Month: March 2014

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It’s past time to go home

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Things that have gone untended this past month at home are starting to need attention. 

Most recent is the Alarm System.

Don’t get me wrong, I can handle a ton of this stuff over the phone. Which is what I’m doing now, albeit I’m in a hold queue.

Something has apparently gone wrong with the cellular radio in the control panel. First it was just a minor inconvenience. Our ability to remotely arm & disarm the system wasn’t working. No big deal, the other half just armed and disarmed with the panel code. 

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I called ADT and after speaking to a little lady who had no idea what she was talking about when she told me that the device in my house was connected to the internet via my router…

It isn’t, for that to happen ADT would have to know my network password. When  confronted with that bit of information, she claimed that ADT had installed their own router in my house. Again, incorrect since the only hardline internet coming into my house is under my control. Therefore an ADT installed router wouldn’t do them any good since it again wouldn’t be connected to the internet. 

When I pointed out that the panel wasn’t even connected to my telephone line, she transferred me to the next tech in their hierarchy who did actually know something about the system.

He tried to reset the alarm system remotely but the system refused all commands. 

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The tech suggested that we unplug the adapter, and then pull the backup batteries out of the machine to reset it.

Had I been home I’d have done that but I didn’t want the other half attempting this maneuver due to inexperience with very compact circuits in a confined enclosure. 

It was at some point in this exercise that we discovered the transformer that runs the panel is screwed into the outlet with a square bit screw.

No, it couldn’t be phillips, flathead, hex or torx it had to be the ONE screw head type I don’t have a driver for. My cunning plan was to unplug the unit from the wall and then let the batteries die over the course of 24 hours. It was my hope that at that point we could plug the adapter back in and effectively reset the device. 

My cunning plan was thwarted by a damn screwhead.

This led to setting up an appointment for Thursday to have a repair person come to take a look at the machine.

Then at 3 am on Saturday, the other shoe dropped. In this case the “shoe” was the last leg of the radio communications gave up the ghost.

No big deal you’d think… 

Yeah, except that the panel started beeping constantly reporting that the long range radio failed. It did this intermittently until the other half who’d not been able to get any sleep called me and asked me to make it all stop!

I get back on the phone to ADT and ask the little lady who answers the phone how to make the panel shut up. “Enter the code and press off,” she says.

“We’ve done that and have been doing that since 3 am, every 30 minutes the alert starts beeping again. Can we shut it up permanently?”

“I don’t know how to do that sir,” she said.

I’m thinking “you’ve got to be kidding me!” 

This is the first time one of these systems has failed? REALLY? The ADT people don’t know how to control it? Worse is that the other half consulted the manual seeking answers. Much as Homer Simpson concluded about the bible there were no answers to be found in the alarm system manual even with an index!

The other half managed to shut the alerts off, by accident! It was simple but the ADT people didn’t seem to know how.

Since we had a hard failure, I asked to get someone out to repair the system right now!

Nope! no can do…

I called ADT again this morning and asked for a supervisor, this is insane.

I asked the supervisor the following questions and got little in the way of reasonable answers.

1) Why was there no call when you completely lost communication with our system? It seems that should have raised some eyebrows somewhere in a monitoring facility.

2) A hard failure trumps installs and/or minor repairs, why are we still looking at a Thursday, earliest repair visit?

3) What were the ADT people thinking, effectively asking unskilled labor to open a control panel and start fiddling with it’s connections? Not to mention that the installer had made it impossible to unplug the transformer if we needed to.

If that’s what’s required then clearly a tech should have been rolling to the house right at that moment.

(We now own a nice shiny set of square drivers, but at this point I want to leave the system in failure mode so they can actually fix something!)

4) Clearly the folks on the phones at ADT have no idea what their machines do or are capable of. Those first line phone people need a lot more training.

5) Why am I paying for 24/7 monitoring?

None of these questions or statements were answered or challenged. 

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We will be chatting with the insurance agent, after all they give us a discount on our policy for having a monitored security system.

I wonder how they’d react to learning that the monitoring may not be 24/7 as advertised?

All this has led me to wonder if there’s another vendor of alarm services that might be better.

For example…

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Beautiful Sunday

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Got laundry going, had my morning coffee outside listening to the birds and critters in the trees.

I was reading the paper on my iPad and generally at peace.

