Thursday - December 10, 2009

I am Joe The Plumber

Or at least I will be this weekend.

I have to repair an ADA compliant bathroom sink for one of my doctor customers, and he wants the little sink in the second exam room replace.

ADA compliant sinks are the long ones that are made for wheelchair access. It’s a great heavy piece of porcelain hung from a wall mounted bracket. To be fully compliant it needs to have an offset P trap underneath and levers on the faucet. His sink is sagging and is held up with cheap metal legs. That’s a no-no. Can’t get a wheelchair under there if there are legs in the way. And his has a regular P trap. Plus plain old knobs. Putting in faucet levers and the offset P trap is just a matter of finding the parts and screwing them on. Getting the sag out could be a different story entirely. These sinks are about 30” long. They stick out from the wall twice as far as regular sinks and weigh about 60 pounds. So that’s at least double the amount of torque applied to the wall mount bracket. And what happens when a big guy like me leans on the front of the sink? I might have to get not one new bracket but two, and double them up. I might have to go into the wall and replace the stud support with a double 2x8 or one made of oak. Instead, maybe I can find or fabricate a seriously heavy duty angle bracket to sneak under the front edge of the sink to support it from the sidewall. Less work for me, but it should be a good fix. Any way you look at it, it’s a pretty big job. $$$. Yay me!

The little sink in the second room is a total oddball. It’s about 10"x24", a shallow bowl enameled model with a low rise faucet mounted on the right end. Strangest little sink I’ve ever seen. It’s mounted to a 30” countertop back in a little nook. Dark, cramped, and hard to get to. And IIRC, the plumbing underneath is pretty strange too, with some kind of electric pump on it with a valve because that pipe is actually below grade. I’m not sure such a funny size sink is even made any more. It might be easier and cheaper to just replace the whole bit of countertop and put in a standard stainless bar sink with a medium gooseneck faucet. It’s never the easy jobs I get, like sorting out Peiper’s electric.

Both jobs together look like the better part of 2 days of labor to me. Cool, I’ll take it. You can hire me for $250 a day, and I’ll do whatever you want, as long as it’s mostly legal. Parts extra.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2009 at 12:57 PM   
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   Friday - November 13, 2009

Let us see now. How an we help police and spend money. Got it. Publish book on how to ride a bike.

Ok I know things can get pretty stupid here, but I’m not certain if they can get more idiotic and waste more txpayer money then this.
On second thought, yeah. They have come up with stuff somewhat dumber.  But this really does rank very high in the DOH awards list.
And if the mayor (who hasn’t read it yet) thinks it may have value, then he’s smoking smoking funny or maybe having just one glass too much.

A 93-page guide on how to ride a bicycle – including advice on the need to carry out a risk assessment before removing one’s helmet - has been drawn up for Britain’s police forces.

By Matthew Moore
13 Nov 2009

The Police Cycle Training Doctrine was drawn up by biking enthusiasts in forces across England and Wales.
The two-volume tome offers lengthy guidance to constables on skills that most children have mastered by the age of 12, such as how to maintain balance at corners.

It even reminds officers that they must not attempt to detain suspects while in the saddle – or “engaged with the cycle” in the words of its authors.
The Police Cycle Training Doctrine was drawn up by biking enthusiasts in forces across England and Wales and submitted for the approval of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), but its officials yesterday distanced themselves from the contents.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London and a passionate cyclist, led the chorus of derision, saying that while the guide’s advice was “very, very sound”, it did not represent value for money. Thousands of pounds were reportedly spent putting the full colour publication together.

“I am sure it is of great value, I haven’t seen it, but I think you can do this kind of thing much, much more cheaply,” Mr Johnson said.

The mayor has already proved himself a master of mobile crime fighting, dismounting from his bike to save a filmmaker from attack by a hooded gang in the capital earlier this month.
Officers from the police’s national working group for cycling training, which wrote the book, declined to comment. But independent bike safety experts said there was no need for police to devise their own basic training guide.
“I would like to remind Acpo that the national standard for cycle training covers all the basics of cycling skills and road sense,” said Greg Woodford of CTC, the national cyclists’ organisation.

