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Oh yay, another foot of snow is expected Saturday night.
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I will take this this snow o naked captain my captain.
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We all know captain yesterday gets happy when he sees snow.
I had a comment but decided it was inappropriate. It was about naked captain.
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We all know captain yesterday gets happy when he sees snow.
It's a Freehold-happy tier, though.
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Stupid storm is going to miss NY.
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Good news and bad news:
(1) The teacher is accepting Impus Minor's notes to give him an actual grade on his test. Still need to work out the logistics of reporting her without risking retaliation against Impus Minor, so it's a delicate shell game of "this teacher really f****d up" without "and it's Impus Minor reporting it". I'm fairly adept at such things, but it takes time.
(2) As always, too many levels of subcontractor spoils the broth. Our main contractor subcontracted to another guy, who's been doing excellent work. He brought in a friend to help him. Yesterday, with two weeks of storms approaching, he had the guy work alone so he could go out shooting for the day. (I'm paying a fixed price for a fixed deadline, so how they manage their time is their own.)
Sub-subcontractor bypassed our water heater.
Which kind of explains why he hasn't managed to get his plumber's license after 20 years of work.
Yeah, they'll be back today and they'll fix it, but they lose schedule time and we lost a day's worth of showers. And, "Hot water goes TO the water heater and then FROM the water heater" is something even I would have known to check.
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Good news and bad news:
(1) The teacher is accepting Impus Minor's notes to give him an actual grade on his test. Still need to work out the logistics of reporting her without risking retaliation against Impus Minor, so it's a delicate shell game of "this teacher really f****d up" without "and it's Impus Minor reporting it". I'm fairly adept at such things, but it takes time.(2) As always, too many levels of subcontractor spoils the broth. Our main contractor subcontracted to another guy, who's been doing excellent work. He brought in a friend to help him. Yesterday, with two weeks of storms approaching, he had the guy work alone so he could go out shooting for the day. (I'm paying a fixed price for a fixed deadline, so how they manage their time is their own.)
Sub-subcontractor bypassed our water heater.
Which kind of explains why he hasn't managed to get his plumber's license after 20 years of work.
Yeah, they'll be back today and they'll fix it, but they lose schedule time and we lost a day's worth of showers. And, "Hot water goes TO the water heater and then FROM the water heater" is something even I would have known to check.
SMH.
After the trouble we had with the unlicensed plumbers screwing up our hot water heater when we moved in and Googling YouTube videos in the closet trying to figure out how to install it oh, nothing would surprise me anymore.Really glad that impass minor is going to get credit for his test answers, though.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Good news and bad news:
(1) The teacher is accepting Impus Minor's notes to give him an actual grade on his test. Still need to work out the logistics of reporting her without risking retaliation against Impus Minor, so it's a delicate shell game of "this teacher really f****d up" without "and it's Impus Minor reporting it". I'm fairly adept at such things, but it takes time.(2) As always, too many levels of subcontractor spoils the broth. Our main contractor subcontracted to another guy, who's been doing excellent work. He brought in a friend to help him. Yesterday, with two weeks of storms approaching, he had the guy work alone so he could go out shooting for the day. (I'm paying a fixed price for a fixed deadline, so how they manage their time is their own.)
Sub-subcontractor bypassed our water heater.
Which kind of explains why he hasn't managed to get his plumber's license after 20 years of work.
Yeah, they'll be back today and they'll fix it, but they lose schedule time and we lost a day's worth of showers. And, "Hot water goes TO the water heater and then FROM the water heater" is something even I would have known to check.
SMH.
After the trouble we had with the unlicensed plumbers screwing up our hot water heater when we moved in and Googling YouTube videos in the closet trying to figure out how to install it oh, nothing would surprise me anymore.Really glad that impass minor is going to get credit for his test answers, though.
Oooohhh...Impass Minor. That's a good one. Well done, Autocorrect, you mischievous little devil.
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Good news and bad news:
(1) The teacher is accepting Impus Minor's notes to give him an actual grade on his test. Still need to work out the logistics of reporting her without risking retaliation against Impus Minor, so it's a delicate shell game of "this teacher really f****d up" without "and it's Impus Minor reporting it". I'm fairly adept at such things, but it takes time.(2) As always, too many levels of subcontractor spoils the broth. Our main contractor subcontracted to another guy, who's been doing excellent work. He brought in a friend to help him. Yesterday, with two weeks of storms approaching, he had the guy work alone so he could go out shooting for the day. (I'm paying a fixed price for a fixed deadline, so how they manage their time is their own.)
Sub-subcontractor bypassed our water heater.
Which kind of explains why he hasn't managed to get his plumber's license after 20 years of work.
