Tag: Annoyances

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Gee Thanks Joe!

So as has been stated, I’ve been looking for a job for 2 years. I was laid off from my previous job due to outsourcing in Aug of 2019. Just in time for COVID Yea!

Throughout 2020 I applied for various jobs in my field that process has continued into 2021, with no positive results.

With over 30 years experience in technology and software testing I’m apparently unemployable. That’s not whining, it’s just a statement of fact.

Way back in the day, I demonstrated that I had a high aptitude for technology and computers. I was literally hired out of a junior college and never went back to finish a degree. That’s on me I admit it.

The fact is most of what was being taught in colleges had zero relevance to what I was actually doing because the colleges were teaching technology that was already 5 -10 years out of date and I consistently found myself on the bleeding edge of new technology.

There was little incentive or indeed value to paying for knowledge that was irrelevant. You see, my pragmatism dictates that knowledge is useful, a piece of paper proving my indebtedness, less so.

New hardware, new software, new languages, new technology was coming out every month. It was all most of us could to just to keep up within the companies we were working for.

While all this was going on, there were the innumerable layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions that made someone like me have a resume that looked like I couldn’t keep a job.

That assumption is completely false, but as time moved on and younger HR people came into the industry, they were applying all their college knowledge to my resume and frankly there was a significant disconnect.

Over time it got harder and harder to find a job, but I persevered and remained gainfully employed.

In my career, I have been a technician (back when we actually repaired machines at a board level), I’ve been a technical instructor (teaching others how machines worked and how to repair them), I’ve been a regional representative (supporting corporate product sales, and solving problems of product implementation and repair), I’ve been a technical support representative (explaining very technical issues to non-technical people to solve their problems), I’ve also worked in retail and warehousing.

All of this experience is useless today because I don’t have a degree. I ask you what function a computer science degree would serve since that degree would include FORTRAN-77 or COBOL, parallel communication, or RS-232? Virtually none of these skills have any relevance today.

To be sure, subsequent technologies that grew out of the aforementioned do have relevance and those technologies would have been learned on the job over the intervening years.

Which is to say, I’m on an equal footing with anybody coming out of college today with the possible exception of those educated in C# or some of the later languages. That being said, the core logic of computer languages is still the same. High level languages compile down to an instruction set that commands the processor to carry out specific actions. That hasn’t changed since computers occupied entire buildings.

The language simply provides a more human readable and therefore easier mechanism to create software. You can still bypass all of those higher languages and write software directly in assembly code. (The instruction set specific each processor. Before you ask, there are still people who earn really good money doing exactly that. Those folks, I respect immensely. Coding at that level is tedious and abstract beyond belief. I’m a little too ADD, or not ADD enough to do anything more than ‘tinker’ in that realm.)

As an aside, the folks that code at that level, are the folks ALL the sexy high level languages rely on. Assembly coders are an interesting and unique bunch. It’s not unusual for them to be socially challenged and challenging to more “normal” people. Assembly coders, deal in absolutes, mathematics, and the purity of silicon switching. Right and Wrong are terms which have no grey areas 2+2 in their world always equals 4. Something works and is therefore “right” or it doesn’t and is therefore “wrong”.

I haven’t met any coders who work in the new field of quantum computing. I would guess that they are a completely different kind of duck. Quantum theory being somewhat less determinant and the underlying math is so far beyond me I can’t begin to visualize it. I’m quite content to take it on faith that they know what they’re doing.

I digress…

The point is, I actually like computers and technology. I like testing it, and verifying that the code does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a puzzle to me. My job in the last decade or two has been to test the software coders create. I’ve mostly looked at this as a cooperative effort where I’m a fresh set of eyes working on code that the actual programmer finished working on weeks before. They’ve moved on to other parts of the project and are being productive. I’m making sure they didn’t miss anything and if they did, I’m the one who captures the errant behavior and shows them how I induced the error.

In this capacity, I’ve learned so much and been blessed to work with some truly amazing people. I earned the nickname “Demon” and wore it proudly. My “Demonic” tests, helped to produce a wide variety of award winning and useful products, of which I am also proud.

Now I’m dealing with having all that taken from me. It was hard enough to deal with human HR folks and get myself, or my resume in front of a hiring manager. Most hiring managers look at my resume and think, “This guy has been around. I’ll bet he knows all kinds of things that I could leverage.” That’s how I’d get hired.

