Home Ownership

My Wet Baby Day

• by GeekMan • In Family, Geek Life, Home Ownership •   1

Or, Baby Shower Weekend.

We’re holding our baby shower this weekend and in order to keep costs down we decided to throw the party in our apartment. Of course, we’re really looking at this shindig as more of a housewarming party because it will mark the first time we’ve had a party in our place since the renovations were completed, but the bonus is that we also get gifts for the baby. Unfortunately, this means that we need to unpack and clean our apartment, two things that we haven’t been able to do for the last eight months. And let me just say right now that if you’ve never lived through construction in your own home then you don’t have any idea how fricking awesome it feels to wake up in the morning NOT covered in white construction dust.

I actually cried when I woke that first morning.

Another downside of throwing the party in our home is that, since some of the guests will be bringing their small children with them, we’ll need to “baby-proof” our apartment which is something that we just don’t comprehend how to do. For one thing, we have stairs without a baby gate, and no plans to install one even after our child is born. Although the lovely HoBiscuit is iffy on my reasoning, I don’t believe that one is necessary if we just take care as parents to teach our child that the stairs are dangerous and she should be careful or she’ll get hurt. I grew up without stair gates, so I figure our kids can, too.

But, I ask you, why stop there?

You see, I also plan on burning her fingers with a hot pan to teach her not to play with hot things. Letting her stick her wet finger in a wall socket so she learns about the pitfalls of electricity. I’ll slam her fingers in a car door so she’ll always remember to keep her hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and I’ll even let her eat rat poison so she can thank me later on in life for teaching her not to eat things unless she knows what they are. This way she’ll learn all of life’s little safety lessons as a child living at home where I can protect her and then I’ll write a book about how everyone should do these things to raise perfect and happy kids and the world will praise me because of my superior parenting skills.

What? Why are you looking at me like I’m a monster?

Anywaste, babyproofing the apartment is tough for us because we don’t even understand what might be dangerous for a kid. Having never been in contact with children under the age of 7, I’m completely clueless about what they might find “fun” to play with, but I’m pretty sure I’ll need to hide the neon orange box cutters we have laying on the kitchen table. And I’ll probably need to put away all the day-glo colored bottles of household cleaners that I have in a box in the living room with, “Yummy Kandy” written on it. Two things I do know for sure is that someone will need to guard the stairs and we’ll need to put little socket-blocks in all the wall sockets to stop curious fingers. Hey, come on now, you didn’t really think I’d let kids hurt themselves, did you?

Really? Wow. That hurts… wow. Just… wow.

Geekgasm 360

• by GeekMan • In Education, Geek Life, Home Ownership •   0

I still got it.

Right now, I’m listening to music that resides on my networked attached storage device which is being piped through my home network to my home theater system. Some of you might not think this is such a big deal, and to you people I say, “You just don’t know.” This is SUCH a big deal, and not only because I’ve got the music playing over the network. No, that wouldn’t be very exciting since most people nowadays listen to their music through their computers, so of course my doing it is not big news.

Unless, of course, you take into account that I’m not using a computer.

Yeah, that’s right. No computer necessary for my music listening pleasure. I finally figured out how to directly stream music from my “server” (the aforementioned NAS) to my home theater sans computer. Why is playing music (soon to include picture slideshows and even movies) without needing a computer so important to me? One reason is that my NAS is always on but my computer isn’t. In fact, my computer has to travel with me when I go on the road for work which means if I’m not home then poor HoBiscuit wouldn’t be able to play ripped music or watch recorded movies until I returned.

And that would be bad.

Also, streaming directly from the NAS means that my computer is free to do other things, like photo editing, without having the added overhead of processing and streaming the music. And let me tell you, the less strain on my computer while I’m working on 500GB image files, the better. Now, if only I could figure out how to get the movies to stream without needing a computer to do the heavy lifting of on-the-fly transcoding, I’ll be in Geek heaven. The mere thought of watching all my… ahem, ‘free’ anime on the home theater’s 106″ screen has my mouth watering in anticipation.

And ohmygod, larger than life Pr0n!!!11

Floodwatch

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   1

So… heavy rain sucks.

This morning there was a massive rainstorm here in NY and the basement of our building flooded. Luckily for us, our apartment was spared any real damage, just a little seepage under our basement door, but three other apartments with direct access to the basement were not so fortunate. Our neighbors have about 3″ of water covering the floor of their apartment now, completely destroying many of their carpets, books, low furniture and any other stuff that was on the floor. It’s doubly bad for them since they’re in the process of doing work on their upstairs area and so are living in their basement. That means a lot of their stuff was in cardboard boxes on the floor waiting to be unpacked once the work upstairs was done.

