I Bring Out The Stupid In People

I'm starting to get the feeling that my mere presence lowers people's IQs.  Here some some instances to back up my observation (and these don't even mention the awful drivers I seem to see every time I get behind the wheel):

1. Me: "So, I was reading about this research being done by a doctoral student at Dalhousie University blah blah blah."
   Other guy: "Research by a doctoral student at a university? Sounds pretty sketchy to me."
   Ummmm....you mean at an educational institute where people do research to be recognized (the bread and butter for a scientist) rather than for maximizing profit (like in a corporation)? Where this person will not achieve his dream of a PhD unless he can rigorously defend his research face to face with his peers and superiors actively trying to attack his research?
   Yeah. University research, esp. at a place like Dal, is totally sketchy.</sarcasm>
   
2. After talking about Jesus' standard for adultery ("If you even look at a woman with lustful intent, you have already committed adultery in your heart") someone said "And it's morals like that which prevented Christianity from ever making it big beyond the first century."
3. When discussing the cost of home ownership and whether or not I could afford it, I pulled out my iPhone to use the calculator someone said "Put your calculator away! This is no time to make calculations! You just have to do it!"
4. "You should cheat on your taxes because when you pay your taxes, all you're doing is supporting welfare cheats." Besides the implication that two wrongs do make a right, does this person think the whole tax system exists to give money to "welfare cheats"? A quick and dirty calculation reveals that less than 1% of your actual tax dollars goes to welfare recipients. (Same guy said this as #3.)
5. In reference to someone saying something similar to #4; "Remember that at election time." Yeah, whatever you do, don't vote for the party that's in favour of people cheating the system! Whichever party that is.
6. "You shouldn't complain about a late night party. Free music is always a good thing." Well....unless you have a migraine, or are sick, or have to get up early to work, or, in this exact case, the party is several kilometres away and the solution is to put the speakers up on stands. (This incident refers to Ottawa Folkfest 2014.)
7. "Einstein was an idiot." You lose a lot of credibility when you say this.
8. "The Bible can't be true because the Hebrews never would have been slaves because they weren't black." Because the only slaves in history were black. </sarcasm>.
9. "I f&#%@ing hate unions!" After having lost his job due to a layoff in a unionized environment; instead of been shown the door and perhaps being given a severance cheque (like in a non-unionized place), this person was given the option of 1) leaving immediately with severance pay, 2) sticking around for a year to find another job in the (rather large) organization, or 3) taking some money, going to school to upgrade his skills, then come back to work being put on a priority list to look for a position within the (rather large) organization. He took the third option, and had found a job and was complaining that he might not start at the top of the pay scale, instead of having to work up through a few years of guaranteed raises.
10. Me in December, 2012: "I just have this really ominous feeling that 2013 is going to be a bad year for me." Other person: "You'll just have to make it a good year then.". I knew at that point of a few changes coming up that were going to negatively affect my life. Besides that there was a mass exodus of my social circle. (Approximately 19 friends moved away that year. For context: in January of 2012 I didn't have 19 friends in Ottawa.) Aside from that there were a few things too personal for this blog. By December I knew I was right: 2013 is probably on record as being one of my worst years so far, and the vast majority of the good and the bad (of any year for that matter) was well beyond my control.

Some honourable mentions:

1. "You shouldn't rent because when you rent, you're just throwing your money away." This is an honourable mention because a lot of people say it, and it is technically true, and still may be practically true in some cases, in some parts of the world. But not in Ottawa in 2015. The implication is usually that when you own, you're not throwing your money away. To see why this is wrong, you have to use something called a 'calculator'.
2. "Hello, help desk support? My Microsoft isn't working." This is honourable mention because a lot of non-techies wouldn't know what's wrong with that. However, this was uttered as I was walking through my office. I work in IT.
3. "Canada is the most taxed country in the world." I'm calling this an honourable mention because it's really hard to verify the veracity of this statement. Do they mean the most amount of distinct taxes? The highest tax percentages for Sales tax? Property tax? Income tax? What tax bracket are we talking about? However, it made the list because upon a quick Google search reveals, by most measures, Canada's not even in the top ten.
4. "If you're trying to sleep while your neighbours are partying, just wear earplugs." Have you ever actually tried earplugs? They muffle sound, not cut it out entirely. Also, have you ever tried sleeping with earplugs in your ears? I moved this one to the honourable mentions because it turns out that ear plugs actually do work for a lot of people for some noises. I've found out that I have a weirdly shaped ear that makes it very difficult for any ear plug to stay in. I've tried many types of earplugs. I've twisted, scrunched, pulled on my lobes, done every thing I could think of, but I can't seem to get any to stay in my right ear for very long.

A Christian Perspective on Harry Potter

Dislcaimer

I'm only on the fourth book: The Goblet of Fire. Something could come up later that throws the rest of this post out the window.

I did start reading them a while ago, and got further (the fourth book, I think), but I read through them faster, basically racing through them. I'm now reading them at a slower, more enjoyable pace.

Background

This post is an extension of my previous post: My Harry Potter Fan Theory where I ultimately conclude that in the Harry Potter universe, magic isn't magic per se; it's technology.

I have recently started reading the Harry Potter series of books, and am so far enjoying them.

When the books first came out, there was discussion amongst Christians as to what the Christian perspective on them was. The books easily lend themselves to comparison to Lord of the Rings and Narnia. There seems to be a "completeness" about 3. We seem to want triologies. So many jokes involve three similar, but contrasting things. (A priest, a pastor, and a rabbi walk into a bar...)

Tolkien and Lewis make two. They were both Brits who wrote fantasy highly popular, other-world epics, which are often enjoyed by younger readers, which have thus far stood the test of time. Where's the third?

Enter J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. We don't know if Harry Potter will stand the test of time, but the other criteria are met.

But, for the Christian reader, Narnia is blatant allegory. Middle Earth mythology are not allegory, but are laced with Christian themes, and clearly from a Christian world-view. What about the Harry Potter universe?

Most Christian parents would be happy for their kids to read Narnia. For Middle Earth writings, it would be more a question of age-appropriateness. We read The Hobbit as a class in grade 4 (9 years old), and I just loved it! That summer I tried reading Lord of the Rings, and I just couldn't get past the birthday party! Now that I'm older and more used to longer, slower stories, Lord of the Rings is a much more enjoyable read.

But what about Harry Potter? Some would say "No way. That's witchcraft and it's of the devil!"

What I Heard Others Saying

When this discussion first came to my consciousness, I was still a post-secondary student living in Sault Ste. Marie. The default position was "Harry Potter promotes witchcraft, and is therefore evil."

So, at first I just went with the default position. I was too busy with school to be doing all that reading, and it's easy saving money on a movie ticket when none of your friends want to see the movie.

A friend, whom I greatly respect, disagreed with the default position.

"But, what about the spells? They use spells! Surely that's evil." I asked.

She replied to the effect that the Harry Potter spells are mostly just Latin, and that "nobody had a problem with 'Bippity-Boppity-Boo.'"

Then years later, on Twitter (I'm not calling it X) Tim Keller, in an AMA said that he enjoyed Harry Potter "as a story of friendship and redemption" or something to that effect.

Okay, if you're going to argue with Tim Keller on whether or not a Christian should partake, you'd better have some solid ammo.

Time for my own reading. I picked up a box set of the Harry Potter books, and started reading. And I noticed a few things that lead me to develop my own fan theory, which I will delve into now.

My Own Findings

First, in order to decide if Harry Potter is evil by Christian standards, we need to understand the basis for why we think witchcraft and wizardy is evil.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says that the reason we don't have witch hunts anymore is that not that we don't think that witches are evil, but because we don't believe in witches anymore.

“Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the 'Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

So, the primary issues with witches are:

1. They do evil things (ex: kill neighbours, destroy crops, etc.)
2. They call upon evil beings (ex: the devil, demons, etc) for them to use their power

I'll look at each in turn.

Witches Do Evil Things

Yes, they do do evil things, especially "he who must not be named".

But they also do good things.

In the Harry Potter universe, magical powers seem to be like any technology; it can be used for good or evil. In The Philosopher's Stone, Snape talks about curing poison. Surely that's good.

