Shameless gloating

Ohio State Buckyes: 14, That School up North: 3

Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah!!!!!

Michigan sucks. GO BUCKS!!!!!!!!!

You know you're a beer snob if...

You're at the concession stand at the movie theater, and the following scenario unfolds. The bartender?barista? pouring your bottled beer into plastic cups calls over the new employee to show him how to properly pour a brew. (He had just created a foamy, overflowing mess for the people before us. You say a silent prayer of thanks to the beer gods that he didn't get a chance to do that to your beer.) The experienced pourer tells the newbie, "Look. This is how to pour a beer. See? You've got to tip the cup so you don't make all that foam." If your immediate reaction is to roll your eyes, slap your head, and say, "Duh! How can you NOT know how to pour a beer??", you might just be a beer snob. You also might be a beer snob if... when the girl before you orders a Bud Light, you immediately judge her as having no class.

Either way, last night we went to see The Darjeeling Limited. I thought it was quite good. I think seeing it at The Neon made it better than it would have been at some suburban megaplex. I just love the whole experience of seeing movies there. The tickets are a few bucks less than you'd pay elsewhere, the people are intelligent, upstanding adults (employees and patrons alike), and you get that warm, fuzzy feeling of going downtown to support a local establishment. The movie was a bit out there, but I would have expected and accepted nothing less. I think the most intriguing thing to me was seeing India. The culture and landscape is just so dramatically different than what I've experienced in the U.S.

On my days off I like to spend most of my time working.

The past few weeks I've been spending an increased about of time producing 360 virtual tours and working on perfect the art of VR. I'm currently remodeling the 360Dayton website but I just put up the VR's I shot a early this month, it's pretty darn cool if I do say so myself. They came out really nice!

In addition to VR I have two Board's that I'm currently working on. The Walnut Hills Community Association of course... and then my new position with the Dayton Access Television (DaTV) board.

And then there's the garage... electrical is 80% done, I just need to wire the motion light over the driveway and hook up the panel. I plan on finishing the garage this weekend, if I can tear myself away from the television.

P.O.'d at the P.O. (for the millionth time)

We've hardly at all spoken too badly of the P.O. on this blog (not that we've spoken much at all in the first place, but I digress...), even though we've cursed her name too many times to count. Either way, I went down to the 'dungeon' the other day to switch clothes from the washer to the dryer, and I saw puddles of water:


Aggh!! Our biggest nightmare...water where it shouldn't be (on top of the vapor barrier over the crawl space). I initially ignore what later seems to be the obvious from looking at the photo. My first thought is to look up at the water lines that feed the kitchen sink. Are they leaking? They have a few turquoise spots here and there, indicative of pinhole leaks from corrosion. I feel the pipes, get my hands dirty but not wet. This will most likely bite us in the a$$ in the future, but this was not the problem on this day. My eyes next focus on the glorious duct tape joint on the PVC drain line for the washer. I feel the tape, and it is definitely wet. And gooey. (Yuck...must...wash...hands...now). Apparently, duct tape was the best way to attach the furnace's condensate pump drain line to the washer drain pipe. Of course...duct tape...what alternative is there??

Sexy Mama

We finally had enough of the fridge that we inherited with the house. It wasn't necessarily a bad fridge, but we grew tired of its inability to keep a constant temperature (the top shelf would get freezer envy from time to time and decide to freeze everything sitting on it, while the bottom shelf would be warmed up to 45 degrees), and its lack of ice maker was a definite shortcoming. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I was just too lazy to keep the ice cube trays regularly filled. I'm also looking forward to some energy savings. According to the Energy Guide, our new purchase only costs $56 a year to run. Sweet. Behold our new goddess of all things cold, frozen, and filtered. Now if only she had a beer tap...

Money shot 1:

Money shot #2:

Murphy's Law is Alive and Well

So, what do you get when it hasn't rained in two weeks and you spend the weekend tilling and trenching your back yard?

If you're lucky, you get this:

Which leaves you with this:

And it's still raining. Oh the humanity.

My PS Exam results

I started surveying in late November, 1997 during my Senior year in high school. My first job was with a very small firm in my home town of Lancaster, Ohio doing mostly boundary surveys and mortgage location work as a survey tech... I enjoyed it and it was my boss who pushed me to go to college and try to get dual licensed as both an engineer and surveyor. If I hadn't worked there I doubt I would have gone to college, and I know I wouldn't be where I am today.

