Tuesday - August 03, 2010

One thing leads to another

So I finished off the windows on that “cottage” and it’s outbuildings. Broke my butt and got the whole job done in 30 hours of labor. I told the property manager that the glazing on many of the windows was shot and that panes of glass would start falling out soon.

“So?”, she says. “Can you fix it?”

Why sure, yes I can.

“Good. Then get to work.”

There are about 65 windows in this place, almost all of them 6-8 panes of glass per sash. Two sashes per window ... that’s ... I dunno ... about 1000 panes of glass that need to be stripped, repointed, reglazed, primed, sills scraped and primed, then repainted. Looks like several weeks work to me.

So I guess I’d better go online and learn how to glaze windows.

I think it would have been smarter to have me fix the panes first then clean them, instead of other way ‘round, but I’ll take the work, thanks.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/03/2010 at 12:09 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Friday - July 30, 2010

task switching

No, I’m not cleaning windows today. I wanted to, and I should be. I put 11 hours in on the job yesterday and made great progress, but even coming home at 7:30 I got stuck in a traffic jam. You can’t win in NJ; rush hour lasts most of the day. And the car was on the very verge of boiling over, and now the radiator is done and dead. So today I’m putting the new one in, and I’ll do the rest of the windows tomorrow. I’ll do the parts swap but I won’t fill it yet, since I’m still waiting on Fed-Ex to get here with my new hoses. UPS got the radiator here days ago. Fed-Ex: union free but lame.

Too bad; today is nice and cool, dry with a bit of overcast. Maybe going to hit the low 80s this afternoon. Perfect window washing weather.

Update 1pm: Well that was easy. Taking my sweet time it took me barely an hour to take everything apart and get the radiator out. It figures: the car that almost never needs maintenance is easy to work on. I looked things up on one of the Saturn forums and found that when everyone’s radiator goes it breaks in exactly the same spot, a big crack in the top of the left tank. Design flaw I’d say. So I’m stopping for lunch and then I’ll put the new one in. Piece of cake, so far. I just wish the new hoses would show up. Though the 14 year old factory originals are still in fine shape, if needs must.

Update 5:30pm: All done. I tool several breaks in the heat of the afternoon, so it didn’t take all this time. But I did have to mess with it a little. The CSF brand aftermarket radiator was a 95% exact fit: the mounting pads for the A/C condenser are about 1/4” too far apart. So I had to make the condenser flange hole a little longer. Probably later models had a groove flange instead of a mounting hole; that allows for more adjustment. Anyway, all finished. No leaks, so leftover mystery parts, and I’m actually not even bleeding. Talk about just in time delivery: the Fed-Ex guy showed up just as I was finished getting the condenser mounted. I could not have used the new hoses one minute before he delivered them. 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/30/2010 at 09:24 AM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - July 28, 2010

Summer Fun

Doing windows in the summer sun and heat is no fun. I never knew how much I could sweat until today. Holy cow. I was soaked all day long. I should get a set of swimming goggles to wear to keep my eyes clear.

And this job gave birth to another job, 2 “cottages” (3000 sq ft) back in the woods and a garden house. So I’ll be busy for a solid week at least. Fine by me, though I’d like to find half a day in there to install my new radiator. Phah, just keep a few gallon jugs of water in the car. Make hay while the sun shines, or at least get the windows clean for cash. Fix the radiator later. And this is repeat business too, something I hope I’m finally starting to see after chugging away at this for 2+ years now.

So I’ll be away from the old blog pretty much. Maybe I can get a couple posts up in the evening. Sans links, but heck, these stories are everywhere.

I hear Arizona’s immigration law was shut down by a Clinton appointed in-the-pocket judge. That was expected; this one has to go to the Supremes. I hope AZ governor Brewer simply ignores the court until her appeals bubble up through the system. Like, what are they gonna do, bust her for smoking come and arrest all the AZ cops for carrying out a federal law? It’s high time the states started flipping off DC and their minions. And We the people should too. And it could all start with her. Far out. ( I heard last week Arizona had to take down all it’s traffic cams because nobody was paying the tickets mailed out that the cams generated. Seems AZ has this law that says tickets have to be hand delivered. Tens of thousands of tickets ignored by the people. Maybe it’s starting already. Fantastic. )