But that was when humans actually read a resume. Now, folks like me are lost in the filters of HR databases. Databases I might add, that are controlled exclusively by the priesthood contained in the bureaucracy of layers of HR.

The hiring manager writes out a list of ideas about the kind of person they’d like to fill a position. HR passes the requirements up level after level of representatives ultimately getting the request to one or two people who actually enter the requirements into a database. However, by the time the data is actually presented to the hiring system the requirements are absolute and glacial.

The hiring manager wrote the initial requirements in a fuzzy way. “This or this would work for the position.” HR enters the requirements as “THIS AND THIS MUST BE PRESENT.”

(C) Scott Adams 2008

That’s how you end up with tons of people out of work, and corporate HR saying there’s no-one available for a particular requisition. This is also how you end up with corporations not capitalizing on workers within their own ranks for internal openings that could be promotions, and why so many workers leave a company after a few years.

I’ve personally witnessed newly minted Baccalaureates applying for open positions within the company they were already working for and being ignored. After 6 months or so they’re tired of being passed over and they go to work for the competition in the position their new degree qualifies them for.

Then I’ve also gotten nasty looks from HR when I laughed in their faces as they lamented that workers had no loyalty and how difficult it was to ramp new hires up to being productive. When asked what I find so funny, I’ve told them exactly why people in my department left. It wasn’t the pay, it wasn’t anything other than HR locking them into a particular position and having no hope of advancement.

As a side note HR people really hate having their noses rubbed in their own poo.

All of this is what workers deal with every day. This is one of the reasons the hiring process is such a royal pain in the ass, for employers and prospective employees.

But along comes Joe Biden… With his imperial decrees about mandated vaccines, and what do we have?

Now we have companies adding “Must Be Vaccinated” to their job openings.

And in HR’s usual moronic fashion, they’re making the vaccine mandate apply even to people who are applying for remote only positions.

So now there’s another hurdle to surmount. It’s not enough that the remote position is on the other side of the country and a prospective employee will never darken their corporate door. A remote only worker cannot transfer any disease to any other employees via a zoom teleconference. There is zero risk or threat of contamination.

Yet, corporations will demand that a worker be vaccinated simply because they can. Their HR departments will fall back on the excuse, “We’re in compliance with The President’s mandate, and the law. After all it’s for your protection…”

Translated: “We’re protecting the corporation from any/all liability. We’re doing our bureaucratic duty…”

So thanks President Biden, you’re batting 1000 at screwing everyone. Good job!

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

The trouble with career politicians is that they’ve never had to consider unintended consequences. That fact coupled with greed and elitism is why politicians always fail.

If good ol Joe keeps up the pace of failure, I suspect that Washington DC will very soon look like The Vatican. The question will be, are the walls keeping the angry population out, or the shitty politicians in?

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I’m beyond disgusted… I’m super Pissed!

The bodies of our soldiers (needlessly killed) aren’t cold in their graves yet and the administration is trying to turn the page metaphorically.

I’m not one to rend my clothing or wander the halls weeping, but “come on man”. Can we at least take a week to allow their families to grieve? How about putting off the ‘turning the page’ until after the 9/11 anniversary?

Is that so much to ask?

How about a dignified speech acknowledging these last victims of an ideology that is nothing but a death cult. Something like, “these young and valuable members of our brave military will be the last to die by a fucking suicide bomber.”

How about a speech wherein the American flag waving on some kind of big screen dissolved into live bomb feeds of the destruction of every major city, water & power station, internet nexus, cell phone tower, opium field, and infrastructure items like bridges and roads, in Afghanistan being destroyed. Then as a final touch, salt the ground with depleted uranium, or nuclear waste water.

Probably too extreme. I guess I’m a little more pissed off about the Afghanistan debacle than I thought I was. Please pardon the outburst.

That’s not the way a civilized human being is supposed to act or think.

I can assure you that is exactly what the Taliban, ISIS, ISIS-K, or Hamas would do if the roles were reversed. I can make that statement because these fanatics are driven not by the here and now, they’re driven by an image of absolute forgiveness in the afterlife where all their woes & cares will be attended to.

All things in the service of Allah are forgivable. Lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder, burn… even sex with animals and small boys is just fine. After all a warrior of god shouldn’t have to beat his own meat. Besides, if little boys grow up liking cock, they can be gang raped again then thrown from the nearest tall structure.

