Month: August 2013

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Sharp Fire Day 3 (What part of this don’t you understand?)

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Yes we’re evacuated.

Yes it’s inconvenient and a little uncomfortable, if for no other reason than our routine has been completely disrupted.

BUT…  and this is important.

It is far better for me to be here.

Not because I’m scared but because I’m out of the way!

Narrow roads, unpredictable fire, lots of equipment, lots of firemen, the very real potential for chaotic and potentially dangerous retreat where second of delay can cost lives.

So the Firefighters correctly asked us to evacuate. They very patiently explained their reasoning to people who didn’t get it,  and yet…

There were dumbasses who insisted on not leaving when they’re asked to do so. I get it, they wanted to stay to protect their homes if possible.

If I didn’t have responsibility for the dog, I might have been one of those dumbasses. Of course… The key would have been in the ignition of the car, the car nose out in the driveway and the basics would have been packed in the back of the car.

Worse yet are the dumbasses who insist on walking into an evacuated area.

Folks that don’t leave are, at least Identifiable because they’re going to be hunkered down in their houses. If things go bad the Firefighters can make sure they can take those folks with them.

But what about the people that walk in?

Are these people thinking at all? 

Many of them don’t belong or live in the area,  and don’t know what they’re walking into.

They’re placing yet another strain on the Police & Firefighters. Yes, another strain… How do the police know you’re not up to no good?

The Police and Firefighters are busting their asses to make sure that the property is protected from both the fire and from opportunistic scumbags.

The presence of people walking in and out of the evacuation area makes the jobs of the Firefighters and Police much more difficult than it needs to be.

These guys, have to keep doing head-counts to keep track of the number of folks coming in & out. And with ecah new body they see, its another person they’re responsible for.

Yes dumbasses…  

The Firefighters and Police primary duty is to protect human life, then structures & property. (Yep even idiots who by all that’s Holy should have offed themselves years ago and earned a Darwin Award in the process)

Your presence in the area makes them responsible for you.

Honestly I’d rather have the Firemen concentrating on putting the fire out instead of counting or trying to control idiots. 

But then again, I’m funny that way. I’d rather not lose my home again. 

If the wind changes and the fire starts moving fast toward them what are those people on foot going to do?

Ask for the cops to give them a ride out? Hop on the firetrucks and hope theres enough room?

I’d like to see the police give them a ride out of the area… to the local jail. Charge them with insufferable stupidity and hold them for 10 days. But that’s me…

Should the wind change, causing the firefighters have to fall back… Does it ever occur to these idiots, that a Firefighter or Police officer may lose their life trying to find or protect their moronic asses? 

Of course not…

Nope! All these people think about is their own selfish desires and self importance.

So, for the sake of the morons in the crowd.

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Fire has big red things climbing trees and crawling on bushes

Smoke from fire hard to breath its bad

Firefighters make fire go away

When Fireman tells you to go away… Do it!  

Go find someone else to annoy perhaps you can go chat up someone in the media I’m sure one of them would love to hear your inane driveling about big fire, lots of smoke, and that you were scared.

The media won’t even bother to ask if you’re a resident or why you crossed an evacuation line in the first place.

One last thing… we pretty much all agree that the Main Stream Media are a bunch of idiots… So since THEY are out of the evacuation areas what does that say about those folks that cross evacuation lines on foot?

Think about it.

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Why I turn down gracious offers to stay with friends during evacuations

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After sleeping for 10+ hours I feel a little more like normal.

The Dog slept soundly and is more like his normal self this morning.

We’re still evacuated it doesn’t look like that’s going to change today. It might but I’m thinking more likely I’ll be here at the hotel until tomorrow.

I’m good with it.

Friends have offered shelter and I am very grateful for those offers.

We’ve not taken them up on their unbelievably generous offers for a couple reasons.

1) We hate to impose…

Yes I know friends say it’s not an imposition and they mean it. But think about it, It’s one thing to have guests stay for the weekend or a defined time and you can deal with that. In this case, I can’t tell anyone when I’ll be leaving. They can’t make plans for their weekend or possibly well into next week for that matter.

2) We have a large dog…

Simple Black And White Modern Living Room Ideas By Tumidei

Believe me 85 pounds of curious happy go lucky retriever is not something you invite into your home lightly.

The dog is very well behaved. He likes cats, he likes children, and generally he will respond to command unless he’s wound himself up to the point of needing to hear me tell him he’s a bad dog.

Think about this,  if your house isn’t childproofed it’s surely not retriever proofed.

All those expensive hand blown, one of a kind glass trinkets artfully arranged on a shelf 5 inches off the ground?

GONE! in one swipe of happy puppy tail.

That bookshelf with magazines and expensive coffee table books casually arranged to invite someone to read them? HAHAHAAHA that shelf is cleared and nicely dusted by a hairy dog trying to sniff the squirrel he can see through the window behind the shelf.

When we decline your gracious invitation, It’s nothing personal my friends. You don’t have a dog in your house for a reason… You like your lives to have some order and you prefer to be able to display your art in a manner around your home that is appealing to you.