Looks like the libs are trying to throw Charlie Rangel under the bus, calling for his resignation. Greasy smarmy bastard has been living large and laughing about it for far too long. I hear he’s suddenly trying to cut a deal. No friggin way. Kick him out, bust him, perp walk him on international TV, investigate him inside out, make him pony up the full millions he owes in back taxes, then send his uppity ass to jail for 20 years. Then tell the rest of them they have 60 days to get their finances in order or they’ll get the same. And watch the billions come rolling in over night. The power brokers have been above the law for too damn long. It’s time for major payback. TV news says old yellow belly, John Freakin Kerry, is going to pay his home state the $500,000 luxury taxes on his expensive toy boat, “whether they’re owed or not”. And he did it without mentioning that he’d served in Vietnam, which means he’s running scared already. So, two done, more than 500 to go. Roaches scurrying when you turn on the spotlight.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/28/2010 at 09:35 PM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Tuesday - July 27, 2010

Two More Years

Busy busy today. Getting set up for tomorrow’s window job; I’m building a sort of easel to clean storm windows on. The house I’m doing has lots of them, the old flat kind in the raw aluminum mounts. What I’m going to build is a rack that attaches to the back of my 6 foot ladder, made out of a couple of L brackets, some adjustable shelf channel, and a 3 foot plastic flower planter. The shelf channel bolts to the L brackets and forms a non-intrusive shelf for the storm windows to rest on. The flower planter also bolts to the ladder, but below that. It gets a towel in it, and it’s function is to catch drips. Easy on, easy off if I make it with wing nuts, and the easel arrangement lets me wash those windows at a comfortable waist height. Trust me, cleaning storms across your knee while holding on with one hand sucks. And squatting down on the ground to do them is a back buster. Sure, I could buy a rig like this, for $300, or I could make my own for $10. Guess which one wins? You got it.

But why “Two More Years”? Because I’m gluing two posts in one here. After an insanely long download, I found out that my good old PC does not have the processing power to properly play HD movies. I have the software to do it, and I’ve got a good monitor that can handle that resolution. But this PC is from 1999 and so is it’s graphics card. I get the picture on the screen just fine, but everything plays at 1/8 speed. And since I don’t have a Steve Austin slo-mo fixation, that’s not really good. So that got me looking around, and burned up a couple hours learning about where the PC market is today. And that’s the Mac market too you know, since they both use the same chips and architecture these days. And what I found out is phenomenal.

The current cutting edge CPU is the Core i7 970X from Intel. Holy cow. This is a 6 core monster that runs at 3.2Ghz with a 12MB L3 cache and built-in overclocking that can run it as fast as 4Ghz for short time periods. Assuming your software has parallelism built into it, each core can be split in half, so that it operates as if it had 12 CPUs. Insane. Even 6 CPUs is insane. And even though this chip just came out a couple months ago, the prices are dropping already and a little-brother chip (no overclocking) is now on the market. Performance-wise, this new chip is about unfrickin believable faster than my steadfast old 733Mhz Pentium III. The bus speed is more than 10 times faster on the latest motherboards, and the memory chips they can use is 6 times faster and more than 10 times larger. Hard drives? Phah, you’re stuck in the past. Samsung has a solid state drive out now. Half a flippin’ terabyte, and it’s on a single chip. Expensive? You betcha. But your software will load almost instantly:

The new 512GB SSD makes use of a 30 nanometer-class 32 gigabit chip that the company began producing last November. The toggle-mode DDR structure together with the SATA 3.0Gbps interface generates a maximum sequential read speed of 250 Megabyte per second (MBps) and a 220MBps sequential write speed, both of which provide three-fold the performance of a typical hard disk drive. At these speeds, two standard length DVD movies (approximately 4GB each) can be stored in just a minute.
...
Samsung also provides streamlined boot time and application access with this new SSD, showing an approximately nine-fold improvement in random performance over HDDs.

So even boot time is down to only a bit slower than “hit the On button”. Unreal. And the SSD uses almost no electricity, so it’s “green”. And no moving parts. Ought to last forever, but you can always pick up a 10,000rpm 1TB super ATA II regular HD as a Raid 1 backup for about $100. You do NOT want to know what I paid for a 32Mb Seagate ST-4096 hard drive in 1989. I’m not telling, but it was a full width, double height piglet that weighed 8 pounds. Today, that puny amount of storage might fit on the head of a pin. With enough room left over to land airplanes on probably.

So I indulged myself, and spent a little time over at Dell building out one of their ultimate PCs. With liquid cooling even. And they’ll build it with ultra fast RAM chips that have more capacity than the 32 bit architecture can address. Say what? That’s right, 32 bits worth of binary is only 3.2GB. You build your PC with 8 or even 16GB of RAM. Wasteful? No, because the extra memory can be addressed by the latest generation of video cards, I’m not sure how, and they’ll use it as a buffer or something. Dell “recommends” that I build a PC with more than one video card in it. I guess so I can use 2 or 3 monitors? Not sure how just one monitor can use 2 or more video cards at once. Whatever ... my dream box at Dell topped out at nearly $8000. Horry Clap. Which is why ...