The process of getting licensed is a four step process. The first step is getting the education. In Ohio a four year degree is required from an accredited institution, there are only two in Ohio, OSU and Akron. The Geomatics Engineering program at OSU is accredited for both civil engineering and surveying, graduates can be licensed as engineers and surveyors (it's a rigorous and difficult program).

The second step is passing the Surveyor in Training exam (SIT), this exam is taken typically right after you graduate college and (after you pass it) marks the beginning of your professional training. The SIT is an 8 hour exam featuring everything from differential calculus to ethics, accounting to chemistry, and of course a large amount of surveying.

After you pass the SIT, you are required to get 4 years of professional experience working directly under the supervision of a licensed surveyor. This experience is the 3rd part of the PS process and for me, the clock started ticking after I passed the SIT in April, 2003 and began with Woolpert later that month.

I filed the paper work at the end of last year and exactly 4 years (to the day) after taking the SIT exam, I again found myself sitting in Veteran's Memorial on April 20th, 2007. I took the PS exam that day and last Friday I received my results:



So I'm very happy to say that the 10 year journey I started way back in 1997 was completed this week. I now have the PS designation behind my name and I'm thrilled to be free from the stress and anxiety of waiting for the test results.

Woot!

Timmy Poops His Pants

I just wanted to share this video... oh my god, I couldn't stop laughing.

Game room, paint and lighting

Saturday night we pulled a classic all niter, priming the walls and painting the ceiling. We kept it going all night, wrapping up with some touch ups at 5am. The ceiling is old, but not original, obviously.. having been painted twice I believe and not ever by the former owner. The gap between each tile is a mere millimeter, but it's enough that the roller wouldn't cover properly.. so we painted the grid as a starter and then rolled the rest. Here's Kelly doing a fine job:



Sunday morning we slept late, but got up in time to go to Home Depot in the rain a buy trim and crown molding (brilliant!) The drive home was a wet one, I sat in th back of Betsy holding on for dear life to our 14' sections of $3.19 per linear foot crown molding (at that price I wasn't about to let it fall out!) The rest of Sunday we spent painting & finishing the grey (Behr Dark Granite) and tan (Behr Gobi Desert).

Monday we stained the trim, I put a second coat of gray on the ceiling and we hung the Lowe's special order light fixture, the result is exactly what I'd hoped for. A dark, peaceful, moody game room that is a completely irresponsible usage of space:

04212007.jpg

04212007.jpg, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

This is a MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) message.

Tit, bit nipply!

nipples, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

NO. This isn't Kelly. This is the most bosomy dummy I've ever seen in a store. Odd, I didn't think it was particularly cold in the woman's running section.

Then again, what else would you expect from Dick's Sporting Goods?

A beautiful house for sale, in Columbus...

house, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

After my exam on friday (it went well) I spent some time driving around the campus of OSU (my alma mater) and looking at houses for sale. This beaut lists at $459,000 and is just south of campus in the Victorian Village.

The monthly mortgage payment on this house across 15 years at 5.8% would be $3,793.17.

There goes that idea.

It's go time!

04182007.jpg, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

To anyone who cares, I'm sitting for my PS exam this Friday. I've spent the last few weeks studying when I could, but now it's "go" time. I took the week off from work to cram and I'm 42 pages into my crib notes, lots of boundary control principles, lots of survey history, and lots of title definitions. In three days I read all 602 pages of Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location as a refresher, today I worked through most of Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles and tomorrow I get to Writing Legal Descriptions and a refresher on Ohio Surveying Laws.

The Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) exam is Friday in Columbus at Vet's Memorial and will last 6 hours, 100 questions. Woot!

My #1 choice for embalming fluid

Living next door to a funeral home has been a non-issue so far. They're really quiet neighbors. When I got the mail on Friday, I noticed that we had accidentally gotten a piece of their mail, specifically a catalog entitled "The Meaningful Funeral". This issue featured funerals for children and child-size caskets. I chuckled at the oddity of such a catalog and started flipping through it. When I got to page 3, things got a little uncomfortable (see above image).

The next time I'm embalming someone and end up s#!t creek without a paddle, I'll be sure to try out '36 Plus' fluid to get over my 'wall'. I just have to wonder, what makes one embalming more difficult than the next? What causes tissue to not absorb the fluid?