“I’d recommend all police cyclists pass their level three [cycling test] and encourage Acpo to work alongside what has already been developed.”
Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group added: “This guide is an absurd waste of police time and taxpayers’ money. Police officers are perfectly capable of riding a bike.”

An Acpo spokesman insisted that the doctrine was never intended to become official policy, and would not be issued to rank-and-file officers.
“This work was neither requested nor drawn up by Acpo and we do not endorse it,” she said.
“It was put forward by a group of well-meaning police officers with an interest in this area. Acpo will not be taking it forward.”

Rules from the police cycle “doctrine”

Always wear padded shorts to ensure “in-saddle comfort”

Consume sufficient food and “adequate liquids” before setting off

Listen to instructions when cycling in formation. If your leader shouts “Move to double file”, move to double file

Undercover officers should carry out a “risk assessment” before removing their helmets

Take care to avoid the kerb during “deployment into a junction” - or turning the corner

LINK TO SOURCE

So then.  Whatcha think BMEWS?  These folks on to something? Or maybe some spare cash was found in the public kitty and it had to be spent?

Posted by peiper     on 11/13/2009 at 07:39 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Daily Life • Health and Safety • Stoopid-People • UK • work and the workplace •  
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   Saturday - October 31, 2009

Doing It Doggy Style

Busy day. I had a whole house window job, a regular sized home with 28 windows. It was unseasonably warm here today, but it was raining most of the day. So it was an inside cleaning job, aided by the Marvin windows they have that unhook easily from the frames and fold inwards. Nice. It’s actually faster to do double hung windows the regular way, outside first then the inside, but at least I stayed dry this way. It just takes a bit longer.

They were referred to me by the Cat Ladies, the two biddies down the road that I do odd jobs for. Thank goodness this client didn’t have a dozen cats and 5 stinky litter boxes like they do. No, she has dogs instead. Lots of dogs. Wall to wall dogs. She’s got an old, nearly blind Springer Spaniel, and half a dozen Welsh Corgis. She used to show them, and has a den full of ribbons and trophies. Oh, and they have one little rescue kitten who right now lives in a carrier. Poor kitteh. Probably psychologically damaged already.

I love dogs. Dogs are great. But while the spaniel is old, and slow, and rheumy, and sleeps a lot, the corgis are high energy animals. She kept 5 of them in a little room so they be out of my way, and the one running around was fairly mellow and quite friendly. Actually all the dogs were nice. But 7 dogs is a pack, and they act that way. So whenever I moved from room to room, put something down or did anything that made a small noise, they started barking. And when one starts the others chime in, and nobody wants to be the first to stop barking.

Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof.  Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! Woof. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark! meow?

Posted by Drew458     on 10/31/2009 at 07:49 PM   
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   Sunday - October 25, 2009

Sunday, my day of NOT rest

Morning cleaning job done. Minor repair in their bathroom, 10 minutes, one screw, no charge.

Grabbing a quick bite, then off to the afternoon cleaning job. Which will include more priming and painting in their bathroom, hanging another vent fan in the production area, and now ... I have to replace a shelf on one of the benches. With something that won’t rot or rust, but can still support the 80lb weight of the edger slop bucket. So I’m thinking pressure treated 2x6s or some 3/4” exterior plywood. Probably need some sturdy U-channel to support it with. Nuts and bolts. Looks like several hours of project. Maybe a sheet of Melanine to cover it with? Whatever I put in has to be “milspec plus” because the crew in that shop is brutal. They don’t treat anything with care or respect. Bunch a animals.

I have to start charging this guy for the time it takes me to figure out solutions and shop for the parts. Just billing him for parts purchased and the labor to put them in isn’t covering my effort.

So it looks like I’ll be down there for the better part of 8 hours instead of the 2 it usually takes me to spruce the place up.