I don’t want one of these PCs. Not now. This latest chip uses the Nehalem architecture which is due to be updated to the Sandy Bridges architecture in just a few months. That will increase efficiency and use less electricity, resulting in a considerable speed improvement. But wait, that’s not all!!! One major reason that the latest Core i7 chip is so fast is because Intel shrunk things down by a third. By which I mean that the latest and greatest i7 chip is built on a 32nm (freaking NANOMETERS!!!) scale, compared to the slightly older chips built on a 45nm scale. ( I think my first PC, a Dell 80286, was built to the nearest quarter inch). Now that they can do 32nm, the next step is 22nm. That’s the Sandy Bridge thingy, which will shrink to that size around the time Obama gets voted out of office in 2012. But like everything else in computer world, as soon as 22nm architecture manufacturing stabilizes, and improved version that takes advantage of that smaller scale will hit the market. That’s the Haswell architecture, itself slated for a 16nm upgrade about a year after that. The smaller the nm numbers get, the closer the microscopic parts are inside the computer chips, and the faster things run while using even less electricity.

So when the Haswell architecture starts phasing in sometime in 2012-2013, today’s insanely fast and expensive chipsets will be old hat, and found in the bargain bin at Kmart. And that’s when I’ll strike, even though the Haswell series of computers will have FMA, “fused multiply add”, an instruction simplification which will make every non-FMA machine a canoe anchor. It’s going to be that big of an improvement, seriously. Down at the very bottom of things, almost everything a computer does is binary math, followed by assignment. Do the math and the assignment at the same time, and you can cut the instruction set in half. Which doubles the effective speed of things, except for reading back and forth to the drives. Which will all be solid state by then, and 16 times faster than the latest solid state drives (and 32 times bigger), which are 3 times faster than the best mechanical drives you can buy, which are at least twice as fast as the ones you actually bought. Probably 20 times faster than my dear old 27Gb piggy wiggy HD on this system. So a cutting edge Haswell machine ought to be at least twice as fast, if not four times as fast, as the best machines money can buy right now. We are on the real verge, finally, of all-encompassing cheap computing power. Beam me up, Scotty!

Today’s cutting edge machines are about 60 times faster than my old tank, yet this old tank does everything I want eyeblink fast and I hardly ever have to wait for it other than the boot. But I would like to watch HD movies, which I can’t even do on my perfectly fine and sturdy old CRT 32” TV. It’s a decade old too. And it works fine, especially after I had it in to the shop a few months back for a minor fix and a full physical. The cable company called up today, trying to sell me some package deal. I think they are at the point where every package they offer will include HDTV, whether I use it or not. So I’m way behind the technology curve there too, but the newest TVs are so damn expensive, and they keep getting better every 6 months. I want today’s TV but at 1/5 the price. $3000 is just too damn much to spend on a TV if all that’s on is Idol. Blech.

So please, let this old warhorse make it through the next 2 years. Let it last longer than the Obama presidency. Then I can score an insanely hot PC for less cash than I paid for this thing back in 1999, even though that cash won’t be worth 1/10th as much.

Ok, break time’s over. Have to get down to the hardware store and get the parts for the easel thingy.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/27/2010 at 01:08 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (9) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - July 14, 2010

stomped but working

We lost last night, 2-5. It was hard fought, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Conditions were really strange the first game. I can’t really describe it, but the whole league had really bad scores that game. We did terribly, 3 of us throwing a 139 and me scrubbing the toilet with a 124. Our opponents didn’t fare much better, even though every one of them has a 200+ average - we had a 123 pin handicap. But the lanes just weren’t cooperating. We did a lot better in game 2, but to no avail. One guy on the other team threw 11 strikes. I got lucky and matched him for most of the game, throwing 8 myself, but leaving an open in the 5th, so my 211 came out far shy of his 275. So we got slaughtered in that one, even though our team total was well over 800 for that game. Game 3 saw a lot of splits and lots of weird splits all up and down the lanes. I took a straighter line and pulled a 170 something, while the guys on the other team didn’t adapt. So we pulled ahead a little, and held onto that lead even through their 8th frame surge. Woo hoo, we won a whole 2 points. But it was hard competition so that’s Ok.