Yeah, they'll be back today and they'll fix it, but they lose schedule time and we lost a day's worth of showers. And, "Hot water goes TO the water heater and then FROM the water heater" is something even I would have known to check.
SMH.
After the trouble we had with the unlicensed plumbers screwing up our hot water heater when we moved in and Googling YouTube videos in the closet trying to figure out how to install it oh, nothing would surprise me anymore.Really glad that impass minor is going to get credit for his test answers, though.
From the texts I received, it sounds like I may never see sub-subcontractor again. As it should be.
Plumbing is unforgiving on mistakes in the first place. Randomly rerouting pipes that were working the day before? That's epic-level bad.
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Poor logistic planning is what America does best.
Wait, best and most are the same thing, right?
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Subcontractor is here, sub-subcontractor isn't (no surprise), I showed him what was happening, and he declared it "impossible".
He's now under the house trying to figure out how sub-subcontractor made the impossible possible.
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Interesting. A plausible story, but I'm still skeptical until I see it working.
Sub-subcontractor did nothing but hook up the cold water in the bathroom to the fixtures, including the shower valve. According to subcontractor, all the piping is correct.
So his current working theory is that the shower valve doesn't include backflow valves, or, if it does, they're in the cartridge that he hasn't put in yet. This gives water two paths to get to any hot water spigot: One through the water heater, and one backwards through the shower valve. With brand-new pipe and a brand-new valve, the shower valve has less resistance and gets the majority of the flow.
And, as a quality plumber who doesn't want any more callbacks would do, instead of just plugging in the cartridge and hoping it doesn't fail, he's off to the hardware store to pick up two backflow valves to hook into the shower pipes to make sure such flow is impossible in the future, cartridge or no.
I'll provide an update as to whether his theory is correct. It's at least plausible.
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UPDATE #1: I asked him why he didn't just put in the cartridge and save himself money and time. (We're on a fixed-fee schedule, so extra work doesn't get him extra money.) He says that since we're going with a tile shower stall, they're going to have to tile around the plastic cartridge. And they've had too many issues with the tiling trowel (or whatever) hitting the plastic cartridge and breaking it, so they prefer to put in extra valves so the cartridge can be the very last thing that goes in.
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UPDATE #2: He's done, and it worked, so he was right.
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Does that mean it wasn't really the sub-subcontractor's fault? At least this time?
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Does that mean it wasn't really the sub-subcontractor's fault? At least this time?
That is correct; his *only* technical mistake was that when he left he only checked the cold water instead of both hot and cold. And it was a pretty easy mistake to make, considering he'd only work on the cold water lines.
On the other hand, he apparently left all the subcontractor's tools strewn about under the house in the mud, which left subcontractor... displeased.
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Does that mean it wasn't really the sub-subcontractor's fault? At least this time?That is correct; his *only* technical mistake was that when he left he only checked the cold water instead of both hot and cold. And it was a pretty easy mistake to make, considering he'd only work on the cold water lines.
On the other hand, he apparently left all the subcontractor's tools strewn about under the house in the mud, which left subcontractor... displeased.
Oh boy
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Why do astronauts use Linux? Because you can't open windows in space.
Frequently, you can't open Windows anywhere...
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Why do astronauts use Linux? Because you can't open windows in space.Frequently, you can't open Windows anywhere...
Oh you can open the Windows, but then you let all the bugs in.
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We went wrong with computers when we introduced the first law of robotics and turned them all into spineless automatons.
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Just a day until the next snow storm, this time we're only expecting 2-4 inches (of snow) which sounds wonderful compared to the last storm.
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I think its all been downhill since we crawled out of the primordial ooze.
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Random thoughts for the day:
(1) Is anyone else going to have to make major clothing purchases when society re-opens? All of Impus Minor's pants have gaping holes in the knees, and most of his shirts are impressively holey. And we haven't bothered to replace anything because he doesn't leave the house except on his runs or walks.
(2) Have Pepperidge Farm cookies really fallen so far? They used to be the go-to cookie in the cookie aisle, and in the last year we've tried some milanos (ended up in the trash with most of the cookies uneaten), thumb cookies (again not even the kids would eat them so they ended up trashed), and now their usually-solid Nantuckets are just flavorless calories.
Y'know, if you're going to charge high-end prices for your product, you can't cheap out on the ingredients and put out flavorless crap. See Ghirardelli.
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I think its all been downhill since we crawled out of the primordial ooze.
I, for one, welcome our new primordial ooze overlords! May their reign be wet, but fair!
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Random thoughts for the day:
(1) Is anyone else going to have to make major clothing purchases when society re-opens? All of Impus Minor's pants have gaping holes in the knees, and most of his shirts are impressively holey. And we haven't bothered to replace anything because he doesn't leave the house except on his runs or walks.
