Category: Personal

I’ve had a female Downy Woodpecker whose taking a liking to the Type 111 siding on my house, like she has a calendar that says “From 11AM to 2PM: Go Peck on That Dude’s House.” Since it’s not the right season for woodpeckers to be drumming, and since female woodpeckers don’t do that anyway, my first belief was that I had wood boring insects. A quick romp around the attic with a flashlight and a knife showed no sign of insect infestation in the studs or siding. Whew.

I came across research that showed woodpeckers like Type 111 siding painted in earthy colors. There are insects that like to lay eggs in the channels, which the woodpeckers eat, and then peck around at other parts of the hollow sounding siding to see what else they can find. She doesn’t seem to be boring, as if to make a nesting site. She’s chipped away not very deep in a few areas. It could also be that she just like the sound my house makes when she pecks on it.

Now, if I lived in the middle of nowhere, this would be a prime opportunity to practice the three S’s, but I’m not living in an area where that can exactly be done discretely, and I’m concerned that she’s pecking pretty high up on the house, and a miss with an air gun could damage the flashing or overhang on the roof. So I’m stuck with other forms of control. She didn’t seem too impressed with me chasing her off with a super soaker. She’d leave for a while then come back pecking just as before. I thought about an airsoft gun, but I’m concerned that would maim the bird, and I don’t think that would be very humane.

The only solution I could come with is appeasement. If she’s hungry, she can have her fill of suet, rather than peck at my house.

What other control techniques have people found effective for dealing with woodpeckers, short of lethal means or trapping? So far she hasn’t done very serious damage to the siding, but it’s bad enough I’m going to do some puttying and repainting up there once I’ve been rid of her.

Woke up this morning feeling a little off. After the morning teleconference with work, my abdomen started cramping up. That passed, and despite not much appetite, I forced myself to eat some lunch. Now like the number three engine in “Airplane!”, I’m running a little hot. I’m worried I may have picked up a stomach bug. I don’t have it coming out either end yet, but I’m concerned that will come. Hopefully it’ll be mild and will pass quickly, because, I don’t really have time for this.

Bitter has been doing a good bit of genealogical research lately, and decided to explore a part of my family line that no one else in the family has ever explored. This is generally where we’ve found all the gold, including my 3x great grandfather who fought at Antietam. That was on my fraternal grandmother’s line. Recently Bitter decided to look at my maternal grandfather’s line, on his maternal side, and hoe-lee-sh*t. It turns out this guy is quite probably my 8th great grandfather. The sixth mayor of New York City!

So let me assert my ancestral right to declare that the family is very unhappy with what Mayor Bloomberg is doing to our city. We just hoped you’d do better with the legacy we left you. Maybe I should enter the New York Mayor’s race. I mean, I haven’t sent pictures of my John Thomas to half the women in New York, and I’m not a raving socialist. My family ran The City well for err… almost two years… and we can do it again! What should I call my Mayor’s Group? Descendants of Mayors of New York for the Second Amendment?

We’re at company outing today. Family is invited so we’re both here, and thus the lack of posting.

There’s nothing like a genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car monorail!

This weekend Bitter and I attended a wedding of a friend of mine in Ottawa, Ontario. I’ve been to Montreal and Toronto several times, but I had never been to Ottawa. It’s not unlike our own capital in look and feel, except their Parliament building is in the gothic style.

But many of the Canadian government buildings which house the large bureaucracies don’t look much different than our own. Showing left is Canada’s parliament building, which was unfortunately blocked from the front by the stage for the Canada Day activities beginning today. We decided to get back to the US before Canada Day, since the locals told us things could get pretty crazy. I’m sure Canada’s definition of crazy is probably pretty mild and polite, unless it involves losing a hockey game, in which case it only gets sad. I managed to snap a picture of the Supreme Court of Canada which will soon be hearing the case involving Quebec’s challenge to the destruction of the federal long gun registry. As the article mentioned, Quebec suffered a devastating loss in the Court of Appeals, not only losing the case, but having to pay court costs. Quebec wants to retain a copy of the registry to use in order to form the basis of a planned provincial registry. The entire capital area is under quite a lot of construction. Probably the best capital improvements a shale oil an gas boom can buy. Canada’s economy has weathered the financial crisis quite well. Ottawa is also the entrance to the Rideau Canal system, which was constructed in the 1830s as a means to move goods from Ottawa to Kingston on Lake Ontario in the event a war with the United States. Now it’s mostly used for pleasure boating, and operated by the Canadian park service as a historic landmark:

It’s a nice city. If you ever have an opportunity to go sometime, I’d recommend it. I’ll be getting back to regular blogging shortly, but it’ll take me a while to catch up. I also have a number of other things going on which require my attention.

This morning I was pleased the installers from the Home Despot* showed up to install the new carpet in my office. This was to be the culmination of all our efforts. I was considerably less pleased when the installers informed me they didn’t have enough carpet for the stairs, because it wasn’t put into the order. After calling the installers, and the Home Depot, we determined Home Depot had measured the stairs, but when they submitted the order, it wasn’t noted correctly, so the carpet for the stairs was never ordered. We were scheduled to get our new bookcase tonight, and Bitter was going to start restocking it. That’s now on hold because the stairs still aren’t carpeted, and the bookcase goes right adjacent to the stairs.

Home Depot agreed it was their mistake, and agreed I didn’t have to pay for installation for the stairs, but I still had to pay for the cut of carpet they forgot to order. I found the installers to be far more apologetic and helpful. To me, if you screw up the order, that’s on you, and you eat the whole cost of fixing the problem. But that is apparently not the Home Despot way. If this was the only mishap, I would have been somewhat understanding, but I’ve found the whole customer experience with Home Depot’s carpet department to be lacking.

We originally picked Home Depot because they actually had a better selection of commercial-grade carpets than most of the local stores, and allowed us to take samples home. The local stores wanted to bring samples over when they came to measure. Because my office is in the basement, the sun comes in at different times of day and I didn’t want to have to make a snap decision on color. But that’s where the Home Depot advantage ended. From Bitter getting wildly wrong information to the first person she talked to, to the order being screwed up, to the haphazard way they schedule installation, the rest has left a lot to be desired. I should note that I’m not dinging their installers. Their installers did a bang-up job. My basement floor is concrete, uneven, and difficult to work with. There are PVC drain covers around half the perimeters, and they dip in places. Their installers dealt with the weirdness very well, and the carpet looks great, despite the still naked staircase.

But Home Depot itself needs to work on their customer experience. I’m generally fine with appointment windows, but having a 7-8AM window in which I’ll get a call to get my appointment window that day is the kind of customer service I expect to get from the local electric monopoly or Comcast. It would be nice to be able to have an actual appointment window, and perhaps, as the customer, to even have some feedback on when this window might be so we can plan around it. It would also be nice if their employees knew their business, and didn’t screw up orders when they submit them to their installers.

So next time, I think it’ll be Big Marty’s, and I have a lot more carpeting left to do. I get that mistakes can happen. Bitter will tell you I’m actually a pretty undemanding customer. But when the good customer experience ends once I decide on a purchase, that’s tough to forgive. Home Depot’s only saving grace, at least for this area, is that their installers know what they are doing, and do good work.

* Term shamelessly stolen from Tam.