Life

-

So as a result of my brother’s room going from a sleeping space to a 1,000 degree oven his Nintendo Wii got destroyed (go figure).

Having had nothing but good results from contacting Nintendo in the past I went on a limb and suggested he email Nintendo telling them what happened to the house, and requesting a free Wii.

So my mom wrote a very impressive email to them.

Their response?  Send proof.  So we went and found a melted (but clearly a Nintendo device from any gamers eyes) and will be sending that in.  You can clearly see the GameCube controller ports on it, and Nintendo should more then easily be able to identify a large amount of components on the circuit board.

Nintendo continue to live up to the high regard I hold them in.

-

So I went over to the house with the intent of helping clean up the house but that didn’t seem to happen.

First we were going to wash dishes, but apparently you need gas to heat up the water first.  Go figure.  We got the great idea of using the grill to heat up the water, but the fire had melted the hose.  The scary part is the grill wasn’t even close to the house for a long time.  One would think if it was hot enough to melt the hose it would be to hot to pull away from the garage.  Weird.

So we did clean out the fridge.  My brother had actually already done this, but I guess his “clean out” is different from ours.  We took out the garbage, which with everything else going on know one had thought of until the flies got bad.

The insurance adjuster came over.  She was very nice and seemed to very much be on the same page as us.  She had to go back to the office to come up with numbers (a few days down the road), but she left with us happy.

Now we can finally start doing whatever we want.  ie start cleaning up the mess.

We also had a contractor look at the house today so that he can come up with how much he thinks it would cost to fix the house

-

Ya that’s right.  You read the title right :sigh:

A house fire.  So should I start from where I realized my house was on fire, on from backstory that I have recieved?  Well I’ll do it both ways pointing out where my experience becomes first hand - Not that there is much back story.

So my garage caught on fire July 3rd somewhere between 9pm and 10pm (I’m sure there is a “exact” time the fire dept determined, but a 1 hour time frame is close enough for me).

So the garage caught on fire.  According to the fire chief it started on the roof.  Frankly I think that is a bit bold of a statement.  My view point is it could have started on the ground, and lit the area on fire catching the roof, and burned out on the ground before it eventually went back to the ground.  But whatever.

So my my brother, Jason, and their friends were in Jason’s room apparently when it happened.  My sister was in here bed room.  That is when a stranger saw the fire driving by, and banged on the doors.

They called 911 (after the strangers, and at least one neighbor had) and got out.  They had to be outside for about a hour or so before I came into the picture.

So I’m with a friend, and we are driving down my street and the road blocked.  I asked the firefighter if I could just get out and walk down.  The firefighter asked his partner where the fire was and he said “287″.  Well my house is 300, so I didn’t think a single thing of it and continued walking (At this point I’m not sure what the fire fighter said the address was, but it wasn’t my house, was in the 200s, and was a uneven number).

So I start walking down and call my brother saying in a joking manner “what is going on?”.  Well he starts crying, and I pretty much realized what was going on, and told him bye, and I would be right there.  So I start walking the quarter mile (or so) but quickly start walking, because if I ran I would be out of breath (I know I know) before I got there, and then what good would I be for the next 5 minutes as I gasped for air?  Or I could just walk it and be useful at just about the same time as if I ran.

So I get there and the first person I see is my neighbor.  And he goes “Where were you??”.  Well we have a really nice neighbor, but I don’t see him much, and there were so many other people who had no right being there I asked very madly “Where are YOU?!!”.  His reponce was “your neighbor”.  I said sorry, and asked him where Joe was.  He pointed over towards the other side of the driveway.

Pretty much from there is yada yada.

We were told to go into the house and get anything with high price tags out of the house, because people like to loot houses that were on fire.  So we do that.

My poor mom hardly could deal with going into the house and seeing the damage - And you couldn’t see much.  Between the fact it was night and there was no electricty (go figure), and we were going very quickly we couldn’t see much.

So the next day we saw the damage.  It was bad…

The garage was 100% gone (including the car), but the mud room (exterior and interior) were pretty much oddly fine.  It must have had fire proofing dry wall or something.  The interior did have some very minor burn marks, but that was about it.

The interior outside side was heavily damaged, but when you went in the only damage to the inside side of the door were two very minor burn marks.  Beyond that the only damage to the kitchen area was firefighter created damage.

