eejits

trials and tribulations : EasyClosets not easy (for plaster walls)

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Following the glowing recommendation of friends who used EasyClosets systems to maximize the storage space of their San Francisco condo, I ordered shelving to convert our small hall closet into a pantry. We have a larger closet in the family room that we use for coats, and the hall closet is directly across from the (also small) kitchen. My hope is to move the collection of small kitchen appliances out of the dining room and off of the kitchen counters, along with the canning supplies currently in my office and the stocks of rice milk, paper towels and distilled water that are stashed here and there under counters and at the backs of cabinets. I’d like to remove the bookshelf from the dining room entirely, relocating the cookbooks to the nearest shelf around the corner in the living room.

At any rate: EasyClosets. Nowhere on their website does the word ‘plaster’ appear, nor is there any warning statement indicating that the hardware and mounting system — set up to drive the weight of the shelves against the wall and down toward the floor — is suitable only for drywall. Nor does any such warning or distinction appear in the instruction booklet accompanying the materials. Nonetheless, the anchors are readily identifiable as drywall anchors (once you have them in front of you), and the E-Z Toggle website clearly states (when you go searching for clarification), Since plaster has a different composition than drywall, E-Z Ancor® products cannot be used.

So. Here we are with a living room full of particle board, a dining room full of the stuff that we took out of the closet to prep it plus the tools we assembled for the installation, and no pantry. I called EasyClosets and am hoping that the guy who’s ‘done a lot of installations,’ but wasn’t at his desk just then, will call me back with instructions for mounting the shelves into plaster. I’m sure they would rather do that than pay to ship the particle board back to themselves because they don’t make it clear that their system is drywall only. I, of course, would rather have mounted shelves in the closet than not, so a hardware alternative would work for everyone.

Our own research didn’t leave us very hopeful; from what we could tell, the approach for mounting wall units into plaster is nearly completely opposite that of mounting them into drywall. With drywall, you use anchors to distribute the weight across the wall as evenly as possible, and the surface takes the force. With plaster, it seems that you drive as much of the weight into the studs as possible and away from the wall itself. As our closet is adjacent to the original exterior wall, we have only the first stud off the wall to work with, smack in the middle of the space; the closet is not wide enough to span two supports. The other alternative, of course, is to install freestanding shelves that are anchored to the wall for balance only, but I can’t tell you how sick I am of that type of setup. I believe my exact statement on that topic was ‘I want a pantry, not another gosh-darn bookshelf in a closet!’ It was late, I was tired, but the sentiment is the truth (and if you know me I’m sure you can guess that by gosh-darn I mean a whole bunch of other stuff not suitable for prime time).

Hopefully EasyClosets will pull a bunny out of a hat for me and save us from having to have another gosh-darn bookshelf in a closet.

trials and tribulations : EasyClosets not easy (for plaster walls)

patchy DSL

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Last month we started the process of switching our DSL from Verizon to Speakeasy, with the intention of trying Speakeasy’s VOIP service. After a year of being harassed via evening calls by Verizon trying to sell us FIOS — each time being told by their customer service people that ‘it takes a while to get off the list’ and ‘we don’t control the list’ and being promised that I wouldn’t hear from them again — I decided I was done with Verizon. We had Speakeasy DSL for two years in the District and had changed to Verizon when we moved out here because it was less expensive. In terms of DSL service, the Verizon service was comparable to what we’d had from Speakeasy, with only slightly more frequent modem reboots required for line drops.

Since we got our new dedicated line installed we’ve had nothing but difficulty. The line has trouble locking on a signal, it bounces all over creation, it only works consistently in safe mode — with about half the speed we’re paying for — and even then it drops in the evenings and on the weekends. This makes it a little difficult to follow up on all the communications we have in progress with basement repair companies and caterers, to say the least. I certainly have no intention of transferring my phone to a completely unreliable service.

