Nightmares. :(
Damn, well done doggy. Glad everything ended up OK. Did they find out who it was?
I’m glad everyone is alright. I have been told in the past that dogs are one of the best deterrents to intruders.
Please scratch your brave doggy right behind the ears for me. Glad you’re all okay.
The police came quickly and we notified the neighbors to keep an eye out, but it seems like it was just a couple of random hoodlums.
Frodo the dog got an extra special treat last night and then felt so full of himself, he pushed me out of bed and stole my warm spot this morning.
I’ve had a job since Oct 2015 at a startup in Vancouver. Pay was (comparatively) shit but we were promised shares and a bunch of other crap. Turns out the CEO was a complete narcissistic headcase who had no idea what he was doing and has just been trying to screw people out of money for the past 15 years of his life while he chases his dream of building a company and getting rich.
I quit in Jan and am now working with a super cool guy on a business he’s been wanting to pursue. The pay is great and I work from home and now with all the time-savings of not having to commute I’m slowly working towards getting back to my game development too :)
Sounds like a great change. I’m happy for you!
So there was a Star Wars original trilogy marathon on FX I think. My son caught the escape from the Death Star as I was flipping through, and declared ‘watch this!’
So we did :)
Otherwise a chill day at my parents house before the move. They got to see their grand daughter, I got to watch the OT with my son. It was a good day.
Oh my. This post ended up being 4 pages long. There’s a reason for it being this long and part of it is my rambling nature, but the other is there’s an M. Night Shamalan twist which may end up rendering this a giant waste of your time like many of his films of the last decade. I’m disappointed with the number of times “I” shows up here, but I’m not sure how to write the appreciation and respect I feel for QT3 and many selfless game communities in general without writing in some weird 3rd person perspective.
I wanted to write this several days ago but couldn’t as you’ll discover later on. It’s now Sunday evening, you have one picture (man I need a haircut) so let’s go back 14 years. I was younger, a shade dumber than I am now, and still slightly green to home ownership. I left a faucet splitter on over the winter. We had one hose for watering the lawn (we had one back then) and one for spraying out filter pads. We left the main faucet on the house on and the splitter faucets closed. What I didn’t know was when winter came, this allowed ice to freeze back into the copper pipes and split them open. We had an awful flood that put an inch of water in the entire basement which ruined a lot of electronics in out basement. Fast forward to Friday morning.
As the first post details, my wife comes home and sees water pouring into our downstairs tv, an older hi-def CRT (who knew they could serve as a bucket?). 4 ceiling panels are soaked, the tv is full of water, and there is water dripping down the pipes. I try and think back to last this happen and my memory thinks that when we examined it we could actually see the hole. But we can’t see it here. You can tell water is pouring in from somewhere beyond the floorboard where the pipes disappear, but beyond that who knows. I’m pretty beside myself. I’m tired, I want sleep really bad, I have a -pre-surgery screening I have to pass Monday or my end of month surgery will be postponed. While yes, I need this done to not further delay a lung transplant as it it so stop colon bleeding and rule out cancer. But the real reason I want it done March 31, as it’s pushing into my spring bog time.
Spring is the best time to work in the bogs. It’s the easiest air to breathe all year, its comfortable, and seeing everything come back to life from the dead is like medicine for the soul. I liken it to the big bang where at one time there’s nothing, then suddenly the seeds of life. It’s going to to take 3-4 weeks to recover from surgery and in reality I’d like to be working out there by the second week of April. Being stuck inside in bed while you watch life happen on the outside is incredibly frustrating. If surgery gets delayed I’m looking at a May 1st which is really bad. This entire paragraph is a lead up to my frustration. I’m trying to know down this lung infection before my surgery screening and need some gentle work on the treadmill to pass. Instead we have this.
I come to QT3 for inspiration like I’ve done many times and write a generic vent and longshot post for ideas. I built the deck extension for my grill in a fit of feeling good, truly on a whim many years ago in the only space we had left - right in front of the faucet. In my defense, when that faucet pipe broke, the plumbers said they were adding a special fitting inside that would never let the ice back up and rupture again so I guess I figured I could build a structure making it inaccessible. Where were we? Oh right, it’s winter, the screws are hard to get to due to the deck boards puffing up and over the heads, and I remembered some actually broke while I was screwing them in due to over-torque. I imagine they’re all frozen in place and I post hoping someone might have some idea how I might get around this (blowtorch?).
