Blog of Chris

The HVAC system in my house was never awesome.  I used the cheapest units (Goodman) I could find, and the cheapest (crappiest) installer to design and install the ductwork.

There is only one return on the first floor, which is not a problem because of the open floorplan.  However, this return was built-in to the joist space and the wall space…  This is a common practice in HVAC system design, and effectively uses a vacant space in the wall or floor as a channel for moving air.

Again, under most circumstances this would not be a problem, but in my house, which is over 100 years old, the joist and wall space they built the duct into has a not so solid brick wall on one side, which has been a constant source of dust since the system was installed in 2005.

Since that time, my HVAC filters get dirty within 7 days of their installation, and massive amounts of dust are recirculated around the house, as evidenced by the layers that accumulate near each HVAC register around the house.

This is compounded by the nearly 500 square feet of exposed brick wall in my house, most of which is not properly sealed, and has dust constantly falling off of it and settling on everything.  Add the fuzzballs that fall off of my dog and accumulate in every nook and cranny, and my HVAC system is constantly blowing around 100 year old brick dust and pet hair.   I feel ok now, but I am sure I will have some sort of delayed respiratory condition.

Tonight I finally got around to modifying the return ducts in my house, blocking off the in-wall return from the first floor with a custom cut piece of sheet metal and a whole lot of foil tape.  I then disconnected the return from my bedroom, allowing it to pull air directly from the basement (in lieu of the first floor, which again is not an issue due to the open foorplan and open stairwell.    There were huge chunks of brick debris inside the return duct that had fallen off the wall, so I am pretty sure that it was the source of the majority of the dust.  Time will tell, and I will check the filter in a few days to see if it will stay clean a bit longer now.

That’s one check on my ridiculously long, expensive and time-consuming punch list here at the casa.  Other major projects include:

• Insulation of the exterior wall around the crawlspace, weatherproofing and sealing.  The lack of insulation here is responsible for my constant frozen pipes in the winter time, an extremely cold kitchen floor that’s offensive to bare feet, and massive amounts of heat loss that leads to higher energy bills.
• Repairs and staining of the rooftop deck.  The weather has taken its toll… Railings have warped, boards have come loose, etc.
• Painting the spiral stairs to the roof deck.  The only thing more annoying than building spiral stairs is painting them.
• Addition of HVAC duct and registers in basement and crawlspace.
• Re-tile the main bathroom – I used an experimental product… tile that installs like laminate.  It failed, miserably, and I missed the boat on the class action lawsuit.
• Relocate washer/dryer to 2nd floor.  Having it in the basement just sucks.
• Build a master bathroom.  If I could do it all again, I would have had 5 more feet of bedroom, a decent sized master bath, and no balcony (or roof deck).

These will all take money and time, 2 things I haven’t had (not at the same time, anyway)  since I started Charm City Networks.

-C

So much happened on this extended weekend that it warranted revival of this blog after over a year.  Here we go…

I did my last minute (literally) Christmas Shopping around 3 pm on Christmas Eve, making one trip to Barnes and Noble and getting everyone some sort of book… this is my M.O. every year, for reasons I will not go into… maybe I will blog about it next Christmas.

My extended family has a Christmas Eve gathering in Timonium, where we used to do a secret Santa gift exchange, but recently have been exchanging donations to charities, cookies, and this year, anything edible (which ended up being mostly cookies, as expected).  I made banana bread from scratch, and Joanna made rugelach.

I planned to make 2 loaves, just in case I messed the first one up, I could tweak the recipe for the second one.  The first one was prefect, so naturally I started eating at it while the second one was baking.  To make a long story short, the second one was within dog’s reach of the floor, and either my dog or Joanna’s dog proceeded to eat about 25% of it, ripping up the plastic wrap.  So, I was left with a half dog-eaten loaf and a half human-eaten loaf, so I made two clean cuts and combined the good halves into one delicious Christmas present, ready for exchange.  I came out of the exchange with a box of mini-chessmen cookies.  BA.

On Christmas day we drove to New York, dropped the dogs off at Joanna’s dad’s house and proceeded to Manhattan.  Joanna purchased 4 tickets for us and her parents to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.  She got them from a semi-shady website which indicated that the tickets would arrive via FEDEX, a highly unlikely scenario since they were ordered on Christmas Day and needed to arrive on Staten Island before 10am the next day.  Of course, nobody answered the contact us number, so we left for NY uncertain as to whether she had just lost her money.

