Jammies likes a big crowd of friends, and the official hosts of the party are very persuasive, and generally enjoy the idea of a three-day-quasi-bender. And I get why our house is a good choice for such an affair. But ugh.
It's actually nine families including us, but I don't think more than five will be there at any given time.
I can't imagine doing that sober. Good luck.
Is it to the death or are tap-outs allowed?
It's the going-away bender for the family heading to North Carolina.
Wait, there are Veronica Mars novels?
The weekend bender will determine which family has to move to North Carolina.
Will this be more like the drinking contest scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, or the scene at the end of The Deer Hunter? Really it depends on how far Heebie is willing to go.
Jenny Diski and Francis Spufford did a joint interview in the last week or so about solitude, some interesting things in it (interviewer was kind of lame), but I would counsel hg to *not* seek it out at this precise moment!
6: Singular. I'm about halfway through, having started it last night.
It assumes the movie, plotwise. So see that first.
Also we're packing up the front half of the house for the kitchen renovation and wallpaper extravaganza, beginning Wednesday.
Quick poll: Jammies says we need to completely clear out the kitchen, because nasty drywall dust will get everywhere. (Replacing countertops, backsplash, floor, and installing a garden window instead of a normal window. But not knocking down walls or messing with cabinets.)
I am arguing that it would be much, much easier to leave a bunch of stuff in the cabinets, and just completely tape them up to keep the dust out.
Jammies is obviously right, but is he enough-right to justify completely packing up an entire kitchen and moving it to the storage unit?
It is weird that I have not seen the movie. Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone.
It will be like the scene in Bullet in the Head where the one friend has to drink the entire bottle of vodka, or they kill the other friend.
The girl's name 'Reagan' is provably a Republican thing.
Uh-oh I think people are here. Or Jammies is here with the kids, which would be okay. Or neighbors are here. Or someone shut a car door somewhere.
The dust is so bad. You'll end up taking every piece out to clean it. It'll be a full move anyway, might as well do it with clean gear and skip the re-cleaning step.
Can dust really get through tape? I suppose it does, inevitably.
Uh-oh, NOW people are here. I'm sure of it.
Good luck with your weekend Heebie! It doesn't sound terrible, though hosting it does remove the option of strategic retreat.
That was a double reverse ricochet humblebrag because it was like "how wearisome to have scored very high on this game" but then the game is actually a towering waste of time so maybe don't blow your cover as someone who has nothing better to do, Smearcase.
15: in the director's cut, it's made clear that that's piss.
Moby, I dunno. Do we need to have some kind of talk here? You're a smart guy. Have you been taking UPETGI's system to heart, and loading up the top row in order from biggest to smallest, with the biggest tile in the far upper left corner, and then systemically adding to the tile in the upper right corner? Or have you been bashing your head against the wall playing randomly.
I hadn't really gotten into a strategy. Every time I try, home maintenance issues crop up.
OK, seriously, that's your issue. Just run that strategy. Keep the top row in order with the biggest tile in upper left. The top row should be immobile; do everything you can to keep that order, so that moving right doesn't move your highest tile out of position. Never use the "down" arrow at all. You'll get 2048 in like 10 more times playing for sure.
I mean I'm assuming you want to play 2048 like a boss and not do home repairs like a bitch.
Nothing is more paleo than replacing a sump pump.
You'll get 2048 in like 10 more times playing for sure.
Moby's roof can collapse a lot faster than that.
29: Look, I'm no mathematician, but how can it matter, topologically, which corner you choose?
Also I really think the world would be a better place if three-day quasi-benders, rather than dinner parties, were the standard way for adults to socialize.
36: It doesn't. I prefer to put the biggest tile in the top right instead of the top left, and it works fine. The point is just to pick one and stick with it, so that you'll know that (as Halford says) the down arrow is your worst enemy and you should move (in my case) to the left only when the top row is solid. Once you've prioritized the same corner for a long time the strategy will internalize.
DIVE is more of a gentleman's game, anyway.
Sump pump replaced. Now seeing if the small garage river stops or if I have two problems.
My parents came over for dinner and my mom helped me weed my garden, which goes on show next weekend and is enough of a disaster that Lee is concerned about feeling ashamed, though I basically don't care.
Mara told an awesome story, claiming that when she lived with her mom they were digging in their yard and they found a mammal. The mammal was dead, with blood on it, and it had solid teeth. (She was very adamant about both those parts and repeated them several times.) It was a vampire! It was a ghost! At that point I started giggling because it seemed like a Halford's Daughter bedtime story, and I missed out on any other monsters she may have included.
Now seeing if the small garage river stops or if I have two problems.
I sympathize, having just spent two days with a toilet dribbling water onto the bathroom floor. Even when the toilet shut-off valve was turned off, and in desperation, the house water was turned off entirely. Still with the dribbling.
