Monthly Archives: July 2009

Birthdays and Car Accidents

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 27, 2009 – 7:45 pm
Filed under Accidents!
Tagged as

img135So today I turned 30. Horray for me.

Well, I’ve already talked about how my car repairs have sapped all our car savings. So, now it’s the Mrs.’ turn. She and our toddler were on the way to meet me for dinner to celebrate my birthday and I get that phone call. My first reaction was the good one — I asked where she was and if everyone was OK.  (Brownie Points!)

As you can see, the front end of a Chevy Malibu is no match for the back end of a pickup. She was in stop-and-go traffic and was looking to merge. The pack started moving and she looked over her shoulder and, well, the traffic was in ’stop’ mode and she was still in the ‘go’ mode. Like I said, everyone was OK. The pickup should just need a new bumper. Blue Betty here is drivable, but the hood is a hazard right now. My wife’s only 5′-0″ tall so seeing over it is questionable right now. I’m thinking I might take the hood off and switch cars with her until we get her new one, but I’m not sure it’s legal to drive without the hood. (The Oklahoma Driver’s Manual doesn’t really say…)

The one thing that the Mrs. didn’t do was take any pictures of the truck’s damage. She’s got a camera phone, so it would be easy to do (and it’s what I did when I got sideswiped last year). We are really hoping that the driver doesn’t all of a sudden develop a case of whiplash. The Mrs. thinks that he won’t be that type of person — he seemed nice enough apparently. Guess he gave off the honest vibe. That’s all well and good, but he didn’t have insurance. I just won’t say anything about it.

Well, one ‘good’ thing may have happened to me on my birthday — my current deadline probably will slide to Friday. I say probably because the architect told me that’s the assumption he’s working under. I could really use the extra time to finish (especially without working late tonight because of the accident).

So now we’ll have another panic purchase — and that’s a story for another time…

The Impression of Completeness

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 16, 2009 – 8:05 pm
Filed under Revit, Work
Tagged as , , , ,

100_percent_override-782395So I recently “met” a deadline on the project I’m working on. This was supposed to be a 100% Review set — i.e. should be pretty much done. Well, my to do list is currently getting longer instead of shorter. This simply turned into a “submit-where-I’m-at” submittal. There are some estimates being made off of what I’ve turned in that will be off, but there is nothing I can do about it at this point. I do have time to finish up before sealed drawings are due and will be done by then, but this probably won’t be a good impression — if my stuff is reviewed (and more often than not, it isn’t).

It seems like there is never enough time to do everything that is needed to put a structure into a building. It seems like our clients and the owners think that what we do is just pushing a button. Changes aren’t that easy to incorporate especially late into the project. Luckily, I have a really responsible client/architect this time and there are no changes at the last minute. My problem this time is that I’m learning a new 3D modeling software: Revit.

Revit is a really great tool. It allows me to actually model the building in 3D and cut a section through any part of the building and most of my detailing is there right away. From there it should just be adding notes to the section and walking away — but we don’t model everything. This is because unless the owner is going to use the model to building the structure, there isn’t enough time or money in the project for us to do it.

So, with the learning curve for this software, I keep finding myself working toward giving an impression of completeness. I detail various parts of the building with no calculations to back it up. Some of this is OK due to my “engineering judgement” (i.e. I’ve done this before and this solution worked last time). But when I do get around to finally checking things, any changes I have to make to my stuff affects more than my drawings. The architect has probably detailed around what I’ve ‘guessed’ at and now they’ll have to make changes as well.

I would have to say that, when it comes to this type of submittal, working to give the impression of completeness is better than leaving item completely off the drawings. I know that as I keep getting more and more experience, my “engineering judgement” will get better and the changes will become fewer. Right now, I just hate having to back track and apologize to our clients for having to make changes.

So I Nuked Everything…

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 11, 2009 – 9:04 pm
Filed under ramblings
Tagged as , , ,

explosionWow — I blew up my site with extreme prejudice. I know what happened. and the highly ironic thing is that I was trying to be proactive to keep this from happening.

