The not-quite finished patio in our yard. Still need to level the bricks and even up the wood framing the edges. Much to my dismay, the bricks did not fit evenly between the planter beds, so I’m going to have to get a sledgehammer and nudge them closer to the bricks so the patio has an even edge.

This was a very rough layout of the bricks, and you can see there are gaps between them, starting in the center and especially in the upper right portion of the photo.

I will gradually even them out, and hopefully they will settle evenly too.

Previous stages

I was at Rite Aid on Rainier the other day, and saw a Hummer 2 parked in a handicapped parking spot, with no rearview-mirror hanger or license plate indicating that the driver of the vehicle was, indeed, handicapped. Jerk, I thought. I recall seeing a similar scene in a photo in a blog post on Metafilter or somewhere a few months ago, with people debating whether it was photoshopped.

I took a phonecam pic, but was in a hurry and didn’t save it properly. However, the next day, when we were in Spokane for a convention, I saw another one (this time, only overlapped rather than fully parked in the handicapped space):

Not only do you have an obnoxiously big car, but you have to park it overlapping a space reserved for people with disabilities?

Other Hummer 2’s parked in handicapped parking spaces:

• Here
• Here
• A whole Flickr group devoted to people flipping the bird to Hummers

And then there’s this guy, a physics genius who blew up $5 million worth of Hummers in California and is serving an 8-year sentence.

Oh, Hummers. What have you done to us?

When we moved into our house, we attempted to, er, make some improvements in the garage, which has washer/dryer hookups. The washer and dryer work, as local friends know, but the rest of the project remains incomplete, and will likely be either torn out or finished by a professional when we have the time and money.

On Wednesday of last week, we went with our friends (if you know them, you know to whom I’m referring) to inspect a house on which they’d made an offer. The home inspector was very thorough and professional, which heightened the funny factor considerably when things started to go badly. Very badly. Yurodivuie says:

Julie, our inspector, summoned us to the crawlspace. I crouched and shuffled forward under the porch to the 3×3 door in the side of the house. Almost immediately she pointed to one of the walls and said something about a “extreme” and “structural engineer”.

It was a crack in the wall almost an inch wide.

Backing up a bit: the house is at the base of a small hill, but is also just above a precipitous descent of about 8 feet to the adjacent lot. As I looked at that crack (and the sister crack on the opposite side of the house), I realized that the whole house was slowly cracking in half, with one half drooping toward the neighbor’s yard. This explained the sloping floors inside. It was clearly obvious that the house was shifting. Down.

A moment later she pulled back a tarp and said, “Oh… oh Jesus. Wait, I’m not supposed to say that. I’m not supposed to scare the client.”

In the end, the litany of sins against this house which elicited (nay, required) an invocation of the mercy of Christ included: extreme cracks in the foundation, as well as significant undermining, a tear off roof, heating available in only 1 room, aluminum wiring, amateur plumbing, a deck that was on it’s way to falling off the side of the building (as well as signs of many many rats).

It didn’t matter. I knew of only two things that could utterly destroy a house, that could end any thought of occupying said location: termites and a damaged foundation. As soon as I saw that crack, I knew that we would be withdrawing the offer.

Fortunately, they’ve found a newer, better house to buy, and we have all learned a valuable lesson: never, ever hack your house in any way that is supposed to require a professional.

This hit home for me when I noticed Julie using the word “amateur” as she pointed out various hack-jobs that had been done on the disaster-house.

If you’d like to see some amazing home “improvement” projects noticed by home inspectors, check out the following galleries from This Old House: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Just saw this on BBC news - looks like they’re a day late for Blog Like It’s the End of the World day.

Check Technorati for more post-apocalyptic goodness.
(Update: If you’re seeing this in a reader multiple times, I’m sorry. Curse me for not previewing!)

Adam at TerraBlog continues to crank out gems for the environmentally conscious. For the urban dweller who can take mass transit to work, he suggests, rather simply, carrying a book at all times, effectively dropping your commute time to zero:

But if you’ve got a good book, you’re never waiting. You’re reading. While this might seem an obvious point, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. As a frequent subway rider, I can say from experience that a good book will almost magically shrink your commute time to zero. It is not at all uncommon for me to be disappointed when I finally reach my destination, because it means pulling my nose out of my reading.

Perhaps you prefer other diversions. Maybe you’re a crossword puzzler or a sudoku fan. I’m a bit suspicious of these activities, actually. However enjoyable you find them, they seem like time-fillers. They may make your wait more bearable, in much the way that radio makes your drive more bearable, but you’re still killing time. A good book offers just a whole different kind of enjoyment. But others may disagree.

This points up one of the larger problems with the supposed convenience of driving. Driving does move you around more quickly, but time spent in the car is guaranteed dead time (unless you’re on your phone, which you shouldn’t be). By using a book to eliminate the dead time from public transport, you shift the convenience equation considerably.

You can read or subscribe (RSS) to the TerraBlog to get stuff like this directly from the source.

I personally have been listening to audiobooks and podcasts on the bus lately, which is a little easier since I’m carrying my coffee and a bagel when I wait for the bus. Once I sit down on the bus, I can’t have the bagel out, so it’s pretty easy to pull out a book, but fumbling for bus fare while holding a book and coffee is a bit of a pain.

However, this is prime reading time, so I think I will try to start reading more on the bus.

Seattle humorist Matthew Baldwin has written an excellent piece for Flak Magazine on starting a game night. His recommendations ring true for creating a welcoming, low-key event that people want to come back to. Joe Myers, take note!

I’m planning to shut down EmergentNo.com. Any objections? I’m shutting down my servers (this site has already been migrated to MediaTemple) and don’t really feel like keeping E-No.

Any objections? Bob?