Another home project: fireplace fluffy rambles

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Another thing I’d been putting off way too long on this house was getting my fireplace evaluated, with a bunch of stuff that had been called out on the home inspection report.

Today I finally had a chimney inspector come out and he said that it’s in mostly good shape, but that the chimney cap would need to be replaced with a more modern crown, the flashing needs to be replaced, and of course the whole thing needs to be swept out. The estimate for all that came to be not a huge amount of money so I went ahead and scheduled that work too.

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Another bathroom update fluffy rambles

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Got a second estimate from a plumber today. This one did a much more thorough diagnosis than the first one and he determined that there is definitely a leak between the valve and the tub spout, and pointed out some definite problems left by the contractors. This was a pretty thorough amount of work that took a few hours and cost a chunk of money, but that’ll make the estimation from the remaining plumber (who will be coming on Thursday) a lot more straightforward.

Today’s plumber estimates that the necessary plumbing work will be around $3000, plus however much it costs to redo the tiling. He said there’s tilers that his company works with which might work well although scheduling is difficult at present. And they’d be able to limit the amount of tiling work that needs to be redone, at least.

Anyway on Thursday I should have the final estimate for the plumbing stuff and then I can try working with the bathroom contractor in terms of who’s paying for all this. Or maybe he’d be able to prove the quality of his new crew by doing it for free but I’d have no reason to trust him to do a good job at this point.

Ugh.

Bathroom update fluffy rambles

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This morning’s shower with the exposed drywall confirmed that there is definitely a leak, on the output side of the valve.

Some tile is going to have to be removed and reinstalled. I guess I need to start looking at bathroom contractors again.

I do not need this right now fluffy rambles

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There is a fucking leak in the wall behind my bathtub

It is probably yet another fucking hurrah from the shitty goddamn bathroom remodeler folks

It is going to be fucking expensive to fix

Maybe the plumbers will be able to get at the pipes from the side but I’m not optimistic about that

This leak has probably been there for a while but it’s taken this long to be apparent, because it was slowly eroding away the drywall next to the tub and causing the baseboards to swell up

I suspect I’m going to need to sue the contractor for gross negligence

At least I still have plenty of tile left over from the renovation, in case the worst comes to pass and I need to get that wall redone

anyway this guy fucking sucks

What, another grinder?! Timemore Sculptor 064s Coffee Talk

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As much as I appreciated my Sette 270, there were a few things I didn’t like about it:

  • The fine adjustment mechanism is weird and unpredictable (due to the dual-ring thing)
  • It is incredibly loud
  • Grinding for espresso usually took 3-4 cycles due to popcorning
  • The dang felt pretty huge (relative to my tiny kitchen)
  • It’s built for keeping stuff in the hopper rather than single-dosing

I was considering a number of other grinders (most notably the Option-O Lagom Mini) but then in April, Timemore announced the Timemore Sculptor series, in a number of sizes and grind profiles. And the requisite Kickstarter had it on a pretty deep discount.

So anyway, I backed the 064s (64mm stepless variant) and expected to wait.

And wait I did! But the lovely new grinder arrived today.

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside fluffy rambles

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It’s December, when people start on the Baby, It’s Cold Outside discourse again.

The song was written in a different era when different idioms were in place. It is not a song about aggressive sexual advances (much less date rape!), it’s a song about an unmarried couple trying to come up with excuses to spend the night together, in a society where that was extremely frowned upon.

There’s a pretty good explanation of it by Pessoa on Genius Lyrics:

In a modern climate, these lines are often seen as Marilyn catching Dean putting a roofie in her drink, followed by simpler date-sexual assault. Dean also defends that his feelings are ostensibly more meaningful than Marilyn’s.

When the song was written in 1944, it was seen as scandalous for women to stay the night with someone who wasn’t their husband. As seen earlier (and later) in the song, the girl has a strong desire to stay with the man, regardless of the social norm—not to mention there’s a strong blizzard outside.

The line “Say, what’s in this drink?” was a common phrase women would use as a way to attribute their deviance to a strong drink. The phrase was originally a nod to the idea that alcohol is “making” them do something unusual when there is actually nothing in the drink—the drink is to blame. In Frank Loesser’s original version, the girl pretends to resist his advancements so she can tell others it wasn’t her fault for deviating from the then-current societal expectations.

There’s also a pretty good discussion about this song in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Also the song was originally written by Frank Loesser to have something he and his wife could sing to their party guests when it was time for them to go the fuck home.

Music keyboard upgrade downgrade change: Casio PX-S1100 fluffy rambles

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So the new keyboard arrived today and I swapped it into my setup, along with the Akai MPK49 (which I also finally restored to working condition). Here’s some vague unstructured thoughts about it.

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