In the last year every bit of cable and connections in the house has been replaced. I even went and bought a new modem. Getting the provider to recognize it on the network was an exercise of its own.

Here is a real problem as the provider only has techs between 9-7. Since my problem was between 10 at night until 9-10 in the morning you can begin to taste the insanity. So when they come during the day, it is on. sigh…. One of the most annoying parts of these adventures is the playbook mentality of the techs. Not their fault as the company seems to feel this is the one true way. Having has a parade of tech come through doing the same things over and over again, despite the length and breadth of conversations with the tech support folks, the techs show up doing the same damn things over and over again. I have mentioned to them repeatedly that the drop from the alley to the house was the culprit as the wire in the house was new and they could connect from the office to the connection point in the alley. By a process of elimination, whether by Sherlock Holmes or Occams Razor, replacing the drop should solve the problem.

But Nooooooo! The people on the phones can schedule service, but there is no place for notes such as conversations with customers and or more importantly a history of previous service calls. Hence the techs doing the same snoopy dance over and over. This is not a criticism of the techs, as they were all courteous, knowledgeable, and workman like. The problem is a management function like so many of these service industries are.

The business model is simple. Sign us up, provide a product, make money. The connectivity game is not nearly as competitive as folks would have you believe. There is infrastructure such as lines and connections to maintain. Although the mobile phone industry is being savaged by not maintaining the infrastructure to keep up with demand especially in the smart phone category. They are stuck in the modem sales mud hole. This is in the early days of the internet, ISP’s would sell 10 connections for every modem they had under the theory that this was over capacity. Back then you needed a dialer, telnet, and Archie and Veronica were your search tools and browsers fit on a 720K Floppy. Back then we didn’t surf the net. we dog paddled. We lived in the dancing bear universe. We were amazed that the bear danced and didn’t criticize the lack of form.

Providing service in case of connectivity product failure should not (which is of course my optimism, trying the glass half full meme) require a legion of techs who are doing the same snoopy dance, sent out in the field with inadequate information especially after the third service call.
During this period I fslipped off a ladder in the rain. Not far, but screwed up my back muscles something fierce. More on that later.
The second to last tech did call for a maintenance request, where they would ping my modem to see if it was on the network at 2 hour intervals.

Progress I thought… Silly me. They checked it during the day when I had connectivity and closed the ticket. sigh….
While I was hobbling around as I could not sit or lay down for any length of time and I walked around like a real old fart, the last tech showed up in the early morning while the connection was down. Finally the drop got replaced and everything is working great including me, which brings us to seed corn.
Gravity
Being a remodeler one has a love hate relationship with gravity. Some times too much, some times not enough. It was raining and I was getting something off a short roof before it rusted. On the way down Gravity farted and I ended up on the ground. Do not use ladders in the rain. Full Stop.
Feed Corn
I got up, put things away and went to bed. The next morning it was a 20 minute slither to the bathroom 10 feet away. It went downhill from there. This is a bag of Feed Corn. Denim Cover filled with Feed Corn.

You put it in the microwave oven for 2-2 1/2 minutes and get about an hour of heat. Absolutely wonderful for strained muscles. Plus you don’t have to plug it in. So basically that is what I have been doing for the last month.
I did manage to watch the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. A lot of those large companies resemble vampires and other monsters. If only I had a Slayers Strength and a few wooden stakes…..

In scanning a blog the other day from a link that another blogger had posted, I saw an image that looked real familiar. I guess that is because of it being from one of my own my blog postings. I do my own photography, and image processing, which accounts for the raw look of a lot of the things I post here. It only took moments to discover that this was indeed my work.
Without permission, attribution or links to the source.

This is like going to your neighbor’s garage and ‘borrowing’ his tools without telling him. You may get away with this for a little while, but when your other neighbors discover this behavior, your integrity gets called into question. I don’t think that you want to be that guy.

