option youll need to turn on viewing hidden files, [for vista users click organize in your windows explorer, then folder options, then turn on viewing of hidden files - they moved this option after xp and i know it took me forever to find it in vista] and then open your ipod as a harddrive in windows explorer. 

3. now youll have to dig through the folders until you find the actual mp3's on the ipod. for my ipod the folder strings are as follows: ipod-control> music>[and then a number of folders numbered f00 - f50] now all of your song files are named bizarre stuff like FTH3 but they'll still have the .mp3 suffix, so you might not recognize them at first, but its the same mp3 i promise[my computer actually still displays all the artist info, etc in the folder, try turning on the details view in vista]. 

4.now then, grab all of these folders of mp3's [they may be broken up into a few dozen folders depending on how your ipod is organized and how much music you have] and copy/transfer all of those to your computer - i recommend putting them all in one folder on the desktop for easy finding.

5.now open itunes and go to: edit>options>advanced [if youre using the latest version of itunes anyway] then tell itunes to have it copy music into your itunes library folder and keep it organized. now save those preferences and clean out your library in itunes if there is one. 

6.then go to: file>add folder to library> and browse to find the location of all the oddly named files you just copied [to your desktop if you followed my advice]. now using the data embedded in the mp3, itunes will reload your library with fresh song info, album covers, you name it.  

7.when itunes is done copying everything over close it and you can now delete the original folder/folders [still on the desktop] with all the funky ipod named files and you SHOULD [i cant guarantee anything, technology is weird sometimes] retain all of the fresh copies in your itunes library. now open itunes and youre good to go!  

i know this all sounds a little complicated, but ive done it a couple of times and its worked perfectly for me. hopefully thats enough of a step by step instruction to get it done, but email me if you need more thorough info.

note:

i should warn you, that to do this the way ive described you will need to have at least twice the harddrive space as you have total gigs of music on your harddrive. i assume thats a given, but some people dont think about it before hand. if you dont have enough space then when itunes is adding to your library itll tell you youre out of room and screw the whole process up.

a fix for this is to actually place all the copied randomly named music directly into your itunes library in windows explorer [after cleaning it out first!] if youre doing it this way, DONT tell itunes to copy all the music into your itunes folder, but DO tell it to keep your music organized and then follow the same process for telling itunes where the music is [in your itunes library]. itunes SHOULD rename everything automatically and organize your library, but if the exess folders bug you, youll have to go delete them from the itunes folder in windows explorer.

well... i hope this helps you guys out. i dont claim to be any kind of ipod or computer guru, but i figured this out and thought it might help you guys if youre lost in despair and hopelessness over this conundrum.

good luck!

in.my.house

just a short one to keep you all up to speed.

wednesday was a fairly successful day as well. we went to work as usual and did our whole work thing up until lunch time. i worked on more leed stuff, i assume karen did her usual as well. at lunch time we actually both had a lunch & learn. 

ill deviate topics for a moment here - have i discussed lunch & learns?

in our little industry, theres the overarching organization which most registered architects choose to be a member of - the AIA [american institute of architects]. well as a membership requirement you pay dues like so many other professional organizations, as well as various other little requirements - one of which being the AIA's commitment to continuing education even after professional registration. i can't speak to other professions on this one because i honestly have no idea, but the AIA believes that as architects we have a responsibility[and really just the need if we're being honest] to stay informed on current trends in our industry and all those related [which is a LOT] if we're to be the best at our jobs and id say if we're to stay relevant in the world in general. so what this means is that members of the organization have to fulfill x number of points of continuing education each year to meet the guidelines and stay in good favor or what have you. as a result, pretty much every architectural office out there [im speaking specifically of u.s. based, obviously] has regularly scheduled "lunch & learns." this is where some product manufacturer, distributor, or other professional relevant to architecture and its related industries [take door-knob manufacturers or software developers for example as options in this realm] come to the office during lunch time [so as not to waste valuable billable hours], provides lunch, and gives an hour long seminar over whatever the topic is. [so if the guy develops the software from my previous example, he gives a seminar on the relevancies of different software types in the industry, what trends are occurring within the profession involving software vs. traditional methods, and ultimately slips in briefly how his software is a better fit for our office's needs than all his competitors] in return, we get a couple of points towards our c.e. quota, and this guy [yeah, i know im not being pc, get over it] gets the option of having our office spec his product, service, etc.

