Day two was basically a bust. Home owner plumbing emergencies will do that to a guy. I started one idea, song number three, but it was just a couple of short bass riffs on my iPhone. That’s all.
Spoiler alert, day three will be a little bit better. Not much, but a little bit.
I tried to make today a photography fun day. Early in the morning at least. I went to Boston thinking I could shoot a couple of rolls of film on Beacon Hill and along the Charles River by the Esplanade where they had the 4th of July spectacular yesterday.
I got through one roll of 120 and one roll of 35mm and was starting to think of what to load up next when I got called home. I guess that means I have to go back soon, right?
When I got home it was time to start cleaning out the closet where the plumber needs to work tomorrow. We also went to IKEA and another furniture store. Tomorrow, after the plumber leaves (assuming he fixes the problem) I will be putting together a Swedish dresser.
We also picked up an order of a couple of rolls of bread from a bakery that Jen’s high school friend is running out of his house with his husband. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve had some of their baked goods before oh my goodness…
I think I am going to have a piece of bread now and then I am going to go to sleep because I am freakin’ exhausted.
G’night, folks.
My beloved bride had a cool idea today. We have a Sonos audio system in our living room. It’s how we get surround sound and movie theater audio goodness. She wanted to upgrade the system. Good idea, right? She ordered a new beam and we went to Best Buy to pick it up.
After, while we were still in the parking lot, she had another great idea. Wanna go for a mini road trip somewhere? Sure! How about the ocean? Sure! Off we went.
When we got home a couple hours later, Jen heard a noise. Oh wait! You don’t know the back story. Hold on a second while I fill you in.
Back story: Our house used to have a garage. Years ago we had it remodeled into a primary bedroom suite with an attached bathroom. The outflow pipe from the bathroom was far away from the outflow for the rest of the house and we had to have a pump installed. The pump is under the floor with a little trap door to get to it. That trap door had not been opened in the 500 years since we finished the remodel. It is located in a closet and we had put a big closet organizer into the closet and part of it was sitting on the trap door.
Okay, back to the main story. When we got home from the ocean a couple of hours later, Jen heard a noise. She was standing next to the bathroom and I was on the other side of the room. I thought the noise was a bird being loud and obnoxious outside. She said no, it wasn’t a bird. I then thought it was the mini-split system’s door being squeaky. She said no, it was not the mini-split. I stood next to her so that I could hear what she was hearing and I heard it too.
There were two sounds. One as an alarm beeping like crazy. The other was the pump running more or less continuously. I went into the closet with the trap door and sure enough, the beeping was coming from there. Well, shit.
We both had a job to do from that point. Mine was to clear almost everything out of the closet (there was a lot of stuff in there) and open the trap door. Jen’s was to find a plumber. Oh yeah, it’s Independence Day. A national holiday. Almost everyone in the country had the day off (except for the poor staff at Best Buy).
I was able to get to the pump. I had to move almost an entire wardrobe and partially disassemble the organizer but I did it. Jen was able to eventually get a plumber on the phone who could not come help tonight but did offer to help talk us through shutting down the pump until they could come… on Monday. While she was giving the plummer the details I found that the alarm beep was tied to a flashing red light with a label that said to open the unit to see what was causing the alarm. Well, I wasn’t doing that. There was also a button that said push to silence alarm. I pushed it. Oh what a relief.
So the alarm was still going off but it was silent now and at the plumber’s suggestion we killed the power to the pump from the circuit box. The situation has been remedied for now. On Monday the plumber will come and tell us that we need to replace the unit which should cost $10000000000000. Would that be preferable to finding out there is a clog in the sewage pipe? I don’t know. Would it be preferable to finding out there is a leak in the sewage pipe? Probably. I mean, our house doesn’t smell like donald trump so I don’t think our en suite bathroom is shitting itself. We’ll find out on Monday though.
Eventually we were able to relax and that lead to us putting up the new Sonos system. It got a little annoying trying to link everything together in their app, but eventually it all worked and now we are watching Project Hail Mary (again) and enjoying the kick ass audio.
Tomorrow I think I am going to go into Boston really early in the morning and wander around Beacon Hill and the riverwalk along the Charles with my cameras. I’m also officially into the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge, so there will be music to make too.
One thing is for sure… we are not going to use the primary bedroom suite’s bathroom for a couple of days.
Oh the glorious day off. Friday without work? Perfection.
I slept late, I ran some errands with the love of my life, I cooked dinner on the grill, and I am thinking about going to bed early.
Who could ask for anything more?
It is July 3rd and the sun went down 30 minutes ago and we just heard our first fireworks in the neighborhood. All fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts, but not in New Hampshire and New Hampshire is maybe 100–200 yards away from my house.
Now the question is, do I go to the ocean at sunrise tomorrow and take some 4th of July sunrise pics?
Probably not.
Tomorrow is July 3rd. July 4th is Saturday so we get the holiday day off tomorrow. My beloved bride’s company gave them Monday off so I took a vacation day on Monday too. Instant four day holiday weekend. Awesome.
We don’t have any plans. I might get a haircut. I might get the car inspected. I might ask my beloved bride if she wants to go see Supergirl before it goes away.
On saturday July 4th nothing happens because we’re a fascist shit hole of a country. Musically for me, the 50 songs in 90 days challenge starts. From July 4th to October 1st write 50 songs. I’ve tried it a bunch of times and failed all but three. The challenge used to be part of fawm.org but last year the dropped it. I’m still doing it. Fawm replaced it with a short term thing, Write five songs in nine days. Maybe I’ll sneak one of those in as part of 50/90. We’ll see.