I’d love for us to show these animals exactly what we think of them.

Christianity had a similar phase. The crusades, the inquisition, the destruction of countless native tribal cultures in North & South America and on many islands in the Caribbean and across the Pacific.

Three to six hundred years ago, I’d have been advocating for the Annihilation of Christianity too. It’s possible for a religion to be essentially a good thing, but for its practitioners to be so completely evil that they taint everything else about the religion.

In the case of Christianity, it grew a conscience and simultaneously realized that entire generations were being sacrificed for no real gain. Had it not, Islam and quite possibly Judaism would be dust in the sands of history.

Sadly, Islam continues to be a wasteful religion of a backwards people.

In this very blog I have said that we shouldn’t interfere in the internal politics of any country.

I stand by that. However, in this situation there is a continuing and growing threat to our way of life.

What kind of moron, leaves weapons in a country controlled by terrorists like the fucking Taliban? Who doesn’t see the logic of at least destroying those weapons if you can’t take them with you? I’m not military, never served, I wish I could have. Even a non-military idiot like me knows you don’t leave loaded guns in a rabid monkey cage.

I’m all for bombing them all back to the Stone Age, ignoring them for a century, and seeing how they fare in their re-evolution.

What I have described, President Biden, is payback. Not random drone strikes that are no better than terrorist activities themselves.

Let them hear and see the entirety of our air force darkening their skies. Let them hear the approaching destruction as the bombs fall. Let them make peace with their deities and then let them die.

Any survivors can record their history on goat skin, Stone Age people don’t need cell phones, computers, banking, or communication systems.

I have also said in this blog, that we cannot deal in a civilized way with uncivilized people. We must communicate in a language that is unequivocally understood.

The message should be simple, “Leave us the fuck alone, and we’ll do the same.” End of message.

No cash, no reparations, no rebuilding, no negotiations, nothing at all beyond the message.

Perhaps then 20 years of blood, sweat, tears, and pain, would mean something. At least our dead would be avenged.

It wouldn’t do away with Islam, but it might give some of the other terrorist fucks something to think about.

We wouldn’t have to know their names, just where they came from. Obliteration of their home, or just the village they were operating from might be enough to have them put their shit down and start dealing with their own problems.

This isn’t entirely hate on my part. A very large part of this is blind rage. I watched the towers fall 20 years ago. I heard every word released from flight 93. I pounded my fists bloody on the floor in front of my television. I didn’t then, and don’t now, give one runny shit about the why of it, or any of the apologists explanations.

In the 20 years since, that white hot rage had cooled to a more reasonable dull red. It sparked up with every IED or Islamic asshole murdered some innocent. It gets a lot brighter every time I see or read some bullshit from Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, or Rashida Talib. I’d like to see all three of them dropped into Afghanistan with the Arabic equivalent of “WHORE” written on their forehead. Let’s see how they like Shira Law then.

Generally though the rage had died down to a manageable level until the Biden fuck up.

Coming as it does, so close to 9/11, I’m 20 years back in time and the white hot rage is as hot as it was then. (Maybe a little cooler, since at the time I was for nuking the entire muslim world and letting Allah sort it all out. Carpet bombing Afghanistan and salting the country with radioactive waste not withstanding, at least it’s not the entire Arab world! That’s progress isn’t it?)

In my life from now on, a “Biden” will always be shorthand for epic next level fuck up. In that, Obama was completely right. Biden can and will fuck up beyond recognition, everything he touches.

On the plus side, I’m pretty sure that he’s fucked up Kamala Harris’s political career too.

We all know he’s not going to last through his term. He’s obviously ill. Even Lady McBiden with all her Bene Gesserit machinations can’t keep him propped up forever. (Like the Dune reference?)

Frankly I’m surprised that Lady McBiden has kept him functioning on whatever drug cocktail this long. It must be taking a hell of a toll on his body. Kamala will end up being President for a time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pelosi has a turn in the big chair, when Kamala proves completely incompetent.

I’m betting that in 2024 the Democratic Party is going to be cheating super hard to keep Kamala or Pelosi in office. Regardless of what may or may not have happened in 2020, they’re going to have to mess with voting in broad daylight to keep any Democrat in The Office of the President.

Yep, The Afghanistan debacle has really pissed me off.

