Media & Culture 343 | ***Dave Does the Blog

So a man walks into a ceiling fan …

Ouch. It seems we always do Big Home Improvement Projects when the in-laws come to visit. So when my folks came this time, I thought, hey, why not a home…

Ouch.

It seems we always do Big Home Improvement Projects when the in-laws come to visit. So when my folks came this time, I thought, hey, why not a home improvement project (of at least moderate size) for them.

Aha. The ceiling fan.

We’ve been wanting to put a fan up in the breakfast room for some time. We don’t have a/c in the house — most folks in Denver don’t, and there aren’t more than a few dozen days per year when you really wish you had some. Well, maybe more if you’re working from home.

So, now that summer is waning and we’re finally getting a few brisk (to coin a phrase) evenings, it’s time to put up a ceiling fan.

We’ve had the fan, and a between-the-joists bracket — for three or four months. Time to put it up.

And to learn, once again, why I don’t tackle these projects on my own.

Turn off the power, first.

Go up and pull off the existing, chintzy ceiling fixture.

Hmmm. Odd. I expected this to be a simple electrical box nailed to an adjoining joist. Well, there’s a joist, next to it, but no connector. Just some screws at the top.

Wait. Not screws. Rivets. Odd.

Call Jim, my Father-In-Law Master of Things Home Improvementish. He thinks its already mounted on some sort of bracket between the joists. Cool.

Assemble the fan. Big fan. Assembles easily, though.

Getting ready to mount it. Hmmmm, what’s this next step?

Remote control. Yes, this ceiling fan has a remote control. And that’s good, since we only have a single power line coming up here (otherwise we could have separate switches for light and fan). And the way that works … is with a modules the size of a garage door opener, with wires for the incoming power, then wires for the fan and light, and a little antennae for the remote control.

Y’see, this is really sort of a hybrid unit. It’s a ceiling fan with the wiring a ceiling fan would be. And it’s a remote control kit for a ceiling fan.

One problem. No way that little module is going to fit in the electrical box on the ceiling.

Okay, not a big problem. I can pry open some ceiling drywall next to the electrical box, make a slot for the remote unit to fit in, and still run the wires back through (I hope) to the box. Problem solved.

Cut, cut, cut. Be careful not to make anything that will be visible around the ceiling fan’s decorative bell around the electrical box.

Hmmmmm. That’s interesting. I can see up now past the electical box …

… and it’s simply has a hanger riveted to the top of it, that hanger in turn nailed to the joist. Seriously NFG to support a ceiling fan.

Damn.

Okay, drop back and punt. We’ll pull out the old electrical box, by brute force, then use the bracket-between-joists doodad up there, hang the enclosed electical box, all’s right with the world.

(What the hell is this old box made of? Some sort of bakelite, or quasi-ceramic material Weird.)

Okay. Slide the bracket-between-joists doodad up through the hole. This thing’s cool. It has a spiked bracket at each end to dig into the joist, and you turn the shaft in-between to extend it out. It starts out just short of 16″ — the usual distance for joists — and extends out to 24.

Unfortunately …

… the distance to the next joist is 11″.

Off to Home Depot to return that guy, see if there’s a different, shorter one. Alternative is to tear out more drywall, bracket/hang a 2×4 between the joists, and go from there. Or so suggests Jim, after another phoned consult.

A very, very helpful fellow at HD speculates that the bracket things — they have them there — could be cut down with a hacksaw. Duh. Buy a hacksaw for $5, come home, cut it off, lookin’ good …

…. And it’s time to go off and start off our new Star Wars campaign. Tale to be continued ….

Make Mine Molly

I love Molly Ivins. In a “I like to read what she writes” sort of way, not in any way that Margie needs to worry about. She’s witty, she’s clever,…

I love Molly Ivins. In a “I like to read what she writes” sort of way, not in any way that Margie needs to worry about. She’s witty, she’s clever, she’s incisive, and she’s not afraid to poke fun at anyone in the political spectrum — though most of her barbs tend to be aimed toward the right, which is just fine by me.

Yahoo! and Intellivu both carry her columns, but the home is at Creators Syndicate. You can find her current column at that site. A recent one (the most recent, at this writing) is “The Fatal Weakness of Libertarian Thinking”, a fine example of her wit and insight.

She wrote an entertaining biography of Dubya prior to the election, Shrub. I enjoyed it. Margie enjoyed it. My folks (staunch conservatives) enjoyed it. And we all probably had nightmares about it.