To my surprise @ineffablebob responds in a pm and offers not information, but to actually come over and help. I’m stunned. I wasn’t expecting anything but “Good luck that sucks”. I look around the house and remember our backyard looks like Bosnia after an air strike. I want help, but am really embarrassed by the state of our property. After all, I know how I’d like to present the final backyard when it’s done and we are quite literally the polar anti-thesis of that right now. I respond right away and ask how long he has. I have got to rest for a bit since my heart is having some arrhythmia due to lack of sleep, then I want to see if I can get everything done on my own. I rest for an hour then take the maximum amount of pain medicine I can. I’d already been dealing with extra pain since I’d been weaned down to prepare for surgery. I had an internal ultrasound that had to be aborted a bit ago because as they tried to keep my under I stopped breathing. Doing anesthesia on a Cystic Fibrosis patient is incredibly tricky so I want to make as easy for them as possible. I’ll deal with a lot more pain now to make things go better then. But because I’d been working on this for weeks it put me in a great position. My tolerance to pain meds were down, I could max it out and really bust out some work feeling nothing til later.
I attack the deck boards. Whoa! Some are coming out. Because of the roof I built it’s much more sheltered than anticipated. In fact it’s kind of comfortable in there compared to the rest of the backyard. It starts out good. I get a few boards out then I can feel fatigue setting in already. I get as far as I can then realize there is no way on Earth I’m going to get this done before the plumber comes out 4 hours later. Furthermore my wife is really upset. She knows I’ve been fighting an infection, I’m weak, and my heart isn’t right. She works night shift and had called in, but while I was removing the first board work called and told her she had no choice but to come in… they had no one. She’s already angry I didn’t immediately take up @ineffablebob on his offer but if there’s any way I can only waste my own time, time is precious, I prefer to do that. Plus I look as bad as my yard and I feel really, really bad when someone comes over to help and I can’t work with them. But now I imagine the plumber coming over, takes one look at the deck and starts laughing. He turns to me says “What are you nuts? This isn’t going to happen.” . He turns away and walks towards the truck shaking his head thinking, “What is wrong with people?” I call @ineffablebob
The ineffableBob lives 30 minutes away so it’s not a quick trip but he promises to come as soon as possible and thankfully traffic is light. He has a timeline to work in so I imagine we will work right up until it’s time for him to go, or the plumber will arrive before we’re done. QT3 people are always nice, and when you meet someone to see just how genuine it is, it’s always heartwarming. I’m not sure people think of me. I do worry about it as I’m very passionate about things, especially injustice. If I come across 10% as nice as ineffableBob I’d consider my life good. He takes the frill from me and without hesitation starts at it. The break he gives me coupled with pain meds really kicking in gives me a second wind. So I pester him with questions while he diligently removes the decking and offer to help when I can. Before he came I imagined we were going to have to demolition saw a crapload of the boards to make room, but in the end we only had a few screws that wouldn’t come out and he was able to saw them from underneath. In a few hours we’d (he’d) cleared plenty of room for the plumber to work. Except for one glaring problem. The primary support beam (see picture). By this point I don’t care. I’m just so glad we got so much cleared out and if I had to saw out the floor support and it ruined the rest of the deck shanty so be it. At least the plumber could stop the leak and considering we’d gone without water all day that was a sacrifice we’d make.
We go inside, I show him around a bit and have a nice relaxing conversation. Then I go to refill my Oxygen tank and the post where the Oxygen the connects to the tank broke off. This is the day where stuff breaks LOL. 2 hours later then plumber shows up and we go around assessing the damage. Yep, we’re gong to have the saw the support beam of the floor for him to work on the faucet, but let’s go over things again. He goes downstairs and is perplexed. “I don’t understand where the leak is”. I’m floored, not the least of which is because you can still see water slowly seeping down the pipes from the floor. “It’s right there”. I point up to the floor which is soaking went, where the pipes disappear supposedly through the wall to the outside. We go back outside and I get the demolition saw and ask if I should hack it down. I’m starting to really feel things and it’s getting dark so I need to do this asap if he doesn’t want to do it himself. He makes a comment I also made to ineffableBob. “Things just don’t add up. There’s no moisture out here. It’s sheltered. Furthermore we’ve not had a single call for frozen pipes in months”. I’d made the comment of confusion at there being no ice whatsoever down there, no moisture, and the fact even if I’d left a hose and faucet open it was supposed to not break after the last repair. The only thing I could think of was the old repair went bad. The plumber tells me to hold off and let’s go downstairs yet again.
