Tocci's Blog

Before I get started, let me just say congratulations to Mandy and Luis on your engagement. I love you, Sis.

This isn't a home improvement blog, but that's been what has consumed me in the past couple of months. Although most of it was not so much "improvement" as it was necessary repair.

The most time consuming job has been rewiring our house. The main goal has been to replace all of the aluminum wiring in our house with copper, but along the way, I've found and fixed quite a few overloaded circuits complete with melted wire nuts and charred wiring. I found a box sealed inside a wall where aluminum and copper wires were connected, ungrounded outlets, ungrounded metal faceplates on plastic boxes, lots of exposed wire splicing, and countless other code violations and fire hazards. I've been getting a lot of use out of the attic stairs I installed and garage attic hatch I made.  It's been a lot of time in attic spaces, crawlspaces, and basements, but I'm finally done with everything but one outside light in the backyard and the outside outlet for our pool. I think I can wait for some warmer weather to tackle those, or at least for the snow to melt.

We bought a new kind of insulation that's made from polyester. It's called SafeTouch and it's made by Dow. I installed their R21 product in our attic after the wiring was finished and noticed that it didn't fluff up to fill the joists like it was supposed to. (When insulation is compressed, it doesn't work as well.) I contacted Dow and it turns out that I got a bad batch of the R21, which apparently was new and had a few problems. Dow went above and beyond to fix the issue for us by sending us some of their R19 product to add to our attic and make up for the lost R value. Unfortunately that means more time in the attic and the need to raise the catwalk floor up above the second layer of insulation. (I'm in the middle of that project now.) In the end we'll be better off.

Our garage roof had a slight sag to it so I built something like a purlin wall using a 2x6 horizontally across the rafters and 2x4 posts, notched and anchored to joists and a load bearing wall below. It's solid as a rock and seem to have worked a treat.

Our front porch roof was also sagging due to a sunken footing on one corner. I adjusted, bolstered, and built up the footing with cement making the roof level and fully supported once again. That was the first time I worked with cement but it won't be the last. The front steps need some patching in the spring.

Tocci Ponders: Is Windows 7 eighty-eight versions behind Windows 95? If so, we're in trouble.

I blew out our sprinkler lines with my new compressor just before the freezing temperatures settled in, saving an $80 visit from the sprinkler company. Just 3 more years of skipping those until the compressor pays for itself!

Tocci Ponders: Why do movies and TV shows run credits for production staff? Does anyone in the audience care who did the lighting? When I buy a snickers bar, it doesn't list who picked the peanuts on the wrapper. When I buy a sweater it might say "hand made in India" but it doesn't also say "by Rajiv". Why is it that only people in the entertainment industry get their names in front of the consumer?

In other news, xmas came and went. We cut down our own tree again but this year we went to Lantier Farms and got a blue spruce. The tree was beautiful with a grayish hue to it and the branches held up really well under the weight of the ornaments. The only problem was that it was really prickly. Still, I think I'd get another.

Link overload:

• Bottle - Excellent animation filmed on a beach in sand and in snow. One of the finalists in the Vimeo Awards for animation.
• Amazing photo of lightning hitting the Statue of Liberty.
• If you're one of the few people who haven't seen it, here's the Antoine Dodson bed intruder song, inspired by a charismatic interview in the projects.
• FML - FMyLife.com has some awesome stories, particularly in the intimacy category. Thanks, Jiz.
• George St. Pierre's ESPN commercial - Funny stuff for MMA fans. Thanks, Erik.
• 540 kick - 3 boards. 1 jump. Cool.
• VeryFunnyAds - Lots of funny international commercials. One of my favorites is the disgruntled massage therapist.
• Porn Stars Without Makeup
• Lego Art
• Carrot Peeling Contest - This is so wrong but I can't watch it without laughing. BTW I'm pretty sure the "judge" for the contest is a dude in a wig. Thanks, Tosh.0.
• WallpaperWeb.org - Excellent source of free computer desktop wallpaper, including the one I'm using now.
• Does eye color make a difference? - This page is probably responsible for thousands of color contact lens purchases.

