PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT UNTIL

... to add to the house saga....

Today the replacement part for the oven came. I put it in, only to discover when I went to put the broiler element back (the part that was ok before) that a part of it is broken. But I had been told it's fine to put a bake element in with no broiler, so I just left the top element out, and the bottom was working fine and dandy when I tested it, and we had an oven and it was beautiful.

Fast forward half an hour.... when our power goes out. Apparently they were using the oven and it was fine for like 10 minutes. Then it blew a fuse (which makes no sense to me...) So one of the girls went into the basement to reset it, but it didn't work so she did it 3 times... and then all of our power went out. After calls to multiple friends/family members who are of an electrical persuasion, we managed to get it back on just before calling someone in... but now we have no oven or stove at all until we can get it looked at tomorrow.

Seriously?

At least we have power, I guess.

Guys are coming tomorrow to repair the solar thermal system. Plumber has checked out other problems, and we're getting some pipes replaced and a new radiator. AND after two solid days of work, our greenhouse finally looks like a greenhouse! Plastic is on, solar fan is installed... we just have to get a little more lumber for some bracing and shelving, and some gutters, and I think were in business. Almost a year after we got the grant, and it's finally getting done... phew.

...welcome to ashleigh's home improvement blog? If nothing else, when it comes time for me to be a homeowner, I'll have seen everything. And at least I don't have to pay for any of it....

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

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On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

FUCK people. Fuck secrets, and fuck a world that makes people have secrets which can never end well for anyone.

I hate not having any control over something that affects me directly. And I hate when people can't have the balls to stand up for what they want out of fear for what others will think. I'm over that at this point in my life, why can't everyone else be? I'm done with handholding and playing therapist. I can't take this anymore.

In conclusion: BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. That's all there is to it.

OH ALSO, I seem to have the flu and haven't gotten out of bed in two days, which makes my summary of injuries for the week: ankle, throat/head/whole body, heart. (oh I went there... angsty town!)

Best week ever?
 

So, part of my job is maintaining a house which has had 14 people living in it for 10 years. If you ever doubt how much fun this is, let me put it in perspective. Since noon today, I have discovered and more or less addressed:

-a clogged toilet
-a water damaged floor
-a broken oven
-a flaming burner
-a leaking radiator
-a failing boiler
-a broken doorknob
-a collapsing shelf in the tools shed
-a clogged bathroom sink
-a leaking solar powered hot water system

And we ran out of trashbags on cleaning night.


DEAR GOD.

It's funny how everything seems to happen at once, isn't it?

I haven't updated in millenia.

Summaries? Too much to summarize, really. We lost a member in the other house, turns out she had already done too many AmeriCorps programs (one of which my program didn't find out about until a month into the year), so she was ineligible and had to leave. We brought in a new member, one of the girls from last year actually. This caused loads of drama, but seems to be settling down, and is more than anything affecting the other house, not mine.

As can be seen from my list, I'm slowly becoming handier around the house by necessity. I still need a lot of help, but at least I'm getting more creative.

Service is going well. I've got all of November scheduled out for my house, and some interesting things coming up. Building this effing greenhouse is still going to be the death of me.... I managed to lose the only copy of notes left for my by the guy who worked on it last year, so now we're kind of working blindly. AND we have to move the whole thing across the street for absurd reasons.

My personal drama has been resolved (after many more twists and turns) and I am now pretty much the happiest I've been in a long while. The busiest I've been pretty much ever, but content. Thank God, because if I was still in angsty-town, dealing with this house would probably kill me. (which it still might... the members also tell me they smelled gas in the basement yesterday, and we've got some asbestos covered pipes that need to be repaired as well. yeehaw!)

Pre-halloween festivities were fun (Friday party at an alum's house), though on the actual day of, I 'celebrated' by cozy-ing in at a friend's house, watching a bad movie and then a better movie, and handing out halloween candy to trick or treaters. Sounds kind of lame, but was kind of fabulous.

Who wants to know my dumb moment of the week? SO. I didn't go to service with the members today because... yesterday, while doing nothing at all strenuous, unusual, or even interesting, I fell over and hurt my ankle. Lamest thing ever, I was literally just walking, stepped into the tiniest of holes, and BAM. It's ok, not broken and the swelling is pretty much gone, but I just couldn't stand on it all day at outdoor service, so I went in the the office (and subsequently home to deal with the decaying house).

One sad thing.... my favorite partner in crime (aka Christin, my supervisor from last year) is moving from 2 miles down the street to 2 hours away, up on the North Shore. While I am jealous of her kickass job at an Audubon Sanctuary and excited to visit, I also am about to lose my only non-americorps friend within a short drive, just as winter is approaching. Sad news bears.

At least Thanksgiving is soon, and it is going to be a grand old year 10 reunion!!! People flying and driving in from all sorts of crazy places. I can't wait.... I think this might be the most fun, least stressful thanksgiving weekend in recent/total memory!

OOOOOOOK. I'm off to write letters and then check up on whether people did their chores.... and then maybe catch up on some Office? Oh, the exciting life I lead!!!