so during the lunch in learn [or "l&l" for short, or "cell" as its referred to in my office - continuing education lunch & learn] karen got a call from a blocked number and excused herself to answer it, didnt get it in time, and there was no message or callback... weird. we assumed if it were one of our people they'd try again and ignored it. about 5 minutes after my l&l ended i got a phone call from the plumber scheduled that day saying hed be at the house in about 20 minutes, so i coordinated with karen and she met him out at the house. 

from what i can tell it went well, but the guy either didnt know how a high-efficiency water-heater works or was just trying to pull a fast one on us, because he told karen that the current water-heater was venting through the wall instead of the normal through the roof and that he'd have to install a "special fan" to correct this when he installed the new water-heater... the reason its venting through the wall is because its a high efficiency water-heater [be it old and in need of replacement, probably one of the first models] and they vent through the wall... thats how theyre designed. so either the guy is ignorant of his profession, or thinks we are. [im betting on the latter, or maybe just hoping, lol!] 

so she got that taken care of, we'll get his estimate in a day or two. [speaking of, we got the other guys estimate later after i blogged, and it was almost double the first plumber! what?! not to mention he was trying to get us to install new waterlines and venting for the laundry that we already have and look like theyre in perfectly functional condition... is everyone going to try to ef us? seriously? what happened to honesty and integrity in your craft?] so we we're looking good, now we just had to get the energy guy out to connect the electricity and gas, and we'd really be in business. 

well karen picked me up from work as usual and my first question was "what happened with the energy guy?" turns out he never called her... weird... so she called them. the blocked call she missed in the l&l - yeah, that was their guy. so she had to re-schedule that for later on this week. possibly today [thursday] or tomorrow, i cant remember which now. but i do know they gave us a smaller window this time around, 12-4, so thats cool. 

so yeah, thats the update on the contractors. 

hope youre all having lovely days. holla back!

post.script: happy birthday kimber!

post.post.script: daft punk is playing in my house, in my house. 

that is all.

contractors.galore

so today has been a busy day... i wont bother with the topic subtitle/section business, its all about the house these days. :]

monday.

so monday morning the first thing to do on our list was to figure out this barricade situation. the woman i had talked to on saturday said we could go to the city buildings & inspections office and that they would give us the keys to the locks since we were the homeowners and we had the right to access our property. thats good news, right? lol! so apparently they were supposed to open by 7:30 and we figured wed just stop by there on the way to work, get the keys, and then one of us could meet the electric company guy we had scheduled at some point between 8 & 4 [really specific right? freakin energy companies...] out at the house to let him in. no problems right? haha, its never quite that easy.

so we get to the city office at around 7:45 and ask the receptionist to see the guy who id tried calling a few times. she sent us on our way, and after waiting upstairs for someone to fetch him, we met dave, and he was a really nice guy. he walked us through everything we were going to need to do to obtain permits, what we needed to do to get the house up to passing inspections, you name it, the guy was a wealth of great info. except the keys, lol, he forgot all about those until he was about to send us on our way and i was like oh, one last thing, could we get those keys? haha, he laughed and went and talked to a lady who came out to tell us the bad news. the contractor who was out over the weekend doing all the work still had them. so we discussed our options and we decided to swing back buy tuesday morning before work to get them and she swore shed have them for us. so... close enough. whats one more day?

so later on i ended up making a number of phone calls and talking to a variety of contractors. first, i scheduled 3 different plumbers to come out and give us an estimate. all three are local and i just found them using a google map search for the closest to our area, and these are the guys that popped up. one of them even had some ratings on google and they were encouraging, so i felt good about it. so i called all these guys up, gave them my info and scheduled them all for as soon as possible. so we ended up getting one guy for tuesday [today] between 8 & 10am, one guy for tuesday but we didnt get a time frame from the woman on the phone, and the last guy for wednesday between 12 & 4pm. additionally i contacted the new mason [the friend of the window guy] who was very happy to hear from me and said hed love to come out either tuesday or wednesday morning to check it out and we could go from there, and then i called the roofer again who promised he hadnt forgotten about me and would try to be there by wednesday to have a look, thursday at the latest. meanwhile, karen was calling the energy company to try and re-schedule them to come out on a day when we actually had access to the house, and she made that for wednesday as well [although still the really specific time frame of 8-4...]

