Tag: DIY

Well, Not All By My Y

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

Several times in my life I’ve helped friends and family members flip a house. I got to do the second one because apparently I did okay on the first.

Here’s the most important thing I learned the whole time.

….and my words are paper tigers, no match for the predator of pain inside her….

Love Will Come to You, The Indigo Girls

Before I flipped a house, I had no idea what a paper tiger was. They are of the devil, and I got the allusion immediately. A paper tiger is a device you put on top of wallpaper to rip it to shreds so you can scrape it off. It leaves everything in ribbons. Except there’s still the glue to deal with, so everything is ripped to shreds, yet still stuck to the wall. The paper tiger quickly becomes ineffective because you think you’re making progress and you’re actually filling the teeth with glue.

So, you can fight with the wallpaper all day long and make no progress whatsoever.

I can think of so many people that the Indigo Girls represent with this line, because there are so many people married to their glue, unwilling to open up- even when another person needs to hear what they have to say.

I also learned how to tackle raspberry brambles, also of the devil and paper tigers without glue. More than one has ripped me to shreds.

But wait- that wasn’t the first time I’d built a house, and I’d forgotten about it.

In the United Methodist Church, there’s a group called UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief). They give lots of money for youth groups to go on mission trips, which mostly consisted of going out into poor towns and building houses or building accommodations for houses, like wheelchair ramps.

So, I also know how to lay shingles, put the flashing on a roof, and watch my dad absolutely freak out at seeing me doing it. Nobody likes to watch their baby putting flashing on the edge of a roof, because he knew I had balance issues. I didn’t. It was fine, but I can see his concern this many years later when I couldn’t in the moment.

I have also helped build the aforementioned wheelchair ramps. I let other people do the measuring and cutting, because I really wasn’t the best person to ask. My cuts would have come out diagonal just like with food…. or maybe not, because there are better tools to keep boards in place than there are for food….

I’m better at finish carpentry, like sanding, painting, shellac, etc. I also love to paint sheetrock with Killz and new colors. I generally do several coats of Killz on new sheetrock as well, just because I’m a perfectionist.

I am really great at helping do things. I am not so great at doing things on my own. I think it’s because I have enough limitations that I need an extra set of eyes. For instance, it would be fun to work on Zac’s car or motorcycle, but I wouldn’t unless he asked me to help, which in my mind means “stand there and hold stuff.” This is a more important job to mechanics than you might think, especially lights. Holding lights is like hazing in the operating room. Stand there, holding this in a very awkward way, for at least half an hour. At least if I drop the light a few inches, no one dies.

DIY is soothing to me, but as Zac says, “I *could* work on my car, but I make enough money to get someone else to do that.” So, I doubt that we’ll ever go out in the front yard for “guy stuff.” Mostly because I’ve never ridden a donorcycle, because my dad and stepmom wouldn’t be nearly as angry if I got hurt as having to deal with Dr. Anthony, because if I lived from the accident, she would beat my ass with a hairbrush. Tiffany is a liver and kidney transplant specialist. She knows from donorcycles.

If you believe nothing else I say, believe that. Transplant surgeons get *a lot* of their organs to transplant from motorcycle riders, thus the name….. which is universal across all hospitals in the US, don’t know about worldwide.

So, while it doesn’t bother me that Zac has a motorcycle, or that Lindsay and Matt have both ridden them as well, I’m not sure that I would ever be tempted because all I see is Dr. Anthony’s “mad face.” Besides, I have a solid reason for keeping my organs *intact,* mostly living.

I have a feeling I would not be very good at holding lights for her, but that’s okay because she’d never ask me. I would argue that I’m “smarter than a gas man,” but that has more to do with the way anesthesiologists get made fun of in the hospital, not that I am actually as smart as a person who can get into medical school (and by that, I mean smart in STEM. I’m plenty smart in other ways.).

I find that I am as smart in medicine as I am in computers. I do not program, and I do not weld things to the motherboard when a capacitor is out or anything like that, but I know my way around most software and what to do when it breaks. I can run commands in a terminal with my eyes closed, literally because I made myself try it.

Here’s the funniest command. To list what’s in the working directory, the command is ls. If you install sl, when you make that typo, an ASCII choo choo will roll across the screen.

