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Last week (May 26), Izzy and I spent most of our day tearing out the downstairs bathroom. A couple of fun stories before I mention the point of this post.

1) When I went to remove the cabinet above the toilet, one of the screws would not back out. So, as with many things, the cabinet was removed by brute force. I noticed the aforementioned screw was rusted about 1/4" from the end. When we removed the wall, we found out why: that particular screw had gone through the sheet rock and into the sewer pipe behind the wall. It didn't matter that much, since a sewer pipe isn't pressurized, but it might have leaked moisture into the wall cavity behind the wall (which happened to the area under the stairs).

2) When we pulled out the bathroom counter/cabinets we found a classic case of "Doin' what it takes to get by." The area behind the doors on the counter (center section) was painted, but the areas behind the drawers (which you would never see) was not. Nor was the area between the counter and the wall (side of the counter). So, we had (even more) fully exposed paper-on-sheetrock. And yes, much more mold.

Needless to say, the "inside" (stud side) of all the bathroom walls, as well as the walls opposite those walls, were covered with "3D" mold. Fun.

But as to the title of this post: when Izzy and I pulled up the floor, we had to stop half way because the 4.5 foot cast-iron tub sat on the other sheet of plywood (2x6 elevated floor under which pipes were run). The tub drain would not yield to any tool I had, even one I had bought to remove the upstairs tub. What did it take? Going to Lowe's and buying a tool like this. That drain came right out. Amazing how easy things are when you have the right tool.

As part of our house gutting, we called Fairbanks' only refuse company, University Refuse (who recently bought out the local Waste Management franchise) and ordered an 8-yard dumpster. I went by the house on Friday to check it out, and discovered they had not delivered it. By then, of course, it was too late to call, and we were stuck without a dumpster.

I began calling around, mainly to see if anyone knew how to contact someone at University Refuse. Long story short, a friend of mine hooked me up with someone at our church who rents dumpsters. Big dumpsters. Forty yard dumpsters. We got one dropped off Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, we took what we had pulled out of the house so far, as well as some yard waste, and threw it in. And filled over half of it. I'm now thankful we didn't get the eight yard dumpster.

But it doesn't quite end there. I called University Refuse on Friday (and tried again on Saturday) and let them know they didn't deliver. I then called on Sunday and told them to cancel the order, and please do not deliver one now. Come Monday, then Tuesday, they never called back, never offered an apology, never said, "Please try again in the future, and we'll do better." I guess when you're the only game in town you get sloppy. Hmm...maybe I'll start a garbage business and do customer service right. Not right now...maybe in a few years.

The Firefox web browser has an extention called IETab which enables you to open a tab and browse websites via Firefox, but using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. This can help, for instance, if a site staunchly proclaims itself "IE only" and will not make changes for alternate browsers. Over at Hacking for Christ, Gervase Markham has a post entitled "IETab Considered Harmful?". He references the Slashdot article about MovieLink suggesting that users use IETab so MovieLink doesn't have to go to the "trouble" of making their web site Firefox compatible. Gerv observes:

The harm is that this 'solution' still excludes everyone on a Mac or on Linux, and its availability also makes the site far less likely to change to support Firefox properly. In other words, whereas before Mac and Linux users could add Windows Firefox users to their numbers when petitioning sites to upgrade to support web standards, the existence of IETab divides those two groups and gives those of us using non-Windows operating systems, and those who want to see sites supporting standards properly, far less clout.

Very true. The problem I have with IETab, however, is one of security. If you are using the IE rendering engine, you are opening yourself up to all the problems, standards non-compliance, and security holes you'd have if you used Internet Explorer directly. I keep telling friends, family, clients, and colleagues to use Firefox for better security. If there are sites out there encouraging users to "just install IETab to use our site," most of that security advantage will be negated.

At the conservative end, I think IETab should carry a big, fat warning along the lines of "This plugin is for development and testing only! Using it may compromise your system's security!" On the extreme end, I would have it done away with altogether. If you need multiple versions of IE for testing, on the Linux side of things, there is IEs4Linux, which allows you to install and run multiple versions of Internet Explorer on your Linux machine. I'm sure there is something similar for Windows. For Mac, you're still stuck, as IE no longer is available for Mac (at least last I checked). I suppose you could install Linux under Parallels and then install IEs4Linux.

So, yes Gerv, IETab is harmful, but not only for the reasons you bring up.

I just came across an interesting spam message. It was a spam offering to sell me (I think) health-care-related e-mail addresses. After getting over my fright at facial features being deformed by the drip bag, I noticed what seemed to be a weird fuzzy area in the photo. If you don't see it, look really closely at the area just to the left of the drip tube. See it? Yup, it's a watermark. That usually indicates a photo that might be a thumbnail or sample from a stock photography site.

So, I did a little investigating. Looking at the source of the e-mail, I found the URL to the photo which included this file name: SuperStock_1491R-120345.jpg

That's right, he didn't even rename the file when he downloaded the sample from SuperStock. Hmm...that really gives me confidence in his character and operating principles.

[For more information and back-story on our remodel saga see our original page about the rebuild/remodel as well as other posts about the rebuild.]

Last Wednesday (2/28), I stopped by the house to pick up something (shampoo, of all things). When I walked in, the house felt rather cold. A thermometer confirmed it: the house was at a balmy 20 degrees. The heater had stopped running. Thankfully, one of the tubs had leaked, relieving pressure on the pipes. We don't think any pipes broke. The water is now off, and the two valves in the house that had not frozen are open.

Investigating in the furnace room, it seemed that the airflow out the chimney had been stopped or restricted, and thus the heat had shut down, but not before blowing an decent amount of soot into the rest of the house (this is a forced-air furnace).

So, time to call a chimney repair person. He came out Saturday (3/3) to take a look. Within about 20 minutes, I was back over at the house because there was nothing he could do. The entire inside of the chimney had failed (liner failure) and there was no airflow through the chimney. The only thing to do: replace the entire thing. We're currently waiting on a quote from from Patrick at Alaska Chimney Service.

The cause of failure? Improper repair by the previous owner. As Patrick was investigating the cause of failure, he found that a hole in the portion of the chimney exiting the house (before the ninety degree joint that turned the chimney vertical). This hole, instead of being repaired, was instead covered with heavy tar paper. This hole then allowed large amounts of moisture to enter the chimney and eventually cause massive liner failure. Not only was this repair very dangerous, it was also illegal (against code) and the house never should have been sold with this repair in place. We wil be investigating our legal options with this one.

Two days ago (2/13, Tuesday) Carl's Jr. opened here in Fairbanks, with yesterday being their first really busy day. Today on my way to work (half way across town from Carl's Jr.) I saw a bag from there along side the road. Sigh. I'm glad we have a state-wide cleanup day every spring.