Useless Conversation

[Yegolev]

I've found it valuable to determine if your GC can read plans.  Or English.

[Merusk]

Nah you're not filtered out I just get a lot of spam cycling people through too quickly.  Being on the West coast and not being a stay-at-home mom so you can post in the middle of the day like voodoo means I miss most of your stuff.   One of the reasons I despise the "news feed" format vs the 3-year-old "show me my friends and their last update" format.

Based on the PP drawing, the designer didn't take in to account the depth of your floor system when looking at where the treads would cross under.  I saw that all the time in builder-land.

I keep reading GC as Ghostcrawler, which is just making everything hilarious.

You are, however, frightening me about our upcoming stair project.  Exterior and non-spiral, at least!

If there's nothing overhead and it's a straight shot, it's hard to fuck-up a stair. Outside of too-high a riser or not accounting for the length of the run there's not much to do wrong.  Spirals, winders, switchbacks, straight runs are the descending order of difficulty.

Personally, I think Rule #1 is don't let the GC provide the drawings and hire a professional (Engineer, Architect or just a plain old designer.) for any renovation construction project. That way they're on the hook if the design is wrong and the GC can't point at you as having approved or provided 'wrong drawings.'  However since it's not required by residential most folks see it as an unnecessary added expense. Just be the 'money guy' and let someone else handle the headaches.

I've found it valuable to determine if your GC can read plans.  Or English.

Yes.  Just because someone says they're a GC doesn't mean they can (or do) read plans.  I heard a scathing (in tone) put-down of one GC by another years ago that makes more sense the longer I'm in.  "There's a reason *HE* builds houses."

[Bunk]

For those who care, there's a new post by Allie at Hyperbole and a Half for the first time in about a year: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

For anyone who's not heard of it, its the blog that was the origin of the "All the Things!" meme. It's actually an insightful (and humorous) blog about a person dealing with their depression.
Kind of funny how well timed this was for me - I'm dealing with how to react to the fact the a good friend has been diagnosed with prostate cancer - and this blog post was oddly inspiring.

[IainC]

I have spiral stairs in my apartment, they are some kind of prefabricated modular thing where it's essentially giant legos around a central supporting beam.

[WayAbvPar]

So Sam needs to hire an 8 year old subcontractor for the stairs. Problem solved.

[Lantyssa]

That shriveled kernel of corn is hilarious.

[Signe]

So Sam needs to hire an 8 year old subcontractor for the stairs. Problem solved.

Can you hire a subcontractor?  I thought you hired a contractor who then hired an incompetent subcontractor. 

[Samwise]

So Sam needs to hire an 8 year old subcontractor for the stairs. Problem solved.

Can you hire a subcontractor?  I thought you hired a contractor who then hired an incompetent subcontractor. 

It's incompetence all the way down.

[Hawkbit]

Ok, that's an awesome visual.

[Samwise]

Update: in a surprise twist I was not expecting, the sub who did the stairs admitted that he screwed up on basic arithmetic and that's why the stairs are wrong.  Since the mistake was his and he's fessing up to that, he's agreed to do it over, but he wants more detailed plans this time around (read: he needs to be micromanaged because he acknowledges that he can't be trusted with anything that involves design or geometry).  Which is fine.

I was SIGNIFICANTLY less enraged once I ascertained that he was actually honestly clueless about what he'd done wrong and not trying to put one over on me.  I mean, I'd rather he just get it right, but incompetence doesn't enrage me the way outright lying does.

[Paelos]

I don't think you are alone in your preference of incompetence over outright fraud.

[Ironwood]

Yup.

[schild]

Week brought to a screeching halt.

Woke up this morning, called mom, in typical jewish mom fashion we went from zero to "your grandma has cancer" in 5.7 seconds.

Ugh.

[Paelos]

I know the feeling. Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer this year and we are with her as she recovers from surgery for mothers day. The good news is her prognosis is good and the lymph nodes were negative.

Is your grandmothers cancer treatable?

[schild]

Yes, she should be fine. It was just like, the shittiest mothers day for every female in my family basically. And as the eldest grandson in a jewish family, I can tell you - as a pro - news rolls downhill like a boulder.

[ezrast]

Sorry to hear that, Schild. I've seen how rough health issues like that can be on an entire family. Hope your grandma's able to keep her chin up.

[Signe]

I'm sorry. I hope she becomes better very soon.  Tell her lots of  people who have never met her are sending her good thoughts.   

[Nebu]

Sorry Paelos and Schild.  That's a shitty bit of news to get.  I hope that they both caught it early enough to prompt a good prognosis.