I think linux is why I don’t use DOS anymore. The commands are so different that I type a linux command first, every time, and then have to think about what it is in DOS.

For instance, listing a directory in DOS is “dir,” and there is no ASCII choo choo if you make a mistake, a flaw in its character.

But it’s worse than that. I have been WAY further into linux commands than necessary before I realized I was in PowerShell (DOS terminal):

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

In linux, that stands for “update my software catalog, install the updates, and don’t ask me whether I want to install the packages after I’ve downloaded them. Just do it.

In DOS, this means *absolutely nothing.*

Windows does not make for good DIY, because they want to control every part of the user experience the way Apple does. Windows is not really for business anymore, because even Windows Pro comes with a thousand “lane bumpers” to stop you from doing what you want to do. You have to turn on developer mode to be able to install any piece of software you want, otherwise it will ask “are you sure?” every single time. This is especially prevalent with software from GitHub, and I think that’s because Windows does not like open source.

It’s easier to turn on developer mode than it is to go through and change all the settings, like “show hidden folders” and “show file extensions.” It’s a lot of DIY just to set up a Windows box, and linux is so much easier. Plus, no one has ever tried to sell me anything unless I’ve downloaded a program that’s not open source. If I do that, the developers should be paid.

For some reason, my computer won’t dual boot, and it makes me sad….. but it’s better now that you can install a linux virtual machine inside Windows so that I still have access to linux command line programs. I usually keep btop running in the background because in linux I use a program called conky to list my processes, memory usage, CPU and GPU usage, etc. btop will do all of it, and is light on CPU usage. If you’ve used htop before, it’s the same, just a better user interface.

But here’s the worst trick the devil ever pulled. In Windows, you can divide the terminal into as many blocks as you want, but if you don’t change the settings yourself, when it divides it brings up PowerShell instead of another linux terminal. Just more Windows trying to push itself on you. I do not know anyone who uses DOS command line anymore, except for system administrators, and they’re more likely to have Macs these days, because the government gets a good deal on them and they come complete with unix out of the box. There are linux laptops and desktops out there, but none that have the reach of Apple to be able to get those government and education deals.

So, where their need begins, so does my DIY. I can fix one computer or 50 at once.

The one thing I can do all by my Y.

This Could Go Either Way

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

How would you design the city of the future?

My city would be completely sustainable and small, perhaps even easy to break down and move because global warming is slowly killing us whether we like it or not. Eventually, you may not have a choice whether you live in Houston or Helsinki. I’m not trying to be all doomsday here, I’m just trying to troubleshoot what issues we’re dealing with. We should have researched more about what carbon emissions could do before we built cars. We just didn’t know we needed to do it. We needed time to discover that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer and I had to give up my Aquanet habit until they could figure it out.

(I’m glad they did, but I use a water-based wax & gel called “Gorilla Ear Wax” now. I also have the gel alone and it’s called “Gorilla Snot.” It’s a Mexican product originally, so when I bought it the first time it was because the label made me laugh- it wasn’t in English and I thought it was clever, so why not?)

I thought Al Gore did a great job with “An Inconvenient Truth” and I wish the government had truly listened. I feel that car companies have not embraced new technology easily and therefore have no idea how much they’re going to become completely irrelevant if they don’t change. It will speed up the relentlessness of Mother Nature, because we won’t be able to predict what’s going to be hit next with accuracy in the future because the temperature swings are going to be too violent.

That leads to putting together buildings that have enough strength to withstand extreme temperatures and weather. I feel the that Finns are the best in the world at this because they have to be. They have to have a lot more in place for “oopsie babies” and poor people because the temperature is too cold to leave anyone outside and feel good about it. The construction of their houses usually has the finest insulation available and windows with three panes of glass with argon instead of two. We could learn a lot from Scandinavia about living with extreme cold as much as they could learn about living in heat from me. I’m from the South and I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest. Ask me anything. 😛

I think it would be smart to learn from the military on how to build down into the ground in the desert and make it comfortable. I’m sure part of it is full-spectrum bulbs in the overhead lights or permission to bring a lamp if you need it. It stands to reason that places like southwest Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona can’t withstand heat if it gets any hotter. They’re going to have to get creative, and I believe that letting the heat pass over you is a viable option. It would also be good for places that experience wildfires. I believe that a lot more houses would survive if the only thing you could see on the ground level is a concrete slab. What else can we do without building an entirely new infrastructure to regulate temperature and acts of God (in the insurance sense of the phrase)?

