Steve Rossi

03/07/05 Supplemental :

Click HERE for a diagram of the electrical progress I'm making. (Just got the light in the closet started, going to finish up on the switches for the dining room and the hall before I hit the sack - I hope ).

03/07/05

Put in some new wiring yesterday, the house didn't burn down last night so I guess it was a success. I now have real plugs in the bedroom (6 sets of them) so I got rid of the extension cords. That's nice. Even got the house somewhat cleaned up so at lest the bedroom area, kitchen and computer room are in order. Progress. Slower than I'd like but stuff is getting done and I can actually imagine a time when I'm done. Yea!

03/04/05

Day 1 of my return to the human race. Woke up this morning feeling almost good, I could swallow without screaming out in pain, my eye wasn't glued shut, I was actually warm and I was breathing through my nose. Ahh, it's the little things in life that give us pleasure. I even got up the energy to put the insulation on the ceiling of the kitchen. Now the house looks more like a work in progress than a bombed out crack house. And the best thing is that I can cook in the kitchen again, no more scary crap falling through the lathe on the ceiling. It was really bugging me the last few days not getting anything done on the house, I'm so tired of it being such a mess, I feel a lot better when I'm getting at least a little done every day - shows there's an end to it somewhere.

03/02/05

So I went to the doctor for a checkup on Monday. Good news, my blood pressure is down from borderline back to normal, my glucose level is down from 6.9 to 5.3 (normal) and I clocked in at 242 lbs (from 285 a year ago). Of course the checkup had good timing, it just happened to coincide with a case of Strep. Yup, been in bed for the last 24 hours taking antibiotics and codeine. I dunno, is it me or have I been sick a lot more this year than usual, sure seems so. Anyways, one more day and I should be back to normal, well, normal for me that is.

02/27/05

First Annual
Back of Beyond Ranch
Paintball Jamboree
June 9 thru 12, 2005
Details coming soon.

02/26/05

Well, the furnace is in, and it blows about three times as much air as the old one, warmed up the house from about 50 degrees to 72 in about half an hour. Way nice. And now there's enough room down in the basement for me to move the computer down there. Click HERE to see the before, during and after photos.

02/25/05

FYI : The site might go offline for a little while tomorrow. They tore out the old furnace this evening, so tomorrow they're going to be putting in the new one. Problem is that this computer is on the same breaker as the furnace, and it'll go offline when they flip the switch to hook up the new one. I'll be home from Chevron sometime after 4, so if it does go off, I'll get it back up as soon as I can after I get home. Sorry about the inconvenience.

02/23/05

02/22/05

Let's see. I got the whole basement cleaned out for the new furnace this weekend. I got the rest of the wall removed, now all there is between the kitchen and the dining room is the chimney. I figured out the electrical issue I was having getting the wires down to the switches. It's going to mean having some of that finished looking conduit coming down from the ceiling, but there was no way I was going to get the wires down inside the walls without ripping them apart. No way. When it's all painted it's going to be barely noticeable (I hope). And I got the chandelier up and hanging in the dining room. Now I just have to get the wires to everything hooked up, sheet rock the kitchen and the ceilings, put something over the floor where the wall used to be and a little (lot) paint here and there and I'll be in business. Yea!

02/20/05

One thing leads to another, and next thing you know you're completely re-doing the electrical system in the house. Not that it didn't need it. I started looking around in the attic and frankly it scared the hell out of me. Wires so old that they were the type that wrapped around the ceramic conductors. Various connections out in the open insulated by just electrical tape and loose (possibly hot) wires laying in the insulation. So I just went ahead and disconnected it all at the breaker box. Fortunately I had already put new wiring in the kitchen and the office, so with a couple of heavy duty extension cords and power strips everything I need to have working is (the basement and laundry room are on a different breaker, so I didn't need to put the furnace and laundry on extension cords.) I'm going to wire all the lights to the same breaker, and the plugs to another one. The good thing is that I'll be putting in a new switch for the office light, so I won't have to reach up to turn it on anymore, and both the living room and office ceiling fans are going to get separate switches for lights and fan. And I'm going to finally have a working light in the dining room. It's gonna be nice. I just have to live with floor lamps while I systematically take apart all the fixtures and rewire them. Fun, fun, fun......

