Furniture continues to migrate from upstairs to down. At this point only the TV and one piece of the sofa are left in the living room. Aside from that and a card table full of plants, Terry pretty much has the ground floor to herself.
Compare the basement to a few days ago; it’s definitely filling up.
I’m no longer certain everything’s going to fit into the finished portion of the basement. So I’ve started getting a little “creative” about finding places to put things.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Champagne
Packing It In
This is what my basement looks like at the moment. As you might imagine, the rest of the house is beginning to look somewhat barren. I’m hoping to get a few more pieces of furniture down there in the next 24 hours, then I can start painting. (Presumably I’ll figure out what colors I want before I paint. At the moment I’m thinking “duct tape gray”.) The flooring materials are due to arrive on Thursday with installation commencing the following Wednesday.
And while the basement is filling up, this is probably the most organized my desk has been ever since the day Uncle Dick and I set it up.
Green Jungle
Two weeks ago Skink pointed out that the plant photos didn’t include any “Leafy Green Non-Flowering plants“.
Technically, the hosta do get flowers. Dainty little light purple flowers on stalks three feet high. The hummingbirds love them. But that won’t be until summer gets here. In the meantime they’re huge, green, and so densely leafy that they choke out the weeds.
Blue Bells
I thought the flower photos were over with, but then one more thing started blooming.
Packing Up
What with all the putting things in boxes and throwing stuff out, Wylie and Terry have definitely noticed that there’s something going on. They get stirred up when I pack up for a weekend away (particularly when I begin carting things out to the car) and this goes far beyond that.
Terry hasn’t seen the place this empty since the day we moved in, and Wylie, heck, he’s never seen it empty.
Here’s how the master bedroom looks now:
At this point the bed and the dresser (and sometimes Wylie) are just about the only things left in the room.
Likewise, the guest room is fairly well deserted:
If Marauder plans to drop any more pizza in the next two weeks, he’ll have to sleep on the floor. (And yes, that is a Nerf gun and a super soaker in the picture. Because you can never be too prepared.)
Soon I’ll start emptying out the living room.
Reading is Dangerous
The reading advocacy people tend to gloss this stuff over, but reading has some serious downsides.
Scooby Demotivator Literacy by ~Jaguaro on deviantART
Last Call for Stamps!
As I’ve noted before, postage rates go up on Monday. That means Saturday is your last chance to hoard Forever stamps at the current price.
A few days ago I mailed a package at the postal counter and decided to buy a few 1-penny stamps because I’m not going to use up all my (non-Forever) 41-cent stamps before the deadline. The fellow working behind the counter had to check three or four places before he finding them. This surprised me; certainly with the rate change coming, people would be stocking up on the Forever stamps and those would be the difficult ones to find.
What I learned from the guy is that the way it usually plays out is that after the rates go up, people overestimate how many of the “make-up” stamps they need and over buy. Consequently, for a few weeks after the rate increase, it’s the “extra” stamps that are scarce.
That’s certainly consistent with what happened to me following the previous increase.
HOWTO: Decommission a Hard Drive
When it comes time to part with your old computer, whether you’re selling it, giving it away, or sending it to the recycling center, it’s very important that you first wipe out the data on the hard drive. That way you don’t have to worry about persons unkown getting hold of any banking or other personal data that may have been on it.
You can’t simply click the delete button either, all that does is remove the file names. The data is still there and can be recovered with minimal effort. Fortunately, a number of free utility programs exist for erasing the actual data.
Of course, this pre-supposes that the computer is in working condition. One of the older computers I just got rid of wouldn’t boot, but I didn’t know what data might still be salvageable. In that situation, what I normally do is remove the hard drive and dispose of it separately after first disassembling it and destroying the drive platters. In the past I’ve been known to shellac them and use them as coasters, or to build a clock.
This time out though, my usual methods wouldn’t work. The drive was held together with torx screws and I didn’t have a small enough torx driver to remove them.
Another way of erasing the data on a hard drive is to give it a dozen or so vigorous whacks with a hammer. By the time I was done, bits of the drive were rattling when it was handled, the spindle had broken loose from the housing, and although you can’t see it in these pictures, peering through the side of the case, the platters are visibly bent.
It’s not the most orthodox method of decommissioning a drive, but it’s nonetheless quite satisfying.
Stain Removal
I bought my house a little more than nine years ago. There’s a lot of pressure involved in buying a home. Everyone talks about mortgage rates, how it’s your single biggest investment, and so on. That’s what gets all the attention, but that’s just small potatoes. The real pressure comes from the first pizza stain.
When a guy moves into a place (and this applies to apartments too), you can’t say you’ve really moved in until you’ve stained the carpet by dropping a slice of pizza. And you can’t do it on purpose either. If you intentionally drop pizza on the carpet, then you’re just a slob.
When moving day arrived, a half-dozen friends and family members assisted me in moving furniture, books, and boxes upon boxes, many of which were clearly labeled as containing “Stuff.” (Several of these boxes are still sitting in the basement, unopened, but contain vitally important stuff that I can’t possibly live without.) Among my helpers were none other than Marauder and his lovely wife Natasha.
After two or three trips between the apartment and the house with cars and trucks brimming with boxes of stuff, we decided to take a break and order lunch. Because it’s the easiest way to feed a group of people on a budget (and also because nobody knew which box had the kitchen stuff), we ordered pizza.
Everyone had already been making jokes about the problem of the pizza stains and then about two thirds of the way through lunch, Marauder dropped a slice of pizza! I don’t know whether he was just naturally clumsy, or if he was just being a slob (he and Natasha will likely have differing answers on that one) but suddenly all the pressure was gone and I was free to enjoy my new home.
We cleaned up that stain in short order and today I can only tell you that it was somewhere in the general living room/dining room area. But nine years of foot traffic, plus Terry and Wylie, have taken their toll on those formerly light-colored carpets. Even the steam machine from the supermarket has only a limited effect. It’s time to do something about them. Preferably, something that will be easier to maintain.
Today I officially selected a company to install hardwood floors. Marauder has until May 28th to complete any additional pizza-dropping activities he may be considering. After that, I’ll be keeping him away from the area rugs.