Yesterday we were gonna get the last of the bathroom fixed up for the time being, but as it turned out, the specialty place we needed to get the tub faucet from didn't have any, despite telling us they did. So they had to order it, which won't be there till at least Monday. So still no tub. That's kind of aggravating, because it would have been easier to reconnect the tub without a toilet in the way. But oh well, we'll manage.

We did put the new toilet in. It's a chair-height elongated one, which my mom thought would be easier on her back than sitting down lower like on the older one. Only uses 1.24 gallons per flush, where as our old one probably used 5x that. Just the size of the tank, and the amount of water it fills up to, is a very visible indication of how much less water this one will use. It went in pretty easy overall, though we did have to cut a base piece for it to sit on. As mentioned, the pipes in this house are from a different time, so not everything matches up to modern stuff. But we got it in with minimal hassle, and it works great. We're waiting to caulk up the edges of the riser piece under it until we're sure there's no leaks.

So I guess technically we're as done as we're going to be. We re-adjusted the legs on the kitchen appliances which were standing on the opposite side of that bathroom wall, to level them back out now that the joist under them wasn't sagging. Put in one of those metal strips to cover/hold the seam between the bathroom rug and the hallway carpet. Lots of cleaning up from everything afterward.

Since this new toilet isn't as wide as the old one, I think it won't be too bad, crawling down between it and the tub to hook up its plumbing. We're also considering buying a can of that refinishing stuff for our tub, since it's old and starting to wear down a bit. It's hard to clean these days because of it. Dunno how well that stuff in a can works though compared to a professional refinishing (which is likely over $300).

Anyway, I just wish we'd had the time and money to redo ALL of the bathroom. Or hell, other parts of the house too, for that matter. There's just lots of things here and there that I'd like to see fixed up. But oh well, as long as there's no floors trying to fall through anymore or anything, that's good enough for me..!


Oh, I uploaded a few of the photos I took over the last week, if anyone's interested in how it looked as it all went along.

( Two days of bathroom fun in one! )

Rained all day today. We had to move our tools to the front porch and do our cutting and stuff out there instead, where we had room to work in the dry.

Started by putting in some cross-brace pieces between some of the joists, but that didn't take too long. We also ended up putting a really long shim across the one joist under the wall since it was going to be lower than the others, which wouldn't have let the floor rest evenly. After that though, it was on to the floor.

Cutting around pipes is a pain in the butt. Not only did we try to make basic measurements of where the bathtub pipes went (which has a clean-out thing sticking up not far from it too), but I also made a paper template which would fit down over top of them all, which we could transfer onto the wood. As a last step, we tried transferring lines straight down from the pipes onto the wood to make sure things would line up. All of that helped, but it didn't prevent us from having to pull the board back up 3-4 times to re-cut the holes a bit bigger. Being off by even a quarter inch is enough to throw things off. Before attaching it down permanently, though, we transferred all those holes onto the other piece which would sit on top of it. The first one took forever, so that would at least save time for the other layer.

After getting the farthest back section of wood down, we decided to go ahead and rip the drywall down from the wall so that we'd still have an open space in the floor to sweep all the little bits into. In the process, we found a small space between the chimney and the living room closet, maybe a foot and a half wide or so, which has a thick black vent pipe in it running up through the roof. But there's enough space in there that a person could rip the wall out from the living room and put, like, a narrow bookshelf in there.

Later in the evening when the cat slipped into the bathroom, she decided that she liked sitting in that little pocket too. I'm surprised she's not still more afraid of it in there since it's all different and new-smelling, but I guess she's gotten her curiosity back. We've actually had to keep her on her harness in the house the last few days to keep her both from running outside from all the door opening and closing, as well as to keep her out of the bathroom, where she coulda gotten down under the house. She slept almost all day here in the bedroom though the last couple days, where my younger brother kept an eye on her.

Anyhoo, as for the sink's drain/supply lines and the vent pipe near it, we just cut out slots and shoved the board back into the wall, then screwed in the filler pieces behind it since there was actually a joist to attach those bits too. And we transferred the cut lines on that one to the top layer again as well.