Ick. Why am I even thinking about this??

tmnt

tmnt, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

Brent and I decided to go see the new teenage mutant ninja turtles movie on saturday night... but it was his decision that we wear old school TMNT tshirts. I check out hot topic, who had them in stock, but $22 was more than I was willing to pay for a shirt I'd never wear in public again. So I did, what any thrifty and crafty person would do.. I went to walmart, bought a $6 tshirt and markers... and made my own.

It didn't turn out half bad if I do say so myself... although, the chick at Walmart didn't seemed very impressed by me drawing the design in the fabric department.

The movie was enjoyable... but mostly because of the computer generated animation, the story line certainly didn't provide much entertainment. Thinking back.. I don't remember any of the turtles saying "kowabunga" during ht entire film.... what a rip off.

The trip to Pittsburgh, Part 3

Sorry for the delay... work has been a real bitch this week.

The pathetic plight of the PA beer drinker

Saturday night found Chad and I heading back down to the hotel. We decided that after a long day of walking around, we'd like to grab some beer and just hang out in the hotel room. Well, it turns out that in Pennsylvania, you can't just "grab beer". There is heavy lifting involved, unless you can find the rare restaurant that will sell you a six-pack to the tune of $15 for non-fizzy yellow. I did know going into this trip that you couldn't buy beer at grocery stores (my new-to-Pittsburgh friend had told me that much). So, we pulled into the Wine & Spirits Warehouse near the hotel, thinking that surely they would have beer as well (afterall, Arrow Wine & Spirits in Dayton has a spectacular beer selection). We walked into the store, a clean, well-lit, vast expanse of liquors and wines from all over the world. They even had a tasting going on. After a quick look around, however, we were dismayed to see that there was no beer to be had there. Chad inquired at the customer service desk about where we could buy beer. Piece of cake, there's a 'beer distributor' in the shopping plaza with Border's Books & Music, just down the road.

So, we head in that direction. A scan of the signs over the stores leaves us at a loss. Nothing with 'beer' in the name. We pull over to a nearby gas station to ask if they know where it is (side note: no beer sold at gas stations, either). It turns out that we had to go to the back side of the shopping plaza, you know, where the dumpsters and other unsightly things are kept. The place didn't even have a proper door. It was an overhead garage door. Surely this couldn't be the entrance. I fully expected to walk in and see piles of stolen goods (namely electronics) for sale. We saw someone come out of the garage door with a case (meaning 24 beers), so we were reassured that they did in fact sell beer here. We walked inside. It was dingy and dimly lit, and there were just randomly-stacked, huge cases of beer everywhere. We browsed around a bit, and I found a nice 12-pack sampler of Great Lakes Brewing Company beer. Perfect. Good beer AND we could just buy 12. We certainly didn't need 24 beers to haul back to OH. I happily carry the 12-pack to the register. The guy behind the counter looks at me like I'm an idiot. "You can't just buy that, you have to buy the whole case. Pennsylvania state liquor control law." Right. I see. The flimsy cardboard tray that was holding two 12-packs together made it a case. I go back to the stack, retrieve the tray and second 12-pack, head back to the register, pay, and carry the s&!t-ton of beer back to the car.

I'm really not sure what the logic behind this law is, but it definitely made PA lose cool-points in my book! I can see why they wouldn't want beer to be so readily available, but why do you have to buy it 24 bottles at a time?

The trip to Pittsburgh, Part 2

Saturday morning we woke up around 8:30, lounged for a bit and then got ready. Our first stop was the St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, just a few miles from our hotel. Any Warhol and his parents are buried there and I've wanted to see it for a while. It was very cold that morning, the wind blowing across the hill was numbing after about 10 minutes, and I lost feeling in my fingers very quickly. I was determined to get enough photos for a pano though, so I kept shooting and shooting... they came out well.

In researching this trip I had a hard time figuring out exactly where Andy was buried, wikipedia didn't offer much more help than the name, so I was determined to go find the cemetery, take a lot of photos and create an article linking off the Warhol wiki article. Both of the photos on the above linked article are mine and i wrote the majority of it.. I'm very proud of the contribution.

Kelly and I left the grave yard around noon and headed north towards downtown, we took S.R. 19 up to U.S. 279 and through the Fort Pitt tunnel. I've never been to Pittsburgh, so popping out the other side was a surprise... you literally go from a dark, damp hole in the hill to "whoa.. there's down town" in just a few seconds. Very cool.

