Bug'n out of Babylon

A capsule of the last few weeks - and a test of some software

2011-12-13T14:06:00.001-08:00

I'm testing out some blogging software. What I had been using has now gone wonky and ??? if they will ever fix it. But part of the scarcity of posts is lack of a decent tool.

But I digress....

So, We had fall bounce out close to the last time I posted.

A pause for an interesting sign.

OK back on topic...

Then Monty got dressed up for Halloween.

And the green bushes in the back finally decided it was fall.

Then it turned cold and we started using the fireplace(s).

And Thanksgiving came. I failed miserably in documenting it so all I have is the morning after shot of the Big ass table (actually two end to end. It's not so easy to see here but there was plenty of room for more table!

And then Winter arrived. On the 30 of Nov. we had a bit of the white stuff.

The stubby maple is still pretending it's fall but pretty much everything else has given up.

The recovered dining room. Thetable in the back is what extended the main table for Tday.

For those that know, we have everything in here we had in SF plus a trunk and the second table. It's kind of mind boggling.

The once red bushes a week or so later.

It's cold but we only have gotten light snow so you get some pretty interesting images like this one.

And it's nippy enough in the back bedroom at night the the beast has no problem snugling up.

well thats

-30-

The big questions

2011-10-10T19:55:00.001-07:00

After the why did you move?, comes:

Did you move on a lark?

I HATE to move, so if it's a lark it's not mine.

Did you know how much it would cost to fix up the house?

Yes and no. It's coming in at almost exactly what I said it would but it's not exactly where I thought it would be spent. And we thought it would spread out over a number of years instead of whacking us all at the same time. O the flip side we will have very must do tasks left.

How can you stand the weather?

I kind of like it. We will have AC next summer so those few really nasty days will be livable, but most of it has been pretty nice. Of course we are heading into winter and that is going to be cold.
But, and this is a big ?, so far I like that you have to change things around. You can't wear the same cloths, the same food doesn't really work, etc. It's a little like the Olympics. Was it was once every four years it was special and we all looked forward to it and planned around it, at least a little. Now that there is one every four years it's almost always happening or getting ready to happen... kind of boring. So I'm looking forward to winter because it will be loaded with things that can't be done in the summer. The Bay Area doesn't have a lot of seasonal change, there is some. But san Francisco has a lot less than the East Bay and it all mushestogether a bit. Now ask me in a year if I'm looking forward to winter and it might be a different take.

OK still no pictures but soon really.

Seasons...

2011-10-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

So this is what they were talking about!
Maybe.

For the first time in months it's warmer in SF than it is here, though that should change in a day or two. Bur SF you go from warm to cold going across the city but here it's pretty consistent in the day. But... Sat was in the 90's, Sun it was nice in the low 80's, Mon. it was in the 50's. That is SF kind of weather. We have had a few days of 50's - 60's so if it's a trend it's "Welcome to Fall". Lots of squash in the market, but still a lot of berries. Where did the summer go. But we are definitely heading into fall.

So time to do winter...

Apple season is just coming in so cider time! And I just got the summer brews in a good place.

OK so winter brews, hard cider, apple jack etc.

house news.

The doorbell is working again, it got broken in the heating adventure (might have been me pulling down pipes).

Wow I started this a while ago... So sorry about the delays. It's been chaos, mostly of my mind.

Well I will finish this off quickly and try to get a better one up in the next day or so.

Roof is almost done, looks great.
Heating is done except for inspections and closing walls.
The exterior has had some adventures but gets closed up tomorrow and then a week needs to go be before they can paint and then the roofers have to do the portico.

I have to get off my but and give the front drain another shot. If we can't seal it we will have to bypass it and put a redo for that bathroom on a list for another year. It would mean disabling the bath tub but everything else would work.

I have heard from a little bird that the film incentives are getting largely reinstated so things are looking up.

And we are going to be featured in an article in the Detroit Free Press.

Unrelated to that...
There is a pop up biergarten that has been happening every Sun. and I have been helping out and I got captured a bit on film so I'm also in the Detroit News.

Here

And Monty won cutest dog at the Living in the V event.

So pictures next time

I'll be fixing some holes... my mind is wandering

2011-08-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

HVAC,

Holes,
Vacuuming the dust from all those holes,
All those damn holes,
Calling someone to fix all those damn holes.

I think there is a theme here. We are beginning to refer to the guys as the gods of Destruction. It turns out "minimally invasive" means that they don't strip the walls back to the studs. For some silly reason we thought "a few holes" didn't include ripping two foot wide channels up walls and into ceilings (and cross your fingers , not yet across any ceilings).

To be fair they figured we had balloon construction which is common with this vintage but low and behold we had much sturdier construction. Good in general, bad for running forced air ducting. ANd they would have had to rip into a lot of the same places to get to the water lines that were broken so...
It's still a lot of ravage for the poor old house. It's also going to be a LOT of repair work after the fact.

I was pretty resigned to the fact that the house was going to be a construction site till all the work was done, so while it's a bit more than I expected it is in the general ball park. Aislinn however missed the first round when the plumbers were chopping holes (smaller and MUCH fewer) so I think she is kind of in shock right now. Until you go through it it's hard to comprehend the shear volume of dust and that it gets EVERYWHERE. Till they are done and we can really vacuum this dust will be in everything we own and eat.

To a lesser extent it will happen again when we close up all the holes.

But then we will be able to actually start unpacking!

On an up note the deck is almost back together.

And Monty found a new playmate (appropriately named for the houses condition "Dusty").

The electrical is almost done with the first phase.

Bottled yesterday while the power was off, so were stocking up!

so long from the BigD

- 30 -

Al Grain, no Pain

2011-08-26T12:25:00.001-07:00

A quickie on brewing in the hood because the beer festival is looming...

So on coming to the big D and regaining some space one thing I really wanted to do was get back into brewing and up my game a bit.

Extract brewing is good but it's a bit expensive and a bit limiting and I wanted to be a bit more "off the grid".

So That is what it has been, mostly. I had some extract from before so I have used a bit in some of the brews but mostly all grain.

First I tried the Brew in a Bag. I like the idea and will revisit but with out being able to get or make a big enough bag (we are still mostly in boxes remember) it was not super successful. Or it was successful but I had to use a fair amount of extract because of the bag limit..

Then I went crazy and tried to do a Pari-Gayle brew. I did but when your living out of boxes it's silly to try a complicated brew day. That was two smaller batches of tasty beer but ...

Then I had this fruit that needed to be used and was over ripe so I brewed a weird mix of fruit juice and grain that is really refreshing. A crazy brew of malt plus plums, apples and peaches with some ginger thrown in in a fit of madness.

Then I calmed down and did an American Pale ale. I had a lot of two year old hops so I calculated the loss in bitterness but I guess I stored them better than I thought and ended up with more of an IPA than a PA but still very good.

In the fermentor right now is, or should be, closer to what I was aiming for last time.

I have also managed to scrounge up some used kegs and scored a great deal on a CO2 tank, so this or the next brew may go into a keg! How cool is that.

Cooling might be an issue but I have plans for a way to cool keg to tap and in the winter...

In future I'm planning to do a bunch of hard cider when apples come in and then turn that into Apple Jack over the winter. If it works I will probably put that in my ale keg and let it sit for a year or so and have it ready for Thanksgiving 2012 or 2013. Actually since I may end up with three or four gallons It may come out many years running...

Speaking of T Day. We set up the table the other day. We can't find some of the parts (they are in a box someplace...) but I stuck a dowel in and used some cedar shingle shims. We even had guests for dinner the other day. So we have no idea how many people are going to show for T day. It's looking like probably under ten, which as many of you know is way down from the 30-40 of recent years. But you never know.

Cheers from the Big D

- 30 -

Radiating Pain

2011-08-26T12:03:00.001-07:00

I had mentioned before that we had a little hiccup with the heating system...

Well essentially all the radiators are trash and way to many of the feed pipes also, SO.
we had to give up and move to forced air. To save some bucks I with some help from Aislinn did most of the "demo", cutting out the old heating system pipes and stacking them up. It's kind of cool actually but 4" steel pipes are HEAVY!

The pile grows...

Slice and dice baby!

Back at the boiler it looks really cool...

And then there were none...

So now they are cutting holes in the walls all over the place to run the vents...

On an up note Aislinn got to experience the joys of the old super wimpy 20 gal electric water heater.

Side bar, did I mention that the fridge and washer drier she ordered showed up? Big fridge, lots O ice, mmmm. Somehow it was OK for me to live off a dorm fridge but.... well anyway the big bertha arrived and we can now shop at CostCo again ;~)

So anyway she also had little tolerance with no washing machine. So it all arrived and I hooked up the washer (drier needed a gas line run, and a couple of loads with warm water and that emptied the tank. Now I knew from the dark days when the water heater was just turned on that it takes a couple of days to get hot. Well Aislinn took a shower after the washing and was less than thrilled. When after two days it still was not really hot, replacing that sucker moved way up her list.

So since the heating guys were just kicking back now that they didn't have to deal with the boiling beast she made them put in a new on demand water heater!! WhoHoo! They got a smaller one than they wanted because of the price point so this one only does 8.5 gal a minute.... So basically we could have showers going in all four of the bathrooms (if they all had showers) and still be able to wash dishes. And we could do that continuously till we all turned into prunes.

And the electricians have arrived...

They are not going to do a huge amount right now. Check out what is here, Ground the system, it's the little things that count. And put a whole house surge protector so everything doesn't get fried in the next storm.

They are also going to run power for the shop. It's now located where the furnace and water heater used to be. Bigger space, better access and a flue for those fumey things like welding and a forge? ;!) (probably not but one can dream...).

There is a lot more usable space "down under" now that there isn't heating pipes running all over.

In taking down the piping I found a few pipes that probably would have popped once the system was up and running. Ones that I started cutting and had just break off. With the auto feeder on the boiler it could have pumped a LOT of water into the basement before we noticed something was wrong. So sad as it is it's probably a god thing that we have moved beyond the radiators.

Also we may have cut the heating bill by 2/3rds. That is the guess at the efficiency difference. And it can be switched to do cooling also. If Aislinn finds out that we can do geothermal (sounds strange like personal nukes but it's the new thing, not too expensive and completely passive once it's in) we can hook that into this heater and it would have been complicated with the boiler.

So long from the Big D.

Soon it will be time for !) the big beer festival and 2) the huge jazz festival.

-30-

Mish mash and smish smash

2011-08-26T11:14:00.001-07:00

So I will try to cover a bunch of time.

So I got back, we had a lot of heat and then it has been mostly pleasant weather wise.

The tree trimmers are still going sporadically. Partly because there have been a few storms through and partly (I think) because it's down to "topping" the elm which is around 120 feet tall. Me personally... it would be a freezing day in hell before you got me up there, it is scary tall. To put it in perspective if you were up where they need to be and fell you would fall about 80 feet before you hit the peak of our roof and that is three stories + the roof up. The guys who fixed the chimney were a bit in awe of the tree trimmers and that guy was sitting on top of the chimney (~40 up) with no safety line!

Oh and we had the fireplaces inspected and "pointed" and a new flue put on one and spark arresters on the rest.

A pause for some Eastern market food porn.

Well that was good for me, you?

OK so we are in the middle of construction and destruction all at the same time. Aislinn is hot to get everything painted AND we needed to do that behind the radiators while they were pulled for the system test. So most rooms have color tests in them now.

And the room that was falling off the house, kind of we needed to jack up and support. Well they needed to see inside the floor to make sure jacking it up wouldn't break the kitchen ceiling. So since that room was tiled and those would break when we jacked it up level I needed to remove the tiles. They came up pretty easy but they were laid on concrete board. Think sheetrock but made from concrete. The folks laying it down were of the "belt and suspenders" crowd (folks who don't trust either and so wear both). And they glued AND screwed it down with determination. That meant basically breaking it all into small pieces with a hammer drill.

So this room

Became this room

And slowly all these little rocks got cleared away

In this bucket

And a lot of sweat

And we got down to the boards and then beyond...

You probably can't see it in this shot but the first three joists are cracked because of the "falling" room.

But then Ray and Ron rode in on white stallions, or maybe it was a car? and ripped open the deck below and put in some posts that could actually hold some weight. They also jacked up the room. It had sagged over an inch on one end and just under an inch on the other. FYI that is a LOT of sag for the five or so feet that hangs over the deck.

Old semi-useless posts.

Though they had replaced older and even less useful posts...

Now with all new and really useful posts

OK next, radiating pain...

Personal nukes are the answer!

2011-08-21T10:01:00.001-07:00

WE have been going through a bit of hell with the heating system. The 50% loss of radiators has turned into closer to 100%. Add in some burst feed pipes and... Well the radiators have to go. Actually we can't even find them. That is the other twist. It looked like we would have to buy many new radiators. The catch is that the new ones are pressed metal ones from a german company that look nothing like traditional cast iron radiators. So as the cost skyrocketed we needed to make a decision.

So we went with what passes for renewable energy out here and we are installing a small personal reactor.

It's kind of a new thing and our electrician was a bit puzzled by how to hook it all up.

But he did figure it out. Turns out the lead in the water is great in the cooling loop and keeps the drinking water from glowing after dark. We did have to put in a tsunami wall (new US regulation) though there has yet to be a tsunami on the great lakes.

The little baby puts out 500KW so we don't have to worry about power and the heat coming off the core heats the house nicely. Of course right now it's still pretty warm so we are using some of the juice to power a big ass AC unit in the basement. Every few years we have to change fuel rods but they say you can do it with work gloves if you move fast and it's legal for individuals to simply put the used rods in the trash!

So it looks like we are set for awhile. The big test is Tue. We flip the switch and it either works or we burn a two block whole in Detroit.

