Today, we went to go work on the front yard at the rental property. The house next store is cleaning out something. I am glad they are cleaning, but the mess looks unreal. Why can't they put he junk in actual bags.



So someone stole our trash bin and to make it even crazier, I think the tenant that moved out, just stole my grandmother's hutch from the attic. There is no one else that could have really gotten into the attic to take it. The downstairs tenants, the only other people with access were home and they did not have it. His apartment is empty since he moved out and the hutch is gone. Really, no one could have taken it but him.

So I called him and he said he didn't know what a hutch was. I described it and he said he didn't take it. Most definately someone did, as it was there the last time I looked in the attic and it was quite large. It makes me really angry. I am not giving him any security deposit now. I guess what that is for, but still its not the same as my grandmother's hutch.

These are some pics of the rooms. It is not too bad and is for rent if anyone is looking for a second floor apartment right next to D'youville Every tenant has a different idea with how the inside should be painted so I am leaving it up to them. I will pay for the paint. The last time I painted all the trim brown with really expensive oil paint and two weeks after they moved in, they painted it gray with cheap flat latex.

The dining room is cute and opens to the living room




3 bedrooms




A kitchen that needs a new floor, I think we are probably doing that before someone else moves in. The floor is very 50s.




The bathroom has the old style tub like in the back bathroom at my house but we added a shower head.

I am totally confused why there is almsot no information about household disposal of chemicals. Since we moved to this house I have collected a vast amount of household chemical from the previous own and put all the containers in totes. They are starting to rust. It is dangerous and I want them to go away.

They refused them when I brought them to the dump. The garbage people don't take them. What the hell am I supposed to do with them. There is no information on that I can find on google about household hazardous waste disposal in Buffalo, NY. I hope by writing this, someone will come forward with an answer and then everyone else who searches for the info will find it here.

This is the container they are in. It is warping from the chemical vapors. Our garage leaks so it is not in ideal conditions. I refuse to bring it in the house.


The containers are now all swimming in some sort of sludge.


How come there is no information about this on the web. Does everyone just throw this shit in the garbage? Is that what I am supposed to do. It seems too dangerous, but I need somewhere to properly dispose of it.

He is now free according to this A.P article. I always wondered how long they would drag this out. I wonder if the whole thing was really good for his career in the end but probably, bad for his blood pressure.

Biomaterial charges against N.Y. art professor dismissed

Apr 21, 2008

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was "insufficient on its face."

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

I just got this from a Linwood Block Club member. It makes me want to buy a gun but I think I am going to settle for some more high tech things like a tazer. I would have no moral qualms with killing people who attempted to touch my electronics.

FYI, our house near West Ferry was burgled yesterday morning.

Our wonderful neighbor Nick scared them off and called the police, but not before they managed to steal some valuables (laptops, digital camera, couple of old cell phones, some jewellery...). Basically anything with recognizable value they could shove into backpacks.

The two thieves he saw were young black boys, wearing hoodies. They were probably PRE-TEENS. They pried open a back ground floor window using a tire iron, and then crawled inside.

There may have been others, because they pulled out just about every drawer in the house and dumped the contents. And they didn't have long in there. I left around 8:30 and Nick saw them about 10 am. They ran east towards Main Street.

So watch your back windows. Ours had the usual sash lock plus an additional sliding security lock (slides into the path of the window so it won't slide up very far). They applied enough force to break the sash lock out of the sash, popped the stops part way out, and then push the sash off its track around the security slider. I suspect they still only got in because they were so small.

Crazy that they we pre-teens, its just like that avanadalism last week at the Massachusetts avenue project. Do you think adults train these children or they do it on their own accord?

The other day I was at buffalo General again getting my post surgery checkup. My doctors appointment was at 8am and the doctor showed up just around 10am. I was really happy after waking up at 7am for nothing.

The one good thing is that I got these great pics of the city out the windows in the different rooms.

Carlton house looks so out of place on the medical campus. I wonder if they are going to knock it down and build a big building in its footprint.


Downtown Buffalo actually looks bigish.


Here is the whole of downtown


In the back left you can see the windmills on the waterfront.


Here they are up close making power.


I took this one in the direction of my house but all you can see is the roof. In the way back on the right is a city, is it Toronto?


Here is a close up of that corner, what do you think, Toronto?


It is amazing the clarity and distance I can get with my tiny point and shoot nikon s7c. The new s series is even better. I think the s700 is like 12MP point and shoot. Here is a review but it is minus wifi. Mine has wifi for emailing the pics, which I never use so I guess it doesn't matter.

The s600 is a point and shoot 10MP and it is only $236 on amazon right now That is so crazy cheap for something so powerful. I fyou are looking for a digital camera I would grab it. It is one of the ones ashton is promoting, lol. Look they even bought the URL ashtoncoolpix.com

Last night I was talking with (e:hodown) while locked out of my car at Wegman's and she told me that the world was coming to an end and we would be waiting in bread lines soon enough. The indicator was that vine ripened tomatoes were $7.99/lb in NYC. Well my friends BUffalo is in fact way cheap, because check these prices out $1.99 for vine ripened and $3.99 for organic.
Vine ripened


Organic


On a side note, this is the color of golden oak for future reference.

