I had the most unfortunate major computer setback today. It pretty much erased my progress for a whole day. I was using my normally fanastic IDE called Zend Studio when I renamed a folder that had a flash movie in it which was still open in flash. It decided not to rename my folder the way i wanted because the file was locked. No big problem, but instead of doing nothing it just deleted the entire directory I was working in. Normally, I save everyday thanks to a personal version of gathe rthat I run, but still that involves losing a hwole days work. I find that tragic. At least it was much easier the second time around but now it pushes back my production a bit, argh.

I doubt I am much slower than anyone else here anyways.

On another note, the house is being rid of its minor toxic underdressing as we speak. I hope I come home to a toxic free wonderland and not the site of a hazmat team and the EPA with a big bubble over the mansion, lol.

I wonder what it is like in NYC today.

Well not the school kind, but homework nonetheless. I didn't go to sleep until 5am yesterday because I was busy painting. Then I woke up and started doing the second coat followed by removing the enormous amount of trash in the basement into the backyard so the asbestos removal guy can work easier. I figure if everything is out of the basement than there is nothing to contaminate.

I simply wrapped the washer and drier in plastic drop clothes. I started to clean up the previous owners nasty marijuana grow room. It was molding so badly because they took all the plants out, obviously, but left lots of soil and rotting leaves all over the place. We didn't ever look in the room until after we moved in. Bad idea, always investigate everything.

I bought a new vacuum. Yes, that is vacuum number 9. I have a problem but I guess it is better than a drug addiction, although I can't say it is cheaper. I have every kind of vacuum. This one is meant only for the basement renewal project. I decided I am going to try and pay the asbestos guy extra oney to vacuum the whole basement.



The same guy who is going to be doing it, is our usual furnace repair man. The other day the furnace at the tenants house went out and we called him to fix it. Turned out that a bird flew in there and kind of fried into over time.



The painted office looks so much better. I wish that I took the pictures during the day so you could see it better.











I love Ivana Trump - here she is on her yacht called nothing other than Ivana.

The Kansas minimum wage is the lowest in the nation-- $2.65 an hour. A Kansan who works 40 hours a week at this level makes the unbelievably low salary of about $5,000 a year.

I have been sick to my stomach pretty much since camping at Vermont's Townshend (e:paul,4618) I have a feeling that it all goes back to this one drunken night when I filled up a water jug with creek water to put out a fire and then accidentally drank out of it the next morning.

My hands also had a horrible reaction to paint thinner and exposure to too much latex which I am becomming alergic too. They look disgusting. Am I falling apart?

Well I can't complain about my job as much as (e:zobar) who is working for $20,000 on web stuff worth way more, I am still going crazy with the slowness of some stuff here and this one issue specifically.

About 4 months ago I came up with this positively great idea for a web tool that I thought should be patented. I came up with my proof of concept and went to my boss. He refered me to the department that is made for handling patents here at Roswell. According to my contract anything I develop while working here needs to be patented by them and I split the proceeds. That is totally fine with me, in fact I like the idea of them getting some of the money to help cure cancer.

Well the patent office people just don't seem equipped to deal with computer tehcnology patents. They mostly just deal with medical technology. At first they sent me through a patent search with some company that they subscribe to for doing that - I thought it was a good first step. Then I found out there were no other patents that seemed to cover my idea. Then to my surprise and I believe my bosses's surprise, they just kind of dropped it there. I tried to email them and so did he.

Now other people at the institute are going to begin using the technology which is why I was excited about it again. I hope that someone sees a reason to take action because someone else is surely going to come up with it soon. I think for me right now there might be too many levels of beaurocracy within a state run company, someday when I want to slow down, I will think that is great, lol.

The Ladycroft Drama
I am not mad at you. I don't hate you. I was just saying (e:paul,4635) that I thought it was shitty that you promoted your's and (e:neijefer)'s birthday while not recognizing theirs. I am sorry if it came across as I thought you were a shitty friend or that I was really mad about the issue.

I never thought it would become such a big deal. I was only commenting because I value you as a good friend. I realize that people have obligations that make them socially unavailable. I was not mad that you did not attend the events rather that you didn't say anything about their birthdays, even after we got to yours. I was definitely not trying to "slam" but rather gently nudging you for not remembering.

Asbestos
We had a bunch of varying asbestos removal estimates. The highest of which was $4500 and the lowest of which was $1800. They are all NYS certified and since Monday, the home owner is responsible for hiring the air test people so I feel that any company is held to some sort of outside standard.

The Fireplace
60 hours later I am almost done. What a freakign process. I would say stripping paint is not worth the effort. I guess we will see once it is shiny and varnished.







Hopefully, this image of one of the other fireplaces is what it wil look like when it is done.

