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Aug. 29th, 2010 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I had a quiet weekend. On Saturday, I went over to Theron and Chris's to look at their DSL which was not working. DSL router lights incorrect as all hell, power light red, all four ethernet lights lit whether or not anything was plugged in, dsl/internet lights not lit at all. DSL router broken, yo. Chris called tech support and got no joy, they told her it was her computers that were broken. (Two of them, a win98 and an ubuntu, magically broke themselves when the lights on the DSL router went wrong. Must have been minimum wage tech support, is all I can say.) So I called tech support again and we went over all the stuff, cycled the power, checked the cords, yadda yadda yadda. The DSL router is broken. They will send her a new one.
I'd sent Sam off to his friend's 40th birthday party that morning, with my less-favored small igloo cooler, the red one with the rotating lid. He needed the cooler to take a lump of home-made bacon to the friend, who had listened politely to my explanation of how excellent home-made bacon was when we all went to Six Flags a couple of weekends ago. Friend did not express any desire for home-made bacon, but I sent some along anyway on the grounds that anyone who tastes home-made bacon will like it.
I have two small igloo coolers, one red and one blue. I did not pay for either one -- tenants left them behind at some point and I saved them. I like the blue one with the removable flat lid a lot better because I can use it as a seat if I have nowhere else to sit. The red one has a pointy lid that is not sittable and I don't like it nearly as well. Since I figured that whatever I sent as a cooler would get left at the friend's house, I sent the cooler I didn't like.
The cooler got left at the friend's house. Since I expected this and planned for it, I was not mad. Sam apologized anyway, but it's kind of weird to be apologized at when you're not mad. I told him it was okay and not to worry about it, that I had specifically sent him with the yuckier of the two coolers so that when it got left behind, I would not be upset about it. He was surprised I'd thought that far ahead.
***
A tenant called me on Saturday night with an issue about her water heater. I said I'd be by on Sunday to look at it. However, I am an idiot and failed to take notes on phone call... so did not have any real idea which tenant this might be when Sunday arrived. There are sixty-odd tenants, so guessing which one is kind of a crapshoot. :( I suck. I was hoping tenant would call back today but thus far that has not happened. *sigh*
***
I took the most ungrateful of babies out for a drag today. She's two and a half, needs to start working on a job. Ponying her along while I'm on the red idiot is good for both of them. Nick needs the practice being a good horse with job skills. Peake needs to pony alongside a grown horse because it's a job skill for too-young-to-ride horses that she can have but does not YET have. We went down into the hollow, up the hill and around the buckwheat field, back up out of the hollow, and around the jumps in the hayfield. Then we went home. There was walking and trotting. She drug along less-than-stellarly but showed improvement as we progressed. I'll need to do this a few more times, and at least one time for an extended period, and then we can advertise her as "ponies alongside another horse".
***
I've also been working on cleaning up my wire and pipe salvage from 347, which we are deconstructing. There's a lot of wire in the building, much of it the old tar-paper stuff with plated copper wire. When recycling copper, you get more money for #1 copper (clean uncoated copper wire bigger than 16 gauge) than you do for #2 scrap copper (most copper pipe and plated wire). Because of the price differential, it pays you to sort your stuff. It also pays you to strip your wire and clean your pipe of fittings (plastic or galvanized are throwaway, brass goes into a different bucket) so that you get best price. Burning the wire to strip it is not good for the environment OR cost-effective (burnt wire sells for less) so I strip it by hand, using a utility knife. The opportunities for interesting cuts on my hands are endless but it keeps me busy while I'm watching television and I will clear a hundred bucks on the wire and pipe out of the building.
***
Brother the elder gave me some of his elderberry jelly, brother the younger shared some raspberry wine and a book on managing emotions.
***
The horse people did pick-your-own for peaches, no idea where they got them, but the peaches themselves are small and unshapely dwarf peaches whose flesh clings tightly, tightly to the pits. They taste like food for the gods, though, so very ripe and so very musky that gnawing the flesh off the pits is not any trouble at all. I ate five on the way home from the horse people -- a distance of about four miles.
***
One of my borrowers, who is not doing a particularly good job at repaying me (she should have been done about a year ago), asked me for more money today via a facebook message. Now, I am perhaps not the most even-keeled of humans (Note above the book on managing emotions -- that's not so much an "I think you will like it" book as a "You have issues that I am hoping this book may partially mitigate" book. There are no gifts without ulterior motives in my family.) but I did make every effort to respond appropriately. I wrote several cuttingly sharp and bitingly sarcastic drafts of the message, but what I finally settled on was the following: Because your record to date on your outstanding loan with me has been less than satisfactory, I regret to inform you that I am not interested in loaning you any more money, with or without a co-signer. It's not nasty. It doesn't have any name-calling. It's short and to the point. The previous efforts were significantly longer, more entertaining for me to read, and way more fulfilling for me to write, but she still owes me money and I'd like to get it back. *sigh* I probably won't, but that's still no reason to throw good money after bad.