Back to work again; I’ve got a 2-3 day window job. It’s going to be a challenge, since it’s raining today and might rain more tomorrow. That makes going up on a ladder a no-no, so I’ll be working inside. Hope her A/C is working well; doing windows in high humidity is difficult because nothing evaporates. That leads to a whole lot of wiping, which tends to leave streaks. See you in a couple of days.

Update: Rats! Customer called me up as I was loading up the Satrun. It’s pouring for the 2nd straight day at her place and her windows are all fogged. So let’s push the job back. And she has carpet cleaners and painters coming in next week, so let’s push it back further. Hey, that’s how it goes. I try not to let customers push me around, but I can’t control the weather. And it really does suck trying to do windows in the rain. Well, at least I got up nice and early, so maybe I’ll spend the day doing stuff around here. Or go bowling. Or something. I know, I can call Sears for the great Dishwasher Recall Event

Incidents/Injuries: Maytag has received 12 reports of dishwasher heating element failures that resulted in fires and dishwasher damage, including one report of extensive kitchen damage from a fire. No injuries have been reported.

Description: The recall includes Maytag®, Amana®, Jenn-Air®, Admiral®, Magic Chef®, Performa by Maytag® and Crosley® brand dishwashers with plastic tubs and certain serial numbers. The affected dishwashers were manufactured with black, bisque, white, silver and stainless steel front panels. The brand name is printed on the front of the dishwasher. The model and serial numbers are printed on a label located inside the plastic tub on a tag near the left side of the door opening. Serial numbers will start or end with one of the following sequences.

SERIAL number STARTING with
NW39, NW40, NW41, NW42, NW43, NW44, NW45, NW46, NW47, NW48, NW49, NW50, NW51, NW52, NY01, NY02, NY03, NY04, NY05, NY06, NY07, NY08, NY09, NY10, NY11, NY12, NY13, NY14, NY15, NY16, NY17, NY18, NY19

OR SERIAL number ENDING with
JC, JE, JG, JJ, JL, JN, JP, JR, JT, JV, JX, LA, LC, LE, LG, LJ, LL, LN, LP, LR, LT, LV, LX, NA, NC, NE, NG, NJ, NL, NN, NP, NR

Sold at: Department and appliance stores and by homebuilders nationwide from February 2006 through April 2010 for between $250 and $900.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Maytag at (800) 544-5513 anytime, or visit the firm’s website at http://www.repair.maytag.com

It took us 5 years to wrangle a new dishwasher out of the landlord. And it’s a pretty decent model that works well and is fairly quiet. And it hasn’t set the condo on fire, not even once! But a recall is a recall, so you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

PS - 6 different “brands” of dishwasher listed are all actually the same company. So much for competition in the free market, what what?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/14/2010 at 06:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Thursday - July 01, 2010

Snip Snip

I will be spending today, and perhaps tomorrow, trimming hedges. How about that? I’ve got landscaping work, and I don’t even speak Spanish. 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/01/2010 at 08:47 AM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Monday - May 17, 2010

hard work and free beer

So I’m at the job sight today, going at it on that befouled apartment. And my customer calls me on the cell. “Can you fix screens?” Sure thing m’am, whatever you need. “Good, do those two that are torn up. Do you think you could install that cooktop and get the other one out?” No worries. It takes a while, but I know how to do it. “Great! How about closet door tracks? All those sliding doors are really wobbly.” Yes indeed, I can fix those too! And so on and so forth. Now that she knows I’m Handy Andy and not just Squeegee Guy I’ve got another 2 days work, maybe 3. $250 a day? I’ll take it. And then the words I love to hear: “And anything else you find that needs doing, do it if you can.” Oooh, I love this customer. Seriously, she’s the greatest. I’ve had at least a dozen major recommendations from her, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that that mansion I did a couple years ago is ready for another window cleaning. That’s big money, and she’s the property manager for that. I have 3 more jobs lined up from her for some point soon, so that’s really nice too. At least 2 solid week’s work.

So I got most of the windows done today. I would have got them all done but I stopped to clean out the gutters. She wanted it done, and I had the big ladder there today.  And I had to clean the screens. They were foul.