I have to go now and get a cowboy hat and practice my Slim Pickens impersonations.

-30-

Buy American...Where? How? I know why.

2011-08-07T19:44:00.001-07:00

OK before you think I've gone off on another tangent let me say that there are about three posts in the works so I will catch up on the happs. And this does relate, but wait I digress.

First a question. What is the largest American own brewery? You can ponder that for now I will tell you later.

How it relates? Well one of our contractors, never thought I would know so many.... , was talking about how he tries to always buy American. Not having lived in the manufacturing heartland it was something that I kind of did but not so dedicatedly. Anyway he and his wife went in to buy a car and they had researched it and it was an american car actually made in america and when they got there it was pointed out that the colors had all changed a bit for the models because the paints come from Japan and deliveries had been affected by the disaster.

What? We buy paint from Japan because???

He also said he uses all Hilti tools. Nice stuff but when I looked
Hilti Corporation
Feldkircherstrasse 100
P.O. Box 333
9494 Schaan
Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein!? I thought they made stamps?

My point is that it's very hard to know what IS american made and what just seems to be american made. There are a lot of "american" companies who's products are actually made over seas. Porter Cable was/ is an "american" company but their tools are no longer made in america.

Or are they? Porter Cable is a division of Delta

In January, 2011, Taiwan-based Chang Type Industrial Co., Ltd. purchased the Delta brand from Stanley Black & Decker.¹ Chang Type formed a wholly owned subsidiary, Delta Power Equipment Corp. to own the acquired assets including trademarks, designs and industrial tooling.² Chang Type is moving Delta's production tooling from a Stanley Black & Decker owned facility in Jackson, Tennessee to a facility in Anderson County, South Carolina.³ Bryan Whiffen is President & Chief Executive Officer and Norm MacDonald is Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Chang Type's Delta Power Equipment Corp. subsidiary.⁴

^{BUT In this article on Black and Decker...}

Black & Decker (the corporation) is distinct from "Black & Decker" the brand; the latter is used by more than one corporation. In particular, "Black & Decker"-branded household products in the Americas (but outside of Brazil) are marketed by a division of Applica, and a Florida-based corporation much smaller than Black & Decker Corporation. None of Black & Decker's power tools are manufactured in the United States of America any longer.

Brands include:
DeWalt
Porter-Cable
Delta Machinery (sold)
DeVibiss Air Power
Kwickset
Baldwin
Weiser Lock
Price Pfister
Emhart Teknologies
Oldham Blades
Black and Decker Firestorm
Vector
DustBuster

So it's just darn confusing since IF Porter-Cable is actually a division of Delta then it's a Chinese (not PRC) company that is making the products in the US, if not it's an "american" company making it's products outside the US.

Which is the more "american"? Personally I would have to go with the chinese company as being the more "buy american", and that is just plain weird.

OK back to the beer question.

Anheuser-Busch, right. I mean BUDWEISER, BUSH, MICHELOBE, BUD LIGHT. What can be more american.

Well, actually in 2008 they were bought by Brazilian-Belgian brewing company InBev.

OK so then it must be Miller, another American giant.

Hmmm, The Miller Brewing Company is an American beer brewing company owned by the United Kingdom-based SABMiller.

But there is more. On 1 July 2008 theMillerCoors company was formed as a joint venture with rival Molson Coors to consolidate the production and distribution of its products in the United States, with each parent company's corporate operations and international operations remaining separate and independent of the joint venture.

MillerCoors? MolsonCoors??? That just killed the other contender also.

But what is SAB?
Miller was acquired by South African Breweries from Philip Morris for $3.6 billion worth of stock and US$2 billion in debt to form SABMiller, with Philip Morris retaining a 36% ownership share and 24.99% voting rights.

OK so all the icons are owned by Brazilian, Belgian, Canadian, South African super conglomerates. Who is the largest american owned brewery?

Samuel Adams.

That small craft brewery in boston that was formed in 1984.

Samuel Adams is an American brand of beer brewed by the Boston Beer Company (NYSE: SAM) and its associated contract brewers. The company was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, Harry M. Rubin, and Lorenzo Lamadrid in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The brand name of Samuel Adams (often abbreviated to Sam Adams, even in advertisements), was chosen in honor of Samuel Adams, anAmerican patriot famous for his role in the American Revolution and Boston Tea Party. According to tradition, he was also a brewer.⁷

Following Anheuser-Busch's 2008 sale to InBev, the Boston Beer Company became the largest American-owned beer company in the United States.

Second largest and oldest is.
D. G. Yuengling & Son is the oldest operating brewing company in America, established in 1829. It is one of the largest breweries by volume in the country, and is the second largest American-owned brewery after the Boston Beer Company, makers of Sam Adamsbeer.⁸ Its headquarters are in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.⁹

So buy american, if you can figure out what that is.

Next time all Detroit All the time! Updates on the house, the Eastern Market and some demolition... oooo POWER TOOLS!

Two weeks of blessings and heat

2011-07-23T15:48:00.001-07:00

But now I'm back in Detroit! under the "heat dome". Kind of like the Thunder Dome but without the fun sports angle.

Before I left and Aislinn arrived and the tree fell over a friend from SF who's traveling around the US on a secret project dropped in and we shared some beers, BBQ and a Giants game! He saw them in Chicago (almost going to Zeros rehab start - he doesn't like him to put it mildly) and then came here and we saw them play a crazy game against the Tigers. Both are leading their divisions so that could be a very interesting World series, at least for me ;~)

OK you non baseball fans can wake up again.

So it's not all head and depression. About 5 min away in Grosse Pointe there is a concert in the square every Thur. evening.

This was a jazz orchestra that was in the area for a festival so they booked them for the night.

Eastern Market today

Carrots and Tomatoes $1 a basket

Plums (the over flow from the other bag), Cherry peppers (YES they are back - I already have them pickling) and limes. $3 for the peppers and the limes - the plums come later.

Blackberries, they pushed them on me $1 a basket.

Romaine lettuce and celery, I think $1 each?

OK this is a bit of a ringer. Aislinn wanted Ricotta and none of the cheese vendors had any so I went to R. Hirt Jr. Co.
They are part of the Eastern Market just not part of the Farmers market.

More peppers, Bell and Poblano, some Roma tomatoes and a few Peaches.

And Plums. The guy was selling them for $2 a flat. The flats were about 2 feet by one foot by three or four plums deep. A Jamaican guy and I were looking knowing we couldn't use that many so we decided to split the flat. So all the plums here and above were $1.

Going back in time a bit.

HHDL - DC

It was scorching outside and freezing in the venue. We were in the Verizon Center and it was close enough to walk from the house, which I did quite a bit.

First day there, carpet is going in and the stage is still under construction.

The Front Of House guys. Mixer on the left and lighting on the right.

The control room for video and projections (JumboTron etc.)
In the back left next to the mixing board is where the streaming was being done. The public talks and teachings were streamed live in English, Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Some portions were also uploaded to YouTube.

If you were at the event you could get headsets and have your choice of nine different translations.

What they are looking at. A bunch of cameras and a computer feed for display announcements, schedules etc.

My little corner, actually a room off the control room. Depending on what was going on I'm recording up to 12 tracks including the three streamed translations.

People liked the shoes ;~)

One of the more difficult parts of the adventure was that His holiness is an early riser and no mater what time the schedule says he starts when he wants and ends when he's done. So it's all very flexible. Most of the time our call was 6am but then he started coming earlier. One day the mixers came really early so they could tune some things and when they arrived at 5am HHDL and a bunch of monks were already in place chanting!

But all worked out and it was nice working with consummate professionals. Sometimes you show up and the guys you have to interface with are doing it because they got the short straw and while they are often nice they really don't know anything about sound. These guys were pros who were very good and VERY easy to work with. I only really deal with sound but from what I heard every one was very impressed with the skills of the crew.

Flying back to Detroit. Wow I live in the midwest!? But hey we are eastern time so maybe that is mideast.

I have a video clip of the house with the audience in, packed to the rafters. If I can figure out how to link it up I will.

Later dayz...

Cheers
SK

HHDL and DC

2011-07-06T19:52:00.001-07:00

So I'm hanging in the house behind the Masonic temple. I hear it features prominently (the temple not the house) in the second sequel to the da Vinci Code (Lost Symbol).

thats the view, the front is more impressive.

This is not a new disaster but the 4th fireworks as seen (and photoed badly by the phone) from the roof patio of this very cool house I'm staying in.

The phone cant deal with the contrast so it looks a bit like a pre vis of what some folks would like DC to look like.

THis is actually painted trim.

you can tell in this next shot

The kitchen has only one drawback. That huge refrigerator/ freezer in the center sounds as industrial as it looks. The stove burners are like a bunch of turkey friers. Those things get HOT FAST.

Next some shots from the venue

A meassage from on high?

2011-07-05T04:11:00.001-07:00

So to start with the latest. I will be doing some catching up because this is
unfortunately our big old Maple tree. Now it's fire wood for some time. That is bad but not as bad as our poor neighbor whose house it landed on.

One branch went right threw his laundry room and the rest ripped off the back of his roof and crushed the deck and kind of wiped the the balcony.

Apparently a lot of people new the tree was rotten and going to fall. Wish this had gotten passed along!

Monty is the only one who really likes the new situation. He can tromp next door and play with the dogs and get treats.

Luckily our neighbor has a good sense of humor.

The storm only lasted a few hours but was a bit too close to a hurricane. Lots of downed trees and 100,000+ with out power. Some places just got the wind and they ended up with fires from the downed power lines. We had so much water so fast that fire wasn't an option, but flooding was. So the tree through your roof is a bigger deal when you also getting a few inches of rain in an hour.

In other news...

For those who remember the studio in it's last colorful stage...

It now looks like IKEA got ahold of it. The floors look great but... It saddens me. Some of those shelves have been with me since the 80's. It was wood and real. Now they looks like some cheap prefab pressboard cookie cutter IKEA junk.
If I had know they would be embarrassed like this I would have taken them down and given them a demise with dignity. I hate it when wood is made to look like Vinyl siding.

OK I'm over it. I knew there would be things like this, there always are. When I was much younger, as in second grade, we moved from one house to the one I mostly grew up in. After it was sold we went back to pick up ? something. Anyway my room was all knotty pine, not the washed down kind that I had later but just the polished wood. So we go in and the new owners are rolling that awful blue green that was everywhere for awhile. Aquamarine puke. All that beautiful wood was going to look like a cheap tract house. Which ever parent was with me must have kicked me to keep me from screaming at them. So this isn't that bad, wasn't great wood but still?

Now in the new disaster home one thing we have planned (big Irony) is removing the white pain that some misguided real-estate agent painted over the 100 year old polished oak trim.

Ah well so it goes.

My internet is dodgy here in DC, but that is another post.

Ah, the good life

2011-06-27T09:22:00.001-07:00

Back to what this is all about, the Detroit Adventure!

So in real need of doing something I wanted to do, I brewed some beer the other day.

This is the bottle tree. It's how you was and sanitize bottles. Oh the joy. Well you have to put it someplace. To be honest this is the second brew day. So I'm bottling the first batch and brewing the second (actually two batches, or really a split batched, that is called a Parti-Gyle).

The carboy in the back with the fermentation-lock is the first batch waiting to be bottled.

So while bottles are being washed the brew pot is going.

I actually didn't document a lot. What is happening is I'm heating water in the metal pot to put in the plastic cooler with a bunch of crushed malt. That does it's thing for an hour or so and then you drain the water out of the cooler and boil that to get what you will ferment. So technically in this photo you see the HLT (Hot Liquor Tank - for some reason water is "liquor" in beer parlance) and the Mash Tun (where the grains soak "Mash") which in my case is also the Lauter Tun (the place you wash the sugars out of the mashed grain). Mashing is really a complex enzymatic process, but for the brewer it's basically just soaking the malt at the right temperature for the right amount of time. The grain does the rest on it's own.

And the bottled first batch. In a couple of days...

So a couple of days later we had rain. Midwest (east?) rain.

This went on for quite awhile and was accompanied by lots O' thunder and lightening.

Out in the hood Monty discovered CHICKENS. Almost as much fun as Squirrels.

And of course there is the Market...

The goodies

Peaches and plums. They ended up with the older plums in a brew made later...

OOOO peppers. They still don't have either the sweet red peppers or the little cheery peppers, but say they should be coming soon. And Carrots for le dog.

I broke down and got some bread. Can't really make any till the kitchen get semi put together. grrr
Oh and some sweets because, well. In the back are some pickled peppers I made up the other day. I need to get a better brine, but still OK.

Strawberries. I got there late and people were working to move stuff, these were $1.50

I though I would try to make some pickles.

And on my way out there was a vendor selling off their hanging pots for $2 a pop so I though I would spruce up the deck a bit.

And if you remember those flats of peppers and herbs...

Basin and Cilantro and a pepper.

Tomatoes and peppers and Rosemary. You cant see it but there is mint also in the two big pots.

The only fatalities I had were the dill. It croaked early and stayed that way so there you go.

The flowers in the front, have been hit heavily by squirrels. I guess they buried stuff around there because they dug up most of the flowers in a week or so. We will have to try something else next time.

As a final shot.

Monty has discovered he likes corn on the cob.

So long from the Big D

Cheers
SK

Warning Will Robinson OT AGAIN!

2011-06-27T08:35:00.001-07:00

A quick and I promise relatively short clarification on the last post.

I actually got feedback on that one so I guess there are some readers ;~)

Apparently it came off as an anti war rant to a bunch of folks, which means I missed my point.

So...

It has nothing to do with whether you think we should or shouldn’t be over there.
The point is that politicians get to play the “war” game and pretend they are at war but they have never declared war.
It’s the perfect political war. The naysayers say it’s un-winnable, what they miss is it’s also un-looseable! There is no metric for a claim either way so whenever you need it to end declare victory and go home. The trick is you have to go home after the victory or people start to squawk.