Out here on the web it is common when using images by others to provide attribution and or links to the source of material whether it be words or images. The funniest thing about this situation is that the web is the one place where asking permission is actually easier than asking forgiveness.

Using other people’s stuff without either permission, attribution or links to the source is just wrong.

I am not mad but sad as in my 15 or so years on the web, I have had images stolen, entire postings hijacked, entire websites stolen, been hacked, had somebody take my online identity, do some real evil damage, and had just about every bad thing that can happen to you online happen to me at one time or another. When you are out here long enough, shit happens especially someone as outspoken as I am.

It is a short path from being a good neighbor to being the guy that folks avoid. Online this is even more so as the web has a memory like a herd of elephants.

As I mentioned earlier, on the web we are all next door. You have to decide what kind of neighbor you want to be.

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I wonder who is making money on this?
Tacky Tacky Tacky
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UPDATE: 1/19/2010

Finally deleted it after only 3 months.

One Project Closer in addition to being a great resource for DIY by actually doing and sharing are kicking it up a notch.
The folks at OPC have opened up a DIY Discussion Forum Here.  This is a place for you to ask questions and discuss remodeling projects, from painting to site work.

Come on in.

One of the latest things I have discovered but not tried yet are Air Admittance Valves which I discovered from the folks at Better DIY. There area number of places where this would be just the ticket. Especially in eliminating roof penetrations.

Besides remodeling I think about building my dream house. One of the things I include is eliminating roof penetrations of any sort. And a Flat Roof scheme. I am an advocate of foam roofing. I live under an aircraft landing patterns and unless the wind conditions are just right, I just don’t hear the planes. My roof are 2×8’s with a 3/4 plywood deck, r 19 insulation and 5/8” drywall. Normally this would act like a big drum, but the foam isolates the noise very well. and The insulation is a plus also. The only current downside to foam roofing currently is needing to renew the roof coating every 5-10 years.

I will build the house once I win the lottery.

From left to right are Galvanized, ringshank and phosphate drywall nails, and concrete nails. These are the most common types of nails most DIY’ers will need. Below we take a closer look.

Galvanized Nails
From top to bottom we have Sinkers, Roofing, and Exterior siding nails.

Galvanized nails are coated with zinc to inhibit rust and are used in exterior locations. There are three current galvanizing methods, Hot dip, mechanical and electro-plating.
Most framing nails and some finish are available galvanized for locations that are exposed to moisture, like exterior trim, siding and roofing.
The top nail is a 16d hot dip sinker, the middle nail is an electroplated roofing nail, and the bottom is a 4d mechanically galvanized siding nail for siding and or wood shingles.
Quick rule of thumb: if it is outside it needs to be galvanized.

Ringshank and Drywall Nails
Ring shank nails increase the surface area that can be gripped, increasing the friction and resistance to pull out and removal.

From top is a 2” ring-shank paneling nail, a ringshank drywall nail and a southwestern phosphate coated drywall nail.
Ring shank panel nails are used most often in attaching plywood and or particle board sub flooring.
Drywall ring shank nails perform the same function on walls and ceilings. Phosphate drywall nails were developed to minimize rusting behind taping mud, and as far as I know are one of those weird southwestern nail deals. The coating may provide some friction benefit like coated nails, but I do not know.

Concrete Nails
Concrete nails are much harder than regular nails, and eye protection really needs to be worn. You should use eyeware protection in any case in remodeling and construction, but especially when using concrete nails.

The top nail is called a Cut nail. These nails are forged rather than drawn like wire nails. Subsequently they are harder and chip easier than wire nails. These are primarily used to fasten wood to masonry or concrete. Like furring strips to the interior of brick or block houses. Despite having around 4 times more holding power than a equally sized wire nail, they have been replaced by fluted nails, sleeve and wedge anchors for attaching bottom plates to concrete floors.
The bottom one is a fluted concrete nail, doing basically the same thing.

So there you have it. Probably more than you ever wanted to know about nails.