For the most part Speakeasy has been responsive. They’ve taken our calls and tested our line many many times; I think we currently have five or six open service tickets for various aspects of the problem. They have agreed that our line is not yet installed. They just haven’t fixed it yet. Granted, they are limited by our schedule (going out of town for a week stalled the process) and the schedules of the people who maintain the physical systems and have not been available to swap out circuit cards and the like on weekends. Still, it’s been a month and we’ve had only craptastic to nonexistent DSL service with no end in sight. If I weren’t switching from Verizon because I believe the company to be the spawn of satan, I’d be entirely inclined to stick with what I had.

I’m sure all this is just a fluke of a series of poor mechanical connections and I’m hopeful that the service techs will be able to locate and fix the problems this week. In the meantime, I’ll continue to do a lot of things around the house that are generally neglected for lack of time and conduct my business by phone (which is my least favorite way to communicate after spending six years in a long-distance relationship). We do what we must.

patchy DSL

turning the suburbs into a salt wasteland

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Road salt heading to the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the things I hate the most about living out here is the way they deal with winter weather. Or rather, the ways in which they don’t deal with it. During the first year we were here, there was a blizzard. A good old-fashioned three-feet-of-snow-shuts-the-city-down-for-a-week kind of blizzard, of the type that also shut down the east coast in February of 1996. Not surprisingly, DC didn’t have enough salt or sand or plows or trucks or workers to clear the streets in the days after the blizzard. I say not surprisingly not because DC government is a bunch of backwards eejits, but because no government could have had enough salt or sand or plows or trucks or workers to deal with this level of snow. I say this having lived in Pennsylvania during the blizzard of 1996 and having grown up in places where at least once per year two or three feet of snow can be expected; when these things happen, it takes a while to clear the roads. Period.

However, local residents’ expectations did not align with this reality, and so there was a lot of protesting and blaming and complaining and accusing following this blizzard, the result of which was overcompensation with regard to all future winter weather. In some ways, the overcompensation was amusing: schools were closed in anticipation of an inch of snow, snow which sometimes never materialized. As I was teaching at the time, I enjoyed frequent days off. The other way in which people in the area overcompensate, though, remains completely mind-boggling to me, and that is the coating of the roads and sidewalks with salt. Salt which is rarely needed at all, let alone to the degree it’s applied, and which therefore mostly ends up in the local soil and water system.

I can’t remember ever using salt on sidewalks except during an actual ice storm. Where I come from, we use a shovel and the sun: shovel the snow, let the sun do the rest. In the rare instances where patches of ice develop we either (1) walk around them or (2) use the shovel to break them up and clear them from the sidewalk. Out here, people either don’t shovel their walks at all or shovel them and then cover the damp surfaces with a layer of salt. Sometimes, as in the photo above, the surfaces are completely coated with salt in anticipation of the possibility of snow or freezing rain that never materializes. As a walker, this means I’m walking in the grass throughout most of the winter to avoid having my shoes deteriorate through constant exposure to chunks of salt. Which is annoying, but not nearly so annoying as seeing buckets of salt heaped at the side of the road and dripping into the storm drains, drains which flow to the Chesapeake Bay.

I took the above photo a month ago, on January 22nd, at the end of the day on which the salt was applied. Much of the pile of salt is still there, six weeks later. I suppose I could be glad that it’s still there, rather than all in the water system; mostly, though, it just makes me angry. I shudder to think what the water in our local creek must be like, and try to remember to fill the birdbath with fresh water each day. I know that other locals are concerned about the chemical runoff into the water system, including members of the Town Council. So I try not to let it get to me and focus on maintaining my little chemical-free soil haven for the local grubs and insects, which in turn feed the local moles and birds, which in turn feed the local hawks, possums, raccoons, and foxes.

turning the suburbs into a salt wasteland

Republican presidential candidates debate

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Uh, Mitt? I’m legally required to carry my green card with me in order to be able to produce it upon the request of an officer of the law. But, you’re saying, it’s ‘un-American’ for an officer to request it? Take some responsibility for your own house, dude.

Since when does any reasonable person think that Canada has any desire to become part of a North American amoeba with this country? Oh, right. Nevermind.

