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The Three Martini Renovation Or How To Piss Off Bloggers

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The Wall Street Journal has a article title “The Three Martini Renovation” in which the the article can be summarized to this

But when novices who’ve had a few drinks get a hold of crowbars, drills and Sawzalls, the results are sometimes less than satisfactory.

A number of house bloggers were interviewed for this article, including myself. Many bloggers believe the reporter of the story, Jennifer Saranow, misrepresented herself.

The reporter told me she was writing a story about such work parties. People helping people. That sort of thing. When I described the plaster party to her on the phone, she expressed the usual polite surprise that people still help each other like that.

Then the reporter admitted the story was not a feel-good story about people helping their neighbors. It was a story about people throwing renovation parties to save money and inviting inexperienced friends over to mix alcohol with demolition – friends who ended up screwing things up or getting injured.

1902victorian.com’s account of the story is pretty good. I recommend reading the whole thing.

I was contacted via my blog, but I took several weeks to get back to the reporter. By the time she had interviewed me, I think she pretty much had the story written and didn’t dig too much. I did have a demolition part with plenty of beer but there was no excitement like some drunken friend taking out the wrong wall. I’m not mentioned in the story.

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The Mess That Is My Underground Duct Work

Swamp cooler duct work 3

This was only the second summer I’ve lived in this house, and the second year I’ve ran the swamp cooler. I thought I was lucky to have a swamp cooler that sets on the ground instead of the roof. I expect to have some dirt get through the ducting, but i had quite a bit of it all summer long this year. I also found that the cooled air was making it out our under the concrete pad that the cooler is setting on. Summer is over, so i pulled off the swamp cooler to take a look. I found a huge mess.

The metal duct work is mostly rusted away. I would expect that the ducting would be incased in concrete, which it appears there was an attempt to do so. Except only 50% of the ducting had concrete surrounding it, the rest was up against dirt. Damp dirt, which led to the rusting and the mud which penetrated the ducting.

I pulled up the majority of rusted mess out. I allowed the pit to dry out then vacuumed up as much of the dirt with a shop vac as I could. I also found a layer of dirt in the 18 inch duct that leads to the main distribution center under the forced air heater. Thankfully that where the dirt stops.

Temporary sealing of duct work for winter

I’ve got a huge mess to clean up. I’m going to need to talk to a HVAC contractor to see what can be done. Hopefully I can do most of it myself, but I will need some advice. I decided not to deal with it this fall, instead I sealed up the main 18 duct so the heated air wont get out this summer. I took a piece of foam and a piece of plywood, sized up to the wall where the inlet to the house is, and held them with some 2×4’s that I hammered into place.The foam compresses and seems to have a good seal. I filled any other holes with pieces of foam and some expanding foam.

If your interested in following the progress, you can view pictures at a flickr set.

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Another Bear Sighting In Rio Rancho

A bear was sighted near North Hills in Rio Rancho. So far I find no reports that it was found.

A black bear weighing 90 to 100 pounds was spotted this morning around 8 a.m. near Unser and Cherry Road and was last seen heading in a northwesterly direction around 8:30 this morning heading in the direction of Colinas del Norte Elementary School on 23rd Avenue, Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety spokesman John Francis tells us.

I’m sure it was heading toward the school to eat the children. Isn’t that what bears do?

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Bizarre TSA Freeze Command

Boing Boing had this today

I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.

I made a comment on that post that the exact same thing happened to me.

This happened to me when i was in PDX a few weeks ago. I was leaving the secured area after getting off a plane, i was near the screeners but not yet through. The TSA people started yelling and did the same thing you described and had everyone freeze.

It only lasted a few minutes for me.

My tax dollars at work. Whatever.

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iTunes 7.3: The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)

iTunes 7.3.1 is suppose to fix this issue.

iTunes 7.3: The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)

I would not recommend downloading iTunes 7.3 unless you absolutely need to. I was greeted to this error: “The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)” after iTunes attempts to upgrade the library. It seems every version of iTunes has some problem or another after install, but this is the first time I’ve had some such error.

Apple’s message board indicates that many people on Mac OS X and Windows are having the problem. I see a few people who have a large library and have the library on a external hard drive as I do, but it’s not clear that this is the cause. What seems to be the cause is some sort of permissions issue. Possibly. Hopefully Apple gets this one fixed soon.

Update 07/01/07 10:54 AM: There’s suggestions to use this Apple tech note to recreate your library. The only problem with this tech note is it will delete any customizations in the library, like ratings and playcounts. I’m going to revert my install to iTunes 7.2 until Apple comes out a fix.

