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the limits of Victorian privacy
Thursday, June 30 2016
I showed up at the brick mansion early this morning and quickly finished the installation of the toilet in 1L and then worked to make that apartment's front room (which will probably serve as a bedroom) as private as possible. A pair of pocket doors opening into the hallway came together at a gap about an eighth-inch wide, so I installed a strip of wood on one of the doors to cover this gap. In the middle of this strip I installed a solid new locking system (complete with key). But the place where the strip was interrupted for this locking mechanism introduced a pair of tiny peepholes, so I blocked those with a rectangle of folded aluminum from a dryer vent. When I was all done, there was no way to peep into the room from the hallway except through an ancient keyhole (the kind designed for a skeleton key; it was big enough to provide a good view to anyone willing to put an eye to it). I decided not to worry about that possible privacy vulnerability; the mansion deserved to retain some of its Victorian quirks.
Next I turned my attention to a set of wiring problems that had been identified by Central Hudson. Their only concern had been people getting electricity in their apartments that had been metered for other apartments. The brick mansion has a complicated wiring design, with 1L getting free electricity because it is hooked up to the same meter as the building's common spaces such as the hall and basement. But most of the lights for 1R also come from that same meter, even though it gets billed separately for electricity from its outlets. Almost certainly missing some issues, Central Hudson only identified two electrical problems: a 1R outlet in common space in the basement, and stairway lighting for the attic apartment (3) that was being paid for by the apartment on 2. The outlet would be an easy thing to fix, so I turned my attention to the stairway lighting. I soon figured out how some of the wires got up to that stairway, which seemed to occupy the space directly above an abandoned stairway being used as a chase for wires and plumbing (if the very term "abandoned stairway" gladdens your heart, you really need to get yourself a Victorian mansion). While testing levels in a junction box, Danny, the guy Gretchen had once hired to give a sanity check to our woodstove's chimney, showed up to examine the mansion's boiler chimney to see if a liner could be installed. Danny is a nice guy and seems to respect my technical skills; yesterday on the phone he even floated the idea of us perhaps installing a liner together. But that might've been because he hopes to tap into my talents as a computer whiz; he also asked me about about search engine optimization; he had hopes of showing up in Google queries for chimney sweeps over a wider geographic area. He took the main pipe off the chimney and gave a look and didn't like what he saw. Chunks of tile had fallen down hole and were partially blocking the air flow. There was also an enormous amount of debris that had completely filled a cleanout shaft beneath where the pipes entered the chimney. Danny was also concerned about a metal brace supporting the chimney from one side near the top. Such braces often go right through the middle of a chimney, meaning they have to be removed before liner can be installed.
I couldn't really get anything done with Danny there, but at least he was self-aware enough to be apologetic about distracting me from my chores. I left about a half hour earlier than I'd intended to, since I was just wasting time being there while Danny grumbled about the various problems with the chimney.
This afternoon I drank some kratom tea, which proved an excellent study aid as I cranked out tedious code designed to import donation data from a third party. By this evening I needed a way to come down from the kratom's stimulatory effects, so I bought myself drinking rights by painting a crappy little black and white landscape on an old Banana Republic credit card.
Original.
They always look good when you mirror them twice.
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