As far as the end of summer is concerned, for us it's not about Labor Day or the autumnal equinox. It's all about the pool. If the weather cooperates, we're jumping in. However this past Sunday was autumn capitulation day when we abandoned all hope and closed the pool for the winter. Fortunately, fall is my favorite season, so I didn't take it so badly. This year I used a PVC elbow in my jet return so that I didn't have to drain the pool as much to close the lines. I think it worked well. I guess we'll see next May. Great or brown = fail.

In a stark contrast to the most dry summer I can remember, we've had a lot of rain lately which has kept me from tending to what's left of our garden. This weekend, we discovered a giant lurking in one of our zucchini plants. I didn't even know the zucchini was still growing, but one the size of a watermelon was happily plumping up under our noses. I picked it, skinned it, dug out the seeds, and Jenny turned it into a ridiculous amount of zucchini bread.

I put down a new kitchen floor in my mother's home the other day. After weighing the options, we went with the new Allure flooring from the Home Depot. It was pretty easy to install but it still took a while due to the prep work and odd cuts involved. My dad helped me the whole time so we were able to finish it in one day. It looks really nice!

I'm now back to working on the electric in my house...

S&*t to do. No time for links this time. :(

I can finally solve a Rubik's cube! Check that one off my bucket list. I can get the first 2 of 3 layers in place perfectly without using any algorithms, just by understanding how it works. For that last layer I still need to use algorithms to solve it consistently, but hey it gets the job done. Here are a few helpful links if you'd like to learn too. And here's a video of a three-year-old solving it in 114 seconds to make you feel stupid.

Tocci Ponders: Why do people still say "backslash" when giving URLs? It's just a slash. And there's no reason to say "forward slash" either. If anybody really needs clarification as to which direction a slash goes in a URL, they probably have never seen the Internet anyway.

Congratulations to newlyweds Chris and Amanda Dzwilewski! Enjoy the honeymoon in Italy, guys!

This link list consists of a few commercials that I find amusing. It's kind of sad that many commercials these days are more entertaining than the programs they interrupt.

• Axe Detailer - Clean Your Balls
• DirecTV - Russian guy
• Old Spice - Great ads in general, but my favorites are the ones with this guy.

The other night I went to bed around 4AM, which is not unusual for me. I brought the cat upstairs and put her on the bed. She likes to sleep on the bed with us but has trouble jumping up there. I grabbed a pair of mesh shorts and a t-shift from the drawer in my nightstand before heading off to brush my teeth. When I got back to bed, the cat was gone. Sometimes she disappears to use the litter box or do whatever cats do, but she usually comes back and starts tapping me from the floor until I pick her up and put her on the bed. After a few minutes I assumed she found a different place to hang out for the night so I went to sleep, closing my nightstand drawer which I had inadvertently left open. I was woken up around 7AM by Jenny who could hear the cat meowing from my side of the bed. "Where is she?", Jenny asked. I had no idea. We looked under the bed, under the nightstand, and behind the bed. No Leia. I called her and we heard her meow again from under the nightstand. I opened the bottom drawer to see if she was stuck behind it. No Leia. Then I opened the top drawer and she popped out like a jack-in-the-box! Apparently she hopped in there from the bed when I was brushing my teeth and was sleeping comfortably in there for a few hours. I didn't notice her when I shut the drawer because the room was dark and her coat camouflages quite well against just about any background in the dark. I guess when she had had enough, obviously she couldn't open the drawer by herself, so she asked for assistance. Poor cat. At least she wasn't hurt at all and didn't seem traumatized in the least, so that's good.

Tocci Ponders: Why is marijuana called weed? I've pulled plenty of crabgrass and clover from my lawn but I have yet to find any purple haze growing out there.