02/14/05

Got this picture in an e-mail. Put the rest of them on the Picture of the Week page, but loved this one so much just had to take up the room to put it right on the front page. It was titled "Tattoo of the Year".

02/13/05

HERE's the picture Shirley & Danny wanted me to put on the site for downloading, considering who's in the picture, it's probably for Shellie, eh?

02/12/05

You've probably noticed this already, but now you can log into your e-mail straight from this page - it's right there in the upper left-hand corner.

Police One Liners & Men's Rules. More stuff from my e-mails. Click HERE to check them out.

Monday Morning v. Friday Afternoon & The Boston Blizzard of 2005. Click HERE to check them out.

Thanks to Danny & Rachel for taking me in for the week my house was without heat, thank you Alex & Marijke for loaning me the money for the new furnace until my taxes come in and for all the time Alex put in getting info and quotes for the new furnace. It wasn't a major disaster but I was without a home for a week, and it made me realize how lucky I am. I had no less than 7 offers from family and friends for a place to stay (including one from Green Bay, Wisconsin). My family was there with a place to stay, hot meals, clean towels, the money for a new furnace and the time to look for it. All I can say is thanks, I love you guys and I'm one hell of a lucky guy.

Well, here's the deal on the furnace. It took a $6 part and about half an hour to get it working again. But considering the reactions Alex & I got from the heating people (anywhere from laughter to "My God, this belongs in a museum"), and that I was planning on replacing it this year anyways, it's still going to go. It sits 27" wide, 50" long and 59" high, compared to the new one which will be 20" x 29" x 38". The heating guys think it was probably installed sometime in the early 1930's (yes, really) and runs at about 35-40% efficiency, compared to 80% for the new one. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be able to get the new furnace put in, but according to everyone Alex & I have talked to the house will be a lot warmer, more comfortable and it'll even cost me less to keep it that way.

02/10/05

Sorry the site was down all night and all day today. We were working on the furnace last night and I forgot that the computer was on the same breaker. Normally I would have noticed, but since I've been staying at Danny's house while the furnace was broken I haven't been using my computer and didn't notice it was off. But the good news is that we're going to be getting the furnace working tonight, so I won't be homeless anymore. It's only going to cost me $5, but I'm still going to have the new furnace put in in a couple of weeks.

02/06/05

More commentary from Pedro, click HERE to check it out.

02/05/05

(Click here for current pictures.) When it rains it pours. So, we're working some more on tearing out the walls, got it almost all done. Except for a couple of problems. First of all the garbage and the back of my truck are completely full already. So, I'm going to have to take a trip to the dump tomorrow, Randall's going to bring his truck too so we can get all the crap out there. The second problem is that my 40+ year old furnace decided to kick the bucket today. Yeah! All I can think is "at least I'm not living in Wisconsin" and why didn't it just wait another month until my tax return came in, when I was planning on replacing it anyways. So, it's not that big a tragedy, since I was getting a new one anyways, and Danny offered to let me move into their basement until I can get it done, so at least I'll have a warm place to stay. (Thank God for family, 'cause I know that if Danny hadn't beat them to it I would have had other offers, and it's great to know that.) Other than that, I'm still happy that I decided to tear out the wall and reveal the chimney, getting as far as I have I can tell it's going to look fantastic when I'm done. So, gotta run off to bed, get some sleep so I can get up early to go to the dump, and hope you like the picture of me during the reconstruction.......

01/31/05

Pictures that make you want to say "Holy Crap!"....HERE.

Want to help tear down walls? Read on if you're interested.

Got up into the attic today, interesting experience. First of all, I found out that the TV antenna isn't on the roof, it's IN the roof (picture). You can also see part of the old roof, before the back was added on, and that there is a second chimney which goes down through the computer room. I also couldn't figure out the ceilings, there aren't only two levels like I thought, the add-on has two levels of it's own, making me wonder what was built when. Oh well. But I did discover that all the rafters over the living room and kitchen go parallel to the wall I want to remove, so it isn't load bearing and can be removed. So, that's what I'm going to be doing this week. Tonight I want to get all the old wood trim removed (intact I hope) and then on Thursday I'll start tearing down the walls. Anyone willing (and able) to help me is more than welcome to come on over thursday, friday and/or saturday, whenever you're free. Just give me a buzz and see what's up, I'm pretty sure I'll be working on it all week..