This is as it should be, and I appreciate from the bottom of my heart your willingness to open your home to us…

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But I’ve been in your homes and I look at the beauty, and picture a large dog, no matter how well behaved in the middle of your place, and I shudder.

Believe me a hotel room is cheaper and is going to do less damage to our relationship.

Even those of my friends who have pets.

Think about this… My dog likes cats… he wants to play with them and often they don’t want to play with him. This results in the potential for chases, usually ending in crashing crockery.

Those of you who have dogs. You know that some dogs just don’t get along with other dogs. My dog is generally sweet but every once in a while he encounters another dog that says “your momma”.

This ends with me and the owner of the other dog having our shoulders yanked out of the socket because the two dogs have decided to take care of business and it’s all we can do to restrain them.

Imagine for a moment how that might play out if my dog is invading your dogs space…

If we stay then it’s going to be all about marching one dog outside while the other is inside, Then changing the guard 4 or 5 hours later. Your dog deserves not having their routine disrupted.

So unless my dog and your dog have met before and not had any issues I’m going to decline your invitation.

You may think this is all about the dog…

Well, yes and no.

It’s really about me. If I’m having to worry about your house being trashed accidentally, or our dogs fighting, or my dog chasing your cat out of the house…

I’m not going to be able to rest or get much of anything done. It’s really about my ability to tell the dog “Go lay down” and have him do that so he can rest too.

Being evacuated is stressful for a human, imagine what it’s like for a dog who doesn’t really understand what is going on or why.

The dog is part of my family too, so yes I guess a lot of it is about the dog. However a lot of it is about my friendships.

So don’t be offended when I turn you down.

It’s that I value our friendship more than the trivial cost of a hotel room.

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Sharp Fire Day 2

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As of 8 am no homes have been destroyed. 

My Alarm system is still responding to commands and reporting status. So that is good news, it means that my house is still there. 

We have only 5% containment at this time. 

The Firefighters have been pounding the fire with air drops all night but the area that is burning hasn’t been burned for a very long time.

Here’s a photo of the first hint that there was a problem.

It doesn’t look like much does it?

Within just a few hours the scene look like the next photo.

The fire started coming down the face of the hill toward the line of homes 2 streets above my street.

That’s when the fire department told us to leave.

It make sense because the streets are narrow and if the fire were to advance toward the houses suddenly, there would be pandemonium as the residents and the firefighters tried to get out of the way.

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This way, if the firefighters have to bail out, at least all they have to worry about is getting themselves and other people who have appropriate training instead of trying to make sure that a bunch of panicky civilians too.

In my neighborhood only one person didn’t evacuate. It was his right but probably not exactly the smartest move anyone ever made.

We’ve evacuated to a very local hotel. The dog is sprawled on the tile floor and is finally calming down.

Between Kitties, chickens and his whole world being turned upside down for the second time in less than a month he’s a little stressed. I’m thinking we’re going to just hang here with the A/C running and just relax.

You have to love the fact that the dog has ice floating in his water. Can you say spoiled puppy?

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You know, Sometimes I shouldn’t complain…

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I guess I shouldn’t complain about interruptions…

Today I’m working, getting some writing done, I’m inside, not really paying much attention. Then I catch a whiff of smoke.

A moment later I hear trucks, you know… the heavy diesel truck engines.

Then all hell breaks loose!

Yes, there is a fire and I’m evacuated.

This fire started in the canyon where I often hike. There is NO source of ignition in that little box canyon.

So I’m suspecting that the fire was started due to human stupidity.

So I’m at a friends house tonight and tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do for the longer term. Maybe if we’re lucky the firefighters will have knocked this down.

God knows the firefighting response was amazing!

I swear, the trucks were so thick the road above my place looked like a firefighting convention. The hotshot crews were walking up the hill straight into the smoke and later I could hear the distinctive sound of chainsaws.

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Water dropping helicopters and even a big jet of some kind were flying over dropping all kinds of water or fire retardant chemicals.

I am really impressed with the fire people.

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I hope the people that started this get caught and get their butts kicked.

Here are some of photos from today.

I’m not going to be able to upload until I hit a public WiFi site.

Hopefully that WiFi will be one of my own.

 

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Some days… Or Weeks I just can’t catch a break

This has been one of those weeks. There will be a few blogs I think over the next days, possibly hours but don’t hold your breath… This week has been a week of interruptions. Mind you any one of these interruptions is a minor event but the frequency and wild differences have added up to it being Wednesday as I started this blog… and in all likelihood the blog wont be posted until Thursday.

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Today I tried to remount a blind in my front window. 

This blind broke on Thursday last week. It was dropped off on Friday morning to be restrung It was picked up Monday and I tried to put it back up today. Well I succeeded in putting the blind back up.

This task was not as simple as you might think.

You’d be perfectly justified in thinking “what’s the problem you just snap it back into the hangers and that’s it.“

Well you don’t live in my world. 

In my world you’d experience a scenario more like the tale of woe below.

I found that there was no way get the blind back in the window. The window has over time become trapezoidal in not one but two dimensions. Then I noticed during the windows transformation from a rectangle to trapezoid, all kinds of cracks have appeared in the drywall.