The folks actually IN the war are woefully under supplied, get no “war” benefits and are the first troops to be in a “for the duration” situation since the last World War.

If you are in the armed forces and are going to be deployed (and want to come back in one piece) you need to spend upward of $6,000 to buy equipment that you should have been provided. This number is from families who have had to do this for members that were deployed not some theorized amount. It’s what it actually costs, if your smart enough to buy it before you leave. It’s a lot more to get it to a member once they are over there.

In the intro to new recruits they are told what model of flack jacket to buy if they want to survive and are given a demo of why what the military issues will get them killed. Again first hand from someone who was there and wrote down the list of things that they HAD to buy.

As expensive as these wars (were in four now, or one with four fronts depending on how you look at it) are they are a fraction of what they should cost because the politicians have shifted a LOT of the expense onto the troops and at the same time yanked many of their benefits.

Someone said “It’s all volunteer and only stupid people are in now”.
God I hope not.
And “volunteer” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s a “non draft” army. A not insignificant portion of the troops are National Guard. They are supposed to mostly go into disaster zones and help out. They didn’t volunteer for combat duty and they don’t get compensated for that. But surprise. Not only have National Guard members been sent overseas but they have been swept up into the “stop loss” in for the duration nightmare. The other group are all those folks in inactive reserve. Turns out if you are an officer being discharged doesn’t do it. You have to specifically “resign” your commission or you are on inactive reserve till you die. A lot didn’t realize this till they got their “draft notice” informing them they were back in. The only real press this got was when they served papers on a 80 year old grandma. I think she got let off.

So volunteering is pretty much like you accept a job with a two year contract and at the end of that they tell you that they have you for life and BTW were cutting your benefits.
If signing a two year contract means your a “volunteer”, well I think some dictionaries need to be altered.

If the press actually educated and everybody knew the facts then there might be an argument for “diminished capacity” with some of the troops. And as much as I would love to lay it at the feet of FOX news, tain’t nobody covering it. You might get a snippet, but it will be sidelined by whatever bit of juicy BS comes around. Ex governors boring email, congressman's twitter accounts... And how much real information can you squeeze into a two minute sound bite between commercials?

My general point was that we are screwing a generation of military personnel. No mater what your position on our current “entanglements” is any reasonable person will concede that at some points there is a need for a military, even if it’s only for humanitarian missions. Once this generation of military comes back and word really gets out about how screwed they were, we may be in a position where only the stupid will join.

Think about that for a few seconds.
Now that IS scary.

Well don’t debate it here. Call a congressman.

...Now back to our regularly scheduled programing...

WE are at war

2011-06-22T20:27:00.001-07:00

I have been sort of barraged by A) reading a great book by a friend on Film Noir and B)re-watching "The War" by Ken burns and by knowing a bit about the current situation because my cousin deals with it.
It doesn't make the news much and the numbers of troops aren't as great but we are at war. The country isn't "mobilized" and the press doesn't cover it much but we do have young men and women who are going through the same kind of hell that the "troops" went through in WWII.
You may not agree with why they are there, I'm with you on that one. But that is a political issue. For the troops, who also may not agree with why we are there, they are just there.

It is a war and we as a nation should be more supportive. Not of the politicians who either put us there or didn't stop us from going there but of the young men and women who are there. They didn't make the decisions they in many cases were in effect drafted. Many are national guard. They were never supposed to leave our soil. They were supposed to be the folks who went into places like New Orleans and helped in times of national stress. But folks who don't have to go let them go to an actual war zone. A place where people die everyday because it IS a war.
These folks are not given the respect and support they deserve. Either from the population as a whole OR the government that, well tricked them into going where they never should be. Even the real troops, the actual military folks who one could argue signed up for the possibility of being sent to a war zone. Because the congress in their collective ... um gutlessness? Not sure of the right word here, never declared war.

So nobody over there gets combat benefits. You hear about the "war on terror" or the "war on drugs" or the war on whatever. But the fact is that through political posturing they have all played like they are at war but never had the guts to actually declare war on anything.

So our, and they are our - wether you agree with the mission or not, troops do not get ANY of the benefits and support that all of our troops have gotten in all other wars. The survivors don't get medical, the families don't get survivors benefits, etc. They are even cutting the GI bill.

It's a bloody crime.

It may be a "fake" war but on the ground it doesn't make any difference. It's very real if folks are shooting at you.

This isn't a partisan stance. Bush may have foisted this on us but the Dems could have made it "real". By not doing so they have left a generation in the wind. There are a lot of people coming back with all the typical war issues, and hey have NO support. Their jobs are not still available, they do not get the medical help they need. And all of us look the other way and hope it will all go away.

It wont. The suicide rate among new veterans is staggering. It turns out that they get an insurance premium if they die within six months but their extra "return pay" lasts less than that. So it actually pays to off ourself in the gap. With no job prospects and families in the lurch this turns out to be a "positive" option for way too many folks. That and "stop loss" that returns folks who should be home for an indeterminate number of redeployments is a powerful motivator for people who just need it to stop.

Indeterminate sentences (a California thing till it was decided that it was unconstitutional) is the standard for the unfortunates that have gotten swept up into this "war".

It just struck me kind of hard because these folks are in the first "your in for the duration" situation since WWII and they are not even in a "war". They are getting all the bad parts of a real war with out any of the support and compensation that they would be getting if we were actually in a declared war. It is in a very real sense a film noir world that was only on the screen before. It's dark and it's awful. It saves money in veterans benefits but what does it cost?

It sort of comes down to do we need an army or a national guard? As pacifist as I am I'm not stupid and I think the answer is yes we do need those groups. We need a military and there are going to be national disasters and so we should have a national guard. If we want them we have to treat them like we want them. I can't imagine anyone going into either right now. Well not if they knew the raw deal they would be getting.

So personally, aside from it being the right thing to do, I think we NEED to deal with this travesty. These folks are at war because OUR representatives sent them there and they should be treated as such. They should get the same benefits and compensation as all other combat troops have gotten. And the national guard should NOT be deployed off our shores.

Yes it will cost some. But that is the nature of war! If we don't want to pay the price then fine, Bring the Troops HOME.

Right now our troops are paying a heavy price for congress having "plausible deniability".

Personally I'm in favor of both. Bring them home AND retroactively give them all combat troop status and benefits.

Personally I don't think they should have gone in the first place but that wasn't THEIR decision and they should not be paying for it.

This is a very bipartisan SNAFU so feel free to contact your representative and congressman and get them to own up. Neither side of the isle has "manned up" to this issue.

Next time I promise to return to Detroit happenings.
Really

Sprung Spring, the Market and BEER!

2011-06-18T10:13:00.001-07:00

Don't think I have shown how the hood has bloomed. You virtually can't see the sky the trees are so thick. Makes it fairly pleasant when it would be a bit scorching otherwise - assuming it can be scorching in 75% humidity.

To Market to market.

Don't think I showed last week. Trying not to torn this into the shopping show. And things have picked up to the point that the Eastern Market is not the Island of positive it once was. It's still great but the contrast is not as great now that I can shower and drink the water and don't have to hide away in the "warm room".

Not sure of all the prices but I came back $25 lighter and that includes a bone for the dog and $1 to some of the musicians playing at the market. Maybe next week I'll take the Flip camera and see if I can capture some of the feel. Pictures somehow don't do it. I hit earlier than my usual scoop the bargains as people pack up time so there were some different vendors and a bunch more people.

It was the last day for Michigan asparagus. I didn't get any because I'm not going to eat that much and I'm still living with a dorm room refrigerator so...

1 lb Mushrooms, 1/2 lb Garlic (and I think this is local - the stuff that has been around was from California!) A couple of large cucumbers (for a salad), limes, tomatoes and in the back plums and a peach. I got some peaches last week but they were a bit hard and now that they have ripened there a little long in the tooth. I saw the plums and thought they would fit into some beer plans (more later) and the guy made me taste the peaches, mmmmmm, so he tossed one in with the plums.

More carrots for the dog and a little over a pound of cherries then in the back is a flat of blueberries and one of Raspberries, one huge bunch of radishes and some lettuce that was grown in Detroit on one of the urban farms.

I've been feeling a little too "meat and potatoes" time to get more vegetation in the diet.

Next week I hope to show some pictures of the studio work. I've been fixing and prepping and it's time to start painting. Then I can start reassembling and maybe get back to some sound work.

But one of the perks to trudging across the country was more sq ft and the chance to get back to brewing beer. I was really enjoying brewing and then I kind of hit a wall with the little nook I had for brewing disappearing and the capabilities of a stove top making all-grain near impossible (try to get 6 gall of water to boil on a conventional stove). So one big step was getting a turkey frier style propane burner (220,000 BTU!), now that can boil water (6 gal under 15 min). So last week I had a plan to do what is called a Parti-Gyle. Basically two batches from one start. I won't get too far into it but you end up with one high gravity beer and one low gravity beer (how high and how low are variable). The idea was to do two four gallon batches and then they would be drinkable by the time I got back from DC.

Well plans have a way of, ah "evolving" and it became one 3.75 gal batch. I tried doing it in the room off the basement that I though would be a good place for such things. It may be some day but not now. It has good ventilation and I had a box fan blowing fresh air in fro m out side and a monoxide detector (the house came with one) so air wasn't a problem. But it's damp down there and kind of moldy so it's not the ideal place to cook something that is going to be microbe friendly and the humidity of boiling down there is kind of overwhelming.

So as soon as the wort (the liquid that becomes beer after the yeast gets through with it) was cooled I got it out of dodge and upstairs.

It smells good and is really finished (very fast) but I'm going to let it clear for a few days before bottling.

It's percolating in the hall closet.

So with history in mind I have plans to try again. This time though I'm going to aim at a more summer fruit beer for the second batch. I'm going to run the old peaches and the plumbs through a juicer (to get rid of most of the pulp) and add that to the second batch. With that added sugar I should be able to make to moderate gravity beers. High gravity beer requires a lot of grain and I just don't have the capacity and the second runnings from a med gravity beer would probably have too little sugar to do anything.

That's the plan anyway. Since the fruit may take a long time to finnish I found a used 5 gal keg that was broken (so nobody wanted it) but is perfect for a long haul secondary fermentor. All stainless and light proof. So after some heavy cleaning it should be good to go.

So long from the Big D.

P.S. Not that I want to promote the competition ;~), but there is another blog that sort of inspired me to do this one. Also by a transplanted Bay Area family. They have been at it longer but he takes more strange shots around the city.

It's Sweet Juniper

Unleaded Please

2011-06-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

The title refers to (no pict) finally getting a water filter installed in the kitchen. I was going to drill a hole in the sink to mount it but the "instant" hot water unit it turns out kind of exploded when it froze. So after sawing the heater off the sink (I'm sure there is a proper way but I couldn't find out how one removed it and even after I sawed it off I can't see how you would take it off) I put the new filter tap where it was. A monster filter that is supposed to remove the lead, mercury, arsenic, you name it. It was a long search for a filter that did what I wanted and didn't cost a fortune in filters, or water. I was drawn at one point to the reverse osmosis filters that are really good. Except you looking at about $60 in filters every six months AND a little thing they don't print in bold, RO filters wash 5 to 10 gallons of water down the drain for every gallon they filter. That just seemed insanely wasteful.
Bottom line I can drink the tap water with out getting a big dose of heavy metals.

This stuff started coming down the other day. Obviously some seed thing but it collects like snow drifts.

It piled up all over the place.

Probably the result of the strange heat wave but? This is a weird part of the world.

If you look close you will notice that the outside temp is 86 and it's 2:43 AM!
I have had just about every weather advisory since I moved here except hurricanes and blizzards. We are probably pretty safe from hurricanes (though they do get a lake version on the great lakes so...) but I'm sure the blizzard is just because I got here too late in the year.

This day it was a heat advisory. A lot of places shut down or went home early. Pretty much all out side work stopped after noon and they closed some of the schools and opened "cooling centers" to keep the death toll down. It only hit about 96 but the humidity was around 60% and the "heat index" was 9.9 on a scale that only goes to 10.
It's all so exciting! I only had to deal with earth quakes before. And in a lot of ways I still do. There is enough bounce in these old floors that when the dog shakes the right way you get a little wiggle and a lifetime of training puts me right into Fight or Flight. It can be really nerve wracking.

I may have complained here about the new (to me) iPhone 3Gs. It has been a royal pain because the screen was staying active so my cheek was accidentally hanging up, muting, launching other apps etc.

Turns out that, well, it's more my fault than Apple's. They moved the sensors that tell when you get close to the phone. The sensors blank the screen and disable the touch function when you have it up to your ear so your cheek doesn't do all those things. I liked my case for the old phone (I find the iPhone really hard to hang onto with it's sleekness and I don't like dropping phones) so I reused it. Any way the old case was blocking the new sensors... So the surgery you see above fixed all the issues. Once I dig out my leather tools I can clean it up a bit so it doesn't look so much like a rodent got to it.

The big adventure was to get my first batch of beer going east of the mississippi. I had big plans of making a brewery out of a hunk of the basement. Well I found out there is a reason it's always damp down there and has the faint aroma of "eau de toilette", but not the french kind.

I was cooling the wort which uses a small but constant stream of water. I used to run it into the garden in SF but I was experimenting with working in the basement. Then I noticed the plug on the site of a long ago removed toilet.

So the sewer backs up and flows up the old toilet and across the floor to the floor drain. That also goes to a sewer line but maybe less clogged?
Isn't that special? I sure think so. Anyway since beer works by having bugs eat sugar I moved the wort upstairs because I don't want to drink what the bugs in the basement might produce.

It's safely bubbling away in a closet upstairs now.

