House Adventures
Absentee Blogger
Jul 17th
I am a bad blogger. I promised an update during the long weekend and didn’t deliver. I apologize. Lots. I even had a fun post about shoes drafted that I never bothered to post. Some day soon. Promises.
It has been super hot here the last few weeks. We haven’t hardly had a chance to enjoy our kickass patio set we bought because the heat and humidity has been so oppressive. Such is life in Maryland. Our in ground garden has been pretty productive now that we’ve fended off the deer and weeded it. Our container garden has not done as well. Note to other container gardeners: ceramic pots create too much heat and cook the roots of your plants. Next year we’re going to fork over the cash and go with some whiskey barrel pots instead.
The most exciting thing was the earthquake yesterday. It woke Trey and I both up at 5am when it happened. I remember my cat growling waking me up. Apparently, Trey woke up and asked why the headboard was shaking. I told him the whole house was shaking and that it was an earthquake and to go back to sleep (I do not remember saying this, but he swears I did). He told me it wasn’t an earthquake, this is Maryland, it was just a low-flying plane. When he got up and checked the Internet, my earthquake claims were confirmed.
It is a little known fact that there is a very large, dangerous fault line underneath the Eastern seaboard. It is often forgotten because it is not very active at all. We’ve been hearing a few more reports of other earthquakes steadily moving west. Like dominoes.
Next week, we head to San Diego for our honeymoon. This includes two days at the San Diego Comic-Con. We are very excited. Trey gleefully enjoys telling people where we’re going for our honeymoon. Then, even more gleefully, he enjoys telling people that it was MY idea to go to Comic-Con for a honeymoon. I am the nerd girl. It is true.
So, that’s really all I’ve got going on. Work has been picking up in busy-ness rather steadily the last few weeks. Planning for the honeymoon has consumed a lot of my leisure Internet time. Sitting down and writing has not been foremost on my mind, sadly. I hope I’ll have more to say post Comic-Con.
Naughty Decoy
Jun 22nd
Our house has a really nice sized deck. It has an excellent view in the winter and a good mix of view and privacy in the spring and summer when the trees have leafed out. It also gets quite a lot of sun. This is both good and bad. Good for container gardening and plants that needs lots of sunlight. Bad for just hanging out on the deck because it gets ridiculously hot. And you can forget spending any amount of time on the deck barefoot.
Because of this particular limitation, I refuse to purchase a metal patio set. It would get too hot to sit on and then what’s the point of having it? So, I insist on buying a wood patio set. I found a perfect teak one at a seasonal store a few months back. The season came and went and I do not have a teak patio set, unfortunately. I was at Lowes the week before the wedding for something not patio-related and saw a 5-piece wood patio set. I decided to come back after the wedding and get it. My patio set problem appeared to be solved.
Trey and I went to Lowes this weekend to purchase said patio set. As we pulled out the chairs and sat down in it, I came to a horrible realization. The chair was cold. Cold? Wood doesn’t get cold in air conditioning? The wood patio set was metal painted to look like wood. Naughty decoy patio set!
I would not be foiled. We continued shopping around Lowes in the hopes that something else would catch my eye. Such a set did, it is dark brown wicker and on clearance! The naughty decoy was trying to keep me from finding the killer deal in the next room. Obviously.
I honestly would have much preferred the teak patio dining set from the other shop, but I will be very happy with the set we found. Now the tricky part is getting my victorious find delivered. It was supposed to arrive yesterday. No such luck. Some sort of mishap involving no one having put together the thing and it not getting onto the truck yesterday. I should get it tomorrow. Expect a volcanic hissy fit if they fail a second time. Lowes, you’re on notice. I usually <3 you, don’t disappoint me.
Comcast Update – FIXT!
May 11th
As anyone knows, when you have a problem with your cable, phone, or Internet and it’s a really weird, erratic, hard-to-pinpoint problem, when a tech comes by to fix it, the problem is no longer there. This was my problem. My voip modem would just stop working of its own volition. I have called Comcast 3 times to fix this mystery problem.
The first call, the tech told me there was a short in my phone line and that was probably causing the modem to short out and that’s why it was being a bastard. He was only half right. There was a short in the phone line and he did fix that, but that wasn’t what was disconnecting me.
