I finally finished installing soffit venting yesterday which should improve the ventilation in my attic which should reduce the load on my HVAC which should reduce the power we use. That isn’t my point, though. When I finished and cleaned myself up I really felt like having a sandwich. It was a beautiful day and I thought I’d go to the local neighborhood grocery store, Kings Red and White, for bread. I could have easily walked the extra half block to Compare Foods, which is much larger but non-local. Or, I could have walked the opposite direction and gone to a panaderia or one of the other tiendas on Roxboro. I talked to a couple of neighbors on the way there, read some fliers on King’s local events board, and walked home with a couple of neighborhood kids. The algorithm at Walk Score seriously underestimates my neighborhood.

That little hike to the store reminded me of house hunting. We bought the house we did, in the neighborhood we did, partly for the ability to walk to stores and restaurants. Another important factor was proximity to the regional mass transit stop so I could catch the bus to work. I was reading the Atlantic this morning and The Next Slum? seemed to sum up perfectly why we didn’t want to live in a cul-de-sac suburbia.

We have friends who live in a giant, sprawling suburban McMansion development of enormous houses and it’s always so surreal to me. I’ve been in their neighbors houses and always had the impression that they’re just squatters. To a household, they all seem to have 1,000 square feet of furniture in their 5,000 square foot homes. With soaring ceilings and yards of the same paint throughout the houses I always have an unsettling feeling and can’t imagine how the occupants find it comfortable. On the edges of their development the houses are going to rent and crime is starting to rise. The article above could have been written about their completely un-walkable ‘neighborhood’.

Because I don’t want to talk about the FGDC Geospatial Metadata Standard, which was written before XML, I’ll post a picture of my backyard instead.  This is a screen capture of a Linksys camera pointed at my back yard.  It is awesome.

I came across 6 snakes last night while I was raking.  Actually, I was collecting large chunks of bark remaining from our recently removed sycamore.  Surrounding the stump is a large swath of English Ivy known for harboring wildlife.  They were all juveniles, the largest measuring roughly 5 inches in length, and were likely from the same brood.  This breaks my streak of complaining about the lack of snakes (or any reptiles) in my yard.  I was quite pleased.  I’d really like to move ahead with a small pond in the backyard to attract more wildlife.  We have the room.

Back to the snakes! Rough Earth Snakes:

We finally had the 110′ American Sycamore taken out today. We solicited bids from about 6 companies ranging from $800 to $3000. We went with JB Tree Service, (919) 918-6017, and we’re really happy. They had great insurance, were prompt, quick, and did great work. JB was awesome and we’d highly recommend them in the future. Thanks for recommending them James. For $1350 this is what we got.

flickr photo set

Here is a matrix showing prices and insurance.

I recently had occasion to wonder what goes on in my yard while I’m not home. I’ve got a couple of Logitech QuickCam Messenger cameras that I’ve been pointing out the windows and use Motion to monitor the cameras, detect motion, capture images, notify me of motion events, and transfer the images to a remote server. Motion provides some handy facilities for the last two objectives. I use the Motion on_event_start to trigger a bash script that connects to various other computers, including my work desktop, and notifies me that Motion has detected movement in the camera’s field of vision. Both computers are configured to use SSH public key authentication. The bash script triggers a Zenity alert box shown below.

Clicking OK on the alert box opens a Firefox browser window to a Qdig Quick Digital Image Gallery. The gallery is populated via the on_picture_save option. When a picture is saved a bash script is triggered that copies the picture to the Qdig gallery directory. When the browser opens the gallery, thumbnails are dynamically generated for the contents of the directory. I can’t yet testify to the effectiveness of the system as I haven’t caught any motion yet, but I’m hopeful.  Motion also provides a mini-HTTP server that can be configured to listen to a remote port so that one could watch streaming video in real time.  In fact, motion is extremely flexible and, due the inclusion of the ability to trigger external scripts, is highly extensible.

I saw this compliation of hardwood floor refinishers recently on a neighborhood listserv. The formatting makes sorting out which comments go with which company a little confusing. You’ll have to figure it out yourself.