Cheers from the big D

Why the App store is the scariest idea in ...

2011-06-14T11:30:00.001-07:00

If you don't know the "App Store" is Apples bid for world dominance. In theory it will be just like the iPhone App store and you will get (have) to buy all your Mac software through Apple.
Monopolies and restraint of trade aside it's the "just like the iPhone app store" part that is just horrible. If it wasn't for the fact that I got one very cheap and it integrates so well with the Mac OS the iPhone App store is what would keep me from owning an iPhone.

Recent case in point. Someone hacked my Apple ID (what you use to shop through the Apple store). It's one of the least secure ID's around in part because they make you use your email address as your ID so your password is the only line of defense. Why? Well I'm sure it was so it would be simpler and "user friendly", well it is... to would be thief's. Anyway they caught it sort of. They disabled the Apple ID, but not really. They disabled buying or downloading anything to my iPhone the ID was still in full force. As far as I can tell the bad guy (who if it isn't a dead drop I have all the particulars on) could order a Mac or other things he just couldn't download stuff to my iPhone. Since I have that phone it would have been a bit pointless of him to want to. My safety net is that I never have a credit card attached that anyone could buy anything with anyway. But you have to have a card connected!

I don't download a lot of random apps so this is probably not what happened to me. But there have apparently been a bunch of Trojan horse apps on the iPhone App store that do little but mine your info including Apple ID. That wouldn't be shocking except that Apple make developers jump through hoops and makes every app go through Apples approval process. So while Apple is very scrupulous about making sure there are no apps that do things like search for WiFi sites (so you don't have to use up your data), they apparently don't have as big a problem with apps that steal your personal info.

Now I have gone in and changed everything in my account so it should be safe now and I can log in and do whatever but I still can't update any of the apps on the iPhone!

So I'm sending a big WTF to Apple. If I can buy a Mac then I should be able to update apps on the iPhone. But according to an email response from Apple, from some guy in India I think, it could take days to re-enable my Apple ID. But actually the ID is fine it's just the phone...

Back to my point. I don't know about you but having all the software on my computer held hostage while some big corporation meanders its way it's procedures is enough to make me want to kill something. I've had this discussion with various developers because Apple is luring them on in because of the cost savings of not having to have your own store. They are going to go that way even though it means a lot of bad things for the end user. Apple does not allow demos, so you have to buy a pig in a poke. That is OK on the iPhone where $1 will get you an app that you may hate and toss (after it mines your info...). But can you imagine buying a serious app for $$$ and finding out it doesn't work on your system. Also no refunds, returns. Also you don't have a backup. You can back up your drive but a restore requires Apple to reauthorize all the software. Better not be away from the internet or have your ID disabled...
And there are also a bunch of other restrictions that have lead to many of the App store versions not having features that the non App store version has. This will disappear as the only version becomes the App store version.

In theory the plus for users is ease of use and the protection that Apple has checked the software out and it's "safe". Now that #2 is gone is it really that hard to install software? It used to be but now, on a Mac?? Many "installs" amount to dragging the app to your app folder. If you cant do that maybe you need to put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard.

Oh, I'm in Detroit. This blog is about Detroit, sort of. Well I spent way too long on something that should have been a phone call (no people you can talk to can tell you anything but send an email to xxx). and it pisses me off so there you go.

I have some updates coming that are more on topic. In the meantime if you have an Apple ID you might want to pop on it and make sure it hasn't been hacked. There are somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand reported cases (depends who's talking) and there are probably double that number that like me didn't/don't know it.

The Nazi's ruin more than a good mustache

2011-06-05T14:18:00.001-07:00

Despite the title this is not a political post. Just the side effect of folks you really don't like using things that were kind of cool and thus making them unpopular to down right offensive.

WTF? does this have to do with Detroit?

Well I was walking the other day and since the hood was all cleaned up for the big house and garden tour I noticed these stamps in the sidewalk.

Of course this creeps one out a bit till I realized that it's 1914 and that was before the Nazi existed.

So a little Googling and it turns out that the old Swastika was a very popular symbol in the west.

In fact the it was used all the time. It was a symbol for a car company, state highways in Arizona, a theatre in Sausalito California was named the "Swastika Theater".

Maybe most interesting was the military use.

Original insignia of the 45th Infantry Division (from the American Indian symbol).

The 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army used a yellow swastika on a red background as a unit symbol until the 1930s, when it was switched to a thunderbird. The American Division wore the swastika patch while fighting against Germany in World War I.
The Lafayette Escadrille squadron flew World War I fighters against Germany from 1916 to 1918, first as volunteers under French command and later as a US unit. The official squadron insignia was a Native American with a swastika adorned headdress. Some of the squadron planes also bore a large swastika in addition to the squadron insignia.
Among the Lafayette Escadrille members who were killed in action was Arthur Bluethenthal of Wilmington, North Carolina, who is buried in a Jewish cemetery with a grave marker that includes the squadron insignia, complete with swastika
The U.S. Army 12th Infantry Regiment coat of arms includes a number of historic symbols. A tepee with small, left facing swastikas represents the unit's campaigns in the Indian Wars of the late 19th century. The Regiment fought German forces during World War II, landing on D-Day at Utah Beach, through five European campaigns and received a Presidential Unit Citation for action during the Battle of the Bulge.

There is a lot more but you can check it out here

I was going to post yesterday about how Detroit bait and switched us on the weather, but considering what the mid west has gone through in the last month it doesn't seem like much to gripe about.

So I will leave with some shots of houses that are probably available for not too much in the hood.

This is the one I saw listed for $24,900

The current listings

And this very cool house with a roof deck (and I'm pretty sure not on the market).

And of course a dog in jail.

Plumbers gone and the Eastern Market

2011-05-29T13:37:00.001-07:00

So the Plumbers finally wrapped up. And then I found another leaking sewer pipe. It's a little leak and it's on the sewer from the bathroom that hasn't been used... So I will investigate and see how bad it looks, maybe we can just patch it. Otherwise I think it means ripping up two bathrooms to get to everything that needs getting to. This is also another case of the previous bozos (see how I'm keeping this PG) cheaping out. They redid the bathroom in question. They had it all exposed and should have replaced the 100 year old sewer line that BTW showed signs of leaking. They knew that because they patched the ceiling where it had been leaking!

Anyway I have a small list of things to do and then all the bathrooms will be 100%, not counting this sewer line that may need to get replaced.

But as always the Eastern Market shined up the week.

Next weekend is this house and garden tour through Indian Village so I got some flowers to liven up the front. I could let people in as a "before" experience ;~) I don't think it's quite the image they want to convey.

So stuck them around the tree (that I now suspect may be an almond tree).

And around the front shrubs.
I have a very brown thumb so I kind of doubt they will last much beyond next weekend but? Maybe Aislinn will arrive in time to save them.

Ho right prices, they were $8 a flat. So about like buying cut flowers for the day.

Also got a bunch more herbs. I like plants I can eat. Actually there are some tomatoes and a bunch of peppers in there also.
$20 a flat

Potatoes and Garlic. $1 each I think. Maybe $2 for the spuds?

Peaches $2

In the back is a mix of honey tangerines and Oranges $4 for the lot. To the left are those cherry peppers that are just a bit hot but oh so tasty $2 and the jar is an extravagance. I read about these brothers that make pickles from their grandfathers recipe. They both have other jobs because this is a small company. Anyway the Eastern market is one of the few places outside a restaurant you can buy them. Wow. I like pickles but I'm not fanatic about it but these are GREAT. I think it was $7, so it definitely won't be a regular thing.

Carrots and some more of that great "German Bacon" and some Italian sausage from the same farm. Your literally buying from the people who raised the hogs. I think $2, $3.75, $3.50 respectfully. The meat was about a pound and that was the per pount price.

Carrots and onions. Yes I know I already bought carrots but the dog goes through them and these were $1 a basket so... The onions were also $1.

One note about yard work. One should always do it in 70/70 weather, it cleans the pores. And you should always plant a lot of grass around old trees. That way all those twigs are in a good location for mowing.

The tree in front sheds more twigs than??? I filled three yard bags with stuff that fell off that tree and that does not include the big sticks that I save so Monty can turn them into wood chips.

Well I'm off to take a shower, cuz I can!

There is never an Ark around when you need one

2011-05-26T06:38:00.001-07:00

We had a little rain yesterday and the basement leaks a bit.

but then we had more rain.

and more

and then it got heavy

Kind of dark but it was coming through the bricks like we had installed plumbing!

The sewer backed up and the basement started filling, no shots because I was busy plunging at that point.

A nice shot of lake Seminole under the deck.

I think it's safe to say waterproofing the basement just made the big list.

Plumb interesting and Superman safety

2011-05-23T14:51:00.001-07:00

Now I'm not getting homey, just puny*.

So I think I mentioned I plunged the bathtub, it wasn't draining, and ended up with dripping water in the entryway. So today they they dug in and found something none of them had ever seen before.

This is a custom made piece of lead pipe. It's a specially made Y that shrinks down to fit into the top of some very weird cast iron piece. If you look close you can see the brush strokes in the lead where the Y was formed. And it's still shinny after 100 years or so...

Now what turns out to be leaking is what is called a barrel trap. You can see the bottom of it here.

This is also lead and has some other custom made piping that goes into the bath tub.

That is shown here.

The part that snakes over to the tub drain (just over the armored cable and below the 100 year old hay) is not even round. It's an oval so it could fit in the space needed. And it goes up inside the the drain feed from the tub.

Anyway the short story is that this stuff is not replaceable, at all. You would have to redo it in lead, which you probably can't even legally do these days. I guess if you tore this stuff out of the floor with out damaging it you could get someone to custom cast a plastic replacement for $$$$. And you might just get away with it (I'm sure it's not code) since this is a "historical building" but I haven't won the lottery recently so...

The reason to not just rip out all the old junk is this very cool old bath tub with original fixtures. If we rip out the pipes below the fixtures will have to go and as you can sort of see here.

The fixtures were made for this tub, so getting rid of the fixtures means getting rid of the tub. Since this is the only pretty intact original (or close) bathroom that is something we are trying to avoid.

This is the enamel toilet that is also original.

And this is the sink. Also enameled Iron. The tubs stopper should have a know that looks like this one on the sink.

Anyway our star plumber is going to try and chip away the concrete subfloor around the barrel trap and see if they can find the leak and then seal it up with epoxy. The fresh water feeds also appear to have some pinhole leaks someplace so that portion is going to PEX. In theory this should all hold together till we win the lottery and can redo the bathroom.

OK so some progress shots.

New PEX to the Bathroom #2

This is also the bathroom that got the second new sewer line.

This looks sort of like it did except that at the top it used to go into cast iron (the collapsed Elbow) and below it used to go into a cast iron bell fitting.

Now it goes plastic into the basement and makes a proper connection to the old pipe.

While we are down here let me show you something interesting.

We were wondering what all the dirt build up in the sink was from.

Here is some scraped off.

I snaked the drain and we have roots to clean out. The mess in the sink is what comes out of the back end of a garbage disposal. The kitchen sink backs up in the basement sinks.

But that also lead to another discovery.

Out lovely predecessors in their ever cheap single cheeked way didn't put a vent on the kitchen sink so the P trap gets syphoned out and you get a lovely direct connect to sewer gasses.

OK last of all.

It was supposed to rain but since it was sunny instead I mowed the lawn, my god does this stuff grow around here. So I finish, the plumbers are off because they need to let some things set and suddenly it starts getting dark. It's four so?

three minutes later the wind is howling and lightning and it's coming down in sheets.

Yes that is water dripping off the blinds. The window was open and the wind blew the rain right threw the screen and inside. It was a mad sprint to check all the other windows.

Monty has found a new "thunder safe zone"

I wonder if he would put up with a bath to avoid thunder???

The rain stopped but it still sounds like a naval assault out side.

Oh and we got some Big ants around here.

*The pun for those that didn't get it. The word Plumbing comes from the fact that most plumbing originally was made from lead and the latin word for lead is Plumbum. Plumbers were lead workers.

Lead was the one thing you could stick Kryptonite in so it wouldn't weaken Superman, but you knew that.

The house crawls on but the Eastern Market saves the post

2011-05-21T12:57:00.001-07:00

OK so the bad news. I tried to take a bath in the "newly working" "blue" bathroom and all was well till I tried to empty the tub, which just would not drain. So I got a plunger and got that baby going. Great.... except that uncovered a leak in the drain someplace because it was dripping in the entryway! GRRRGRAHGRRRR!!!! So that has to be opened up farther to find where the "new" leak is coming from. I went and got a shower curtain because I though better test that while were ripping things up. But I forgot the rings! So maybe later I'll go and see if I can get some. I'm a bit dubious about the shower looking at some of the "repair" that was done to the tiles but better find out now. Probably won't fix it now if it's a problem just because of the logistics?

I bought a lawn mower the other day. Doesn't sound exciting but it's actually the first lawn mower I have ever owned. If you told me a year ago that I would spend more than a nanosecond in the rest of my life thinking about Lawn Care I would have laughed in your face. It's a gas powered beast with drive wheels, huiour! (Tim Allen moment). I resisted but this is a BIG place with a lot of lawn and it was/is growing like it's been radiated. Even with the monster it took two hours to do it all. The last lawn mower I used I was in high school and it was cast iron and wood. It was probably about the same vintage as the Model T's that made Detroit famous. If there was any resistance it just slid across the grass.

Anyway considering that today the dandelions were about six inches tall (in less than 24 hours) I'm guessing I'm going to get good at cutting lawn.

But the saving grace of the week is the Eastern Market. I read someplace this week that food is becoming a big thing in Detroit. It would be very ironic if I moved from the last new big food place to the next new big food place. Maybe that is what I need to get into?

