Mudville

Some of you might recall that I blew out my knee playing softball, back in late June. Well, it turned out to have been merely sprained and after a 6 week hiatus I was back in business. I never quite regained my sweet swing from the beginning of the year (I went 3 for 4 with a home run), but hit some nice line drives and by the final game was starting to feel comfortable in the field again. Our team, Ether Binge^, had made the playoffs, although that is less impressive when you know the top four teams make the playoffs and there were only four teams total. I am standing far right, holding a mitt that was holding a hidden can of Tecate beer. Worry not, it was a post-game beverage. I play clean.

Still, we were two games away from a championship and playing the dreaded Steamers, the very team I had injured my leg against two months earlier. It was a great game, back and forth each inning. We must have exchanged leads several times before finally getting into the final set of at bats, down 2 runs. We strike quickly and score a run and have men at 1st and 2nd, but then we make two outs. Our manager, batting right in front of me, takes a walk, loading the bases. So there I am, season on the line, bases juiced, any decent hit probably wins the game.

I take a ball. Then I take a strike. Then I make the second-worst swing of my shortened season, fouling the ball roughly three feet. I swing the bat once, trying to get a feel for it. There is some good-natured taunting as I am wearing a Superman logo shirt. I am warned not to break the windows in the buildings over 1000 feet away. I bear down. Another pitch, another ball, but only barely. It is now a 2-2 count. One long exhalation of breath. Then a pitch that looks hittable.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land
the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere,
and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing,
and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville--
Great Casey has struck out.

Alas, this was the worst swing of my season. I fouled the ball maybe 1 foot. I actually threw the bat down in front of the ball to knock it back fair. Not because I had any expectation that it would work, but because there was nothing else I could do. In slow pitch softball, you can foul out. I could make an excuse that I had picked up a heavier and unfamiliar bat, but the truth is I choked under the additional pressure and did not make good swings. And like mighty Casey, I will have to move on and hope for revenge some other day...

Now, in proper DaColbert Code style: Revenge is a dish best served cold. Cold hands mean a warm heart. Hart-to-Hart starred the incomparable Robert Wagner. Wagner co-starred in the made for television fiasco, "There Must Be a Pony" with Elizabeth Taylor. Of the two, Taylor's career has clearly plunged farther from the heights of such classics as "National Velvet" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." A tin roof is cheaper than a shake roof, but both are better than no roof, which is what my house presently has!



Eerie, no? Yes, after much hand-wringing, fretting, and general groaning we finally pulled the trigger and ripped the old shake roof off of the house. This was not the original plan. Our architect loved the old roof and wanted to keep it. I felt it had become a bit of an eyesore, that it just looked dilapidated and unsound (You can decide for yourself, although it should be noted this picture was taken after they tore up the roof to attach the new addition). Still, we were already so far in over our heads on this project that we were willing to listen to the honeyed words of our advisors and were going to live with the old roof a while longer.

Well, you know what they say about "The best-laid plans of mice and men". They go awry. Let me let you in on the big secret about home renovation. Every part of your house is in some way connected to every other part of your house. Pipes, ducts, and wires go everywhere. Walls touch ceilings, rafters meet walls. The most well intentioned contractor will run into obstacle after obstacle where the old house intrudes on the new. Not to mention the city, which continually terrorizes from a distance through its permitting and inspection process, doesn't like old houses much and loves to take every opportunity to dissolve them bit by bit. So time and time again compromises have to be made to move the project forward. Take out that plaster, remove that insulation, replace that wiring, shore up that wall, tear out that duct. This is the reason all remodel budgets balloon.


Or half of it anyway. The other half is that you never want to half-ass something at this stage. You could replace only the effected areas, but it seems absurd to spend 1/2 the money it would to replace everything to replace only 1/3 the stuff. I mean, if the walls are already ripped open and we got to replace some insulation anyway, why not do it all? A thousand here, a thousand there... pretty soon we are talking real money.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, my roof. As we were installing entirely new plumbing (original plan) and an entirely new HVAC system (one of our first "savings"), we were riddling the roof with new holes. To make the shake roof water tight again was just out of the question. Getting to the roof boards was like digging through crumbling foam-board. It wasn't going to go back like we had it and so much of it had to come up we had to replace it. Now we had the option of just replacing the back roof (no new holes in the front), but that just seemed silly. Why not just do it all? You see? That's how they get ya.



So here are pictures of the first two phases of my re-roofing. Phase one is the tearing off of my roof, right down to the frame. From a distance you can almost imagine there is nothing wrong, but the closer up shot from above makes it clear that my home's weather proofing is sadly lacking. My favorite is the shot from inside the house, looking up into the pale, blue sky. You can see my chimney there on the right, both inside and outside my roof.

Next comes the plywood roof. Still not exactly water-tight, at least it keeps out bird droppings and the morning dew. You can see my contractor up there talking with the roofer about exactly where they are going to dislodge money from me next. The close-up shows us the platform the new AC unit will be resting on. You can also see the makings of a little rooflet that they refer to as a "cricket". It serves the very important purpose of allowing water to run off your roof to either side instead of piling up against the new addition (where I took the photo from). It also served an additional valuable purpose as a place the HVAC guy could run air ducts to the new part of the house. Previously we had been talking about dropping down ceilings to accommodate those pesky pipes.