so all in all we had a pretty successful day i thought. i felt good about how things were going, and even more so how smoothly they seemed to be going even with a few hiccups.

tuesday[today, for those of you keeping score]

so this morning we got up early and got over to the city office at 7:30 and great news, she had the keys! so we were in and out of there in no time flat, just a copy of my i.d. in case anyone wanted to dispute who had the keys, and off we went. so we're headed back to the house and karen is on the phone confirming what time the first plumber would be there, ah... 30-45 minutes. crap. now what?

 so we decided to turn around and id take karen to work [because her office is anal about starting at 8am sharp] and then id meet the morning plumber, take her the truck, and then shed meet the afternoon plumber [hopefully on her lunch break]. so, i dropped her off, turned around, and arrived at the house at the exact same time as the plumber and another truck with two guys who got out and walked towards the house as well... masons? yesss! score. so now i had not only a plumber on time, but also a mason who showed up at all, and i had the joy of juggling both to get an estimate at the same time. well it went just fine. the masons had a look around outside, the plumber did his thing in the basement and when it was all over with i had an estimate in hand from the plumber [nice guy, by the way] and the mason [also a nice guy but technologically challenged] promising to drop off an estimate at the house either wednesday or thursday. sweet. things are lookin good. 

so i took karen the truck and then went to work [only an hour late after all this, not bad at all] and did the whole work thing. right now at work im working on getting leed credits for 6 different schools we're working on, and its a good learning experience, but tedious as hell. for those of you that dont know, LEED is a certification that a building can achieve for designing and building sustainably and efficiently and is a program sponsored by the USGBC [united states green building council]. its a good thing for all new buildings to get, and is a great start in driving our nation to thinking about energy efficiency and what we can do to reduce our impact on the environment. anyway, ive been working mostly on daylighting points lately, but thats not really the point of this post. 

at about a quarter to noon i get a call, its the other plumber, he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. so i called karen and off she went to meet him. i dont have any gory details of their exciting meeting [lol] but i know it went well, and the plumber should email us an estimate by wednesday afternoon at the latest. 

now. 

so after a long day, we're doing great i think! tomorrow weve got another plumber coming, the energy guy, and potentially a roofer. so house repairs are looking up at the moment, and hopefully they stay that way! honestly, if all wed gotten done today was gaining access to the house id have been pretty happy, but in my opinion we surpassed that by leaps and bounds! 

well, i think thats it for now. if you havent already noticed, look carefully at the blog layout and see if you can find what i changed today, lol! i know, i know... im a nerd. but i cant help it, its who i am. [and i love who i am, heh]

"catch you on the flip side yo"

[for 10 awesome pts in chris' book of awesome, email me and tell me where that quote is from. no cheating, and dont post it directly on the blog to spoil it for everyone else. and seriously, no cheating. just whatever knowledge youve got locked away in that head of yours. hint: potatoes]

post.script: lcd sound system is rocking my world as of late. lovin it. 

post.post.script: http://www.shapeofamerica.org/ [get inspired!]

sore.shoulders

hello hello all! :]

so a little update action is in order i think. 

house.

the biggie obviously is the house. thats really all our excitement these days. 

thursday - thursday after work and still bubbling with the excitement of the new house i dropped karen off at class and went straight to the house to check things out. excuse me, OUR house. hehe! well when i got there, to my surprise i found a notice in the window from the city. this wasnt the first time this had happened, you may remember the condemnation orders we found once that the sellers neglected to tell us about or do anything about, so here we go again. this time its a barricade order. great. since the door still hadnt been repaired [after we told the seller a number of times] the city had come by and found it open to trespassers and given that its also considered a safety hazard in its present condition by the city [and no one wants to get sued...], the city issued orders that the house either be secured from trespassers or else theyd barricade it themselves, the seller had 3 days to comply. um... yeah those orders had been issued long ago, i was shocked they hadnt already barricaded it. so i immediately called the numbers to find out who i needed to talk to and what i needed to do, etc. got no one. the guy im supposed to talk to is only in the office from 8-10, m-f and the rest of the time hes out in the field doing these inspections and such. fantastic. guess i'll try again tomorrow...