Happy long weekend, everyone.
I have nothing to write about. I wish I had something to write about but right now at this moment in time on a Wednesday on the first of July in 2026 I have squat to write about.
My step daughter flew to Baltimore tonight. She also signed a lease on a place to live in San Diego in September when she starts grad school. My beloved bride and I both booked a week’s vacation so we can go out there to help the move in. We’re going to fly all the way to California and then spend a week putting together IKEA furniture. It’s going to be EPIC.
What else… my beloved bride and I have started another rewatch of Parks and Recreation. The show is a classic but the first season or two are just good. It doesn’t get great until Rob Lowe and Adam Scott show up. It was good at the beginning, it was great eventually.
I had a decent day at work today after three consecutive ball busters. I have to work (from home) tomorrow and then we get Friday off for the 4th of July. My beloved bride and I both took Monday off too. Can you say four day weekend? Too bad this year’s independence day is awful because we’re a nazi state and the whole american dream is just a farce ruined by the fascists in the white house. The fascist rapist pedophile in the oval office has destroyed literally every thing he’s involved with. Whatever.
Yeah… I think I need to take a nap or something. It’s been a long couple of days. Goodnight everyone. Talk to you tomorrow.
Well, that was a crazy work day.
One of our customers did something yesterday afternoon that they really should not have done. Had they asked me about it I would have warned them off. I wasn’t asked though and they did it and it blew up.
The messes fell like dominoes. The thing they ran caused this one thing to go bad, which in turn caused this other thing to go bad, which then caused a third thing to go bad.
First thing this morning I was asked if I know of a way to clean up the mess. I said no, it just needs to run its course. Half an hour later the problem turned into a teamwork adventure. I threw the question out to my whole staff. Any ideas? One guy says that this one thing includes this other thing that we could sort off of. I say that the issue is past the point in the process. Someone else asks if that one thing includes a link to this other thing that is the actual point where things are stuck? A third guy comes back with woah, there is a link.
So loop through the second thing, get the linked data, link back to the first thing and check the sort item, if it is what we’re looking for, kill it off. Run that over the entire million and a half records and boom, problem solved.
Another guy figures out that there is a third thing that is feeding the first thing. We had been under the impression that the problem had moved beyond that point but it was still processing and making things worse. That third thing has a value we can sort off of as well. A second loop was written to kill off anything that is still feeding the problem. That loop had to be run first.
The only other problem came when the first loop finished and we had to start the second loop… everyone was at lunch. Shit. I had people pushing for progress and I had to stall a little so that the writer of the loop could come back from lunch and execute his code. I did some of his prep work and fortunately he came back before the customer started asking questions and everything went off without a hitch.
Teamwork, man. Three customer service programmers and one development engineer all working together to fix a problem that none of us even realized was possible. Fan-freakin’-tastic. All the while there was me, your humble narrator, getting on conference calls with the customer trying to keep them from freaking out. My job description doesn’t really include dealing with customers directly but it does happen now and then. Today was one of those rare days and I was the point person on most of these calls. I’m guessing that they could tell that the big red head introvert talking to them was not comfortable in the role, but I’m also guessing they could tell that I was getting a little excited at the prospect of my team doing something that had never been done before.
Of course, now that we know we can do it… here’s hoping we never have to do it again.
I have worked in the office three times this week. I am supposed to average twice a week. Two weeks ago I only made it in once. This week I went three times to make up for it.
Three days……
Damn, that was a lot. Remember the old days when I worked five days in the office? How the hell did I do that? Three days… it feels like a lifetime.
One more work day left this week and I am going to work from home. Insert the sound of a really emphatic sigh of relief right here.
Change of subject. On Sunday I dropped seven rolls of film in the mail. On Wednesday (yesterday) I got the notification saying that they had arrived at the Darkroom Lab. It is now a quarter to nine on Thursday evening. No scanned images yet. Fingers crossed I don’t have to wait too long. I wanna see how shitty my shitty photos look. I’m ready.
I’m ready for the weekend. Are you ready? I’m ready.
The US is shit. Completely. Why would anyone from outside of the US chose to come here?
Then again, the Scottish soccer fans who came to Boston for the World Cup were an absolute delight. Boston’s fun level increased by at least 600%. Of course they left Boston and went to maga central, Miami where the police cracked down on the fun. You know, like fucking nazis do.
On top of that, there is the glorious Rush tour. Two Canadians (Geddy and Alex), one German (Anika), and… I don’t actually know where Loren Gold is from. He played with The Who, is he English? He played with Chicago, is he American? There’s this thing these days called “the internet” and I used it to look up his professional website and it says he’s American… so he doesn’t actually count for this discussion.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, a band with a bunch of non-Americans who have a crew who is probably also made up of a lot of non-Americans. They played four shows in the US and then two in Mexico. They left the country and then had to come back into the country for a show tonight in Texas… and the show has been postponed because of some issue at the border crossing.
What was it I said at the start of this post? The US is shit. Miami giving the Tartan Army shit? Texas border crossing giving Rush shit? We are so unworthy. The fuck?
I’m so tired I can’t Even…
I was in Boston at 2:00am this morning. Maybe I’ll tell that story someday.
I went to my nephew’s graduation party today. It was great. We may have set my step daughter up on a blind date. Probably not. Maybe I’ll tell that story someday.
Inside the Red Head's Head 