I’ve found houses built in the US, New Zealand, and Australia on this very concept. The ground provides natural insulation if you can keep your house dry, because it won’t take as much in power to cool your house. The walls will stay cool longer with that much padding. Even in the desert, groundwater is colder than the air above, thus the need for dehumidifiers built into the HVAC system. It is not easily or cheaply done, but it’s amazing how much you adapt when you have to, not because you want to spend that money or DIY that much.

If we’re dreaming entirely new ways of building, the earth will survive whether we do or not, so it makes sense that we adapt to it. It will never adapt to us. Because we already have more technology in living underground than living in, say, space, I think it would be wise to invest as much money as possible in getting it even further along. We could create buildings in the middle of lakes and oceans to naturally cool them. My favorite cinematic wonder in film is the underwater kingdom on Jar-Jar Binks’ home planet. Seeing the fish swim in the windows was just magnificent on the big screen.

I would love it because I am a fish person, anyway. Just not goldfish. They’re pretty to look at but require too much maintenance. I’d probably go with tilapia because they are so plentiful and freely available if I catch my own. Because of course, by now in my head there’s a beautiful underwater house in a lake I’ve filled with tilapia myself. I watch so much of this stuff on YouTube that I’m very Elle Woods about it. “What? Like it’s hard?” I may not be the best at DIY, but I can certainly tell when a contractor is bullshitting me or not. I know what things cost and what’s worth the hype. Insulation with as high an R value you can find is priceless because you’ll hardly have to do anything to keep yourself comfortable. Energy will just keep getting more expensive, and I don’t think it’s a bad move to start making your own. You can run an entire homestead off solar panels and batteries. You can even tap into the grid and make your utility bills negative, but won’t experience a loss of power if your batteries are dead.

The thing about construction and insulation is that you cannot miss a trick. Any leak and the whole concept is ruined. The quality of every material matters, but not as much as the skill of the people doing it. If no one tells you that you need a French drain for your basement in order to convert it into livable space, your basement is going to flood every time it rains. You just won’t notice it until your beams are rotted.

It is very, very hard to retrofit a house, especially where converting basements to living rooms is concerned. If you want a three-story house, you have to know that up front. Retrofitting a house for the proper drainage only sort of works. The only way to do it properly is not worth the money because you’d have to rip everything out. Even more expensive when the ceiling isn’t tall enough and you have to lower the floor to live comfortably.

In other words, basements build to hold Christmas stuff and basements built to hold a gang of teenagers like it’s “That 70s Show” are not the same.

That’s all about building the cities of the future. Using materials that work with the earth to make us more comfortable, instead of insisting that this fight is one we can win if we do nothing long enough.

But in every seed of desperation, there’s a strand of inspiration. We don’t need to let global warming paralyze us. We need to learn to roll with it. I, personally, will deal with it a lot better if I can see fresh or saltwater fish. But that’s just me. Maybe you’re the spaceship type. I wish you peace, luck, and any other color shirt but red on a trek not to be lost in space.

Mother Earth is trying to tell us something, and we are falling down on the job. We have to fix it one way or another. Mine would address it before it even leapt off the blueprints, in my city I build in the future.

On Pets

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

There are people working on the roof this morning. It’s excruciating, all the pounding, because it seems to pulse with my sinus headache. At least they are marching in step. I’ve already taken my Zyrtec and Sudafed PE this morning, and it’s still not helping, so now that I’m on my third cup of coffee in a mug that holds four cups, I might consider a Benadryl kicker. I find that treating the allergy is better for me than treating the congestion…. treating the root of the problem rather than the symptom. I also need to take a shower and clean my room…. the former because the water will wash away whatever’s making me bloom, and the latter being that I am most allergic to dust. I had one of those tests where they put 25 allergens on your skin to see how you react (smaller than most- I think some tests are up to 75 different ones). Dust overtook six other samples. The best thing was learning once and for all that I am not allergic to dogs or cats… I just thought I was…. probably because dog and cat hair on the floor attracts dust bunnies.