I spent the weekend working on one task that consumed more brain cells than all the drugs I have taken in my life - and that is a lot to be said, especially considering my raver years during the 90s. No, I didn't party it up crazy - I stripped a large wooden fireplace in my office of multiple layers of paint in order to restore it to the wood it originally was. The process has been long and crueling and I fear I chose the wrong product, which just ade it take longer. The hard part is really the intricate woodwork, most of which I didn't even realize existed until after the paint started shedding. I even had a gas mask for the second half after I was totally consumed by fumes earlier. Even though the mask was rated for paint thinner and paint/pesticides - the shit still smelled though the mask. It makes me never want to eat ornages again. I feel orange burned frot he inside out.

You saw the first couple stages in my last journal (e:paul,4365) This is where it is at now.

They could not fix my phone so they gave me a totally new one. At the sprint store in Amherst they have a repair facility and if you have the $6/month insurance and you have a phone they can't fix of no fault of your own, you get a new one. Now I have a brand new $599 cell phone. How did the price go up since I bought it last decemeber. It is so nice to have a new one. Even windows mobiel gets the windows regedit slow down after a while and it was nice to start with a fresh copy of windows. Plus I found a bunch of new hacks to ake my mobile videos better.

I went to (e:ladycroft)'s birthday last night. I didn't think I was going to go because I found it quite shitty that she didn't show up at (e:mike)'s or (e:terry)'s party and then at (e:mike) birthday celebration at frizzys and didn't say anything about it either. I decided to go anyways and it turned out to be quite interesting. It was a mix of about 4 or 5 different european ethnic groups. In fact I think an english speaking american was minority at the party. I have a hard time telling gay guys apart from French guys. I mean they kept humping up on each other and sitting on each others laps but I think they were supposed ot be straight.

(e:ladycroft) and (e:neijefer) stuck their faces int he cake. I started getting carried away with taking a picture of a picture of a picture in different digital mediums until they were just about unrecognizable.





The Dalai Lama was at home depot. I know, no one will believe me but he was there buying lumber.


We went to FWS this morning. It's just down Elmwood before Hertel.
(MAP TO: 1738%20ELMWOOD%20AVE)

(e:matthew) got a pretty new 10 x 13 oriental carpet for the living room at FWS You would think he would be happy but he was a gruppy fucker all day, granted, his wisdom tooth is coming in.

::Download Flash Video::

At FWS they had this bizarre miscellaneous piece of furniture on clearance for $10. I almost wanted to buy it, it was so strange.




I decided return all the woodwork in my office back to its original form. I want it to match the foyer, something it used to do before someone decided to paint it. My friend Katie said, "Can you imagine being the first person to paint over that." Frankly, I cannot imagine being that person, it just makes no sense to me with such nice woodwork.

This is what it looked like before I started working and before I had everyone else's stuff banned from my room. I just one one nicknack free uncluttered space with nothing other than me, my laptop and maybe one piece of sitting furniture for a guest/client in my office. I think it will make the 10 x 16 space quite livable. I want to be able to get up and pace, think, sit on my new rug, pace some more, lie on the one piece of furniture and then get up, walk to the laptop on the guant desk and type some more.





I order to strip the fireplace and woodwork I am using citristrip The stuff smells a lot like citrisolve and probably work sin a similar manner. It does smell intense but it is much more tolerable than paint thinner or a heat stripper.



I haven't finished yet but it is coming along.


















These are the color my office would be if I lived alone. Instead they are going to be a yellowish tan, suede color. Behr paint is 25% off with a rebate from home depot this weekend.

I spent the afternoon doing what I like to refer to as duct tape programming. I was given the task of taking a web interface that is created by a propriatary commercial server side application, whose code I do not have access to, and tacking on a new interface and functionality by forcefully unloading their design and DOM and replacing it with my own while retaining the data using surebert javascript toolkit.



I wish the asbestos issues would just go away. I am hiring an EPA certified asbestos abatement professional to come access the situation on friday. I also talked with the lawyer about it seeing as we have still not closed on the freaking house. She said to give her an official esti9mate from the contractor and she will see what she can do. I hope we can work something out or maybe the insurance will cover it. We really have no option because the asbestos is exposed within the ducts and we can't turn the furnace on until it's done.

There was this major traffic jam in front of the hospital this morning. There always is some sort of jam there but today it was particularly bad.


Indoor Air Professionals really did a bad job cleaning. I found after closer inspection that many pipes were full of debris and dirt. They are scheduled to re-inspect of Sept 5th.



I contacted a company about asbestos removal. Let's pray it is not unreasonably expensive or that they can contain it and clean our basement.

The one that makes me really nervous is a pipe that got rusty but has asbestos lining so that the asbestos is exposed through the rust.


















Is this friable?




At least it is not like this. Although that old train station I used to play in was. Does anyone else remember kicking in the decomposing walls, etc. Why was I such a stupid kid?