‘Tis the Season

No, not that season. For various reasons (Alpha class schedule, other stuff) Margie and I were serious slackers when it came to watching Buffy and Angel this past season. Lucky…

No, not that season.

For various reasons (Alpha class schedule, other stuff) Margie and I were serious slackers when it came to watching Buffy and Angel this past season.

Lucky for us, Doyce is as compulsive about taping them as I was about B5. And he has been noodging us to catch up. And more than noodging — making extraordinary efforts.

So this weekend, between basement cleaning and tree planting, we watched at least four or five Buffy eps, and two Angels. And FFed through a few more of each. I worry if we’ll be able to catch up, but it’s worth doing.

And, in return, I finally got around to loaning Doyce Season 3 of B5, and will be taping the Farscape stripping that SciFi is doing (though not this week, since it’s all on the tapes I already bought and loaned).

Media ‘R’ Us.

Listen, rinse, repeat

I have odd music-listening habits. When I start listening to something I enjoy, I listen to it again. And again. And again. Over, and over, and over again. Sometimes a…

I have odd music-listening habits.

When I start listening to something I enjoy, I listen to it again. And again. And again. Over, and over, and over again. Sometimes a single track, played on Repeat, the entire trip to and/or from the office.

Margie is very indulgent of me in this. It has to be pretty annoying. I think she chalks it up to one of my charming eccentricities, and a relatively harmless (if noisy) one.

For the last three or four months, it’s been John Barry‘s soundtrack to The Living Daylights. Barry is the king of James Bond movie soundtracks, and is noteworthy for them as well as for other such trivial soundtracks as Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, The Lion in Winter, Born Free, Midnight Cowboy, Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Somewhere in Time, Howard the Duck (!), and many others. Once you know his style, it’s unmistakable, a lush, lyrical melange of violins, brass, and contrapuntal rhythm. (Indeed, if you are not aware of him as an artist, consider the above tunes plus most of the Bond soundtracks. You’ll probably recognize the commonality right there and then.)

When we had to provide music for our wedding video, we (well, I, but Margie agreed) selected his Moviola theme for the finale. Sweepingly romantic, strongly melodic … I can’t say enough about his work. Incredibly neat stuff. If I had to have someone composing the soundtrack for my life, it would be him.

Anyway, The Living Daylights soundtrack has some really fun, driving themes to it, including tunes done by The Pretenders and A-ha. Leaving out the soppy romantic tracks (which Barry also does extremely well, but which isn’t nearly as much fun cranked up on high as you go driving down the freeway), it’s rollicking good fun.

Has anyone ever noticed …

Has anyone ever noticed the similarity between Farscape’s Stark and The A-Team’s Howlin’ Mad Murdoch? They even look a little alike….

Has anyone ever noticed the similarity between Farscape‘s Stark and The A-Team‘s Howlin’ Mad Murdoch? They even look a little alike.

Templates

I’ve been tweaking my blogger template (if that wasn’t already obvious). Which meant I had to dig back into the old brain pan for my HTML knowledge, sadly atrophied with…

I’ve been tweaking my blogger template (if that wasn’t already obvious). Which meant I had to dig back into the old brain pan for my HTML knowledge, sadly atrophied with such tools as FrontPage, since that’s what the blogger template stuff requires. A fun exercise.

Watching Farscape this evening. Over the last year, it’s been about the only “Gotta watch it, go out of my way to watch it, or tape it, or whatever, gotta watch it” show on my schedule. (We’ve been reeeeealy negligent of Buffy/Angel this year, despite Doyce’ best efforts.)

Well, starting next week (maybe late week, maybe even next week), the ante gets upped, since SciFi is now stripping the earlier seasons of Farscape M-F. Which means (a) Margie and I need to watch them at 6 p.m. every weeknight, and (b) we need to tape them, so Doyce, who doesn’t get SciFi [cosmic balance for my not being able to get DSL, perhaps], can watch it.

On the bright side, I don’t have to buy any more Farscape tapes via Best.com.

Potpourri

An odd and interesting morning. I’m off today, since my company does a 4-9s-and-a-4 schedule, which on holiday weekends translates into 4-9s-and-an-8 the week before, and 4-9s the week of,…

An odd and interesting morning. I’m off today, since my company does a 4-9s-and-a-4 schedule, which on holiday weekends translates into 4-9s-and-an-8 the week before, and 4-9s the week of, which means 4-day weekends. And that’s enough numbers. Suffice it to say that it was nice not working today.

Margie went in, though, so I’m Mr. Mom this morning. Which isn’t bad. Aside from occasionally becoming clingy, Katherine’s a good Squiggy.