As a sociologist, the inability of these people to differentiate between economic systems and state structures is mind boggling. Of course, as any political sociologist will tell you, they’re interrelated in complicated and interesting ways.

Aw, Anderson, why didn’t you hit Ron with the question-dodging hammer?

I’m getting the impression that Mitt didn’t do so well in math when he was in school. I hope he has a secret skill at reciting Blake or some such thing to balance it out.

Thank you, Fred, for pointing out that entitlements are in fact such a rinky dink part of the federal budget that cutting them doesn’t begin to address the problem. Oh wait, that’s not exactly what you’re saying. But it’s the truth.

Three programs? Oil subsidies, illegal wars, and corporate welfare. I could get behind DHS, but OMGLOLZ the IRS! Tee hee.

John, John, John. I kind of used to like you when you were the new Bush alternative. It’s true, Ron, that John doesn’t understand that difference, but it’s also true that you are an isolationist. Sorry. It’s true.

Booyah corn subsidies! My new favorite questioner. Mitt, I’m sorry, but I spent my early life surrounded by fields of inedible corn destined for industrial uses, and I can tell you this: corn subsidies are not about food security.

Anderson! Do your thing.

Let’s reiterate: it’s against the law to employ people who cannot prove their legal ability to work in this country. It is, in fact, the legal responsibility of the employer to determine eligibility before hiring. Period. So, be realistic, yo!

As a person who’s had a handgun pointed at my head–in a college dorm, by an ROTC member–and lost two friends to self-inflicted gun wounds, I lack the ability to take the pulse of this issue. I’ll always be in the no-guns-ever camp, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.

Oh no you didn’t, Mitt. You did not just bring Bill Cosby into your madness.

Number one priority. Huh.

Anderson! Bring them back to the Jesus question.

I can’t think of anything more clear than thou shalt not kill, but somehow the minister manages to be all for the death penalty one minute and all about the literal interpretation of the bible the next? My brain is starting to hurt.

Rudy. Are you trying to be ironic? You’re a smart guy. Surely you understand that reduced snowfall has to do with global warming, which you have likely contributed to by your energy policies.

John. Please stop making me fall off my chair with the giggles. Please stop saying the words ‘winning’ or ‘surge’ or any such, m’kay? Thanks.

Convenient not to mention the people we killed with sanctions leading to lack of food and medicines in various countries.

Mitt. Gah. I am trying to keep this blog PG, but holy mother of the baby Jesus you are making it hard for me.

John! The former John rears his dragon head! You go, my old friend.

But then…John. How can you be so inconsistent? How can you say things that are so clearly reasonable and moral one minute and things that make it sound like you’re mainlining illegal narcotics the next? How can I admire you in these circumstances? You pain me.

Whoa. What did I miss? Did one of these old white dudes just name-drop Reagan like it was going to help them? Yowzah.

Speaking of name-dropping, can I get a ‘go Cheney yourself!’

Do not lie about soldiers to your own ends, people. The majority of enlisted men and women are working class, and not idealogues.

If the middle of an active war is not the time for more soldiers, when is? This is not meant to be a critique of the public, but rather of the candidates. Still, I cannot help but wonder what kind of Republican boos a 42-year Army veteran and thinks to retain any kind of moral or ethical stance? Feh.

Billions of dollars on foreign invasions, dude, not space travel, make for a big deficit. Just tell the truth.

If by ‘moving people off welfare’ you mean ‘busting public service unions and replacing them with low wage workers,’ you did a great job, Rudy!

Time to go watch network TV and leave these guys to their fans.

Republican presidential candidates debate

the ice storm goeth

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We must have been perfectly prepared for the storm: in line with Murphy’s Law, we didn’t even get any actual ice. Snow, sleet, freezing rain, slush, some wind. That’s it.

Nothing like what we remembered from Indiana 17 years ago. Which was, you know, good. I’m sure my foresight will be duly rewarded on some other occasion, hopefully one that doesn’t threaten life or limb.

the ice storm goeth