Category: Personal

I sometimes get friend requests from people I don’t know, but who have mutual friends that indicate they may be readers. Back when I started that Facebook thing, I pretty much friended anyone who friended me, but now I have a pretty strict policy of not friending anyone I don’t know from Adam. I don’t do politics or guns on Facebook (except for, you know, when I actually go shoot). It’s strictly boring personal stuff.

So it’s nothing personal if I don’t friend you. Most of the gunny and bloggy people I’ve friended I’ve met in person, and those that I haven’t I added back before I thought very much about this Facebook thing. I’m very careful now with Facebook, lest our opponents find out where I work, who my coworkers and family are, or discover details of my remodeling plans, and start up whole new themed blogs called “Colors Gun Nuts Can’t Coordinate” and “Landscaping Disasters of Insurrectionists.”

I had figured when I started doing most of my work from home, one advantage would be that I’d get sick less often. You’d always get bouts of stuff going around the office, and maybe 1/3rd of the time something went around, you got it. I figured being home most of the time would mean this wouldn’t happen.

So far that’s not playing out. There’s definitely a cold bug going around the office, and having been there Wednesday and Thursday of last week, I’m battling my second cold bug of the year. That’s about par for the course before I started working from home. Moreover, both my colds have been worse than previous ones I used to get. So I’m not sure working from home means you catch less illnesses from your coworkers. Though, perhaps the workplace isn’t quite the disease vector that grocery stores, restaurants, and other places people frequent are.

I’m wondering if anyone out there might live in Bucks or Montgomery County, and have a data center or server room they want to rent, of less than 1000 square feet, or know someone wanting to sublease such space. I’d even take space in an active server room under a sublease. Initially I’d only need room for about two racks of equipment, but the ability to expand to four would be great. I’d prefer not to enter into a traditional co-lo arrangement, because I’d prefer that it be a space not everyone and their mother has access to physically. This is for a new business venture I’m trying to help launch.

From SayUncle:

A thing hiring people tend to forget is that not only are they interviewing you, you’re interviewing them.

I worked very briefly for a company the last month of 2011, where the company failed the interview (from my point of view) but being unemployed, and against my better judgement, I took the job, hoping it wouldn’t be that bad. The company was complete chaos. Executive management berated employees, and whipped them to work longer hours, and weekends. They blamed employees for their own failings. I started getting drawn up into the dysfunctional vortex after a few weeks, and facing the threat of unexpectedly losing a weekend for which I had made plans which cost me money already, I drew up and turned in my resignation, and walked out. Surprised I wouldn’t give notice, I pointed out we were still in the “probationary period” of the employment relationship, and I did not feel notice would be mutually beneficial. The “probationary agreement” I signed recognized I would not get full full benefits for 90 days, and could be terminated at any point without notice. Surely they didn’t think that probationary period only worked one way?

I saved my weekend, got to take the trip I paid for. I had been talking to a friend whose company I had invested in years ago, who had suddenly developed a need for my skills. He had agreed to bring me on the day before, whenever I wanted. I never got so much as a call from an HR person at the company I left, telling me this was not an uncommon occurrence. I never thought I’d just walk out on a job, but having spend the better part of 5 of the 10 years at my last job putting up with abuse from a sadistic CEO, I wasn’t about to go through that again.

There’s a lot of etiquette out there that suggests you don’t do this or that, but I think that depends on a mutual respect, which is often absent among many employers. One bit of advice I give young people starting out in their careers, especially if they are particularly skilled or talented, is don’t take shit from employers, and don’t pretend courtesy is a one way street, where you have to be courteous to them, but they can abuse the hell out of you.

Fortunately, that part of my life is behind me. One of the reasons I invested in the I work for now company was because of the philosophy on how to treat employees, and how to build a company without selling your soul. I’ve known the CEO here for a long time, and if he gets uppity, I think I’m still like the 3rd largest shareholder of the company :) But we’re a small outfit, with ambitions to grow bigger. Speaking of which, I’m currently shopping for commercial real-estate, particularly a kind of industrial or warehouse space. If anyone knows about that process and can offer advice, I’d be grateful. Especially gotchas, or things to watch out for.