Fixed now, but just as you realize what a lame-ass you are without electricity, no water is a pain in the butt as well, no matter how much you explain to yourself that's it's like camping! It's just like camping, that's all!
I find camping more enjoyable in the abstract.
I've retired for the evening. Jammies has the big kids in a tent outside. I've got the bed to myself. Not bad.
43: in the concrete, it is uncomfortable.
Ugh, ten kids in the TV pit at 7 am. All their parents are still sleeping (as they should be). Last night was fun, but the group of kids collectively seemed more ornery and disobedient and destructive than they usually are. So it was nonstop asking them to quit breaking house rules, which is annoying. (All the parents were - it wasn't left for us exclusively, but I was still annoyed by the kids.)
My basement river has reached a decision point. I either need to find a guy or break a small hole in the cement floor myself.
I think it takes very little expertise to break something. I have personally broken many things, despite having little to no experience when it comes to those sorts of things.
One alternative is to say fuck it and play time-wasting computer games instead. What's the worst that can happen. If the underground basement river means your house is going to collapse, just put some spackle over it,paint it, sell the thing quickly to some unwary sucker, and move on. Or, just let things float away, who cares. Anyhow, your worst option is to do something.
48: Moby, I'd find a guy at this point. But that's just me.
I should have just come out and said I was going to knock a hole in the cement floor.
So, like, is there a space below the cement floor into which you're going to knock things? I'd have thought it was more like digging a hole out of the cement floor, but then, I really don't know the ins and outs of how sump pumps work.
Good luck!
There is drain tile below the cement floor. And rocks.
Possibly sinkhole excavated by stream! Could be swallowed into netherworld!
55: he lives in pittsburg, don't get his hopes up.
If you don't have an 'h' at the end, you're in Kansas.
Anyway, after making the first hole in the floor, I realized that I created a second sump. Even though I can't clear a path for water to get from the pseudo-sump to the actual sump, I had something to work with. This sump is now being drained safely outside the house by means of a siphon. On consultation with my neighbor, who was raised in enlightened topless Europe, I knocked a second hole in the floor. I'm not sure what that has gotten me, but once you have to fix one hole in the floor, a second isn't that big of a deal.
I find camping more enjoyable in the abstract.
I find it more enjoyable in a hotel, in a city.
I'm not sure if knocking holes in a cement floor is going to fix your drainage problem, but to tie back to the other thread, it can't be bad from a fitness perspective.
I still haven't gotten to 8192. I've been very close to it, within two or three moves, but haven't quite made it.
But the wife and I closed on our house. So that's like an achievement. We are now very close to Mobybar. (Actually closer to the hipster bar, but the bars in this neighbourhood are all on the same block.) I'm looking forward to putting rivers in our basement, or whatever it is homeowners do.
Remember the importance of french drains and good luck home owning.
58: I am just struck that being from Europe apparently gives the neighbour, in Moby's eyes, higher status in the field of knocking holes in floors and whether one should do so. Is the neighbour from Wales, and thus with presumed inherited expertise in underground digging? Is he from Berlin, and thus a veteran of knocking holes through large concrete structures? Is he from Transylvania, and was he therefore consulted solely because Moby wanted to check whether there might be a risk of disturbing something (or someone) interred in the sump pit?
62: Thanks! This is all terribly exciting for us.
He could be Dutch, and an expert in dealing with water where it shouldn't belong.
Getting to 8192 requires a good deal of luck, and/or playing far too many times. I don't have any good tips.
Alas, French drains aren't actually French. Moby should have consulted a pompous New Englander instead.
63: Europeans have more experience living in really old houses than Americans do, at least.
61.2: Congrats! May you have only good surprises.
64 He could be Dutch, and an expert in dealing with water where it shouldn't belong.
You have it backwards. The Dutch deal with land where it doesn't belong.
I would like to say I am quitting without trying for 8192 but for this to be true I'd probably have to find a similarly engrossing but not actually interesting game. I played Temple Run about a million times even though it is new heights of boring because I needed a fidget.
Getting 4096 required me to dislodge things from their corners so I'm dubious about getting any higher.
I am now relieved a French drain is not a homeowner-y thing we have to deal with. Hopefully the fact that we're on a hillside will make the water magically disappear as I imagine it does.
I'm currently paranoid that if we make our backyard permeable then all the water from uphill will pool against our house somewhere underground.
We're on a hillside. We can't really flood, but I'd prefer if none of it made its way down the hill through my garage.
I'm now trying to figure out how the French drain connects to the sump. Usually, you can see the drain going into the sump, but my sump has only a bunch of weeper holes. I suppose the sump just sits in a pit of gravel and the drains go into that pit. That would explain all the fucking tree roots.