Talk about a crappy day.

Plus, all of the building storage rooms, where many apartments keep extra stuff in boxes, were also filled with water. Again, luckily for us we only had plastic tubs in the storage areas, but many of our neighbors had stuff in cardboard boxes which means their stuff is most likely destroyed. The really strange thing about this whole mess was that we had a condo meeting last night to discuss some ongoing problems the building has been having with water leaks. Even weirder was that some owners expressed the opinion that as long as the leaks didn’t affect them they didn’t feel they needed to pay money to have it fixed.

Talk about Karma.

So now, as I sit in my dry basement I am thanking my contractor for insisting on using water-resistant and waterproof materials when he remodeled my basement. Even though those things cost me a little more money at the time, they are definitely worth the it now! Even more so since next weekend we’re supposed to be hosting a baby shower here at the apartment, and if we had flooded I’m not sure what we would have done with the 60 people coming over. Hmmm… maybe we would have been forced to hold the shower at Medieval Times, like I wanted to in the first place. Ah, just thinking about the serving wenches, leg-o-meat and jousting knights is making me smile.

Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to thank my contractor after all, huh?

Stage 27,925: Complete

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, Home Ownership •   2

I can almost taste victory.

We bought our current apartment over a year ago and moved into it back in January and we have yet to unpack. You might wonder why we’ve been living out of boxes for the last 7 months, but really, it’s no big mystery.

You see, we’ve been doing renovations.

Of course, this is where most of our friends and family throw up their hands in frustration and disbelief. Not because we’re doing renovations, but because we’re doing renovations on what was a completely brand new apartment in a new construction building. Yes, you read that right. We are the very first people to live in this apartment, and the building in which we live was constructed less than three years ago. Nothing was used, everything was brand new. So why did we do “renovations” when it sounds like nothing needed to be renovated?

Well, because as it was the apartment sucked.

The layout was all wrong, with doors everywhere they shouldn’t be, hallways that used up space that should have been better utilized, no usable closet space and a kitchen that was worse than useless. The developer had simply built a building fast and cheap without thinking about how people would actually live in the spaces he was creating. Luckily, HoBiscuit and I are very good at seeing past that kind of stuff, so we ignored the horrible layout and saw that the actual space was wonderful. A duplex apartment with three full bathrooms in New York is almost unheard of! So, looking past its cosmetic flaws we thought we could make it into something beautiful for us to live in. Transforming the apartment from the ugly caterpillar it currently was into the beautiful butterfly we imagined it could be. All it needed was a little work, and some money.

And holycrapyoucannotbeserious amounts of time.

Oh my lord, did we underestimate how long this project would take. We originally thought three months would be sufficient to complete the entire project, but we quickly came to realize that we were so very, very naive. From construction permits, to ordering materials, to unexpected surprises, nothing happened on time or on schedule. It was as if we were cursed by the construction gods and had to atone for our sins by being forever covered in white construction dust. Some of our daily rituals included making the bed every morning by covering it with a plastic tarp, eating every meal (every fricking meal!) at local restaurants because we didn’t have a kitchen for four months, and always wearing some kind of foot covering just in case a stray nail or screw was lying around looking for a foot to penetrate for giggles.

Damn you, 8 penny nail. Damn you to hell.

We had done renovations before, but never like this. And we hope to never do it again. But now, finally, we are nearing the end. This week is the last of the finishing touches on the work already done. And in one month, around the time that the Mighty Baby will be joining us, we should have a brand new stair railing as well. And that will finally end this whole saga and maybe, just maybe, I can stop using this craptastic laptop as my business machine, set up my home office properly and start blogging on a regular basis again.

Won’t that be nice?

A Quick Update During My Moment Of Silence

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life, Home Ownership, Rants •   4

My Most Awesome of Electronic Computing Devices Ever is dead.

On Sunday evening, as I was working on my computer, the screen suddenly went dark and I heard a soft popping sound. “Hmmm, that’s odd.” I thought, and looked over at the big box that sits to my immediate right thinking that my Vunder-Machine had powered down or something. That’s when I noticed the wisp of grey smoke coming from the back of the computer and the acrid stench of melting plastic.

“Huh. I wonder what that could be…?”

