Improvisations and Quick Responses
I spent most of the morning installing doorways, actually door frames with doors in them in one of the houses that had been flooded. We put hangers on the doorframes, hung them in the holes that had been made in the walls, and shimmed them so that they were solid where all the hinges and latches needed the support. Then we took all the doors off their hinges, and put supporting screws in the tops and bottoms so that they could be painted with a final coat of paint.
All in about four hours all together, for a whole basement, with several bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage room, as well as the entry down the stairs.
The hardest part, though, was supporting the long screws until they bit into the tops and bottoms of the doors themselves. Normally, I'd have my work gloves, but I hadn't been able to find them for a few weeks. So, instead, I improvised with a strip of masking tape to cover the skin that supported the screw.
It's one of those things that I've learned the more finishing work I do. A lot of it is pretty physical. While the power drill turns the screw for me, I'm the one that has to lend my weight and strength to drive the screw into the wood, or if it's while I'm doing drywall, it's through the drywall into the wood that is supposed to support it. It won't go in if I don't push. So I abuse my hands pretty thoroughly if I'm not careful.
When I came home, I got my shower and my lunch before John got home, and then he called for my help in a very weird voice. It turned out that someone had stolen our credit card number and was trying to use it in France... *blinks mildly*
The credit card company jumped on it immediately, so none of the charges went through, and they called us pretty much immediately, and we went through all the pending charges and called out which were fraudulent and which were not. So it was caught well within time, that card is now turned off, and we'll get a new one; but it still felt pretty odd. It was very good that the credit card company was so on top of it.
I spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching Log Horizon and really enjoying it a lot. The responsiveness in battle is really a marvelous thing, especially through the eyes of the young girl, Minori, who is learning how to direct her friends in a battle and see how it's going. It was also interesting having the whole idea of all the "adventurers" being able to decide for themselves, so that they had to be contacted one on one, as they didn't take orders from some hierarchy. It's just like the UCC in that, and just like real teams, too, from my experience. The best ones are the ones where everyone acts on their own initiative, with the information they have not only by themselves, but from each other, especially when they've all agreed on an overall goal.
I had a discussion with someone earlier this week, where she was really frustrated about not knowing what our chain of command was and how horribly inefficient we seemed to her because there wasn't just a single someone that could make the decisions for everyone else.
And it was interesting because my reaction was that having one person trying to make decisions for everyone else would be horribly inefficient... someone dictating everyone's actions would be a bottleneck for everyone. But I also see the whole system, not just what she was trying to deal with, and for her it was difficult to figure out who was actually responsible for what. We get so much done with so few people and so few resources it still amazes me, sometimes, but it's because everyone gets to make their decisions in their bailiwick without me having to interfere in any of it unless they need my help to work with a different part of the organization...
Anyway...
So it is.
Dinner was Sprouts Sushi with Jet, because John had a meeting with someone else. It was delicious, and we're having Trader Joe's almond croissants for breakfast. He has an honor band meet tomorrow, and a performance in the evening! So I'm very jazzed that I'm going to be able to go watch him.
We got to play a lot of TF2 for the rest of the evening, and he got a taunt dropped on him randomly!! *laughs* Those things almost never drop for people, and it had to be a Pyro taunt, which I already own. He never plays Pyro. It's kind of funny how Jet and I split up the classes. He loves Spy and Sniper, and I nearly never play those classes. I have the most hours as Pyro, but then come Engineer and Heavy. Jet and I can both do engineering, but we do it vastly differently, and he never does Pyro or Heavy. So I give him all my strange and exclusive Spy gear and Sniper special weapons, and he gives me all the crazy Pyro things and my Heavy now has a Tough Man's Toque thanks to Jet.
The interesting thing is that when we're on the same team we cover most of the bases, if there's a real need for a particular class one or the other of us can do it. He tells me when the team needs a Heavy to anchor the team, and I tell him about sentry gun placements and Engie nests, so that he can go Spy or Demoman and wipe them out. I'll sometimes go Soldier to do the same dirty job, but I have to do it up front and dying a few dozen times. *laughs* We both pick up Medic duties when there aren't any, and after watching a video called Unbalanced Teams, we've now made it a goal to Ubercharge a spy into winning a match for us, sometime. *laughs*
And I'm really proud of the fact that I now have a "Spectacularly Lethal" flamethrower.