Bohemia, 308-8500 Mark (maybe 201-1029 also),
$1.75-$2.25/sf install OR refinish (probably
$5.50 installed and finished); 3 coats poly; nice
flyer from Kathleen; “dust free, insured,
licensed & 100% guaranteed); $1.25/lf moulding
(1/3 of total sf); huge list of good references

The cheapest (but still do a great job);
Banks Flooring, 231-8399 (from Leslie Page)
* Bobby Bullock, 528-1708 in Creedmore (every
bit or better than Accent Floors (who is very
expensive), booked way in advance, but worth the
wait… buy new furniture with the savings)
* Accent Hardwood floors; owner Genia Smith (excellent, but $3/sf)
* Elston Hardwood Flooring 383-3616
$1.75-$2/s.f.; light sand & 1 finish coat $0.75/sf
* Just Floors – 419-1925, 1803 Chapel Hill
Rd, Suite #D, Durham F)
287-2342 $2/sf $0.60/sf remove
linoleum (Shonte’s cell 697-9717) — Tracy
Proctor of Just Floors Hardwood Flooring
(919-697-1244). He refinished the floor in one
room for me, but has done more extensive work for
several friends (who are quite picky), and they
were very pleased. His prices are good (much
less than Accent, in my experience), plus he’s a really nice person.
* “Elegant Hardwoods”, much less than others,
Frazee subcontracted them (BUT-uneven sanding,
wavy surfaces, and although I watched them apply
3 coats of polyurethane, they’re wearing very quickly.)
* Stern flooring 479-0222
* Tim Ellis; small family business, competitive. 477-2468
* David Elston to refinish $1.75/sf; no recommendation
* Disconnected phones:
* McLean’s Hardwood Flooring
* Smith Floor Finishing & Covering

Brandi uploaded some photos of our open house yesterday. It seemed to go pretty well. We had 58 guests and collected a lot of donations for the Animal Protection Society of Durham and the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. We were pretty surprised we could fit so many people into our little house, but it was quite comfortable. The weather was perfect (about 65F) and the screen porch saw a lot of use. The party, the planning, and the idea to ask invitees to bring charitable donations are all to Brandi’s credit. This was so much fun, we’re thinking of doing it again next year.

Ok, so I suspect it’s hot everywhere. However, it’s really hot here. Here’s a screen capture of my Gnome weather applet.

104 °F! Luckily, though, the humidity has dropped from the high 90’s earlier this week.

I thought I’d upload a photo I took of our weather station in the office. My mobile (L6) has a lousy camera so apologies. What a difference, though, right?

So, some neighbors just moved out of the house 2 doors down. It’s really incredible how unpleasant one household can make your life. Since they’ve been gone it’s become obvious that most of the sleepless nights spent listening to dogs barking were due largely to them. However, when they left they abandoned one of their cats. The nice one. They also had an evil cat that once bit me in the eye as I leaned down to pet that little monster. Our good fortune multiplies!

Here’s Kino, our new outside cat.

Cute, no?

It’s been warming up in the Bull City and our house is not impervious to the temperature apparently. Early on I had assumed that our spiral stairs to the partially finished attic would be a bane to the efficiency of the environmental controls in the house. Ah, how true. Although I suspected it was not the fault of the new HVAC system I called CWJ, the company that installed our new gas pack 3 months ago. The good news in this story is that the CWJ’s service was great. I called at around 7PM and they were out in about 20 minutes. Very thorough, very polite, and willing to talk about things unrelated to their system that I should do to improve the environment in the house. Try that with American Home Shield.

Which brings me to my next point: Attic ventilation. Why hasn’t anyone in the 64 years since my house was built think ventilation might be important? No idea. Perhaps the finishing of the attic has exacerbated things. Either way, I’ve got some work to do. First we’ll insulate the vestibule at the top of the stairs, then we’ll install some soffit venting to compliment the continuous ridge vent, and we’ll think about prying up the planking in the attic to increase the insulation between the attic and the ceiling below.

I’ve had this fantasy of blowing insulation into the walls of the house, too. However, I don’t want to damage the original asbestos siding and I hate to drill holes all over the plaster interior walls so that might not happen. Asbestos siding is actually super-high quality stuff and never needs to be repainted. Replacement windows are out. Our windows are lovely and new windows don’t let light through in the same way.