friday - so friday i went to the house to meet with a new window guy. [for those of you that remember, a few months ago we got initial estimates on a lot of the work we're going to have to do, i.e. the brick wall, the roof, & windows being the 3 biggest jobs] so i was supposed to meet him at 4, and i got there at roughly 3:50. i had tried calling the city again in the morning to no avail and had left a message for the guy i was supposed to talk to. i hadnt heard back, so i tried calling again while i waited for the window guy. no luck, they were gone, it was basically an answering service i got hold of. even better... what now? no clue... 

well the house was still open, luckily, so the window guy arrived at 4pm, right on time, and damn he was a fast talker. it seems a lot of these contractor, subcontractor types are. or maybe its because im in yankee country and im used to texans talking nice and slow, lol, i dont know. but i had to listen pretty intently to keep up, lol! so we walk through the house, he takes a look at all the windows, we discuss my options, and then he gets busy measuring every window in the house. 

now for those of you that remember from last time we got an estimate from homedepot and it was a pretty decent one we thought. $225 per window installed, an extra charge for those on the second floor and again for the finished attic. the windows were very nice, but on all of our huge windows on the first level we were going to have to do some shimming [for lack of a better term] to get the window openings down to their maximum size. but overall we were pretty happy with the estimate they gave us. well this guy, man, what a deal. no only did all of our windows [save the two floor to ceilings in the front room that are just ridiculously large] fit within their maximum opening size [so no shimming!], the windows were even better [welded corners this time around], there was no extra charge for any windows on any upper levels, and they also had an option for a trim treatment in which they encase the window trim all the way around in a vinyl casing to protect it from the elements and save us the pain of having to paint trim every couple of years. we havent decided for sure on that, it adds 50 bucks per window, but we're definitely considering it. oh and the windows are pretty much the same price installed as home depots base price - these are $235 each with the lowE + argon insulated glass. 

so we're really happy with this guys quote. he's willing to work with us in phases if we need to and overall he was just really friendly and offered us a great deal. so we're most likely going to go with them. [thanks mom-in-law for the recommendation!] and on top of that the guy gave me the name and number of a mason friend of his who he says does great work, very dependable guy, whos currently looking for work. sweetness, another mason! so far we've only gotten one quote on that damn wall, and its a little high we think, so im definitely looking for more options. [ill be calling him later this afternoon]

saturday - saturday morning we decided to get up and go to the tile place near our apartment to see what options we were going to have to work with and start formulating some plans for the work we want to do in the bathrooms and such. after that we were headed over to the house to measure doors to see about possible replacing or at the very least new door hardware in order to secure the house and hopefully avoid the barricading. 

well the tiling place was really cool. there were so many more options than we'd expected! we'd looked at homedepot briefly when we were there for the tiling seminar and their selection was fairly limited, to say the least. but this place was like a tile paradise! they had everything you could imagine, and a lot of stuff you couldnt. we found a lot of what we were looking for there and a lot we werent looking for, lol! overall it was a very successful trip and we're definitely brainstorming about our options now. 

after the tile place we went straight to the house, although we'd spent more time than originally anticipated at the tile place, it was now 11am. yeah, you guessed it, when we got to the house we found that the city had already been there and barricaded - boarded up a window, the back door, and put a pad-lock on the front door. we were stuck. locked out. crap. 

well... i called the city, to no avail, no one works on saturday in the offices that could help me. so we were screwed till monday morning. at which point we'd have to go to the building & inspections office to see about getting a key to our house. well, we were planning to go to homedepot anyway, so instead of doing door stuff we decided to get stuff to do yard work - push brooms, rakes, yard bags, etc. 

after a few hours and trips to not only homedepot but also walmart and mejier, we finally had most of what we needed, including a haircut for chris [oh man did she ever butcher my hair... ugh...i miss you christina!!!] and a few groceries we needed as well. however, it was now about 3 oclock and we hadnt eaten since 8am, so we decided to head home for lunch. after lunch, haha, we didnt want to do anything, we were full and sleepy after all the running around, so we stayed in and watched a couple of netflix, leaving the rough stuff for tomorrow [sunday].

sunday -  so sunday morning we did our usual. a little breakfast, and then off to church for a couple of hours. after church we headed home to do a little research on some remodeling equipment we're thinking about getting [more on that at a later time] and then had lunch before heading over to the house. we got there at about 1:30pm and unloaded the truck of our newly acquired supplies, ready to do some house work!