And I WILL be delivering a bill tomorrow. I can’t front this guy hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. He will pay me, no problem. I just haven’t written up a bill yet since everything is in the works.

Otay, I’m off. Back to the grindstone.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/25/2009 at 12:03 PM   
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   Friday - October 16, 2009

There’s Always One

I just got a call from one of my window customers.

“Why didn’t you scrape off the paint splatters when you did my windows?”

I remember that job. It was a nice big house, about a thousand dollar job. I gave them the estimate. Silence. Weeks later they called me back and said they only wanted the outside of the upstairs done. In one day. That cut a $1000 job down to about $150. And no tip either I recall. And it was an hour’s drive across the state too. So no, you don’t get supercalifragilistic work for that price. You get clean windows, and that’s it.

You can take your car to the drive through car wash, or you can take it to a detailer. In the window cleaning business, I’m a detailer. You don’t get that level of work when you only pay for a drive through. But yeah, I can just give things a wash if that’s all you want.

So they’ll call back in the spring and have me back to do it my way, and pay for it. Actually, I’ll probably only charge them the same amount, but do better work. Besides, windows that I’ve cleaned less than a year ago just won’t be all that dirty. But I’ll leave a happy customer that way. That is, assuming I’m still in the window business at that point.

I don’t like taking shortcuts. But I don’t like feeling backed into a corner either. I really don’t charge much more than the guys who come to your house mostly sober, give things a quick swipe and take your money. So I’m already giving great value for the money, so stop (redacted politically incorrect expression) me down.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/16/2009 at 11:10 AM   
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   Thursday - October 15, 2009

End of the Season?

It was 33 here this morning, touched 40 for a half hour earlier, and it’s only 38 now. I think winter is setting in early. Which pretty much means it’s the end of the window cleaning season. So time to find some other line of work. Even with waterproof gloves and a heavy jacket, that’s getting a bit cold to be playing with water outside.

The first bathroom ventilator fan arrived today for my weekend employer. I’m going to hook it up here and see just how quiet 0.6 Sones really is. The fan is rated 150CFM, which means it will exchange the air in that bathroom in under 2 minutes. I’ve got a 290CFM model on order for the lab area, which is quite a bit bigger. It was only $25 more, and 1.2 Sones louder. 290CFM ought to pull the aromas of their acrylic grinding out of there just fine, in less than 10 minutes. My only concern is that the guy wants to save a couple of bucks, so there won’t be any ducting to the outside. Both fans will vent to the area above the dropped ceiling, which is about 10,000 cubic feet. It should work, although who knows if or where the aromas will leak out.

Ok, back to work.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/15/2009 at 03:17 PM   
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   Tuesday - October 06, 2009

Hard Work

Work was just awful today.

I did the windows for another one of these condos here. The lady was watching Charlie Rose on TV, and his guest was author, and fanatic leftist, Max Blumenthal. Horry Clap. The guy was on for 15 uninterrupted minutes and almost every word out of his mouth was a lie. What a total crock. Al Gore won the 2000 election. Bush was selected not elected. The Christian Right wants to execute doctors and eliminate old folks. The GOP has no ideas. McCain is a moderate Republican. Republicans overwhelmingly rejected Sarah Palin. And on and on and on. 10 years worth of tired old Push Button talking points dragged out and repeated for the 83rd millionth time. Plus how wonderful Obama is, and how he’s going to save us all, and take the country in the right direction finally. GAK.

Maxxy baby has a new book out, called “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party”, in which he “exposes” the Christian Right as intolerant haters who want to rule everyone and violently stamp out all forms of dissent or contrary opinion. It turns out that extremely large portions of Max’s book are just retellings of Frank Shaeffer’s book “Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back”. So much for originality and actual research.

As Mr. Shaeffer himself explains, for 18 paragraphs, in the review section at Amazon for Blumenthal’s book,

For me reading Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah is a look into a mirror. That might be because Blumenthal extensively interviewed me and drew rather heavily on my book “Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back” as a reference for his in-depth exposé of what has gone so very wrong with the Republican Party. He’s on my turf so I happen to know he’s telling the truth as its not been told before. But there’s more.