Our first destination was Tessaro's of eastern Liberty Avenue. We found web reviews claiming that this place has the BEST hamburgers in the United States... and with a claim that big we had to check it out. The St. Patty's day parade was still going on downtown, so we took the north route 28, across the 40th street bridge and down to Liberty Avenue.. skipping the downtown chaos all together. It was a smart move, we didn't see hardly any traffic. We parked a half a block a way from Tessaro's and as soon as we got out of the parking lot a group of locals asked "are you guys going to Tessaro's? They put syringes and condoms in their food!" I dunno what that was all about... prolly just locals vs. tourists type of shit, we we laughed and I explained that I liked syringes in my food. There was a small line for tables, but the bar was pretty much empty so we sat right down and made small chat with the waitress, and shortly after ordered our food. Kelly had an cheesburger with home fries.. I had a slaw burger with home fries. Honestly, I think the flavor of the meet was lost int he slaw, but I'm never one to pass up a slaw-anything. It was good though. "Best in the U.S." is an over statement.. but it was good. Odlly enough, it wasn't until we were driving away and I was licking my lips that I REALLY taste the flavor of the meat... smokey, rich with fat that really sticks to your teeth. It was good and if we ever go back to Pittsburgh, we'll also go back to Tessaro's. If you're every in the neighborhood check it out.

Next we towards the Warhol Museum, our primary destination. I won't get much into the museum tonight as I've got some proof reading to get done... but here's a little teaser. We were greeted with this in the entry way to the museum...

The trip to Pittsburgh, Part 1

The Friday night drive took about 3.5 hours, from Dayton to Pittsburg. The trip was hampered by snow fall, the roads were slick and at times traffic slowed to a crawl. I-70 eastbound outside of Wheeling, WV was shutdown, the detour took us south along the 470 outerbelt. We pushed on and arrived at the hotel around 10:00pm. The trip one way was just over 250miles.

As is our common practice I pricelined a room in the area, I was very happy to get a room in Bethel Park at the Crown Plaza Pittsburgh South. It was very comfortable and clean and might I add... a steal at $45 a night.

After checking in and getting comfortable we decided to head out and try to find some food, after exploring all that Bethel Park had to offer we settled on TGI Fridays. It was funny to me to see the thick bar smoke in the air when we walked in... I've gotten very used to being able to go out and eat dinner in Ohio and not stink like Joe Camel afterwards. I guess Pennsylvania just isn't as progressive as the Buckeye state.... either way, we ate. To tell the truth, there's a handful of resteraunts that all taste the same to me. Appebee's, TGIF's. Max and Erma's.. I know there's someother one also... but they all taste the same to me. It's boring as shit.. and I don't quite understand why people go there, or what they see in it.

We went back to the hotel and Kelly fell asleep on the bed... I watched some Kevin Bacon movie I think.

Tomorrow I'll post photos of our big day in Pittsburgh... wait for it.

Care for a cup of brown water, anyone?

Today was our first filter change for the GE SmartWater filter that we installed under our kitchen sink back in the summer. I was very curious what the condition of the old filter would be when I pulled it out. See the comparison photo above. Yuck!! At least we didn't drink all that rust, although I'm starting to wonder if we should in fact be taking advantage of such a good source of iron.

The open road

For the last few weeks I've been wanting to make a road trip... to get out on the open road and just drive. The problem I've been having is trying to decide exactly where to go... I've got some friends I haven't seen in a while and I've thought about going and visiting, but the truth is, that's not the open road. That's a long drive and a guest room. A weekend of catching up and talking about careers.. fuck that. I want the open road... just me and the highway, back roads and a destination. I want to go some where, see something and not have to answer to any one all weekend. Turn the goddamn cell phone off.

So I thought about it. Lansing, Michigan crossed my mind. They have good coney dogs up there, casinos, a beautiful downtown and a bar district right off campus. Driving 4 hours for a coney dog fits me well.. I could seriously consider that.

I thought about Lynchburg, VA. I've got a buddy who lives down there. His dad owns a light fixtures company... they have ovens that melt metal. I haven't been down there in about 3 years, but again.. I'm not sure I want to spend a weekend catching up.

This afternoon though I was reminded of a road trip I thought of a few months ago. So I decided, next weekend, I'll be traveling out to Bethel Park, PA to walk a hillside at the corner of Connor Rd. and 88. It's a trip I can really get behind.. I've been wanting to do it for a while and I'll pass on more info this week as I plan it out.

Anyone know or care to guess what's there?

IKEA and Internet explorer

"The page cannot be displayed", originally uploaded by Peter Kaminski.