I made a new friend while I was sitting there.

A little treefrog decided he wanted some company or that I needed company, and jumped on my leg.

He sat there for a long time looking around then hopped down to go on about his business. 

This morning is was lightly breezy, as the afternoon has progressed it’s clouding up. There’s a storm coming later tonight, it will probably hang around all day tomorrow. This is FL so its “normal” and I admit that I do like regular rain.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see some sites as I exit FL. I’m collecting my energy for the drive home and checking out different routes. I want to see places I haven’t’ seen before, so I’m actually looking forward to the long drive home.

I hightailed it to get here, but going home I’m going to take a little time to test the hayfever meds!.

Hope you all had a great Sunday.

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My work is done

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I suppose all families are dysfunctional in some way.

As our parents age I guess that their good points and bad points are accentuated.

In the case of my parents at least, this is true. 

I’ve been here a month, I’ve cleaned, fixed, moved stuff and made suggestions for the longer term fixes that should be made by professionals.

My stepdad was unfortunately the one who answered a phone call about repairing the wiring and adding a timer for the pool pump. He talked for about 5 minutes then hung up the phone. (I couldn’t help but flash on myself at 15 expecting a call from friends inviting me to a concert and knowing the call came, my stepdad intercepted it then lied to my face. I knew he was lying because he said you don’t need to go to a concert, as he was telling me there’d been no call for me.)

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I asked him what the estimate on the timer and replacement of bad wiring was, his response “There is no Estimate!”

Ahhh you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. You can however drown ‘em in that same pool of water!

The problem here is denial. 

Neither of my parents are in good health, and while they’re not that old, they are both overweight and haven’t taken care of themselves particularly well through the years.

You could open a well stocked pharmacy with all the prescriptions on the counter tops.

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Neither of them can keep up with this house anymore. My stepdad thinks he’s handy, but he’s not. When it comes to things like tools, being able to build something, or repair anything he’s all but useless. 

Case in point. This is what happens when a breaker blows.

Clearly the reason the exterior outlet isn’t working is because there’s something wrong with the wiring! Obviously it must be torn out and sorted, then left hanging out of the conduit! Yeah that will make it work better!

I have to wait for the parents to be gone when I try to fix this one. I’m going to have to turn off breakers and that would interrupt the incessant babbling of the TV.  

That’s not too big a deal but the stepdad would what to know what I’m doing and why. Then he’ll be yelling and swearing; “I’ve been meaning to get back to that!” (I personally know these wires have been like this for 2 years.)

I’ve done what I can, much of it invisible. Many of the repairs I’ve made are things that will escape their notice, except that things will simply work. 

NewImageNeither of them want to admit that they’re losing the battle against entropy.

None of us ever wants to admit that. But there comes a time when you have to simply accept what’s happening and adapt.

I’ve made the suggestion that they sell this place and move to something more manageable. That suggestion went over like a lead ballon.

My sister and I have made the suggestion that they get a housekeeper. You’d have thought we killed the cat.

Their refusal to admit what’s happening, isn’t all that unusual, but they refuse to see that their quality of life is degrading or that all it takes is a phone call to a cleaning firm, or a repair firm to reverse the tide.

My mom is closer to accepting this reality than my stepdad.

For him it’s about ego and pride (even though he was NEVER good at household maintenance. He’s an academic with tons of book knowledge and zero common sense.

It’s funny, all his brothers got the “Builder Gene” One is a contractor, the other is a former contractor, the third is, or was a sign painter / builder.

One of my grandfathers was a “Master Carpenter”. My genetic dad was good a fixing and building stuff. I spent a summer visit with him helping to build a house. It was fun and he was great at giving instructions that even as a kid I could follow without hesitation.

I came by the fix it gene honestly, from both sides of the family.

My stepdad never learned how things worked or developed any artistic ability when it comes to patching holes with spackle, and God help you if he wants to help you paint. None of his tools get put back where they belong or cleaned properly. 

He used to blame us kids about lost / damaged tools. These days he stomps around and swears when a tool goes missing but has no-one to blame. He absolutely will not admit the tool was lost because he didn’t put it back.

I’ve wandered around the yard and collected all kinds of tools from wherever he dropped them. The scary ones were the sharp tined tools laying at the bottom of stairs, tines up! 

At least in the time I’ve been here I’ve managed to make the place a little safer and a little better. 