People, clean your window screens. Do you know that dirty screens block twice as much light as clean ones? The dirt just loves to build up on them. Once a year minimum. Twice a year is better. Just take them down to the backyard, get out a scrub brush and a bucket of soapy water and a hose. Wet ‘em, soap ‘em, scrub ‘em. Both sides! Then spray clean. Both sides! Leave them in the sun to dry, or go over them with another junk towel. NOT paper towels, toilet paper, or any kind of fuzzy cloth. Worn out old towels (we always called them dog towels when I was growing up, and used them for drying the dog) work the best. If you don’t have a backyard or a garden hose, you can do most of them in the tub, especially if you have one of those shower wand thingies on the hose. But be warned: lay down several junk towels in the bottom and on the sides of the tub, because the metal framing of the screen can scratch the enamel on your tub!! ESPECIALLY the old style, raw aluminum ones. Over the years, the outer surface turns into aluminum oxide, which is nasty, rough, and very hard. Duh, they make sandpaper out of it!

So as I’m talking to her on my cell, walking around the apartment, she wants me to check in the closets for the window A/C units. “Look in the closet in the back bedroom. Is there an air conditioner in there?” No ... but there is a 12 pack of Budweiser!! “Beer in the closet? Get rid of it!” Yes m’am, your wish is my command! “Not now wise guy, take it home with you!” Oh, Ok. Geexz.

So I worked till dark while the beer was chilling in the fridge that I brought back from the edge of death to immaculate, like new condition. Packed up the Satrun and took them all home. Gosh, I haven’t ad a Bud in ... 15 years? So I drank one with dinner. Um, there’s no beer in that beer. Foam, yeah. Alcohol, some. But taste? Let’s just say it’s a really light lager. Really light. And people pay just as much for a watered down light version??? So I finished a couple, and then opened a nice caramel brown Leinenkugel 1888 Bock. Mmmm, now that’s a regular beer. But it wasn’t free.

Odds ‘n ends on the schedule for tomorrow. Will try to get a condo customer to switch days so I can make some money, otherwise it’s a day off. Too much shiz to do until noon, then summer bowling league starts in the evening. No point driving an hour to do another day for this apartment job, then only stay 3 hours then have to drive back. But she’s glad to have me when I can get there. Like I said, this woman is my all time favorite customer. And she tips!!

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2010 at 08:08 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Sunday - May 16, 2010

Monday Monday

Let’s see ...

Goo Gone? Check.
Plastic and steel putty knives? Check.
Painter’s multi-tool scraper? Check.
Buckets, sponges, rags, chamois? Check.
Extra paper towels? Check.
Squeegees, extra rubber? Check.
Assorted sizes of T-bars and scrubber heads? Check. Clean ones? Check.
Secret special soap solution? Check. BUCKETS? Checked already, but, check.

Food! Breakfast, lunch, plenty to drink, cooler, ice. Do it in the AM. It’s all in the fridge.

Ladder, straps, roof pad? Check.

Tools ... Check.
Giant vise grips? Check.
Tape dope ... let’s see, it’s in here somewh ... check.
Sacrificial coat hanger? Check.
Drain cleaner? Check.
window scraper? Check.
Spare blades? Check.

Okay, I’m good to go. Got another day or two of work here. Do all the windows, unclog a drain, de-stink a freezer, replace a couple ... oh yeah!

New GFI and faceplate. Check; in the car already.
Spare bulbs? Check.
2 F40s? Check.
Fan switch? Check.
Remember to save the receipts!!!
CLR, white vinegar, baking soda? Checkity check. Ok.

See, I’m not just the window guy. I’m that guy. You know, the one who does stuff for hire. Which sometimes means I need a bigger trunk. Hell, I need a bigger truck. And I don’t even have a truck.

So off to work for me in the morning.
Coffee pot set up for the morning, extra strong, Thermos nearby? Check.

Cool. Must remember to wash and polish the doors, including the front door down that steep little staircase. Ok.

See ya.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/16/2010 at 08:55 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Sunday - May 02, 2010

Suddenly It’s Summer

Bit of weird weather here this week; even though it’s just the beginning of May it’s going to be in the 90s all week long. So naturally I’ve got loads of work to do. Did a clear out and clean up job yesterday for folks who are getting hardwood floors installed. Move all the furniture, tear up the old carpet. Got my cleaning jobs today. Got an apartment cleanup tomorrow, then come back when the painter is done and do the windows. Window job on a small home after that, then windows on another house, then a window job on a carriage house apartment. In between I have to fit window jobs for 2 of the condos here. Should be a busy week. Or two. Good.