So this is this weeks haul. $20 in food and $10.75 in plants

Organic Tomatoes, $3 a box

Bell peppers 3 for $1, green onion 2 for $1

Georgia peaches, $2 a basket. Don't know the weight but this is a basket.

Cheery peppers and limes, $3 a basket and 4 for $2

Cucumbers $1 a basket

Raspberries, 3 baskets $2

Lemon bars $1 each (about 3" square

And the splurge. Rosemary $7 for the pot and Basil $1.25 a piece.

I'll have to try and keep the later ones alive. But I'm making Gazpacho this afternoon.

And berries for desert.

I may have to make pasta sauce for tomorrow.

The one thing about most of this produce is that it's ripe. So keeping it a week is about as far as you can stretch it. Some things hold up better than others but the berries are not going to last and the tomatoes... So you kind of have to plan your meals around the shelf life.

I need to find a mid week shop, though the Eastern Market is going to start happening Tue. also so?

The reason is that there aren't any real food stores I have found. One can go to Grose Point and hit the Trader Joe's but remember my $1 strawberries, they are $2.75 at TJ's.

So while in the Bay Area TJ's was often around the same as the Farmers market here the Market is THE discount place to buy produce. Actually not just produce there are farms selling meat and eggs, bakeries selling all kinds of stuff and the local Coffee Roaster has a stand.

I also have not found an asian market yet, though Hamtramck probably has one. TJ did have Ginger but things like sweet pepper sauce and toasted sesame oil may be things we need to get in care packages from SF.

off to cook.

Seatle but with more rain

2011-05-18T10:32:00.001-07:00

I think we have been victims of bate and Switch!

So after a touch of spring weather we got a bunch of rain and are back to near freezing temperatures (40's but feels like 30's). It's been almost a week since I saw any real sun, I could be living in the Sunset!!!!

However I need to mow the lawn soon. It got nice and green, then had some dandelions and something small and blue scattered about and then boom it looks like an abandoned lot. That was way too fast. I though I had some time but I guess not.

On the generally depressing front, more destruction.

A little roadrash.

The entrance way with the old bad sewer line exposed. Aside from the crack in the basement it also had cracks in the upper section and the elbow was all caved in. This wasn't freeze damage but a problem that someone tried to cover up and forget about back when they were trying to sell the house when the market was up.

The newly expanded openings in the "Parlor" room to try and get to the last bathroom that needs re plumbing.

OPening this up they discovered that the sewer line elbow is collapsed like the entryway.

So time to open up the Kitchen!

Darn there is a cabinet in the way. Well a bit of deconstruction and some yanking and it gets separated from the wall. and surgery can start on the wall.

Well looky here. They had a problem and replaced pipe, well at least till it got complicated. Then buried it and left it for the new owners to figure out.
Of interest in the first one is that they did something you "can't do" and that is stick a plastic pipe into a cast iron bell fitting. There is just no way to truly seal that mess. But heck it was easier.

On the it's getting better front.

The new front sewer line in the entrance and in the basement.
So now with some internal toilet repairs we should have three working bathrooms. Though #1 is actually out of commission again because it feeds the same sewer pipe that we just found broken in the kitchen. It's still usable since it doesn't actually go through the broken pipe but why take chances.

And looking up into the kitchen from the basement.

But the warm room is still warm and we have running water.
And I finally have real internet service.

The Ugly, The Bad, and the Good

2011-05-10T14:05:00.001-07:00

So we started with a few select holes, easy to patch.

But then the second bathroom had burst pipes and well more surgery was needed.

Just add water, raining down and...

You have the after shot. Well we had moped up the water by now.

Doesn't look so bad but it's running down from the floor above and this is actual plaster work so it's going to need repair probably once it finally dries out.

Ah and for those of you from the Bay Area this is what a burst copper pipe looks like.

Another one

And more. Except this one is going to the radiator in the bathroom so we are just leaving this for the heating folks to replace.

You can see the bulge at the top.

and another one on the left pipe.
Basically these pipes (both hot and cold) had bursts every foot or so. They tried to patch repair but it became obvious (after they ripped open more of the celling that is was futile. So the whole bathroom will need to be re-plumbed.

More openings. In this one you can look down to the first floor passed the burst plumbing.

This is actually more good than bad. A clean hole with the new plumbing to the third floor. Neat and tidy and no leaks!

THis hole that was not used much for the third floor turns out to be nec. for the second floor.

OK enough Bad and Ugly.

Despite the holes, it really only affects two rooms and two closets.

Actually after these shots we found that a sewer line we though was only cracked in the basement is actually split much higher up and we will be opening up the wall and celling of the entry way. But still considering two bathrooms with burst pipes and a third with a split sewer pipe not nearly the deconstruction that might have been needed.

Of course we haven't touched the heating yet and that is all water also...

BUT
The trees are all "a bloom"

The dog is happy, when there isn't any thunder.

We have squirrels

WE have actual garbage collection happening (with the biggest can I have ever seen (96 gal.)).

We had a visitor to the deck.

It's "Flower day" weekend (Sun. is the official day)

These are part of one section. There are six sheds I think and for the weekend it spreads out into the street. There were two bandstands going while I was there, quite a few BBQ pits fired up and a ton of people.

The food stalls were kind of skimpy because they were pushed out by all the flower and herb vendors, but it's still impressive what you can pick up for under $20, including but not shown a smoked ham bone for you know who. I got carried away with the lemon bar and brownies but they forced them on me for $1 a piece. Strawberries $1/ lbs, black berries two baskets for $3. Most stuff is sold by volume not weight so it's hard to say what the $/lbs is on many things but I do know that these prices are very good. What is a little weird is that some of this stuff isn't in season here yet so it's coming from other places. The strawberries for instance are from California. So how is it that they are cheaper here than in CA? It's a puzzlement.

Cheers from D

Oh and another positive. I have one fully functional bathroom and have hot water, so bathing isn't a once a week luxury any more!

We are finally getting out of the "camping" and into the "living" stage.

Stunning restriction

2011-05-09T19:05:00.001-07:00

A question came up and I checked. So non lethal weapons are illegal in Michigan.

Well it's a bit in flux since a judge has stated that stun guns fall under the same category as real guns so it's unconstitutional to ban one while allowing the other. So now it's off to higher courts.

Hey I'm from California so totally nonsensical laws are not a stranger. I just figured that maybe Michigan would be less whacko than CA, and it is a bit but not always.

While were on the topic of weirdness.

Some asked about the title of the blog.

One interesting thing I came across in the move is the different "types" of residents. There are those who don't really like where they are and are shocked that someone would move there. There are those that love where they are and cant imagine anyone moving away from there. And there are those that are in love with some other place, they don't think there place is so bad but they really want to live XYZ. And there are those that think XYZ is a terrible place and nobody should want to live there.

The interesting part is that the later two groups have generally never lived or spent much time in the place they are focused on. Most folks who have a big problem with Detroit have never lived there, some have never even visited. By the same token I found a number infatuated with the Bay Area who had either never been there or had dropped in for a day or two.

I found a bunch of reactions to the move. Folks in Detroit mostly seemed to be big boosters though there were some that had a big love of the Bay Area. And I ran in to a lot in the Bay Area that were "how could you live anywhere else?". And strange as it seems a few from the Bay Area that were very excited about Detroit in general. Basically all the folks who actually live where they talk about are right and the others are a bit delusional. It's all a mater of perspective and comfort level. If you don't like "Urban" you wont like Detroit, but you probably wont like San Francisco either. If you love "Urban" then both have a lot going for them. Both have a lot of "culture" and plenty of things to do. Both have some really good food (the Bay area may have an edge), both have a rich musical heritage and active scene (but Detroit probably has the edge). They both have a colorful history, loaded with hard work and flamboyant crooks.

The biggest differences in a lot of ways is that Detroit was built on Industry (and that has taken a possibly fatal plunge), and the big money in the bay Area has managed to move into .com and BioTech. (they have had busts but not as long and not as sustained). But Michigan could get on the right new wave and CA could miss a step and the situation could flip fast.

So there were a lot of prospective titles and a bunch had to do with leaving a "perfect" place to go elsewhere. But I have never subscribed to the Bay Area being the "end all" maybe because I grew up there. Yes I like it but it has problems also, it is far from perfect. And then there is this (also very incorrect) perception of the Bay Area as some kind of decadent Sodom and Gamora. But a term that has been used by both is "Babylon by the Bay". Those who think California is the epitome of evil and the San Francisco Bay Area as the epicenter and those that feel it is how everywhere should be have both used the term. So I thought it was appropriate. "Bug'n out" is actually a term I heard on M.A.S.H. It's a military term for pulling up stakes and moving camp on short notice. Hence Bug'n out of Babylon.

So to the point. The Bay Area is not the "end all", neither is Detroit. Both have things going for them and both have issues. What they have in common are some fantastic people who love their Cities.

I though I would also mention politics. It will come up now and again because it's a blog about my move and the MY part is somewhat political. In case you were trying to figure it out I'm kind of in the middle, well the old middle. The new middle has William F. Buckley as a lefty. Mostly I support integrity and neither party has a lock on that (nor generally a lot to spare). I have a lot of respect for folks with integrity whether or not I agree with their politics. I would rather have an honest person who I disagree with in office than a dishonest one who says everything I want to hear.

So both parties hate me, I'm very hard to "campaign" to. Anyway I though I would mention that because some have been confused. The blog is about life and sometimes politics comes in and messes with life so a bit here and there is going to leak in. I Hate misinformation so I generally hate all "political" messages. And that confuses people no end. I dislike the misinformation by the left as much as I dislike it from the right. I was brought up to believe that the End NEVER justifies the means and I try to use that yardstick.

My mother had what she called "the rump test" for entertainment (if you started squirming in your seat they blew it.

I have the "used car test". Would I feel safe buying a used car from whoever is trying to sell me XYZ. If you try that out on most politicians ..., well most don't fair too well.

But the IMPORTANT NEWS is that I may have real actual running water tomorow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a fair amount of wall and ceiling punctures and stress and words I can't put in the blog it looks like the piles have made it to the third floor!

Sorry for all the !!! but it's been three weeks with out running water and well it IS a BIG DEAL!

Heat is the next hurtle. Not that we are going to need heat but we need for all the water bearing pipes to be checked and signed off on.

Then I can start to unpack and fix up, etc.

I look forward to the shift from camping in the house to living in the house.

Sorry no pictures. Next time.

-30-

Cheers
SK

Shots of the hood

2011-05-05T14:14:00.001-07:00

So I said spring had sprung, so here are some shots around the hood.

I don't know what this tree is. It looked like cheery blossoms till I got close. The flowers are more like a Tulip.

And just in case we thought our house was big I found this one for sale

the front

This is from the detached garage and you can see a bit of the back of the house

That is the back of the garage on the right everything else is part of the yard...

were at the edge of the back yard now. I'm guessing the lot is an acre to an acre and a third. Yowsa.

Oh and on that street they have actual gas streetlights!

well back to the "bungalow" ;~)

Cheers
SK

Actual progress and the fall of Legal Tender

2011-05-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

Well after lots of adventure I finally got all the paperwork out of the way and we will get a garbage can soon! The city it turns out doesn't accept cash, or checks, or credit cards, or debit cards. They want Money orders or cashiers checks only!?

Now how a government office can not accept something the clearly states "Legal tender for all debts public and private" issued by the feds I don't know. But similar restrictions have been upheld in other states. I was all fired up to fight city hall but others had beaten me to it and (fire up the Reggae beat) they "fought the law and the law won". So I had to go get a money order for first time since I was a little kid ordering smoke bombs and "X-RAY" glasses from the back cover of comic books.

So "legal tender" isn't any more in this country. Kind of interesting since this is exactly the kind of issue that the civil war was fought over. The "free the slaves" was a nice after the fact PR move but states rights VS the Feds power was what the war was fought over. And now after all these years we have cities that won't accept federal currency for debts. It might seem like a small thing but there are a lot of small things and one has to wonder if they will end up making one big thing.

Same sex marriage is another "small thing". From a legal stand point marriage is just another contract. Part of being one of the United States is that all states have to honor other states contracts. If this were not true interstate commerce would cease to exist since crossing a state line would mean the ownership of the cargo was void. But if your gay and you get legally married in one state other states don't recognize that "contract". Legally they should not have a choice.

It's a direction that I have noticed for some time and it worries me a bit since the last time there was this split with state interests VS the Fed it didn't turn out so well for anyone.

OK back on point!

I got the gate fixed so no more bungee cords!!!
Plumbers arrive at 7am Mon. and actual hot and cold running water should be on the menu by Wed

I have camped in the Sierras and I have camped in a house, the mountains win.

And heat. They also show up Mon. at 7am but it will probably take a week or two to get it all up and running.

Then we can start to really dry out the place and start setting up and fixing up.

Oh and spring has sprung. The trees were all bare and then I went out and boom, they were all covered in new growth.

the 24th

the 28th

I don't have a current shot but I'll walk the dog and bring some back. There are cherry trees in bloom and it's looking quite lush at the moment.

this is of course a flip from California where it's green in the winter and spring is OK but summer tends to be fairly brown.

Oh and the air mattress, in my campsite sprung a leak the other day.

Le dog who loves to sleep on it.

worked very hard to stay on the sinking ship.

but finally had to bail and head off to his own bed.

I found the hole and the patch seems to be holding. A new "real" mattress arrives Fri. so not too long to hold out.

Oh and we got the garage doors all working. One more step until we can really "move in" as opposed to "camp out".

And it looks like I'm going to have to do yard work, actual yard kind of work like mowing lawn and doing whatever else you do to keep it green and not a back lot.