By the time we got the bottom layer screwed down, and then cut all the pieces for the top, it was time to call it quits for today. Being nasty weather just made it darker and colder earlier than normal. Tomorrow, though, we should be able to finish the floor, put felt between the layers to keep it from squeaking when you walk on it, then the rug on top of that, and finally get to the walls. My older brother will be at work, but it's not like he's really done much to help the last couple days anyway. We'll just get him to help drag the tub in there Thursday morning before he goes to work, since we should be done with everything by then. He's sick or something too, and I think we might be trying to catch it. That or it's just all the dust and junk.



Funny thing that happened though. When I was carrying scraps of drywall out to the curb in the afternoon, an Explorer pulled up in the driveway and a guy stepped out just enough to ask about the water heater we have sitting out on the porch. He wanted to know if we were throwing it out. The funny thing about it though is that from a distance, initially, I could have sworn it was Prof. Dude had a beard and was a bit burly, and there was a woman on the passenger seat which I coulda sworn was Christina too. But when I got closer, I noticed what looked like kids in the back seat, and the guy didn't really sound like Prof the more he spoke. It was just pretty weird how similar they looked, though. Coulda played his stunt double in a Snipe Hunt movie..!


Oh also, my new power supply showed up today. I watched the UPS guy totally fumble it on the way over here though, dropping it flat on its top and getting it dirty (since it was pouring). But whatever, it's not as fragile as other stuff coulda been. I honestly have been forgetting about it though this evening, since I probably won't feel like putting it in until we get this bathroom stuff done. I should have plenty of power then, though!

( OPERATION: TERLET-TOPPLE? Day two. )

So we started our terrible job of fixing the bathroom today.

( Then I ramble on a bit longer than I thought about it, so I shall chomp it. )

Another post already. Crazy, I know!

I went ahead and ordered me a new power supply, since the one in my computer now is on its last leg. It's the Antec I put in to replace the LAST Antec which also failed, just in a different way (one of the capacitors started whistling that time). This time, the fan won't run unless I give it a spin manually. And more recently, when I shut down, I hear clicks coming from in the computer, and if I have my headphones on, the sound clicks repetitively too. Almost like it's trying to power the machine up over and over. I've just been pulling the plug out when I turn it off. Hopefully none of my components will have been damaged in any way as a result. But yeah, got a 600W, three rails, all the modern connectors, for a reasonable price. No more Antec shit either, since I think two power supplies failing in a row is pretty damn pathetic.

I hate to spend the money on a boring component instead of putting it on real upgrades, but oh well. I'm gonna have to spend just about as much to replace my DVD-RW drive now too, since it won't burn any discs now. And it reads back burned discs really slowly. I mean, I needed a faster one anyway, since this is the same drive that came in this computer when I bought it. Which was what, four years ago? Five? I've replaced the motherboard and a bunch of the other stuff in the case now, but not the optical drives. So I guess it's about time.


Something I don't particularly look forward to is Sunday, as well as possibly Monday or more. We're finally going to try and fix our bathroom. It's been in bad shape for a while. Basically, water damage combined with old age has caused numerous problems. Particularly, the joists attached to the outer edge of the house are sagging quite a bit. We're not even sure if one or two of them are even still attached. I tried snapping some photos from the crawlspace opening to see what's going on under there, but I'll be damned if I'm actually crawling in there..! So we can't tell for sure if any of them might just be hanging loose. The floor is probably down by at least 3" on the far end, where the tub sits, and there's some cracks now along the corner of that wall, and along the ceiling edge above it, going back towards to the door. So the wall definitely seems to be trying to separate from the ceiling. This all happened slowly over time, while we hoped to get the money to have it fixed professionally. But so much for that..! We just can't wait on that anymore.

We actually replaced part of the floor in there before from water damage, and initially thought that was all we needed to do this time too, so we put it off. We just didn't realize it had gotten as bad as it did until it was too late. So since the floor in a couple spots isn't in good shape in general, we're just going to rip up an entire section, all the way back to the outer wall of the house. That'll expose the joists for us to see what's going on there.

We'll probably sister the damaged joists with similar wood to strengthen what's there (bolting'em together I figure), because we can tell at least one of them has some water damage from the photos I took. My dad's gonna borrow a jack that'll do a few tons, not sure how many, but hopefully that'll be enough to lift the joists back into place. Then, if the ledger board along the outer side of the house is still capable of holding anything, we'll re-attach the joists, except with those metal joist hanger things. But even if they re-attach, we're probably still going to put some kind of support columns underneath'em, because we don't want'em drooping again if that starts to give loose (since I'm sure it's rotted somewhat, hence them detaching to begin with).