I went with Joanna to her Aunt’s house where I met several cousins, uncles, aunts, cousins once removed, etc, and had Christmas Day Chinese food, heard lots of stories about Joanna as a kid, and was entertained by a little boy who got a magic set for Christmas but did not seem to have read the instructions.  He was just making up tricks as he went along!

Our attempts at ice skating in Central Park (and another park whose name I can’t remember) were foiled by ridiculously long lines, so we walked around mid-town a bit, making stops at Rockefeller Center, and the window displays at Saks.  The rain arrived, and I bought a $10.00 street umbrella that I became very attached to, but would not last through the weekend despite my best efforts.

Coincidentally, I had checked Facebook on my iPhone on the way up, and noticed that my friend Kevin was on a train to NYC at that moment, so I called him and we made plans for dinner, in Chinatown at a place called Hop Lee.  There is another Chinese restaurant right across the street called Hop Kee, which we stood out in front of waiting for Kevin until realizing late in the game that it was the wrong place.

Dinner was delicious, and I also go to catch up with Dave and Tali, former Kemp Millers who currently reside in New York.

It was raining and nasty, so I figured we should catch a movie, so we killed some time driving around Manhattan and stumbled across what Joanna remembered as “blue light park”, which is actually called South Cove Park, a very cool little waterfront boardwalk on the Hudson by Battery Park City.

We saw Sherlock Holmes at a theater in Chelsea… neither of us could stay awake in the theater, tired from a long day of driving, walking, and stuffing our faces with Chinese food.  The review of Sherlock Holmes will be another blog post in itself.

We stayed the night at Joanna’s mom’s house on Staten Island. She was able to dig up a VHS tape of her appearance on “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” in 1991.  If you don’t remember it, it is a kid’s educational, geography-themed game show.  Joanna was eliminated in the second round (which is really a memory game, and has nothing to do with geography), but not before answering questions with a THICK New York accent which she has grown out of.  “Route Fawdy” was one of her answers in round one, which I proceeded to tease her about all weekend.

When we woke up, she got a phone call from the semi-shady website saying her tickets could be picked up in person, so we scrambled to fight traffic, get the tickets, get to Radio City Music Hall, park, and watch the show.

Joanna’s gift was an awesome surprise for her parents, who had wanted to see the show for 3 decades but never did.  It really is a powerful show, with synchronized dancing, carols, Santa claus, 3d cinematics, a virtual tour of NYC with an on-stage bus and a moving background, and a million other amazing on-stage things that leave you wondering “how did they do that?”.  True to my nerd-dom, I was dissecting the technology while I should have been enjoying the show.

After the show we drove to Astoria in search of middle eastern food, where we found a little restaurant called Jerusalem Nights on Steinway street.  I had falafel, a favorite of mine, that Joanna’s dad explained to me should only be made with Fava Beans and not Chick Peas…  I don’t care, it still tastes awesome to me.

We stopped off at Best Buy and the mall, to get memory for Joanna’s dad’s computer and a new sweater for Joanna, respectively.  We also stopped off a pet store to pretend we were interested in buying a puppy but actually just wanted to play with them.

Joanna had gotten into a little fender-bender in the ice last week, and her hood was dinged up in the front.  After we opened it, we had a bit of trouble getting it closed again, and Murphy showed up on the Verazzano Bridge, in very high winds and very cold rain…  On our way back to Manhattan on Saturday night, the latch for the hood came undone, and it proceeded to open violently, smashing the windshield and scaring the crap out of Joanna and I.   After some debate on whether or not to try to get off the bridge before stopping, we pulled off, and I attempted to tie down the hood using small ropes from a shopping bag.  It was so windy that it took almost all of my strength to get the hood back down, and I had to keep weight on it to prevent it from blowing back up again.  My ghetto fix was in place, the windshield was broken but still intact, and I was soaked from my hasty repairs in the rain, but we made it into Brooklyn in one piece.

I then began to look for a Home Depot on Google Maps, so we could get a ratchet strap to really hold down the hood.  Google Maps took us to the nearest Home Depot, which was incidentally in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, home of the Notorious BIG, and incidentally not the best part of town.

I had always joked about going to Bed-Sty, but I never thought I would actually go there.  We drove by the famous Marcy Houses projects where Jay-Z used to live and eventually found the home depot and tied down the hood of Joanna’s car.  It was at this moment that I decided that this weekend was blog-worthy, and I would have to write all about it on Monday.  I told the world via Facebook what had happened, and how we accidentally ended up in a stabby part of Brooklyn, and that despite the misfortune, we were just laughing about it and weren’t going to let it ruin our night.

