Opening Statement
“… the code behind a symfony-driven application can seem quite daunting. It consists of many directories and scripts, and the files are a mix of PHP classes, HTML, and even an intermingling of the two. You’ll also see references to classes that are otherwise nowhere to be found within the application folder, and the directory depth stretches to six levels. But …” – The Definitive Guide to symfony, Chapter 2
Never a good sign.
Hot City Inspector or Hot Water? Neither
I woke from a dream at four a.m. this morning:
The City of Houston plumbing inspector had been a woman, it was her last inspection of the day, and after inspecting the gas line, she started hitting on me. We ended up scheduled to have dinner at her place.
I also noted that the caps on the floor jets were flush with the floor and resembled man hole covers. [The actual caps jut out of the floor.]
About 7:30 a.m. the plumbers called me to inform me the inspector would be coming today, between 8 and noon. I would be at work, so no hot-to-trot plumbing inspector for me. The Roommate on the other hand got home at 4 a.m., and if he didn’t wake up when the inspector showed I would be none to happy.
I decided to go for a morning walk and upon returning saw the plumber’s van sitting in front of the house. He had just woken The Roommate to provide him the same information I had received on the phone. Fine – it meant I didn’t have to.
The inspector came several hours later, and gave the work a green tag, but asking that we paint the PVC emergency drain pipe. It’s a bit ugly and that’s no large task.
One step closer to hot water.
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Day 29: Tree-free Garage
I finally synchronized a borrowed chain-saw, electricity (for the electric chain saw), free time, and daylight to allow me to climb onto the roof of the garage and cut off the two main trunks of elm that were still up there.
Quite a bit of physical exertion was required, though it only took about an hour. There were a few precarious moments, not knowing when and how the main trunk would fall or roll.
Now that the roof is clear, a few spots of minor damage are evident. I’ll need to get up there and patch a few places sometime soon.
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Markets Burning
The markets are in a free fall. Friday the Dow swung 1000 points. (18% down for the week) At the end of the day, it rallied to only be 150 down. Hoping positive thoughts for the G7 Financial Ministers meeting this weekend.
They think they’re going to get seven pre-eminent economists to agree on a future course of action and all act on it. I think there’s a very small chance of that so more Down on Monday.
I was also humored that there was no talk of the “G8″ since we’re talking about actual economics and Russia’s economy is a rounding error compared to the other seven. They are only ever included for political reasons.
This is the most important point in the last eight years for this country to have a Leader, easily more important than 9/11. So much of the market is reacting emotionally, and without any leadership there have been dozens of voices for the fearful and angry to listen to, only magnifying their negative emotions.
And, oh, by the way, we’re four weeks away from a presidential election.
Day 23: DSL Returns
I finally have Internet back at the house. Took me over an hour and a half with tech support – solved in 10 minutes of course once I got to talk to Cal in Second Level Support. I explained what I thought the problem was to him, he said “you’re right”, and told me the super secret hoops to jump through to fix the problem. I’d bet $20 my old DSL modem is fine, as well.
I’m exhausted from working 15 hour days supporting 20 roller derby bouts for the WFTDA Regional Championships – following each day with many hours of after party. But I managed to stream most of the games live to the Internet with a webcam and now have 100 new best friends that I’ve never met.
Hopefully I can now decompress and get to bed early.
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At&t Is Oblivious
18 days after the storm and I get the runaround or the cover-my-ass questions from the AT&T reps.
“you only contacted us this morning for the first time?”
Since I’ve been without power for 14 days and couldn’t confirm their outage, they will want me to pay.
And on top of that they have NO IDEA what the status of the network is. Wendy, a very cordial girl who asked about the weather “there aren’t any hurricanes around are there?”, told me to call back in another four hours. It’s the standard response. “Call back at 3:15am”, she actually said to me!
There’s no f-ing way it’s going to be fixed at that time or that anyone will know what’s going on at that time. If I happen to wake in the middle of the night, I may call them out of hatred. And in honor of squeeky wheels.
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