The piece of wiring work I was battling with yesterday is now complete. It was a bit of an ordeal getting quite so many wires squashed into the back boxes but with a little persuasian, some coaxing and the liberal application of expletives they all went into place. Thankfully nothing blew up or caught fire when I turned the power back on, which is always nice. Next up involves running cables from the bottom of the stairs into the attic so I can put a light at the top of the stairs and control it from the top and bottom. I hope the remains of my 14/3 is long enough to do the job - I really don't want to cut into a new roll because I'm 3 feet short or something.
It turns out I'm going to need to cut into my new roll of 14/3 anyway. I thought I might just about have enough to wire the last couple of stretches with what I have but then remembered there's another three rooms that will need some, and there's no way the remains of the current roll will cover everything. My guess is I'll end up with 150-200 feet of surplus cable when I'm done. I also figured out there's an easier way to wire my upstairs light that only means one wire goes into the attic. I wish I'd figured that out before I ran multiple pieces of 14/3 into a back box when I wired the light at the top of the other stairs. Oh well.... live and learn I guess.
Love the picture. Reminds me of why I live in Florida. I like snow.........on the mountain's where it belongs.
Snow at about 20" but no new precip so-far this week. 0°F to 15°F average. Freezing temps here to stay. Trending towards minus zero F. I used to enjoy winter. I was crazy.
I need to get on with a piece of work in my house. I have a small patch of ceiling insulation taken down (largely because the ceiling below it is also taken down), and I need to build a temporary floor over a stairwell, pull down some more ceiling with the associated insulation, and then replace it with nice shiny new fiberglass. It will be a real nuisance for a short time, as it will mean the only way to get in and out of that part of the house will be through a space that was once a closet and is now a closet with part of the wall torn down, but I don't have a lot of options right now. Once the ceiling insulation is in place I can use the temporary floor to put soundproofing material across the entire ceiling. I'd really rather not do this piece of work at all, but if I don't I've got a big space in the middle of the house where the noise from the road can get in. I'd rather not deal with that. At some point I will probably look to insulate and soundproof the entire attic but that's waaaaaaay down the line, if I even bother doing that.
My power os finally back on. Nicole knocked down a dead tree in the alley behind my house (not my tree). It took down some power lines. I.reported it at 4:30 yesterday. Discovered a little later that the tree had taken out the line. So I called back and told them that. Sometime mid morning a crew came by and removed the tree. Later the power crew repaired the line. The power came back up at 12:30m, for about 2 minutes, then went back out. I went out and found the crew still there and told them what had happened and was told that it would be back on in "a couple seconds." I called numerous times and was told they would send someone out to check. Finally at 8:30 this morning I got hold of someone competent, that actually checked things out. Found out that those brainiacts had forgotten to turn the main breaker back on.
It reminds me of the meme I saw where someone working in the yard managed to cut a fiberoptic cable, so taped it together and hoped nobody would notice...
Tinkering with code again. A client who I wrote some software for years ago contacted me asking if I could do some upgrades for them. As it happened I'd been looking at very similar upgrades as a matter of personal curiosity and had made some inroads into the work required. It turned out a few things were more complex than I expected (significantly so in a couple of places) but it looks like I'll be able to deliver within the time frame they are talking about. It's been a while since I wrote much code, I'd forgotten that I really quite enjoy doing it.
The last couple of days have been about building a floor. I've got some wall I need to work on but it's above the stairwell. Specifically it's above the bottom of the stairs, which means I can't reach it and I don't have a ladder long enough to reach it. So I'm building a temporary floor that I can stand a ladder on, and then stand on the ladder to work on the wall. So far I've put six beams into place. Next I need to figure out how to get a flooring sheet home from the hardware store - it won't fit in the back of my car and I don't really want to pay $35 delivery for a $25 piece of wood. I thought I could borrow a cut sheet of flooring from the attic but they are only two feet wide, and the base of my ladder is about 23 inches wide. That feels a little closer than I'm happy to cut things. So I guess I need to buy a sheet of material and find a way to get it home. Maybe a friend with a truck will help me out there.... One of the beams is screwed against a beam so I can't test the strength of that one. The other five will each take my weight on their own - I hung from some of them and sat on others, and figure that if each beam individually will take my weight the whole lot of them will easily carry me, and a ladder. At some point I'm going to need a drywall hoist on there, but figure it should be fine for that too...
I'm doing a ~month of code testing in an attempt to go fully into software engineering. Ahem. Fun times.
99 little bugs in the code 99 little bugs in the code Debug for a while Then recompile 136 little bugs in the code
I've got the beams I need for my temporary floor, and also figured I've got some 2x10s kicking around that I can use as a temporary floor. That means I don't need to buy a sheet of material, which is handy. I rested my 2x10s across the beams and was able to stand on the new floor without issue. Since each individual beam can take my weight it's hardly surprising that all six of them can carry me easily. TOmorrow I can pull down some walls and ceiling.