Republican Gomorrah is the first book that actually “gets” what’s happened to the Republican Party and in turn what the Republicans have done to our country. The usual Democratic Party and/or progressive “take” on the Republican Party is that it’s been taken over by a far right lunatic fringe of hate and hypocrisy, combining as it does, sexual and other scandals with moralistic finger wagging. But Blumenthal explains a far deeper pathology: it isn’t so much religion as the psychosis and sadomasochism of the losers now called “Republicans” that drives the party. And the “Christianity” that shapes so much “conservative” thinking now is anything but Christian. It’s a series of deranged personality cults.

Th e Religious Right/Republicans have perfected the method of capturing people in personal crisis and turning them into far right evangelical/far right foot soldiers. This explains a great deal that otherwise, to outsiders, seems almost inexplicable--the why and wherefore of “Deathers” “Birthers” et al. Blumanthal brilliantly sums up this pathology as:

“...a culture of personal crisis lurking behind the histrionics and expressions of social resentment. This culture is the mortar that bonds leaders and followers together.”

So we have one lefty encouraging another. Big whup. Give each other a hand. And a reach around.

Max Blumenthal is a jerk. Want more proof? Here’s a couple excerpts of his book, from over at the “fair and balanced” NPR site. Max is writing about his almost dangerous, amazingly bold foray into the lion’s den, about when he attended the 2008 GOP Convention:

From the Idaho delegation, I pushed through a gaggle of reporters and cameramen surrounding the Alaska delegation to meet some of Palin’s constituents. When I approached a young man, the only delegate from the state who appeared to be under the age of fifty, he snapped, “You’re not going to ask about Bristol, are you?” referring to Palin’s pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter, who sat nearby with her fiance, eighteen-year-old self-proclaimed “fuckin’ redneck” Levi Johnston. I asked about Palin’s support for laws banning abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger. “There’s no reason to kill a baby, whether you consider him unborn or born,” the delegate replied. Another delegate, a middle-aged woman, explained to me how her husband took their two daughters on “dates” to “talk about keeping themselves pure until marriage.” (Two days later, the same woman, dressed in a construction worker’s outfit like one of the Village People, bellowed on the convention floor in favor of offshore drilling: “Drill, baby, drill!")

This was a portrait of the Republican Party fully in the grip of its right wing: almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly evangelical, fixated on abortion, homosexuality, and abstinence education; resentful and angry; and unable to discuss how and why it had become this way. Noticeably absent from the convention were moderate Republicans. Senator Lincoln Chafee, legatee of the moderate Republican tradition in Rhode Island, was defeated in the 2006 midterms, and he was endorsing Obama.

Born in 1900 in Germany, Fromm descended from a long line of rabbis. After studying to be a rabbi himself, he switched to the law, sociology, and the new field of psychoanalysis. He joined the famed Frankfurt School for Social Research [ You watched Peiper’s video yesterday? Then you know that this means that FROMM WAS A COMMUNIST!! ] but fled the country after Hitler’s assumption of power, eventually making his way to New York. In 1941, Fromm published Escape from Freedom, a book illuminating the danger of rising authoritarian movements with penetrating psychoanalytical insight.

Writing after the Nazis had overrun Europe but before the entrance of the United States into World War II, Fromm warned, “there is no greater mistake and no graver danger than not to see that in our own society we are faced with the same phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere: the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual.” Those who could not endure the vertiginous new social, political, and personal freedoms of the modern age, those who craved “security and a feeling of belonging and of being rooted somewhere” might be susceptible to the siren song of fascism. For the fascist, the struggle for a utopian future was more than politics and even warit was an effort to attain salvation through selfmedication. [ and yet Blumenthal doesn’t see the slightest thing wrong with Obama and Obamabots. Hmm, willful disconnect perhaps?? ]

