Days that make it all worth it

Sometimes, my job is just awesome. I know most of you might consider this a nightmare, but spending 3 days making up these panels and contactors is like eating 3 meals of just dessert.










And yes, I know where every single wire goes and what it is for.

Instant weight loss

Good child care is wonderful. My mom stayed home with me until I entered Kindergarten because she and dad believed that the benefits were worth the loss in potential income of two working parents. I tend to agree. Unfortunately, Wife and I already have well-established good-paying careers and it's just not very appealing to think of both of us renting a house and driving today's equivalent of the lime green and lemon yellow Ford Pintos that my parents did as they struggled *shudder*. The alternative is high quality and very expensive child care. Not a live in nanny or anything. We call it "school," because for all intents and purposes this is as close as a 1 year old can come to school. They play indoors and out, sing, read books, paint and do arts and crafts, and eat off of plates and drink out of cups (pacifiers and bottles are strictly prohibited!). Younger daughter gets great socialization skills and probably more mental stimulation that if I were to stay home with her. And then here comes the big, glaring, flaming negative: Colds.

I don't know what it is about herds of little kids, but they just seem to be sick magnets. Constantly acquiring and sharing new breeds of viruses until it blends into one giant snotfest. The latest gift my daughter has brought home (just in time for Mother's Day!) was a wonderful stomach flu. I've lost 6 pounds, or roughly 3/4 of a gallon, of fluids in the last two days from a netherregion where only solids should emerge.

The good news is I'm down to 170 lbs, which is where I'd prefer to be. The bad news is that I'll regain that weight as soon as I fix my leaking sieve. Perhaps I should try less than 6 sodas a day (I have been drinking only water and Gatorade while sick, but the Coke in the fridge still calls to me...) and a little more exercise, but that would be both tortuous and, well, work. I get enough work at work. Truth be told, I'd probably weigh closer to 190 if I didn't spend all day sweating, climbing ladders, crawling around houses and buildings, and making 50 trips to the utility truck with 20 lbs of tools strapped around my waist. I haven't liked voluntary exercise since High School. But I do love my job and the fact that it keeps me up and moving every day. Somehow, It's a lot easier when you're getting paid and there's tools involved. Uh!Uh!Uh! I'm suddenly feeling very Tim Allen. I think I'll grab my Sears Tool catalog and head to the bathroom. I'd better grab some extra paper, too...

Hectic

My day started by having to rush to Waikiki to attempt to do a service call on Friday's work. We had to re-route some phone lines in a kitchen remodel because in the 70's builders were too stupid to separate everyone's phone instead of running it floor-to-floor through the kitchen walls. So I cut 5 people's phone lines and had to extend and splice them in the new wall & ceiling. Unfortunately cutting the lines apparently blows fuses in the telecom room which kills their service. My biggest mistake was my affinity for courtesy and helpfulness in which I told the building management that I would be doing this and that the occupants should not be alarmed. Had I not said anything, they each would have called the phone company, which would have sent a technician who would have easily found and replaced the fuse. Instead, they are all told that I had cut the lines and everyone assumes that I fucked it up, and they want blood.

In a technical sense, it is my fault. Unfortunately I had never seen a fused phone block before, and had cut at least 100 live phone lines in the past without incident. I wasn't anywhere near the telecom room, and since we were doing rough-in I had no reason to check the phone in that unit for operation yet. I was extremely careful, meticulous, and painfully slow in making sure my splices were accurate and proper. It then is a crappy way to start the day going back to check my work, which was right, when the phone company would have already fixed it if I had kept my mouth shut. Crappy for the phone guy, but he has to fix it either way, because I don't have an array of telecom fuses and nobody is really allowed to touch their equipment anyways.

So then I drove to another jobsite 15 miles away, dropped off 1 roll of wire, ate my lunch on the road, doubled-back and drove another 25 miles into Kailua. Jumped into a job I have very little history on and we ended up working an extra 2 hours of unplanned overtime and still didn't finish it. The very last thing I did was flip a light switch and hear *pop!* Guess where I'm going tomorrow morning. We still have to take down the scaffolding after we troubleshoot, and the flooring goes in tomorrow. Ugh. So not every day is palm trees and ocean breezes....

Big decisions

I'm still alive. I have to work tomorrow, so another short weekend for me. Fair enough. I had a nice long one a few weeks back.

We just got word that our landlord is planning on putting this place up for sale in a couple months, and we get first dibs. It's a good debate. The neighborhood is great, we love our neighbors, the location is good, and its affordable. Due to a combination of ants, termites, single-wall construction (A very unique type of old construction in Hawaii where the walls are built out of 1" thick solid wood planks. No insulation, no 2x4's, no drywall, no plaster, no siding.), and the entire hillside in this neighborhood shifting & settling, this house is really barely standing. The foundation is completely cracked, and it is downhill in any direction from the kitchen. Every time we have heavy rains, the house shifts, and I usually have to make adjustments to a couple doors so they'll close properly. It would be illegal to rent this place out in Cali, but it's all just part of the lovely way of life in Hawaii.

So I need to get some opinions from several of my contractor friends as to what it would take to rebuild on this lot and what kinds of temporary fixes will make the house a little safer for the next couple of years until we're ready for a project that big. I know it can be done, it's all a matter of how much will it cost. The largest factor is that the house sits on clay fill from a marsh, and they didn't understand the hydrodynamics of clay that well in the 50's - especially not here. When it rains, it swells, and when it dries, it shrinks. I know we can have pilings driven/poured down a ways until we hit something more solid, but are we talking $10,000 or $100,000?

I'm excited because I've always wanted to build my own home. Heather looks at homes that are pretty with nice appliances. I look at homes and say, "Here's a nice lot, and the house is CRAP! Let's get it! I'll bring my sawzall!!" I really want to be able to build something to my specs, wire it myself, and know that every bit of work I put into it is saving me serious cash. After years of doing new homes & remodels I've seen what works and what doesn't, and would love to integrate ideas and details that would normally be far to expensive as options for other people or that you can't normally convince them to do until it's too late. Stuff like;

1. Installing the conduit for underground service so that the utility just has to tie in whenever they get around to taking down the power poles.
2. installing conduit and laying out areas for solar power so it can just be "plugged in" when affordable. In the meantime make it compatible with a backup generator.
   
3. Putting all of the low voltage wiring in pipe so it can be upgraded as technology changes
4. Lighted Solatubes - they're just way cool.
5. Extra capacity circuits or extra pipe in garage for vehicles - Plug in hybrids are coming, and full-electric vehicles probably are, too.
   
6. Panic/storm room
7. Rainwater collection - May be better as an augmentation or irrigation source, but I've seen homes further up the mountain that get all of their water this way.
8. Re-install solar water heater - and add anti-scald plumbing fixtures!
9. Install a hot water recirculating pump. The small amount of electricity it occasionally draws is nothing compared to the water wasted every night waiting for hot water at the shower.
10. Have the plumber install a 1/2" cooling loop somewhere cool outside for my computer. It's already watercooled, pump that heat somewhere outside of the room!
11. Whole house surge protection. Why spend $20 each on a surge strip when you can cover the whole house for under $100?