Speaking of pesky pipes... Those two girls of mine can really wail. Why just this morning Kayla had some unexplained discomfort (I am going with tummy-ache) and her screaming would have put a banshee to shame. Fortunately most days things are bit more mellow, with a much higher giggle-to-scream ratio.

Here are a couple of really nice shots that I have yet to squeeze into the blog. The quality is high, so you know I didn't take them. The lovely bride has not only a superior camera (a Canon D10), but a superior photographic eye. Unfortunately it is not always convenient to haul around a single-lens reflex camera and all its accompanying attachments and lenses. Nor is it always convenient to carry around my wife either... although she is as light as a feather. (Phew! Good save.) Still, when you can get both, I recommend it.



The first photo is the girls in their full Dodger outfits, probably getting ready to go to a game. Note the adorable baseball on their butts. The recent Dodger unpleasantness started after we last went to a game, so I think there is a clear correlation between our NOT going to games and Dodger losing streaks. Clearly they can not do without my babies for more than a week.

Finally, we have another album cover shot. Some may have seen a similar picture sent out around the 4th of July, but from a different angle. In this one our favorite duo, The 2nd Dimension, are acting like they didn't know we were there.

But they knew.



^I begged off explaining this team name in an earlier post. I am still not sure exactly how it specifically came to be the team name, but the Ether Binge name came from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson: "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

But This One Goes To Eleven...

10 years today.

How about that?

Happy Anniversary to Mrs. C, who has made the years fly by.

I am now putting the vote to the Bundestag...

We have to wait a moment, as there is some concern over language. Something about a celebrity clause and a garbage lifting addendum

It's ok now. They have ironed it all out. Quorum has been reached. Yes! The Ayes have it. We have been renewed for another 10 years. Alert the media.



Also, please check out my new poll on the sidebar. I am trying to get some feedback on what people do or do not like about the blog. This poll should be next to useless for this purpose, but will at least let me test the new blog poll widget.

Let the Sunshine, Let the Sun Shine In, The Sunshine In

The title comes from the 1969 hit single by the Fifth Dimension, often erroneously called the Age of Aquarius. It was actually a medley of two songs from the musical Hair, "Aquarius" and "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In)". The Age of Aquarius is an astrological concept, referring to the shifting of the stars in the sky as the Earth continues through its 26,000 year precession, i.e the slow turning of where in the stars the north pole of the Earth points. Once every 3000 years this slow precession shifts which zodiacal signs are associated with which months by one. These are called Ages. Before 500 BC was the Age of Aries, The Age of War and Fire, which was followed by the Age of Pisces, an era dominated by Monotheism and Spirituality (whether that was that predicted or post-dicted, I think you can guess). The Age of Aquarius should start in roughly 2654, and should supposedly be a time of Freedom and Peace. While it is nice that Astrologers noted the precession, it doesn't seem to bother them that it means that the sun is not actually in the sign it was 2000 or so years ago, when much of Astrology was codified. A Taurus does not have the sun in Taurus at their birth. It is actually in Aries. Still, if I decide to freeze myself I think I will set the alarm to defrost me in 2654 when universal harmony will abound and all haircuts will be banned.

When planning to freeze oneself for centuries, you might want to keep track of how much Solar Irradiance is striking your potential cryogenic site, perhaps using a handy map like the one above. To put it another way, this map shows the average amount of solar energy -- sunshine -- that strikes each region of the Earth, including nights and periods of cloudy weather. This is also the sort of map you would want to consult when trying to decide on the best places to build Solar Energy collectors. The entire Earth is being constantly bombarded by roughly 150 PetaWatts (150 billion MegaWatts) which can be compared to the entire energy use of the human race, around 15 TeraWatts (15 million MegaWatts), roughly a factor of 10,000. The little black circles on the map show how much area one would need to cover with photovoltaic cells if they operate at 8% efficiency (light to electricity): roughly 910,000 square km. If that area were collapsed into one circle, it would be roughly 600 miles in diameter.



While not outside the realm of possibility -- the human race has already built structures and paved over even greater areas -- it is still a bit daunting. What would really help is if we could up that light-to-energy efficiency. Say, to at least
42.8% efficiency? This new solar cell record is not only impressive because it beat the old one by over 2% in a field where 0.1-0.2% has been the norm, but because they did it using a relatively simple system that should be much more easily placed in something thin, portable, and easily manufactured. Now don't get me wrong, cells of this efficiency are still clearly at the prototype stage, but a path to a mass-produced, reasonably priced 50% efficiency photovoltaic cell suddenly seem a bit closer today than yesterday. See how happy it made these scientists? Oddly enough, one of the team members appears to be a 14-year old girl... or a scientist that continually gets crap about her youthful appearance, anyway.