Now that my stepdad is strong enough to start fighting or undoing every change or cleanup, it’s time for me to go. I’ve got my life and my house to tend to.

I don’t need my blood pressure continuing to creep up due to the constant bickering between my mom and stepdad or the outright battle to simply fix broken things around this place.

I’m going to have dinner with my sister to plan for the future, then I’m heading home.

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I guess all this work is a good thing

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My pants fit differently.

I’ve been in motion since I got here and I suppose it’s showing in my losing a little of the gut.

I could of course stand to lose a lot more of the gut but eating healthy here is a very tough thing to do.

I’ve cooked a couple of times and since I don’t load everything up with salt my efforts haven’t been necessarily well received. 

This is southern cooking at it’s saltiest, oiliest best. Even the blooming onion at Outback seemed laden with more grease than usual.

I’ve been trying to maintain some semblance of a decent diet. Making smarter food choices isn’t exactly easy here without causing someone offense.

So I keep hydrated and keep moving. I’m hoping that the increased activity will at least balance out the calories. The only way to dilute the salt inherent in everything is plenty of water.

Even then I’m sure that I’ve consumed a years supply of salt and preservatives in the past month.

NewImageGotta say there were some nice barbecue the other night. I can’t complain too loudly.That’s going to take a good 6 months to purge from my system I’m sure!

I just learned something that should never be googled. Obese Men! OMG! 

Or maybe it should be googled and when you lose your lunch you’ll think I don’t want to ever look like that!

The picture at right should reduce your desire to claw your own eyes out.

I told you not to google “obese men” did you listen? Hell no!

I don’t know if I’d recommend tending ailing parents as a weight loss routine, but as a bootcamp it might work.

I’ll rent my folks cheap!  First come first serve.

 

 

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Some free time…

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I’ve caught a cold while I’ve been looking after my folks.

The sneezing, coughing and hacking took the wind out of my sails. My Mom has it too and frankly it’s a lot worse for her. 

I think this is going to be a quick little thing. Last night I was a mess. Today I’m feeling much better although I can’t get more than 10 paces from a kleenex box.

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I’ve been able to continue doing the stuff that I’ve been working on. Moving furniture, scrubbing floors and trying to catch up on all the stuff that my folks haven’t been able to keep up with.

I’ve suggested that they get someone to come in and help them with the cleaning and stuff like that. That suggestion went over like a lead balloon. It’s a full time job keeping up with forgotten glasses of water, tea, or diet coke. Plus cleaning up the spills and little messes caused by them not asking me or each other for help.

I’ve been told my halo is getting brighter. My response is that it’s about to burst into flame.

Yesterday I took a couple of hours off, and drove into Tampa. I visited a BMW dealer to pick up an update for my navigation system.

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Expensive, but on the trip here there were several times when the navigation system was really wrong.

I’ve been trying to do the updates about every other year. The one I purchased yesterday was dated Jan 2014.

FL roads and highways are a bit strange to someone that has been driving in California for the better part of 30 years.

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In California turn lanes are pretty well defined and you’re usually warned well in advance of a Left or Right turn only lane by the striping on the road and a sign.

Not so here!

I was driving along on a main surface street. I knew I needed to make a left turn in less than a quarter of a mile and so I got into the left hand lane. I’m driving along and suddenly I’m in a left turn only lane that leads onto the freeway. Without any warning, the lane I was in just became a turn lane. No little jog to the left, no change in the striping on the road, nothing except an arrow with “only” printed under it. The next lane over was a “left or straight” lane but there wasn’t enough time or warning to get over.

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Sigh, no way out! I got on the freeway and just as I was making that turn, I saw the dealership I was trying to get to. 

Briefly on the freeway, then next exit, two lefts later, I’m exiting on the street that I got screwed on. On the second approach I made another left and avoided the left turn only lane this time.

This dealership is cool, think of any European car and they had it. The BMW building was the first, then Porsche, Maserati, Lamborghini, Range Rover, Audi, VW, you name it,  and it was all the same dealership. 

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It was kinda like being at a car show. I got to see an Audi R8 up close and personal. NICE!

It was nice being out on my own and I took a meandering path back to the house.

It took me a lot longer than I thought it would but I didn’t care, I was enjoying the down time.

Ya try to be patient, kind and loving, but in the end you need time away.