OK back to the trenches

Toilets, toilets, everywhere and not a place to sit

2011-04-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

You though I was going to go for it didn't you. Well I try to keep this fairly PG. Inspections and pipes and leaks... We have four full bathrooms and not a working toilet in sight. Or bath or sink etc. I'm beginning to think fondly of outhouses and hand pumps. And really with a lead water main how much worse could the well water be? Actually a whole lot worse so we won't go there.

Anyway Plumbers are on the way.

I just hope they don't get swept away in the storms. We had a Tornado watch last night till 10pm, my first!

No joy though, or actually lots of joy no tornado.

Apparently the ones that were coming our way were particularly fun. Big long tornado followed by lightening thunder torrential rain and golf ball sized hail. Now that is FUN.

We just had the lightening and thunder and torrential rain (though not nearly as torrential as the folks to the south) and some howling wind. Only lost a few small tree parts. The beast has been looking for someplace to dig into and hide from it all. Downstairs in a cave of boxes seems to be the best he can do. He left the room with a look at me that said "only a fool stays above ground in weather like this!". And with a "so long sucka" he trotted off to find a cave.

I need to see if I can dig out the recorder because we are getting some nice wind and hardly anybody is out making noise.

Foghorns in the moonlight, playing for you all night

2011-04-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

OK, it's a steal of sorts from a song, but can you name it???

So I heard them last night but they were really going this morning. But it's not SF???? Well Det. is on the river and we have some heavy fog right now so... No buoy bells though.

The goal is to get the house looked over by someone who will spot problems that we haven't caught. Get an actual time for a plumber to look at/ fix at least the kitchen and one bathroom. Get a firm time from Comcast and get a garbage can.

Now since the city "inspected" and declared the house "habitable" you might be wondering why there are so many basics that are not working. Me too. Though it was explained to me that since municipal inspectors are not liable for anything they say they will often say whatever is easiest. There is probably a lot of push to declare anything that anybody is talking about inhabiting "habitable". And how are you going to tax an uninhabitable house?

Hey another fun fact. Michigan is a "right to carry" state so basically unless they can prove you shouldn't have a gun you can buy one. You need a permit to buy a hand gun but rifles and shotguns are free of even that.

Concealed weapons are a different matter, you have to not be a convicted felon and pass a safety test with a score over 70%.

Well I need to get packin ;~)

BTW "Tuba's in the Moonlight" - Bonzo Bog Band

At the whims of WiFi mooching

2011-04-25T14:16:00.001-07:00

Till I get Comcast out to actually get a real internet feed to the campsite, I'll call it a house once some basics finally get working - like indoor plumbing, I'm "dependent on the kindness of strangers" (though I Blanch to say so).

So postings are erratic as is email and all things web related. Ironically the 3GS which in a lot of ways I like a lot less than the original iPhone seems to find WiFi just about everywhere. Now is Apple would put some SPAM filtering on the mobile mail so it was of any use!

For some reason the 3GS has the same problem with cases and the proximity sensor, you don't get the screen back when it comes away from your face (till to take it out of the case). But has added some new twists. The touch screen is now very sensitive and is active even when the proximity sensor says you have it up to your head??? The result is that I am forever hitting MUTE or pause (what the heck is that???) when I use it like a phone. Obviously the testing was done almost exclusively with ear buds or bluetooth. You can use it with out a case but it's like holding an ice cube, very slippery, so that isn't very recommended. I just can't figure out where the logic is in killing the display but leaving it active
However it apparently has a much better Wifi antenna that a MBP, so there ya go.

The other day we had SUN! and I was pleased to see the weather was better than the Bay Area.

But it didn't last and we are now back to grey chilly and wet.

But Sunday, Easter, I saw my first Cardinal, the bird not the guy in a funny hat. The Bay Area has a lot of colorful things but the birds are generally Black to gray to dirty white (crow, pigeon, seagull respectively). So the blazing red of the Cardinal was quite a nice surprise. We actually saw three yesterday!

I forgot to mention that the other day I went to the last meeting for the season of "Open City - Detroit". It's a sort of group of small businesses or want to be small business. It was good but they met at Cliff Bell's and that was very cool.

And I found out that the symphony is selling tickets for $20!

Now if I can just get a working toilet life will be looking up.

Another day in search of a bath

2011-04-23T09:48:00.001-07:00

Another sunny ~~day~~ morning. I was going to use that as the title but apparently titles cant have strike-though letters...

Anyway I woke up to most of the windows in the house all fogged over.
Turns out the fog was on the outside. It's warm and humid (80%) and the house is so cold that the out side of all the windows (except the "warm room") frosted over.

I thought I would open everything up and warm up the place. That might have been a mistake since just about every surface instantly had condensation on it...

But I figure if I let it air long enough it should balance out and dry up. One can hope anyway.

I cleaned out the garage gutters which were full to over flowing with compost. In fact there were a few plants that had taken root up there. But it looks better and maybe the rain coming will wash them out.

The beast has been grazing all morning and after helping clean the gutters needed to relax.

I should drop by the Eastern Market today just because. But the big quest is to get to this hot tub place I found and soak the last week off. I hope they have a shower or I may leave a ring.

I also found a cool recourse. Habitat for Humanity has retail outlets! That are open to the public.

** side note there have been a stack load of fire trucks flying by out side. They don't seem to be stopping close by but??? Considering how understaffed the DFD is it must be a fairly big deal to get this many heading to the same place. **

Back to HfH. They sell all kinds of stuff at a big discount. Nothing is regularly stocked so you have to hunt often if your looking for something specific but still.

This may be a solution to the electric stove also since they just started selling tested and guaranteed appliances. And they will take old ones so maybe a good place to dump the old electric stove, space wasting dishwasher and electric water heater (seriously... Don't know what those guys were thinking.

Well off to soak, I hope.

O'h one other weird thing I have found is that almost no companies have web sites out here. Big ones and chains yes but hardly any local shops. I'm so used in the Bay Area to checking a places web site to see if they really are likely to have what I want. I can see some places not having one but none of the local computer stores have a web site! Gives one pause.

OK now I'm really gone.

Some interesting views of this city

2011-04-22T09:17:00.001-07:00

This is a "making of" on a a music video. Since it's youTube you can see the music video also but the making of is more informative.

This is another one with a different twist.

WE are not in quite such a heavy rebuild, but turns out there are some burst pipes so ... First the roof before the forecast 4-5 inches of rain in the next 9 days or so and then I NEED to get some indoor plumbing working!

AS for us we had a sunny day yesterday so the beast was happy.

And I got to clear out the vines that lived on the roof of the garage till the winds brought them down.

Once we get another dry day I can get all the rest of the junk off the roof.

Our contractor cleared a bunch off the main roof when he took a look at the wind damage. So it's better but we need to get it patched ASAP.

I'll be moving a bunch of stuff around because we are going to have to open some walls and ceilings tracking down the burst pipes.

So much for the assumption that the place was winterized in time!

Not sure if this is a bad cleaning job or there was a bit of a water fall

You only really see it with the light skimming it so?

However there are some other signs of water or age.

This is the same wall from a different angle and you can see where the plaster has puffed out.

It might just be age and the sad fact that it's been empty for a couple of years so has had some big temp swings. And the idiots who had it last did a lot of stupid things to the house. They were apparently hot on "doing it themselves". I'm not opposed to that since I intend to do a lot of the work my self. BUT you should have at least some basic knowledge of what your trying to do and these doofuses as far as I can tell didn't know a screw from a nail. So everything they touched one needs to recheck. Subtle things like they disconnected the ground to the house, connected copper to steel pipe with out dielectric unions, nailed and screwed things into plaster walls. Just a heads up to all you would-be fixer-uppers, plaster has pretty much zero strength. You NEED to go into wood or something structural or it will all come down the minute it has weight and a wiggle. One thing the had up with two aluminum roofing nails, it came off when I touched it. This closet "improvement" didn't fair much better.

As you can see 1/4" of sheetrock screw into old plaster is falls a little below building standards.

But now I'm getting into a new branch. The This Old Detroit House, think PBS will pick us up?

Boxes, boxes everywhere and not a place to sit

2011-04-19T20:08:00.001-07:00

So I have made a dent but...
Not enough to brag about

So I will be digging out of this for some time...

Water is connected. Tomorrow a Bath??? Monty hopes so.

We can't just turn it on because there is no telling if and where there may be burst pipes so we need to do it slowly and check for leaks.

Another "surprise" is that our water main is made of ... lead.

That is apparently common in these old houses.

That filter on the drinking water just moved up a notch. There probably isn't much that can be leached out of the pipes after 102 years but maybe I'll just not find out.

I went to a meeting of Open City Detroit. It's a group of small business and start up entrepreneurs. It was interesting, and one of the main folks it turns out lives in our hood! And it looks like Meg White apparently throws some very nice parties. So goodies on the horizon. Also maybe tomorrow I can get to the post office and pick up a goodie package from SF!

Well Go GIANTS!
and so long from the big D.

Film incentives the right and the wrong

2011-04-19T19:45:00.001-07:00

Seems OT but it either goes here or in the sound BLOG and since it's a VERY hot item here in the big D here is where it goes.

Michigan may do away (essentially) with it's film incentives. California got a touch but it's getting fought so?

Since I have moved to MI I'll focus on the logistics here but this really applies to all states.

There are two papers that get dragged out and held up to prove film incentives cost money.

The first is this one Film Incentives Report

It's by the "Tax Foundation" which used to be reputable but then got bought by the Heritage foundation. They fired all the economists and it now is used to churn out what ever report they want to support their causes.

The second one is State film subsidies

A report by a supposedly OK outfit named Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

However it reads like a rewrite of the first and and uses the same erroneous arguments. So?

There are a few points that the folks supporting the incentives can't seem to get across to the general public. The anti incentives folks have set the argument and the pro folks are doing what the dems have done for years, defend against stupid accusations.

It seems to be a right wing thing to go after film incentives and the only reason I can think of is it's easy press to link them to.

Hollywood "liberals", which becomes a kind of code for all of "those people".

The arguments all come down to:

And how "we" should not be paying "them" all this money.
And all the best jobs go out of state.

The implication is that the state is giving money out of it's treasury to subsides the film industry.

The thing is EVEN IF the incentives all went to "those people" the states still make a bunch of money.

But we are talking TAX incentives.
The production pays a stack of cash in taxes to the state and when all the bookkeeping is done (a year or two down the pike) the production gets a refund.

It's not a subsidy it's a tax refund.

The "money" the state pays to the production is a slice of what the production payed to the state in the first place.

The only way this ends up costing the state anything is if you assume that all the films would have shot there anyway. Judging by the number of projects that pulled out of Michigan on the threat of the incentives getting curtailed that is an obviously wrong assumption for just about any state.

And lets get back to "those people". Yes "those Hollywood" types are going to be the headliners but they are also a drop in the bucket of film jobs.

I have news for you the majority of people in the film biz are not any of "those people". Hollywood power is smack in the middle of Orange County. One of the most conservative areas in the US. Hollywood was home to Charlton Heston and Ronald Reagan.

What is very ironic is that most of the jobs on a film are trades jobs. Carpenters, painters, electricians, metal workers, Teamsters, etc. A lot of these folks are very blue collar and pretty conservative. Many of the "flaming liberals" that get dragged out are actors. Actors are generally 1%-5% of the people working on a film. I have met more NRA members in film than ACLU members.

It's cracking me up the spell checker keeps wanting to change Charlton into Charlatan. But I digress.

For a state with incentives this could mean hundreds of jobs hired locally. And true IF you don't have local talent in the "best job" category then your not going to get many of those jobs.

But that is exactly why the state gives out "tax credits" to all kinds of businesses and even out right subsides. To grow your local talent pool and to keep businesses in your state.

And with out the incentives you don't even get the "worst jobs" (which in film generally pay pretty darn good).

Lets take a look at Michigan's budget. Now it has been claimed that Michigan "paid out" $100,000,000 in incentives. If that is true then they collected $238,095,238 in taxes, hung on to them for a year or so and then kept $138,095,238.

i.e. Michigan MADE 138,095,238, it didn't loose $100,000,000.

Look at it this way if you pay me a dollar and eventually I have to give you 42 cents back who is benefiting? I mean if the state wants to make the reverse deal with me I'm game. You can use the comments to tell me who to send the bill to.

But lets look at the bigger picture. Since we are outraged that those liberals are taking all that money to create jobs, who else might be sucking at the public teat? How much does Michigan actually pay out in "tax credits"?

Well it looks like that number is $1,351,500,000.

Here is the budget report.
Budget Report

So the state of Michigan is subsidizing companies to the tune of over one and a third Billion dollars and the only money the want to cut is one hundred mill that brings in film jobs.

I don't know where all the credits go. I'm sure none of it goes to companies that out sourced jobs to other countries. Right, and I just bought a hunk of the Brooklyn bridge.

If you think about it film production is one of the few businesses that can't out source, unless it moves the whole shebang.

OK I'm done. If someone is trying to kill incentives where you live use this info and shove it where it counts.

Spring time in the great white north

2011-04-18T07:25:00.001-07:00

There are a bunch of things we should do today but there is a winter advisory out on the roads so maybe staying close to home is a good choice.

We've had a warmish rain and yesterday they had high wind alerts. Not super high by Bay Area standards BUT they get a real winter here so the trees are weaker right after winter and they get a lot of branches breaking off and downing power lines. But waking up to snow was a surprise!

For the benefit of those not familiar with the history. This house has no heat at the moment. It hasn't been bad since the weather has been fairly warm and I have a electric radiator in the bedroom we are using at the moment.

But it shouldn't last too long. We are supposed to have thunder storms tomorrow and the next day. 8~).

I may have to shift the boxes far enough away from the fireplace to get some crackling heat down stairs...

The big D at last...