Going into Jason’s room there wasn’t much damage either.  The ceiling had burn marks and such, but that was about it.  There was also a hole in the ceiling, but once again that was firefighter created damage.  There was also lots of water on the floor from the hoses (they were spraying directly above the most).

So directly above Jason’s room on the second floor was Charles’ room.  For all intents and purposes his room had 100% damage.  If it wasn’t 100% from the fire alone by the end it was as a result of firefighter created damage (I should note that when I say “firefighter created damage, this was damage to prevent the spread of the fire).

Next door was Joe’s room.  I would say there was between 90 and 95% damage to his room.

Then you have my sisters room…  From the other two rooms I’m sure you would guess extensive damage.  But no.  There was ceiling and floor damage, but beyound that the walls were still perfectly blue, and the contents intact.  It was sureal compared to the other rooms.

Beyond that the hallway had minor damage, and my mom’s room.  Back downstairs on the first floor of course the house beyond the kitchen was fine beyond smoke/smell damage.

My room (in the basement) hardly even had the smoke/smell issue.

Infact as far as I can tell the only thing I lost was in the car, and we already know that is insured by the car insurance.  Heck I even have the receipt for that item.

So ya…

-

So my friends wanted to go see a wrestling show and asked if I would come along.  I said sure having no idea what I was getting myself into (Rochester has a respectable amount of indy wrestling promotions).  Turned out they just wanted to go to a bar/restraunt to catch the WWE PPV “Night of Champions”.

Now to be honest I have never gone to a bar to see a PPV much less eat (unless you count Applebee’s type restraunt/bars).  I just have no interest.  If I want to drink I’ll drink at home (with friends of course).  Anyways…

This was much more fun then I even thought it would be.  Just the astrosphere.  Now by no means was this bar packed (it wasn’t empty though either), but for what it lacked in shear numbers it more then made up for in die hard fans.  Now it was kind of hard to hear the announcers from the get go, but you might as well forget about it when something exciting was happening.

In the last 5-10 minutes of the main event it just never died.  People were screaming and pounding on the tables as if the wrestlers could actually hear their cheers.

It was just so much fun.

The only real complaint was the sound and picture quality.  I just wish they had pumped the sound up a bit more.  Not so loud you would be able to hear it when the place went nuts, but loud enough you didn’t have to strain to hear the announcers during a time when everyone wasn’t cheering.  I can’t imagine it is easy to find the sweet spot where you can talk to your friends and still hear the announcers though.

And then the picture.  I could either watch it on a 27 inch or so HDTV, or watch it on a crappy 60″ or so projector.  Anything short of WrestleMania, and the choice is easily the larger screen for me.

Lots of fun, and best of all I only spent $15 bucks on food.  Hmmm…  $10 to go out to eat and have decent food, or $15 to go out to eat, have decent food and watch a PPV I really enjoy.  Touch choices.

-

I have been looking for my restore disk for a few weeks now, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me.  I couldn’t even pirate XP since Dell used a DVD/CD RW drive that has a high failure rate (btw since the I KNEW the restore disks were in my house I think pirating XP would be well within “fair use”).

So finally after looking for something else I accidently came across the restore disk!

The darn thing was litterly 2 feet from where I was looking over and over and over.  I was kind of annoyed but very happy at the same time.

You see my computer really needed to be reinstalled.  The computer was just so slow.  I didn’t even try to speed it up because…  Well I highly doubted I could, plus there was just so much demo type garbage in the registery that I knew I couldn’t get rid of any other way.

So I reinstall it.  But I forgot about the drivers - Why the drivers are not part of the restore disk is beyond me.  Really the restore disk isn’t even a restore disk.  It is a XP install disk that only works on a Dell computer.  Whatever…

So I get it booted up, and I can’t get on the internet.  Now I have many flash drives - But they all have disapered.  Because the people in my house can’t keep thing hands off my things, so I have just stopped buying them.

So I call up a friend and ask to borrow his.  He says yes of course and aks if a 1gb drive will be big enough.  I roll my eyes and say ya.  All I need is a stupid network driver and then I can get the rest from my own computer.  Of course he didn’t know what my intentions were so ya…

So right now the only thing I don’t have is…

A. OpenOffice (because it slipped my mind up until just now)

B. A way to get my music off my iPod Touch.  I must have tried like 7 differnet programs.  No really…  That many…

So um…  If anyone knows of a way to get my music off my ipod…  I would love you forever and ever - And then even more time.

-

So today we were going to go see fireworks, but between work, and heavy traffic we missed it.