Are you using your smartphone for good or for evil? Or are you just using it to facilitate whatever else you're doing (communication, research, entertainment, education, etc.)?

Furthermore, Dumbledore does talk about sin with the assumption that sin is something bad. "Curiosity is not a sin", or something like that.

The Harry Potter universe acknowledges good and evil, and their versions of good things and evil things seem to be pretty much in line with Judeo-Christian versions. Curing poison is good. Killing people is bad.

Witches Call Upon Evil Beings

Here's where things get interesting.

There's no mention of any specific supernatural being (that I've gotten to). But in my reading I noticed a couple of things: First, they celebrate Halloween (aka: All Hallows (ie: Saints) Eve), not Samhain. They celebrate Christmas, not Winter Solstice. That is to say: they're celebrating Christian holidays instead of the actual pagan holidays! (It gets a little tricky with Easter because the word Easter is pagan in origin, not Christian.)

If the Harry Potter universe were truly trying to indoctinate kids into the occult, why not introduce them to Samhain and Winter Solstice? Rowling is already introducing everyone to a world of new vocabulary (like Muggle and Squib), a whole new sport with complex rules, new magical creatures, a history, etc. Introducing the audience to Samhain and Winter Solstice would have been small potatoes compared to the rules of Quiddich.

To me, that was the first thing I noticed that suggested that my friend and Tim Keller might be right; these aren't manuals of witchcraft the way we think of witchcraft.

So, where do they get their power?

I explore this further in My Harry Potter Fan Theory. In summary, they're not witches and wizzards in the Harry Potter world; they're more like X-Men. They have a genetic mutation (or several) that allow them, through the use of a wand and incantations, to manipulate the electromagnetic field. It's not magic. It's technology that's not understood through the lens of scientific method.

And that doesn't make a thing evil. Simply using a power that you don't understand doesn't mean you're grasping at power that you shouldn't. Do you understand how your phone works? I don't. And we still use our phones.

Aren't They Using Power For Their Own Ends?

This is a common objection from Christians about Harry Potter. If I understand it, the object could be summed up as follows: "In Narnia and Middle-Earth, power is to be used for the betterment of others, not achieving one's own objectives, like it is in Harry Potter. Those witches and wizards are using magic for their own means, rather than for others'."

But is that what's going on? Let's look into it.

Power in Narnia and Middle Earth

Narnia

There are a few instances where people are put in positions of power, and saying they do not feel ready, and Aslan assures them that it's that feeling that says that they are ready, and if they had said they were ready, they wouldn't be. And, of course, The White Witch would like to rule Narnia and prevent the four humans from ruling; and Edmond would like to be at her side bossing Peter around and putting him in his place, all while he eats Turkish Delight. Then there's the Last Battle, where ape tries to basically take over by being the puppet master who controls "Aslan". And the green witch in The Silver Chair.

So, yes, there do seem to be themes of the dangers of the pursuit of ill-gotten power and authority. All true authority and power belongs to Aslan. And, yes, any unrightful power is often self-serving, rather than others-serving. It seems to be a theme that a king or queen's primary duty is to their own people; servant leadership.

But, how apparent would this be to Lewis' target audience: 7 to 9 year olds? I don't think it's the main point of the books. It seems more secondary.

Middle Earth

(Forgive me if I conflate the movies with the books.)

In Middle Earth, the pursuit of power is largely a Sauron thing. (A whole series of posts could be written on these themes in Middle Earth from before the end of the Third Age, which is when The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings take place. And most people are only familiar with those writings, so I'll stick to them here.)

Sauron wants to take over, so he created the rings of power (minus The Three). This would help him take over the world. I don't think it's ever stated what his end-game was. Was it to take over, then bring Melkor back to Middle Earth to finally rule? Or just to rule himself? Then what?

Gandalf and Galadriel are both offered The One Ring, and decline, but not without saying they would start off with the best of intentions, but would eventually go bad, serving themselves. Same thing would happen with men.

The special thing about hobbits is that they have enough interest to keep the ring around without succumbing to it for long enough to return it and destroy it. Others would likely go bad before reaching the mountains bordering Mordor. Whereas Tom Bombadill, who's so self-sufficient, wouldn't even care about the ring, and would likely lose it.

I think Tolkien's warning about the pursuit of power could be summed up as following: "You may start out like Superman, but eventually you would turn into Homelander."

It seems like the pursuit of power is a substantial theme in Lord of the Rings. Power must be kept in check. No one should have absolute power.

In other words, Tolkien isn't trying to say "Power is to be used for others, not for the self." He's trying to say "The pursuit of power is a problem."

Power in Harry Potter

Lewis and Tolkien warn us against the perils of power. It's more subtle, but Rowling warns us of the same thing! Remember, in the Harry Potter universe is that magic is not the power like, say, the one ring. Magic is not the power. It's a talent based in genetics.

It's like if you found out you had perfect pitch as a kid, you should sign up for music lessons; you need to hone that skill to be useful; to be a gift to the world, to fulfill your God-given purpose. When Happy Gilmour finds out he's better at golf than hockey, he develops the skill of golf to win enough money to buy his grandma's house back (or whatever it was for).

If you had the "magic gene" that exists in the Harry Potter universe, you need to learn to control it. (In Fantastic Beasts we see what happens when magic is suppressed. It's not good.) You don't go to Hogwarts to learn to summon satanic powers, or communicate with the under-world. It's closer to taking music lessons when you find out you have perfect pitch.

And, really, what do they use these spells for? They're not destroying crops or killing babies. They're using it the way we use technology. We have cars and airplanes. They have broomsticks and portkeys. We have phones. They have owls and some can communicate through fires. We have microphones and PA systems. They can amplify their voices with wands. We have flashlights. They can create light with their wands. They do hunt vampires (implying that vampires are inherently evil), or train dragons, or keep magical creatures out of view of muggles. It seems like they're just going about their lives as we are, just differently. If the existence or use of "magic" is evil, then so is any of our technology.

In fact, there's a whole government body overseeing the use of magic, making sure everything is done properly, and people aren't abusing their magic.

The "magic" isn't the power. But power still exists in the magic world as it does in our world, Narnia, or Middle Earth. It's the domination of other people. It's ill-gotten authority. And the Harry Potter books and movies have plenty of warning against that; just like Lord of the Rings, or the Chronicles of Narnia. So, don't take a throne that doesn't belong to you; don't use the One Ring to fight against Mordor. And don't use any spells to dominate or kill others.

The warning is in the four houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. As Hagrid (inaccurately) points out "There's not a witch or wizard that went bad that wasn't in Slytherin." But, he's correct in most instances. Part of the traits of students in House Slytherin are they desire power and cunning and ambition. They want to get on top. They want to be better than others. (Not all, but some.)

Slytherin exists as a warning to us what happens when those traits (which, as C.S. Lewis points out, are not evil in and of themselves) get out of hand and take over as the top thing. There's a whole 43 minute video on YouTube exploring Why does Slytherin still exist?. I didn't watch the full thing (it seems like there may be spoilers), but it seems like we don't know of any good Slytherins. There probably are good Slytherins, but their stories are probably not interesting enough to make it into the stories. (I understand there may be some repentance later on in the stories. But no spoilers, please.)

And it's clear that your personal preferences play a role in what house you're placed in. Harry could have gone Slytherin, but he wanted Gryffindor, and there he was placed. It's as though Rowling is warning us: "Don't desire Slytherin. It's better to desire friendship, loyalty, bravery, knowledge than power."

The Imperius Curse 

Furthermore, it can be said that the real problem with the power is to dominate or control other people. Ultimately, that's what the One Ring gives you.  The Green Witch from The Silver Chair is in the wrong for doing this.

And in Harry Potter, the Imperius Curse allows someone to do just that!  "Ah ha!  See!  EVIL!"

Except that the Imperius Curse is one of the three "unforgivable curses" which lands one a life sentence in Azkaban without possibility of parole.

So it seems that Harry Potter is teaching us that there is right and wrong; and it's wrong to control other people for your own ends. Just like in Middle Earth and Narnia.

Divination

But what about Divination? That's clearly frowned upon in the Bible, and that's in Harry Potter.

Rodney Dangerfield gets more respect than Divination does in the HP universe. They downright make fun of it, often saying or implying that it's not a real thing.