We made our way back to Astoria to meet up with Joanna’s friend Gina and watch Avatar in 3D, which was just freaking awesome.  I am definitely going to see it again, hopefully in IMAX.  I won’t do a movie review here, but I will say that Avatar is groundbreaking and has a great message about humanity, war and nature.

On Sunday we went to an All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet (that’s three times we had Chinese food if you have been counting), where there’s always an eclectic mix of Staten Islanders, and the peoplewatching is just as good as the food.  There was an unsupervised table of toddlers nearby, probably children of employees, who were watching cartoons on a portable DVD player with the volume turned all the way up.  There was a table of teenage boys who got a free cupcake because it was one of their birthdays (though I am certain it was not actually, as we used to do that in high school for the hell of it).

On the way home we hit terrible traffic, including a 15 mile backup behind the Delaware toll plaza.  (this is where you have to pay $5 just to drive through Delaware.  Joanna had some work to do, and didn’t want to use my iPhone to get online, so she came up with the idea of trailing a megabus to use the free wifi.  We found one in short time, pulled up alongside it, and it worked!  I wondered if there was a name for leeching free wifi from a moving vehicle on the open road…  let me know if you have heard of this.

That’s about it… I got home and played Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 all night, which Joanna had surprised me with for Christmas. Stay tuned, it looks like I am going to start blogging again.

-C

I’ve spent the weekend cooling down in the woods of the Patapsco Valley, so I’ll calmly explain how a Baltimore city jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict in a case that involved a young inner-city crack dealer. Sorry, an alleged young inner-city crack dealer.

There were members of our jury who were too young or immature to take their civic duty seriously, and did not understand the oath they took stating they would be unbiased, and reach a conclusion based on reasonable arguments and the evidence that was presented.

After a little bit of back and forth, the more reasonable members of the jury convinced most of them that they were not applying reason when coming to their conclusion, and they joined the majority who desired to submit a guilty verdict.

One juror, who was busy text messaging through most of the deliberations, not participating in the discussions, and who was particularly guarded when asked any question, or asked to argue his side of the case, simply refused to call the defendent guilty on the grounds that he does not trust the police.

Despite his defiance, he was willing to go along with a unanimous guilty verdict because it would end the trial and get him off of jury duty so he could get back to his life.  (truly virtuous, right?)

So, when we deliver our verdict, a “polling of the jury” is requested, where each juror is individually asked if he or she is in agreement with the verdict, and of course, our rogue juror stated that he was not.  He told the rest of us that he could not bring himself to convict the defendant when they asked him the question directly like that.  This led to another full day of deliberations where he sat in the corner playing with his phone and trying to ignore our arguments for him to change his mind. Searching for “Hung Jury” on Wikipedia led me to the Allen Charge, which I found pretty interesting.  It basically says in nice words “If you are in the extreme minority on a hung jury, then you are probably not thinking reasonably.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Allen Charge:

If a substantial majority of your number are in favor of a conviction, those of you who disagree should reconsider whether your doubt is a reasonable one since it appears to make no effective impression upon the minds of the others. On the other hand, if a majority or even a lesser number of you are in favor of an acquittal, the rest of you should ask yourselves again, and most thoughtfully, whether you should accept the weight and sufficiency of evidence which fails to convince your fellow jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.

Apparently, judges are supposed to give this text to a hung jury if they are unable to reach a verdict (in some jurisdictions).  Our judge did not cite the Allen Charge, but I found it on my own in hopes that it might help.  It did not.

Thus, we were unable to come to a unanimous decision, and the judge sent us home after 3 days of trial that probably cost taxpayers a LOT of money and accomplished absolutely nothing… all because they let unreasonable people participate in a process that requires and open and reasonable mind.  It’s ok, it’s just crack cocaine in Baltimore.

I would like to think that this can’t possibly happen again if they retry the case… the more I think about it, it seems that the lawyers know exactly what they are doing when they select a jury.  The defense needs this type of idiocy.

-C

Guess who has to miss yet another day of work to participate in the legal system?  Me.  The system is flawed, and when I am at liberty to discuss the particulars, I will let you in on some really sickening things that are going down in Baltimore City.  Until then, know that sometimes a Jury of your peers means a Jury of complete buffoons who do everything they told you not to do and violate their oaths by bringing personal feelings into the deliberation room.  I guess that’s why the lawyers get to pick us.  Idiots are easy to convince if you put the right shiny objects in front of them.  Reasonable doubt doesn’t mean anything to unreasonable people.