I want street trees bred to surround sewer pipes and use the nutrients but not clog them. Very fine, shortlived feeder rootlets, like grass roots, maybe. Some mad genius needs to get on that.
2048!
Thanks UPETGI (and Halford). I got it the first time I convinced myself that I shouldn't move the 1024 out of the corner just to make a merge.
I almost made 4096 on that same game, except I got lax and moved the 2048 out of the corner by mistake.
and/or playing far too many times.
because I needed a fidget.
That's me with DIVES. I did get a 6707 the other day, With a 3664 in one cell (I find just about every big score has one very dominant cell). I did a bit of searching to see if I could see where people have gotten to with it (unfortunately its name is a somewhat common word) and found this guy whose screenshot showed a high score of 7082. 731 is the biggest number I've unleashed.
The weirdest thing about having a cold (or sinus infection or whatever) is that I get weepy about things that are not really all that fucking sad. Like, say, the Veronica Mars movie.
Maybe the basement river is really a feature, not a bug. Your house is trying to be Fallingwater!
There are varying opinions about just how many holes we need in the garment floor.
Some of us are objectively pro-Balrog.
Two nights of bender completed. Or at least I have retired and the party is on the deck.
Pretty sure I just heard some gunfire. Sounded like 8 shots.
I would like some followup, Spike. Preferaby not "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-"
Today we replaced two-thirds of the panels in my mother's PV system, with the invaluable help of my father-in-law, who was a logger in his youth. Apparently you don't forget how to belay, tie off, cross-brace, and rig a luff tackle to advantage. He didn't, anyhow. It also helped that a lot of our equipment was out-of-date professional logging or fishing equipment my mother has picked up cheap, so it was familiar from his youth. The visual effect of hauling up the nicest new PV panels using an old wooden block and jute line was pretty good.
So many delicious old words: clevis, sway up, standing line. And at no point did we have to get the first-aid kit or scavenge part of an existing building or drive to the big hardware store in the next county. Excellent day.
How big is your mom's system? On- or off-grid?
79: And AWB! Really my modification was rather minor and she was the first person here to hit on the right strategy. It's like we're in some feminist fairy tail about how men can steal credit by rephrasing a woman's idea.
My modification was how to deal with the second row (if your biggest tile is in the upper-left then on the second row put your biggest tile on the right). From watching the AI, I don't actually think this is the optimal strategy. The AI instead puts the big tiles in the second row on the left, but then cleverly collapses the whole row from left to right at the last moment. I think the main benefit of the AI's version of AWB's strategy over my version, is that there's more flexibility in switching from a top row strategy to a left column strategy when you get forced to make a move you don't want to make. However, I can't seem to get the AI's version to work in practice without having the AI's mad skilz.
I would like some followup, Spike.
So would I, but so far, nothing in the news and I haven't found anything on the Twitter. Not that there necessarily would be... its not particularly advisable to tweet about such things.
There is a very high murder rate in this country(13th in the world), though not nearly so bad as in nearby Venezuela.
Why on earth can't a guy have sex with his bicycle in the privacy of his own room?
72: If you're looking for a Temple Run-class phone game to fidget with, I found Smash Hit (throwing metal balls at glass pyramids) satisfyingly fidgety for a couple of weeks.
I blame my phone for not spelling Halfotd right.
98: I blame the other half of the day.
When I read about how he replaced his sump pump I was impressed by Moby's handiness. Then I began to question that when he knocked a hole in his basement floor. That was reinforced by the second hole. Now I just wonder if he thinks that life is like minecraft.
If it were like Minecraft, I'd have a pickaxe instead of a hammer and the spiders would be much bigger.
To get all mathy about it, I've got a siphon at and end of the French drain that is putting out about a quart per minute. I've got a sump at the other end that runs twice an hour. For a guess, I will say it dumps seven gallons each time, so roughly the same amount. This has been going on for close to 24 hours with no change in the water level beyond the first drop when the siphon was started.
Do you live at the bottom of a river?
99 it sounded more fun when I misread it as "meatballs" but I'm still going to give it a shot.
104: Speaking of pickaxes. A friend of mine made what may be the ultimate two-item order from Amazon--so as to take advantage of free shipping. He bought a pickaxe and a wireless laser printer.
I replied that they may have thought him the most confused bitcoin miner of all time.
106: I'm 200 feet above the river.
That must be one majestic waterfall.
Are you sure you haven't made a circuit with your sump and siphon?
It's really not that much water. Just like a sink tap, not one running full either.
A friend of mine made what may be the ultimate two-item order from Amazon
Wasn't there a thread here once about the best two-item combination of things to buy in a store?
96:
If you let it go too far, it would be the end of everything. You would have bicycles wanting votes, and they would get seats on the county council and make the roads far worse than they are for their own ulterior motivation.
