Windemere

        For those that link directly into the blog and forgoe the wonderment that has been the rest of the website, just wanted to give a heads up that I've finally gotten around to posting some stuff up to the website. Mostly it consists of finally getting a photo gallery up. Check out www.kgmoore.com to see what I've been up to that isn't related to the drama of home ownership.

        And by the way. No one is allowed to give me grief for using iWeb to make the site. I'm sure that most people will have tons of issues with the layout of things and the fact the the site probably only works on a mac. I don't really care. This was easy and now it is done. If anyone wants to contribute to the "Buy Dreamweaver for Kevin Fund" then you can complain about the crappy bloated code behind the site.

        It finally feels like Autumn is here. There is a crisp chill to the air. Trees are changing color. Leaves are falling. And once again I have no heat.

        Well that's a bit of an exaggeration. I do have heat, it just hasn't really been working in the sort of automated fashion that so many people are so familiar with these days. Normally you set the temperature at the thermostat, walk away and the magic of technology takes over and keeps things ticking along at the correct temp. Not so at Windemere. As temperatures have begun to dip at night it was finally time to fire up the old boiler and begin to think about heating the house. I've been putting this off as long as possible. Mostly because heat seems like such an expensive endeavour and blankets and shivering are so cheap. But my will was finally worn down and I decided to turn the thermostat up from sub-zero to a reasonably comfortable temperature range normally associated with "room temperature".

        But nothing happened. So I turned the thermostat up a bit further. Nothing. 75 degrees. Nothing. 85 degrees. Nothing. Siiiggghh.... Cursing and grumbling I headed down to the basement to threaten the boiler. The last time I went through this the problem was with the automatic flue damper not opening as it should. But this time the damper was open. So I poked and prodded and shivered and eventually found a combination of connections that I could jump together to get the boiler to fire up. And with a resounding and satisfying woomp and thud the boiler fired to life. Yay, heat.

        In my smug naiveté I went to bed knowing that I would soon be basking in the glowing warmth of a nice warm home. You know the saying be careful what you wish for? Yeah, life has a way of coming and biting you on the ass hard when you start "basking" overmuch.

        This particular adventure started with me walking into the house to find it was only about 55 degrees. By about 5am the temperature in the house had skyrocketd up to over 80 degrees. Evidently the magic electrical solution I had cobbled together in the basement permanently wired the boiler to ON. Ignoring any prudent advice it might have been receiving from the thermostat, the boiler pressed on throwing caution to the wind and continuing to boil away. In fact, by the time I woke up bathed in sweat from the heatwave and stumbled downstairs to get things turned off, the boiler had managed to get the water up to well over 200 degrees. Oops.

        But all is now well. Another water cooler session with the HVAC guy at work and I've now got the faulty flue damper out of the loop and the heat here is working as it should.

        For now...

        Prior to dealing with the whole no heat trauma I'd actually managed to find the time to work on another project around the house. Painting another room. Although not exactly a color from nature, the bold colors of fall are kind of inspiring.

        First a bit of back-story. Last year I started to "make the switch" by purchasing the MacBookPro. Even though the home PC was still a pretty quick machine I just really wanted/needed a laptop. Since I got the Mac I just really haven't used the PC much at all. It is just so much more convenient to have my digital life in my lap wherever I am rather than having to wait until I can get back home to plug in.

        So prior to getting the Mac and starting to live the good life I had purchased an upgrade copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 for windows. Life was good. Photoshop is amazing and there were some great new features in CS2 that I had unknowingly been longing for. Now that the PC has been sitting and languishing and I'm always on the Mac I've been really missing Photoshop. I got the GIMP but it really just doesn't compare. It is awkward, kinda slow and just not the same thing. But it was free.

        I have been taking massive amounts of photos and I have some projects that I really need a better image editor for. So I did a bunch of online checking and figuring and researching and I even "chatted" with an adobe rep online today to check to see if I could cross upgrade from Windows Photoshop CS2 to Macintosh Photoshop CS3. I was very clear about this. Very Clear. And they very clearly told me. No problem.

        I checked online at CompUSA and they had the upgrade in stock at the store. Woot! So after work today I swing by CompUSA and 2 clerks and 20 minutes later they finally found the correct version. This is very complex because I need Photoshop Standard edition not extended edition. I need the upgrade not the full version. And I need the Mac upgrade version not the windows upgrade version. But they did eventually get it all sorted and I walked out of the store with a little bit more of a bounce in my step.

        So I arrive home and tear off the wrapper like a kid at Christmas. And I started off with pretty much a terrible install experience. I had previously had a demo copy of CS3 on the laptop and it took several tries before I was able to purge all the old CS3 demo stuff of the computer in order to get the new installer to start it's thing. No amount of running the un-installer etc was working and the new installer insisted that there was still some small crumb of CS3 left on the machine that prevented it from even considering starting to install it's precious copy of CS3. This was a very non Mac-like experience. Normally software installation and un-installation of things is a very cavalier sort of dragging icons in and out of the Applications folder without much care thought or consequence. You can drag most applications off to an external disk or drop them off at a friends house to visit and somehow the machine will run out go knock on your friends door and find the application and run it for you. Even Microsoft's office suite could just be dragged and dropped to install. EVEN a MICROSOFT product was easy. Photoshop on the other hand, had deep roots.