(2) Have Pepperidge Farm cookies really fallen so far? They used to be the go-to cookie in the cookie aisle, and in the last year we've tried some milanos (ended up in the trash with most of the cookies uneaten), thumb cookies (again not even the kids would eat them so they ended up trashed), and now their usually-solid Nantuckets are just flavorless calories.
Y'know, if you're going to charge high-end prices for your product, you can't cheap out on the ingredients and put out flavorless crap. See Ghirardelli.
Pepperidge Farms have been bad for at least ten years. If not longer.
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Pepperidge Farms have been bad for at least ten years. If not longer.Random thoughts for the day:
(1) Is anyone else going to have to make major clothing purchases when society re-opens? All of Impus Minor's pants have gaping holes in the knees, and most of his shirts are impressively holey. And we haven't bothered to replace anything because he doesn't leave the house except on his runs or walks.
(2) Have Pepperidge Farm cookies really fallen so far? They used to be the go-to cookie in the cookie aisle, and in the last year we've tried some milanos (ended up in the trash with most of the cookies uneaten), thumb cookies (again not even the kids would eat them so they ended up trashed), and now their usually-solid Nantuckets are just flavorless calories.
Y'know, if you're going to charge high-end prices for your product, you can't cheap out on the ingredients and put out flavorless crap. See Ghirardelli.
Yup.
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Pepperidge Farms have been bad for at least ten years. If not longer.Random thoughts for the day:
(1) Is anyone else going to have to make major clothing purchases when society re-opens? All of Impus Minor's pants have gaping holes in the knees, and most of his shirts are impressively holey. And we haven't bothered to replace anything because he doesn't leave the house except on his runs or walks.
(2) Have Pepperidge Farm cookies really fallen so far? They used to be the go-to cookie in the cookie aisle, and in the last year we've tried some milanos (ended up in the trash with most of the cookies uneaten), thumb cookies (again not even the kids would eat them so they ended up trashed), and now their usually-solid Nantuckets are just flavorless calories.
Y'know, if you're going to charge high-end prices for your product, you can't cheap out on the ingredients and put out flavorless crap. See Ghirardelli.
Well, I'm old.
I remember when Godiva chocolates and Pepperidge Farm cookies were good.
But I'm not that old. I never remember Ghirardelli ever being any good...
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Wait.
Stores are still closed places?
...
...
...
*looks around*
...
...absolutely nothing is closed here. Seriously. Literally nothing except businesses that failed from non-plague related events like gross managerial incompetence.
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Wait.
Stores are still closed places?
...
...
...
*looks around*
...
...absolutely nothing is closed here. Seriously. Literally nothing except businesses that failed from non-plague related events like gross managerial incompetence.
So...
California started its first lockdown on March 13, people obeyed, and we were a shining example of the efficacy of such measures when compared to New York, which had a similar caseload to ours but went in the opposite direction.
Then came the stupid. Different rules for different parts of California. Color schemes with purple, orange, and who-knows-what-else instead of a simple red/yellow/green we could understand. State officials (including our governor and the mayor of San Francisco) openly flouting the rules. News that the governor shut down wine production in all the counties except the one where his wineries were located.
Everyone revolted and stopped paying attention to any restrictions coming in from the state. So when the Thanksgiving surge started and health officials saw that we were in real trouble, they tried to re-institute a shutdown on December 4 and nobody paid attention. As I mentioned in a previous post, bookstores, dessert shops, fricking rug stores, and pretty much every other business I could see stayed open.
So we had a "theoretical" lockdown from December 4 - January 25, but nobody paid attention and there was no enforcement, which led to us passing Texas to become the #2 COVID death state in the country and even though the worst has died down we're likely to overtake New York and "win" that particular contest.
Conservative writers are asking, "If lockdowns are so effective, why is California doing so poorly?"
And the answer is simply, "By the time the second lockdown came along, people were so sick of the doubletalk from state officials that they all ignored it."
CrystalSeas put it well: I have been extremely COVID-conscious for the duration, as has my family. Yet during the second lockdown GothBard was going to bookstores and Impus Major was going to ice cream stores. Because they were open and following standard COVID protocols, so it all came across as a non-issue, and the law was meaningless.
Don't make something illegal if you're not going to enforce it.
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Finally some good news from the school district: They're trying to re-open ASAP, but any parent can opt out and keep their kid in remote learning for the rest of the school year.
"Pull my kid out of school for the rest of the school year" still isn't an option, but Impus Minor indicated that given the choice between living through the atrocity he's dealing with and being a year behind his friends, he'd rather tough it out for the rest of the year. And he's passing all his classes, so I'm fine with that decision.