If there’s one fundamental constant in our household, it’s that I’m a cheap bastard. I don’t like spending money on things I need, so I can save money to buy things I don’t need. Unfortunately, “things I need” has been dominating the past year, with expensive house repairs, dental work, and car repairs rounding out the top places I’m spending money. I am disappointed to find yet another “things I need” knocking at the door and begging to have money spent on it.

I don’t think I’ve ever owned an actual desk. I do have an Aeron chair (which I highly recommend, if you have the cash or come across one) I acquired from the previous company’s liquidation, because I’d be too cheap to pay full price for something like that. But my desk has always consisted of a six foot folding table and a five foot folding table, arranged in an L configuration, showing here, though rarely this tidy:

I’ve gotten along OK with folding tables, but when you put drinks, electronics, gun parts, etc, on a surface that’s basically a laminated printout of wood backed with paper, and then glued onto particle board, the surface tends to go pretty fast. At some point, I turn the table around so the crappy parts are in the back, but about once every three years or so, it’s time for another folding table. Yesterday, I had a big piece of “laminate” (i.e. paper) come up, and extended my tape job another foot or so to patch it. I’ve looked at the polymer folding tables, and they feel flimsy to me. Cable channeling would also be more difficult without the steel supports. If you look at solid wood or high quality laminate folding tables, you’re now talking real money. So it is time for the madness to end. I looked online to find better solutions, and I’m struck by how much office furniture either sucks, or is expensive. I’ve always liked Ikea as a cheap, not quite sucky solution, but nothing they had was big enough for my desk space requirements. The trend today seems to be for smaller workspaces, which I would quickly have piled a foot high with crap. So Bitter helped me go through Pinterest and Ikea Hackers, and I found the perfect solution:

Perfect idea for solving my problem! I don’t much like the red, but it comes in black. The butcher block countertop they use, made of solid oak, is a little rich for me, but Ikea offers a much cheaper alternative in a solid Beech. They make it in lengths of 96 inches, which can be cut to size. It’ll work fine for making two desks I can arrange nicely in an L shape. I’d also pick up some storage space, since they also have drawer and cubby modules for this desk. I can stick the server that runs the blog in the cubby, alongside its UPS, if I don’t install the middle piece.

All this can be done for under 300 bucks. That may be double what I’d spend on a new pair of folding tables, but I think solid Beech is going to hold up a lot better than laminate, and if it gets rough, I can just plane it, sand it, and refinish it. If you have a look around that Ikea Hackers site, it’s pretty amazing what people are doing with some of their furniture.

Today is the day we celebrate labor by not doing any. When you work from home, three day weekends don’t have the same feel. First off, it’s easy to forget. You don’t have coworkers reminding you, or asking you about what you’ll be doing over the long weekend. It would have been easy to come down here and start working, forgetting completely it’s a holiday. It also doesn’t quite feel like a day off. Now, a day off is when I leave the house. If I come down here to my office, invariably I start doing something, because all my somethings are right here. So to have time off, I generally have to be focused on activities away from the computer. If I get bored, I’ll come down here and work on something.

So today it’s going to be smoking up some baby back ribs. My smoke wood will be cherry, and I’ll have to formulate a rub. My rubs for chicken tend to be lighter, focusing more on onion, garlic, sometimes ginger or coriander, and other flavors that go well with chicken. My rubs for pork tend to be redder, sometimes with fennel, and other spices that go well with pork.  Beef I like peppery, both from pepper peppers and chili peppers. A lot of times I just mix spices, salt, and sugar together until it tastes good. On ribs I tend to cheat. I’ve found the 3-2-1 method, of smoking for 3 hours, foiling for two, and finishing for 1 hour ends with the best results. Sometimes I only foil for an hour. I’ve successfully done ribs without foil, but I tend to prefer moister, more tender ribs, and I have a hard time getting that without foiling.

For a side, we really like this cole slaw recipe. Bitter hates blue cheese, but loves this. I gave it to someone else who hates cole slaw and they loved it. It goes great with a beef dish, and also pork. Usually we’ll cheat and use bacon bits from a jar (the real ones, the fakes ones are an abomination). I’ll also probably concoct some legume-based side as well. So that’s my “Yay! It’s a holiday,” plan for not hanging around the office too much.