When radical extremists sought to cleanse society of sin and evil, what they really desired was the cleansing of their souls. Fromm’s understanding of the psychological character of authoritarianism was not only penetrating but also prophetic. He described how submission to the authority of a higher power to escape the complexities of personal freedom would lead not to order and harmony but ultimately to destructiveness. [ this sounds EXACTLY like the Left’s desire for the NANNY STATE. Max must be asleep at the wheel not to see this one! ] Movements that evangelized among the crisis-stricken and desperate, promising redemption through a holy crusade, ultimately assumed the dysfunctional characteristics of their followers. After sowing destruction all around it, Fromm predicted that such a movement would turn on itself. Dramatic self-immolation was the inevitable fate of movements composed of conflicted individuals who sought above all the destruction of their blemished selves.

“The function of an authoritarian ideology and practice can be compared to the function of neurotic symptoms,” Fromm wrote.

“Such symptoms result from unbearable psychological conditions and at the same time offer a solution that makes life possible. Yet they are not a solution that leads to happiness or growth of personality. They leave unchanged the conditions that necessitate the neurotic solution.”

I thought he was never going to shut up. I was hoping, really hoping, for a commercial break. Ha, not on Channel 13!  But I had work to do, so I kept my mouth shut and got done as quickly as I could.  It was awfully hard to do so.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/06/2009 at 02:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • work and the workplace •  
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   Sunday - October 04, 2009

Mr. Maintenance

That’s one of the jobs I have to do today for my regular Sunday customer. The vent fan they have in the lab bathroom gave up the ghost, and they want me to put in a new one. It shouldn’t be a big deal, as the ceiling there is suspended fiberglass panels underneath rebar trussing. So I’ve got all the clearance room I’ll ever need. And the wires and switches are already in, so it’s just a matter of going up on a ladder, getting the old one out, and hooking the new one up. Gosh, I might have to cut a new hole if the new fan has a bigger faceplate. Looks like a 90 minute job.

Now it’s down to picking the proper fan. They don’t need one with a light built in, and they don’t need one with a heater built in. And it’s a semi-industrial setting, so the fan noise level isn’t much of a concern. Price is a concern, but I know where to get stuff on the cheap, because I am the GoogleMeister.

So, what fan to pick?



If you read the typical Fix Up Your Bathroom web pages, they will tell you that a bathroom fan should be able to change the air at least 8 times an hour. How do you calculate how much fan you need with that? It’s pretty easy:

Length X Width X Height X 60 minutes in an hour
-------------------------------------------------------- = Number of Cubic Feet Per Minute needed
8 air changes per hour

Thus, if you had a 10 x 10 x 8 bathroom, you’d get 8 air changes per hour with a 54 CFM fan. The problem is, 8 changes per hour is 7 1/2 minutes per change. While this is probably fine for your home bathroom, and probably fine for clearing out the steam from your shower, you want a bit more than that in a workplace. Just in case your trip to the bathroom ... is, um, aromatic.

So, how to go about finding how much fan you need to de-stink the place quickly, but not so much fan that it sucks the paint off the walls? If you think that 3 minutes is a typical length of visit, then divide those 3 minutes into an hour and you see that what you really want is 20 air changes per hour, not the leisurely recommended 8. Recalculate the above example, and you’ll see you need a fan that can flow 133 CFM. Now realize that with ducting, fans don’t operate at maximum efficiency, so move to the next model up. That means you want to install a 150 CFM unit. With that amount of ventilation, by the time the employees are done washing and drying their hands, the room is almost fully aired out. And if they visit for longer than that, then no problem. You really want to keep the number of air changes above 12. But let’s not go crazy. 30 changes per hour is quite excessive, unless you have a whole queue of folks lined up to use the room every day. In which case it’s really nice.

Just remember that you have to let air in to pull air out; you may need to install an air inlet or trim 3/4” off the bottom of the door. If the door to floor gap is about an inch, you’re fine.