Conclusion

"Power" or "magic" in the Harry Potter world is derived from genes, and not evil spirits, demons, or the devil. We're "fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14) If some people have the genetic ability to interface with the world in a different way than others, then it's God that gave them that gift. Magic people in the Harry Potter universe aren't getting their power from Satan. The source of the magic is not in conflict with a Christian world and life view.

Any technology can be used for good or evil. Harry Potter uses technology and genes to do mostly good.

Since the two problems with witchcraft (source of power, uses of power) are inconsistent with the Harry Potter universe, we can conclude that there's nothing inherently wrong with Christians enjoying the writings or the movies.

Lastly....

I will continue to update this post as I read through the books and find further supporting, or contradictory evidence.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

― G.K. Chesterton

My Harry Potter Fan Theory

Dislcaimers

I know I'm probably not the first one to come up with this. I haven't looked for others. These are just my own conclusions. I guess I'm writing this out in case one of my old English teachers stumble upon it. "See, I can do this sort of thing, but only if I find the subject matter interesting."

I'm only on the fourth book: The Goblet of Fire. Something could come up later that throws the rest of this post out the window.

I did start reading them a while ago, and got further (the fourth book, I think), but I read through them faster, basically racing through them. I'm now reading them at a slower, more enjoyable pace. And during that time, I noticed a few things that have led to my current theory which I outline here.

Theory: Harry Potter et al aren't actual wizzards and witches; they're basically X-Men

Allow me to explain.

While reading the first book, something jumped out at me: At Hogwarts they were celebraing Halloween (ie: All Hallows (ie: Saints) Eve) and Christmas. Why would British witches and wizzards celebrate Christian holidays, rather than their pagan equivalents: Smahain and Winter Solstice?

Then I noticed that everyone is either magic or a muggle. There's no going back and forth. If you're a muggle, you can't learn these spells and do magic. If you're magic, you can certainly not do, but you can't stop actually being magic.

And, for the most part, magic people come from at least one magic parent. Occasionally, two magic parents produce a muggle (i.e.: a Squib). And occasionally, two muggle parents produce a magic person. But, it's noted that there is often a magic person somewhere in their ancestry. It really seems like genetics are involved.

I don't understand genetics well enough to understand how things like recessive genes work. But I think it's that a gene can be passed down for generations without the thing it codes for appearing. For example, my brother and I both identify as gingers (but not as much as the Weasleys). But no one else on either side of our family has a hair colour even close to ours! So, out of nowhere, we have this reddish/strawberry-blond hair. And out of nowhere, Hermione, a talented witch, is born of two muggles.

And what if several generations ago, like hundreds or thousands of years ago, there was a genetic mutation that somehow allowed a person to interact with, and manipulate the electromagnetic field? And this if generally what we see in the Harry Potter universe. They can manipulate objects as a whole (move things without touching them). And they can transform objects (this would be maniupulation of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles). But they can't create ex-nihilo; hence their need for money. (I don't know why they need their own currency though.).

(In The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver tells the Pevensie children that Jadis is not a "daughter of Eve", but a "daughter of Lilith". What if that's where the magic started? This isn't a part of my theory, per se, but I'm currently reading through the Narnia Chronicles, and that thought occurred to me. It also fits in with a popular meme that the four Hogwarts houses equate to the Pevensie children. Maybe there is a Narnia/Harry Potter cross-over!)

At one point it's even mentioned that a lot of electronics don't work at places like Hogwarts because of all the magic concentrated in one location. Why would magic interfere with electronics? But this is exactly what you would expect if magic were really just the manipulation of the electromagentic field!

There also seems to be some complexity and precision to magic. You can't just say an incantation and make something happen. A wand is needed. And not just any wand, it has to be a wand that works with you specifically. And incantations need to be pronounced properly ("Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa", not "Wingardium Levio-sa"). And the swish-and-flick of the wand needs to be done properly. This seems to be more in line with science than magic.

And they can't bring people back from the dead. (There doesn't seem to be any explanation (so far) why some people die (like Harry's parents) and some people become ghosts (like Nearly-Headless Nick)). This implies there's more to life than electronic impulses. Either that, or no one's figured out how to get those impulses going again. But the spirit-world does exist in the Harry Potter universe.

Hogwarts or Dumbledore's School For Gifted Youngsters?

Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic to a primitive society. It seems like this is more like technology that was derived without scientific method. They don't understand it at the sub-atomic level. They just know a set of causes and their effects without understanding the underlying relationships. (And that's okay. Do you know how your phone works? I don't. But we can still use our phones. Nor does our lack of understanding make it magic. But someone understands it.)

And since they take kids out of muggle school long before they can learn about scientific method, maths, science, and other muggle subjects, and concentrate entirely on their own subjects, it's unlikely that science will ever be appreciated or applied by magic people. They'll continue to hand down their potions and spells to the next generation without understanding why they work, all the while calling it "magic" rather than what it is: technology.

Conclusion

Wizards and witches in the Harry Potter universe are more like mutants a la X-Men, and not like witches and wizards like we normally think of them. In the L. Frank Baum books, after The Wizard of Oz leaves Oz, he does return and Glinda teaches him some basic spells. He does become a wizard. Dudley Dursley will never become a wizard.

I will continue to update this post as I read through the books and find further supporting, or contradictory evidence.

My New Kobo Clara Colour

I recently (Christmas of 2024) acquired a new Kobo Clara Colour. Here are my thoughts:

What I Want

I still have plenty of dead-tree books left to read. For me, an e-reader will be for reading classics (ie: public domain, available for free from sites like Global Grey E-Books and Internet Archive Books). Furthermore, I'm looking for something light and portable so I can take a whole bunch of books with me. I may want to highlight, but I doubt I'll ever anotate.

I wish I wish I wish whenever you bought a book, you'd get a code that you could enter into a site somewhere and download an e-version of that book. Even if it was DRM'd, I'd be happy. But it seems like book publishers are worse than record labels, and long-time readers will know how I feel about them.

This is what I want with an e-reader:

1. I want a desktop app and a mobile app.
2. On the desktop, I want to drag'n'drop EPUBs, MOBIs, PDFs, etc. onto the app, apply any metadata, and organizing, then hit a sync button.
3. Upon syncing, I want that EPUB, MOBI, PDF, etc. to show up on my e-reader device, and my phone app.
4. As I read that book on any of those devices, I want my progress to be synced automatically to the other devices.

To me, that's the minimum of any e-reading software. If you make an e-reader device, your app should do all of the above. And it should do it all seamlessly.

My Thoughts and Observations

1. I thought e-Ink needed external light to read, but e-readers have added backlights lately that can be switched on or off. This one has a backlight that can be dimmed, but not turned off. The blue light dims later in the day, but still isn't as good on the eyes as no back-light.
2. I was disappointed that the Kobo desktop app doesn't work the way I described above. There are desktop and mobile Kobo apps. They do allow you to purchase from the Kobo store, and borrow from your local library (with OneDrive). And those books are synced across devices and apps. But you can't drag'n'drop books into the desktop app.
3. The way to get books from elsewhere onto your device is by using Calibre, which is what I'm doing. IMO using Calibre feels hacky. I don't mind hacky....but it feels like you should use hacky solutions for things outside normal operations (like, say, removing DRM from a book, or using a lesser-known e-reader). But normal usage should not require hacks like that. And adding ebooks from places other than the Kobo store or library should be considered normal operations.
4. Also, it's a wee bit heavier than I was expecting. Lying down and holding it it one hand above me can get tiring.
5. If I add a series/number in a Series to a book's metadata in Calibre, that never shows up after I sync. According to a bunch of tutorials, you're supposed to sync to your Kobo, eject the Kobo, plug it back in, and then the Series data will show up. But that hasn't worked for me, ever.

Overall, though, I'm not unhappy with my Kobo. But I am now curious about lesser known ones.

My Leaky Roof

This post continues the series of My avoison of Covid-19 where I thought that staying the blazes home would be fine, as long as I didn't need to have any service people into my house.

But then I had Appliance Troubles which caused me to have 6 service people into the house. Then there was my My basement issues which brought 9 more service people into my house. Plus two movers and a furnace maintenance person. That's a total of 18 service people in my house in less than two years, compared to 17 the previous 5.