2011-04-16T16:45:00.001-07:00

So Monty's final Motel
6 stay

The cargo seems mostly intact

Something I was not sure of considering the various road conditions (Illinois and Indiana I will single out for truly horrendously bad road maintenance, With all respect to Illinois, Indiana takes the cake for charging me for the worst roads I traveled on).

I checked off the "avoid toll roads" on the GPS and it send me a few blocks north into Michigan...

The rural back roads highways in Michigan put the best I saw in Indiana to shame. And "Road construction" meant the shoulder was not available as opposed to the Illinois version which is semi's playing chicken on a two lane stretch with a paint line separating the opposing traffic.

We finally pulled in around 1pm. With a lot of help from our contractor and a guy he brought in we managed to unload the truck by night fall. Good thing because it's been raining ever since.

Today I returned the truck. A bit more involved than it sounds since I had to reattach my car and the tow dolly (need to get back from the truck rental in a town with virtually no public transit) and then find some place I could fill up the yellow whale (Pensky charges $8/ gal to refuel - they really don't want you to bring it back less than full).

But all went well even if it took longer than expected. I then went straight to the Russell street Grill for breakfast(in the afternoon) and some produce shopping at the Eastern Market.

There is a lot more to do but at least none of it involves a 26ft truck towing a car and a dog who doesn't like trucks.

So long for now.

Cheers
SK

Bye Bye Iowa Illinois and into Indiana

2011-04-14T23:30:00.001-07:00

Our last full day on the road, I hope.

Last nights Motel6 was the clear winner Avoca, if your interested. Tonight's (and probably the last for some time) is a step or two back. Not it's fault but the water comes out frothy with a tinge of green. No ice machine, normally not a huge deal but when your getting in late (in Indiana that is anytime after 7 pm) nothing is open and dinner is week old tortilla chips and warn Pepsi it matters!

OK we started out in rain. There was apparently a big rainstorm last night but cozy in our five star Motel 6, with double pained windows, we didn't notice. It stopped long enough to load up but da beast still tracked mud in on everything.

But he is a bit calmer in the truck so that's good. He doesn't always sit with his head down looking like he's trying not to puke.

WE also had a stack of celebrities today. We drove through the town where John Wayne was born, then Ronald Regan's birth place then the Hoover Historic site???

This one I thought was funny. Heading east to West Liberty.

If this wasn't so shaky, this is a truck after all, you would notice that our millage is 2011. Seemed appropriate.

Monty is looking out at the Mississippi

And we make into Illinois.

But wait we didn't stop there...

The beast is SO happy not to be in the truck.

So some observations.

Iowa was fun to drive through, even though it was raining. Rolling hills interesting to look at and the roads were pretty good.

Illinois on the other hand was a bit more like Nebraska view wise, but the roads! I swear 1/4 were "under construction" I don't know if this is a good move at improvement or if they are always "under construction" but I80 is a mess. A bunch of times your down to two lanes, one each direction. When you have big trucks flying at each other on "under construction" pavement it's nerve wracking. Once you get close to Chicago any pretense of repair is pretty much out the window. There are pot holes a truck could disappear into. I hit one and everything not tied down in the cab went flying. Le dog was not amused. I was down to mountain crawling speeds to try and save some of the cargo. But then we get to Indiana...

Indiana is a rare driving experience, thank god. In Indiana they repair pot holes by filling them in, a little. Most of the I80 is basically one big pothole with stripes. But they don't stop at that, they add to the fun by not lighting any of it. Exits with shopping are lit up like daylight but the roads and road signs are not lit at all. Actually that is not strictly true. The toll booths are lit up very nicely. They are unmanned and take some kind of state issued pass or cash (bills only and no change (so that $1.40 toll is $2 cash. There is a name for practices like this but the server would yank my post if I used it. You can also pay with a credit card. So far, my two hour adventure with Indiana road hell cost around $15 in tolls. I though it was a bit steep till I realized that if you just think of what this experience would normally cost you it's pretty cheap. While driving I thought that the closest I had come to this kind of thrill was to ride the barely hanging together Big Dipper at the Beach Boardwalk. Indiana highways are like ridding an old scary roller coaster with out a safety belt, for an hour straight not knowing when it all falls apart and you die. And hour of the Big Dipper would cost more than $15, and I got two hours for that!

Michigan still has a chance to slide lower than Indiana but I have done a fair amount of time on the roads around Detroit and I doubt that the rest of the state can be bad enough to bring the score down to Indiana's level. Plus even if it's as bad they don't add insult to injury (quite literally) by charging you for it.

AND with all this money they are ripping people off for WHERE is it all going??? Certainly not into maintenance. I want that gig. I give you a really lousy version of what your looking for and charge you through the nose for it. Oh and you don't get a chance to say no.

Next post from Detroit.

On the road again.

2011-04-14T11:39:00.001-07:00

I was going to do a real post since this rest stop has Wi-Fi but the silly laptop apparently never went to sleep and so is dead. And no way to power it because that very cool MagSafe connector apple won't let anyone use except them. One step forward one back. Apple is a little like that cool kid on the playground that looks cool but doesn't play well with others. Except for the cool looking part that sort of describes computer geeks when jobs was young so...
Guess I need to get back on the road. Monty wants to go explore.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Why Oming? Why not.

2011-04-13T18:56:00.001-07:00

OK so this is two days worth because last night I ended up sleeping in the cab with the dog - no Wi-Fi. I'll get to that later, but first.

Motel 6 has been the place of choice because they are "pet friendly". But there doesn't seem to be much consistency between places, in just about anything. The first one was "no problem" with the dog but $3 for Wi-Fi. It worked so fine. The second one was OK with the dog but I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and Wi-Fi was free. The third one didn't have any "pet OK rooms" and basically tossed us out on the street.
The first one recognized I got a discount, the second had a big sign "We already discounted the rooms so no other discounts apply". Who know about the third since I ended up sleeping in a truck.

Everything was OK in the first, the second didn't have hot water. After about 10 min it got up to luke warm (this was at midnight so I don't suspect a whole lot of showers had just depleted the supply. It didn't actually matter since it turns out they didn't put any towels in the room. And again with the third I wouldn't know since I slept in the truck (get a theme here?).

IF they advertised that they had a FEW pet rooms I wouldn't be so pissed but they say pet's, no problem.

Now my cousin would have probably gotten a few free rooms out of it all but really I'm driving 18+ hours a day with a dog and a hassle with the management is one thing I don't need to add to the pain. But I do think I will have some choice words in the survey they sent.

OK back to the real story.

After the towel-less, hot waterless stay we left in a light snow fall - O' the joy...
You can kind of see it here.

It actually got a bit snowy driving.

You can see the slightly white out perspective. Not too bad but also not something you want to start learning how to do with 10 tons of truck dragging a car over the rockies.

I have to say the view was a lot more interesting than some of what we have been going through.

This is around one of the "continental divides" I say one because a sign flashed by on the highway saying "continental Divide" and then about fifty miles further another one said exactly the same thing. Neither had a rest stop so we couldn't really get the shot you of course want to see.

My question is what's between the signs? Does the west and east overlap or is it a big no-man's land? Or is it in fact the "middle" that politicians keep talking about? I have news for them, NO BODY lives there!

OK we passed out of Wyoming and in to Nebraska. Nebraska is I believe the "huckster" state. I was told they got the nickname because they convinced the rest of america that Corn was the only real food.

Nebraska is also known as the Silo state. All those ICBM's that they launch in Colorado shoot out of silos all over the prairie.
The though that came to me looking at the prairie was "some body must own all this". It's america after all. Is there any land not owned by somebody? My second though was why would someone buy it? I can see national parks and all but why an individual would buy land out there is beyond me. But it's probably because I'm basically a city boy and there are, I am sure, folks who would rather drop dead than spend a week in a big city.

I'm probably being unfair to Nebraska but after a fair amount of miles on this trip this was the first state I had a truck try to drive me off the road. Actually two different trucks forced me and the great yellow whale to swerve into the emergency parking lane to avoid getting in a wreck. And in both cases they had a free lane to the left. It's also the state that made me sleep in the truck. Ironically in my search for a place that would have an open bathroom at night I ended up parking across the border in Colorado.

On the plus side Nebraska was the first place Monty actually interacted with snow.

And There was Buffalo Bill's "trading post"

And Penny's Dinner

I meant to get a better picture but I forgot till we were on our way out of town. It's in what looks a little like a train car or a big Old school RV, and it was really good.

OOOO fount a better picture on the Web

Not sure you can tell from this shot but the wind was howling and everything is kind of hazy because the air is filled with dust.

On other news I was wondering how loud it is in the truck. I know it's loud but how loud?

Well "there's an app for that", and I already have it.
This is the "quiet" cruising level. It's a bit louder when it has to shift down for hills. I'll have to do a OSHA check but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be doing 90dB 18 hours a day for very long.

We are now in Iowa, at a Motel 6... But this one I think is going to reset the high bar.

Oh and for a last shot. Monty finally relaxed a bit in the truck. Maybe because we slept in it last night???

Also I have some video but I need some time to look and edit so maybe in the final wrap up?

Later

Overland to Evanston

2011-04-11T21:58:00.001-07:00

Monty leaving his mark on Winnemucca

Todays progress

Monty saddled up

Checking out the Salt Flats

Seagulls at Salt Lake

ADA at work, Handicap Truck Parking. I'm not kidding, every truck stop has a couple of handicap parking slots. Kind of ridiculous when you realize you have to climb a ladder to get into the cab.

One lesson I have learned on this trip is that when your driving something big that you can't back up it's important to use any bathroom you can park at because it may be a long haul till you find another. Never pass up a rest area!

So we are out of Utah in a day. We are a bit over 800 miles so far, almost 600 today. When you consider we can't go over 55 and in the mountains we are often more like 35-40, not so bad. We are running around 8 MPG, which sounds god awful till you realize that if we were burning gas in this beast it would be closer to 5. I'm optimistic that after we get out of the mountains we can scoot the MPG up toward 9.

Other revelations. 5 hour energy stuff tastes pretty bad but really works well, and very useful when faced with a couple of hours of driving through salt flats. Utah gets a bad impression if you head in from the west on I80. You come out of the high desert of Nevada and descend in to the salt flats. The flats look like miles and miles of dirty snow, and then they get sort of amber. All in all it looks filthy. Some of it is wet and looks a bit like a post apocalyptic wasteland. Also the salt and dust makes your eyes burn and gives an over all impression of a VERY smoggy day in LA.

The reality is probably a lot better than the impression but it tarnishes your out look before you get to the Salt Lake which is quite striking.

later days

Welcome to Winamucka

2011-04-11T00:22:00.001-07:00

So Monty and I finally made it out of the City, and the state! in a big old truck. No video, and there might not ever be since handling the truck is a very full time job and I don't know where I could prop it up and get anything interesting. But ???

So the route is

and todays part is

I made it to a Motel 6 and the dog is snoring at my feet right now. It was a hard day for him, he's not a truck dog. But he did seem to like to watch the world go by out the window.

Two things came up today that were kind of surprises.
First a lot of I80 is in bad shape, there were times I though I was on a pogo stick. The worst is some patches in Nevada where I think some shady contractor used cheap cement because the slabs seem to dip in the center so you end up hitting very regular ridges. At certain speeds it gets awful. I ended up down around 35-40 to keep from bouncing off the road.

The other thing is that although the truck is heavy it is also tall and is pretty much always like driving a VW buss over the bay bridge with gusty wind. You have a lot less "extra" lane with the truck and with the buffeting you are constantly correcting your course. And since you can't see the line you need to rely on the side view mirror. If you can see the line next to the rear wheels your not over it.

OK parting shots.

Da Truck on the Lincoln Highway bridge rails

Leaving the City

Monty's smiling because Donner pass is open and I wont have to eat him.

Well that's it. If I have internet tomorrow I will do another installment
-30-

The end of an era?

2011-04-09T20:51:00.001-07:00

Kind of grandiose, but hell it's my blog!

So last time I mentioned the disassembly of my studio but now the picts...

so here are the bare shelves, all custom I might add.

And here is the truck

It is one big Motha

So what am I leaving?

Here's a shot of the SF house in it's Lego colors

Not much hard info in this post but I'm heading out in the morn.
Packing hell has put me a good two days behind my planned departure, but through the genius packing of my cousin Marlane we are actually hauling most of our stuff in one move.

Next post from the road!!!

Death and moving

2011-04-08T23:15:00.001-07:00

Nice title eh!

Well I've decided that packing is like facing death. In both cases you see your life pass before your eyes.

OK it's not really your life. But that chatchky (I'm sure I misspelled that but...) you have stashed is important why? Because it represents a moment in your life you wanted to hold on to. So in a real sense it's your life, or the parts that are important, passing before our eyes. But with packing you have to decide if they are worth the move. I'm assuming death is more socialistic and anything goes. But I have a truck and it only holds so much. So every memory has to be assigned a value and only those of the most value make the cut.

It's grueling.

But it goes on. So the truck is mostly packed, I'll add a picture but it was too dark when I though of it. And there is a lot I'm leaving behind. Granted I figure we have another truck load to go so most is just temporarily left behind but still...

BTW if you want to see the last work done in the old studio it's on YouTube.

If you look for The Monkeybutts there are a few clips from my mixing of a couple of their songs. It was a fun way to end the "era". Actually the project before was also "classic". Fist to Fist. It should be out on DVD soon and if you like Jackie Chan flicks then you should check it out.

I only did some post work for the DVD release, but I would love to work with the director again. Very good film at a supper low budget workflow. It wanted to have done the post after looking at it, maybe next time. Definitely worth a netflix.

I guess this means I have died in SF and will be reborn in D. Nawww. I grew up in Oakland. SF is a wimpy alternative. Wait I have to say it GO GIANTS!!!!! World Champs!!!!!!!

whew, got that out of my system. BUT the Tigers are AL........ Not real Baseball but I should be able to root for SF And D with really very little conflict.

