Muppethouse » House

Tree of Heaven

Ryan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:40:59 +0000

Do you recall any cloud-filled vision of heaven in popular media that has contained deciduous trees? I can tell you that if heaven was wall-to-wall forest it surely wouldn’t contain this bastard of a tree. Many people have had ideas of what this tree growing through the fence in my back yard is, but sorry, you’re all wrong. It is an ailanthus altissima, more commonly referred to as a Tree of Heaven. This exotic tree likes to implant its buhjillion seeds everywhere, growing super quickly even in the most inconvenient areas. Hey, want a tree in the middle of your lawn? Here ya go. Want another one? Here ya go. I am not a fan. Heaven can have their weed back. It is getting chopped down this weekend.

Inadvertly Added an Indoor Pool

Ryan — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 14:18:34 +0000

DCP_0240.JPG

Originally uploaded by ryanmshea.

On Friday night one of my pipes decided that the pressure was just too great and it couldn’t go on. It gave up all hope of holding water and cracked, spewing gallon upon gallon of water throughout my basement.

Fortunately we were notified somewhat quickly about the disaster. Stacey and I were on the scene quickly with wet-dry vacs, dehumidifiers, fans, and a trash can to hold all the sloppy water. This shot shows just a few of the massive “air movers” that the Service Master disaster recovery experts put in place to help dry out the basement.

The irony is that the plumber was scheduled to replace all the pipes last Sunday, but had to reschedule. Not good.

m0n0wall, Ubuntu, & Pergo

Ryan — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:37:33 +0000

After the sheet vinyl flooring disaster in my kitchen, the subsequent commercial vinyl flooring project, and now the Pergo project at Stacey’s place, I hope to be done with flooring for a good long while.

I’ll state the obvious: I get obsessed with dorky things for rather limited amounts of time, then move on to newer, more interesting projects. I have been playing around with Ubuntu Linux lately. Although I’ve always been a Red Hat guy, the Debian side of the fence is not without its charm. I’m still ramping up, but I’m quite pleased with Ubuntu’s performance on the craptop work gave me, as well as on my work PC. Also, I’ve migrated my home network off of the Xincom dual-wan router I had and over to the Soekris Net4501. M0n0wall has been running on that thing for quite a while acting as my wireless access point, but now that I’m reducing devices I am beginning to see how powerful m0n0wall is. I’m trying to figure out the PPTP server that is built in, but have had only limited success so far. Anyone else out there have a fun technology to share?

PMS for Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 21:59:02 +0000

Every month about this time I get all kinds of nervous. It has nothing to do with the phase of the moon, hormone levels, or low blood sugar. My monthly bout with anxiety is exclusively due to that time of month – rent day. My balances are low and I continue to hope beyond all reason that this month all will pay on time. I often question whether this is worth the ulcers I am causing myself – I sure hope so.

Proud Electrician

Ryan — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 21:46:35 +0000

Although this may sound trivial, I’m pretty proud of my latest project. Although I have hooked up basic ceiling lights and installed X10 light switches, I’ve never really done any AC wiring. In the new house the basement “closet” is the area under the stairs. Even though I installed some closet rods, it is still sorta just the dark underside of the stairs. So I thought I would install an outlet, light switch, and a light fixture. I bought all the supplies at lowes which cost next-to-nothing. The only problem was I had no clue what I was doing. Having been electrocuted before during an X10 switch install, I was a little fearful of messing with wiring. However, I fought through the nervousness, drilled some holes, and tacked up some new wiring. I stripped wires, attached ground lines – still having no idea what I was doing. I just plugged things in based on what seemed to make the most sense. This morning I finally tied my little project into the main wiring – half expecting an explosion. To my pleasant surprise everything worked. I did it right somehow. Awesome.

Next project – reflux distilling. Remember that moonshine thing you printed out for me a couple years ago David? It will eventually become a reality.

Inversely Proportional & Christmas

Ryan — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 14:47:58 +0000

I just realized today that the effectiveness of advertising is inversely proportional to the amount spent on that ad.

Washington Post $85 – got me a few losers and no-shows
Roommateclick.com $45 a few nibbles – haven’t given it much of a chance yet
Roommates.com $25 – had a good handful of people out to the house based on this
Craig’s List $FREE – probably have had more calls from craigs list than anything else

Maybe if there were a service that was less than $FREE I would do even better.

So I was thinking about Christmas and wondering why it is we are encouraged to ask for gifts that we would not buy for ourselves. By definition haven’t we determined that these items are not worth purchasing ourselves? Otherwise we would have already purchased them. We are increasing the market for shit we don’t need. How much better off would we be if we all asked for the things we were going to buy anyway – toothpaste, sandpaper, and a set of 50-weight ball bearings?

Zee House

Ryan — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:43:15 +0000

I’m having a pretty horrible time finding people for the new place. Although I’ve spoken to over a dozen people about the place, and shown it to about 5 or 6 people nothing seems to be panning out. Last night I called a couple less-than-perfect candidates and accepted them – however one has decided to go with another place and I’m waiting to hear back from the other. My $85 Washington Post ad produced a disapointing 4 or 5 phone calls. I imagine that this is a bad time of year to be looking for people, but I was hoping for better luck. My latest thought is to make a run down to Mason and leave a few flyers around – there have to be some graduating seniors looking for a room in my area.

I’m pretty scared about how much it costs me for each day that place is empty. This was a big balls move in the first place, so I’m not sure why they seem to be shriveling up now.

On the plus side there isn’t that much to do in the way of repair. I finally got internet access at the new place. It’s amazing how boring a house can be without access to the ol’ information superhighway.

Buying a House

Ryan — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 05:30:46 +0000

Houses are fun.

You can put your things in them. You can also sleep, eat, and use the bathroom at a house.

For these reasons I have decided to buy another one. Here are pictures.

If anyone out there knows someone looking for a place December first, send em my way.