Gosh, but aren’t fans that powerful both noisy and expensive? In the past they were, but no longer. Fans are getting better every year. Panasonic has a full line of high volume, super quiet fans that are very competitively priced. Their Whisper Ceiling fans cost much less than a similar CFM model by Brone, run much quieter, and last nearly forever. And they’re all Energy Star rated, pulling only 31 watts or less. Plus, if you shop around you can get one for nearly half price.

And quiet these days is defined by the “Sones” rating. Old fans ran at 3 - 5 Sones or more. Conversation is around 2 Sones. A couple years ago “quiet” fans were at 1.0 - 1.5. Today, a really quiet fan runs at 0.5 Sones, and if you use fiberglass wrapped flexible ducting (Air King makes this stuff) it cuts the noise even more. 0.5 Sones is so quiet you have to almost strain to hear it.

Another way to figure things is to just calculate the number of air changes per hour:

CFM rating of fan X 60
-------------------------- = number of air changes per hour
Length X Width X Height

So if you had a 6 foot wide X 12 foot long X 8 foot tall bathroom, then a 150CFM fan would give you ... 15.6 air changes per hour; once every 3 minutes and 50 seconds. Good enough.

The downside to these high powered fans is that the bigger ones use 6” ducting. And fiberglass insulated 6” ducting is actually a bit over 8” in diameter. So you aren’t going to fit these things in a downstairs bathroom when the upstairs is sitting on 2x6 joists. You have to find a low clearance fan that uses 4” duct. No worries, Panasonic has them too. This is their WhisperFit line, in which the same quiet fan is given a smaller lower housing. You’ll either get less airflow, or a bit more noise, depending on which model you want. But even 1.5 Sones is still very quiet.

And for you California folks, there is a WhisperGreen line that meets the new Title 24 specification. As an added advantage, these fans can sense the backpressure in your ducting, and will automatically adjust the motor speed so that they output the rated level of air. WhisperGreen appears to be the WhisperFit line, with this added variable speed feature. They’re Energy Star rated too, of course.

No, this isn’t a push for Panasonic products. Broan is a big player in the fan market, along with Air King, NuTone, and several others. And they all have a full line of products. What I’m pointing out here is that the fans available today are much more powerful, efficient, quiet, and cost effective than that 20 year old monster you might have in your bathroom. So it might be time to think about putting in a newer, better model.

I was able to locate the Panasonic FV-15VQ4 fan, a 150CFM model that uses only 31 watts and is 0.6 Sones quiet, at WAMhomecenter.com for only $124, with free shipping. I’ve seen this same fan being sold for $299 plus shipping. This is about the strongest fan you can find that runs at the dead quiet noise level. There are fans much more potent, but most of them are in the 3.0 Sones level, which is getting kind of noisy. A 25 foot run of Air King fiberglass insulated flexible ducting is about $30. FanTech sells a nearly identical product for just a little more. I was able to find a generic one, still UL listed, for just $17.75 ($26 delivered) at ComfortGurus.com.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/04/2009 at 11:56 AM   
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   Wednesday - September 30, 2009

Time To Run An Ad

ring! ring! ring!

Hello?

Hi Drew, this is Mrs. G. Nancy gave me your number. Can you do my windows?

Ok, I’ll be right over.

What, you can do them right now? Today?

Sure, if you’re going to be around, why not?

Great! I’ll see you in 10 minutes!



I love doing the windows on the condos here. It’s not at all hard, none of them are more than 2 minutes away, and the pay is actually almost double what I get per hour to do a big house. $90, including a nice tip. 5 sliders, a storm door, and a french paned door. No screens, no ladder work. And I was done in just over 2 1/2 hours, which includes doing 2 of them twice cuz they were super grubby. I wasn’t doing anything today anyway. And the customer is overjoyed with my work. Excellent.