Off to work, and then to buy various cleaners for tomorrow. I always “look forward” to those “the tenants trashed the place, come fix it” phone calls. Let’s see what to take up there ... drain snake, oven cleaner, scrub brush, scrubby sponges, bathtub cleaner, clorox, toilet brush, dryer vent brush, a couple 5 gallon buckets, glass cleaner, wood soap, Liquid Gold, dust cloths, vacuum, tools, toilet parts, scrapers, putty, caulk, Comet, drain cleaner, Goo Gone, tools, dusters, duct tape, rubber gloves, rages, paper towels, ...  Oh yeah, it’s gonna be a busy time.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/02/2010 at 11:40 AM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - March 24, 2010

I can see clearly now

Did my first window job of the season today. It was March this morning alright. Two pair of pants, a sweater and two jackets, all the way up on the ladder while the wind was whipping around. Hug that building! The sun came out later and the wind died down, and it turned out to be a nice day.

Looks like about 2 loads of laundry to clean up all the dirty rags. And dirty is right. Folks have those removable screens and they just collect dirt underneath and on the sill. Collect? Forget that. They’re little compost heaps, and the dirt turns into fresh soil.

I can always tell when people have cats. No, not the litter pan aroma, or the little furry toys you see lying around the house in unusual places. No, I can tell because of the windows. Cat nose prints about 9” up the glass on nearly every window with a sill inside. Little bitty kitty boogers stuck to the glass. And groups of paw prints around the top center of the lower sash if they happen to have window shades with those pulls on strings. Cats can’t resist them ever.

So I did a real nice job, and did a bit of double cleaning on several of the bigger sheets of glass. Not too much scraping, but I had to stop and dissolve a number of stickers and the glue they leave behind. That slows me down.

That Perfect Glass stuff works really well as a final cleaner. Works pretty well as a primary cleaner too most of the time; this house had skylights on either side of the roof right next the the fireplace chimney. Can you say soot build up? Oy. Filth. “You went up on the roof and cleaned those? I don’t think they’ve ever been cleaned before!” No kidding. They’re clean now. Took 3 applications of Perfect Glass after a thorough scrub and squeegee with my regular window mix. Blackened the scrubber, a firm bristle scrub brush, 3 rags and a microfiber cloth. Per skylight. But the glass is brilliant. Until the next rain, party of birds, or “let’s have a fire tonight” event.

Now off to do my Sunday afternoon cleaning, delayed several days. They don’t care, as long as it gets done once a week.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/24/2010 at 05:46 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Sunday - March 21, 2010

Plumb Tired

I just finished a pain in the tail plumbing job. 12 hours.

Normally I respect jack-leg carpentry, building something or other in place and getting the job done. That’s all well and good, but when it’s time to replace or repair something like that, it’s a royal pain. I had to replace a countertop and install a new sink and faucet for a customer. The old one was in a little nook, with sliding doors on the front. Was it a cabinet that was put there? No, it was built in place. On the cheap. No back or sides, just plywood plates nailed to the drywall, everything whacked together with finishing nails. And then they glued Formica on top and finished it off.

And ... “um, we’ve had some water problems with those pipes before”. Yeah. Uh huh. I went in there last night and took things apart, and half the wood was rotted. Damp walls, and a mold problem. Rusted everything, even the nails. I turned off the water and disconnected the lines to the sink, tore it out, and then went home. Back at it at Oh-God-Early this morning, and I come in and find a great big wet spot on the carpet. Well, it turns out that the shut-off valve ahead of the water meter under there doesn’t. It only mostly shuts off. And the water meter was only loosely screwed in place. Hand tight on the nuts on both sides. O. M. G. So the slightest little wiggle and it started peeing like a drunken monkey. Oh, such fun, swapping cup after cup under the drips, racing back and forth to the bathroom to dump the water. Got out two wrenches and tightened the meter. No more leak. Later on I put 3 coats of PVC cement over the nuts and threads, just to make sure. Good thing that there was a huge pile of cheap towels handy.

So I had lots of fun, lying down on damp carpet, working in a tight little crooked alcove. Yee friggin ha! But I screwed and glued all the support brackets, got everything strong, square, and level, put in the new sink and faucet and the countertop I custom built for them, new water lines, new sink drain. And then found that the old P-trap (eww, gross!!) and the drain line didn’t line up. Of course! So, two more trips to the plumbing supply store down the street, and I put in a PVC zig-zag ( 2 45s, butt connector, 2 3” stubs of pipe) to make things fit the new P-trap. Mmmm, I just love that purple PVC primer and glue. Stuff smells like instant death that’s just waiting to ignite. But it works like magic. Screwed everything together, tape doped all the thread connections, and went through 2 entire tubes of adhesive caulk to install and seal the top and it’s 3 piece backsplash. And it came out perfect.