We head downstairs for the third time and I can see things click for him, “I don’t think that’s your faucet piping that leaked”. I say that’s impossible what else could it be? We go upstairs and he points at the kitchen sink. It is directly in front of the outside faucet. We have child locks on the kitchen cabinets to protect kids when they come over. He wiggles them free and swings the doors open. A wash of water comes pouring out and a rotten egg smell with it. OMG. After some investigation he finds the sink trap went bad. I’d been telling ineffableBob how lucky we were we caught the leak just an hour or two after it started leaking or we might have a microbial problem to deal with too. Well, we now had a potential microbial problem. Because not only did this change the dynamic of the leak but it also changed the kind of leak it was. One was clean, cold outside water. This was dingy wastewater. And, it had apparently been leaking for a few days. The water had built up in the cabinet which took time to collapse the bottom so it could find a place to escape. We’d never considered an inside leak. My wife had come home from her nightshift and was doing kitty litter at 8:30 am. We hadn’t done dishes since a day or two before that. What appeared to be an active leak was simply the timing of the breach and the water pouring out in a controlled manner.
So this story is about my own incompetence, the kindness of the gaming community, and I’m happy to say my covered deck experiment is saved as I didn’t have to hack the floor joist apart. Of course this also means I wasted ineffable’s time… but not entirely. I won’t be putting things back together til late spring and now that the area is exposed I now have the opportunity to make things right. I will be able to create a boxout area where the faucet is in case things go bad in the future. I can add the support substructure needed then remove the offending/blocking support when it’s done. Now we get to why I’m only posting this now and not Friday night when everything was sorted. I should mention in case you’re wondering a mitigation service was called and they’ve been working all weekend tearing up the floor under the sink, in the basement, and the ceiling. They’ve had fans and machines running to try and pull spores from mildew, mold etc. It’s like housing a 747 on two floors of our house, but it’s working well.
Finale’.
Remember that pain medicine I mentioned? No I didn’t overdose. I am way too measured in my dosages for that to happen. But I was feeling no pain. ineffablebob said he was impressed (surprised?) at my input. I wasn’t. I was still disappointed I wasted someone’s afternoon, but I have to admit I am thrilled I got to spend time with a QT3’er and can’t wait to take him out to dinner or do something fun if he’s available (this goes for everyone here!). He is seriously such a cool guy. I’m running off the rails here again, where was I? Oh yes, the plumber left and I went to sleep on the couch waiting for insurance to call as I’d hoped water mitigation would get out there that night (they didn’t). I woke up a little later, took my meds, then went to bed. Quite a rollercoaster, but like those, when you get off you’re still alive.
Sat morning I wake up. I’m a little sore in arms and chest but not bad at all. I go to stand up and immediately collapse as my legs give out. What is going on? Holy cow they hurt, a workout kind of hurt, but I can’t get them to support my weight. Doesn’t take more than a few seconds to figure it out. When you push your muscles you get lactic acid buildup. Normally your body will tell you when you’re hitting a point where you need to cut it out. You get cramps, charlie horses, etc. While we were working a combination of pain medicine and amazing company from ineffableblob let me just ignore and blow by those warning signals. Jen helped me to the bathroom and my pee had a hint of purple to it. I’d broken down protein in my leg muscles Rhabdomyolysis. This is similar to when you see a marathon runner collapse near the finish line and can’t finish no matter how much they want to. Their muscles can’t support them. Thankfully I didn’t lose control of my bowels like one famous long distance runner that was televised many years ago. 2 nights alter after proper fluids and meds I’m finally back up and at the computer feeling fine. I think my surgery screening is going to come down to my powers of persuasion, but I won’t sweat it if it’s delayed because the world became a better place this weekend. Thanks @ineffablebob.
Was a ridiculous 4 page post necessary for this event? No. But a 4 page story hardly feels worthy to describe something that was so meaningful.
So a few years ago I started a woodworking business on the side, doing it during nights & weekends. I focus on big slabs for bars, desks, tables, beds, etc. My plan is to get this to a point where it will allow me to retire a few years earlier from my day job.
Any woodworker will tell you that the finish makes or breaks the work you do, and having paying customers, I need my work to hold up. For bars and tables, I have what I call my “bulletproof” finish. It’s absolutely wonderful. The problem is it takes 14 hrs between coats, so 7 days just to get the finish on, then it’s a 3 week wait for the finish to completely cure, and then I hand rub it to a silky satin finish. So, all told, a 4 week wait for the customer once I’ve done all the woodworking.
I am in search of another finish that I can count on - I have other finishes I use for less harsh environments, so I’ve got a lot of experience with french polish, a conversion varnish, and a water based polyurethane for things that will be outside.