Update 07/02/07 12:29 PM: MaxFixIt is covering the iTunes error now. They have several suggestions including checking for iTunes add ons, Disabling APE for iTunes and restarting in safe mode. I tired all the suggestions and none of them worked. I’m going to play with Tiger Cache Cleaner and see if it will clean up anything.

Update 08/02/07 5:55 PM: Fixed! I removed most of my podcasts, most of them were video podcasts. Once of them must have been screwed up in the iTunes database.

Update 07/06/07 3:49 PM: I re subscribed to some of the podcasts, video and audio, since deleting them all. So far there’s been no problem with any of them. They are syncing with my AppleTV and my iPod. I didn’t add them all though. There maybe some that I didn’t add that maybe causing the problem.

If you don’t like the idea of deleting all of your podcasts, try deleting a few at a time. Starting with the video podcasts. Be sure you delete the whole podcast, not just the individual episodes.

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A look At How Houses Are Built In Israel

Friends of mine are moving to Israel for a few years. They will be living in a newly built house during that time. Although they are living in a relative safe area, the houses are built to withstand an assault. Here are some interesting things to note about the construction (and a few pictures).

  • The house has an alarm system.
  • Some windows have a metal shutter system. Others have a roll down protection system.
  • The windows and doors all appear to be heavy duty in design and made of metal.
  • According to my friend, “By law, every new house in Israel has to have a security room – lockable from inside and airtight.”
  • “All houses and building here are made out of concrete – this is good for shelling protection as well as taking advantage of cooling.”
  • “This means all interior walls are also concrete.”
  • “I think they simply tile everything they want tiled, then smooth the walls with plaster and paint it.”

Interesting how a constant threat of a terrorist attack dictates the building materials and design of housing. I assume that there aren’t a lot of McMansions there either.

Side of the house. Nothing too unusual looking here

north side yard

Safe room. I guess you fill it full of important papers, food and guns

safe room

Metal security shutters. Where can I get these in the US?

secuirty shutters

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80 Year Contract Over At Carslbad Caverns

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The company that has supplied concession services at Carlsbad Caverns National Park for nearly 80 years has lost the contract. Cavern Supply Co. will be replaced next year by Carlsbad Cavern Trading, owned by Santa Fe-based businessman Armand Ortega, to supply food, drinks, retail, kennel and vending services at the park. The new vendor was chosen after competitive bids, said Michael Snyder, National Park Service Intermountain regional director. Five companies bid. Carlsbad Cavern Trading will begin operations once a project to renovate the park’s visitor center is completed, expected next March. Cavern Supply president Frank Hodnett said it was a shock when the National Park Service chose another vendor. His Carlsbad company was specifically incorporated in 1927 to provide concession services at the park, he said. “We have no other business except the concession,” Hodnett said. “There is a very good possibility that we will close, but at this time, I can’t say for sure.” Cavern Supply sold its first meal in the cavern’s famed underground lunch room in 1927 and opened a surface restaurant the next year.

National Park Service is trying to choose service contracts based on merit and not senority. A good thing in my opinion.

I was at carlsbad caverns several years ago (pre digital cameras). The food was pre prepared sandwiches that came in boxes. The boxes looked like they were from 1927.

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Yay! Indiana Jones Picture From Indy 4

Harrison Ford as Indy

Picture from Flickr of Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones 4 movie. It’s being filmed in Deming, New Mexico. From the picture page:

FIrst glimpse of Indy since 1989.

Photo shot on set by Stephen Spielberg. uploaded to flicr for use in a danish langauge blog post 🙂 More info about the shot here: indianajones.com/community/news/news20070621.html

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Council Votes No Confidence In Mayor Jackson, Makes Way For Councilor Palpatine

The Rio Rancho City Council unanimously voted no confidence in Mayor Kevin Jackson. The Mayor position is apparently more of a figure head and the council cannot force him out. They would have to take him to court to get him out, which doesn’t seem likely.

He wasn’t in town for the vote, he was in Taos for a conference and lost his cell phone. How convenient. Every one seems to think he has no choice but to resign.

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No iPhones For Residents Of Mardid

People living in Madrid, NM have prevented AT&T (formerly Cingular) from building a cell tower on a ridge overlooking the town. AT&T is, of course, the provider of the Apple iPhone. Personally i’d rather see Madrid get some public toilets before they worry about the cell towers.

They don’t seem like the iPhone types anyhow.