Monthly Archives: January 2010

The Hulett Plumbing Disaster Part II

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I dutifully followed Plumber B into the bathroom expecting Plumber A to inform me that they just broken everything and I would need to pay $20 gazillion dollars to put it all back together.  I was working to brace myself for this particular scenario which did nothing to prepare me for the reality of the situation which confronted me.  Something had very forcefully exploded in my bathroom.  Something wet, something very dirty, something very much resembling a dead, wet raccoon.  The walls, floors, door, fixtures, shower curtain and even the plumbers were all splattered in a thin muddy black stuff and layered with a fibrous material which was in varying states of chop, mince, and puree.  The dead raccoon-like monstrosity was dangling precariously from the end of the epic auger machine, dripping more thin, muddy black stuff on the floor.

It turns out that the raccoon was actually a rather amazing cluster of roots which was astounding.  In November they had pulled out a small wad of roots which had seemed reasonable and everything went back to normal.  Since that time what was left in the pipe had most likely been cut loose in November and had come together, Megazord style, to create a bigger and badder beast than before.  Even more amazingly, despite the sheer volume of material which had been brought up, my sewer line was still completely blocked.  Still.  Plumber B seemed to be convinced that we were on the final stretch, just another run of his magical machine and we would surely get it all fixed. Huzzah!

I went back to watching Netflix as the noises started back up and I took a deep breath, relieved to think that I would most likely be back in business shortly.  I could go back to normalcy and all would be well.  About 30 minutes later, I began to wonder why I hadn’t been drinking more as the noises changed and the machine stopped and Plumber A started making frantic sounds and Plumber B ran out to their truck for tools.  I ventured in to the bathroom to see them trying to put their mighty auger machine back together.  Their nearly brand-new mighty auger machine was no match for my home and I was informed that my entire sewer line was most likely completely gone.  But, if they could get their machine repaired and get the 80 feet of auger out of my sewer line they would try one more time with a different size blade.

Wait… what?  I need to replace my entire sewer line?!

What little amount of my soul which was left at this point was beginning to wither and die.  They eventually got the auger repaired and retracted after much huffing and puffing and muttered curses and started to run it one last time.  It promptly bypassed my sewer and shot straight up the vent line and come out on top of my house.  Plumber B, was starting to crack around the edges.  He was a really nice guy but I could tell this was uncharted territory for him and he was starting to get edgy.  After they managed to get the whole damn thing reeled back in I was brought into the bathroom for the results.

“Um, I hate to say this, but you are probably going to want to call the city or something tomorrow.  Or, ya know, you could call another company with a bigger auger,” Plumber A said while staring at his hands, wiping them in a nervous and exhausted manner.  ”We would run the camera down there, but ya can’t really see anything if the line is full.  From what I can tell, it looks like that whole thing is gone.  If ya can get it cleared or they can scope it, let me know what they quote ya to replace the line and I’ll beat their quote.  A lot of guys’ll try and charge too much.”

My sewer was dead and the plumbers I had called out to my house weren’t able to fix it, or even kind of jury-rig it so I could take a sponge bath.  What’s more, they were certain I needed to replace it all and I got the impression that I was screwed until that happened.  I thanked them for their time and saw them out as the desperation started to settle in.

My friend had to go home as he had work in the morning and I was then left to my own devices.  My bathroom looked like the gates of hell had opened up and sprayed the remains of the most ancient rotting souls onto every conceivable surface, I could still see water sitting in the sewer line where my toilet was usually perched and I felt dead and empty on the inside.  In the quiet, the fetid smell of wet iron and decay started to hit me and I wanted to just go far away from my home and never return.  For a week I had been taking showers with just a couple gallons of water as the drain was slow.  That morning I hadn’t been able to shower at all before work and I wasn’t sure I could do it again.  At this point, I couldn’t even relieve myself in my own house.

I didn’t even have enough energy to cry at that point, though I really wanted to, so I started on the hunt for another plumber.  I called Roto Rooter, who had been recommended by the original plumbers and they said they would dispatch someone to my home within two hours.  I curled up on the couch and just sort of sat there in numb silence, my head buzzing with the numbers and terrifying idea that I need to replace my sewer line.  I would be ruined.  I was facing a financial hurdle, which I had researched as a worst-case scenario, that I wasn’t sure I could get over.

To be continued…

Amen and Aaamen

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Stop what you are doing right now and read this. Immediately. Then read it again. Dooce tweeted this article by Mark Morford saying “Reading this was like a thousand cathartic kicking in of the doors.” and I heartily agree.

Why are you so terribly disappointing?.

Have you seen how many things there to be disappointed about these days? Love. Sex. Marriage. Stock market. God. Gas mileage. Death. Air travel. 5/9ths of the Supreme Court. It’s all just a big goddamn letdown. The list is endless. And getting endlesser…

But we don’t stop there. Not only are we disappointed, we need to express it. Vent it. Hiss it and spit it and hurl it like fistfuls of mental manure at the great wall of hey, screw you.

The iPadcolypse

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The Apple iPad is an amazing product no matter what the detractors say. The iPad fits a rather broad market segment which encompasses people who find a full laptop overkill for their needs, who have been looking into netbooks but haven’t been able to be fully convinced for any number of reasons, and/or the people who have been looking at eBooks but haven’t been 100% thrilled with those either.

I’m in love with the iPad. It rather neatly resolves the dillema I’ve documented in the past regarding my computing needs. I have always disliked the idea having more than one computer. I like elegant gadget solutions as I can’t afford to buy different devices frequently and I’m amazingly OCD so I don’t like overcomplicating things. I’ll be saving a huge amount of money getting an iMac and iPad instead of an iMac and MacBook Pro.