Well this was this disabled vehical, and some poor guy trying to push it up a off ramp.  So I asked him if he wanted help pushing it (he was clearly having trouble).  So I did.

-

So a while ago I discovered this girl on YouTube.  She plays the ukulele, and sings.  She also has 100,000 subscribers, and is from Rochester so I ended up getting interested enough in her to subscribe to her, but for me that doesn’t mean much.

Her username is jaaaaaaa

Well recently I started looking at her stuff again.  I actually spent several hours straight playing her videos, and glossing over the comments.

Well now I think I’m addicted to YouTube.  Not downright because of her, but she didn’t help matters.  Now I’m browsing through the recommended videos, the featured, and the promoted every day.  And since jaaaaaaa is a frequent featured person I just keep on getting exposed to her.

My favorite thing I saw though recently I would have to say was a video of Abby Wambach in Rochester.  It just has such a personal feel.  Although I’m not sure what she was talking about when she started talking about Don’s Orignal.  It is either Nick Tahou’s or Abbott’s.

And then of course there are all the wrestling videos which was pretty much the only repative reason why I used YouTube.

-

So the other day I went to Friendly’s.  Now for some back story.  For anyone that doesn’t know Friendly’s is a restraunt, but at the end of the day it is just a excuse to get ice cream at the end of a meal.  For some of their items the meal comes with ice cream.

So anyways.  I went with 3 friends.  They all ordered their ice cream, and then the waitress started walking away.  Now she had been annoying me the entire time.  If it wasn’t her lame one liners (with zero delivery) it was her inability to get our drink order straight (and then after she screwed up the drinks had the nerve not to write down our entree orders).

So she starts walking away, so I’m like “I’d like a Butterfinger Sunday”.  Boy was that a mistake.  She turns around and with the most sass you could imagine goes “You don’t get none”.  At this point I’m like WTF, and give her a very confused yet annoyed look.  She responds with “Your meal doesn’t come with a sunday”.

At this point I’m just rolling my eyes and am speechless.  One of my friends replies with “Well can he buy one?!”.  OMG.  What a nut case.

Now I’m the kind of person who always makes sure to tip well.  It is pretty much always double the tax - And then I go from there.  But this lady…  I had no problem what so ever not putting down a single penny.  Actually…  If I had a penny I would have put it down.

Despite the waitress the meal was good though.

-

So I just replaced the spark plugs in my car after a bunch of people started to tell me (with no knowlege of the other people saying the same) that my car needed new spark plugs.  So I went and got new spark plugs.

Sadly it seems most of the problem is in the spark plug cables instead of the actuall spark plugs.  Well after destroying 3 of the 4 spark plug cables (if they were not destroyed before) I put in the new spark plugs.  Now I know nothing about car engines, but a friend said it sounded like it was still running on only one cylinder.

The good news though?  The car *seemed* to start up better then before.  So I took it for a drive.

Boy what a diffrence.  The car now actually will accelerate decently, and the car now doesn’t cringe at the slightest hill.  Amazing what one cylinder working the way it is supposed to does.  I can only imagine the beast my car would become if it had all 4 working the way it should.

So I was talking to this same friend, and he is going to talk to a friend and I’ll buy the new spark plug cables (no more then $30 bucks) and they will install them for dirt cheap.

Throw in the fact that I also just had my breaks replaced and my car feels so much more fresh.

-

So coming home from NYC I got to thinking.  How does Rochester match up against other cities.

Well first highways.  In other cities (Buffalo, Washington, and NYC) it seemed to me that their highways are really complicated.  Ater actually thinking about the highways in Rochester I don’t actually think their any worse.  Maybe more, but not worse.

Buildings.  Okay Rochester may not have the tallest buildings around, but few skyscrapers we do have  all stand on their own.  We have the World HQs of Eastman Kodak, and the really tall skyscrapers we do have either look really nice, or have very cool unique architecture.

I mean at night you have the skyscrapers.  Throw in a jet or two in the background…  The 3 major stadiums, and 7 sports teams.  Toss in the billboards this week advertising the Senior PGA Championship in Rochester, and there is a lot to apprecate.  And the city isn’t a dirty city as far as industry goes.  Sure Rochester is home to Kodak and it’s dirty poultion, but it is contained in a somewhat small area.  And while Xerox has a large industry section in Rochester is not really a dirty industry park, and is tucked away on the very outskirts of the Greater Rochester area.