Internet explorer doing what it does best.

asta la vista

asta la vista, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

Balmer blames piracy for poor vista sales.

I found this display this afternoon at the Office depot. The lower shelf are all upgrade discs, but upper are full installs. If someone out there can explain to me how the average user, presented with this display, could/would make a decision to buy ANY of these... I'd love to hear it.

If I was Joe Schmoe and I've heard good things about vista and I'm thinking about upgrading, this display alone would make me decide to NOT upgrade. The huge price range, all the different versions, and in the end the HUGE price tag of the "best" version... it's too confusing and just not compelling enough for me to open my wallet.

Here's 6 good reasons not to buy vista!

blockbuster vs netflix

blockbuster vs netflix, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

Yahoo! News Link!

This weekend Blocbuster is offering free rentals to netflix customers who bring in the labels from netflix shipments. We've been enjoying a two week free trial from netflix and have recievered 12 movies from them in the last week and a half... for one reason or another we haven't thrown away ANY of the shipping labels. So we headed down to the closest blockbuster and picked out 12 free rentals, let the burning begin!

all smiles

all smiles, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

This afternoon I was approved by the Ohio PEPS board to take the April, 2007 Professional Surveyor Exam. I am thrilled to death. The exam (when I pass it) will add the PS initials to my name and will open up some really great options career wise. I rule!

Electrical 101

02102007.jpg, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

I spent Saturday morning stripping the game room and cleaning the walls, then I started filling plaster cracks and mudding. With our house I find that the amount of work required isn't as daunting as the amount of work required to fix the previous owners handy work. Here we find her electrical work.. err, paint work.... hell, maybe it's just one of her early attempts at arson.

Talk about shitty marketing, Part 2.

consider me sold, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

If this is Ruby on Rails... consider me OUT.

Oh, and what's this Programmer to programmer bullshit? I'm not sure if you can make it out or not but this obese, 30 something, has acne, is wearing glasses from 1984 and he's sporting some sort of militaristic battle dress uniform. I'd place this photo on the cover of a "Begining WoW" or "EverQuest for total n00bs" but this is just insulting.

Either way, I was out tonight in the snowy weather to pick up a VB 2005 book so that I can continue dev on woolpert.net.

garage stand still

garage stand still, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

With the rain last week and the cold weather this week, the garage work has been slow going. We've got a lot of sticks up though and this week I think the sheeting will begin.

The Heat Is On

Last night as I was getting out of the shower, I heard some brief whining outside, almost like a child crying. It didn't last long so I ignored it. About 30 minutes later, I was walking through the dining room and heard more noise outside. This time I recognized it as the unmistakable sound of a cat in heat, and it sounded like she was on the side porch. "Brrrowww, brrrowwww..." This morning as we were laying in bed trying to wake up, I heard the cat again. "Brrrrrooowww, Brrrowwww..." Our bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from the bathroom, so the cat must have been in the alley this time. Then later as I was getting ready to walk out the door, I heard it again, this time from the back porch. This is probably the fifth time we've had a cat in heat moaning around our house. What is it about our house that they like so much?? All I can say is that I hope a male cat will come around and put this girl out of her misery. I can't stand the whining!

Talk about shitty marketing!

bird shit, originally uploaded by chadsnoke.

I snapped this in Springfield on Friday night.. we were looking for fat people in Walmart.

Our bushy little friend and my massive wood!

We got him! This little bugger finally realized that the only way out of our newly squirrel tight enclosed attic was through US. We lured him into the cage Monday night with apple slivers and then set him free out side, here's Kelly doing her duty.

In total I believe we've had four squirrels in the attic at one time or another. Three of them made it out alive. The one who didn't make it out found his way into the rafters above the dining room some how.. and he was a gonner. We kept the door closed on the attic for about a month and now you can't smell him anymore. I think when we redo that attic space and add the upstairs bathroom we'll proably find his corpse... our plumbing will probably run right through that area.

Also on Monday we had a big pile of lumber delivered from Woolahan. We recieved the 2x10 skirt boards, the massive 16' posts, and then a bunch of 2x4's and 1x6's for the poles. It was a busy morning because our friend dug the holes for the posts and called for the City for inspection.... he also poured the concrete for the footers.


Tuesday morning I was very surprised to see that City of Dayton had already made it out and inspected the 'footer'. It seems funny to me that they called it a footer, even though it was just a post hole about 42" deep with a bag of concrete poured down it. Either way, the okay'd it and now they can set the posts and begin the actually building process.

