SOLD and billable

Well it took long enough but the project I am working on finally sold. We have been working on a temporary Statement of Work that has been extended several times. This new Statement of Work will take the project to the finish line next July. This means that I will be traveling to Dayton for the at least the next few months. I also have been working on the task of mapping data which could lead to being put on creating/capturing master data for the customer. This would mean that I may be on the project until the completion of the project next July. I also am now billable on the project as I had been shadowing. That means that I am actually making the company money instead of being a mooch!

It is also time already for mid-year reviews. This means a lot of extra paper work and meetings that don’t contribute to anything but keeping my career on track. I hope that my project manager agrees with my self assessment. We are rated on a five point scale. You want a 1 or 2, 3 is ok, and you want to stay away from 4 and 5; though I have done quite a lot on this project so I am not too worried about it. We shall see after my PM checks off my appraisal my councilor will meet with me and go over it again. Then I think he goes over it with the partners in the office. Then it is put away until the end of the year and compared with the second half of the year. We will have to wait and see.

Utility Door

I finally decided to do a lot of the maintenance on the house that I have literally been putting off for years. The first item on this list was replacing the utility door that leads to the basement from the back of the house. The original door must have been put in back in 1905 when the house was originally built. It was panel door hung in a wood door frame. The door was simply put in on top of a pile of rocks! So over the last hundred years dirt had seeped in under the door and filled the gaps in the rocks. This led to the frame rotting out – it did last for 95 years or so – leaving a gap between the door and the ground about an inch and a half across the bottom of the door. It has probably run the heating bills up quite a bit over the last few years.

After ripping the door frame out of the wall I needed to poor a foundation to set the door on. I had already purchased the concrete but when I mixed it and poured it into the simple 2x4 form I had built I found I only had half of what I needed. So I had to run back down to the Home Depot and buy more. I had planned to have the door out and foundation finished by two in the afternoon. Unfortunately due to having to work that morning (Saturday) and it taking longer to prepare the foundation, in addition to the extra run to home depot I didn’t finish until 4:30 so I was unable to hang the door the same day. Just for some more fun it decided to rain as I was finishing the foundation. But it came out pretty good anyway.

The next day I went to hang the door and Minnesota was experiencing 60+ MPH winds. So after an hour or so of battling I had the door hung. I used a level and shims and got the door basically perfect level. This was only the second door I have hung so was doing most of the work on limited experiences. When the door was hung I was surprised to find that one side of the door was flush with the wall and the other was flush on the bottom and sticking out several inches at the top. I checked with the level and sure enough the door was hung well so I checked the wall and it wasn’t level!!!

Well this was past my abilities (I hate to admit it but I can’t do everything) so I called up a friend of mine who is professional. CQ is as good a carpenter as there is. I did have to wait for the Vikings game to finish for him to come over, but he worked so fast it was absolutely amazing. He first loosened the screws and pulled out the nails I had used and then pushed that corner back in for a bit. After that he re-shimmed the door and tightened all of the screws it took at most 10 minutes and he did it all by eyeball. He then went to the depot with me and cut the cedar to finish the job. It took him less time to cut and install the trim as it took to go to home depot and back. When he was finished the door even swung and latched better.

The finished product is really doing its job. The basement is now noticeably warmer and dryer. I couldn’t be happier with the results. Maybe the third door I put in someday will be an easier job.

Halloween

Last night was Halloween and last Saturday we had a Halloween party. There was a pretty decent showing, except that people don’t seem to stay as long as they used to. I would guess maybe 50-65 people showed not too bad. Unfortunately my younger brother couldn’t make it – I found out later he had car problems – we were really looking forward to having him there. Most people showed up in costume too, which is a good thing; though LJ still hasn’t broken his string of skipping out on the costume. The night went pretty late with most people staying until the middle of the night and others until what we can only describe as early morning. I was in general happy with the turnout and the party. Nothing really crazy happened but it wasn’t boring either, everyone seemed to have a good time.

We even put out a nice spread of food for the first time. RB would let me just through some chips and dip. Instead we had to go to the grocery store and create a nice spread that included: Ship and marinara sauce, cheese – crackers – summer sausage platters (with 4 kinds of cheese and 2 kinds of crackers), pretzels, mixed nuts, 3 kinds of chips and salsa, cocktail wieners, and cheese/chili dip! KS added some veggie dip and we had a ton of food. GM and AL put together a nice little cash bar in back so if people didn’t just want beer they were set there too.

The next day was defiantly as much fun as the night before. After 5 hours or so, it was time to wake up and clean. This was the only time I had as I was going to parents for dinner and flying out the next morning. But it really wasn’t that bad. The new floors clean up really fast, I’m glad I had extra poly put on. The yard only had a little garbage in it and most of peoples empties the night before made it to the trash can or recycle bin. It did take some time to clean the kitchen. The dishwasher was already half full so we filled it and ran it right way then hand washed everything else. That’s ok running on so little sleep my mind didn’t really know what was going on anyway so it was done before I knew it. Next year though I think maybe it should be at someone else’s place! But I’ve said that for the past 5 years!