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billroperAnd here's today's entry on the maintenance treadmill, or "Why Bill can't get things done."
So when I got home from lunch, I set out to take care of a few things before starting work on the taxes. (You remember the taxes, right?) First, Gretchen had asked me to find out why the TV in the living room wasn't working. This turned out to be relatively simple: Ruby the Dog had dropped one of her toys off the edge of the stairs so that it landed behind the TV and turned off the power strip that the TV and assorted other bits of electronics are plugged into. Thus, I rescued the squid (which is what we call this particular dog toy when not calling it an Andorian Tickler) much to the delight of Ruby the Dog, swept out the mass of dog hair behind the TV, made sure everything was plugged in, turned the power strip back on, and sat down on the couch to make sure that everything fired up.
It did, but the on-screen message complained that the batteries in the remote were failing. Ok, so I asked Julie to bring me some batteries so I could swap them out, did so, turned off the TV, and went to throw the squid for Ruby the Dog so that there would be peace in our time.
This all reminded me that I had been nagged by the remote controls upstairs that they needed to have batteries replaced, so I grabbed four more batteries, along with the hanging hook that I had bought at Menard's yesterday when I went to get the new brackets for the banister, and headed upstairs, where I could take care of the remaining tasks before getting to work on the taxes.
I replaced the batteries in the two remotes that had been complaining and fired up the TV. A third remote then complained on the TV screen that it needed new batteries. Of course, I didn't have any and wasn't going to do anything about it right now, because I still needed to go install the hanging hook so that I could hang the lovely piece of cardinal-themed stained glass that Gretchen had given me for Christmas before we finally managed to break it by leaving it lying around.
Of course, before I did that, I would need to move Gretchen's sewing chair that was between me and the window. That's easy enough, except my work laptop bag was sitting on the chair. Right! A few weeks ago, I had decided to push back the monitors on my desk a bit, a comedy of errors that resulted in my dropping the charging cable for the work laptop behind the desk and then plugging it back into the wrong port on the dock so that the laptop wouldn't charge. I had grabbed the charging brick from the laptop bag in a desperate bid to get things working again during a meeting and I had never gotten it back into the bag. Clearly, I should do that before putting the bag away or I would eventually arrive at some office with the laptop and no charger.
This would have been easier if the Velcro on the traveling charger had not become entangled with the Velcro on the charger that stays here. By the time everything was untangled, the laptop had come unplugged from the dock and when I plugged it back in both of the external monitors were displaying at the wrong resolution.
Several minutes of messing around followed, including a reboot, which didn't help. Eventually, I decided to unplug the laptop from the dock and plug it back in, after which everything was now ready to work correctly.
This all meant that I could now put the charging brick in the work laptop bag, put the laptop bag away, and get back to hanging the hook for the stained glass.
I wanted to put the hook as low as possible above the window. Unfortunately, that was low enough that the *second* screw really didn't want to go in, because it needed to penetrate a piece of metal corner framing around the window. Well, I could fix that. Back to the drawer with the tools to get the hammer. Now all I needed was a nail.
I didn't have one. But there had been a picture hanging kit on top of the bookcase underneath this pile of stuff that was there. Except I didn't see it. And this resulted in knocking the pieces of paper that were on top of the pile behind the bookcase. Great.
I yelled down to Gretchen that I was looking for the picture hanging stuff and she said she would look for it. In the meantime, I had better retrieve those papers in case they were important. I pushed the bookcase out of the way, and there at the bottom of the pile was the missing picture hanging kit, which I extracted and set aside for later use. I yelled down to Gretchen that I had found the picture hanging stuff, so she could call off the search. The papers, meanwhile, turned out to be of no great usefulness, so I consigned them to the recycling bin.
The bookcase sits near the laptop, so in the process of doing this, I managed to disconnect the laptop temporarily from the dock, which meant that when the plug connected again, the monitors were once again at the wrong resolution. I pushed the bookcase back in place, grabbing the back scratcher that tried to fall off and putting it back on top of the pile, unplugged the laptop from the dock and plugged it back in, resetting the resolution on the monitors back to the correct setting, and returned to the problem of the hanging hook.
The small nails in the picture hanging kit proved to be too small to successfully penetrate the corner guard, but the big nail was able to do the job. I returned the parts to the picture hanging kit and set it aside, grabbing the screw and screwdriver so I could try to finish this job.
It was while I was forcing the screw through the hole in the metal sheathing that K arrived, bringing the picture hanging stuff that Gretchen had found downstairs, because she had not heard me when I said that she could call off the search. K was trying to present it to me, I was trying to get the screw in the hole, and I was not in a particularly good mood by this point, so she wisely left it sitting in a place where it doesn't belong (because why should it be any different from anything else in the house?) and retreated to her room.
Eventually, the screw was screwed in so it was flush. I retrieved the piece of stained glass from the bottom of the stack that was sitting on top of the printer and hung it carefully on the hook, where it looks absolutely lovely.
The picture hanging materials (the ones that I found and the ones that K brought upstairs) were then consigned to a shelf on the bookcase where they do not belong. On the other hand, there is currently no place where they *do* belong, and at least they are out of the way there and not likely to fall onto the floor or *behind* the bookcase.
The remaining hanging hook went downstairs along with several other items that were on my desk and really didn't belong there and all of these things were placed into the kitchen junk drawer or the garbage, as seemed most appropriate.
You may not be surprised to hear that I did not make any progress on the taxes today.
Oh, and I have two more batteries in my pocket that will be going into the remote control in the bedroom just as soon as I head there after making this post.