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Random thoughts for the day:
(1) Is anyone else going to have to make major clothing purchases when society re-opens? All of Impus Minor's pants have gaping holes in the knees, and most of his shirts are impressively holey. And we haven't bothered to replace anything because he doesn't leave the house except on his runs or walks.
(2) Have Pepperidge Farm cookies really fallen so far? They used to be the go-to cookie in the cookie aisle, and in the last year we've tried some milanos (ended up in the trash with most of the cookies uneaten), thumb cookies (again not even the kids would eat them so they ended up trashed), and now their usually-solid Nantuckets are just flavorless calories.
Y'know, if you're going to charge high-end prices for your product, you can't cheap out on the ingredients and put out flavorless crap. See Ghirardelli.
Q1: Are usually-solid Nantuckets really:
a) A side effect of drinking 'raw water'
b) Members of a secret grandmothers' fight club
c) Rare worms
d) Out-of-phase Victorian underclothes?
TO completely toot my own horn, new PF2 book has been announced and I wrote things for it
WOW~! That's so awesome Woran! WOO~!
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TO completely toot my own horn, new PF2 book has been announced and I wrote things for it
Yay! Feel free to toot!
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Speaking of COVID, we're coming up on my one-year anniversary of having been to a Costco. Let's just say their mitigation practices have been, er, "sub par" in my mind.
My garage freezer has been sitting around empty since then, since our major purchases at Costco are red meat, vitamins, toiletries, and frozen snacks for the kids. I'd like to go, but as I mentioned I haven't been in a store that wasn't doing full lockdown measures in almost a year, so it's a bit daunting.
And let's be blunt: When your COVID mitigation measures are being trounced by the likes of Target and Home Depot, you're not even trying.
EDIT: Though credit where credit is due: Our local Target has been a shining paragon of, "This is how you deal with big box shopping during a pandemic," so it's unfair to compare to them. They have HUGE lanes and they put down one-way stripes you have to follow, and if you get off your stripe an employee politely asks you get back on it, then if you need something from a popular aisle (such as toilet paper) an employee fetches it for you so you never enter the aisle. They really looked at their layout, asked, "How do we protect our customers?", and did it.
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Everyone in Madison wears face masks indoors so it's like double face condoms.
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Speaking of COVID, we're coming up on my one-year anniversary of having been to a Costco. Let's just say their mitigation practices have been, er, "sub par" in my mind.
My garage freezer has been sitting around empty since then, since our major purchases at Costco are red meat, vitamins, toiletries, and frozen snacks for the kids. I'd like to go, but as I mentioned I haven't been in a store that wasn't doing full lockdown measures in almost a year, so it's a bit daunting.
And let's be blunt: When your COVID mitigation measures are being trounced by the likes of Target and Home Depot, you're not even trying.
EDIT: Though credit where credit is due: Our local Target has been a shining paragon of, "This is how you deal with big box shopping during a pandemic," so it's unfair to compare to them. They have HUGE lanes and they put down one-way stripes you have to follow, and if you get off your stripe an employee politely asks you get back on it, then if you need something from a popular aisle (such as toilet paper) an employee fetches it for you so you never enter the aisle. They really looked at their layout, asked, "How do we protect our customers?", and did it.
Wow. Target stores here just provide sanitizer stations that are usually empty, and they ask you to wear masks, and that's where it ends. But, you can do curbside pickup with the app, so that's where I get the few groceries I buy by brand and therefore can't get at curbside at Sprouts (like Hellmann's mayonnaise and King Arthur flour), since I won't go to Kroger anymore (their stores are so dirty and they don't take Covid seriously for a given value of Texas, plus what happened to VE's family). I've cut down my TJ's run to twice a month, but I go to the one with the highest level of hygiene theater. It may not actually be any safer, but it looks safer.
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Yeah...
I cannot emphasize that enough.
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Just found out that we're most likely continuing the current reduced/distanced classroom setup for next school year as well. And one of my favorite students is not returning because her parents can't afford to keep both girls in school, so I get to keep the younger sister, and the older sister is moving on to public school.
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But I'm not that old. I never remember Ghirardelli ever being any good...
It's still better than that vomity sludge Hershey puts out.
Edit: It occurs to me I only ever buy Ghirardelli chocolate chips for baking (which get snacked on and never end up actually baked) so I'm not sure if their bars are the same quality or worse.
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But I'm not that old. I never remember Ghirardelli ever being any good...
It's still better than that vomity sludge Hershey puts out.
Edit: It occurs to me I only ever buy Ghirardelli chocolate chips for baking (which get snacked on and never end up actually baked) so I'm not sure if their bars are the same quality or worse.
Hershey's makes chocolate?