Quick Life update

I may be getting a job. Since I left me last job in August, I have been watching my son two days a week and working on the house the rest of the time. Also lazing about a bit. Since my wife had 15 months off while I worked, I don’t feel bad about this.

I had planned on looking for a job after I  finish my degree at OCC in December, but after talking with a friend, I submitted my resume to the place he works. I went in for an impromptu interview last week and got a job offer today. Unfortunately, I have to watch my son these nest two days, so I was unable to act immediately. This may have cost me the job, but the manager said that he has a few other positions open as well and I may still be able to start Monday.

During the past few years, my wife and I had gotten used to never worrying about money. She had a teaching job and I was making a much as I could hope for with only a High School diploma. We had saved up quite a chunk for a newly married couple ($25,000) and planned on using this when she took a year off with the baby. This saved us because midway through that time, my position was cut to part time. We basically lived off savings for the rest of the summer. Now she is working again but I am still home. Money is still tight although we have never missed a payment on our mortgage or school loans. I wouldn’t say we argue about it, but we can order anything off the menu at restaurants anymore. We can’t go out to eat at all anymore. Maybe twice a month, max. No movies, only free DVDs from the library.

But now I have a chance at a job. I realize that this is rare in this economy, especially for someone who has no practical experience in the field that this company is in. So when the interviewer asked me what salary I think I should receive, I told him that any dollars/hr is better than no dollars/hr.

This job will be different than anything I have done before. More of a factory position than working at a desk. This is part of what attracts me to it. I enjoy working with my hands and want to be able to leave work at work at the end of the day.

I am looking forward to the sense of security that this will bring to our finances. I would also like to say that I never worried about money because I knew God would take care of our family. There have been a few times we were low on funds and out of the blue, a check would come in the mail from some obscure thing we were not expecting. Like an alumni fund or extra cash from our escrow account. Anyway, I hope to post a positive update soon.

New Solatube skylight

Along with my new roof, I just installed a Solatube skylight. Our bathroom is the only room in the house with no windows. It had one originally, but someone covered it up with a tub-surround years ago. The room is a cave. Even in the middle of the day, you need to turn on the light. So I thought it would be an ideal application of a small tubular skylight. Now it’s bright enough that we only need the light in the mornings and at night. Hopefully we can recoup the money in energy savings, but it will take some time. I went with Solatube and not Suntunnel by Velux or another brand because from everything I’ve read and seen, Solatube is the best. I was certainly impressed with the quality of their product. The inside of the metal tubing is like a mirror! I thought it would just be painted silver or something, but it is literally a mirror. Plus they have good customer service. The day I got home and opened the box, I found that the dome had been cracked in shipping. I called and they were very nice over the phone and I received a new dome in two weeks, free of charge. I got the more expensive model because you can take a 30% tax credit this year. So really, the $300 model is less expensive than the $250 model that does not qualify for the credit. Here are the before and after pictures. Each picture was taken around noon without a flash. Keep in mind this is November in the Northern hemisphere and the Solatube is on the North face of the roof. I imagine it will be brighter come summertime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Roof!

We just got a new roof! The previous owner of the house bought it in 1983 and never put a roof on, so we know that it was at least 26 years old. It had three layers of shingles on it and the original boards, no plywood. So we got six quotes. Some were as high as $15,500 and the one we eventually went with was $7,500. Our house is 1,500 sq. ft. and we’ve been told our roof is 17 squares. We got Barkwood (color) 30 year architectural shingles made by GAF Elk. It’s nice having a new roof over our heads, but not so nice having hardly any savings left in the bank. We got kinda used to having a $10,000 cushion. Well, not anymore! Here are some pictures. Before and after. Now we just need to paint. I put in a new skylight too, but that will be its own post. If anyone has any questions, just let me know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New bike choices

So after my bike was stolen from my garage last month, I now have an insurance check to get a new one. But which one? I had a Globe commuter bike that served me well, but it was like a tank when I took it out for long (25-40 mile) rides. Especially when my companions have racing bikes.

Now I am deciding between this:

And this:

The first bike is the Specialized CrossTrail. $580. It’s a hybrid with a mtn bike frame, a locking front shock, and medium sized tires that are flat in the middle for easy riding on the road, but knobby on the sides for grippage on the trail.

The second bike is the Specialized Hardrock. $610. This is a straight up mtn bike with large knobby tires, a locking front shock with a larger travel, disc brakes, and slightly better components like derailleurs, shifters etc.

So…which one should I get?

My riding style for the last two years has been primarily inner-city road riding. Lately, I had taken the globe on some light trails. My usual ride would be 3-6 miles around our park and neighborhood streets with the baby in the carrier on the back. One of the parks we ride through has some trails, but they are mostly smooth. Sometimes I have an urge to ride down the steep sides of the hill though, but I obviously can’t because of the baby on the back…and I had a commuter with street tires.

If I got the Crosstrail, I would get a bike that fits my needs perfectly now. But maybe not in the future. It would be easier to keep up with my dad on long road rides, but hard trails would be beyond my reach.

