The MacDeskBlog

I spent another weekend and another Monday night working on the house. My friend Dave Giessler came over Sunday and worked on the wiring. We ran the circuit for the downstairs lights, and he exposed and cleaned up the wiring upstairs so the inspector can look at it all (new and old). I almost finished the plumbing. I’m short one piece of flexible tubing to connect the inlet of the (temporary) water heater. We also ran out of 12-3/g Romex on Sunday, so I have a couple of three way switches to run wires for, and a little bit of clean up work to do in the pantry, upstairs bath and closet. If I can get supplies today or tomorrow, I should be able to finish up both the rough plumbing and the rough inside wiring on Thursday night. If I’m lucky, that could mean inspections on Friday, though it will probably end up on Monday instead.

My hapless Giants are back in town after a truly dismal road trip. I’m heading to the game tonight with Ken. I haven’t seen him in many months, primarily because work transferred him to another site. Should be a fun evening.

I’m 35 today. My house isn’t ready for me. We passed rebar inspection for the footing for the front stairs this morning, but the rain all day prevented us from pouring the concrete. I’m giving the crew the weekend off. They busted their tails for the last three weeks to try to make the goal of today which I set. There was just too much work to do. Time to step back and re-evaluate a bit. Time to remake the schedule based upon the work remaining instead of driving it off of my birthday. I’m a little disappointed, but I’ll get over it.

PG&E still has not connected my temporary power pole, which was approved by the City on March 25th! I raise hell today. I spoke with several people at PG&E and lodged complaints which each of them. I even called the California Public Utilities Commission (after filing a complaint electronically) and the service representative I spoke with was very helpful, connecting me to PG&E’s headquarters. I also spoke with the City of Berkeley twice. The first time they resent the service authorization to PG&E. The second time I had them send me a copy and follow up with a phone call to PG&E. Of course, I still have not received a call back from PG&E’s Service Planning group, so I don’t know whether raising hell has gotten me anywhere. If not, I’ll just have to continue next week. I hate having to complain in order to get service.

I noticed that I had turned off one of the two methods I was using to monitor Apache on the server. I had left on the ineffective method and disabled the less ineffective method (I almost said ‘more effective’ but it’s still just restarting Apache after it has hung, so that’s not very effective in my book). So, I switched them, turning off the worse of the two and re-enabling the other. Apache has already restarted five times since then, so it’s an improvement. I’m also going to re-evaluate prioritization of the MacDesktops server configuration. I’ll probably but it up a few slots.

I really wanted to meet the target for the house. Now that we didn’t, I don’t see a big difference in missing it by two days or two weeks. That philosophy might shift, but that’s where I am today.

My father sent to me from Seattle chocolate made in Berkeley, where I live. Scharffen Berger is good stuff. And a book, Chocolate : A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. Should be a fun read. Well, I’m off to the Giants game with Michelle, mom and John. I hope the Giants do better for my birthday than they did for Brett Tomko’s yesterday.