After this weekend, I’m thinking about possibly quitting the IT biz and going into home improvement.  Those of you familiar with my “skills” might find humor in this notion, but after some of the work we’ve had done out here I think I’ve got a future in it.  We just haven’t had good luck with contractors at all.  Every single project has had some issue, with varying levels of successful resolution.  This last one takes the cake though, at least in my book.  We had a patio cover put up a long time ago, like 2.5 years, and the guy installed two ceiling fans on it.  They’ve never really worked right.  They make so much noise we hardly ever used them, which stinks because A) they weren’t particularly cheap and B) it gets hot out there.  So, this weekend I saw a nice fan on sale at Costco, and actually had a pair of them in my basket.  But, they weren’t that cheap either, so I figured “Eh, I might as well at least try and figure out what’s wrong with the ones I have.”  So, I drug out the ladder and in about 30 seconds noticed all the blades were flopping around, they were barely attached at all.  Now, actually fixing it took me quite a bit longer.  I found a copy of the installation instructions online and started at the end, taking everything back apart until I got to the “Assembling the Blades” page.  The error here was so incredibly stupid I couldn’t grasp it for quite a while.  I’ve got to add a picture to even try and describe it.

Put the two screws through the two holes and screw them into the motor.  Yep, looks pretty straight forward.  Well, this guy had actually put the blade through that small space right above the plate where he was supposed to attach them, and then run the screws up through the holes.  The holes in the blade aren’t threaded, so they were just sitting on top of the screws, kept in place only because that space is too small for them to totally fly off.  Good grief.  For a while I told myself, “Eh, I do plenty of dumb stuff, I might have done the same thing.”  And then the more I thought about it, I concluded that for one thing, there is no way that even on my stupidest day I would have done that and then thought “Yeah that seems right, the blades are probably supposed to flop around on this fan.”  Even if I HAD made the same mistake, it was brutally obvious that it was wrong. And on top of that, THIS IS WHAT THIS GUY DOES FOR A LIVING!  IT’S HIS JOB!  I PAID HIM FOR THAT!  Yes, I was a little upset.  But, looking on the bright side, I enjoyed a nice cooling breeze from my new-ish ceiling fans while watching the Royals game outdoors that afternoon.  I’m still going to be mad about it for a while though.

I suppose I am obligated to do some kind of cursory update, if only because I paid for a whole year of this domain name.  No sense wasting Internet bits.  The simple fact is though, I’ve not really done anything.  A few less than inspiring bike rides, a couple of random dinners, and a lot of boring Royals games on my patio.  The wife is out of town, and I really don’t do well at entertaining myself.  Work has been beyond hectic too, but I’m sure that’s even more boring subject matter than what I’ve watched on TV lately.  Part of my ongoing boredom is due to the weather also;  The monsoon rains have continued pretty steadily.  I think they may have stopped, with the possible exception of this coming weekend.  (Why always on the weekend??!?!)  I appreciate your continued patronage here at the website though.  You never know, one day you might randomly check in for a read and find I’ve done something absolutely fascinating.  Yeah, keep holding your breath for that.

I’m officially sick of the rainy, cold weather.  And, much like before I was officially sick of it, my opinion doesn’t seem to make much difference.  Geez what a year.  I don’t know if it’s ever going to warm up.  Actually what I imagine will happen is, it’s suddenly 105 out every day and there will be no stretch of 70 & sunny I look forward to every year.  Guess that’s the way it goes.

My weekend entertainment was severely hampered by said weather conditions.  We had friends over Friday and tried to watch TV on the patio, but the driving rain hammering against our aluminum cover made it impossible to hear anything.  We stuck it out though, at least until the heater ran out of propane.  That was the final straw, we called it an evening.

Saturday we never really got out of the gate.  The rain continued, and just made everything a mess.  Can’t take the dog out, can’t watch baseball on the patio, can’t go cycling…  WOE!!!  We did go out to a birthday party that night in Old Folsom, which provided some much-needed entertainment.  It only improved slightly on Sunday.  I did go out for a ride around 10:00, but cut it short because I was freezing.  Just couldn’t get warmed up.  I told myself a short ride is better than no ride;  Hopefully that’s the case.  After that we tried to watch the debacle that was the Royals game.  My mlb.com subscription is off to a rough start this year.  The video quality is so choppy it’s nearly unwatchable.  I did catch the last inning though, which effectively ruined my entire day.  After that we rolled over to a friend’s house for dinner and a little doggie play date.  Once again it was freezing out, cutting into my patio enjoyment.  (I may have exacerbated the situation by wearing shorts…)  But, dinner was delicious and the puppy got worn out so I call the evening a success.

Well that was actually a busy weekend.  As a matter of fact, I took off Thursday & Friday and stretched it out into a 4-day.  This was triggered by a visit from my ol’ buddy James from KC, AKA Munkirs, who flew up for Thursday & Friday.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen him we actually had things to talk about.  Maybe not two whole days worth, but if we rationed the subject matter and kept the chatter to a minimum, we stretched things out pretty well.  He actually rolled into town on Wednesday night, which allowed for a nice early start on Thursday.  We started off with a solid hike up in Auburn, at Hidden Falls Park.  (Random side note:  I’d originally planned on Horsetail Falls as a destination.  On a whim I checked the forecast:  30 degrees and heavy snow.  Time for plan B.  If you’ve seen one Falls you’ve seen ’em all.)  I’ve been to Hidden Falls, but only on my mountain bike.  There is, I found, a reason for this.  Hiking is slow and hard.  Hills that are challenging on my bicycle are downright torturous on foot.  Oh well, the scenery was nice and they didn’t have to fly me out in the medevac.  After our hike we dropped by Mt Vernon winery, where I had a club pickup to make.  Hey, it’s a long drive out there, gotta make the rounds.  We then wound over to Auburn Ale House for a quite passable lunch on their patio.  Not quite done yet, we made the somewhat long drive to Folsom, and visited the Folsom Prison Museum.  It’s small but interesting, I usually take visitors by there.  After a quick stop by the house to clean up, THEN we drove up to Shingle Springs and met some friends at the recently opened Breakroom.  We’ve been there quite a few times and it’s growing on me.  If that sounds like more activity than I usually have in a given day, well, it is.  Heck it’s more activity than I have in a given week.  Guess I need house guests more often.

Friday we huddled up over a delicious breakfast of boiled eggs to plot the itinerary for the new day.  His first suggestion was “Work out and bike ride.”  The conjunction in the phrase threw me off.  I’m assuming you meant “Work out or bike ride.”  Alas, my hearing was correct the first time.  So we got ready and took the walk over to the gym at the neighborhood clubhouse.  Full disclosure, I badged us in the door, waited until he got started, and walked right the heck back home.  That’s just too much exercise for one day.  By the time he finished up, I’d enjoyed my umpteenth cup of coffee and was ready to go riding.  So, we loaded up and drove to the nearby American River bike trail.  It’s a nice paved trail that follows, not remarkably, the American River.  We rode for quite some distance.  Not sure how far, let’s just go with “Farther than most normal human beings are able to travel on a self-powered two-wheel vehicle.”  Yeah, that far.  In addition, we were bucking a 20 mph wind.  Not sure where THAT came from, but it was rather defeating.  Luckily that finished my physical torture for the day.  We finished the day back at the house, on the patio grilling a tri tip.  Much more my speed.