I never drive. Seriously, once a month I drive, if that. Tonight I was feeling especially angry about my lack of sand paper for my sander. I had a project I wanted to work on that required it. I stormed off to the store to buy sandpaper and forgot to write down the type if sander.

I was so angry by the time I got their that I just bought a whole new sander and every flavor of sandpaper to match. I am finally going to finish that fireplace in my office. One thing led to another as it always does at home depot and now I have all the supplies, except for one I surely forgot that will inevitably lead to another trip to home depot.

So I was feeling good about driving and drove to Wegman's too as I wanted more lamb chops and locked the keys in the car, which is what I am solving now, argh. I hate cars.

Wow, no one cares about this besides me prob but finally, after so much criticism and so much time, Apple released Java SE 6 version 1.6 for mac leopard. I have waited so long for this. I used all the betas and the develop preview and someone's hacked version. It is so great to see all the java VMs on the same page now.

So, we went on the private Linwood Home tour for all the people who's homes were on the tour. I am totally amazed at how simple in design my house is compared to the other ones. I mean I still love it and honestly, I don't need 10 bedrooms but still it was amazing to see how the real rich folk lived. I don't understand how they managed with such big houses. I never need more than one dining room.

We also learned so much about our former neighbor and everything makes so much sense now.

We met a lot of cool people and I really got along well with many of them. We saw so many interesting home remodeling projects. I am excited at the possibilities for our house if we put a lot of money into it. Almost all of the people were really nice and it was great to see the dedication that many people had to keeping their houses in order.

I most definately can't stand the guys from the Junior League show house - The Silverthorne Mansion. They are the utmost pretentious people I have ever met. Maybe they are just sick of showing people around their house. Also neither one is a retired Naval officer like the show house pamphlet said. They say the junior league made it up. (e:matthew) says I am jealous, I am really not.

Today we went down to the Erie County Electronics Recycling program at the Central Park Plaza to drop off our old electronics that were slated for the dump.

I had such a crazy junk yard's worth of electronics and computers left from the previous owner of the house. Okay, some of it was my own too. I was able to fill up two industrial size contract bags with electronics such as game controllers for systems retired, ram chips, disk drives, CD drives, DVD drives, wires, CPUs, GPSs (yes plural - I had way too many GPSs) Then we packed the rest of the car with 5 computers and 3 additional mother boards, a DVD player and more general electronic shit.

I think the original total retail value of all parts we recycled was somewhere around $25,000 - which is now worth about $400 if I had meticulously picked through everything and sold the good parts but who has time for that. Iw ould have been a serious endeavour taking months, lots of photography, lots of ebay drama, and lots of time at the post office.

Instead, I put it all on the train to happy recycle land and hope that someone else can enjoy it along the way. It is amazing how much electronics devalue, more than anything else.

This IBM server was insane It was here when we moved in. I think, the guy that lived here before ran a site that had a 3D version of Allentown on it. You could walk through and they sold ads I think. It was called neoworld . There is still alink to it on Allenstreet.com It apparently went the way of the dinosaur.


If you don't believe me that it was old and wrothless, just check out the made in england sticker. Have you ever even seen electronics Made in England?


Unfortunately, the server did not have the horsepower to do anything I needed it for and required too much electricity, used scarce parts and generally weighed about a ton. Needless to say, it was like 1/1,000,000 of the computing power of the tiny, energy efficient 1U rack mount that is currently running estrip.

Here are all the things packed up and ready to go.




We also brought (e:lilho)'s old Sony trinitron monitor. That was the last CRT in my life. It feels weird to not even have one. There were thousands of them there.


At the recycling place, you drive up and your car gets in line. I could not believe how many people there were. We waited over 1/2 hour. It was so ironic to see all the people in fancy SUV's with the engine running for 1/2 hour in order to recycle.

When you get to the end, some giant bulky dudes open the doors and trunk and just offload everything. They couldn't seem to handle the IBM server and really fucked up our car door. I can't even imagine if I was someone who really cared about that kind of shit. There would have been a serious throwdown, in which they would have kicked my ass, lol - these dudes arms were liek the size of my waste. They asked us if we were okay with it. What was I going to say. No kid get your supervisor to sew it back up?


In the end they forgot one giant bag of stuff. We went back, drove around everyone and gave it to some coast guard guy at the end and explained the situation. People were beeping and yelling about us cutting. We did not cut, they forgot shit and fucked up our car.

On a totally separate note, the other day we went to an estate sale. i think I mentioned it. It was so weird to go through all of someone else's stuff. (e:matthew) liked the furniture so much that we ended up spending like $1000 for a living room set after talking them down from $1450. I think that it was worth it because they said, after we left some guy offered $2000.


If you come to the Linwood Home Tour tomorrow you can see it. Our first floor looks so different now.