It took a second, but I got there eventually. At that moment the synapses in my brain began firing the way they’re supposed to and I dove for the power cord and fire extinguisher. But I was too late. Long story short, although there was no actual fire, my motherboard, graphics card and power supply are all crispy in that “fresh from the nuclear reactor” kind of way. Luckily, I keep most of my files on an external hard drive which is fine and dandy, but there are a few things I still need to get off of the internal hard drive of the computer. You know; things like my QuickBooks files and client lists.

And my pr0n.

So, although I was hoping to be posting here again by next week, that hope has been thoroughly dashed to pieces as it now seems that I will have yet another thing added to my list of Things To Do. I’ve already decided to buy two computers, one for business use and one for home/entertainment use, which hopefully will make my life a little easier in the “networking computers is easy, like teaching theoretical astrophysics to a retarded chipmunk.” kind of way.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, that’s why.

Well, I might as well do a full update while I’m here. Wouldn’t want to disappoint my adoring fans fan. During the time that I’ve been away, HoBiscuit and I have bought another new apartment and are in the process of killing ourselves by bleeding to death from paper cuts due to all the forms we need to fill out to get a stupid mortgage for the new place. And, just in case that alone doesn’t kill us, we’re also trying to create the world’s largest ulcer, in my very own body, by attempting to sell our current place at the same time. Also, HoBiscuit and I’ve been working non-stop for months and we’re very, very tired.

Woooo, what fun.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll be back when I can. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it and remember; when life gives you lemons, kick life in the nuts and demand better service.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled silence…

The Long Weekend

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   3

Busy, busy, busy.

As most of you know, and as some of you don’t, HoBiscuit and I moved into our new apartment in mid August. Now, as some of you might know, and most of you don’t, since we moved in we’ve been living out of boxes and suitcases. This is not because of our busy schedules or our innate laziness, but because we have actually been physically detained from unpacking our belongings into our apartment thus making it our home. I can see you scratching your heads in puzzlement at that bit of knowledge so allow me to elaborate with a single sentence of clarity that will enlighten you as to our predicament.

We have no closets.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You see, we do have closets but only if your definition of “closet” is ‘a small, virtually unusable space sectioned off behind cheap, hollow doors but without any actual shelves or bars upon which to place or hang items you wish to put away.’ But, should you define “closet” as ‘a cabinet or enclosed recess for linens, household supplies, or clothing’, then we are well and truly screwed.

As you can imagine, this hampers the unpacking part of moving in to a new home.

Well, you may now be making faces at the monitor as you attempt to convey your disbelief at our misfortune. “Why,” you may be shouting at asking the screen, “didn’t you just have the guys who remodeled your kitchen build you some closets?” Good question! Let’s explore that, shall we? But first, because you obviously don’t recall how much we absolutely loved our kitchen contractors, allow me to refresh your memory by supplying you with this fine tidbit of information about them; they SUCKED! The fine and upstanding people who built us our kitchen did everything absolutely, totally and 100% WRONG. Need proof? Go ahead and read this and then come back here. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Back? Good.

Perhaps now you’ll understand why we were a tad reluctant to ask our kitchen contractors to do anything beyond the scope of what we had originally hired them to do. I mean, it took them a total of SIX attempts to install the cabinets properly. And they had to redo the doors more times than that because every time they took them down to stain them they kept messing them up!

Idiots.

And thus, Keystone Kops Construction was crossed off our short list of closet makers. Last week we finally found a closet company who we felt was offering a good price for making our closets and we signed them up. Of course, it dawned on us that now that all the construction was done and we would finally be getting our closets, it might be a really good idea to paint the fricking house and then unpack everything that wasn’t going into the closets. As we surveyed our unpainted apartment and did some quick mental math, we came to the conclusion that if we attempted to paint it ourselves we would wind up in divorce court, the hospital or jail.

Or, much more likely, I’d be dead and HoBiscuit would be happy.

Not wanting HoBiscuit to ever be happy, especially when her happiness so depends upon my untimely death, we hired painters. Now, I must say that these guys did one hell of a great painting job. They painted everything we wanted painted and absolutely nothing that we didn’t. Even better, when they realized that some of the paint we had was of a different shade than we had originally asked for, they not only informed us before they painted with it, but they also had one of their guys come with us to the paint store to make sure we didn’t pay for the new paint.

Now that’s service.