I do not have any pets, but the family I live with has a number of dogs. I think “we” have four of our own, and a rotating cast of visitors. In this house, we are not cat people, and I am somewhat grateful. Though I love cats, I do not love the smell or the mess of a litter box. When I lived alone and had Asher, I bought disposable litter pans by the dozen and just threw them out every other day or so, because scooping a permanent one made me so sick to my stomach. So far, the only pet I have had complete and total success with is fish. I can keep a goldfish alive for years, and it makes me happy to pay five cents for a goldfish and watch it grow to mini-koi. In order to do this, the setup is expensive, but once setup is done, you can make an environment that sustains itself.

Oh, now I am on my soapbox, because I’ve come across something about which I’m truly knowledgeable.

The biggest mistake that people make with goldfish is that they don’t change the water enough. Goldfish are nasty. Gorgeous, but nasty. Their ammonia levels get really high, really quick, which is why it is inadvisable to keep them in a bowl…. unless you want to change the water almost every day. If you are going to keep goldfish, splurge on the most expensive filter for your aquarium that you can afford. If you just buy a ten-gallon kit, the filter it comes with will not turn the water over fast enough if you have more than one goldfish in the tank…. and by “turn it over,” I mean the amount of time it takes for the entire ten gallons to be refreshed by activated charcoal. I generally buy a 20-gallon filter for a 10-gallon tank if there are goldfish involved. You still need to change about a third to a half of the water every four weeks, roughly, but you’ll thank yourself if you buy a Python. Before you buy one, though, make sure you know how far your aquarium is from a water source so you get the right length. There are adapters for every water source- kitchen sink, bathroom sink, outdoor hose, etc. I also take the fish out when I’m cleaning the aquarium so that the fish aren’t barraged by chlorinated water. Although, since the chemical that takes out the chlorine works instantly, it’s not that big a problem if you don’t. It’s just my preference.

The best part about buying “feeder fish” is that you can’t tell whether the goldfish is exotic when it’s that small. So, I’ve paid five cents for black moors, pearlscales, etc. You just have to keep them alive long enough to find out. 🙂

The only time I’ve ever encountered true problems is when a tank gets ich. I have not once had any luck with treating it. I just do everything I can to prevent it. The treatment is expensive and might as well say “does not work” right on the label. Believe me when I tell you this is true; I’ve kept goldfish most of my life and am not inexperienced in the slightest. It spreads so quickly that even isolating the one fish that has it doesn’t make any difference. By the time you see the white spots, it’s game over for the whole tank…. which is why I buy five cent fish. If your tank gets ich, and you’ve had the fish long enough that losing the tank will be emotionally damaging (and I do mean it…. so much work goes into keeping these fish alive that it’s hard to watch them die after two years), try the treatment and see if your fish respond to it… but I’m betting dollars to donuts that they won’t.

If your entire tank dies, the only solution is to go back to the beginning. Start with an empty tank, even taking out the gravel and running water through it (I use a colander). Make sure the plastic plants are clean as well. Scrub the hell out of the walls and bottom of the tank with one of those yellow sponges that has the green layer on top. Never, ever, ever use soap. Even if you think you’ve gotten it all out, the molecules you can’t see will still kill the fish. Once you’re sure the tank has gone back to zero, replace the gravel and plants and plug everything back in. Then, let the tank run for at least two weeks before you add more fish. Some experts say that you only need to wait 24 hours to let the temperature stabilize, but I think this is unwise for goldfish. It takes time for the healthy bacteria to grow. Once you’ve had six or seven weeks with fish in the tank, a bottom feeder is also helpful, like a cory catfish. You want to wait until there’s enough for them to eat.

Also, aquarium size is directly proportional to how long goldfish will live. The smallest rule is one inch of fish (excluding their tails) per gallon of water. Also, goldfish will grow to the size of the tank they’re in. My rule is generally three goldfish in a 20 gallon tank, because I want all of them to be yuuuuge. 🙂

Lastly, don’t put a goldfish in a desktop aquarium. Just don’t. If you only have a one or two gallon tank, one betta is more than sufficient. I named my betta “Tester.” It also helps if you play Aqua for them. Bad puns, I’ll see myself out……