And I'm not even done yet.

The Roof

I don't know if it was the siding project a few years ago, or if being home all day during the day, and spending most of that time in an upstairs room lacking in proper insulation caused me to turn the heat up more than I used to, but for the first time since living here, an ice dam formed during the winter on my roof above where I sat at my computer whilst working. I wasn't alone. Other houses had ice dams too. The property management company sent people around to break the ice dams off of people's roofs including mine.

All was well until the Spring. Then one day we got a heavy rain. It was right at the end of the working day. I was still in my office room. A few minutes after the heavy rain started outside, it started raining inside! I called the property management company, but it was after-hours for them. So I called the emergency after-hours number. But, the rain was a short downspurt, and shortly after the rain stopped outside, it stopped inside.

Nevertheless, they sent someone around to take a look. They said they could see some damage to the shingles. Then they did was put some caulking on the roof.

For the next few rainfalls, mostly light rain, all was well.

But then on July 8^th, just as I was soon getting ready to go out and get my second dose of vaccine for Covid-19, the heavy rain started outside. Then it started raining inside again!

After talking to those who had gone before me, I knew that the next day I was likely to feel like garbage. I had everything all worked out. I had finished my shopping, chores, cleaning, laundry, etc. I had it all planned out that for the next few days all I had to do was lie on the couch watching TV feeling miserable. This would totally put a monkeywrench in my plans. Should I cancel my shot and re-book? If I had to move a bunch of stuff out of my office, I didn't want to do it right after getting a needle. (I hate needles! I consider my arm to be ineffective for at least a couple of days after I get a shot.)

I tried. But you needed to cancel within two hours, and it was about 1 hour and 57 minutes. So I decided to risk it.

Anyway, again, I called the after-hours emergency number, and they sent someone over right away. He came in (person 19) to take a look at the damage inside. (At first he wasn't even wearing a mask! I had to ask him to put one on!)

He couldn't see anything from the inside. So he called the property management company and they sent two guys out tomorrow to take a better look.

When they showed up pretty early in the morning on July 9^th, I was only feeling a little tired. The real side effects (fever, headache, chills, etc.) hadn't kicked in yet. These two guys (one of whom was the guy who cut the hole in my basement wall) cut out a square of drywall in my ceiling. They saw that when the guy was clearning the ice dam, he hit the ice dam with the sharp side of the axe, not the broad side. He put a hole in my roof! And now there's a hole in my ceiling! (Now we're up to 21 service people.)

They took pictures to send to the property management company. Eventually, they sent a roofing company around. "Ahhh, finally! They'll fix the roof, then I can get the ceiling fixed!"

And how did they fix the roof? They put more caulking on it. That was it!

The roof no longer leaks. But it's still broken! If they're not going to fix it further, then okay. But they need to send someone around to fix my ceiling.

I'll let you know how it all turns out when it's finally fixed. I may have to live with it through the winter and see if it leaks again. I'm getting really tired of this property management company. I would sell, but the housing market is nuts, and this place has not gone up in value as much as other places. So I'm further behind than before. And there's no way I can sell with a big hole in my ceiling.

Update: On the morning of January 18, 2022 I came into my office room to significant leaking. I promptly emailed the guy at the property management company I had been dealing with with pictures and a note saying "Since my roof still hasn't been fixed, it's leaking again into my unit." I got an email back from someone else saying that the person I had been dealing with was now elsewhere. I hope this new guy is better.

He did send a roofer around to fix my roof on Jan. 20th. He cut out a small hole and replaced the wood and shingles. Of course, the ceiling still has a big hole in it. But I don't want to get that fixed until the roof itself is fixed.

Then on January 28 we got another big snowfall, and I had more leaking in my roof. So, finally on Feb 18th they sent a couple of guys around to go into my attick and investigate. That was this morning. I'm waiting to hear back what happens next. But I think they'll be waiting for Spring for when everything melts.

Anyway, as of today, we're at 23 people in my house during the pandemic.

Update April 25, 2022

As I was waiting to hear the next steps, on March 1 I got an email saying that we've got a new property management company. *sigh* Will the old company pass all my info onto the new company? And given all the different issues with all the different issues, this could take a while for the next steps. Maybe even go back a few.

After waiting a few weeks for the dust to settle, I wrote to the new property management company to ask if they got any if my file from the old company.

They hadn't.

Now, they have to send roofers around to take another look. They sent two on April 25 (just before I wrote this). They took a look and said I'd have to have my front 3 feet of roofing replaced. Apparently, the repair mentioned above didn't have any weather sheilding on it, so it was bound to leak. And, oh look, we're supposed to get 25-30mm of rain today. So probably more leaking.

Now the count is 25 people in my house during the pandemic.

Update July 31, 2022

Well, after a bit of a wait two roofers showed up on July 21^st to fix my roof. After a few hours of work, they told me they were done. (They didn't need to come in at all, so my count isn't going up.) From my bedroom I could see that nothing had been changed from the underside of the roof. They told me that the previous person to repair the roof only replaced a bit of wood and some shingles. They didn't replace the waterpoof covering that goes between the shingles and the wood. That's why I was getting leaking. But now that's fixed.

So now I wonder: do I wait til we get lots of rain? Do I contact the condo management company to ask that the internal damage be fixed? This would include replacing the insulation in my attic and replacing some damaged (and now missing!) drywall. I am not looking forward to this.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of my roof issues:

My Basement Issues - Part 3

Recap

As of My Basement Issues - Part 2 I found out that my basement does not have asbestos in it, and I've had to have 5 non-appliance service people into my house during the pandemic. But the fix hasn't happened yet. I was contemplating two options: Basic repair, or replace the drywall ceiling with a suspended ceiling.

The Fix

I decided that I would rather the suspended ceiling. This would involve someone coming in to remove the remaining drywall ceiling, install the suspended ceiling, fix the hole in the wall, and then paint.

So on Sept. 2^nd, 2021 the demolition guy showed up (that's non-appliance service person #6). Then the next week two guys showed up (#8) to install the ceiling, and repair the wall, and do some painting. And they were fantastic. They just kept going with the paint, and painted my whole basement! They even fixed some minor issues that had nothing to do with the damage mentioned in this blog. A++++ right there. Then on Thursday, Sept. 9^th someone showed up to do the cleanup.

Total Number Of People In My House

So that's 9 non-appliance service people in my house plus 6 appliance service people. For a current total of 15.

But wait! There's more!

My parents sold their house to downsize. In doing so they sent me a bunch of stuff. So two movers had to come in and out of the house. And it was a hot and humid day. Sept. 23^rd. Some of the stuff was pretty heavy, and sometimes the moves had to remove their masks. So that's two more people.

I had just gotten my furnace cleaned and serviced just before the pandemic. It's something you should do every year; and I pay for one of those plans where it's included. So I needed to get my service when the weather started to cool. So on Nov. 10^th the furnace guy came and cleaned the furnace. I stayed upstairs for most of it. At the end I asked a question about installing a coldair exchange in my basement to increase air circulation. I think that question may have been above his paygrade. But anyway, at some points, his mask was below his nose...so basically no mask at all. Now we're up to 18 service people in my house total. That's more than what I've had my entire time in this house pre-pandemic!!!

Here's some pictures of the basement:

Netflix Won't Take My Money

I want my own Netflix account. I don't particularely want most of the other streaming services for reasons beyond the scope of this post. I want Netflix.

A few years ago I had a roommate living here. When he moved in, he brought his Netflix account with him. My TV has a Netflix app built right in. He put his credentials into the TV, and set up a profile for me so either of us could use the account. Then he moved away, but continued to let me use his account. After a while he cancelled it. So I decided it was time to get my own.

On March 1, 2020 I went to Netflix.ca and created an account. When it came time to pay, I noticed they no longer offered the free one-month trial. I was disappointed, but decided to carry on anyway.

As part of the registration process, I had to give an email and password, and it knew I was in Canada, but didn't ask for a postal code.

When it came time to make the payment, I selected the cheapest option ($9.99/month) and filled in the form. After filling in my credit card information and clicking "Submit" I got a vague error: "There appears to be a problem with the payment method you are trying to use."