However, being that I’m a neurotic, anal retentive bastard, I didn’t want them to move my computer stuff or my home theater equipment when they painted. So, Friday morning I woke up at 6am and began moving boxes. And kept moving boxes all day. By midnight I had moved everything I could out of every room in the house and piled them all into the living room. When the painters arrived they were amazed that I had gone through such lengths to keep them from touching my stuff, and laughed at the little “Painter Guys, Do Not Touch” signs I had put on several boxes. After watching how careful they were while they painted the house, I felt comfortable enough with them that when they were ready to paint the living room I let them move most of the stuff while I nervously watched from afar.

And I do mean nervously. I was even wringing my hands and sweating.

Anywaste, now the apartment is painted and I’m actually in the process of unpacking things into their proper places (except for closet stuff, of course). It’s a great feeling; unpacking into a new home. And even though we’ve been living here for almost six months it’s never felt like home because we’ve never really unpacked. But all that’s going to change, this will be our home. We’re very excited and once we’re all settled we’ll finally have ourselves our first home.

But first, does anyone know how to get rid of that nauseating ‘new paint’ smell?

The Mighty Kitchen

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   11

I’m so happy I could cry.

Our kitchen was finished last week and now that we have unpacked our plates, dishes, pots and pans we actually feel at home here. You know, like we can live in this apartment or something. Well, truthfully we feel like we can cook in the apartment, because it’s very hard to feel at home when you have no actual closets in which to put your clothing and so are forced to live out of suitcases until a closet-person can come and build you some closets.

But, hey! I can cook!

Anyway, as I promised, here are some pictures of the new kitchen which you can look at and become jealous of because we all know that my kitchen can kick your kitchen’s butt. Seriously, if you showed these pictures to your kitchen it would either faint from fear or become enamored of its huge muscular metal peninsula pole, smooth glass tile backsplash and shiny brushed metal and black marble facade.

Now, where did I put those pictures..?

…

I could have sworn I left them right here next to my Hello Kitty soap dish…

Dammit. They’ve got to be around here somewhere…

Hmmm…

No, they’re not in my back pocket, let’s try the front…

…

Heh, that tickles…

…

Ahem, they’re not in my front pockets either. Oh wait, I remember now. I already uploaded them! Silly me, I’d lose my head if it weren’t glued to my shoulders. Oh well, guess I’ll just go back to searching my pockets for… stuff…

…

He-he-he. That tickles…
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Bad Medicine

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, HoBiscuit, Home Ownership •   2

It was the perfect medicine cabinet.

At least that’s what we thought when we first saw it hanging on the wall of one of Ikea’s lovely little ‘home’ displays. HoBiscuit and I were immediately taken in by its clean lines, faux wood finish and solid hinges. It also didn’t hurt that we were tired and frustrated after a full day of shopping with absolutely nothing to show for it. So, when we came upon this lovely medicine cabinet that appeared to have been specially made just for us, we didn’t even hesitate to put our money down and take it home.

And that’s when the trouble began.

You see, unlike almost any other piece of Ikea furniture I’ve ever bought, this particular piece needed to be hung on the wall. And when I say hung on the wall, I mean hung straight on the wall using a tool called a ‘level’ and everything. I couldn’t just drill a couple of holes and hang the medicine cabinet willy-nilly because then our medicines, cotton balls and razors might have fallen out of the cabinet, spilled onto the floor and gotten all dirty.

And no one wants dirty cotton balls. It’s unnatural.

So, in accordance with Ikea’s Holy Instructional Pamphlet, I assembled the core structure of the medicine cabinet and then prepared to hang it on the wall. Medicine cabinet? Check. Mounting screws? Check. Electric drill? Check. Level? Check. Someone to hold the cabinet steady while someone else levels and mounts it to the wall?

Oh crap.

I glanced over to where I had last seen HoBiscuit. Looking at me with puppy eyes filled with hope, she was waiting patiently outside the bathroom, all aquiver with anticipation. She had even resorted to putting on an adorable little tool belt to help complete the look of Eager Helper. I knew this would be trouble, but what could I do? Ikea’s Holy Instructional Pamphlet had a drawing on it of not one, but TWO people mounting the medicine cabinet to the wall, and who was I to argue with such a learned institution of authority as Ikea?

Even so, I almost asked her to go get a neighbor. Almost.

Sighing mightily, I gave her the nod and hefted the cabinet to its place on the bathroom wall. As I held it there, HoBiscuit got the level and placed it on top of the cabinet inflicting only minor scratches on the ceiling in the process. When we had repositioned the cabinet so that it was level I asked HoBiscuit to please mark the drill points on the wall by drawing an ‘X’ where the holes for the screws in the back of the cabinet were. They were fairly large holes; able to fit a pencil with plenty of room to spare, and I thought drawing an ‘X’ on the wall was a fairly simple artistic task to ask my lovely wife to do.

