Productive day.
Oct. 29th, 2006 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I find myself a lot of times just wanting to yammer about what I'm doing or what I've done today. Since I haven't really modified the blog to take sort of life-yammering off the home page, I'll do it here for now, with the tag 'life'. Not sure if you can filter that out in LJ feeds, but anyway.
Tons of navel-gazing and general blithering ahead.
Today has been amazingly cyclical. I've been fighting off this weird cold-thing for the last few days. It seems to manifest in general ouchiness and occasional spikes of brillint pain in my sinuses. Sort of general malaise. I've seen this happen as a result of me stressing (and I am stressing about some work stuff), and 'not getting out enough'. So against what should be better judgement, I decided to take lots of drugs and be Super Active.
So I did.
Spent the morning plotting my various projects. There's tidbits I've been wanting to do for ages, so I figured this would be a good Home Depot day. It turned out okay, though I was definately part of the Weekend Contractors crew - the number of guys at HD with babies or small kids was pretty high.
End result? Good success. I replaced a blown outlet in the basement (really blown. Like, soot on the outlet) with a new GFCI component. It only took me 5 minutes to figure out that the GFCI breaker can only be reset when the current is on. Doh. I got a nifty little studfinder / circuit tester at HD (durn those impulse buys) which was invaluable in a) confirming the current was off when I had hit the breaker, and b) pointing out when I had swapped Hot for Neutral on the outlet. Fixed those and remounted, voila! Clean power.
This meant I could unwire some really scary-rific wiring I had done in the basement to make up for it's screaming lack of functional outlets (we were down to one). I also got a new extension cord and ran power from the new outlet to the workbench. Suspended the new cable and everythign (yay zip ties). This pulled up 200' of extension cord that we had been trodding on for the last 6 months off the floor. Double-yay.
Also redid power by the washing machines - mounted an outlet box on the wall and plugged various bits into it, cleaning up that rats nest. This is in prep for re-routing hte dryer vent hose (which has too many kinks in it). Didn't get to the hose today, but did get the power squared away.
The other big project was the geeky bedroom. My bedroom doubles as the sort of 'second living room' here at Interlude, and has a big comfy couch and everything. Problem is, the room isn't all that large, so storage space and usable horizontal surfaces are at a premium. The above picture is from several months ago, but to the right over the couch is a large blank wall.
Well, blank no longer. There are now some lovely wall mounted 6' long shelves there, stocked happily with DVDs and other things that had been piling up on my dresser. The most important bit there is that it now holds a large chunk of my magic card collection (I was careful to -very- strongly anchor the shelves :). Since we're spending a lot of relaxation time lately sorting and cataloging the collection I have, it's good to have things right at hand. I'll try and take a picture soon.
I also mounted some small halogen 'accent' lights to the bottom of the shelving - this gives nice bright reading lights to the couch space, which I find VERY pleasant. I don't know if it's the teeny card printing or the fact that I'm getting older, but I can't read cards for more than 1/2 hour without getting serious eyestrain.
Anyway, the room is reassembled now, and a lot of laundry is put away. It's heading toward liveable again, which is good as I'll be moving into a very busy work week the next few days, and I work better when I have a clean area to live in.
Nuff babbling from me for now. Z is in bed, it's quiet in the house, RP is playing on the... er... internet-pc-speaker-thing. Maybe I'll do some work a'fore sleep.
Tons of navel-gazing and general blithering ahead.
Today has been amazingly cyclical. I've been fighting off this weird cold-thing for the last few days. It seems to manifest in general ouchiness and occasional spikes of brillint pain in my sinuses. Sort of general malaise. I've seen this happen as a result of me stressing (and I am stressing about some work stuff), and 'not getting out enough'. So against what should be better judgement, I decided to take lots of drugs and be Super Active.
So I did.
Spent the morning plotting my various projects. There's tidbits I've been wanting to do for ages, so I figured this would be a good Home Depot day. It turned out okay, though I was definately part of the Weekend Contractors crew - the number of guys at HD with babies or small kids was pretty high.
End result? Good success. I replaced a blown outlet in the basement (really blown. Like, soot on the outlet) with a new GFCI component. It only took me 5 minutes to figure out that the GFCI breaker can only be reset when the current is on. Doh. I got a nifty little studfinder / circuit tester at HD (durn those impulse buys) which was invaluable in a) confirming the current was off when I had hit the breaker, and b) pointing out when I had swapped Hot for Neutral on the outlet. Fixed those and remounted, voila! Clean power.
This meant I could unwire some really scary-rific wiring I had done in the basement to make up for it's screaming lack of functional outlets (we were down to one). I also got a new extension cord and ran power from the new outlet to the workbench. Suspended the new cable and everythign (yay zip ties). This pulled up 200' of extension cord that we had been trodding on for the last 6 months off the floor. Double-yay.
Also redid power by the washing machines - mounted an outlet box on the wall and plugged various bits into it, cleaning up that rats nest. This is in prep for re-routing hte dryer vent hose (which has too many kinks in it). Didn't get to the hose today, but did get the power squared away.

Well, blank no longer. There are now some lovely wall mounted 6' long shelves there, stocked happily with DVDs and other things that had been piling up on my dresser. The most important bit there is that it now holds a large chunk of my magic card collection (I was careful to -very- strongly anchor the shelves :). Since we're spending a lot of relaxation time lately sorting and cataloging the collection I have, it's good to have things right at hand. I'll try and take a picture soon.
I also mounted some small halogen 'accent' lights to the bottom of the shelving - this gives nice bright reading lights to the couch space, which I find VERY pleasant. I don't know if it's the teeny card printing or the fact that I'm getting older, but I can't read cards for more than 1/2 hour without getting serious eyestrain.
Anyway, the room is reassembled now, and a lot of laundry is put away. It's heading toward liveable again, which is good as I'll be moving into a very busy work week the next few days, and I work better when I have a clean area to live in.
Nuff babbling from me for now. Z is in bed, it's quiet in the house, RP is playing on the... er... internet-pc-speaker-thing. Maybe I'll do some work a'fore sleep.