If you came to my site from the afternoon of Thursday the 9th to this evening (the 11th), they would have been greeted with a nice Fatal Error message and nothing more than that. B-E-A-utiful. Especially because I didn’t notice it until Friday morning…

So here’s what happened: I had backed up my site via copying everything through my FTP client. I then tried to make an automated backup. But instead, I ended up setting a sync. So, when it ran Thursday, it synced over the top of what I had previously copied off – and it did so very poorly that it corrupted my backup. So now my install of WP is nuked and I don’t know what to do. And to top it off, I have a deadline at work that day and can’t jump on fixing anything other than submitting a help ticket until I get home.

Well GoDaddy is slow in responding to my ticket, so I just uninstall WordPress and reinstall. That works and I get things mostly set back up Friday night. Then Saturday morning I get a response from GoDaddy telling me how to revert back to their saved versions. So, I think I have a working WordPress now, let’s just revert all the files — blew it up again, but this time with a different error. So I repeat my steps from the night before, and now here I am.

I was able to get Google’s cashed versions of my posts, but didn’t get a chance to grab their cashed version of my Debt Snowball Spreadsheet page. I did grab one at work on Friday, so I can go back in time once I get back to work on Wednesday (short vacation time!).

At least I was trying to be proactive about it.

Getting Motivated

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 10, 2009 – 8:49 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

My company paid/acquired tickets for me to go to the “Get Motivated!” seminar yesterday. What a disjointed bunch of speakers. Alone, the speakers would have been good to listen to and informative. Instead, they were jam packed into a 8 hour day. On the ticket, there were 9 speakers listed, but three mystery speakers showed up as well. They were there to motivate you to buy their products and/or sign up for their seminars. After hearing from Joe Montana and Colin Powell (probably 20 minutes each at most) we heard a 45 minute overly energetic diatribe about what basically amounted to day-trading. “All you have to do is buy at 3 green arrows and sell at 3 red arrows. It’s that simple.” I’m sure it really could be, but where am I supposed to come up with the $10k to play with your website? And where is the (what amounts to) $50/month to subscribe?

Then came lunch — nothing like unleashing thousands of people on Bricktown when they are summer staffed and apparently unaware that a large event is going on. We ended up missing Zig Ziglar and lost our seats. The ushers apparently decided that my stuff sitting on my seat wasn’t good enough to hold it. That’s fine, really it is, but then when I ask for my stuff back, people look at me like an ass? Really? So, we moved up to the nose bleed seats, and I sit next to a cliché. No problems though until the next salesman comes out. This guy comes out all religious-like and pseudo-preaching. Then the Cliché starts with the “mmmmmm-hmmmmm” and “You preach it!” Then she tries to (loudly) complete his sentences and fails miserably making it very hard to pay attention. This guy is pitching real estate as a good investment and if you aren’t buying property you are a damn idiot and “should be run over by a bus”. Yes, that’s still the pseudo-preacher. He starts off “You should not buy foreclosures because you will be taking advantage of people when they are in the most need.” Wow, sounds admirable — let’s give this guy a shot. and he completes the circle of WTF by saying “I live in a foreclosure” and “I hope [someone leaving early] dies so I can buy [their] house cheaply out of probate.” To top that off he says “renting provides you no benefit and is a complete waste of money” Well, I’m sure he says that to his tenants. That is where I turned off my brain to this guy. Sure, renting doesn’t build any equity or provide any tax benefits, but it puts a roof over your head! That is a tangible benefit! Urgh, — I’ll just leave this one alone. This is the guy that also said if he couldn’t make $50,000 on a deal, “he’d rather pick corn out of vomit and put it back in the can.” (At least I’ll be able to use that quote somewhere…)

More speakers then the last sales pitch of making money on the internet. Oh son of a … Well, OK, let’s hear what he has to say. Well, there’s no content here. Basically “my seminar will teach you how to get on Google’s first page” and “you need a online storefront.” To sell what? Who knows? Wait for it, wait for it, DROPSHIPPING!