It’s gonna take me some time to cool down, maybe another 20 years!

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Readers, Please pardon the Sidebar

It seems that WordPress decided to NOT tell me on opening the widgets panel, (Which I had carefully arranged the way I wanted them,) would result in a royal fuckup. This fuckup encompassed not only of the widget that I wanted to add a single line of HTML to, but destroyed every widget, including those that WordPress supposedly maintained.

Hey, THANKS GUYS!

Now I get to figure out the “New” damned widget system, and honestly my first take is this:

I DON’T LIKE IT!

I was perfectly content to use HTML to do what I wanted to. I was perfectly content to have a simple widget bar down the left side of my blog that presented information the way I wanted it.

I didn’t ask for a visual editor that randomly throws <SPANS> and Font changes, paragraph to paragraph. I didn’t ask for an HTML editor that apparently doesn’t actually like some of your <!– wp:paragraph –> tags in certain arrangements (even though YOU WordPress are adding those elements).

I ESPECIALLY don’t like the fact that you’ve created and released a buggy widget editor that incorrectly converts some HTML and chokes if there is a <Space> between the last character of text in a line and a <Line End>.

This is especially annoying, since there’s no way to see either, within the editor. Attempting to post such a line will result in an error that prevents the user from making any changes. Although, apparently this is an editor problem, not an underlying system problem since the badly converted text is displayed in the first place.

So what should have take 2 seconds has now taken at least a couple of hours to learn how to manipulate, partially reconstruct, and of course debug. (See Above)

Sometimes… making changes is not in the best interest of anybody. Sometimes making changes just creates more work. But I suppose it gave some coder 6 more months of work on a work visa.

Hey, here’s an idea… if you can’t save a chunk of something, how about providing something more descriptive than an error occurred? Better yet, HOW ABOUT HIGHLIGHTING the element you’re having a problem with?

Grrrr.

Just as a point. I’m not even particularly pleased with your new visual blog editor.

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Chasing Gremlins

There are many benefits to technology.

Most of us have various bits of tech in our homes, it may be just our computer, or our phones. Some of us have a bit more technology in our homes, and there be gremlins hiding there.

Most of the time the gremlins are dormant and only awaken when we do something causing us to trip over them. For example, we move something around, or try to add a new device. Usually these instances result in a minor irritation but are easily resolved.

I’ve been chasing gremlins for the past week and a half, and I have a lot of devices to chase the little devils through.

About a week or two ago, Edison was having a problem. In the course of 4 hours they flipped the power on & off at least 6 times. I’d just get the clocks reset and bang! The power was off again. Sometimes the power would stutter on for a moment then go off again.

Technology really doesn’t like that!

All the gremlins awoke and have been running through system after system, creating odd and completely random effects. Devices appearing and disappearing from the network, devices working fine one moment and then refusing to execute a command they’d just completed. Or suddenly executing a command that they’d received an hour ago because they suddenly remembered it (Kinda like Joe Biden…)

Fortunately, unlike in the case of Joe, (switching off humans is generally a bad idea,) I can switch devices off and if necessary reinitialize them.

Over the past two days, I’ve begun to feel like The Exorcist. Get thee back Demon!!

Or like a poor bastard that pissed off a Techno-Madge in Babylon 5.

Then I remembered I AM a Techno-Madge and these gremlins will be purged!

There are 30 devices online at my home at any given moment. I’ve purged 25 of these devices thus far. the remaining 5 are sitting in techno-limbo as I type. They’re being reset to factory default and one by one I’ll add them to the network as they wake up mindless from their reset.

After that, the gremlins should be at least flushed from my systems for the time being.

Gremlins will always make a reappearance. Sometimes they’re artifacts of small little bugs that are no consequence in a particular device. The problem is that they can be cumulative. When you have enough devices added to the same network, these little insignificant bugs combine and mutate, (no, we’re not to Maximum Overdrive or SkyNet yet,) the mutation is more of an interaction between devices.

Mr Scott said it best, “The more you complicate the plumbing, the easier to stop up the works.”

We’re living it. All of our devices are “smart” each of them has memory, when they’re network connected the router and some switches remember the state of each of the devices.

Sometimes, just turning the device off and restarting it isn’t enough. That’s because the router will often reconnect the device(s) in the same way when you turn them back on again and then you’re right back where you started.

