Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   one of those dogs
Wednesday, December 19 2018
This evening at 4:30pm as I was getting ready to drive home with Ramona from work, she was loose in the parking lot, as she usually is when I'm coming or going, and then I turned around to see some guy holding a cute youngish dog with a mutty tricolor coat pattern on a leash. Ramona didn't quite know what to do, so she just stared. "Is she friendly?" the guy asked. "Well, she's not always great with other dogs," I replied. I then realized that she's become one of those dogs.
Back at the house, I spent yet another evening doing my electrical and carpentry tasks in the kitchen. By this point, all I had to do was install the electrical outlet that will one day be under the sink (using those moused-up wires discovered yesterday) and fix the drywall destroyed by the removal of the old tile backsplash.
The wall near the sink is an exterior wall, so after cutting out all the rotten and crumbly drywall, I filled in whatever voids I found in the insulation, installed a vapor barrier, and then installed Hardibacker (or some similar product). The hope is that it will hold up better to the inevitable moisture from the sink and not develop, say, the black mold that had been growing on the drywall it replaced.
The north wall also had a section torn out in the removal of the backsplash, though this had been a neater job and there hadn't been any moisture damage. Since that was an interior wall, I took advantage of the fact that it was open to fill it with drywall and foam scraps produced from other parts of the kitchen project. I then closed it up with a strip of more Hardibacker (or the equivalent).
By this point it was something like 10:00pm, and all I had left to do was clean up. Gretchen had come home from dinner at the Garden Café with a cauliflower taco and a container of Asian-style black bean soup, both of which I devoured enthusiastically. Then, to celebrate my completion of this phase of the kitchen project, I drank two Sierra Nevada Torpedos in quick succession. Something about ice-cold IPA (one of the bottles had been in the Subaru) was exactly what my body craved.
Meanwhile, it seemed that our old VIP 722 digital video recorder (which we've had since upgrading to HD in 2010) was on the fritz. It kept blanking out and pausing while Gretchen was trying to watch her programs. After Gretchen ordered an upgrade (to arrive tomorrow) something about the DVR's symptoms suggested to me that it might be suffering from thermal issues. I unclogged a mat of dust from the air intake on the side and it seemed to work more reliably. But its fate was already sealed.
I should gripe at this point about the fact that Dish Network intends to charge us $3 more per month for our new DVR due to the many additional features it comes with. But, as I pointed out to Gretchen, that's not how it works with technology. Features are constantly being added to all sorts of devices, but this does not cause their price to rise. If anything, their prices fall gradually over time.


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?181219

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