And the sheep in the crowd bought all of this. “Hurry to the guys waving their lights and sign up for more seminars.” And if you hurry right now I’ll give you my seminar that’s normally priced at $3,200 for $100. Or $49 or $29 depending on how late in the day it got. I hate to break it to you, but if you can offer something that steeply discounted, it’s not a $3,200 value. Just like the infomercials that can keep “throw in a second tube for free” — the product isn’t originally priced correctly to give an impression of discounted value. But only if you act NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!11111

I understand the need for these sales pitches in this thing, you don’t make money on letting entire companies of people in the door for $19, but good grief people. The worst part was the constant preaching. Now, I’m a Christian and, yes, I think everyone should be given the opportunity to hear the “good news” but to have everything just short of an open alter at a MANAGEMENT SEMINAR is offensive.

Anyway, if the speakers could have just built on each other and had some sort of continuity it would have been worth missing the day of work. As it is, I’m just further behind at work on a short week anyway.

Stupid Things I’ve Done, Volume 1 – Cars

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 9, 2009 – 8:44 pm
Filed under ramblings
Tagged as , , ,
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

face-palm-300x300

So, unfortunately, I will call add a “Volume 1″ to this post. These won’t necessarily be in cronological order, just as I think of them. If anyone reads this and has a story of their own they want to add, just shoot me an email. Let’s do this.

About a month ago or so, we decided that we should start saving for a new-used car for the Mrs. The savings hadn’t amounted to much so far — not even a decent down payment yet — but it was still money in the bank. We’ve been saving some cash each payday in a little emergency fund type of account for car repairs as well. But, well, let me just
keep on telling my little story.

Not mine, but close enough

Not mine, but close enough

We bought my car used in 2003. An 01 model Mitsubishi Galant that was a used rental. It didn’t really bother me that it used to be a rental when we bought it, but that little nugget was always a little burr in my side. We’ve had no problems with it really at all until just about a month ago.

I would get the minor routine maintenance stuff done: oil changes, rotate & balance the tires, that kind of stuff. But those pages in the back of the owner’s manual that give suggested maintenance items and intervals — well, I ignored those mostly.

The Mrs. had to work late, so I was tasked with picking up the boy child from Mother’s Day Out and had a couple of other errands to run while I was out. He was excited to actually ride in “daddy’s car” since his car seat is usually in “mommy’s car”. We had strapped the extra seat he was nominally too big for into my car and we were on our way.

Everything was going fine until I got off the highway to go into our neighborhood. I was stopped at a red light before going over an overpass. I get to the top of the overpass going slowly and then I lost all power. (To top it all off, I was actually talking on my cell phone at the time — one of my pet peeves.) Traffic was starting to get heavy at the time and of course there was someone on my tail. I get to the bottom of the overpass and stop — permanently — at the red light. I try to re-crank the motor and it sounds like a dead battery.

I ended up calling the Mrs. to have her come get me (so much for her working late) and we hook up the jumper cables. Keep in mind I’ve got a toddler that’s getting more and more restless  and hot in the backseat. We can’t get the battery to jump, so the Mrs. heads on home with the boy and and I call a tow truck.

The mechanic says he’ll take a look at it the next day and give me a call with a diagnosis. He was thrilled with it I’m sure. A broken
timing belt. And apparently I have an interference motor. According to Wikipedia

“In an interference engine, or one whose valves extend into the path of the piston, failure of the timing belt (or timing chain) invariably results in costly and, in some cases, irreparable engine damage, as some valves will be held open when they should not be and thus will be struck by the pistons.”

My interference motor just interfered with itself. And on top of that the broken belt slapped around and took out a couple more things while it was at it. So, where does that put me? Well, to see if the engine is any good, they have to first replace the timing belt and a couple of things that the broken one took out. ~$750 just to see if my engine is junk. Great. Let’s give it a shot. Luckily, it turns out I was going slow enough that while it did interfere, it didn’t interfere that much, so my engine lives, but runs a little rough. Let’s go ahead and get some more of the neglected preventive maintenance done while we are at it.