Unfortunately, my wife went to business school.

After several attempts, and about 10 minutes of watching her actually bite her tongue in concentration while attempting to draw a fricking ‘X’ on the wall, we had the following discussion, which I will hold against her for the rest of our lives.

“Honey?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure, because it seems to me that it’s taking you an awfully long time to draw an ‘X’.”
“Don’t start with me. This is harder than it looks, you know.”
“…”
“Don’t look at me like that or I’ll smack you.”
“Do you know what an ‘X’ is? I can draw one for you if you need a primer.”
“Shut up.”
“…”
“OK, you know what? I think I figured out the problem.”
“OK, and what’s the problem Sherlock?”
“It’s the pencil! The pencil isn’t working right and that’s the problem. I can’t draw an ‘X’ with this pencil.”
“…”
“What?”
“Did you just blame a pencil because you couldn’t draw an ‘X’ on the wall?!”
“Uhmmm… maybe?”
“Holy crap, I married myself with breasts.”

I’m Not Dead… Yet

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   1

But I’m pretty darn close.

HoBiscuit and I have finally finished running around like headless chickens and have kinda-sorta moved in to our new apartment. I can’t really say that we’ve moved in yet because we’re still living out of cardboard boxes that are covered in plastic sheets which in turn are covered in dust from the contractor’s minions who are, as I write this, remodeling our kitchen. The same kitchen they said would be finished last Friday that they now say won’t be done until sometime in October.

Maybe November.

I hate living like this. I hate waking up every morning looking like a mummy emerging from a sarcophagus in the middle of the Sahara. I can’t stand having to put on fuzzy slippers every time I want to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. It irks me that I have to take a shower both when I wake up and before I go to bed because I’m covered in construction dust from the moment I walk in to my apartment. I really can’t stand having to wrap my toiletry items in Saran Wrap every morning to protect them from being buried under a foot of dust during the day, but even worse is having to unwrap them every night so I can actually use them.

Have I mentioned that I hate dust?

Well, aside from the whole remodeling fiasco, there have been a few other things going on. Obviously, I now have some form of internet access, however since my computer is currently located in the back corner of the second bedroom under a plastic tarp (and guarded by a feral dust bunny the size of Godzilla) I feel I should warn my faithful readership that I may not be updating this site as often as you, or I for that matter, would like. In fact, if I manage to write more than twice a week for the next two weeks I think I should be rewarded. With an expensive dinner and a medal. And maybe a Broadway show.

But not Chicago. I hate Chicago.

My brother finally tied the knot and married a woman far too good for him. I’ll tell you all about what happened at the wedding another time, but for now let me tease you by giving you a bit of advice. If you happen to speak a language other than English and are serving food and drink at a wedding of primarily English speaking guests, do not insult the guests in your native tongue unless you are absolutely positive no one there will understand what you are saying.

Otherwise, there may be trouble.

That’s all the time I’ve got to write right now. It seems that I’ve got to go back out to the kitchen to “discuss” the countertop situation with the contractor again. It’s funny, but apparently contractors might hear you tell them what you want for a countertop, they might see it written in the contract, they might have received the product samples you sent to them, and they might even have seen the countertop material specifically pointed out on a special page of the architect’s plans but, unless you’ve actually gone out in person with them to buy the damn thing they don’t actually believe it’s what you really want.

Sigh. Anybody know the early warning signs for an aneurism?

Aneurisms Are Hard

• by GeekMan • In HoBiscuit, Home Ownership •   4

HoBiscuit and I painted our new bathroom this weekend.

GeekMan:
“OK Honey, we’re going to start by doing all the prep work…”

HoBiscuit:
“What does that mean?”

GeekMan:
“Well, we’ll remove the light fixtures, the mirrors and all the other stuff we don’t want to get paint on. Then we’ll sand down the walls and wipe them down to remove dust and dirt, and then we’ll tape off the areas we don’t want to paint.”

HoBiscuit:
“That sounds like a lot of work. Can’t we just paint like they do on Queer Eye?”

GeekMan:
“No.”

[ten minutes later]

HoBiscuit:
“‘Prepping’ is hard. I’m going to sit down.”

GeekMan:
“I can already tell this is going to be a looooong day.”

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