So when I got home from lunch, I set out to take care of a few things before starting work on the taxes. (You remember the taxes, right?) First, Gretchen had asked me to find out why the TV in the living room wasn't working. This turned out to be relatively simple: Ruby the Dog had dropped one of her toys off the edge of the stairs so that it landed behind the TV and turned off the power strip that the TV and assorted other bits of electronics are plugged into. Thus, I rescued the squid (which is what we call this particular dog toy when not calling it an Andorian Tickler) much to the delight of Ruby the Dog, swept out the mass of dog hair behind the TV, made sure everything was plugged in, turned the power strip back on, and sat down on the couch to make sure that everything fired up.
It did, but the on-screen message complained that the batteries in the remote were failing. Ok, so I asked Julie to bring me some batteries so I could swap them out, did so, turned off the TV, and went to throw the squid for Ruby the Dog so that there would be peace in our time.
This all reminded me that I had been nagged by the remote controls upstairs that they needed to have batteries replaced, so I grabbed four more batteries, along with the hanging hook that I had bought at Menard's yesterday when I went to get the new brackets for the banister, and headed upstairs, where I could take care of the remaining tasks before getting to work on the taxes.
I replaced the batteries in the two remotes that had been complaining and fired up the TV. A third remote then complained on the TV screen that it needed new batteries. Of course, I didn't have any and wasn't going to do anything about it right now, because I still needed to go install the hanging hook so that I could hang the lovely piece of cardinal-themed stained glass that Gretchen had given me for Christmas before we finally managed to break it by leaving it lying around.
Of course, before I did that, I would need to move Gretchen's sewing chair that was between me and the window. That's easy enough, except my work laptop bag was sitting on the chair. Right! A few weeks ago, I had decided to push back the monitors on my desk a bit, a comedy of errors that resulted in my dropping the charging cable for the work laptop behind the desk and then plugging it back into the wrong port on the dock so that the laptop wouldn't charge. I had grabbed the charging brick from the laptop bag in a desperate bid to get things working again during a meeting and I had never gotten it back into the bag. Clearly, I should do that before putting the bag away or I would eventually arrive at some office with the laptop and no charger.
This would have been easier if the Velcro on the traveling charger had not become entangled with the Velcro on the charger that stays here. By the time everything was untangled, the laptop had come unplugged from the dock and when I plugged it back in both of the external monitors were displaying at the wrong resolution.
Several minutes of messing around followed, including a reboot, which didn't help. Eventually, I decided to unplug the laptop from the dock and plug it back in, after which everything was now ready to work correctly.
This all meant that I could now put the charging brick in the work laptop bag, put the laptop bag away, and get back to hanging the hook for the stained glass.
I wanted to put the hook as low as possible above the window. Unfortunately, that was low enough that the *second* screw really didn't want to go in, because it needed to penetrate a piece of metal corner framing around the window. Well, I could fix that. Back to the drawer with the tools to get the hammer. Now all I needed was a nail.
I didn't have one. But there had been a picture hanging kit on top of the bookcase underneath this pile of stuff that was there. Except I didn't see it. And this resulted in knocking the pieces of paper that were on top of the pile behind the bookcase. Great.
I yelled down to Gretchen that I was looking for the picture hanging stuff and she said she would look for it. In the meantime, I had better retrieve those papers in case they were important. I pushed the bookcase out of the way, and there at the bottom of the pile was the missing picture hanging kit, which I extracted and set aside for later use. I yelled down to Gretchen that I had found the picture hanging stuff, so she could call off the search. The papers, meanwhile, turned out to be of no great usefulness, so I consigned them to the recycling bin.
The bookcase sits near the laptop, so in the process of doing this, I managed to disconnect the laptop temporarily from the dock, which meant that when the plug connected again, the monitors were once again at the wrong resolution. I pushed the bookcase back in place, grabbing the back scratcher that tried to fall off and putting it back on top of the pile, unplugged the laptop from the dock and plugged it back in, resetting the resolution on the monitors back to the correct setting, and returned to the problem of the hanging hook.
The small nails in the picture hanging kit proved to be too small to successfully penetrate the corner guard, but the big nail was able to do the job. I returned the parts to the picture hanging kit and set it aside, grabbing the screw and screwdriver so I could try to finish this job.
It was while I was forcing the screw through the hole in the metal sheathing that K arrived, bringing the picture hanging stuff that Gretchen had found downstairs, because she had not heard me when I said that she could call off the search. K was trying to present it to me, I was trying to get the screw in the hole, and I was not in a particularly good mood by this point, so she wisely left it sitting in a place where it doesn't belong (because why should it be any different from anything else in the house?) and retreated to her room.
Eventually, the screw was screwed in so it was flush. I retrieved the piece of stained glass from the bottom of the stack that was sitting on top of the printer and hung it carefully on the hook, where it looks absolutely lovely.
The picture hanging materials (the ones that I found and the ones that K brought upstairs) were then consigned to a shelf on the bookcase where they do not belong. On the other hand, there is currently no place where they *do* belong, and at least they are out of the way there and not likely to fall onto the floor or *behind* the bookcase.
The remaining hanging hook went downstairs along with several other items that were on my desk and really didn't belong there and all of these things were placed into the kitchen junk drawer or the garbage, as seemed most appropriate.
You may not be surprised to hear that I did not make any progress on the taxes today.
Oh, and I have two more batteries in my pocket that will be going into the remote control in the bedroom just as soon as I head there after making this post.