House Work

Ah, the endless joys of home ownership.

A couple of months ago, I had the plumbing in the bathrooms replaces with copper. The old galvanized crap was spewing rusty water. It'd actually been doing that as long as I'd been here, but I'd grown accustomed to letting the water run clear first.

I finally got tired of it, and had it replaced. Now, no more orange water.

I have a number of projects going on right now. First, I've been replacing the drywall in the master bedroom, and in the bedroom adjacent. When I first bought the place, I'd wanted to remove the wall and turn the master into a suite. But it occurred to me, it's just me and the dog, why do I need such a large room? So there's been framing between the two, but no drywall. I just finished putting fresh drywall up. Now I need to start mudding.

I'm also putting up fresh green board in the guest bath. When I moved in, there was only a tub there -- no shower. So I removed the two feet of tile that was over the tub, removed the drywall, and will be putting in new tile. When the plumbers were here, I also had them extend the tub tubing up for a shower nozzle. I still need to put up the greenboard on the wet wall, following their visit, and I need to patch a couple of holes they made in the master bath, when replacing the shower tubing there. (Since I was already working on drywalling, and had drywall, I didn't see much point in paying them additional dollars to patch their holes.)

Unfortunately, I had to postpone repairing the roof, with the layoff. That could be a bad thing, considering winter's approaching. But I'm still paying off my sister's debt (grr), and without a job at the moment, don't think it'd be a good idea start another project.

The fun project will be Halloween. This year I plan on opening the garage, and having some sort of haunted thing going on. I've already mentioned it to some friends, who'll be helping. I'm thinking black lights and florescent paint. The creepier, the better. Can't make it too scary, though -- I do get little kids coming by.

In other news...

McCain seems to have failed to gain any ground over Obama in Friday's debate. That Obama was able to hold his own against McCain on foreign policy, the area in which McCain is supposedly strong, is a good thing.

Sadly, during the debate, I saw bits and pieces of the McCain I used to like. I'd still be willing to consider him as a candidate, but for his desire to keep us in Iraq, and his selection of Palin as a running mate.

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I refinanced the house last month, cutting $400 off my monthly expenses. Woot! What with the layoff, lowering the mortgage is a good thing. I also switched my DSL from Earthlink to AT&T, and haven't experienced a single failure. Earthlink was DREADFUL. For almost six years, my connection would drop multiple times a day. And for the several days before I finally switched, I was seeing 2,000 ms pings (for those who don't know what that means, it means I may as well have been passing notes on paper, than communicating electronically).

The switch to AT&T also had the benefit of cutting that expense by $20 a month, and increased my download speed by almost 4x.

Did I mention Earthlink was crap?

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Toby's doing well, though he seems terminally bored. Even when I manage to get him playing, he loses interest in that after only a couple of minutes. He's fine, per his last physical a few months ago, so I'm not sure what's going on. He just seems to prefer to lie around the house. He used to bring me toys all the time, to play fetch or tug. He's only six -- I wouldn't have expected him to lose interest in playing just yet.

Redid the Page

Oh, I also reverted back to my old page, making the blog appear first and eliminating the horribly useless main page. This one's fine.

Ages, again

Once again, months without an update.

The Job

Sadly, the job ended a week ago. I was a contractor, so it was going to happen eventually. I wasn't alone in this, as a "restructuring" resulted in many people being let go. The downside to start-ups is that they have to trim staff from time to time, to keep themselves going until the next round of funding.

I've been working 27 years -- 17 of which in the software industry. In all this time, I can honestly say this was the funnest job I've ever held. I actually enjoyed going to work in the morning. I'm bummed they had to let so many people go, as I'd really been looking forward to making Multiverse my long-term career. I'm hoping that I'll be able to return one day, should another round of funding arrive.

Until then, I need to start the job search again. I've been looking into other gaming options in the Bay Area -- EA, Trion, Cryptic, Linden. I'd be interested in working on Stargate Worlds, if Cheyenne were in a decent location (i.e. here, rather than in Mesa, AZ). :)