biggerboat's building boondoggle blog

I worked up a cover finally. I found it's harder than I thought to make artificial "intelligence" understand a damn thing. But I got it.

I would not have guessed you'd go that direction. Interested to see more.

I don't see any hot chicks in party dresses. Are we looking for newsrack sales?

i like that quite a lot bb...well done

Maybe I should bring Fabio back.

Thanks. It got a lukewarm response from my wife. I'm not sure she got it, not that it is entirely straightforward what I am going for. My sister said she liked it but I think she's just saying that.

It couldn't hurt. Ask your wife. That's what she's here for.

Our next door neighbors did an flood barrier experiment. They got some removable caulk (didn't know there was a thing) and caulked their front door. Then they taped it. The put flex tape on one side and some other sort of sealing tape on the other side. Then he ran his hose on it for about 15 minutes. Not a drop came in.

Of course, this isn't the same as 18 inches of standing water, but it was a reasonable test.

I'm most concerned with the garage, though. Still waiting on the barriers we bought for it.

I got through the preliminary screening. They sent me a bunch of forms to fill out. Got that done and will be sending them as soon as I get a witness signature.

Can I get a witness!?!?!

Send me the documents, I'll sign 'em.

Hehe thanks. My wife is not officially a co owner so she signed it.

We got our flood barrier intalled. Looks pretty sturdy.

so is that a fat neoprene gasket at the bottom?
curious what your wall assembly is - wood or concrete? is that real plaster or EIFS (the coated foam insulation stuff).

Yeah, thats a gasket.

The house is cinder block. All houses around here are. Covered with stucco.

All my forms were approved. That doesn't mean the request is approved. Just that I filled them out correctly.

i assume there will be some amount of seepage but most of the tide will be stemmed, hope you never have to use it
good in this case to have walls of non-organic material, you should coat the outside with swimming pool material
are other doors off the ground or you have a simiular approach to them?

The plan is to caulk everything that looks like it might leak, then tape over the caulk with flex tape or something similar. The front door is probably the second leakiest behind the garage door, but we think we can seal that pretty well.

This all might be overkill, maybe not. We figure we have to keep water out for about five hours as the storm passes. That's about how long the water was up last time. And, we don't need to keep all of the water out. That would be impossible anyway. We just need to limit it. We'll be buying some water absorption "pigs" as well. I feel pretty good about it as long as the storm surge isn't ridiculous like 12' or more.

Got some great news, but I'm a little nervous about it.

My wife got a new job (in two weeks). She's currently an occupational therapist that does home visits. She HATES it. She's been doing it for almost 40 years now and it's really not a great job to begin with. She hasn't had any sort of raise as long as I've known her (8 years). The hours suck. For a normal day's work she comes home and has to spend an additional four hours doing paperwork. Plus, she goes into some pretty bad places and most of her patients don't even want her there.

But, last year she did some work for a guy that started his own company. They really hit it off. His business is going bonkers and he wants her to be his second right hand woman. He has another woman working for him, that my wife knows and really likes. The pay will be much better and no more working late.

The good part is she can work from home.

But, yikes for me. I REALLY enjoy having alone time. I'm really conflicted. This is a fantastic opportunity for her, and it will help us out financially as well. I'm really happy for her. But I know I'm losing any "me" time that I have. I knew this day would come. I feel bad that I'm not feeling overjoyed about the whole thing.

It'll work itself out I guess.

On another note, I started another book.

I'm waiting on my sister and wife to finish my first one, then I'll polish it off.

But, I've had this story in my mind for years. I think it would make for a good movie script but someone not too long ago asked "who reads those?" I thought about that, then I thought I would just try to make it a novel.

My first book is somewhat personal. This one is a mindless crime novel.

The neighborhood is changing fairly rapidly. I take walks down one street near me about twice a week. I counted 10 empty lots from recently bulldozed homes and another six new construction homes.

We are seeing, just from our normal driving routes, about a house every week getting bulldozed. Lots more to come I think since there are quite a few empty houses around.

Crazy.

Sounds like it might be time to start getting more use out of that boat of yours.

First, congratulations to Mrs. Boat! Always good to get away from a bad situation; working with people you enjoy and getting paid more is a great bonus.

In addition to what mark wrote, the card rooms and bars are probably open.

so much this

Thanks!

I went for a walk down a street near us. It's maybe a 3/4 quarter mile long. I counted 10 newly bulldozed empty lots, 5 new construction homes, 6 for sale signs, 2 demo signs of homes that will be torn down soon, and maybe 10 or so houses that don't seem to be occupied.

This occurred to me for no good reason. The times I've spent in your area, it seems there's quite a few homeless people.

Do you see any evidence of squatting in these apparently abandoned houses?

Nah. I haven't heard about this. Most of the homeless congregate downtown and we're pretty far away.