However if I got the Hardrock, I could still ride around the neighborhood, but have potentially more fun going off little jumps and taking some gnarly trails that I used to ride several years ago. Skytop anyone? I think that a mountain bike might fit my idea of outdoor fun a little more than a commuter bike.

So…cyclists out there, what do you say?

The best WRX to have for winter

First rough chapter of my novel in progress- Nephilim

Nephilim

a novel

By Dan Mumford

 

The screen flickered to life, showing blips and graphs. Six different sets of vital signs sprang into focus. Tom watched the soldiers they belonged to move about the small room through the feeds in their headset cams, preparing equipment and re-checking their gear. Sun shone in from a window onto a bare dirt floor. Little swirls of dust swished about the room as the team readied themselves for the upcoming operation.

Happy Halloween, and NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow!

I wish you a fun day of chaos and mayhem. For a fun look back at some of my previous costumes, check here.

National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow. I think I’m ready for the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month, but please check back here occasionally and give me some encouragement, or scorn if I appear to have given up. Cheers!

New James Cameron movie looks good

I think this is on my list of movies to see in the theaters. I may even try to catch the 3D showing.

my wife is not sneaky

My wife is one of the least sneaky people I know. When the baby is sleeping, she will just walk down the stairs like normal, not bothering to skip the second step (which is squeaky) or stepping to the inside of the 4th one (also squeaky). If she’s going down to the basement to do laundry, she will just wrench the door open, not pull up first, so that it opens quietly. So I find it very frustrating when I am trying to be quiet and the baby still wakes up if I step on a board wrong, but will sleep quietly with her banging around somewhere.

Dan’s Kayaking Log

This is my log book for every kayaking trip I’ve ever been on. I typed it up to have a digital copy. I hope that some fellow kayakers might find it useful as I do include river levels, descriptions of rapids, etc. However, this is my personal log, so if it seems like I’m a little self-absorbed with entries like: “I surfed Awesome today!” it’s because at the time, I was only writing it for myself. So, anyway, enjoy. And I hope someone else might use this to find as much fun on the rivers as I have. Just a note, most of these rivers are in Upstate NY. The Salmon river features prominently since it’s only 45 minutes away from Syracuse. cfs = cubic feet per second.

Dan’s Kayaking Log:

9-30-02

I first got the itch when I went whitewater rafting on the Lehigh in ’99. I was like, “This is fun, but look how much more fun they’re having.” meaning my guides in the safety kayaks.

Moosefest 09

I just got back from Moosefest on Sunday. A great whitewater festival up in Old Forge. I did the Middle section on Saturday, then we watched people go down the Bottom on Sunday.

I am working on typing up my entire kayaking log, which includes every river I’ve done, water levels, rapid descriptions, etc. Look for that soon. It may be of some use to fellow kayakers, but I’m doing it primarily so I’ll have a copy around incase something happens to my notebook.

This is Crystal Falls, Class V on the Bottom Moose

Climate Change… a Blog Action Day post

Climate change. Does it exist? Yes. Can we do something about it? Maybe. What the world needs now (besides love, as they say) is concerted action. We need to educate people on the true consequences of their actions, and what they can do to reduce their impact on the planet. For a few things you can do individually, check these out:

1) Live close to work & play. I know that for many people, they are settled in to where they are living. But the average American only lives in a house for seven years. So you still may be able to do this at some point in the future. Look at where you live now, and how far you commute. Can you live closer to where you work? Can you get a new job closer to where you live? When my wife and I were buying our first home, we took this into consideration. We decreased her commute time from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, and I was close enough to ride my bike to work most days.

2) Ride a bike. If you are physically able to ride a bike to do short errands, do it. Many car trips in the U.S. are for distance of less than a mile. Have to run down to the drugstore for something small? Take a bike. This alone will reduce your carbon footprint a great deal. Plus it may be quicker. What? you ask incredulously. Yes. My commute was 12 minutes by car and 7 minutes by bike…because of all the traffic. I can always go to the front of the line at a ed light, and speed by cars that are bumper to bumper.

3) Get an energy audit for your home. Many companies that deal in windows, insulation, or heating will offer these for free. A technician will come in and go around your house check for leaks. Not leaks from water in pipes, places where heat is leaking out. They seal off your front door with a big plastic gasket with a fan inside. This creates negative pressure in the house, so any place where heat would have been going out is now coming in. They use a thermal imaging camera to spot areas of cold. (white is hot, black is cold. You can see in the picture that the bottom panel of our back door is very cold, and cold air is seeping in underneath the door.) It was very cool to follow him around and see cold seeping in through the baseboards and around the door to the attic. Then I knew exactly where to seal with caulk or expanding foam. We also got our furnace replaced with a 95% efficient model and insulated all the exterior walls with blown-in cellulose insulation. This cut our utility bills in half! I wrote in more detail about that here.