On a less hostile note, I think it is funny how they pump in static over the speakers when counsel approaces the bench, so you can’t hear what they’re talking about.  Muzak costs too much, apparently.  I wonder if they paid too much of my tax money for a static machine, specifically designed and marketed for use in courtrooms.

I spent my lunch break in the land records office, looking up transfers of my house.  It turns out that as recently as the 1940’s, the houses on my street were not referred to in the records by a house number, but by their size and distance from the nearest intersection.  What I really wanted to find out was what year this house was built, as I have seen three different numbers in three different places. (the dates range from 1890 to 1913). I was not able to find the answer, but now I know where to look.

Well, I am off to the courthouse again tomorrow for the exciting finale… or maybe not.

-C

Today I had the joy of being herded around the Mitchell Courthouse like cattle in the demeaning, exhausting and demoralizing experience that is petit Jury Duty in our fair city of Baltimore.  This process is a shimmering beacon of beaurocratic inefficiency for the world to behold.  This whole take a number, go here, verify this, sign this, swear this, take a lunch break, here’s-your-compensation-which-will-not-cover-your-lunch-and-parking fiasco was comparable to only one experience in my life, which would be behing herded around by the United States Army.  The difference is, when the Army herds you around, there are plenty of soldiers telling bullshit stories about “no shit, there I was…” and making fun of the pogue medical and admin soldiers doing the processing.  The BS is entertaining, and thus makes the process run much more smoothly.

I am not known for my ability to sit still for very long, so at the risk of missing my number being called, I explored the courthouse, occasionally stopping back in the Juror waiting room to “check in”.  The guy behind the desk kept giving me the evil eye, as I was upsetting the natural balance of things by constantly coming and going, and possibly not obeying the strict orders he laid out for us AT LENGTH when we first arrived (and were forced to watch this Jury Duty orientation video from the mid 1980’s).

I wandered into the land records library and looked up some information on my property.  I could have spent all day in there looking up old maps, but I had to get back to sitting around waiting.

The movies they had playing (I have to give them credit for the A/V setup, which allowed announcements and videos to be played in 3 rooms on 2 floors) were Meet the Parents and Happy Feet.  I hate Ben Stiller with the burning passion of 1000 suns, and was in no way entertained by dancing CGI penguins, so I tried to catch some Z’s in the back of the room.

At around 3 they called a bunch of us to sit on a Jury Panel.  I kind of felt like the price is right, except instead of winning money, you go to another room to sit and wait forever.  They whittle down the 60 people in the room to 11 jurors.  Just when they have a full jury selected, the lawyers want to change it up for some reason, and then they pick a few more from the bunch and see if they will work out.  I was the LAST one picked, at 5:00 pm, and now I have to come back tomorrow to actually hear the trial.

To be honest, I was hoping to get selected, as I want to sit in on a trial and be a part of the process, but i was under the impression that it would be a “same day” affair.  So, now that I must sacrifice another crucial day of self employment to the City, you get to hear me bitch about it on my blog.

Oh yeah… when they dismissed all the jurors who were not selected, someone started cheering and clapping, and got himself a good stern talking to by a very pissed off judge.  I thought it was hilarious.

Tune in tomorrow for part II

-C

I just watched this, and it was effing great.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/religulous/

Check this out…  I feel like Dr. Emmett Brown.

I’ve been interested in solar and wind power for a long time, especially the notion that you can sell power back to the utility company if you produce enough.  While I’ve searched and searched for information about this regarding local BGE customers, I have never been able to find anything until tonight.

PV and wind systems are still very very expensive, bulky, and dangerous if not properly installed.  MAKE: magazine recently featured a detailed description of all of the components of a solar system, which got me interested in searching again.

As it turns out, tying into your home system is accomplished through “backfeeding” a breaker on your regular electrical panel.  If you’re backfeeding more than the rest of the house is drawing, you’ll start selling power to the utility (and, as the urban legend goes, your meter will spin backwards).  My brand new digital electrical meter is equipped with an LCD arrow that indicates the direction of flow (meaning they have made provisions for us to sell power back).

So tonight, upon further searching, I have figured out that the term “Net Metering” is used by BGE to describe this process.  Google that, and you’ll find some online documentation about the rules for grid-tie systems on BGE’s lines.  It all seems easier than it ought to be after reading BGE’s documentation.

A pretty basic PV installation can cost upwards of $10K in hardware, not to mention getting permits and an electrical contractor to install everything.  I’ve also looked into the feasibility of putting a windmill on my roof.  I know there are tax incentives and the obvious monthly energy savings, but the upfront costs are just way too high.

-C

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