Got to work on my web page (which is progressing nicely, save my inability to FTP the damned thing up to my web site. I don’t know if that’s a DollarHost problem, or a too-many-hops problem between my notebook and them. Irritating.).

[Oops. Had to read to Katherine, change Katherine, and put her down for a nap.]

In the meantime, watching Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, and (on AMC), Ft. Apache. The second Indy outing is only watchable as an Indy movie. John Ford’s western is good stuff, though, with Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and black-and-white glory.

1993

Amazon.com. Babylon 5. DVD. Pre-order. Today. The first DVD has both the pilot episode, The Gathering, and the TV movie In the Beginning, offered for only $15. Could that mean…

Amazon.com.
Babylon 5.
DVD.
Pre-order.
Today.

The first DVD has both the pilot episode, The Gathering, and the TV movie In the Beginning, offered for only $15. Could that mean that, when we get to the eps, we’ll actually get 3 or 4 eps per disk? That might make it worth it.

Btw, The Gathering shows as having a production date of 1993. Ye gods. A lifetime ago, almost literally for me. I mean, in 1993 I was doing Oracle DBA work in Pasadena, living in a condo in Phillips Ranch, CA, and married (rockily) to Cheryl. Now I’m an IT Manager in Denver, living in a house, with Margie my wife and Katherine my baby.

Wow.

Still a few constants. Mist, for one, who turns 10 this week. Comic books. My employer (if not my position).

Wow.

What I’ll regret if I replace my home-taped tapes with DVDs is (believe it or not) watching, via news blurbs, the progress of the whole OJ Simpson murder, trial, aftermath. Weird.

Down the Mysterly River

Down the Mysterly River A new book by Bill Willingham, best known (to me at least) as the comic book writer (and sometime-artist) of Elementals, Pantheon, and the, ah, mature…

Down the Mysterly River

A new book by Bill Willingham, best known (to me at least) as the comic book writer (and sometime-artist) of Elementals, Pantheon, and the, ah, mature title Ironwood. This is a juvenile story, a fairy tale adventure — but something adults can sink their teeth into as well. Really fun, oddly disturbing, well-recommended. I read it on the plane to/from this most recent business trip. It read quickly, but well. I plan on rereading it again.

StormWatch – Final Orbit

StormWatch – Final Orbit Wednesdays are comic book days at the local Mile High Comics (or, rather, the MHC that is between my office and my house). This week’s highlight…

StormWatch – Final Orbit

Wednesdays are comic book days at the local Mile High Comics (or, rather, the MHC that is between my office and my house). This week’s highlight is referenced at the link above — the “missing chapter” between Warren Ellis’ _StormWatch_ series and his _Authority_. A bit of a mishmosh, but unique in cross-over history in its impact on the Wildstorm universe, and some good bits to boot.

Off on business again

Off on business. Stayed at the beeyooteefull Marriott Courtyard Old Towne Pasadena last night. Decent enough place, clean sheets, fair-to-middlin cable, good (if pricy) breakfast, convenient location (if irritating parking)….

However, their broadband access sucks. I’ve been staying there on and off for a year now (about the life of the hotel). Over the last two months, I’d say the broadband connection works about half the time. Can’t even get link on it. And since it’s with the same notebook and configuration, I don’t think that’s to blame.

So. Annoying.

Gave me the opportunity to watch The Mummy Returns, though, which has been on my list for a while. Glad I didn’t run out and pre-order the DVD. Oh, mind you, it was a decent enough action flick, with the requisite humor, horror, sfx, etc. It just felt like a pale copy of the original. The original was much better than I expected — this one was what I had expected from the original. Not much I can put my finger on — it just felt tired, bereft of ideas, bereft of the killer soundtrack of the original, thrown together in a conference. In fact, I’m probably being harsher on it than I should, because I really enjoyed the original.

Off home tonight, returning around midnight. I had been hoping to sleep in in the morning, go into the office late, but I have a conference call at 8, and miles to go, etc., etc.

Ah, well. Four day weekend coming up.

D&D Widower

So it’s funny. I’m a D&D Widower tonight. She’s over at Doyce’s, doing D&D, while I stay at home and take care of the baby. It’s … weird. Of course,…

So it’s funny. I’m a D&D Widower tonight. She’s over at Doyce’s, doing D&D, while I stay at home and take care of the baby. It’s … weird.

Of course, I’ve done the same thing in reverse. Though not much. And I’ll be doing Star Wars RPG without her. And we’ll still be gaming together. And I’ll be running my own game Real Soon Now Again.

Still, it’s weird. Kinda fun, though.