Friday, October 17, 2008

I’m Home!

I just got back from Spokane last night. Overall a fairly productive trip, despite a shipping mistake by our equipment supplier preventing us from having the computers we needed for the installation by the time we needed it. Fortunately we were able to make other arrangements.

I got to ride a Segway in the parking lot of the store where we were doing our installation. Those are fun!

We (Rob, Jared, and I) stopped in at the local indoor go-kart racing track while we were there. Rob definitely had the best times and best technique. But it was a lot of fun, despite the sore muscle in my back from tugging at the wheel for the duration of the 40-minute race.

We were also in a wee little car accident on the way home from the track. We got rear-ended by a guy in a pickup truck who claimed his brakes were malfunctioning. They weren’t; he just wasn’t paying close enough attention. Both Rob and Jared saw it coming in their mirrors. I didn’t see it, but from something Rob said I knew we were about to get hit. The damage to the car wasn’t too bad, though the trunk lid and rear bumper will have to be replaced. And the most significant “injury” to us were sore necks and shoulders for both Rob and me. Jared seems to have survived unscathed.

Update: Either the Go-Kart racing or the accident did more damage than I thought. My lower back is sore enough that I'm having a really hard time picking up anything that weighs more than about 25 pounds. D'oh.

I was disappointed to find out when I got home that our landlord decided to paint our living room white. Boring!!! They asked for my opinion when they told me they were going to paint it, and I said that I’d like to see a light tan, but I guess they felt like white was the better choice. Interesting.

I’m severely disappointed by the quality of the painter’s work. They have missed a few rather large sections of the wall. And the area of the kitchen ceiling they were supposed to repair just got a skim coat of mud without any sanding before or after, with no attempt to match the surrounding texture. It looks awful.

The paint on the walls of the bathroom has been peeling for some time (apparently when it was painted the last time around the painters didn’t use the proper type of paint for a humid bathroom environment, and the paint now collects mold and peels or falls off if you breathe or look at it funny), and it was supposed to be fixed, but their solution has been to scrape off the very edges of the peeling portions and cover it up with a coat of paint. Not cool. I can guarantee that a week from now the peeling will resume; just running my fingers across the wall or ceiling results in paint falling off; it just doesn’t adhere to the wall any more, and the painter knows it (they knocked off a 8”x8” square section of paint in one fell swoop while investigating the problem. And you can clearly see areas that are rotting behind the existing surface which, of course, are not being worked on. And they haven’t even attempted to fix the areas of the wall that were damaged by a water from a broken water heater a few years ago. There is also a big section of wall under the mirror that wasn’t painted last time around that is still the wrong color. Sigh.

Update: I just talked to the "boss" and they're going to work on the kitchen and bathroom some more, and they fixed the largest spot that was missed in the living room. Whew!

I have only been around for a few hours of what they are doing, but they certainly aren’t in any hurry. The entire job should have been finished in a day, and we’re now on day three with only 3/4 of the job done. They’ll work on something for a few minutes, then leave for quite a while. The guy working on the bathroom has spent about 20 minutes out of the 4 hours he has been here so far today. Pretty sad.

Not only am I disappointed by the color, quality of work, and how long it is taking, but also by the fact that I know I would have done a much better job on my own. I offered to do the work to my landlords. I guess they don’t have any confidence in my abilities, though. But I know I could have done a much better job than what is being done right now; these guys don’t seem to care in the slightest about what they are doing.

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