so we started by raking in the back and then sweeping some, and uncovered that theres actually a concrete slab in the back where the back door is stretching out under the entire stair case. who knew?! it was covered in leaves and a thick layer of dirt every time we were there, so we thought it was just dirt, lol! [not to mention there were a few trees growing through some cracks in the slab, leading to our deception] next we decided to do some maintenance that our neighbors could enjoy and moved to the front and side of the house. we did more raking on the side initially and then the front yard and sidewalk in front of the house, and then came back with a push broom and finally a regular broom for detailing and got all the dirt and dust off the porch, and walks, and it looked sooo different. i thought we could always see the concrete on the side of the house but we pulled 2 trash bags full of dirt and leaves and trash out of the side and we could actually see the sidewalk for the first time! we even uncovered a drain that we never knew was there, lol! so after a few hours of raking & sweeping & bagging we had about 7 bags of crap wed picked up and the house looked great in the front. 

in the process we'd actually met a couple of our neighbors whod been out walking their dogs and noticed us working and decided to say hello. the neighbor directly across the street from us [in one of the newly built houses] was so friendly and a wealth of knowledge - she gave us at least a half a dozen names of people to get in contact with for trash, recycling, a neighborhood e-newsletter, and other various neighborhood related things. shes really nice, and seems excited to have some new neighbors. we probably talked to her for at least a half an hour and she made a few trips inside her house to get us numbers and email addresses, haha! very cool. shes very soft spoken and calm and for some reason her mannerism's and the soft spoken-ness really reminded me of jay, haha! [miss yah roomie!]

so after what had to have been a good 4 hours of the raking and sweeping, we decided to tackle the stairs in the back. they were rotting, because i assume they were never weather treated, and the whole thing was just built very shotty to begin with. we wanted to keep the top deck if possible because theres a door onto it from the house and we'd like to modify it into a nice little balcony off that door in the back. so we climbed up very, very carefully and swept off the decks and stairs to get a good look at what was underneath. after a lot of discussion we decided that the decks were in pretty decent shape, but that all the stairs were pretty rotted and would all need to be rebuilt if we decided we wanted them, but would need to come down for sure. so we started the fun part of remodeling - demolition. 

haha, and it was fun for the most part. there were a million nails in this thing [whoever built it's justification for such a terrible structural design i assume] so it was a serious pain in the ass at first. however, at some point i just decided to hell with pulling nails and started ripping up the pieces with my hands. [thank god for work gloves, im far too impatient when it comes to destruction, lol] so after so many jerks here and there with my massive muscles, *wink wink* i tore the top stairs out without too much trouble. so we chucked those down to the ground and surveyed our progress. 

we were feeling pretty good and started in on the railings on the second deck. those came off alright, with some persuasion, and we decided the 2x4's under them were actually in decent shape. on to the bottom stairs. so i took out a few nails at the top of the bottom stairs while karen made her way to the ground [these stairs were built as one "solid" element on the ground and then just hoisted into place and toe-nailed into position with a handful of nails to secure them... lord...] so then i got down on the ground and we attempted at first to de-nail a few pieces that were connected to the posts, but after i got impatient with that, i just started doing it my way. i grabbed the whole stair element and started jerking on it until pretty quickly i yanked the entire left half completely off and we lowered it to the ground for dismantling. then i jerked off the second half and we did the same. however, in the process we discovered that this thing was built even shotty-er than we had originally concluded. 

the posts went from the ground all the way up to the top, but at the ground level were encased in what appeared to be a concrete footing. having poured a number of concrete footings with dad in my life time, i just assumed that the person that did these had dug out a whole 1-2ft deep and had filled with concrete in roughly a ft diameter up to where we could see it capped off, and that they were pretty securely in the ground - probably entombed in a few hundred pounds of concrete. ha. nope. during my *ahem* careful dismantling *ahem* of the stair elements, we discovered that the posts were simply resting on top of these little concrete mounds and just appeared to be encased in them, and every time id jerk, theyd pop up and then back down. good lord... who built this thing??? so now we've decided that the whole thing is going to have to come down and be rebuilt if we want a balcony - which we do. luckily some of the wood is salvageable for re-use [mainly the 4x4 posts and some of the structural 2x4 members that were most likely treated lumber to begin with.]

so after all that we were beat. especially me after my impatient ripping destruction, lol. that thing must have weighed a few hundred pounds, but with my adrenaline going i barely noticed, haha! [man i love adrenaline] so we did a little clean-up in the back and decided to call it a night. we'd been there about 5 and a half hours, and things we're looking really good. 