The systems are trying to be helpful but they’re actually just more frustrating.

I had to completely reinitialize the Nest Thermostat and the Nest Protect smoke alarms. That was fun, “Gee thanks Google, I knew no good would come of you purchasing Nest, you jackasses could complicate a wet dream.”

Did you know that if you plug a HomePod mini into your computer it will flash Orange? How about that the HomePod mini has around 2.6 gigabytes of software running inside it?

Did you know that your printer is a smart little bugger and it tries to remember it’s setup so hard that it actually fights you when you’re trying to send it back to factory default?

Don’t even ask about network attached storage devices. They can be really contrary. It’s with good reason, they’re trying to protect your data so many of them will require signs, countersigns, along with various incantations and sigils.

The most frustrating part of this particular adventure has been certain smart lightbulbs (I’m looking at you office lamp,) several of these machines have told me they’ve reset, but lied. The office light was the worst offender 5 times straight, “Yep, I’ve reset,” but then, “No, you can’t configure me because I’m already set up.”

“Uh huh, and how did that go for you little light bulb?” (Lightbulb contritely dims)

Don’t get me wrong, I like having a “Smart House”, privacy issues notwithstanding. Yeah, all these smart devices can and do phone their creators regularly. God only knows what information they’re sending.

I thought, and this is demonstrating perhaps white racist language, when I purchased a machine I was that machine’s master.

Yeah, what of it? Am I going to hear from the robot-rights association?

Alright the last devices appear to have returned to their pristine factory reset zombie state…

I’m off to give them a purpose again.

(Wanders off)

“Come on my little slaves, let’s put you back to work.“

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I am not patient.

June 3rd, there was this. A pipe for the fire suppression system burst.

So the living room is flooded, everything is soaked. Despite the fact that I ran though the water, (with live electrical connections sitting in the water…) shut the fire suppression unit off stopping the water, the damage is considerable. In hindsight, I probably should have taken no action. Maybe I should have just let the system free flow for a while.

The system only ran like that for a couple of minutes.

Then I began the cleanup.

As it turns out, cleaning up the water was only the beginning of the nightmare.

The REAL nightmare began when the insurance company was called.

First the agent supposedly handling our account didn’t return the phone call, AND NEVER DID Call back regarding this matter. She ultimately did call me when she was notified that I’d chosen another agent. Note she only called when she realized she was losing a paying customer. Uh Huh, funny how that got her attention.

This happened at about 3:00 PM and she should have been in the office but as usual I was only able to leave a message. Sigh… called the corporate 800 number and got the claim started. They said to call Service Master to begin the remediation.

Service Master came up, took a lot of photos, did a lot of scanning for areas of water intrusion, and looked very efficient. Notice, I said “looked”. Turns out, apparently little of that information collected went anywhere except the iPad of the person taking the photos. Supposedly, all that information was being uploaded to Service Master’s systems and then was going o be sent to the insurance company.

Uhhh, NOPE!

While waiting for the insurance claims adjuster to call. I kept cleaning and drying things out.

I was trying to actually save as much as possible. Hoping to keep the insurance premiums down by doing the right thing. At the time I was wondering if it was actually worth it.

I wondered if I should have just left the water running. I wondered if it would have be simpler and easier on me to just total everything. It would have been more comfortable to allow the house to be so damaged that we got sent to a hotel on the insurance companies dime. At least then we’d have been in air-conditioning.

In my innocence, I actually thought that minimizing the damage would be appreciated.

I was a MORON!

This is what the place looked like after I’d scrubbed, cleaned, and dried everything as best I could.

I’d taken everything that was soaked through out to the front deck where it could do no harm. I’d dried and with some neighborly help, moved everything that could be moved to the other end of the room.

The house was open and has been wide open since. The temperatures have been high, and the humidity low. A fortunate combination if you’re trying to dry something out. I’d wet vac ed the standing water out, then I’d scrubbed and mopped. All I could do was trust physics at this point.

Then Service Master came back. They packed out everything. Pulled down the drywall, opened up the ceiling yanked out the wet insulation, and exposed the rafters.

Then came the drying machine that actually raised the humidity in the house rather than lowered it. This machine only pulled a single cup of water out of the air in the house over a 24 hour period. Impressive! Opening the windows and doors dried things out much faster and more quietly than the Service Master option.