The fun part is that we'll have to take out the water heater (since it's right by the door, and it's gotta go to get the tub out) and the toilet until the joists are back up and the new subfloor, top floor, and rug is put down. We have no idea how long that'll take, since we don't even know what to buy until we ripped it all out and see what we have to work with. So for the time being, we'll have these camping toilets. FUN TIMES. I think the one is even called the "Luggable Loo".

So yeah. Part of me is looking forward to getting things fixed. Part of me dreads what could go wrong (like what happens when we start lifting joists) or how long it could take. We're hoping to at least have the floor fixed within a couple days. After that, there's some sections of sheetrock which have gotten molded around where the tub went. Might as well take care of that while the tub is out of the way. THEN FINALLY, tub goes back, then terlet, then water heater. And hopefully this terrible mess will be behind us.

Hey, I haven't posted in a long time!

So today I was reading about Comcast's new plan for bandwidth throttling. You know, to replace their old plan for bandwidth throttling which got them in trouble with the FCC. With the old one, they were just selectively throttling certain services outright. Not just torrents, but they were investigated for throttling VOIP (voice-over-IP) traffic too, which is worse, since throttling that could be seen as an anti-competitive move.

Well their plan now is to not selectively target things, but to just throttle every damn thing if your usage is too high. Reading over their FCC document, if your bandwidth exceeds an average of 80% downstream and/or 70% upstream for 15 minutes, then you get throttled. Totally. Doesn't matter what you're doing. Then if your usage goes under 50% for 15 minutes, your bandwidth is restored.

First of all, why is Comcast the only one claiming that this is so necessary to the point that they're spending money to make it happen? That money could be spent, you know, increasing their bandwidth capability instead. Charter's not doing anything like this though to my knowledge. Or any of the other major ISPs, for that matter. So there's obviously more to their motives than they're letting on. Money of course being the biggest one, but that's a given.

Second, there's wayyyyy too much room for loopholes here. For example, what is the technical explanation for how the customer's bandwidth is averaged? Are you counting every single byte? Or are you just taking sample usages on certain intervals? If it's the latter, then you could just be casually using the web, maybe loading a Youtube video, etc, just at the particular moments that it samples your bandwidth usage. Well if you're using the net for 15 minutes, even just casually, and it samples you at those moments, then bang. You're throttled. And you'd have a hard time getting unthrottled again at that rate, short of not using it altogether.

Basically, tiered internet, the center of the whole net neutrality argument, is being thrust upon Comcast users whether they like it or not. And I mean quite literally. The FCC document states that subscribers' cable modems will be uploaded with two different service tier files (as opposed to normally just the one, which sets the modem to the speed you pay for). The first is your normal one. The second is the low priority throttled one. Worse yet, the document specifically states that packets may sometimes be lost. That is, in "extreme circumstances", but they don't state what those are exactly. So basically, once you get on tier #2 for "excessive use", you hardly have any guarantee of service anymore at all.

So, what about streaming video services like Netflix, iTunes, Youtube, etc? You're obviously going to be watching those for more than 15 minutes. But of course, why would Comcast care about internet media, when they're a cable media company? They'd rather you be using their services instead. How long until Comcast suggests to Apple, Netflix, Youtube, and the like that they can simply pay a regular fee in order to keep their websites on tier #1 permanently?

This is all just a terrible idea. I mean, for many months, the fears of what could happen if net neutrality wasn't enforced were still merely assumptions and accusations. Republicans argued that we shouldn't mess with the internet since it's worked fine so far, and on that point, they've been right. We've never had to deal with this sort of shit before. But now Comcast is heading exactly towards what net neutrality proponents predicted could happen. And worse, it's being done under the guise of user bandwidth fairness.


And while on the subject of net neutrality, McCain's "Internet Freedom Act" is nothing of the sort. Its purpose is to protect ISPs to do as they want, not to protect websites or internet end users. And hey, guess what? McCain was the largest recipient of telecom campaign funds last year. What a huge coincidence!