There are so many other things you can do, so I will say that the biggest one is:

4) Read. Educate yourself on how you can live a better life for yourself, and the environment. You’re doing it right now! There are tons of simple things you can do. There are also things that many people believe will affect the climate a great deal, but actually don’t.

I focused on only one small part of the climate change issue, but there are myriad facets to this. I expect to read posts from other people doing Blog Action Day today about how coastal regions may be affected, our food supply, desertification, water shortages, international policy changes, new advancements in science, and much more. So just try and do your part, and we can make some change for the good of us all.

For more info, go here:

http://www.blogactionday.org/

1st Grader’s 45 day suspension lifted after zero-tolerance policy went too far.

This is great news. I just commented on this story yesterday as it was rattling around the blogosphere. I said: “Yeah, that’s ridiculous. Why expel a kid for forgetting to take his nail clippers out of his bag? Oh wait. I’m sure that he actually meant to shiv someone in the lunch line, and that he wasn’t just hygienically conscious. Now if it’s an actual knife, that’s different, but clippers, or in this case, a spork/ camping cutlery, that’s just crazy. You have to question the priorities of whichever administrator brought attention to this in the first place. Let’s hope this gets resolved soon. Unfortunately in today’s news climate, with war, healthcare, and the economy, it may be overlooked.”

Well, I’m happy to say no, it didn’t get overlooked, and justice has prevailed. For those who don’t know, 6 year old Zachary Christie was suspended and forced to attend an alternative school for violent offenders when he brought in his new favorite camping utensil to eat lunch with. He is a model student and excited about learning. Apparently he would wear suits to school of his own volition. Being a Cub Scout, he loved his newest camping implement and wanted to use it at school. But his school had a zero tolerance policy against weapons and he was suspended, facing a 45 day sentence. His mother protested and bloggers (like you and me!) spoke out and brought dialogue to the national stage.

I understand that we need to keep our schools safe, and if kids bring box-cutters, knives, guns, etc. to school they should face the consequences. However, I think the zero-tolerance policy needs to be amended for special circumstances. For example: we have a technical school in Syracuse that teaches local high school students trades like automotive maintenance, fashion, cosmetics, cooking, nursing, carpentry, etc. Imagine a student enrolled in the cosmetics program. She doesn’t have time to go home between classes to get her beauty supplies, so she carries them with her in her backpack. Her school on the southside conducts a random weapons search and finds her nail clippers, file, and maybe some shears for hair. Uh oh. She a violent offender for sure! Lock her up before she stabs someone! Nevermind that she’s a straight A student and always nice to everyone. She planning something. Policies like this need to be under constant scrutiny so that we can protect our young people rights and make sure they feel like America is a good place to live and not some dictatorship. Enough of their rights are taken away already in school. How to dress, speak, where they can or can’t walk and when. For the sake of good students everywhere, review your local school’s policies before another six year old’s bright vision of school is shattered and re-fused from the ashes as bitter cynicism at a broken system.

NASA LCROSS Mission impacts moon, gets horrible video coverage.

I just watched the LCROSS Mission bomb the moon live on NASA TV. Wow! Pretty lame. They didn’t even show the explosion or the plume of dust that would show the evidence of water-ice on the lunar surface. I’m sure a better video will surface on youtube in an hour. Just a computer simulation and a camera getting closer and closer to the surface. No shot from space of a spectacular explosion of dust. No plume 30 miles high. They were too busy adjusting the infrared levels on their cameras. I hope a better video will surface. I’m sure one of the thousand independent obsevatories watching will upload one soon.

Break-in

Break-in

My garage was broken into last night. Whoever did it had vehicular support because they stole my lawnmower, my 80 lb. truck jack, and saddest of all, my bike. Now I can’t ride around the neighborhood with my son on the back in his child carrier. (one of my favorite pastimes). They did my nextdoor neighbor’s garage too and got their mower as well. The garage door was padlocked, and the two side windows were boarded up, but they stood on a trash can and broke in the rear window, taking it entirely out of the frame.

If you have ever had a break-in, you know how it feels. Awful. You feel violated. You feel watched, like they might just come back the minute your back is turned. You feel regret at the things you lost. You feel apprehension at having to report all this to the police and your homeowners insurance. You feel stupid for having a $1,000 deductible. You feel ineffective at keeping your home and family safe. So what do I do now?

I made a list of things missing and their replacement cost. $2,090. I boarded up the back window, and changed the padlock around so that someone from the outside can’t access the screws. What else? Reassess security.

Please do this now before it’s too late for you. Go outside. Now look at your house/ garage/ property with a burglar’s eyes. Where would you break in? What looks like the easiest way or the weakest area? What is stored where? Thankfully all my expensive rock/ice climbing equipment was left untouched, due to the thief’s ignorance. But you may not be so fortunate. Go out to your garage and write down the serial numbers of the most expensive things there. I did not do this to my bike, much to my frustration. Keep this list in a safe place. Realize that if someone really wants to get in, they will, but do not make it easy for them. A single-pane window held in by rusty nails ended up being the weak link in my garage. Make sure you know yours, and then do something about it so that this does not happen to you.