[schild]

It was caught early enough. I think there's one more test Wednesday. They're removing the lump(s) in 13 days I think no matter how the test comes back.

2013 has not been great to me.

[Sky]

[schild]

As silly as that picture is, tweeting (or rather, the quantity of tweets) is a terrible metric for anything.

[Signe]

I guess Arizona doesn't have Twitter yet. 

[Reg]

I just assumed that in general bigots are older people and older people aren't big into things like Twitter.

[Rasix]

We have old white people, rednecks, angry fat Republicans, and Mormons.  Our hatred is many different shades of white.  I just don't think they tweet very much, and if they do, it's mostly about ASU/UofA nonsense.

[Nebu]

Wyoming is filled with old bigots.  All 12 of them.

[Paelos]

Sorry Paelos and Schild.  That's a shitty bit of news to get.  I hope that they both caught it early enough to prompt a good prognosis.

Mom's surgery went well. There are final tests to run, but since the lymph nodes were negative, the doctors believe chemo would be unnecessary. However, she does have to have reconstruction, so it's hard on her mentally, but her spirits are up.

[bhodi]

The problem with that graph is it isn't adjusted by population. Overlay it with a population graph and you'll immediately see the problem. It's not that there are a higher percentage of bigots, just that there are more people and some happen to also be bigots.

[IainC]

[Samwise]

The problem with that graph is it isn't adjusted by population.

The small print actually claims that it's adjusted by total number of tweets, which is arguably better.

If it weren't adjusted in any way I'd expect the west coast to have a LOT more than it does just due to sheer population density.

[Signe]

Sorry Paelos and Schild.  That's a shitty bit of news to get.  I hope that they both caught it early enough to prompt a good prognosis.

Mom's surgery went well. There are final tests to run, but since the lymph nodes were negative, the doctors believe chemo would be unnecessary. However, she does have to have reconstruction, so it's hard on her mentally, but her spirits are up.

I'm so glad she doesn't have to have chemo.  I'm sure the reconstruction will be difficult enough but chemo is just horrible.  My aunt had surgery (mastectomy on both breaths) and she didn't mind that even a fraction as much as the chemo did.  I suppose drugs hit people in different ways and to various degrees, but the chemo really hit her hard.  She's fine 25 years later, by the way.   

[Merusk]

The problem with that graph is it isn't adjusted by population.

The small print actually claims that it's adjusted by total number of tweets, which is arguably better.

Yes, except prolific folks would drive-down or up the percentage significantly.   Number of tweets from Hollywood alone would skew anything outlying areas of LA might do, for example.

It's a bad data-gathering model in all.

[Samwise]

The problem with that graph is it isn't adjusted by population.

The small print actually claims that it's adjusted by total number of tweets, which is arguably better.

Yes, except prolific folks would drive-down or up the percentage significantly.   Number of tweets from Hollywood alone would skew anything outlying areas of LA might do, for example.

It's a bad data-gathering model in all.

I bet it wouldn't be hard to adjust by number of unique Twitter users (so you'd be counting number of users who have ever tweeted something offensive vs total number of offensive tweets), but that probably has its own problems.

[Nebu]

Mom's surgery went well. There are final tests to run, but since the lymph nodes were negative, the doctors believe chemo would be unnecessary. However, she does have to have reconstruction, so it's hard on her mentally, but her spirits are up.

Chemo is the devil.  That's part of my incentive to research less toxic alternatives.  I'm glad to hear that they didn't find traces elsewhere.  That's a very positive sign.  As for the reconstruction, she will need a LOT of support.  That's a very tough thing to go through psychologically. 

[Paelos]

Thanks yall, and yes she has good support. They've already done some of the reconstruction and the rest is outpatient surgerys in the next few weeks.

[Khaldun]

I am not liking 2013 either. Mother-in-law just died a month after she went into ER feeling nauseous and they told her she had Stage IV kidney cancer. She was pretty elderly but it was still really tough to see. I had nightmares for a week after we sat with her in hospice for the last four days--she must have weighed 65-75 lbs at best by the end. My work place is an incredible clusterfuck at the moment and I'm right in the middle of the crossfire, several crossfires in fact. Been a really unproductive spring in general when I have had the time to tend to my own projects. My favorite colleague is leaving next year for a dream job somewhere else. I had to cancel plans to go on a two-week hike on the AT with my brother because I no longer have the time with all the bullshit happening at work and because *his* mother-in-law is dying of cancer. My wife's 18-year old cousin just killed himself on the anniversary of his mother's death from cancer. I have to take over as chair of my department in the fall and I am really hating the entire idea--it's a whole new domain of bad administrative crap.