The vitriol about what the iPad isn’t has been unending and I think the haters are all just missing the bigger picture. iPad is great, people who don’t like it aren’t required to like it. The people who weren’t planning on buying one anyway need to shut the hell up already, obviously it wasn’t made for them. I had a huge post coming together about this and even I began to get bored with it so I will let far more eloquent and geeky people say it all for me.

TUAW’s amazing Erica Sadun, writer/developer/geek extrordinaire, wrote In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view. Jon Armstrong over at Blurbomat.com made an excellent case for Casual Computing and very clearly explains Who’s Gonna Buy That?

We are not apologists. (I’ve been clear in criticizing Apple in the past and just recently discontinued my subscription to MobileMe.) We are lovers of technology, geeks, who can see a device for what it is and it’s amazing potential as it has been realized.

P.S. Flash is the devil, HTML5 will save us from Adobe’s ever-bloating evil. I’m willing to wait for more widespread adoption.

P.P.S. The Hulett Plumbing Disaster Part II coming tomorrow!!!

OMG Hype!

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Do you remember when the first iPod launched? Do you remember where you were or what you were doing? I do. I was in high school back then, working my dream job at the local library. I was cleaning and while tidying up the Wall Street Journal I first saw the iPod, rendered in the classic hand-illustrated style of the WSJ on the front page. I was captivated by it’s simplicity, having been looking at other products from Creative, Rio, and Iomega. (Anyone remember Clik! disks?)

The stats for this new iPod were staggering. It had a four gigabyte hard drive, could run for hours between charges, charged and synced data with one simple FireWire cable, and most amazingly you could transfer an entire album to it in 30 seconds. 30 SECONDS!!! Surely this was evidence that we were living in the future. I couldn’t believe what I was reading because it was just all too amazing.

I also remember feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness. It’s original price point of $399 seemed to be far to high for mass adoption rates. It only would work with Macs which I saw as a major shortcoming, though I was an amazing fanboy even then, as that also would immediately disqualify the vast bulk of consumers. I figured that I was looking at yet another beautiful Apple flop à la Twentieth Anniversary Mac or G4 Cube. I put the newspaper down and resigned myself to the idea that Apple was amazing, but might never have a product that would captivate the world or hold a majority of any market.

Several weeks later I heard of a student at my rural high school not just getting an iPod from his parents, but an iMac in order to use the new device. This would have been quite the revelation for the geeks, but the news had trickled down through the mainstream grapevine. The iPod was causing a stir and soon enough, it hit critical mass. Less than 10 years later, the iPod had become not just any device, but the device responsible for shaping the digital music revolution. It’s companion software iTunes being just as transformative to the process of buying music.

A similar feat, coupled with similar awe and just a hint of skepticism (even from me) was accomplished with the launch of the iPhone and eventually the App Store. Both have done a huge amount to shape how consumers view smartphones, expect to interact with these devices, how we view the Internet from the point of view of mobile, and location based services. The iPhone and App Store have even influenced how the tech industry views the process of development and distribution of software in general as well as how we define the the role and responsibilities (for better or worse) of mobile operating system vendors.

This brings us to where we stand today. On Wednesday Apple are launching a brand new device. What was originally referred to as just a “creation”, which could be interpreted on grand or small scales, was clarified today during Apple’s Q4 2009 earnings call by Steve Jobs himself as “a major new product.” The rumor mill leads us to be looking forward to an iSlate/iPad/iBook relaunch thingamabob.

This new “slate” class form factor, which is to netbook as tablet is to notebook, is hoped to find a solid foothold in the consumer electronics market. Tablet PCs, which were hoped to be a transformative product class, became a mainstream disaster. They managed to find a niche in the medical field and other specialist fields, but really failed to change the world as expected by the likes of Bill Gates.

That accounts for my skepticism which has always been a prerequisite for any awesome and successful Apple product launch, especially one expected to be so novel. The level of potential awesomeness is off the charts for what has been bandied about, but I won’t get into all the details as they are scattered and range so far and wide. I would refer you to my sources for the rumor mongering:

Gizmodo

The Unofficial Apple Weblog

AppleInsider

Mac Rumors

9 to 5 Mac

So here is hoping this new device, whatever it is, manages to be just as amazing, implausible, and ultimately successful as the iPod and iPhone. It’s been too long since I’ve had a new must-have gadget to lust over.

(As a side note, does anyone remember the Nokia N770 “Internet Device”? Not totally the same market, but similar enough to cause me to worry.)

BREAKING: Possible iSlate Release Date Confirmed?

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I’ve been helping my super awesome cousin Carrie with some drama she has had with her laptop.  It has been having adventures and I’ve been trying to help and she has also been in contact with Apple to try and fix it.  While she was speaking with a rep over the phone, she got some interesting info:

Carrie:   Just talked to a lady at apple! She told me the tablets are launching the first week of February!

Eli:   Yay for your laptop! And did she really?

C:   Yeah. My laptop died again, it needs new ram. That lady just made me so excited. I’m bouncing.

E:   Lol. I’m really hoping that it will be good stuff

C:   She said it definitely is.
There hasn’t been that much excitement there in years. She’s been working there for 15 years or something like that.

As with all rumors and speculation surrounding Apple product releases, this could be any number of things.  It could be one of the infamous fabricated leaks which Cupertino loves to put out there, maybe they are using their customer support to spread stuff at random?  It could be some mis-information to throw us all off track, or a service representative who is just playing around.  But I think (and hope in my heart of hearts) that this is actually just the pure enthusiasm and honesty of one Apple fan in the know sharing it with other Apple fans.

I guess we will all see next Wednesday.