OK so I'm not dead and I am moving. If death is this painful it's not worth it. At least this time through memory lane you can still edit.

The Big D, Redux -arc 3-13-11

2011-04-04T09:46:00.001-07:00

---So this is one of a series of posts I started in another blog that sets up this move to the Big D---

So what ever happened to Detroit? Well we are packing and heading North East. Actually I'm heading north east and Aislinn will head out a bit later.

Why on gods earth would one move out of California and specifically San Francisco for Detroit?

Well it's complicated. The film biz in the bay area is for shit, well sound post anyway. There were three big players but unfortunately they decided to build little fiefdoms and not build a community. It felt like a community of sorts but that was the people not the "industry". And two of the three have picked up there toys and gone home leaving nothing behind. As "evil" as some of the Hollywood moguls have come off they were at least trying to build an industry and wanted to last a long time.

Coppola has gone off to make wine and has really retired his whole company. You would think that with children in the film biz there would be some desire to pass on the "family business", but I guess not.

Saul Zaentz I'm quite a bit more pissed off at though. He and his partners were rolling in dough and just decided to cash in. Probably more them than him, but still. Now he was pretty old so I can see him wanting to retire but he killed the brand and sold off the place. Not only did he wipe his company from the map (he wouldn't let the name go with the sale so...) but with that he also trashed a slew of low budget filmmakers and media folks who had been surviving in a very expensive area because of reasonable space costs at the SZFC. There was no provision to help them in any way and that completely fractured the small community that existed there.

Lucas is the only one left. Unfortunately that isn't enough to keep many of the support businesses going.

Sure the economy hasn't helped but most of the big down moves happened well before the melt down. It was a lot of very selfish short term thinking.

Oh well.

Detroit has had it's share of that as well.

Hollywood would seem like a logical place to go but it's getting pretty entrenched and I think they are blowing it. They are all about keeping the work IN LA. The powers in SAG consider any production out side of LA a "runaway production". They are one of the biggest hurdles to getting film incentives in CA.

Now that you don't need to be in Hollywood to shoot a film, and even Hollywood doesn't shoot all their films in Hollywood, films are going to go where it's easier and cheaper. Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and... Michigan are the top places in the US.

Detroit has the up side (at the moment) of extremely affordable housing. For a prospective studio they have large already built spaces that take a minimum amount of work to convert in to very nice sound stages. In the winter inside is a good place to be, but in the spring summer and fall you have easy access to rural and urban landscapes. The summers are warm/hot but not as bad and smoggy as you can get in LA so...

And there are tax incentives, really nice ones. The governor is trying to pull back on that because Republicans are traditionally anti business, wait I thought that was the dems??? Well what ever he is he probably won't make much happen. It's hard to sell cutting jobs in this economy.

So Michigan has a ways to go and they could always screw it up. But they have been to the bottom of the barrel and know what it looks like and have taken some action to change things.

California on the other hand ????? It's in BIG trouble and has been for a decade or so and nobody in charge (either party) seems to have the balls to own up to it. SF is if anything worse.

Cal has a 25%+ budget short fall and going up. All they ever want to do is cut public welfare budgets which are pretty small. Nobody has gone and cut anything that affects the top 1%. SF just makes parking even more impossible and ups parking tickets to the point that you could get a dinner in a nice restaurant for less. Sounds like whining I know but parking tickets have more than doubled in the last five years. And they have put in meters that are not lit and are near impossible to figure out, and I do tech support! There were three of us lighting matches to try and read the LCD screen to find out how to pay one night down town. It was one of those one meter per block and you need to do a secret hand shake to know if you have put any money on the spot your car is parked at. OK way OT.

Michigan has a less that 5% budget short fall.

Anyway all told it seems like a decent idea, the move. Our cost of living will drop through the floor. Providing we rent out the SF house. It would also if we sold the SF house but that seems like a bad idea unless it's forced.

So it looks like April 8th or so I climb in a truck with the dog and head out.

I'm going to see if I can find Travels with Charlie in an audio book and Monty and I can listen to that as we trek across the country.

I'll see if I can up date the blog a bit more often.

Cheers

The Big D day 2 & 3 -arc 9-9-10

2011-04-04T09:44:00.001-07:00

---So this is one of a series of posts I started in another blog that sets up this move to the Big D---

So, I'm writing about a day behind because, well because. ** and I'm mixing two days, well because! and there you have it*** So day two we drove around a bunch and checked out the big D. It looks a bit like pictures of Berlin after WWII. That's a bit extreme because there are not too many buildings that look bombed but one will go down a nice street and have this very crazy mix of very kept up houses mixed with boarded up houses with burned out shells with vacant lots. I guess it's more like a place that has been hit with a plague, which it kind of has. It was a city of two million and only 900 thousand are left. Cities grow out but they don't shrink the same way. The city is a swiss cheese the holes are pretty evenly dispersed. The down side is that you have a really big city with a small tax base. The up side is you can make lots of parks! The mayor paid for time on TV the other night to tell everyone that they were going to shrink the city, literally. It's rough times. Someone, from this area, said that Detroit was basically a microcosm of all the things that are wrong in the economy country wide squished into on city.

Now this has all been the bad and that is not fair to the big D. The positives are many if a little harder to see. The people are great. I know one is supposed to say things like that but it's really true. There is a strong "survivors bond" about the folks in Detroit that is very uplifting. They have gone through hell and are still hanging on damn it. It might not get much better soon, nobody seems to really think so, but they are determined to stick it out. What is also interesting, for the murder capitol, is that though many parts of the city look like you just got transported to the worst areas of east Oakland, they don't "feel" as scary. It's a modern city I'm sure there are very dangerous places to hang out, but I haven't gotten that feeling about just about anywhere here. I'm traveling with my wife who has just about zero urban radar so I have had to give her a "warning Will Robinson" or two but I have to do that around SF also. I mean the woman would go on a stroll through a project in the middle of the night and not thing anything about it!

Anyway back to the Big D.

Everyone was worried about food, this is the midwest after all - do they know what real coffee tastes like???

Well I think the answer is absolutely yes. Motown appears not to be in the gravy belt. I have yet to have any bad coffee. I roast and am a bit picky. Certainly some has not been stelar but I have had AWFUL coffee in the Bay Area and I expected bad to really bad with a high point being maybe up to charbucks. If I (for some demented reason) stoop to charbucks it will be far worse than anything I have had so far. And I had a cup the other morning of Ethiopian Harrar that had bunches of the elusive blueberries in the profile. If your not a big coffee person suffice it to say that it to say that you have to do a lot right, ie know what your doing, AND get good beans to pull off a cup like that.

BTW that was at the Russell Street Deli

Tonight we had a great mean in a fabulous bar/ restaurant called Checker Bar and Grill.
Highly recommended, family owned and it's been around since the 50's. Everything is prepared fresh and was very good. If you hang out long enough they will let you help out and wash things ;~). They close at eight so it's not your late light hang out.

Another outstanding food place is the Avalon Bakery.

Along with a great assortment of fresh bread they also serve sandwiches and pastries, and misc other edibles, and yes good coffee.
There is a Trader Joe's, though it's out in Grosse Point. Everything seems about the same as CA but whine is higher. Two Buck Chuck is three buck chuck etc. I need to research it because I'm not sure if it's a flat $1/ per bottle tax or if there is a % tax on beer and wine. Also TJ's didn't sell any hard liquor. This may be a state with strange liquor laws?

Wellcome to the Big D - arc 9-7-10

2011-04-04T09:40:00.001-07:00

---So this is one of a series of posts I started in another blog that sets up this move to the Big D---

Detroit, a town who's motto is "we're cheap, and we're easy".
So we arrived and stayed near the airport. Because of the schedule we got pretty much no sleep in 24 hours before coming in so close seemed like a good idea. Looking for food, they take the Labor day weekend seriously here, we could find only one place open. A Lebanese restaurant with the dubious name of "Beirut Cafe". It is in a small strip mall across from the airport. Well it was a pleasant surprise. Very good. I would say one of the best "middle eastern" restaurants I've eaten at. Very fresh and interesting. then we went back to the motel and crashed.

Motown, or, Go MidWeast Young Man - arc 9-4-10

2011-04-04T09:38:00.001-07:00

---So this is one of a series of posts I started in another blog that sets up this move to the Big D---

So the house has a sitter, the dog has a sitter and in a few hours we go off to Motown to see the lay of the land. It's going to be interesting. Certainly the incentives are there for filming so there should be some work,? But that would be production work. I could get into building things again but I would be competing with kids young enough to well be my kids. So I'm not sure how smart a job move that would be. Post is something the big D wants to add to it's roster but there are not a lot of post houses now so??? As always the union hall in film is not a hiring hall so your on your own to find the work and they point you at the film office. And of course the Film Office is all about the films being made and has very little info on the post facilities in the area. I found some and have a bunch of emails out.

The BIG Motown questions are.
Is it the "armpit" that some folks have called it. Most worrisome is that most of the "pit" folks are from the area. Or is it a bad rep based on a sorted history. It's not traditionally a harmonious town. They have had three race riots big enough to be in their history books and the first was in the early 1800's!!! But it's been relatively quiet for the last forty years or so.

AND is there any real work (for people moving in) in the film biz???

Those are the burning questions. The weather isn't too bad. They are shooting a lot of films. Housing, or rather buying a house, is dirt cheap. Despite the "murder capitol" award, the crime rate is about the same as Oakland. That isn't saying much but I lived in Oakland a long time and the rate may be high but it is a pretty isolated thing. IF you hang out in the "bad areas" you have a good chance of getting in harms way. If your not hanging out in the "bad areas" you are about as safe as you are in any other big city. I suspect the big D has some areas your not wise to loiter in.

The "Pit" question has many sides. Can one get a decent cup of coffee? Is there any fresh produce to be had? Is everyone hiding behind doors after dark? Can you get a meal in a restaurant with out gravy? I figure local wine is not much that is drinkable but is the beer good? Micro brews? They have a homebrew store so that is a good sign.

Some folks have gotten worked up over the racial makeup (70%+ black) but I worked for a theatre where there were only three of us that were not black and the numbers don't really tell you much. Social background and how relaxed people are has a LOT to do with it. I don't mind being a minority. I'm nearsighted, mostly Danish, and generally weird. I'm always in a minority. It's much more important how people deal with each other than who has the bigger numbers. So it could be a problem or not. You just don't know till you go and see. I don't want to live in a place where it is a problem whoever is in the "lead". I am uncomfortable where it's all (or close) white. I grew up with a lot of diversity and it bugs me when the atmosphere is to polarized. So this is a biggie for me. I don't care who's running the show as long as anyone can play.

And of course none of it makes any difference if there isn't an abundance of work.

I can see moving and I can see staying put so it will be an interesting trip.

To Motown or not to Motown - arc 8-4-10

2011-04-04T09:34:00.001-07:00

---So this is one of a series of posts I started in another blog that sets up this move to the Big D---

That is the question. Detroit appears to be the new arts and film capitol in waiting. The idea of leaving California and especially the bay area seems, well weird at best. The Idea of moving to Detroit seems ludicrous. Except when you actually look at what is going on. The bay Area film "industry" is now almost completely mini-Indies and documentaries with a few industrials tossed in.

Now as you know I'm mostly in post and as far as I can tell post is still not very big in Motown. But sound post on smaller projects and ads can happen just about anywhere and spend many years working on stuff other than sound, even when I was working in sound. So there is plenty of possibilities in the rust belt, as long as the tax incentives keep up.

Historically the only reason the film business centered around Hollywood was that is was so hard to get to that Edison's muscle men had a hard time enforcing his patents on all things film. And because with out electricity you had to shoot in sunlight. LA didn't have the most sunlight but it had enough and it was as far away from Edison as you could get and stay on US soil.

But none of that really applies today. Films are either shot on location or on stages for the most part. Motor City has a ton of stages, all with LOTS of power. They used to be called auto assembly plants.

The economy sucks and doesn't look like it's going to get a lot better soon. So something has to give. Manhattan and the SF Bay Area are two of the most expensive places to live in the US. Both are great but if you can buy a house for what it costs to park your car for a year... Well it gives one pause.

Artists tend to be the bargain hunters since they are generally more mobile (lack of a "real" job will do that to you. They also traditionally lack much money. So wherever the cheapest place to get a roof is tends to attract artists. Having more time and skills than money they also tend to fix up those rat-trap cheap abodes. After awhile it's the "stylish" neighborhood. Then it gets expensive to live there and the artists are all forced out.

The catch to this is the cheap location also has to have some proximity to "culture" and transportation. There aren't to many thriving artist communities off in the middle of nowhere. All this points positively to Detroit. It is VERY cheap right now, there aren't a lot of jobs, though there is over employment in the film biz. It has decent cultural roots, once you get over the the "rust belt" designation. It is after all Motown. It's nice and close to Canada, in case they bring the draft back. That's for you youngsters ;~), I'm old enough to be a Hawk now (I guess that would be chicken hawk...).

By all reports there is a virtual migration from locations like Manhattan and SF and other pricey stylish locals to rusty old Motor City.

So we're going to go and check it out.

It's going to be interesting to see if a California boy can wrap his head around living in the only major American city that looks SOUTH at Canada

BRRRRRRRRRRRR

Packing up and moving out

2011-04-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to post a bit of a travel log on our move from Babylon by the Bay to the big D.

The short story is that me the dog and a 26 ft truck towing my car are heading out to the great north mid east. I think officially it's med west but being and hour or so away from New York and looking south at Canada I think mid east is a more descriptive title. Plus it's on EST so how can that be mid west? Well when the Mississippi river was the west "coast" I guess, but we've moved on since then right?

I'll copy posts from another blog giving some of the history of this move.