        So a quick stop up at the Adobe support site finally got me on the way to get CS3 installed. Next came product registration. Enter the new serial number. Enter the serial number from the old product. DENIED. Double checked it. DENIED. Ok, back online and find the hotline number for Adobe sales. After a little bit of phone menu jumping I got through to a live human being. They collected all of my information, updated my online profile, took a blood and urine sample. And then they were ready to ask me what I wanted. I told them about having purchased CS3 at the store and wanting to cross upgrade from Win CS2 to Mac CS3. At which point they asked if I had opened the box yet. OF FUCKING COURSE I'VE OPENED THE BOX. Who buys software from the store, DOESN'T open it and then calls Adobe to chat. "Well you probably won't be able to take that copy back to the store". FUCKING WHAT. "Yeah the version you purchased won't work, but we'll be able to take back the copy you have" FUCKING WHAT. "What's the serial number for your CS2 product" I told them. "Ok, that's an upgrade license we'll need to go back" WHAT "Yeah what we need to do is trace the lineage of every Adobe product you've ever purchased until we get back to the dawn of time when you purchased an original full version. Then we'll need you to pull everything together in a big pile in the middle of your living room floor and then you need to get a video camera out and burn the pile of old software and then send us a copy of the video so that you can prove to us that you won't use the old software on the PC anymore and then we'll send you a brand new full version of the mac software for the same price you paid for the upgrade." ARE YOU MOTHERFUCKING KIDDING ME.

        So I mentioned to my good sales buddy on the phone at Adobe that I have moved probably 3 times since buying the original Photoshop and I have no idea where it might be. So there was nothing he could do. So now I'm stuck.

        I mentioned to him that this was definitely the kind of FUCK TARD policies that drive people to pirate software. Which he did at least have the humanity to admit to. So now I have to go find the original copy of Photoshop. Get the serial number from that, and the serial number from CS2 Win and the serial number from CS3 Mac and then go download a PDF document from Adobe's support site and print it out ON PAPER, and then fill out the form WITH A PEN, and then FAX IT BACK. Really? Seriously? PAPER, PEN, FAX is the best you guys can do. I'm pretty sure there's some really cool web type software stuff that lets you do this kind of thing. Yeah I'm pretty sure. And you know what? ADOBE FUCKING MAKES THAT SOFTWARE!!!!

        Today's drama unfolded in multiple parts. First was waking up shivering to realize that the heat had once again gone out. Then there was the call to the home warranty company to get someone to come fix the heat. Lots of hold music. Lots of waiting. Eureka a live person, arrangements made for service. Ta Da. Hours pass. Still cold. No word from the plumber. Then calling the plumber to see if they were actually coming out. They weren't. Not until Monday. Then more shivering and being cold. Aha but I could light a fire in the fireplace. Then there were the bodies. Sooo many bodies.

        I guess I should elaborate a bit on this last point. After sitting around the house for most of the afternoon shivering and being generally cold and watching the temperature continue to drop I had the sudden realization that I had this amazing fireplace contraption thing in my living room in which you could put flammable combustible materials and with the right combination of heat and air could create wonderful glorious heat and light. I shall call it Fire.

        But I had frittered my summer away doing meaningless pointless things like stripping wallpaper and taming ivy rather than preparing for the hard winter ahead. If only I had listened to the Ant. He is surely ready for the winter. But wait, all is not lost. Legend tells of a grand magic castle not far from here. A Depot of all things Home (if you will). So we will embark on a quest, nay a great pilgrimage to the mighty Depot of Home to gather together the various components of "Fire".

        But first we must inspect this magic rectangular box that will contain the fire. I opened the flue and was showered with an accumulation of dirt and soot. After getting the flue damper out of the way and getting a flashlight up into the chimney I found that the chimney itself didn't look that dirty, there was just an accumulation of stuff on the ledge behind the flue. Not to fear, I'll just break out the trust shop-vac and we'll be all set and ready to begin our quest for "Fire".

        At first, things went fine with the whole cleaning process. The shop-vac sucked mightily, pulling up all sorts of accumulated stuff. And then there was a thump and the motor on the shop vac groaned under the load of having something clogging the inlet. This is a rather unique sound and almost never is the pre-cursor of something good. You never wave the vacuum wand under the couch and have it bog down on a random fat wad of cash you've been looking for. It either fully ingests whatever expensive or rare item that you didn't want to fish out of the belly of the vacuum or else pulls up something gross. It never really seems to want to pull in and consume the gross stuff though that just gets stuck to the end of the nozzle for you to deal with. In this instance I could tell it had suctioned something to the front of the hose but had refused to ingest it. This as I have just described does not bode well. I pulled the hose back into view to find the carcass of a squirrel blocking the end. This was, to say the least, a little creepy. I now had a long-dead squirrel to deal with.

        Now that my task had changed from just a quick cleaning to having to deal with a body I soldiered on an moved ahead. THWUNK- eeaaahhhhhh. Another victim. With the discovery of a second body I decided to re-equip myself for full crime scene investigation rather than just light duty dusting and cleaning. With the proper gear in place I ventured a hand up into the chimney and felt around. There were more bodies.

        In the end, the body count totaled six. I don't know if I just live in a neighborhood filled with especially dissatisfied and depressed squirrels or if my chimney top is to squirrels what a venus-fly-trap is to bugs. Either way, it is really really freaking creepy to discover 6 dead bodies in your house. It doesn't really matter what kind of bodies they are. I guess, to be fair, that if they had been human bodies it probably would have been a bit more creepy and probably would have involved the police department and an action news team or two instead of a trash bag and some rubber gloves.

        With the chimney cleaned out, the bodies unceremoniously put out at the curb, and ordered restored I was finally able to continue my quest. As you can see above the fire did work out quite nicely. I finally sat on the couch and enjoyed a few minutes of hard won quiet and warmth. It is really beautiful to sit and watch the flames dance and leap; the light dappling the room as if it were dancing with the shadows. Although the fireplace really puts far more heat up the chimney than into the room, there is still some primal response wired deep into our brains that is calmed and soothed by the fire. Fire is the bringer of light and warmth and safety from the dark and cold of the night. It even managed to keep the squirrels at bay.