During these discoveries I wonder what’s going on. So I measure the blind then I measured the framing around the window, then I measured the window itself and found that the blind is about 3/4″ longer than the window. That would work just fine if the window opening wasn’t a trapezoid that was narrower at the top than at the bottom.

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I reconfirmed several times that the blind which had been returned to me was in fact the correct blind. Standing there screwdriver in hand I sigh.

The recognition that this is in fact my lot in life I tromp downstairs for the Dremel  

I spend the next hour & 1/2 carefully reshaping the endcaps shaving off thin bits of the plastic so that I can hopefully shove the thing back in the window. Finally, when the plastic endcaps are thinner than tissue paper and the unit still won’t fit in the window I start thinking of alternative avenues to my goal.

This shouldn’t be this hard, the blind had fit in the window previously and it sure as hell didn’t grow while it was at the manufacturer being repaired.

I’ve noticed that the blind will easily fit in the window opening that is nearest the room, and that it only starts to bind up when you get within 2 inches of the already mounted brackets.

I sigh… slump shouldered admitting defeat. 

I tromp down stairs and bring up the big tool box and the DeWalt.

The new plan is to move the brackets closer to the room side of the window opening. The DeWalt unscrews the first bracket from the window with ease.

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Beneath the bracket is the mess that the original “Installer” created. Pilot holes are a good thing, apparently the installer had never heard about pilot holes…

Tromping back down stairs to get the BIG CAN of spackle.

While I’m waiting for the spackle to dry I’m measuring and marking the new mounting spots. The DeWalt drills a nice clean pilot hole, then dies half way through driving the screw into the header. No problem, I grab the spare battery pack…

It’s dead too!

Sigh… (I’m starting to sound like Kif Kroker from Futurama)

I’m hungry. I look at the clock and … CRAP! It’s afternoon! Fine! Battery pack in the charger, Lunch on the counter. Then while I’m waiting for the DeWalt to be usable again, I’m cleaning and spackling all the cracks in the drywall around the window.

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What the hell? I’ll vacuum and watch an episode of The X Files.

I realize I’ve been screwing around with this whole blind thing for about 4 hours and not getting anything that I needed to do, done. Little things like oh I don’t know… looking for a job perhaps?

Battery pack fully charged, I pop it in the DeWalt and drop the second one in the charger.

First bracket tightened, I move on to the second one. This time the screw will require a drywall anchor. For some reason the pilot hole completely misses wood. I drill a bigger hole and push the anchor into the drywall. 

This anchor is my preferred type because it’s threaded and in general does less damage to the drywall as you’re mounting it and it also stays put very well because it’s not an expansion type anchor.

I begin slowly screwing it into the drywall and then there’s a “crack”, followed by the anchor disintegrating and creating a major hole in the drywall.

Oh! Guess what? I found the header above the window. 

The anchor bound against the header and shattered. Lovely! My only option is to create an even bigger hole to drill the remains of the anchor out of the hole and then I’ll use another type of anchor. Why? You ask. 

Well the problem is obvious after I drill the destroyed anchor out of the window. The position for this mounting bracket has the screws coming up in a seam between two 2x4s that make up the header. Oh hell now why would the builder not use a solid 2×4, its simple… the builder was a fucker interested in ripping me and the insurance company off in as many ways as possible during the rebuild.

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The fucker succeeded, he knew he was closing his company and retiring as he was building my home. The only justice is that apparently right after his retirement his health took a turn for the worse. I’ve heard that retirement in some cases isn’t a good thing. Apparently getting up and going to work every day, plus the attendant moving around tends to keep you healthy. This guy went home and sat on his ass, I don’t know whats’ happened to him since I found out that my home warranty was essentially toilet paper.

I pull out a very nice plastic butterfly anchor (These are freakin great but tough to find sometimes and they can be pricy) Insert it in the very large hole, pack some spackle around it then mount the bracket. That anchor is never coming out of the drywall I pray to god I’ll never have to deal with it again. I know that I will at some point in the future be cursing myself for doing what I just did.

Maybe I’ll have sold the house and moved to Costa Rica by then… (Not holding my breath)

The third bracket mounts smoothly. Hey, I’m going to finish this “Simple” home project before sundown yippeee!

I snap the blind into the newly mounted brackets, It’s still a little tight and without the sculpting and shaving I did on the endcaps it still wouldn’t fit But it’s up there and it’s solid. Briefly I think with my luck this bitch will have lost it’s programming but I’ve been assured that will not be the case…

I step back to admire the fill and texture work I did around the window. 

Yeah! It was a pain in the ass but totally worth it. The blind and the window look good and I’m enjoying the feeling of satisfaction at a job done.

I grab the remote for the blinds, select the channel that the blind is assigned to & push the down button.

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… Absolutely nothing happens

ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

The blind has lost it’s programming…

This means that either the motor has been damaged or the programming was simply flushed. Either way I’m going to have to take the dam thing down again.

I leave it where it is, 

Walk across the room, pour myself a whiskey and move into fukitall mode.

I’ll deal with it tomorrow, I’ve got a meeting to attend and I need a shower… After I finish my drink…