The internet is a global thing. The data packets that traverse it don't belong to an ISP any more than H2O or electrons belong to local utility companies. Their job is to deliver a service, which is any packet to or from a customer, not to change the core principles of how that service operates. Which is basically what happens when ISPs control what websites get high-speed service out to internet users. Say goodbye to internet startup companies when that happens, because they won't be able to compete in terms of bandwidth to users unless they can pay fees to ISPs to be at the same tier as the big boys.


As far as throttling goes, which was the basis for my post to begin with, if the electric company decided you were using too much electricity and cut your voltage by half, dimming all your lights for 15 minutes until you turned things off, even though you still paid them monthly for service, then that'd be pretty fucked up too, wouldn't it?

Hey look I'm actually typing something here again!

I'm just in an LJ funk I guess. I haven't had anything in particular to ramble about in length. So I guess I'll just cover a bunch of things at once.


- I think I'm catching a cold, darn it. I couldn't tell you the last time I had one!

- Sucks about Patrick Swayze. I probably remember him most from Black Dog. Maybe soon they'll find a way to busk that silly cancer stuff.

- Far Cry 2 was a good game, but it gives you the impression that you're making choices when in reality they have little to no effect on the outcome. It also needed more voice actors, and ones who weren't South African, so that sentences and words weren't all run together into a mush of some of the most terrible voice acting I've ever heard.

- Chrome 3's memory leak still isn't fixed, even in the final release. It's annoying when your computer starts grinding to a halt just because your browser has eaten every free megabyte.

- Opera 10 is nice, but I've been using Chrome so long now that I just don't really care which of them I use anymore. I think Chrome is heavier on memory usage, though. Probably due to its multi-process browsing stuff.

- I guess my shitty router and shitty cable modem decided to team up, forcing me to make a mess and pull all my wiring connected to both out from everywhere, change the cable wires, and then swap in a much shittier wired-only router. But so far the internet hasn't been dying every half hour, so I can't complain I suppose! It was just odd, because instead of simply the router needing to be reset, the cable modem was actually losing its link now as well. No idea what was up with that.

- I had to replace my monitor, since the one I'd been using for years kept fading in and out randomly, until finally one day it started fading totally to black every few minutes. So I spent the money I had been saving to upgrade my computer and bought an affordable LCD, leaving me back at square one on upgrades, but at least I don't have a massive CRT sitting here anymore. I bet it'll save at least $5 on the electric bill every month.

- Having never personally used anything DVI-connected before, I went and ordered the wrong cable. I ordered in the first place since they were all $30+ in the store, which is crazy for any cable. I got mine for $10 at meritline.com. Turns out though I got a DVI-I cable, when I just needed a DVI-D. I mean, I looked it up ahead of time, and found that DVI-I is both analog and digital in one, so I thought that would be fine. Turns out, even though it plugs onto the video card fine, the monitor didn't have holes for the analog pins of the cable. The large keyed ground pin was also wider. So I used pliers, ripped the obstructing pins out completely, and it works fine!

- My DVD burner is a butthole and has ruined the last few discs I tried to make. I'm afraid to keep trying since those discs cost money and all, especially the dual-layer ones. This is the burner that came in this computer originally, in fact, so it's probably 5 years old. So until I can buy a good one, my free disk space continues to drop!

- Kanye West is still a douchebag. But people will keep buying his albums, because apparently in America we reward people for being rude and obnoxious.

- Joe Wilson is still a dickhole. But people will keep donating money to him, because apparently in America we reward people for being rude and obnoxious.

- I also don't like this tiny font it's using when I write entries here now! Or maybe that's Chrome's fault. I dunno.


I think that's about all worthy of mentioning!

There's an article in today's paper about the origins of many U.S. presidents. The headline is actually "Many U.S. Presidents Weren't American", or something stupid and attention-grabbing of that nature. It mostly talks about who had what in their bloodlines, and their names. But throughout the whole thing is talk of Obama, because in reality, this whole article is a none-too-subtle attempt at continuing the completely ridiculous birther movement.

Some of the gems from this article are things along these lines:

"Determining the roots of many Americans has been difficult ever since Lincoln freed the slaves"

"even if against all evidence Obama turns out to be born in Hawaii,"

"Obama isn't a real American due to his mixed heritage"

"Hawaii isn't part of real America"


These aren't 100% quotes without me going to look at it again, but that's what it said for all intents and purposes.

Southern journalism at its best, ladies and gentlemen!