And what would a 50% efficiency do for us? Well, for starters that 600-mile diameter collecting area now only needs to be 250 miles across to power the whole Earth. For the United States (which uses roughly 1/5 of the world's energy) that circle only needs to be over a hundred miles across, or about 30,000 square kilometers. The U.S. has a lot of empty desert, people. For those panicked about Global Warming, solar energy seems like a fairly workable answer.^

One might rightly say, ok Bigshot, put your money where your mouth is. Put some panels up on your own damn house. Sigh. While that was in our original plans, the cost of everything skyrocketed to a point where we just could not afford it, at least not at this stage. Rest be assured it is in our long term plan to put them on the roof of our addition, once we figure out how to pay for stuff like electrical wiring and plumbing. Plus, I may want to wait for some fancy-dancy, high-efficiency panels that I heard rumors may be just around the corner...



Turns out our contractor was a bit late from returning from his trip. I believe there was a funeral involved, so I can't be too grumpy about it. The upshot of that is that there has not been much done on the Colbert estate this past week. To tide you over here are a series of pictures of the rough plumbing that has been-oft mentioned, but little displayed.

We start with a typical section of plumbing from our bathroom. The big black pipes are waste pipes out, the thin copper pipes the water lines in. You will also notice that the big black pipes go both up and down. Turns out you have to ventilate your waste pipes, otherwise nasty gases can build up. You don't want a methane explosion in your house, do you? I didn't think so.



Here is a close-up of that rough copper plumbing from the home of my future shower stall. The big white doohickey in the center is the main valve that controls all the water flow. It not only mixes the hot and cold water coming up from below, but it has a diverter valve that can send water to either the main shower head or a hand sprayer. The actual shower head, hand sprayer, and knob handle are all what is called "finished plumbing". Rough plumbing is what goes on inside your walls, while finished plumbing is what happens once the walls have been put on. Needless to say, rough is the tough part and where you actually spend most of your money.



Which brings us to our bathtubs. We will have two full bathrooms in the final house. A minimal guest/kids bathroom and our ultra-posh master bathroom. The first photo is the new kids tub, which is a very standard cast iron tub. So standard we literally pulled it off the shelf at Home Depot.




This beauty is our fancy-schmancy jacuzzi tub in the master bath. If you look underneath you can see all the various tubes that will carry air and water to the jacuzzi nozzles inside the tub. The tub is presently covered by several layers of tarp and cardboard to protect the tub interior. Not only is this a good idea generally, but it became essential after the tub was one of the early victims of our vandals (see the Space Toilet entry). Our poor contractor had to spend two hours gently rubbing off spray paint with a damp towel, so there was no way he was going to risk it again.



One of the great things about having twins is that each baby has a built-in playmate. I am sure when they get older they will be able to interact with cildren of all ages, but they are developing so rapidly right now that only a baby very close in age is really going to be on the same wavelength. Growling is fun this week, eating books is fun next week, wrestling in the crib is fun the week after that. These two monsters regularly crack each other up and that is really a hell of a lot of fun.






This series of photos all take place in one of the two cribs. For over three months now the babies have been sleeping in separate cribs as they have just gotten too big and too rambunctious to try and sleep together anymore. On our rare trips out of town they have slept in the same crib and no one got a lot of sleep. Being in separate cribs has hardly impeded their socializing. It is a rare morning when I don't walk into the nursery and find them both standing on the end of their repsective cribs, like two neighborhood ladies chatting over a fence.



Still, getting to be in the same crib for any length of time is a treat. If Rylie and Kayla don't have something more important on their agenda (i.e. food), they love nothing better than to crawl all over the same crib, climbing up the sides, and then falling all over each other in the center of the crib. They can build themselves into such a frenzy that they race each other to get back up onto their feet again so they can fall down and produce one more solid bounce on the firm crib mattress. I must admit I encourage this behavior, which I really shouldn't, as it more often than not ends in tears as one of the girls bumps her noggin or gets pinned to the sheets. But then again, they are usually squealing with delight again moments later, so I can't be too bad of a father.

Finally here are the twins in one of their more serious moments. I think they are posing for an album cover for their group, The Two Dimensions. I hear they are thinking of calling the album The Age of Gemini once they work out a few minor copyright issues.





^Caution: If it seemed like too many numbers or too much solar talk at the top you won't like this end note one bit. The situation is even better than described. First of all, roughly 10% of all the world's energy is already being produced by non-greenhouse producing methods. 3% Hydroelectric, 6% Nuclear, 1% solar + wind. Second, electricity production represents only about a third of that energy usage. While it is true that how the energy is being used does nothing to stop Greenhouse gases, it has a big effect on the practicality of solutions. For all our electricity needs we only require 10,000 square km. A big hunk of that we could generate locally, right on our own roofs, which helps further as 27% of electricity is lost in the transmission from the power plants to people's homes. If solar panels can get cheap and efficient enough we could see individual citizens driving the conversion from the bottom, rather than government struggling to impose it from the top. None of this takes into account increases in energy efficiency, which have been marching along nicely. Unfortunately the population has also been growing... which is another nice thing about the solar roof idea. More people, more roofs, more power. It scales.