With the help of Eric 1.0, I finally finished the last two boards on Super Mario Bros Wii. That world 9-7 is a motherf&*ker. Basically the plot of the game ends at the end of world 8, but that opens up the bonus world 9. I assumed after you beat all of those levels and collected all of the star coins, you'd get some special little cut scene or something, but that's not how it goes down. Basically you finally beat the last board and a message pops up that says "You have completed everything in New Super Mario Bros Wii". Not very satisfying.

Tocci Ponders: Do the girly magazines in the Harry Potter universe have photos that come to life like the newspapers do? 13 year old wizards have it so good.

UFC this weekend!

So much to share. I started quite a few projects that I can write about, and I can't in good conscience abandon this eight year old blog. So here goes nothing...

It all started with a buzzing in the walls whenever Jenny would turn on the hair dryer, or when the coffee maker would kick on. I discovered that most of our house has aluminum wiring, which has been known to cause fires. I decided to rewire the house with copper, starting with the two bathrooms upstairs. I have yet to accomplish this goal, but I'm getting there...

First, I needed to be able to get up and down into the attic easily. That was a problem, since the only access was through a small hatch in the packed closet in Jenny's office.  So, step one was to install attic stairs. I chose a heavy duty model that required some significant reinforcement of our existing joists, but I got it done.

The next step was to remove the old insulation from the attic space so I wouldn't have to wear full biohazard gear every time I went up there. The old fiberglass insulation in our attic was completely shot. There were sections missing, sections that were compressed or disintegrating, and everything had a thick layer of dust and fiberglass particles on top of it. I took my Israeli military issue gas mask out of storage (I bought it just after 9/11 when I lived just outside Manhattan) and went through three full-body paper suits from Home Depot but I managed to bag it all up. I must have filled up 30 contractor bags. I vacuumed the remaining dust with the shop vac and a hepa filter and now the attic is ready for rewiring.

Once the insulation was gone, the heat in the attic became an issue pretty quickly. There was an old attic fan up there but it was disconnected before we moved in. The next project was to replace the motor and blades with a new thermostat controlled model. The fan helps with the heat a lot, but it will be better once we put new insulation up there.

The next phase is to remove some of the drywall in the garage that surrounds the electrical panel and make a decision as to the best route to run the new wires. The only thing I know for sure is that I have to get them up to the attic.

Tocci Ponders: Why haven't cats evolved to have digestible hair?

In other news, our garden this year has been very productive. I expanded it by 8 feet this year, making it 24 feet long. Once again I used the grass I displaced to sod parts of the lawn that needed it. We took that big maple tree down last fall so we had a pretty big area that needed some grass, so that worked out well. We've harvested plenty of yellow squash, zucchini, two varieties of cucumbers (some HUGE... see photo), banana peppers, basil, red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, Japanese eggplant, and a ton of tomatoes. I'm still waiting on the bell peppers. I couldn't believe how big red leaf lettuce gets. They were about 3 feet high before they died. No joke.

Fishing season has treated me well so far this year. I think I'm getting the hang of it. So far my biggest fish was over five pounds, caught on a four inch senko. I've also had some good days using frogs and brush hogs.

Also, we got a new driveway. Late last year, the electric company sent out some contractors to run new electric lines underground through our development. They used a big drill and started drilling right on our corner. When they went under our driveway, the shale deep underground was displaced and created a speed bump. The contractors attempted to fix the driveway a few times, but it never was quite the same, so eventually they agreed to have it repaved. It looks great now, but we're still not parking on it. They said to wait two weeks, but we've given it an extra week and a half so far since it still feels a bit soft due to all of the heat and humidity lately.

OK now that I'm more or less caught up, hopefully my next entry will not be as daunting and I won't have such an aversion to blogging. Only time will tell.

Link ketchup:

• NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day is always worth checking out. I found this one to be really cool, as is the associated 360 degree version.
• Newton Faulkner's version of Teardrops by Massive Attack is amazing, especially this one which is just him and his guitar.
• Tube Dubber is a place where you can pair up different soundtracks with youtube videos. Cool idea. Some of their "best dubs" are great.
• Skinput - There's nothing like typing "LOL" onto your own hand when you're on the go.
• This is why you're fat - This site makes me hungry.