Inert Ramblings

Category: Fundamentals

General stuff.

  • Bootleg grounds…

    The ceiling fan in our kitchen was falling apart so we opted to replace it. Unfortunately, upon pulling the old one down, we found a bootleg ground inside the wiring box where the previous owners intentionally attached the neutral wire to the ground wire since no real ground was available.

    Wonderful. So we temporarily installed the new ceiling fan by grounding it to the wiring box. That way, once we upgrade the wiring, it will ground itself properly with no additional work. And there was much rejoicing…

  • I kind of feel like God…

    It’s rather unnerving to get into Route 128 South at 9:45 AM during the peak of rush hour and to be the only car on the road. No cars on front of me all the way to the hill. No cars behind me, except for a rolled over tanker. Woah.
    (more…)

  • Looking for studio monitor headphones…

    I’m looking for an inexpensive set of headphones I can use for video editing. Prerequisites are price and noise suppression. Basically, I need a set of decent headphones with good range around $30 that will easily suppress the whine of the four servers sitting on a rack five feet from my head. A cow-orker pointed me at head-fi.org but I just haven’t had a chance to do any reading yet. I figured Andrew would be able to give me some insight…

  • The band next door was just 0wn3d.

    We have a garage band next door. They practice 8 hours a day. They’re not that bad but the singer sucks. The singer was attempting some new song that requires constant yelling into the microphone instead of singing. Apparently, someone complained because the police just showed up, screamed at the guys through their window for an extended period of time and then left. We haven’t heard any music since…

  • We have a floor!

    With the exception of the quarter round trim and a few touchups in the paint, the hedgehog room is ready to start housing inhabitants! Brian helped out with the linoleum and we managed to trim the whole floor without a template because the roll was pre-cut to size. Creative use of trim and thresholds will cover the rough edges.

    We’re still looking into shelving and storage solutions to stack the inmates guests and then we’ll be ready for licensing!

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio Show

    The BBC radio show has been floating around the Net for quite a while now…I’ve been listening to it all morning.

  • Hurts so much…looks so good!

    One does not truly appreciate the mechanical advantage of the hammer after repeatedly forcing two pounds of nails into a floor. Do you know how many 1.5″ underlayment nails are in two pounds? In layman’s terms, it roughly works out to a metric fuckton. Banging on the floor was amusing for the first hour…after that, however, the novelty quickly wore off and the task at hand got quite monotonous. But the deed is done and, hopefully, I’ll never have to do it again.

    Next comes the joyous task of laying the linoleum sheeting. And, if you’re wondering about the wallpaper, this is the wife’s new project room!

  • Watch out for the Recyclesaurus!

    The power was out in the office this morning and the entire building has been shaking like mad all day. The Recyclesaurus pavement eater has been dutifully chomping away at the street since the wee morning hours. Looks like I’ll have a rally stage on the way out of the building this evening! About time they decided to redo the tarmac in the facility…

  • Haphazard Linkage

    I’m not quite sure why, but I think that The Sad Mafioso is a really cool name. Glitter Dolly just makes me think of porn…or an antigoth. Someone Loves you. And, finally, a blank slate.

  • A meaningless personal milestone…

    Whenever I come back from a bathroom break at work, I always try to jump up and touch the ceiling in the hallway. For the first time ever, I actually made contact and successfully smacked one of the tiles with the tips of my fingers. So, despite the obvious fact that white men can’t jump, I am now light enough and strong enough to hit the ceiling. So this is a personal accomplishment, albeit a meaningless one since I have no idea how high the ceiling actually is.