I had this idea that I really want to try a lot of finishes in a low-risk environment, so I came up with this idea to approach these two sisters that own this Mexican Restaurant called Lupes Escape, with a proposition. They’ve owned this restaurant for 30 years - and I’ve known them the entire time going to it about once a month or so. While they are not rich, they both make their living off it. It’s good solid food, but their tables are vinyl covered plywood.
So I went to them and said I’d give them 9 new solid wood tables, but they have to know up front that one or more of the finish may “fail” - I said I’d re-do the ones that fail at the end of the year. They were so happy with the idea, and even went to the trouble to paint all their metal bases in preparation for the new tables.
Well, today, we installed them and it was great. With only 9 tables, they decided to make the entry all new tables and then mix the ones in the main dining room with the new wood ones visible as you walk in. Here’s a few pics:
During this time, I came up with another idea, could I put some of my work in their waiting area with some business cards? They said sure! So, they’re even more ecstatic as this really dresses up the waiting area - it had this one old brown painted coffee table that had seen better days.
So now the test begins - these tables are going to get cleaned 10-15 times a day, and be stressed with all the keys, tables, kids, etc that visit it. I’m really curious how this great table finish test will turn out, and I’m really happy I could help the sisters and give them something nice for their restaurant - kind of paying it back a little for all the great food & service they’ve provided for 30 years.
@ddtibbs Oh my goodness that is frightening! Have there been other break-in attempts in your area? Often the police will tell you what other streets have been hit to help with awareness. What a good doggie :)
@CraigM - must be pretty fin to have him take an interest in something I’m assuming you love all on his own.
@Tman - nice tables! Are the chairs just pulled away from the one on the bottom?
Glad to hear that the plumber was able to find the real problem, @jpinard ! Sounds like it’s well on the way to final resolution. And don’t worry at all about “wasting” my time with that deck stuff, it’s never a waste to get a chance to meet a QT3’er and it sounds like it’ll be useful later on anyway. Best of luck with the upcoming surgery screening!
Well, I was just physically ill for the first time in like 3-4 years and it was super not awesome. Remind me to never eat anything anywhere ever again!
Food poisoning?
Looks like, because my gf followed my down that path within like 2 hours. We didn’t have any overlapping social engagements this week, so only likely mutual infection point is food we shared. Either some cheesy bacon fries from steak escape at the mall, or the curry I made us went bad somehow.
I’m having a similar issue, I think. I made Ikea Swedish meatballs for dinner last night. The wife ate right away but I left the dish (covered) on the counter for several hours. Then I ate them cold. Today I had diet Coke for the first time in months. I had weaned myself off of caffeine. This caused the perfect storm (and I do mean storm) of intestinal distress. I’m talking numb legs on the toilet storm. Twice. Sorry for the TMI.
Nice story Jeff. So you were blessed with not one but two great people. Ineffablebob and your plumber for using his head & helping you find the real problem!
Thanks Tman and you’re absolutely right. And QT3 as a community has always been supportive for everyone here - something I love. So if it wasn’t for the community space itself there wouldn’t be such a positive outcome.
@ArmandoPenblade - I’ve been thinking about your case all day. Mall food is notorious for being awful and causing illness. Lord knows how they store their stuff and what happens as it’s awaiting prep. But cheese and overcooked bacon don’t usually harbor bugs. Raw chicken is of course a good vector for food poisoning ala Salmonella. It could have had it when it was processed, but here’s the tricky part. You may have cooked it all out making the chicken safe again, but Salmonella likes to stick around and grab onto things (sorry I know you know all this as a man of science, but finding the cause would be so useful). So a secondary food item, tomatoes, lettuce etc could have picked it up from the counter during food prep. Can you think of anything that might have allowed it? The other thing of course, is the mall place could have had meat contaminated with E. Coli or Listeria and due to unhygienic handling they transferred it to your food. If you can deduce it down it might be good to call the store where you got the chicken to report it may have been contaminated. Same for the mall place. If someone else got sick then they have 2 cases and have to find out why. Immuno-compromised people and elderly too often end up with renal failure or die from simple food poisoning. Speaking of which - I hope the two of you are OK! Are you?
Just remember the gestation period of some of the food-born illnesses can be incredibly long… aka sometimes it’s not the last thing you ate. And sometimes not what you ate at all but what jpindard said, something on a surface. This is why it can be really challenging to find the source of an outbreak or why tomatoes lost their good name for a short time!
Does anyone else remember when Tman was new? And do you sorta see him post now sometimes and feel a little proud that he seems to have come so far along? He’s like a son the entire forum helped to raise or something. :P
No wait, I’m thinking of Teiman or something aren’t I? And he’s still goofy, isn’t he? Now I’m getting myself confused.