Garages, Gold, and Snow
Nov. 24th, 2010 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aGarage Hi-Jinx. So our builders came out on Monday to do Day #2 on the construction of our garage. Well, really Day #1, since they only put in a couple of hours previously before running into the gable-roof problem. And really, the destruction of our garage, but you get the idea.
They went at it for a good 7 hours or so and in the process pretty seriously destroyed the garage. They took out the side brick wall, which I've been afraid was going to come down, as far back as the side of the house, then started more slowly peeling it back from that point. Somewhat to my surprise, they unearthed wood shingles on the side of our house, behind the garage wall.
(I did know the house used to have wood shingles, as they're still on the wall of our sun room upstairs.)
Afterward the builders took out the front of the garage, then the little pillar that remained in the northwest corner. The destruction certainly isn't complete, as there's the back couple of feet of the roof and the back couple of feet on the west wall, but it's close. (The south and east walls are staying, both because they were in good shape and because we can't take out all of the walls of the structure. But mainly because they were in good shape.)
(See what it looked like after their previous 2 hours of destruction)
As the above picture shows, our "garage" looks a lot more like an empty space with debris in it now. We've got a chunk of wood lying across the front to try and discourage stupid people from mucking with the debris.
Unfortunately, the builders also found a problem. Or really two problems. First, the foundation of our house is about 18 inches above the floor of the garage, which is not up to code (and probably wasn't when it was done either, based on the various things that were done to this house before we lived here). Second, the roots from the Acacia that we took down last year have gotten under the foundation.
So, we'll probably need to put a pylon in under that corner of the house, tearing our roots to do so. It'll cost more money, but if that's all that's required, it should be OK. (I panicked a bit at first when Kimberly described the roots as growing through our foundation, which would have been disastrous, but that was just because she thought the foundation was at sidewalk level, not 18 inches up.)
So now the builders have taken a break while they again talk with the architect about what to do. I thought he was overpriced when he just drew up the plans (but not him specifically; architects in general), but if he keeps figuring out problems like this, I'll revise my estimate.
Gold in Them Thar iPhones. This afternoon I passed around my first alpha test of the next Skotos iPhone game, which is Michael Schacht's Gold!, which we'll simultaneously be releasing on the iPhone alongside the tabletop release (if all goes well).
I've been very pleased at how well the coding has gone, because so much of it has been well supported by the card library that I've now built three games upon. I've theoretically been working on it for six weeks, but I've been pretty extensively revising our other games and library at the same time, so I've got maybe two man-weeks of actual effort into it. Having a feature-complete version of the game in that timeframe is great, especially with many bugs and UI issues already squashed.
That release is going to be February 1 if all goes well.
I'm Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving ... It's been cold here in the Bay Area lately. The intellectually-challenged ex-governor of Alaska is no longer my least favorite export from that state. It's once more these darned Alaskan storms that freeze us to death.
Today when I went in to EndGame I wore my winter warmest, which included pants, a shirt, an overshirt, a windbreaker, gloves, and a "Jayne hat" pulled through my bike helmet. Glad I wore it though because it was a teeth-chattering 39 degrees when I headed home. Brrr.
(And I smirk at my dad telling us how cold it was last time we were in Hawaii. It was in the high 60s.)
They went at it for a good 7 hours or so and in the process pretty seriously destroyed the garage. They took out the side brick wall, which I've been afraid was going to come down, as far back as the side of the house, then started more slowly peeling it back from that point. Somewhat to my surprise, they unearthed wood shingles on the side of our house, behind the garage wall.
(I did know the house used to have wood shingles, as they're still on the wall of our sun room upstairs.)
Afterward the builders took out the front of the garage, then the little pillar that remained in the northwest corner. The destruction certainly isn't complete, as there's the back couple of feet of the roof and the back couple of feet on the west wall, but it's close. (The south and east walls are staying, both because they were in good shape and because we can't take out all of the walls of the structure. But mainly because they were in good shape.)
(See what it looked like after their previous 2 hours of destruction)
As the above picture shows, our "garage" looks a lot more like an empty space with debris in it now. We've got a chunk of wood lying across the front to try and discourage stupid people from mucking with the debris.
Unfortunately, the builders also found a problem. Or really two problems. First, the foundation of our house is about 18 inches above the floor of the garage, which is not up to code (and probably wasn't when it was done either, based on the various things that were done to this house before we lived here). Second, the roots from the Acacia that we took down last year have gotten under the foundation.
So, we'll probably need to put a pylon in under that corner of the house, tearing our roots to do so. It'll cost more money, but if that's all that's required, it should be OK. (I panicked a bit at first when Kimberly described the roots as growing through our foundation, which would have been disastrous, but that was just because she thought the foundation was at sidewalk level, not 18 inches up.)
So now the builders have taken a break while they again talk with the architect about what to do. I thought he was overpriced when he just drew up the plans (but not him specifically; architects in general), but if he keeps figuring out problems like this, I'll revise my estimate.
Gold in Them Thar iPhones. This afternoon I passed around my first alpha test of the next Skotos iPhone game, which is Michael Schacht's Gold!, which we'll simultaneously be releasing on the iPhone alongside the tabletop release (if all goes well).
I've been very pleased at how well the coding has gone, because so much of it has been well supported by the card library that I've now built three games upon. I've theoretically been working on it for six weeks, but I've been pretty extensively revising our other games and library at the same time, so I've got maybe two man-weeks of actual effort into it. Having a feature-complete version of the game in that timeframe is great, especially with many bugs and UI issues already squashed.
That release is going to be February 1 if all goes well.
I'm Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving ... It's been cold here in the Bay Area lately. The intellectually-challenged ex-governor of Alaska is no longer my least favorite export from that state. It's once more these darned Alaskan storms that freeze us to death.
Today when I went in to EndGame I wore my winter warmest, which included pants, a shirt, an overshirt, a windbreaker, gloves, and a "Jayne hat" pulled through my bike helmet. Glad I wore it though because it was a teeth-chattering 39 degrees when I headed home. Brrr.
(And I smirk at my dad telling us how cold it was last time we were in Hawaii. It was in the high 60s.)