All in about four hours all together, for a whole basement, with several bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage room, as well as the entry down the stairs.
The hardest part, though, was supporting the long screws until they bit into the tops and bottoms of the doors themselves. Normally, I'd have my work gloves, but I hadn't been able to find them for a few weeks. So, instead, I improvised with a strip of masking tape to cover the skin that supported the screw.
It's one of those things that I've learned the more finishing work I do. A lot of it is pretty physical. While the power drill turns the screw for me, I'm the one that has to lend my weight and strength to drive the screw into the wood, or if it's while I'm doing drywall, it's through the drywall into the wood that is supposed to support it. It won't go in if I don't push. So I abuse my hands pretty thoroughly if I'm not careful.
When I came home, I got my shower and my lunch before John got home, and then he called for my help in a very weird voice. It turned out that someone had stolen our credit card number and was trying to use it in France... *blinks mildly*
The credit card company jumped on it immediately, so none of the charges went through, and they called us pretty much immediately, and we went through all the pending charges and called out which were fraudulent and which were not. So it was caught well within time, that card is now turned off, and we'll get a new one; but it still felt pretty odd. It was very good that the credit card company was so on top of it.
I spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching Log Horizon and really enjoying it a lot. The responsiveness in battle is really a marvelous thing, especially through the eyes of the young girl, Minori, who is learning how to direct her friends in a battle and see how it's going. It was also interesting having the whole idea of all the "adventurers" being able to decide for themselves, so that they had to be contacted one on one, as they didn't take orders from some hierarchy. It's just like the UCC in that, and just like real teams, too, from my experience. The best ones are the ones where everyone acts on their own initiative, with the information they have not only by themselves, but from each other, especially when they've all agreed on an overall goal.
I had a discussion with someone earlier this week, where she was really frustrated about not knowing what our chain of command was and how horribly inefficient we seemed to her because there wasn't just a single someone that could make the decisions for everyone else.
And it was interesting because my reaction was that having one person trying to make decisions for everyone else would be horribly inefficient... someone dictating everyone's actions would be a bottleneck for everyone. But I also see the whole system, not just what she was trying to deal with, and for her it was difficult to figure out who was actually responsible for what. We get so much done with so few people and so few resources it still amazes me, sometimes, but it's because everyone gets to make their decisions in their bailiwick without me having to interfere in any of it unless they need my help to work with a different part of the organization...
Anyway...
So it is.
Dinner was Sprouts Sushi with Jet, because John had a meeting with someone else. It was delicious, and we're having Trader Joe's almond croissants for breakfast. He has an honor band meet tomorrow, and a performance in the evening! So I'm very jazzed that I'm going to be able to go watch him.
We got to play a lot of TF2 for the rest of the evening, and he got a taunt dropped on him randomly!! *laughs* Those things almost never drop for people, and it had to be a Pyro taunt, which I already own. He never plays Pyro. It's kind of funny how Jet and I split up the classes. He loves Spy and Sniper, and I nearly never play those classes. I have the most hours as Pyro, but then come Engineer and Heavy. Jet and I can both do engineering, but we do it vastly differently, and he never does Pyro or Heavy. So I give him all my strange and exclusive Spy gear and Sniper special weapons, and he gives me all the crazy Pyro things and my Heavy now has a Tough Man's Toque thanks to Jet.
The interesting thing is that when we're on the same team we cover most of the bases, if there's a real need for a particular class one or the other of us can do it. He tells me when the team needs a Heavy to anchor the team, and I tell him about sentry gun placements and Engie nests, so that he can go Spy or Demoman and wipe them out. I'll sometimes go Soldier to do the same dirty job, but I have to do it up front and dying a few dozen times. *laughs* We both pick up Medic duties when there aren't any, and after watching a video called Unbalanced Teams, we've now made it a goal to Ubercharge a spy into winning a match for us, sometime. *laughs*
And I'm really proud of the fact that I now have a "Spectacularly Lethal" flamethrower.