WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

chezball's comments

chezball | 2 years ago | on: We made a hot dog talk with RF [video]

Why in the world is the fence around that so short? This is nuts! I would have jumped that as a kid to climb the tower. Probably not in bare feet or the rain. It seems strange to not protect this better (yes, i know, kids are not supposed to be there, but kids are (properly) designed for finding trouble.)

chezball | 2 years ago | on: Writing documentation for your house

So, i sold a house i had in north Seattle after a divorce in 2018. We had bought it in 04, i was working at Microsoft at the time. We raised our son there. I even built a 8’x8’x8’ brick oven for baking pizza and bread (plans from Ovencrafters). I rented an excavator for a week and dug around the entire house and put in 12’ deep footing drains, with clean-out pipes every 20’ down the 100’ to the road. A new 2” pex water main. 1” pvc sprinkler lines buried 3’ deep. I completely gutted and remodeled the basement. I kept a 3” binder with everything in it. Every sprinkler line, footing drain, how my gravity fed recirc system worked, electrical wire, even the pictures of every stage of the six month long brick oven project, including how to move it if needed (10k lbs, but doable with a forklift) When i sold the house, i flew back there just to hand it to the new owner, some nuevo amazon guy. I went through everything with him, and although he listened, there was no interest or appreciation in what i had handed him. Fine. Whatever.

I moved back to Seattle a few months ago, and my 17 yo son, who was literally born in that house (on a Murphy Bed i built, also included in the manual (the plans, not that my son was born on it, how weird do you think i am?) went and knocked on the door, and he asked if he could look around (outside). They apparently looked at him as if he was deranged, but said sure.

He reported back that they had razed the brick oven, the one thing i thought would out last me in my life. I hoped that one day, maybe some kids would be eating pizza from this oven 100 years from now and no one would know where the oven came from.

Yeah, I haven’t had a house since then, but i will do it again, document everything. I will just be pickier about who i sell it to.

chezball | 3 years ago | on: Novell NetWare: The King Returns from the Dead (2001)

I used to work at Novell back in mid 90s. I transitioned from QA to dev in the security department under Roger Schell, who brought me in. I learned most everything I know about security protocols from that group. But my favorite memories there were the interviews I was asked to do. See, I’m not LDS and not from Utah. And I was chef in a previous life. And so they would ask me to take out the “California” candidates up to Oak Room at Sundance, and wine and dine them. It was a rough job for a 25 year old. We knew Eric’s days were limited (especially when he forced that Java crap at us ;-). I never understood the location in Provo. The campus was across the street from a sewage plant treatment plant! But wait, it gets better, the animal rendering plant was 1/4 mile down the road. The worst, however, was smell of the iron factory (smelter?) or something about a mile away. Ugh. I still think of that when I play Factorio! ;-) However, the best Indian food I have ever had is from Daniel at the Bombay House. Wow, his food has changed my life. Such love put into it. Who would have thought this possible in Provo? And I worked in Redmond for years too! I think I knew good Indian food (for a white guy from CT), having lived with six Indian guys my last year of undergrad, we would hangout all night, eating, making curry, and talking all night long. Thanks for the post and good memories!
page 1