secretagentmoof

Well, that's the first $10k of electrical work done; among other things, the spooky, scary, naked splices just sitting on the ground in the crawlspace have been exorcised. Most of the kitchen, the upstairs lights, the downstairs bathroom lights, and one or two other locations are still on a single circuit breaker - which will probably be part of the next chunk of work. Yay house ownership!

In other news, we had one fewer trick-or-treater at the house as compared to last year: zero people darkened our doorstep this year.

The air conditioning for the upper floor broke about three weeks ago - compressor decided to short itself out - and the home warranty company fucked around and eventually decided "lolno" to paying, so fuck hellosuper.com. To add to the fun, the compressor uses one of the older refrigerants, which acts as a labor/supplies multiplier - and since the compressor alone would be about $1k before labor, we're considering putting in a heat pump. (The natural gas boiler is from 1975, and we're not sure what its life expectancy is.)

To add to the fun - it looks like the air conditioning is *massively* overspec'ed for the house - like, 2x what it should need. One of the guys who we had out just blandly speced the same size without mentioning it at all.

The first estimate we got was for $37k; I'm hoping the guy who just came out (and seemed very down to earth) will be less, but I suspect that between AC and the electrician it'd be $30k at a minimum. This will be rather cutting into my toy/entertainment budget for a good long while. (I'd very much like the long covid research to pan out so I could consider working again, even at part time.)

today's house fun: the kitchen has all-metal cabinets; I'm guessing they're from the 50s or 60s. One of the cabinet doors doesn't close quite right, and since weez is out of town, I figured I could get up to shenanigans without being disruptive.

The door's hinge is bent enough out of true (about twenty degrees or so) that there's no way that the door is hanging correctly, and the steel is heavy gauge enough that just hitting it with a hammer is insufficient to knock it back into shape. Furthermore, one of the screws that attach the pivot hinge to the door is bent out of shape - like, at about 30 degrees - that there's no way it would ever fit in normally, and the screw hole in the door is massively stripped out as well. I'm guessing that somebody grabbed at and put their full weight on the door and in the aftermath they just didn't care that much about the doors no longer closing properly.

Of course, nobody seems to actually make those hinges these days, and the actual pivot point is only hanging on by a thread. I've ordered some parts from amazon that I hope I'll be able to modify into fitting, and I bought myself a shiny new tap and die set to see if I can get the old door back on without having to cannibalize one of the other kitchen cabinet doors.

Next up, while waiting for parts to arrive: trying to figure out why one of the sockets in the 1950s (?) bathroom-medicine-cabinet-and-light combo doesn't work; I may have to unbolt the thing from the wall, which fills me with no great joy.

Also: long covid fatigue fucking sucks

One of the most annoying things about my latest long covid flare: I don't sneeze properly. It starts, but it just kind of peters out. Sense of smell doesn't seem to be affected, though.

It's time for the final holiday marathon: familial events every two days until the 1st, and I'll *also* have to go provide tech support to mom at some point. I have no idea how much of a spoon deficit I'll be running.

Welp. Typhoid dad (who didn't think getting a booster was worth bothering with, and pretty much never masks) got COVID again. And then fell out of bed, and couldn't get back in because he said his legs were cramping, so slept on the kitchen floor instead for a couple of hours. Pulled him up onto a chair, where he sat for about five minutes and then casually got up and went to the bathroom with seemingly no issues at all.

This is, shall we say, stressful.

I've been slowly working on getting the house into habitability-for-me; I still need to figure out htf I'm going to reroute the internet connection's fiber, and to finish painting the bedroom, and installing baseboard mouldings, and a zillion and one other things in the house that seemingly had no maintenance for the past couple of decades - except for the "oh shit, we want to sell" slapdash paint everywhere that sealed the windows shut and covered up the decent colors on the wall with dingy grey. It's getting perilously close to the point where I can start hauling shit over from my parents' house.

But in thinking about that, it made me realize - this is likely the last time I'll ever be living at my parents' house ever again. All my stuff will be elsewhere, I'll have my own house with its own bills and maintenance, and it's infinitely more likely that my sister and her family would be the ones to move in back here, not me (or Dr Prof Littlebro Esq, down in Texas). And my octogenarian parents will be by themselves - granted, not that far away from me or sis, but not within spitting distance.

I still don't know wtf I want to do as a post-unix sysadmin career, since that's pretty much dead and buried except in the nichiest of niches, not that brain fog + chronic tiredness (thanks, covid!) is helping out with that one iota. The whole house-buying thing is fairly discouraging of picking up and moving elsewhere, not that I know where else I'd prefer to live, for that matter. Save for the worries of violent political upheaval, it seems vaguely like the world's dullest, lowest-key mid-life crisis.

So, me and my ex-wife bought a house. And we need to buy furni and refinish the floors and undo all the "omg wtf were you thinking" DIY 'repairs'. And she's driving up here to move in next week. So, uh, I've been kinda distracted. (Once we get settled, come visit us in Chicago.)

Then there's all the Twitter stuff, which I won't even bother detailing other than "pretty much all the ex employees said this was going to happen" and "you can find me as antimoof@mastodon.online".

Oh, and 45cm of snow forecast for the weekend with -20C temperatures. So that'll be fun.

I am a wee bit stressed.

Welp. Our offer on a house was accepted. Next up: inspections, insurance, mortgage stuff. Aieeeeeeee.
Still wondering about Spain, though (see last post); it would be Very On-Brand for me to get all sorts of new stuff ready in one place and then abruptly move somewhere else.