That's not very specific. I tried a different credid card, a different browser, a different device, etc. etc. Here are the different things I've tried: (Note Netflix Canada only accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and gift cards.)

1. My laptop
2. Two different desktops
3. Firefox
4. Brave browser
5. Chrome
6. The Netflix app built into my TV (which just told me to do payment details in my computer)
7. The Netflix app built into my BlueRay player (which just told me to do payment details in my computer)
8. MasterCard
9. Visa
10. Putting my middle initial at the end of my first name
11. Putting my middle initial at the beginning of my last name
12. Leaving my middle initial out completely
13. MY NAME IN ALL CAPS
14. My name with only the first letter in capitals

Here are the things I have not tried:

1. A more expensive plan. Maybe this problem only exists on the cheapest plan?
2. A gift card...which may always leave some money on the card.
3. I switched from DSL to Cable Internet (temporarily) so I'm on a different network. Perhaps with this different network I can hit a different Netflix server that may work.
4. I recently got an AppleTV and upgraded my iOS. I can install the Netflix app on each, and the app store says it accepts in-app payments. If I can get Netflix to charge my app-store account, which will charge me, then it's not ideal, but I'd go for that.
5. Use a VPN to try to access Netflix in a different region to see if things could work there. (But they may block a lot of VPNs.)
6. A friend once told me that you can get these "anonymous" credit cards online and use one of those to try. It seems super-sketchy....but perhaps it's something to investigate.

If you Google "Netflix won't accept my credit card" you see that this is a huge problem, and Netflix refuses to acknowledge that the problem may be on their end.

I called Netflix and they sent me a list of questions to ask my credit card companies (and along with the answers of both cards:

Are there enough available funds to cover the charge from Netflix?

Yes

For credit and debit cards, is the card still valid, or has the financial institution recently issued a replacement?

They're all still valid and no recent replacements were issued

For credit and debit cards, can the card be used for recurring billing?

Absolutely

Does the card or account support e-commerce transactions?

Absolutely

Was the transaction processed as an international charge? Does your account support this?

It was processed as a local charge, and I'll return to this question below.

Was the transaction declined for any security reasons?

No, it wasn't declined. More on this below.

Does your financial institution see the transaction attempt from Netflix? Can they explain why it was declined?

They see it as accepted. More on this below

I called both my credit card companies about this. And my cards are both properly set up to accept Netflix. The problem is 100% on Netflix's end. Above I mentioned that Netflix no longer offers the 1-month free trial. I think this may have something to do with it.

One of my banks told me they saw a few Approved charges from Netflix for $0.00.

Very interesting. Here's what I think is what's happening:

Netflix Canada, years ago, sets up a one-month free trial. But before they give out any free trials to a new customer, they need to make sure that customer can pay in the second month. So they ask for credit card details. They charge that card for $0.00 to make sure it works. I figure the psuedo-code could look something like:

At Netflix

// planRate and ccInfo would be from elsewhere.
// I'm just making them global here so you can visually see it.
global planRate = $9.99;
global ccInfo;

function checkCreditCard () {
  planRate = 0;  // temporarily set planRate to 0 for the free trial
  let approval = getMastercardApproval(ccInfo, planRate);
  // the 0 is the $0.00 for a free trial
}

At Mastercard

function chargeCard (Amount) {
  if (applyCharge(ccInfo, Amount)) {
    // It worked!
    sender.sendMessage(true, ccInfo.number, Amount);
  } else {
    sender.sendMessage(false, ccInfo.number, Amount);
  }

Back at Netflix

function checkApproval(success, number, Amount) {
  planRate = 0;  // temporarily set planRate to 0 for the free trial
  if (success == true && number == ccInfo.number && Amount == planRate) {
      successFunction ();
  } else {
      fail ("There was a problem with your credit card.");
  }

If you follow that code through you'll see that Netflix is charging $0.00 and then checking to see if $0.00 was charged. Then when the free trial ended, Netflix Canada removed the planRate = 0; // temporarily set planRate to 0 for the free trial from both functions, and somehow the first function didn't make it to every production server. So on some servers, the planRate (say $9.99) is being charged. On others, $0.00 is being charged. Then in the last function, it's checking if the amount charged is the same as planRate. It won't be on the servers that never got the updated code. Since some people hit a server with the updated code they're able to sign up. Netflix sees that some people can sign up, so they don't notice the problem. They see fewer people have signed up than before, but that's to be expected after prices go up, and a free trial goes away. And I suspect the tech support (no doubt outsourced to a private firm in India) has no way of telling Netflix "We're getting a lot of complaints about this. You might want to look into it."

If I'm right about this, then it's the loss of free trial that's the problem. Some people who have complained about this said that the tech support was able to put a one-time charge through and it worked. Someone else mentioned that using the live-chat feature, the tech support guy was able to have the customer fill out a separate form somewhere.

Aside from the list of questions to ask my credit card companies, tech support suggested I use gift cards. I don't want to use gift cards because the amounts you can buy are never exact multiples of the plan amounts! As of this writing, a basic plan in Canada is $9.99 + HST: $11.29/month. If I could get a gift card for $11.29, or $22.58, or $33.87, etc. then okay. Instead I could get one for $30 and charge 2 months to it and have $7.42 left over. If my above suspicions are correct, then I'd be beyond the free trial part so I could switch payment details to my credit card and it would work. Is it worth $7.42 to find out? If it doesn't work then I'll be forever buying gift cards and always having a bit left over.

UPDATE

In order to get the actual text of the credit card error for this blog, I decided to try signing up again. Just to get the error! But the registration worked! I now have Netflix!

I don't know why. I must be a poor scientist. I altered two variables:

1. I used Chrome instead of Brave or Netflix (maybe Netflix only specifically supports Chrome and not Chromium browsers like Brave. If this is the case, I should abandon Netflix.)
2. I tried using my Cable Internet connection (different networks could hit different servers. I'm now on TekSavvy's network instead of Bell's. (I'm not linking to Bell because I don't want to give them any more traffic.)

Now I'll never know if my suspicions about the new code not making it to all servers are correct. Nevermind! I have some serious watchin' to do.

My Basement Issues - Part 2

Recap

This post is a continuation of two posts: My Basement Issues - Part 1 and My avoision of Covid-19.

In My Basement Issues - Part 1 I told the story of how a broken furnace exhaust pipe had wrecked a section of my basement ceiling, and how some shoddy work from a condo siding project caused a section of my basement drywall to be torn out. In My Avoision of Covid-19 I told the story of how I was hoping to get through the pandemic with as little human contact as possible, and how I thought "As long as I can make it through the next few months without any service people coming into my house, then I should be a-okay. And I've hardly had any service people in the house since I bought over 5 years ago, so I should be fine.

Old Basement Damage

Due to the pandemic I had to (or got to?) start working from home every single day from Monday, March 16, 2020 until [insert date here]. My office was down in the drafty, dirty, messy, disrepaired basement. And now that Zoom calls were all the rage, my colleagues got to see the inside of my basement. I tried to keep the damage out of sight, but I wasn't always successful.

One day on a Zoom call, a colleague asked about my basement, and made the comment "Didn't insurance cover that?"

Insurance?! Why didn't I think of that?! I have insurance! Of course, this will mean having people into the house. I wonder, given the time that's passed (about a year) if I'm beyond the window of being able to make a claim?

New Basement Damange

Well, I didn't have to worry about that last part because one morning in April I came downstairs to hear a drip drip drip. "Oh no. Not again!" Thankfully I still had my plastic sheets and buckets around from the last basement issue, so the carpet wasn't getting wet. I looked around to see where this water drip was coming from. Remember the furnace exhaust pipe, and the hole in the ceiling to the valve to the pipe going to the back of the house for the hose? That water pipe to the house is about a foot and a half over from the furnace exhaust pipe — right where a lot of the water damage was. Well, that pipe had sprung a leak. Just a leak. It hadn't burst. There was no flooding. just some drips. But listening to that all day was annoying.

I called for a plumber. They weren't able to send one for a few days. So I did what I could to slow, or stop the dripping. When I didn't need running water, I turned the water to the house off. This would slow the drip significantly.