I'd sent Sam off to his friend's 40th birthday party that morning, with my less-favored small igloo cooler, the red one with the rotating lid. He needed the cooler to take a lump of home-made bacon to the friend, who had listened politely to my explanation of how excellent home-made bacon was when we all went to Six Flags a couple of weekends ago. Friend did not express any desire for home-made bacon, but I sent some along anyway on the grounds that anyone who tastes home-made bacon will like it.
I have two small igloo coolers, one red and one blue. I did not pay for either one -- tenants left them behind at some point and I saved them. I like the blue one with the removable flat lid a lot better because I can use it as a seat if I have nowhere else to sit. The red one has a pointy lid that is not sittable and I don't like it nearly as well. Since I figured that whatever I sent as a cooler would get left at the friend's house, I sent the cooler I didn't like.
The cooler got left at the friend's house. Since I expected this and planned for it, I was not mad. Sam apologized anyway, but it's kind of weird to be apologized at when you're not mad. I told him it was okay and not to worry about it, that I had specifically sent him with the yuckier of the two coolers so that when it got left behind, I would not be upset about it. He was surprised I'd thought that far ahead.
***
A tenant called me on Saturday night with an issue about her water heater. I said I'd be by on Sunday to look at it. However, I am an idiot and failed to take notes on phone call... so did not have any real idea which tenant this might be when Sunday arrived. There are sixty-odd tenants, so guessing which one is kind of a crapshoot. :( I suck. I was hoping tenant would call back today but thus far that has not happened. *sigh*
***
I took the most ungrateful of babies out for a drag today. She's two and a half, needs to start working on a job. Ponying her along while I'm on the red idiot is good for both of them. Nick needs the practice being a good horse with job skills. Peake needs to pony alongside a grown horse because it's a job skill for too-young-to-ride horses that she can have but does not YET have. We went down into the hollow, up the hill and around the buckwheat field, back up out of the hollow, and around the jumps in the hayfield. Then we went home. There was walking and trotting. She drug along less-than-stellarly but showed improvement as we progressed. I'll need to do this a few more times, and at least one time for an extended period, and then we can advertise her as "ponies alongside another horse".
***
I've also been working on cleaning up my wire and pipe salvage from 347, which we are deconstructing. There's a lot of wire in the building, much of it the old tar-paper stuff with plated copper wire. When recycling copper, you get more money for #1 copper (clean uncoated copper wire bigger than 16 gauge) than you do for #2 scrap copper (most copper pipe and plated wire). Because of the price differential, it pays you to sort your stuff. It also pays you to strip your wire and clean your pipe of fittings (plastic or galvanized are throwaway, brass goes into a different bucket) so that you get best price. Burning the wire to strip it is not good for the environment OR cost-effective (burnt wire sells for less) so I strip it by hand, using a utility knife. The opportunities for interesting cuts on my hands are endless but it keeps me busy while I'm watching television and I will clear a hundred bucks on the wire and pipe out of the building.
***
Brother the elder gave me some of his elderberry jelly, brother the younger shared some raspberry wine and a book on managing emotions.
***
The horse people did pick-your-own for peaches, no idea where they got them, but the peaches themselves are small and unshapely dwarf peaches whose flesh clings tightly, tightly to the pits. They taste like food for the gods, though, so very ripe and so very musky that gnawing the flesh off the pits is not any trouble at all. I ate five on the way home from the horse people -- a distance of about four miles.
***
One of my borrowers, who is not doing a particularly good job at repaying me (she should have been done about a year ago), asked me for more money today via a facebook message. Now, I am perhaps not the most even-keeled of humans (Note above the book on managing emotions -- that's not so much an "I think you will like it" book as a "You have issues that I am hoping this book may partially mitigate" book. There are no gifts without ulterior motives in my family.) but I did make every effort to respond appropriately. I wrote several cuttingly sharp and bitingly sarcastic drafts of the message, but what I finally settled on was the following: Because your record to date on your outstanding loan with me has been less than satisfactory, I regret to inform you that I am not interested in loaning you any more money, with or without a co-signer. It's not nasty. It doesn't have any name-calling. It's short and to the point. The previous efforts were significantly longer, more entertaining for me to read, and way more fulfilling for me to write, but she still owes me money and I'd like to get it back. *sigh* I probably won't, but that's still no reason to throw good money after bad.