Let's play "Fyber talks about politics which just happens to refer to some Republicans". Read/ignore accordingly!

This is about a few things, actually, but they all happened recently, and/or I found out about them recently, or only recently decided to care, etc, so I will just make a post about them all.


First up, let's just start with the latest. How about that Sarah Palin? She sure loves to make herself look worse and worse, and then make herself look worse still by trying to sue everyone ever for them reporting allegations of a scandal possibly being what led to her resigning. Whether she was actually involved in a scandal or not, if she didn't want to bring attention to something like that, then the appropriate thing to do was nothing at all. By going on a Twitter tirade, on July 4th of all days, she only makes herself look like she's trying to cover something up. Naturally I'm going to be biased and assume that she probably did do whatever it was, but that's beside the point. It's like she doesn't even try to appear non-retarded, and then when the press (I mean "liberal attack media") calls her out on it, she plays the victim card. Just like with the recent Letterman joke thing.

As for resigning in general, considering she gave no real reason for doing so, it just shows yet again that she's a quitter. She's quit pretty much everything else she's ever done based on what I've seen, which we knew long before this latest event ever happened. (It sounds more like she should be a member of Fybertech, amirite?) And yet this is the kind of person some folks thought we needed as vice president. I don't get it.

Personally, I think she either was in fact involved in another scandal, or, the Republican party told her to shut up already and is paying her/offering her a position elsewhere to go away and stop worsening their already poor image as of late. Either way, good riddins..! Only downside is that now Tina Fey won't have new material anymore.


Anyway, next up is John McCain's daughter, Meghan. First of all, I have no idea why the press has taken up to posting anything she has to say about anything, because let's face it, she's a pretty unimportant person in the grand scheme of things. However, she does some political blog or some dumb shit these days, and people pay enough attention for it to become news.

Well recently she posted about Mark Sanford. You know, the Republican Governor who disappeared for days and was cheating on his wife, etc. She naturally tries to defend him, says that his personal/sex life is none of our business, and that we hold politicians to "impossible standards".

Actually, I'll quote the whole thing: "We hold our politicians to impossible standards. We elect them, put our hopes and dreams for a brighter future on that one person, and then expect sainthood."

So, I guess fidelity is an impossible standard?

As for it being none of our business, what about the breach of trust, the lying, the sneaking around, etc, involved in cheating on one's spouse? It's not something that suddenly happens in five minutes. Events have to lead up to it. In his case, it was a huge set of poorly-decided events. So while his personal sex life in his bedroom with his wife is definitely none of our business, his untrustworthiness as an individual becomes apparent when he does something like this, which is in fact everyone's business. And this was with his family, most importantly. If he'd not care to hurt his own wife and family, then what would he care to do it to the people he represents for his job?

For the record, I feel that this holds true regardless of what party someone belongs to. I even felt Clinton couldn't generally be trusted when he did his nonsense. What happened with him though resulted in a partisan circus, since the republicans finally had something to latch onto and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to have him kicked out over it. I don't think a politician should be kicked out just because they cheat on their spouse, because it's not a crime (and yes I know Clinton lied about it in his case, but that was after the circus tent went up). I do, however, think that it should be a pretty good reference of character for when re-election time rolls around. And if they had any dignity left, they'd step down on their own beforehand.

Anyway, this guy isn't really the point. It's just that Meghan McCain somehow has become a bit of a role model to some conservative girls, and yet this is the kind of stuff she teaches to them. That fidelity is an impossible standard, pretty much. And that a politician is still just as trustworthy if they commit adultery, and that it's none of your business even if they do. I guess I should also tack on "as long as they're a Republican", but I guess that's kind of implied. We all know how it would go if they found a Democratic representative doing the same thing.

Now of course, whether she actually writes any of the crap in her "blog", who even knows. I mean, look at who this is coming from, and some of the things she's said in the past. She's basically the conservative edition of Paris Hilton. But regardless, I don't think that hopelessly defending a fellow republican with these kind of statements is exactly expressing the sort of values that the conservative party has generally stood for. You know, the whole family first + devout Christian sort of thing. I don't think most prominent Republicans even realize what their base is anymore.


So yeah. Just general gripes about those clowns. Palin hates her some blogs, since she loves hates free speech, so that just makes it even more ironic that I do my griping here.