By the time we got home from work on Tuesday night there was an amazing amont of work done. I don't have a picture of it yet but trust me.. you'll be amazed what these guys can get done in a single day. I commented to Kelly that it's really nice seeing work get done around the house and not having to be the one who does it.

The view from my new cube.

One of the most depressing aspects of your typical 9 to 5 job is the amount of time you spend under fluorescent lights, breathing dirty air, and staring at a cube wall. If spending 60% of your waking hours doing shit you don't want to be doing isn't bad enough... then I'm sure ugly, small cages cubes are. Luckily for me I've been given a new seating assignment at work.. and this one comes with a window. It's a long, slow climb to a room with a view and so I'd like to share mine... ladies and gentlemen, after 3 long years of staring at the wall and smelling Ron's farts... here is my new view:



From where I sit I can just barely see into the Dragon's stadium and during the summer months that's going to be good enough for me.

Garage WebCam up and running!

Vist our webcam at:

http://www.1616.ws/webcam.html

for a live feed of our garage being built!

A virtual tour of our roof!

While I was on the roof fixing our rodent problem I snapped some photos for a rof pano. It came out fairly well... click the photo so see the quick time virtual tour!

The story of our rapist roofer... and a squirrel.

This morning Kelly and I were lying in bed and she jabs me.

"Chad, I think we have a squirrel."

These are infamous events that occur FAR TOO OFTEN. I woke up and sure enough you could hear the little bugger, crawling around inside the attic space. The truth is, we know where they're getting in but we've never taken the proper measures to fix it. Also, we've never had any problems catching them.. so, even though it’s a pain in the butt... we haven't fixed it. Until today.

Let me start back a ways... when I bought the house last year the roof was in pretty poor shape. There was enough to be done by us (a bathroom, a kitchen, painting, cleaning, moving) and my Dad "knew a guy who'd do it cheap." so we hired the work out. It turned out that my Dad's "guy" was a policeman from Columbus who did roofing on the side with his brother.

The day Ed Spence came out to the house to give me an estimate, I told him I wouldn't be home. I was out of town but came back early.. and he didn't know I was home. So when I walked up to his car and tapped on the glass he seemed a bit weirded out. He made nervous small chat and never introduced me to the young girl he had in his passenger seat. He'd made references to his "assistant" on the phone, but I assumed that this young girl must have been his daughter... she was far too young to have anything to do with roofing. However, Kelly and I both got a weird vibe from him. He was in a hurry and left, without ever getting out of the car. Without getting a ladder out, or climbing on the roof.. or even really looking at the roof - he told us he'd take it down to the rafters, OSB what was needed, reroof and fix the gutters for $4k (including materials).

As it turns out, there we FIVE layers of shingles on the house... he filled a 20 square dumpster and then a second 15 square dumpster with all the shingles that came off of the house. A five man team spent seven days in mid-August on that roof, it was hot, disgusting, miserable looking work... and when they were done, complaining, pissed off and realizing some body fucked up on the quote... they had reboarded and roofed the ENTIRE roof.

So here's where the squirrel comes in.. on the side of the house that they did last, there's a side fascia board that is rotted out. And I mean, rotted out. There's a huge gaping hole right in the middle and it's perfect for squirrels to crawl through and into our attic crawl space. If the roofers hadn't been so pissed off about the amount of work they had to do they would have never affixed the new drip edge and rehung the gutters to it. We knew the hole was there, we knew that squirrels could come through it... but we didn't fix it because other projects seemed more important. So in the 1 year since its been fixed we've had three squirrels.

Anyways, back to the roofer... about two months after Ed finished my roof my Dad called me. He said "hey, did you hear about Spence?" and of course being outside of Columbus I hadn't. My Dad informed me that Spence had been charged with the rape of a 14 year old girl.. and all the pieces came together. The young girl, his "assistant" was likely the victim and he was weird because he didn't think I was going to be there. He got the hell out of there because he didn't want to have to answer questions or introduce her... and that's probably why the quote was so low.

Ed Spence ended up pleading guilty for rape and received 8.5 years. Just imagine, he's a child rapist cop, in prison... I'm sure he's getting everything he deserves.

Click this link to read a news report about his conviction.

I on the other hand, just set up a have-a-heart trap in the attic and nailed up aluminum sheeting to cover the holes this afternoon. The sheeting is a temporary fix, but I think this will be the last squirrel.

This is a photo of me and the last squirrel we caught.