I think it’s high time I ran ads in the condo association paper. And in the condo park on the other side of town. And the condo park the next town over. It’s easy money, and it’s fast money. No, it isn’t big money, but there are lots of condos around here ... probably 800 units altogether. And everybody knows somebody, or has a relative with a house in the area ... 10-15 of these a week would be nice.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/30/2009 at 04:07 PM   
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   Tuesday - September 22, 2009

Done, finally

Seven straight days of work to do that house, and I’m done. Finally. No tip, but they paid me the full price, even though I didn’t clean 7 of the lamps and 2 of the skylights. Not because I couldn’t have, but because the homeowner asked me not to.

And they say they want me back next year. We’ll see if they actually call. And if I’m still in that line of work. Because I need to earn like this every single week, and it’s just not happening. I give folks a fair price, then I work really hard for them and do a superb job that they’re all so in love with. Yet nobody ever calls me back a year later. Sure, I get some referrals, and that’s great. But I need a client base I can mostly depend on. And I don’t seem to be making on. Overall I’d make more money being a receptionist at some doctor’s office, working full time.

Ok, into the shower. The last part of this job was cleaning the gutters, which were so mucked up they had compost in the bottom and small trees growing out the top. And a fair amount of that mess is all over me. Time for a power shower.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/22/2009 at 04:49 PM   
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   Monday - September 21, 2009

“Everyone knows coyotes have broadband, right? Acme® ISP” (Drew)

everyone knows coyotes have broadband, right? Acme® ISP

Reminds me of an old, a very old routine by Burns and Allen. circa 1930’s and again on TV early days.
Gracie upset over missing dog. George suggests she put an add in the lost and found and Gracie says, “Don’t be silly George. Dogs can’t read.”
George turns to camera. 

I wouldn’t have started Monday off exactly this way but couldn’t resist after reading Drews post.
Note to Drew.  You need to join a union as I see by comments of hard work performed on behalf of capitalist Rich Lady, she is taking unfair advantage of working class proletariat but keep chin up comrade as come the revolution we all drink Borscht. 

OH ... Vital info for conservatives.
Apparently we’ve all been misinformed re. Obama.  Turns out he’s one of us in spite of health care thing. Yeah really.

Would I lie? All I know is what I read in the paper and in the paper Obama says, “I’m a Conservative.”

The article goes on to explain that European Cons talk to him and say they do not understand why Americans are calling him a commie or a socialist as, by their standards, Obama is a Conservative.

which says something doesn’t it, about cons. over here.

Posted by peiper     on 09/21/2009 at 02:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging • Humor • work and the workplace •  
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   Wednesday - September 16, 2009

still at it

On the job site from 7:15am to 5:15pm. I was going to stay later but I ran out of clean dry rags.

Things I don’t want to here:

So, Mrs. Rich Lady, how long have you lived here?

“Oh, almost 5 years now.”

When was the last time you had the windows done?

“Oh, we’ve never had them done before. We had so many other projects going, we figured we’d just wait. But I just couldn’t stand them anymore.”

So, you’ve been cleaning them yourselves?

“No, we never bothered. We’ve just been so busy!”

No wonder this job is going slow. 5 plus years of dirt, spider webs, dead bugs, sawdust from the cedar shake roof, paint overspray, barbeque smoke, pollution, etc. But I’ve said it before, nobody is going to pay me for a regularly done job. They only call me in when it’s time for desperate measures.

So I got 30 out of 48 windows on the downstairs done today on the outside. I had to break down and go to a 3 bucket system, prewash, wash, and rinse. It’s going slow, but the results are great. And I am learning to hate privet hedge. People grow these things, and keep them trimmed so they stay below the windows. But they don’t think past that, and let the bush grow within a couple inches of the house, and let it grow 4-7 feet thick at the same time. So it’s a tough obstacle to work around. Or over. Or something. Yeah, sure, get out the poles, which I did. But it doesn’t do as good a job. So I fought my way behind the bushes and did things right, and now I’m all scratched up. And I gashed the back of my thumb too. I reached into a bucket to grab a tool, and ran up against the window scraper. That’s a squeegee-like tool that holds a 6” long double sided Sheffield razor blade. Sharp. Mucho sharp. And “waterproof” Band-Aids aren’t. But they are when they get an overwrap of duct tape! I think I’ll just leave that on for a while.