Putting the matching ADA faucet in the bathroom sink was a relative breeze. The old one was so rotten underneath it almost fell off the sink. 15 minutes, and that’s with new water lines from the valves.  Done.

It’s going to cost him nearly $800 in parts and labor. But that’s cheap. Home Depot wants $300 minimum to make a countertop of any size, and I got him parts for a full third below regular retail. http://www.everyfaucet.com - really good prices. Add in all the funky plumbing that was needed, and I think he saved about $500 hiring me instead of a pro.

But it’s been a long long day, and I’m beat. And utterly filthy. The crap that builds up inside of drains has it’s own special kind of transferable filth and stank. Nasty.

I think I hear a cold beer calling my name.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/21/2010 at 03:40 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Thursday - March 18, 2010

bizzy day

I’ll be on the road for most of the day. Have to run downstate to get some parts, then up to NY to get some work done on them. Then back down to NJ to shop for the other stuff.

Will post later if possible.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/18/2010 at 07:11 AM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - March 06, 2010

job dissatisfaction

I think maybe I need a new business model. I do this handyman stuff. Pretty much whatever you need, from fixing lamps to drywall to painting to installing shelves. If you need it done I can do it. I go out of my way to make it easy and reasonable for folks, and I wind up feeling taken advantage of a lot of the time.

Lots of little old ladies need a little help with this or that once in a while. I live in a condo park with over 300 units, so there are lots of them around. I can walk to any of the buildings here in just a couple minutes. So I’m open for short work if I’m available. We’ll work out a price, I’ll do good work, and you’ll pay me. If I have to go buy parts or paint or whatever for you, then you’ll pay me what they cost plus the tax, and if it’s a whole lot of shopping then you’ll pay me for my time. This approach seems to work fine.

But if I have to drive out to your place, and sometimes that drive is nearly an hour, then I want at least half a day’s work. So have a list of jobs for me to do, or a big one, because it isn’t worth it for me to put in a big drive to do a 45 minute task.

I’ll come and talk to you, see what you want done, and tell you about how long I expect that job to take. You pay me by the half day, but here’s the kicker: if I say that I can do a job in 4 hours (a half day) and it takes me 6, then I only charge you for 4. If you have a big list of work and I say I can do it in a day (8 hours) but it takes me 10, then I eat the extra time. Conversely, if a task goes faster than anticipated, then I make out ... but I’ll do an extra task for no extra cost if you have one, so that you get your full half day’s or full day’s labor from me.

And I work to your satisfaction. I don’t take shortcuts and I don’t do quick and dirty work. Yes, sometimes I go slower than other folks who just want to be finished and gone. I want you to be happy with the result. I’ll even work around your schedule to some extent, but it’s in my best interest to come over early, get to work, and stay late if necessary.

I did another half day for that woman I did the drawer pulls for last week. Installed 4 pieces of baseboard molding for her, because the old molding was such a Putty Disaster it looked like there’d been a food fight down by the floorboards. So that required me to go and buy 2 lengths of molding, matching her style and size from memory, pulling off the old molding without tearing up her walls or her newly laid wood flooring, cutting the pieces to fit perfectly, cut and sometimes re-cut 8 miters by hand, nail them on, fill the small gaps and nail holes with putty, let it dry and then sand things smooth. I did another drywall repair for her, floated another coat of spackle on the big drywall repair from last week, and then took her front door down off it’s hinges to fit a threshold sweep to the underside and then a pretty brass draft catcher to the lower inside edge. Oil the hinge pins, but the door back on, and then adjust things as needed. And all that took me 3 1/2 hours.

She in not happy with the big drywall repair. Oh, it’s smooth, and vertical, and the edges are feathered into invisibility, so it will paint up fine. No, she’s unhappy because when the flooring guys put in her wood flooring, they left the end of the stairs about 3/8” shy of where the wallboard would have been, had there been any wallboard. See, when the builders built her place, one of them put the stairs in and carpeted them before the walls went up. So the guys who put the walls in cut around the carpet! And decades later, when the carpet came out for the wood flooring to go in, surprise! there was a stair shaped hole in the wall. Which is what I fixed. But now she wants the wall to come to the edge of the steps, so now I’ve got to lay on more spackle to fill in the gap. Personally, I think that’s the wrong approach. I think her gripe is with the flooring crew. Whatever. I said I’d stop buy Wednesday evening and try and fill it in with another layer. I have to get there precisely on time because she can only fit me in a 20 minute work window and then she has to go.