Physics of a warm dry wind blowing through an area 1. Technological intervention -5.

The culprit pipe was exposed. It spent the next 2 weeks dripping into a bucket. Service Master didn’t know how to drain the system. Nor did I.

Turns out, it’s pretty easy if you know which valve to open. Sadly, I didn’t because when it comes to the fire suppression system I leave it in the hands of professionals.

Which brings up another point. The insurance claims adjuster in AZ kept telling me to just call a plumber.

Uh no… This is California!!! ONLY CERTIFIED Fire Suppression professionals can touch a sprinkler system. Which means that I had to wait until one of the two possible certified companies, within a 70 mile range could come out to work on this thing…

The Claims guy kept pounding on calling a plumber. It’s REALLY sad to think of all the folks this guy may have told to invalidate their certifications on their fire suppression systems and how that may (or may not) affect their abilities to sell their homes later on.

Of course this guy will have moved up, or moved out of the claims department and will later say categorically, “I never told anyone to do that…”

Uh yeah..

I knew stuff the Claims Adjuster didn’t because I’d already been through this with previous repairs to the damn system. Expensive, numerous repairs.

What annoyed the piss out of me with this guy was that he kept calling the system “Plumbing” and saying that I was responsible. As though we were talking about a sink or toilet. A sink or a toilet is simple. go to Home Depot by the parts ya need to fix it and DIY.

I personally hate doing plumbing for a variety of reasons but I can. I can also choose not to have a working sink, or toilet. I’ve got two bathrooms if one is broken, it presents no hazard whatsoever to use the other while I get the parts, and figure out how to fix the problem.

I have to have the Fire Suppression system, it must be certified, it must be maintained, it must be inspected and tested yearly. I have no choice in the matter. (If I did, I’d turn the system off, drain it, and be done with it.) But, I have no choice. It’s State, County, and locally mandated.

To my way of thinking, that makes this a straight-up insurance company issue.

When I was fortunate enough to speak to another Claims Adjuster, she agreed with me. She even found a rule in the policy stating so. She also agreed to pay for the fire suppression repairs.

My usual Claims Adjuster called, all on his own without my having to leave 4 messages, the very next day… He was trying to weasel out of the commitment the other claims adjuster made.

Huh… NOPE!

I pointed out that the system had apparently passed inspection with a critical component missing. The claims adjuster practically orgasmed. Oh, I know he was thinking about subrogation and being able to recoup the costs.

He wanted to know if I knew who installed the system in the first place. I told him I did not. But that he could look it up.

This confused him. I told him that his company had paid for the rebuilding of this house 10 or 11 years ago. That rebuild had been done through one of their preferred vendors and the insurance company (his company) must have a list of subcontractors they paid.

I enjoyed being able to say, if subrogation was involved, that he’d be in subrogation with his own company. There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. The conversation ended pretty quickly after that.

I would happily roll the entire policy up and shove it up this guys ass. Paper cuts can be a real bitch!

My Claims Adjuster really doesn’t like losing. I get it. I like winning, especially when I bare my fangs and get to sink ’em into someone. I like watching the light fade from their eyes as they realize they’ve lost.

I think my Claims Adjuster has put me back on ignore… In a sick way I’m hoping he has.

Metaphorically, I’ll be able to go for the jugular. My patience with this whole thing has come to an end.

It’s strange that after a month of looking at open ceiling, and screwed up flooring. It’s almost normal now. Another month two and I won’t care at all.

Since the ceiling is open, and the insulation is gone, the living area is open to the rafters. There are vents in the roof to allow heat to escape from the attic. Meaning that it’s pointless to run the air conditioner. It’s been in the 90s here for the past two weeks.

It would be nice to run the A/C especially at night.

Since I don’t know how long it will be until the reconstruction crew is going to get up here. I’m considering taking The Martian approach. While I’m not going to have to “Science” the shit out of this, I think I am going to get creative.

A roll of insulation, a sharp hawksbill knife, a couple of 10×10 sheets of heavy plastic drop cloth, a staple gun, some duct tape, and a ladder should about cover it.

Hell while I’m at it, maybe I’ll go into the attic and do some maintenance on the duct work too. I’m sure the ducts have leaks simply because the duct tape used when the house was built appears to be breaking down.

At least then, I could close the house and turn on the A/C.

If I work it right, I should be able to bill the supplies to the insurance policy too.