Getting a late start this morning. We had a bunch of waste from some work we’ve been having done around the house, including getting rid of some concrete from a sidewalk we took up. Looking at the cost of a dumpster compared to the cost of a junk hauler, I’m willing to pay some extra bucks so I don’t have to deal with moving it all. Plus, I was worried about putting a roll off dumpster on the fresh asphalt that’s on my driveway. But I’m one of those folks who likes to keep an eye on things when I have people working, and it’s pouring down rain out. I’d say it was worth the soaking. I’ve been keeping piles of crap from various jobs around the side yard where people can’t see, and now that’s all gone, and in a lot less time than it would have taken Bitter and I to haul it ourselves.

Last March I decided to take up trying to make wine. The first batch I made was OK — not great. The big mistake was my secondary fermentation done in the 6.5 gallon carboy I had for beer. The kit called for 6 gallon. I thought my carboy was 6, but remembered later it was 6.5, after I had followed the instructions that called for topping it off with water. The first result was watery, with little body. That was a combination of my fault and the fact that kits accelerate things too greatly and make mediocre wine.

After that I got enough Welch’s Niagara White Grape Juice concentrate to make a 5 gallon batch. I’m pleased to report that is going well, on a considerably prolonged schedule from the first batch of kit wine. It is now cellaring on oak, after several rackings and cold conditioning. My oak chips are a bit toasted, so I’m concerned about visual flaws if I leave it on too long. After reading a lot of advice online about how get oak chips sunk to the bottom, I found that in a dry white wine, the oak chips naturally tend to the bottom. No trouble there.

I also have smaller 1 and 2 gallon batches of blackberry wine and blueberry wine in the pipe respectively. The blackberry wine I made from actual frozen berries. The blueberry wine form blueberry juice you can get at Sam’s Club. No preservatives is the key — it allows for the growth of yeast. Blackberries don’t bring enough natural sugar to the table to avoid adding a lot of cane sugar. I think blackberries can make some fine wine, but as for blueberries, I’m less optimistic. While the early result is very raw, it still tastes like Tastykake tried to make their blueberry pie filling into cough syrup. The problem seems to be that a dry blueberry wine tastes too medicinal. It might be that the blueberry wine needs to be balanced with natural sugar. This can be done with modern winemaking techniques, and I have the preservatives on hand to try this. I will use some of the raw fruit juice to balance it out, probably with another helping of pectic enzyme to clear it up after the fact.

Part of me likes wine making better than home brewing, because I can find some fruit juice at Sam’s Club and think, “Hey, if I throw some Cote des Blancs into this, along with some pectic enzyme and acid blend, I think it’ll taste pretty awesome.” Because wine is such a broad subject, it is more about experimenting. Home brewing is more about perfecting technique. The latter probably fits my personality more than the former. Though I still plan to keep home brewing when I feel inclined.

Company outing today to Hersheypark. Just got back. Thanks to Bitter for filling in. I basically tend to hit all the roller coasters I used to like as a kid (that I’m almost too fat for these days) and then spend the rest of the time cooling off in the arcade parked at a Skee Ball machine. I could play Skee Ball all day if I had enough quarters. I liked it as a kid, and still like it today. Spent part of the day with sometimes co-blogger Jason and two of his older kids, while his wife was back home with the baby. Hershey Park has changed a lot since I started going there as a tyke, but it’s nice that you can still take kids on the same rides that you went on when you were their age. The Coal Cracker is still fun after all these years, and The Comet can still shake the fillings out of your teeth, just like it’s been doing since it was built in 1946. When we were kids, we used to use the cable cars called “Sky Ride” that traveled high above the park to go from one side of the park to the other, but they seem to have torn that down in 1992. In the intervening years they’ve added a lot of steel coasters, but I’m still a fan of the complimentary chiropractic treatments the wooden coasters give you. I stick with the classics of wooden coasters and Skee Ball.

Bitter and I went on a last minute trip down to Nashville, Tennessee in order to help Bitter’s mom scope out a new condo she was thinking about moving to so she can be closer to the grandkids. The place looked pretty good to us, so she signed the lease, and will be moving down there in a few months. Unfortunately, the drive to Nashville is considerably longer than the drive to Roanoke, but we’ll manage.

We did manage to stop briefly in Knoxville, the Blogger Capital of the World, in order to have lunch with SayUncle. Apparently Robb was up that way with his family, coincidentally, but we didn’t manage to catch him. It seems all bloggers are drawn to Knoxville at some point, and we’ll certainly be passing through more often now that Bitter’s mom is moving to Tennessee.