Turning it around

So.. its been a week.. my house is still a mess. I am still missing a large portion of my ceiling, but work has been halted while we wait for the inspector to sign off on the new electrical stuff. My attic has had all the insulation sucked out, so it get to about 80 in the house during the day and the heater runs for a good portion of the night.
The inspector should come on Monday and as soon as he is done they can start putting up new drywall. Hopefully I will be done with the repairs this week, or early next week at the latest. My wife and I are getting pretty eager for a return to normalcy.

Tom and I spent the better part of yesterday running cat6 to a few of my rooms, a job only made possible by the missing insulation. BTW, when I say "attic" I mean a crawl space above the house. It is only about 4-5 feet from beam to peak up there (I am 6'4"). It wasn't a very pleasant day. We got 4 runs done to 3 rooms and had our ass handed to us by a cross brace sitting in the middle of the wall in the master bedroom. Thanks to the slope of the roof there isn't enough room to use an extended drill bit and we decided it wasn't worth it to cut out a section of the drywall so we could notch or drill through the cross brace 2x4. Looks like the media center extender is staying on the wireless network. In the end I think I can accept a gigabit ethernet drop in the spare bedroom, the office, and 2 in the living room. I debated on putting one in the kitchen but decided the day had gone on long enough and even though the microwave plays hell with the wifi I just don't need it enough to make it worthwhile.

We are trying to make the best of the situation and taking this opportunity to get some other long delayed upgrades done. I got a motion light put in on the side of my house, since I had so much access to the "attic", and am moving/upgrading the lighting in my garage.
It feels nice to get some of these things finally done and done right.

House Flambe

My house tried to kill me yesterday by catching in fire. It failed miserably.
Everyone got out fine, we are ok and the house is in pretty good shape. Electrical fire in my crawl space from the 220V line running to the water heater. The smolder of doom started above the laundry room and we found it before it really caught. The fire department ripped down the ceiling in the laundry room and half the garage chasing the smolder through the insulation. We are crazy silly ridiculous lucky. Insurance adjuster has already been out with a contractor and electrician. They will be back this morning to run new house mains and replace the water heater which means a little demo work in my office to get to the back side of the breaker box to replace the breakers and run the line. After that the real fun begins (work permits from the city, replacing ALL the insulation, structural engineer to sign off on the scorched ceiling beams, etc. etc.)
We are staying in the house tonight even though we where offered hotel rooms. I will skip the hot water for the opportunity to keep an eye on the abode that tried to kill me. Might post pictures of the torched wires, rafters, and missing ceilings.. might not.

My wife and I had both just returned home to meet with some friends (waiting in our driveway) to head out for the day. Kristina was bringing back the dog from getting its nails trimmed and other doggy things and I was coming back from the dentist. Our friends where leaving there 2 dogs at our house as we where planning on being out well into the evening. Because my wife had the dog she went into the house through the garage, and thus the laundry room and thought it smelled like burnt marshmallows. We started checking the water heater and following the smell.. mostly out of curiosity. There was a warm spot near the door and since I am freakishly tall I was able to touch the ceiling and feel a hot spot. Got the ladder and poked my head through the crawl space hatch that is in the laundry room and saw small wisps of smoke and blackened insulation and beams around some wires. Told Kristina to call the fire dept and ran out to pop all the breakers in the house. Posted my friend on the ladder with a fire extinguisher to hit anything if it actually ignited (felt confident leaving him there.. anyone trained to fight ship board fires can fight them in my house). Fire Dept came and was able to take care of it before it actually caught and turned into a real fire. Plenty of damage though.. the thermal imager the captain used was registering over 500 degrees on the inside of the ceiling.

Not quite the eventful weekend I was hoping for. My wife did a pretty good write up of the events of the fire. You can find it HERE.

Too much free time is dangerous

This was going to be part of my last blog but I thought it warrented it's own space. Think of it as an addendum, or better yet, a spin-off of the last blog. Kind of like our favorite spin-off: Stargate Atlantis. Without further pontification, sublimation, or ado.... I bring you a repost the story I forgot to blog about.

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This is why too much free time is dangerous. This weekend was like the perfect storm. My wife went out of town (no supervision), my computer died (no games or other entertainment), I finished the book I was reading and really had no homework to speak of. Being depressed by the computer crash and lonely since my wife and all but 1 of my friends is out of town for the weekend I am looking for something to do. The 1 friend in town works on saturdays, but when he gets off he says he is going to an oktober fest party and invites me along. I jump at the chance.
Through some slight miscomunication I am on the way to the party when I realize it isn't an Oktoberfest as much as it is just a party at some guy's house that he throws every year for oktoberfest. This brightens me up because it means I don't have to pay to get in, or buy beer, or deal with a big ol' crowd and public drunks.
The guy throwing the party went to high school with my friend's fiance, so I will know exactly 3 people at the party. As you will see, that doesn't stop me in the least and with the help of alchohol, my inhibitions and judgement are non-existant. I will let Scott, a guy I met at the party tell the story through his blog on myspace.

The following is an excert from Scott's blog:


Quote:
Move over Flaming Moe's behold the Flaming Marshmallow!
Current mood: amused
Category: Food and Restaurants

Oh yes, I am currently recovering from an Oktoberfest Party that my old high school friend Jeff threw last night. He has a fire pit at his house needless to say you know the dangers of fire and alcohol!! While sitting around the fire and having a few beers and bratwursts the question of the availability of marshmallows arrived. Jeff being a bachelor had some but likely they were purchased in 2004-2005 time frame. Realizing that we have discovered a new material to re-tile the space shuttle with these marshmallows, again beers, engineers and fire (beware, experiments will commence). To soften these lightweight briquettes we figured on soaking them in a mixture of 2 parts vodka and 1 part rum and Wow! You definitely have something special here, marshmallow shots! Even better roast these marshmallow and you have the Flaming Marshmallow, that's right in the same spirit as the Friend's invented game of Fireball! Ironically the best part about it all was the mixture that you soak them in the marshmallows slightly dissolve in the alcohol mixture and actually makes vodka and rum go down more smoothly, enough to sip! If you gulp the following results below. And yes this is footage from the party! I would like to thank Curtis for being the stuntman for this trick!

BTW, there were 2 chemical engineers, and aerospace engineer, and aspiring electrical engineer (me) and a professional councelor (as in someone who should know better) involved in that whole fiasco.