118: Ah, right. Thanks. Google was failing me. I had forgotten that was also the colon-cleansing thread.
That was a great big fucking lot of tree roots.
You're sure it wasn't just all the clay you were flushing down the toilets?
I have every reason to expect that nothing I put down the toilet went into the French drain system.
122: In the future everyone will get to have urple's plumbing for 15 minutes.
123: better than having his idea of novelty
Or maybe in the future everyone will be urple for 15 minutes.
I have dibs on a favorite stall fist pump.
The giant misfire in our Mom's retirement/rural retreat/postcollapse dacha is that the sewage has to be pumped uphill. Not far, and not continuously, as there's a holding tank, but even with an engineered field quite a lot of the Olympic Peninsula is not septic-competent and we did not manage to architect around that. I envision my old age as lying on a recumbent doggedly pumping shit uphill every day. Could be worse, great view, exercise keeps you regular, primrose path, maybe I'll spend my old age with a trained donkey instead.
I forget how big it is now, teo -- I think we just went from 2.5Kw to 4Kw? -- but it's !permitted! grid-intertie with what ought to be a three-day battery backup, if two things don't go wrong at once. Dear mercy infrastructure is hard to build. Today has been the second 80% of work, with we hope only a final 40% next weekend before inspection. On the other hand, it ran without bother for ten years, the maintenance being `graze around the ground panels, wipe all with damp sponge, occasionally check batteries'.
How's it going, heebie?
We had a sort of ridiculous weekend. I'm trying to get the garden in order, so Friday night was weeding and today I bought plants and planted and watered. (There still needs to be more of that, plus Thursday as mulch day.)
But yesterday was Pride and so I got all the girls' hair done and then everything was wacky and took forever and we were in the parade starting at 2, which means I carried Selah for at least three miles by the time all was said and done, and then met up with Selah's mom and her SO and sister and hung out at the festival for a long time and then invited them back to our house and the next thing I knew it was 2 am and I was going to sleep. Today I took the girls to the pool for three hours, and then we just played Just Dance on the Wii. I feel like I get some sort of asterisk on my claims that I don't exercise, because everything is sore and tonight I really need to sleep.
The stuff with Selah's mom is really cool. It really felt like just having friends over to hang out even though it was only the third time we've talked to her. And I finally (again, only the third visit, so I don't need to beat myself up) was honest that we know about her baby who's in foster care one state north and she understands that we'll do anything we can to help reunification happen but that we're also willing to take the baby if adoption becomes the plan. It was as non-awkward as that conversation could be, especially given that it happened on a public bus and the guy on the seat in front of her mom turned around and wanted to see pictures of the incredibly cute baby when she was finally showing them to me. (When she showed Selah, Selah got super excited and tried to kiss the phone, which she's never done before. Her relationship with her mom is so fascinating to me.)
Today was much more mellow, with one out of town guest, and the rest of the guests left around noon or so. We went tubing (again) and I'm super freaking exhausted and will go to bed as soon as the kids are down.
On the whole, it was reasonable to panic about the weekend, but it was basically fun and I made sure to exit when I needed a break from people. It was not a trivial undertaking.
Yay for you, heebie! A break from people sounds like heaven.
Just to clarify, "it" refers to "the weekend" not being a trivial undertaking, not "taking a break". Taking a break is easy.
On preview, this is not to 130.
126.1: That's not a uncommon situation, is it? Not the part with the donkey but just needing a grinder pump.
If I'm ever at my computer while I have my phone and free time and poor taste, I can post a picture of the roots to the pool.
Nobody wants to talk about grinder pumps?
Maybe grindr pumps would be better
Sorry, Moby. I'm tired and should probably read a Piketty chapter.
I had to explain to the very nice bookstore lady that I did ask about copies of his book but that I didn't know one was being held for me and that I decided against buying it after seeing how thick it was.
Hey now we have a plumbing issue. It doesn't seem likely to be as primal as Moby's.
Primal? Not as much as urple.his house must be built on tip of an Indian Plumbers' burial ground
My issue isn't primal, unless half-assing basement drying systems was a big deal back in the day.
Because let's install a French drain and install a sump. And then leave six inches between them so the trees have a chance to stop water from flowing from the drain to the sump. Wouldn't be sporting to connect them directly.
Donkeys are the best! Especially the ones with particularly hairy ears. They need company, though, so likely you'd end up with two. Or donkey and goat, understand that can be a good combo, if their personalities are compatible.
This seems to have been the entertaining weekend, had large-ish party yesterday, all went well until at the end it seems I agreed that some not small number of 13-15 year olds are coming again next Sunday night for another get together at our place ... not sure how that happened but they were all so happy at the prospect ... am preemptively exhausted.