House Rebirth

Fresh interwebz

Posted by Cuthbert Returned , Thursday, May 13, 2010 11:05 AM

So yesterday we had Verizon Fios scheduled for install. It was interesting as when they scheduled the install they said the install was scheduled within the hours of 8-5. Once again DC people don't understand how the clock works apparently...


I took a moment to sit on the futon down stairs before cleaning some more walls in the place. With the carpet cleaned the living room has taken on a certain habitable state. It was still very emtpy and the built in cabinets looked badly in need of a cleaning. I sat awaiting the call from Verizon but by this point I have learned that installers just kinda show up whenever they want. At 9:30 I still hadn't heard anything so I got Lexi up and we ate some breakfast at 9:45 as I was headed out the door my phone rang. Chuck with Verizon, apparently he wouldn't be able to make it out til later so he was gonna call dispatch and try to get someone else out...I told chuck that all he really needed to do for us was intall the optical terminal and go on about his merry way. To which he responded, "Sir, how you supposed to get any good TV without the coaxial...." I scratched my head at this not realizing what in the world he was talking about. All we were signed up for was internet. Anyways I headed off to work.

At around 12:30 I got to wondering if the Verizon guy had scheduled someone else when I got a call from Lex saying that a guy had showed up looked at the optical cable in the backyard and then said he would be right back. Two hours later he apparently still wasnt back. Ahh hourly workers when will the world learn that hourly wages are in-effective for promoting efficiency. Apparently he didn't show back up til 2 by then I was getting hungry enough that I told Lexi I would grab five guys and see if I could set some stakes so we could prove the guy was actually moving. I got home with the burgers at 3:15 and the installer had apparently finished up and left, there it was a new verizon connection with obnoxious bandwidth for us to enjoy... but all of our toys that use internet were still boxed up.

I headed back to work and left lexi to a house that had become much less boring I hope. I do hope she is having a good time out here, we don't exactly have the cool pad like we had in Denver anymore. Lexi got to drive my car to the Vienna station to pickup Amanda and I got to go sit at my desk until 7. At about 6:45 I got a call from Lexi saying the GPS had turned her onto interstate 66 and then run out of battery. Thank god for google maps I thought. I pulled up the satellite images of where she was and helped her get to the train station. I felt sorry that she got stuck driving on the worst interstate at the worst time of day.

After work we set in to actually unpacking. Amanda put away the kitchen and Lexi cleaned out the terrible built ins and fireplace, whilst I began my battle with the dishwasher. Yet another appliance that has decided to act up. Apparently Murphy has inhabited every appliance in the place, from here til the end of time buy the home warranty before you move in, it would take care of all this crap. So I pulled open the drain pipe that was run through the garbage disposal to see that they hadn't removed the punch out. I gleefully thought I was going to look awesome and turned the dishwasher on.... foam sprayed out the front. So I took a long piece of wire and pulled out the gobs of vile food that were two feet into the drain pipe. Thinking surely that must have been the problem I spun the knob again. Foam.....  I pulled off the bottom panel and detached the drain pipe and drained out even more awful slimey sludge into a bucket. Foam....  I took off the spinning water spreayer at the bottom and pulled out giant chunks of condensed hard and disgusting food. Foam..... I hung my head frustrated to oblivion. Apparently the owners couldn't scrape their plates for risk of not breaking one of their appliances.  I took my chunk of wire and pulled out even more slimey vile filth from below the reverse spinning drain in the bottom. Success!!! The dishwasher drained, I reattached the bottom sprayer, and then turned the machine back on....... suddenly there was not water pressure to the system. Feeling snake-bit I turned the machine back on and wiggled the water shut off valve a tiny bit....I heard an awful clunk grind and then a spray in side..I opened the dishwasher to survey my Red Green Capability to find a tub filled with foam.....and black horrid water. At this point i became so frustrated that I resolved to do dish's by hand for a couple days and moved on to the next activity after reassembling everything. If you have any ideas on this one let me know because I'm stumped.

On to more fun things. Amanda and Lexi had cleaned the living room to a point it didn't look the same. After a mild argument over where we should put the TV and Futon we came up with a slightly off center arrangement that I think works very well. I ran a power strip and setup the usual surround sound wide stereo field. We got the Home Theatre PC setup and talking to the WIFI and even changed the PS3 over to the new router. We had a bit of a space issue with the ps2 loaction but I think we reached a workable solution by placing it in front of the amplifier. To test everything out we cranked up the volume and played some slacker while we dusted the built ins with pledge and put out the first wave of knick knacks. Suddenly the house started to take on a slightly homey feel.