When the plumber got there (This is service person #1. Long story, but two other plumbers came out for another issue. I'll count them here. We're up to 3 service people.) He cut out a bit of the copper pipe and replaced it with a plastic alternative. Problem solved.

(As an aside I learned something very valuable in this process of constantly opening and closing the main water valve that I'll pass along to anyone here who needs to read this. It's normal for bits of debris to get into your water lines. If this debris makes its way to a faucet with a filter, then it gets stuck there and the waterflow of that faucet will be severly hampered. This was happening with my upstairs bathroom sink. To fix this: shut off the water to your house, turn on all taps in the house to drain the pipes. Once all water stops flowing, close all taps in the house except the laundry room sink faucets. These faucets aren't filtered, and they're typically the lowest faucets in the house. Turn on the water. As the water rushes in and fills the pipes, this will cause the debris to go to the lowest point in the house and get flushed out your laundry room sink. That knowledge alone is going to save me hundreds of dollars in plumber calls.)

In July I decided to stop procrastinating and get the house back into a sellable condition. I had gone through a whole year, a whole winter of constant basement monitoring. No new floods from last year's issue. I was now confident that part was fixed.

Now for the fun part: I called my insurance company. I've never had to make a claim before. I didn't know what was ahead.

The Repair Saga Begins

I told them the whole story; the exhaust pipe, the siding project, and the leaky pipe. They told me that typically you have to make a claim within a year of the damage. So it was too late for the exhaust pipe issues, and the wall, but I'm still good for the leaky pipe. This works out. They both caused the same amount of damage. As for the wall, since that was from a different incident (same time, different cause, different area) it would be a separate claim. So I made two claims: one for the wall and one for the ceiling. And, yes, that meant paying the deductible twice - and the deductible for water damage is high.

They sent out a contractor (non-appliance service person #4) to take a look and give me an estimate. When the contractor came out he took a look and said "Yeah, we'll have to fix up the ceiling. But the wall? That'll be easy to fix. That'll be well below your deductible, so it won't be worth making a claim." And he was right. So I closed that claim. But there was still the ceiling.

We talked about options. My basement celing is drywall with this swirl pattern that was somewhat popular in the 70s. That makes it harder to fix than flat, or popcorn drywall because the pattern and finish have to match. So one option is to tear out the drywall and replace as it was. Another is to tear out the drywall and replace with flat drywall: no swirls. A third option is to install a suspended ceiling. I like this option if it can be done. Basement ceilings have a lot going on behind them. There are pipes and electric boxes, wires, and who knows what else. You want to be able to access that. And, by code, you have to be able to access to electrical boxes and valves. But with a suspended ceiling, you can just take out tiles. I have that in my laundry room. It's great!

Another advantage of suspended ceilings is that if one gets damaged, it's waaaaaaay easier and cheaper to repair than drywall! (I even helped friends install their suspended ceiling, so I kind know how to do it myself.) If my exhaust pipe issues had happened with a suspended ceiling, when I first saw that discolourization, instead of wondering about it and ignoring it hoping it was nothing, I would have just popped out the tile, and took a look. Finding the break in the pipe would have been easier. And I wouldn't be writing this post!

Anyway, I made the inital call to the insurance company on July 23^rd, 2020, and here we are, January 20^th 2021. There's been a lot of back-and-forth with the contractor; a few esitmates, and revised esitmates. They took samples of the wall and ceiling to test for asbestos (non-appliance service person #5). Thankfully the asbestos tests came back negative. Today I sent one final question to the contractor ending with something to the effect of "...if this last peice falls into place, then just let me know when you can start!"

For context, all of Ontario has moved from a Lockdown to a stay-at-home order until February 11^th. Since I've lived with a damaged ceiling and wall for nearly 2 years, I'd hardly think of this as essential work. I can live without it for a few more weeks. Even if it has to wait til April (when I predict Covid-19 case counts will start dropping due to vaccinations and warmer weather and people spending more time outdoors), then that's fine with me.

After a week, I finally heard back from the contractor saying that the last peice isn't falling into place. The last peice being the cost of replacement. If I go with a full replacement (drywall with swirls), then all costs are covered by insurance (minus the deductible). But, if I do anything else (such as suspended ceiling), if it's more expensive than a full replacement, then I pay the difference. During the inital estimates, the suspended ceiling was about $600 less than the full replacement. In revised estimates, it's more expensive by about $150.

Thinking the suspended ceiling (what I want) was going to be significantly cheaper than a full replacement, I was ready to just go with that option. Even if it turns out to be more expensive than the estimate, as long as it's less than $600 more than the estimate, it's still covered by insurance. Now that it's more than the estimate, then if it turns out to be even more expensive than the estimate, then that difference comes out of my pocket.

So, it's a question of one risk over another. If I go full repair, the risk is in further damage causing another insurance claim. After a certain point, insurance may no longer cover me, or it may get more expensive. So that is a risk for the future. This could come back to bite me in 4 or 5 years. Wheras taking the suspended ceiling option reduces risk from the future, it places risk today that installation could be more expensive than the estimate.

So, I'm not sure what to do here. I am leaning towards the suspended ceiling option: Take the risk right now.

I'll keep updating this post as things progress.

My avoision of Covid-19

Towards the end of the year 2019, a new virus appeared in China, called SARS-CoV-2 which causes a disease called Covid-19. This caused a world wide pandemic in 2020 through at least 2021.

Covid-19 came to Ottawa in early March, 2020, and really started to take off in mid-March. On Sunday, March 15^th I was told by my team lead at work that unless one was required to physically be onsite to do their jobs, they shouldn't come in. And only those deemed essential should log into the network the next day. And I was deemed essential.

So, on Monday, March 16^th, 2020 I began working from home. (As of this writing, Wednesday, January 20^th, 2021 I have not seen my office since then.) To me, that's the start of the pandemic.

Now, I hate being sick. No matter what. I can tolerate colds, but that's about it. Everything else is just the worst. And Covid is all of that! It's respiratory! It's gastrointestinal! It's neurological! It's vascular! The list of potential symptoms and effects sounds like a drug commercial. It's deadly in some cases!

I think that the scariest part of Covid-19 is the wide variety of symptoms. Two people get it, one gets a little tired. The other ends up on a ventilator. Another two people get it. One has no symptoms whatsoever. The other has a stroke. "Most" people recover in two weeks (which is really long, when you think about it. The Flu is typically 1 week and is only respiratory. Gastro is usually 24 hours.), but as many as 1 in 3 take longer to recover. Then there's the long-haulers: those for whom symptoms can last for months, or as far as we know, never go away. But since these people don't die of it, they don't show up in the death statistics, and people don't pay attention to them. So it makes look not as bad as it is.

If everyone reacted the same way to the virus, then we'd all have similar-ish levels of caution towards the virus. If it had a 30% fatality rate, we'd all be scared of it. But because of the wide range of symptoms and severity some people say "It's no big deal!" Others are like "We have to shut everything down!"

As for me, ultimately it comes down to: I'm a huge introvert who hates more than anything else being sick. So, yeah. Stay home? Not a problem? Avoid other people? My pleasure.

When this first started, they were telling us to not wear masks "because it can provide a false sense of security, and will cause you to touch your face more". They also thought you could get it from surfaces. Everyone was being really cautious.

As I started thinking through the implications of everyone stay[ing] the blazes home. Short term wouldn't be a problem. But what if something broke down, and you needed a service person in the house?

Since I bought the house in 2014 I've had into the house: 2 plumbers, the air conditioning guy with his assistant and electrician in to install the unit (as well as three companies to give bids), and an annual furnace maintenance person. Plus some guys sent by the condo to deal with the siding, which, yes, required some inside work (as explained in My Basement Issues - Part 1). That's 17 that I count. Or, 3.4 per year.

"Okay, this shouldn't be a problem then."

Well, My Basement Issues - Part 2 has caused 5 (and counting) service people, and Appliance Troubles has caused 6 more, totalling: 11 - and counting.

But so far, I've kept healthy.

---

And Now For Something Completely Different

My Basement Issues - Part 1

Background

I live in a townhouse condo. (ie: I, along with the mortgage company, own the inside and the condo corporation owns the outside.) A few years ago the condo corp determined that the siding on the condos was getting old and needed replacement. So we had this big siding project.