Ok, running laundry now. An entire washload of no lint huck rags and microfiber cloths. I tried the bargain ones this time around. They are the same kind you’d get in the dollar store. Not bad, but no where near as good as the imported ones from Germany.

Must remember to take the 8 foot stepladder tomorrow. Which means I’ll have to get up even earlier, so I defrost breakfast now, have another glass of glug, put stuff in the dryer, and be off to bed. By 8:30. Gak. This crack of dawn stuff sucks!

Posted by Drew458     on 09/16/2009 at 06:08 PM   
Filed Under: • work and the workplace •  
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   Monday - September 14, 2009

working working working

I started the 100-window house job today. I’ll be there all week. Worked my tail off all day long, and didn’t clean a single window.

Which was good, as they’re having the pavers in the driveway replaced, and extending the driveway so it’s a full double entrance extended semi-circle design. So the landscapers were hard at it with the bulldozer, backhoe, and skid loader, kicking up lots of dust.

No, today I took down screens. And then washed them. Dirty icky things. I don’t like screens. But they are dirt magnets. Give them a good dry brushing, then hose them down, then use your porcupine scrubber on both sides with a strong detergent solution, then rinse well. And they look good as new.

And the pool guys were there closing up the pool for the season. Beats me what they do, but they managed to be very noisy about it. The third crew of guys putting in the pipes so that the tennis court can have it’s own water fountain were way on the other side of the property, so they were no bother to me. Tennis court, in ground pool with 2 story cabana, 150 yard long semi-circular driveway done in new pavers because the old ones didn’t quite match the brick color of the house ... yeah, poverty sucks, don’t it? I’m lovin’ it; these are the people who can afford to hire me!

But jeeez, I spent all day doing screens!! Soggy!

Mrs. Rich Lady is adorable. Yum. And such a sweetie. If she’s 35 then I’m Michelle Obama. I think she ought to be renamed Perky Applebottom. Back to work Drew, focus!

Yeah, and my feet hurt. But I’m almost dry now ... and crap, I think I got a bit sunburned today. Better remember the hat for tomorrow.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/14/2009 at 06:50 PM   
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Boeing, Boeing, Gone

Unions had their place, once upon a time. But with all the safety rules today, and OSHA, and all that government regulation, protecting the workers physically is no longer necessary. And with Equal Opportunity, and how any woman or minority has a very easy path to checking out if their company is doing Equal Pay for Equal Work for those Equally Qualified, unions are no longer necessary to protect the earning potential of the workers.

I am especially against national unions. I belonged to the UFCW for 13 years. I was a shop steward. I went to the contract meetings. I did everything I could for the union. And the one and only time I needed their help, they let me down. I was a superb retail employee, and got nothing for it, other than the same 25¢ per hour every 6 months just like everybody else. So screw them all. Big unions are corrupt, period. If you have any skills at all, then a union holds you back. And now it looks like Boeing might have figured that out.

h/t to Michelle Malkin, where all the interesting news stories wind up.

Boeing Co. employees vote to disband union

Boeing Co. workers in North Charleston voted overwhelmingly to disband their union in a move that could give the region an edge in landing an aircraft plant the company is looking to build.

Of the 267 ballots cast, 199 were in favor of decertifying the election that made them members of the International Association of Machinists. The company was pleased; the union was disappointed.

The local plant makes rear fuselage sections for Boeing’s 787, a new fast-selling lightweight jet that has been delayed by snags with suppliers and an eight-week strike last year by the IAM.

Boeing has said it would consider North Charleston and its manufacturing hub outside Seattle, among other sites, for a new 787 assembly plant. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

One down, 500 to go. Boeing’s manufacturing employees are highly skilled labor. “Joonion? We doan need no steenkin joonion!” Adios.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/14/2009 at 06:09 PM   
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