Now she’s trying to stiff me with the money. Shouldn’t I be getting less? After all, the amount we agreed to last week was “only an estimate”. (as if anyone else in the history of the planet has ever come in under estimate!) And if you add up the hours from all the days, it comes out to less than 8. By about 20 minutes. Why do people have to do this? I’m already giving them one helluva deal. Try getting in a registered, licensed “professional” for $200 a day. Try. At your convenience too. Keep trying! And try getting all that and TLC quality work from him or his crew. Let me know how that works out for you, m’kay?

I got paid for half a day last week, and the job took exactly as long as I told her it would. Installing 8 double blind pulls on 4 drawers takes a fair amount of measuring, taping, etc. And each pull needed 4 screws because of their strange shape. This is carpentry, and doing it right takes time. Last week she was thrilled with the result. This week she’s complaining that it took so much longer than she thought it would (although it took almost exactly as long as I said it would). Last week I had to start late to begin with because she didn’t want to get up early on a Saturday, then she forgot she had to take her car in to the shop for a brake job so that delayed things another 90 minutes. And then halfway through the afternoon she said she had things to do so I had to go. Surprise! Great. So what was 1 day’s work wound up eating 2 days, and took away my ability to schedule another custom for either day (had I had one). Thanks. Today she was annoyed that the molding was taking me longer than she thought it should. I told her cutting miters by hand was precision work and took time. I used about a teaspoon of putty for all those miters; the guy who had put the old molding in cut 4 of the miters backwards and just filled the gaps with handfuls of the stuff. Which looked like a stale shit sandwich of course, because he never bothered to sand anything down. Again, whatever. So instead of paying me the other half of the money today, she paid me $10 less than half of the half, and I’ll get the other half of the half Wednesday night. I guess she has trust issues.

I think I’m being too nice a guy, and too flexible. While everyone else everywhere loves the work I do for them, big jobs or small, these older single women who all work at the same law office - this is the 5th one of them I’ve done stuff for - all try to screw me over once the work is complete. Maybe I just shouldn’t take their references anymore. They can do their own repairs.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/06/2010 at 02:25 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (9) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - February 27, 2010

a hole boring post

You could read that as “a whole boring post” if you aren’t into a bit of basic tool porn.

I did a bit of handyman work for a woman this afternoon. Along with some drywall repairs and fitting a new door sweep, she wanted 8 hand carved walnut pulls attached to the oak drawers on some antique dresser she has.

I used the proper long shank, square drive, washer headed screws, and after a whole lot of measuring and calculation and layout with painter’s tape, I put them in, using a #8 tapered drill bit to make the pilot holes.

I’ve never used tapered bits before, and now I’m kicking myself in the somewhere for that lapse. These things are awesome. The drawer fronts were 7/8” clear oak. The bits went through them like they were butter. Smoothest thing I’ve ever seen. No tear out. No walking centers. The bits come to a nearly needle sharp point. Just set it on the wood and the weight of the drill is enough to make a centering mark. Zip. Done. Easiest thing ever. And they cut a tapered pilot hole, so you get more bite on the front threads of your screws than you would with a standard blunt tipped drill bit. And that matters when your screws are only going 1/4” into the next piece of wood, as was the case for me today with those pulls. They were an odd design, which required me to use 4 screws each so that they wouldn’t lift up when pulled. Got the job done, and it came out perfectly. Measure thrice, get the customer’s approval, drill once. I didn’t even need to float the screws in oversize holes. Nice work Drew. Here’s some money. I didn’t use the countersink part, but that looks like it works pretty well too.

Tapered bits probably suck for punching holes in sheet metal. Who cares? But they make super holes in wood. Fast, clean, and smooth. You can’t ask more than that, unless the job you’re doing calls for a Forstner bit. Which is a horse of an entirely different color.

Next tool porn purchase will be a handful of quality square drive bits. I’ve got a “universal” one with a stepped taper on it that tries to be both a #1 and #2 drive. It works, but it isn’t elegant. And it’s all glanked up from being used as a “rescue” driver when the heads tear out on garbage phillips head screws.

Oh, and it was a nice change using quality American screws for a change too. The washer head long shanks are made just for attaching knobs to drawers. With their self-boring points they probably don’t even need a pilot hole when you screw them into pine. Well made stuff. And they took a nice load of torque without ripping, stripping, or snapping. Which is more than I can say for the Chinese crap screws sold at the home centers. Go American, it’s worth it.

She’s going to have me back to do some electrical work, and probably to lay a tile floor in her kitchen. Good work leads to more work, and another good reference.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/27/2010 at 09:18 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2008 Domain Owner