The siding project took forever and could be a series of blog posts on its own. But that's not this story. There were lots of problems with the siding project. A one year project turned into two. When they started the project they found a lot of rot underneath the old siding. And a number of units had rotting rim joists behind the back steps. This required workers to come in, put support stands in the basement to keep the house from falling apart when the old rim joist was replaced/repaired.

Sure enough, my house had a rotting rim joist. I have a finished basement with drywall ceiling (why?! Why would you ever put drywall ceiling in a basement?!). They didn't have to tear out the drywall, thankfully. But they did put up their supports in my basement to do the joist work. They also found a lot of rot on the wall of one of my bedrooms which caused them to have to rebuild the whole wall. (Turns out there was a lot of problems with that wall too, but that's another story.) So, they ended up doing a lot of work on my unit.

Something's Amiss in the Ceiling

During the siding project One day I went down to the basement and noticed a slight discolouration on the basement ceiling. "Has that always been there and I've just never noticed?" I wondered. There are a few places in my house where the ceiling has discolourations, largely due to bad paint jobs. They're not moist. They're hard. They've always been there. They haven't changed in years. Was this just one of those? Was this a left over mark from when they had to support my house with the rim joist work?

I came down again a few days later, and it had grown.....I think?

Not too far from that spot is a hole in the drywall where there's a valve for a water pipe for the backyard hose. One day I was sitting at my desk in the basement and I heard a rapid "tck tck tck pshhh". Water was dripping out of that hole onto a cardboard box.

Ohh crud. "Where is that water coming from!?" My strategy of ignoring the situation and hoping it would go away wasn't working very well.

I called a friend to come over and to take a look to see if he could figure out what's going on. It was the middle of the winter. He happened to notice that when my furnace came on, nothing was coming out of the exhaust pipe in the back of the house. The exhaust pipe looks like an elongated S. It comes out of the back of the house, turns up 90 degrees for about a foot and a half, then 90 degrees again away from the house. Except this time instead of turning up after coming out of the house, it turned down.

Back to the basement. A line of drywall, starting from that initial spot to the backwall was now soft. There are parts I could just put my hand through. I tore a lot of that drywall out. Behind that drywall was the furnace exhaust pipe. It was wet. "What's going on?"

I had a protection plan for my furnace where I paid every month so that certain repairs and an annual service are covered. I called the company. They sent someone out. He arrived at 10:00pm on a Monday night. He took a look. He poked his head up into the ceiling.

"Ahhhh, I see what's going on. Somehow the exhaust pipe broke just this side of the furnace room. Now, when the furnace comes on, it's blowing exhaust into the ceiling area, which is warming up the exhaust pipe — which is bringing in cold air from the outside. So the pipe is getting cold, and that's causing condensation around the pipe, which is dripping onto your ceiling.

"Now here's the thing. It's blowing exhaust fumes into your basement. I'm getting really low carbon monoxide readings, but you want lower. So we either have to fix this up tonight, or I have to shut this furnace down until you get it fixed."

It was about -20 out and getting colder. So I said we should do it tonight. (And by "we" I mean "he".)

It took two or three hours. He had to cut out more drywall to get to where the break happened. He fixed it. He told me "This isn't really covered under your plan, but it looks like you've got a big, expensive job ahead of you....so I'm just going to say I did work that was covered."

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!"

I did whatever clean up I can. I got some mold killer. I sanded down areas with obvious water damage. Then I continued to procrastinate doing something about this. This is way beyond my skills as a home owner.

A Puddle on the Floor

Then one morning I came down to the basement and the floor underneath the pipe was wet! "What is going on?!" I checked the exhaust pipe. It was working as expected. It wasn't wet. None of the left-over drywall ceiling was moist. I had a plastic cover on the floor, and it was wet underneath that.

I called the condo corp to ask for them to send somebody out. I really had to wonder if these issues are caused by the siding project. (There had been a number of issues which lead me to wonder, a few of which I'll get to in a minute.)

They sent someone out. They took a look around. The broken exhaust pipe was likely a coincidence since it broke pretty far from the outer wall. But this puddle.....

What was happening was that in the course of a few cold spells and thaws, ice had built up right by the rim joist. Somehow the insulation that should have been there had been brought out away from the rim joist, which allowed that area to get cold. Moisture got in, froze, then thawed. When it thawed, in dripped down the foundation wall behind the drywall, and came out onto the floor below.

The eavestroughs (part of the siding project) had been hung horizontally. Eavestroughs should be hung at an angle so that water flows down towards a downspout and out away from the house. But these were horizontal. This caused melting ice to collect, overflow, and drip down the side of the house. This dripping was happening right above the furnace exhaust pipe. The furnace exhaust pipe was shoddily sealed with tape. When they guy from the condo corp looked at it, he said "I can see right through that. And if I can see through it, water can get in."

To recap: we had the perfect storm: Water was overflowing from horizontal eavestroughs and dripping down right where there was an opening into the house, right at a point where there was no insulation to keep that area warm. At least two of these problems was the fault of the siding company. (The insulation part wasn't their fault.)

I was told that neither the condo corp, nor siding company was responsible for damaged finished basements. "We don't fix basements." I thought that was ridiculous. If a roofing company negligently threw old shingles off of a roof onto a parking lot and damaged cars, it wouldn't matter that they're not a car-fixing company. Their actions would have caused the damage, and they'd be found negligent. Same thing here. If the eavestroughs had been hung properly, that water wouldn't have dripped down the side of the house right at the point where there was an opening. If the exhaust pipe had been sealed up properly, then water wouldn't have been able to get into the house from outside.

I told my story to a lawyer friend and he just kinda said something to the effect of "Yeah, that sort of thing is really hard to fight." It sounded like I'd spend more in legal fees than it would cost to fix.

So I spent the next few months procrastinating doing anything to fix this situation. I had a huge, ugly hole in my basement ceiling, and a big section of drywall beisde the hole with some insulation held in by a clear, plastic sheet. This caused the basement to be somewhat drafty and more uncomfortable than usual. And I didn't want to start doing repairs until I went through a season of snow and meltage to make sure the problem was fixed.

This story will continue in a future post: My Basement - Part 2.

Appliance Troubles

Background

This is a semi-continuation of My Avoision of Covid-19 which explains that I hate being sick, so I want to avoid Covid-19 for that reason alone. Plus the risk of complications, being a "long-hauler", death, etc. To avoid Covid-19, one must avoid people, and that shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as I don't need any service people to enter my house.

Unfortunately, I ended up having more service people into my house since Covid-19 than before. I ended up breaking the story down into 3 posts: My Avoison of Covid-19 where I give an overview and do a count of total service people entering my house; My Basement Issues - Part 2 where I tell the story of some water damage to my basement and how I had to have contractors in to fix that.; and this post explaining all the service people who had to enter my house due to my appliace troubles.

The Appliances

The problems

One day I did a load of dishes in the dishwasher, which has worked fine up until this point. When I walked past the dishwasher, I got a bit of a soaker. I looked down and water was dripping from the overhanging part of the door. When the load was done, I opened the door to see that the door seal had come loose. I tried fixing it, and got one good load out of it. When I did the next load, there was a leak on the other side of the dishwasher.

I had also noticed that the elements on my stove stopped working. The small elements were good, but the front elements weren't. The one on the right would never get up to 10. You coudln't boil water. The one on the left was unpredictable. If you put it at 3 to simmer, it would go to 3 and the thing would simmer. For a while. Then the thing on the stove that was simmering would turn into a violent boil. If you set the dial back to Off, then back to 3 it may simmer, or it may boil. You just never knew what that element was going to do. (I guess you could say that it was the element of surprise!)

Furthermore the fridge (which still worked) started getting really noisy. It had always been noisy, and I had enjoyed its white noise blocking out other unwanted noise from neighbours, or the cars outside. But it had gotten worse. It started making a high-ish pitch humming noise which made its way upstairs into my bedroom keeping me up at night. That had never been a problem before.

