Actually, no, I shouldn’t start there. I should start last winter.
Last winter, I moved out of my master bedroom. Yeah, last winter. I’m not the fastest when it comes to home improvement
projects. Last winter, I was a little alarmed that my window kept frosting up all the time. Sure, they’re old windows,
but they hadn’t done that the previous year.
My room started smelling a bit funny too. I thought maybe I was being negligent with the laundry or something, but the
smell was still there after I gave the whole room a thorough cleaning. Once the frosted window thawed a bit, I got a
hint about what the problem might be. Well, it took me a bit to realize the black grungy stuff wasn’t just dirt. It was
mold.
Ick. Mold. I panicked a bit. All those Dateline NBC exposés about Deadly Black Mold Lurking In Your Walls! had me a bit
nervous. I don’t know how long it’s been a problem, either. I moved out of the bedroom and into the basement. And I
started to look around.
I’d always thought it was a bit odd that there was wood paneling on the back wall of the bedroom. The same sort of wood
paneling that’s in my basement. (The house is from the 70s. What do you expect?) With the mold, I was suddenly
suspicious. In a rare fit of DIY energy, I got out the crow bar and ripped the wood paneling down.
Fortunately, there wasn’t any mold underneath. Just a bare, plaster wall and nail holes from the wood paneling. And
thick, black glue that had been holding the paneling on. I guy named Ron put up the paneling. I know because he wrote
his name on my wall. In glue.
It’s stubborn stuff, too. I tried scraping and chiseling it off, but I was doing more damage to the plaster than to the
glue. I tried sanding with a manual sander, and I made a little progress, but it would take years at that rate to get it
all off. I tried a heat gun, thinking that maybe there was a coat of paint under the glue, but no, it’s just plaster.
Which is odd, since it means that that wood paneling has been up since the house was sold. Meaning a professional
thought, in his professional wisdom, that wood paneling was a good thing to have in a master bedroom. Only in the 70s. I
blame Ron.
Today I picked up a power sander and I’m making good progress on the glue. Ron is gone, at least. I’m covered in plaster
dust and it feels a bit gross. The window is going to be replaced on Tuesday. Once I get the glue off, I can start
spackling the holes and chips and start sanding that. Then I can clean up the mess.
Eric invited me to join him to go to BarCamp Waterloo. I’d always meant to go to
one, but I kept missing them for one reason or another. I wouldn’t have known about this one if Eric hadn’t given me the
heads-up.
Eric did a demo of installing Debian in 6 minutes over the network. There was also a Windows 7 demo, a potentially
religious discussion about languages, a demo of FOSS Factory, a demo of an intranet video
training thing in Rails, and something I’m forgetting. I also got a private(ish) demo and beta invitation
to CastRoller.
I also got to find new, intriguing things out about local companies. I’ve been out of the loop for too long. I’m
impressed that the crazy-sounding local startups actually have compelling business models behind them. It makes me feel
better about the tech economy here in town.
I was planning on going back to Belleville this weekend, since it looked like it could be the last weekend I had free
before Christmas. Just a quick trip home to get my parents up to date on recent happenings, reconnect and maybe relax a
little. When I mentioned this to my mom earlier in the week, she came back and asked if I wanted to go to Ottawa.
My sister (the one that lives in Ottawa) was going to be on her own this weekend and wanted my mom to come visit. So
since I was coming too, I might as well come along, since I hadn’t seen her since her wedding.
It also gave me the opportunity to meet up with Ottawa friends again. I don’t do that nearly enough. Ottawa’s pretty far
away and all.
It was very nice seeing people. I went with Bill to see Body of Lies. Which I think is a really good movie, but
definitely not the feel good movie of the year. I liked that it managed to turn American jingoism on its ear, but did it
in a way that wasn’t just rabidly anti-American. The Americans are still the good guys (for some definition of “good”).
They’re just powerful but ineffectual good guys. On that level, it worked for me. On the level of feeling a bit queasy
at the time, I probably didn’t need the torture scenes.
[[WikiLinks]] update: I’m working on it, in bits and pieces here and there. I really only started working on it in
earnest on the train to Ottawa, so I think I’m making good progress. I’ve had a few breakthroughs in figuring out how
the whole WordPress plug-in architecture works. I have a plug-in that actually does something, which is good. I got my
regular expression sorted out. I’m now changing how I was seeing if a page exists so that it doesn’t hit the database
quite as much. I figured lots of database hits would probably be bad.