the pictures probably dont do all the work justice, but trust me, the transformation was pretty unbelievable for just one days work. and now hopefully you understand the title of this post, lol! right now my back and shoulders are pretty sore after all that sweeping and deconstruction. but it was a lot of fun, and we're pretty fired up to get some more work done. 

well kiddos, thats all ive got for now. tip your waiters, and drive safely. you dont have to go home, but you cant stay here! ;]

post.script: currently listening to apocalyptica's new album, its pretty amazing!

a.short.one

house.
so for those of you that havent already heard, we didnt actually close today like we were supposed to. there was some issue with the title search taking longer than normal and they werent finished by this morning, so we have to delay in waiting for its completion. other than that, as far as we know, everything is in order and we're ready to close as soon as possible. so keep your fingers crossed that itll be very soon, we're hoping this week for sure.

work.
work is going well. ive got enough going on to keep me busy most of the day and the office is slowly getting used to me being here. its an interesting culture though, the architects/project managers in this office dont naturally or instinctively hand down work to the underlings [which took me a few days and a few conversations to really understand] and instead prefer a lot of the time to do the work themselves that someone in my position would normally do. [what we in the industry refer to as the b!%*&-work, lol] so what that means is that where im used to having a handful of project managers eagerly doting upon me the mundane tasks they feel theyre too busy to do, i now have to circulate the office each morning asking each individual project manager if they think they could find something for me to do today. [which is definitely a lesson in humility - i hate asking for b!%*&-work...] however, after a conversationi had this morning, theres a possibility that i'll be getting to put one of my biggest strengths to use [organization! woohoo!] and help the office by giving their project storage system and drawing standards some much needed attention. more on that as i know more.

karen.
karen is good. shes been enjoying her classes as far as i can tell, and work is... well, work. shes still um, frustrated, with her office environment and the work shes doing is beyond mind-numbingly-dull, but its a job and it pays better than mickey-d's, so she tries to be happy with it. things between us are great, we seem to be adjusting to our living situation and this whole marriage thing better than some half-glass-empties anticipated. ill admit i feel inadequate at times as a provider, we havent yet been able to live solely on my income when little things like truck repairs or me getting laid off pop-up, but she loves my in spite of my faults and hopefully someday soon we'll get there. getting the house should help significantly so we can stop throwing money away on rent and storage each month, although the other obstacles with the house are definitely going to be a financial burden for a little while...

im learning to thank god for obstacles he presents me with. ill keep trusting that theres nothing coming my way that i cant handle, and while its extremely frustrating at times and im never clear on the purpose behind some of these hurdles, im trying to be patient. wisdom, strength, patience. thanks...

family.
everyone in texas seems to be doing better. things are slowly getting cleaned up, everyone has power as far as i know. theres still ridiculous devastation that beyond anything you could possibly imagine, but theyre making it. dad just got back to saudi and hes fine. long trip, and uncomfortable next to a rather large woman all the way to amsterdam, but hes there and safe. other than that, i dont have much new information to report on the family, ive been a little out of the loop for whatever reason.

last weekend.
karen and i mostly just tried to catch up on little things weve been getting too busy to stay on top of. we did laundry, we cleaned the apartment, some shopping, catching up on the daily show and the colbert report, some little repairs around the apartment... on saturday morning we went to a tiling class at homedepot and learned everything we'll need to know to do tiling projects at the house - oh yes bathroom-suite, you are mine! it was actually very fun and informative and if youre interested in learning hands on how to do home improvment type stuff, i definitely recommend going to homedepot things. they usually do them every saturday, check your local on for specifics. saturday evening we went to a little dinner party at a friend of karen's and had a nice time. some home-made pizza, a little wine, a lot of laughs, it was nice. we're hoping to get together with some of the people again to have a debate-party for the next presidential go-around. [and speaking of politics. i wont go into it now, but in the near future im going to post a little rant of my views on the current situation...] the only other thing worth mentioning from this weekend was that karen and i decided we're going to go on a little detox diet [thanks to karen getting some inspiration from claire's blog, lol! thanks claire] starting next weekend. we've done some research and theres a bit of planning we'll need to do before hand so hopefully we can be prepaired by next monday.

well "ya'll," thats all ive got for now.

tune in next time...

[for stew: currently listening to p86-rival factions]