So now, the wrong car broke (if it was the Mrs. we would have just jumped into car debt), I’ve wiped out our meager savings towards
replacement , and erased the ‘car emergency fund.’ But hey, my car runs … roughly, but it runs…

But, we had no problems with it until it catastrophically failed…

Can we clip $10 of coupons in a year?

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 6, 2009 – 8:34 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

We used to get the Wednesdays and Sundays, but I pretty much just opened the paper to read the comics and sports. Now I’ll at least try the national and local sections. And hey, if nothing else, we will get some drop cloths and packing materials for cheap.

Can a newspaper really make any money with this kind of deal? I wonder how much it really costs the publisher to print and how much gas is used to throw it into my bushes. I suspect the delivery person would be driving by our house anyway, so the gas used would not be anything significant.

I wonder where our ‘break even’ point will be? Hopefully less than one month, but if it takes longer I can’t really complain at the Mrs. unless I help clip the things, right? I don’t necessarily envy her doing the large majority of the shopping with a toddler as it is already, now she’ll have to keep coupons organized at the same time.

Sorry babe!

Win a Roku Digital Video Player

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 5, 2009 – 8:30 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

Winning free stuff is cool, but winning this would be awesome!
rokudarkknight

I have a Roku Soundbridge and it works great. I get my MP3 collection from my computer in the office streaming to the sound system in the living room wirelessly. Mrs @ the Bathroom Door really enjoys it for background music. I’ve been thinking about getting one of these things for a while now, but keep putting it off. Now the prospect of a free one is going to make me start saving my pennies if I don’t win…

This sounds like a sales pitch, and I don’t mean for it to, but if you are interested in registering for this drawing, here’s the link at My Charmed Life.

He’ll Eat My Goat

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 3, 2009 – 8:21 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

Just a quick comic from XKCD — one of my favorites.

Designated Drivers from XKCD.com

Designated Drivers from XKCD.com

And For My First Act…

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 2, 2009 – 8:18 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

I’ll need a volunteer from the audience. Audience? Hello? (hello… o… o….) Wow — what an echo.

What can I write about that people would want to read? Well, let’s start with the name of the site, shall we? I called this place TheBathroomDoor not for poop toilet humor or anything like that. I got the idea from the Blue Man Group song The Complex. It deals with, well… I’ll just let the Blue Men explain it with Rock Concert Movement #237:

Taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective unconscious by using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying work or meaningful connections with others.

I work on the highest floor

There’s nothing in my way
But I saw my picture on the bathroom door today
I don’t feel like working anymore, is that okay?
I’m so far in, I can’t get out
So far in, I can’t get out
So far in, I can’t get out
I made it to the highest floor
By working every day
But I can’t remember anymore what it was like to play
If I could only find the exit door, I’d run away
I’m so far in, I can’t get out
So far in, I can’t get out
So far in, I can’t get out
Can’t get out
Get out
Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up and go
Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up and go
Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up and go
Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up and go

Anyway, I don’t think this will necessarily be the theme of this blog. I’ll touch on lots of topics until I find a niche to call home. Hopefully you’ll find something you like and will come back again!

A Place to Call My Own

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Posted by Man on the Door on July 1, 2009 – 8:17 pm
Filed under ramblings
(Note: this post reuploaded after I nuked my site)

Ahh… man it’s nice to stretch out and brush the cobwebs out of this little corner of the web-o-sphere. Please bear with me while I kick the tires on my new site and hopefully I will have a decent site up and running sometime shortly. As it is right now, I have moved the Debt Snowball spreadsheet I wrote from my ol’ geocities site to The Bathroom Door. There should be a link at the top of the site or you can follow this link.

The address of my new site might seem a bit odd, but I’ll explain it shortly.

Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!