The second call went not quite as well. Got on a call with a really super excellent tech chick who was so empathetic and awesome, but she couldn’t get me an appointment earlier than nearly a week later. She tried transferring me to a different area to possibly get me more expedited service and an earlier time. That guy was a dick. Total douchebag dickweed. Those Comcast commercials where they say “If the customer’s not happy, Comcast isn’t happy”? Yeah, he didn’t get that memo. I understand that they contract out their service calls and there’s always service calls, but there needs to be a better system to help customers who aren’t receiving service. It is not cool to have to wait 4 days for my problem to be resolved. Fix it the next day. So, I scheduled the service call for a day I wasn’t going to be home and let them dangle in the wind. It was petty, but it made me feel better.
The third call almost went the same way as the second, but I was channeling something oddly zen that day. The earliest available appointment was great if the tech came at the back half of the service window. I asked if there could be a note telling the tech to do that. And there must be some sort of asshole clause, because the dude I talked to got cold as ice as soon as I made mention of that stating that was not possible because it is a window and they show up within that window. Achtung, Herr Scheiße Burger. Slow your fucking roll. So, I said fuck it, that won’t work for me, gimme the following Monday. A week+ from the time of the phone call. Fiance was confused. He was pretty convinced I was going to give them hell. Honestly? Not worth it. The problem was inconvenient as hell, but manageable overall.
Dude-guy who did my original install was who came by on Monday. He was all set to head into the basement where he’d originally put it. I told him, “Yeah, I moved it. That wasn’t really working for me.” So, he did all the usual things plugging in his meters and yadda yadda yadda. And then it happened. The most wonderful thing that could ever happen on a service call. The impossible to predict and reproduce random problem happened. That little bit of vindication, “See! I’m not crazy! It does do what I said!!!”
Water + Cable things = Bad News. Apparently. Dude-guy replaced the stuff on the outside of my house, came back in, tested it and not only was it working, the signal was better! Kick. Ass!
Only one downside, tho. I was this > < close to getting a new modem out of the deal. No trouble found with the modem = no new modem 
Comcast Causes Earth-Shattering Kaboom
Apr 30th
So, I’m a nerd girl — In the country — (It is the name of the blog, after all) and as such a nerd country girl, I work from home. My needs are simple when working from home:
- Solid, fast Internet connection
- A comfortable work area
- Land line telephone with speaker phone and mute functions
- Electricity
These are not complex or intricate demands. Yet, at several points in the day, today I lacked 50% of those things. As amusing it would have been had my chair just up and collapsed from under me and as tragic as having no electricity would have been, those two requirements to remain steadfast and true today.
Thanks to dear old Comcast, my phone and Internet went on walkabout for several hours this afternoon. Not only did they take their post-lunchtime sabbatical, they decided it would be a fine time to do so during a conference call.
When my work laptop loses lan connection as ungracefully as the modem deciding it is tired and wants to take a nap, I get one of these:
So, it came as no surprise to me that when I lost connection, it took me an hour of cajoling my work laptop into shutting down gracefully before having to give up the ghost and holding down the power button and start from a fresh reboot.
Needless to say, I got kinda angry.
Hopefully the weekend will prove to have better things in store.
Adventures In Homeownership part 1
Mar 13th
(Well, not technically part 1 but certainly part 1 for this blog.)
Since moving in to the new house I have moved the modem 3 times. (Did I mention we’ve only been here a month?) Already, I am making evil plans to move it again. This time though involves super fun construction! Obviously this 4th reconfiguration gives me more pause because it involves drilling holes in walls. I think I have a really good plan for making this work. I have lofty goals.
Updates In Progress
Mar 7th
Another day done and more updates and polishing done to the old home domain name: viciousgrin.com. Most of the work was done on the Writings section and a lot of removing broken links and other fun stuff of that nature. I think the next polishing steps are going to be adding the links from the boring home page into pages on the blog design. Or! Adding all that lovely and glorious content into the wonderfully-not-designed-by-me WordPress site. Very exciting for me.
I haven’t done any real, solid, good site design work in at least 2 years since I stopped working for VetInsite (now VetStreet). And even then, those were your average static websites. /shrug. I enjoy appreciating the more than excellent talent of more gifted folks than me.
Tomorrow’s blog post should hopefully detail the new desks, various furniture purchased this weekend, status of the home unpacking and various other actually exciting things that have happened over the last few days. Yay!