The Solution

When Black Friday arrived, I decided it was time to take advantage of sales. The pandemic was still going on, and I've been a pretty cautious person. (If everyone lived like me, we could have eliminated Covid-19, as well as probably a few other communicable diseases months ago.) So I did my shopping online. I found this frustrating. It turns out that most stores that sell major appliances leave it up to you to get rid of your old appliances. Why? Most people don't have means to do that sort of thing. Some places (ex: BestBuy and Costco) offer removal and recycling services.

I didn't think it was worth getting a Costco membership just for this, so I went with BestBuy. And that's when things got interesting. A few years ago my washing machine needed to be replaced. I bought a new washing machine from BestBuy. I went to a local store and bought one there. I setup delivery, installation, and removal of my old unit at that time. But this time, I did not want to to go a store anytime near Black Friday during a global pandemic. So I went online.

They had sale, and a deal that if you bought three items from one manufacturer, you'd get $300 off (and free delivery). It turns out that the pandemic put a real bottleneck on the supply chain. Many units had delivery dates of "At least April". I didn't want to wait that long. So I looked for appliances from the same manufacturer, with a near-ish delivery date, that would fit in the areas in my kitchen. And the fridge doors must either open to the left, or at least be reversible. (I didn't want to break the bank too.)

I found some stainless steel Whirlpool units. Expected delivery: December 12^th. Right measurements. The only issue: The fridge doors opened to the right. But they were reversible. Okay, sold!

Delivery, Installation, Removal, and Recyclying

As I checked out, I kept looking for the "Installation and removal" options. None were presented. Eventually, there was a note saying "Before delivery, you will receive a call from BestBuy to give you a delivery time window, and set up options for removal and installation." Oh okay. I just have to wait til I get that call.

When December 12^th came, I remembered I still didn't get that call. So I called them to set it up. It turns out they needed at least 24 hours to do that. So I asked if my delivery could be delayed until later that week. "No problem! We can deliver Tuesday!"

"Okay, good. I don't need them right now. It's totally worth it if I can have my old appliances removed."

"Yes, of course, sir. Just give me a minute to set everything up."

After he set everything up I confirmed the new day (Tuesday), and that since that was 4 days out, that installation and removal services could be added.

"Oh no, sir. It's too late. It needs to be added earlier than 24 hours before delivery."

"Yeah, but it's Saturday today. Tuesday is 4 days away."

"Yes, but they're already at the warehouse ready for delivery."

"But the only reason I delayed was so I could add those services! What am I supposed to do with my appliances?"

"Well, that's what those 4 days are for. You can arrange something."

Okay, whatever. I'll Google something.

Turns out there are people on Kijiji who will take working appliances and give them to low-income families. But I have come to not trust Kijiji people. They're unreliable. They say they're coming and they never do. I'd rather just have the service.

It was still Saturday. I got a call from the delivery people saying "We're 5 minutes away." And I told them the story. The guy says "Okay, the way it's written here is unclear if you've got removal services or not. I'll call email BestBuy and see what's going on. I'll let you know when I know." (Spoiler alert: he never called me back.)

So after a while I called BestBuy and got someone else. I explained the story, and he said "Oh we can totally add removal services if you want!" Okay, so I did that for the fridge and oven. (I had already gotten rid of my dishwasher. I took it out to the curb on garbage night and in the morning, it was gone.) "Okay, I'll make a note of that, and your credit card for the original purchase will be charged. Also, you won't get your appliances today. Let's set up another day. How's Tuesday?"

"Oh good, thank you. Tuesday works."

Tuesday came, but the appliances didn't. I called BestBuy, and it turns out that they couldn't deliver Tuesday, so they moved it to Thursday, December 17.

Okay, Thursday.

On Wednesday I got a text giving me a delivery window which was to from 2:24 to 5:24. On Thursday, at about 4:51 I got a call from BestBuy asking permission to charge my credit card for removal of 2 items. I said "Go ahead. But my delivery window is almost closed, and I haven't heard from the delivery people."

5 minutes later, the delivery team showed up. But they had no record of removal on their worksheet. So, they offered to move the appliances to another room, or out to the curb where "it won't last the night. Some scavenger will come and take it for scrap.". So I asked them to move the fridge to the curb, and I'd get the guy on Kijiji to come and take it to a low-income family.

"Also, there's a problem with the oven. One of the knobs broke off. It came like that. It's damaged. If you want, just refuse delivery, and I'll make a note, and you'll get another one later."

"Okay, yes, I refuse delivery."

"Okay, I'll leave you with your old oven so you at least have that. And I'll take the old fridge to the curb. And I'll wheel the dishwasher and fridge into their spots." (There were 2 delivery people.) Since they didn't, and wouldn't, take the fridge I called BestBuy to get half the removal and recycling fee refunded. I was told the charges would be reversed on my credit card soon.

(Incidentally, the fridge didn't get taken in the night, and the Kijiji guy waited til the next day afternoon to get it. Shortly after he took it, the condo property management company called me because someone complained.)

Fridge Door Reversal - Part 1

Before putting all my food into my fridge, I decided to do the door reversal myself. I quickly ran into problems. At the bottom of the fridge there's a doorstop that must be moved. This doorstop is a metal plate with 2 screw holes. On the front metal piece of the fridge there are two screw holes on each side, and behind them is a little casing with the fridge wheels that also have metal holes. You have to get all three sets of holes aligned to screw the doorstop on. I couldn't get them aligned. I had tilted the fridge back and it was resting on a box so all the weight was off the wheels. It was no good. I still couldn't do it. So I put the doors back on the original way for now. I needed to get the food in the fridge soon, and I needed to eat something, and go grocery shopping before the store closed.

Later on I decided to try it again, but first I'd have to take the rubber stoppers out of the top of the fridge. The rubber stoppers sit on the side of the fridge opposite to the side of the door hinge. You have to take them out, so you can screw the hinge in when you switch sides (and presumably put the stoppers in the other side where the screws used to be.) I tried taking them out. I tried screw drivers, a plastic putty knife, a metal putty knife, thin blades just to get them up a little so I could pull get them out with another tool. I could get them to budge at all. All I was doing was ruining the finish.

Dishwasher Installation - Part 1

Okay, defeated by the door, I decided to install the dishwasher. Uninstalling the old was was easy enough. Installing the new one should just be like that, but in reverse. Nope. It turns out you need a special dishwasher installation kit that doesn't come with the dishwasher. Why not?! They know I'm going to need one! (Ugh. If Apple ever gets into major appliances, Whirlpool better watch out.)

Oven Delivery and Fridge Door Reversal - Part 2

Okay, December 29^th. Back on the phone with BestBuy to get my new oven. They gave me a date of Saturday, January 2^nd. "Okay, that's fine." I ask about the cost of dishwasher installation, and fridge door reversal. I decide that it's probably worth it. I also mention that I had paid for 2 appliances to be removed, but only one was. I tell them I had called to get the second fee refunded. I'm told "You will see the charge reversed on your credit card in 7 to 10 business days. Due to holidays and weekends, we're at day 6. So wait a few days." At this time, I asked for dishwasher installation service.

"Okay, the dishwasher installation will have to happen a week later, on Friday, January 8^th. We'll try to get the door reversal done when the oven gets delivered, but no guarantees. It may be a separate thing."

So on Saturday, January 2^nd (as I write this) the delivery people show up (well past the end of the window, without having called me.) (Now we're up to 4 service people.) They take away my old stove, and bring the new one in. I ask them if they have "door reversal on their worksheet." Indeed they do. So I quickly empty the fridge. I figure for them it'll be a 15 minute job.

It took over an hour. And they had the same problems I did. They wound up breaking the rubber stoppers and having to just drill new holes. They had to turn the fridge on its back. The guy was like "I don't believe this! The holes don't line up!"

Eventually, with a lot of grunting (and probably some French swearing) they got it done. The guy appologized and took some pictures and said "I'm going to put this in my notes. This shouldn't have been that hard. You should get a discount or something."

I really don't want to get on the phone with BestBuy again. But I have a feeling the fridge door won't completely close on its own to make the seal. I imagine I'll be making a warranty claim.

Let's see how the dishwasher installation goes!

Update: The dishwasher guy called on the day he was supposed to show up on Friday, January 8^th to ask if he could delay until Saturday, January 9^th. That was fine. So, he shows up on the 9^th and asks where the dishwasher will plug in. I show him. It's in the basement. (There's a hole in the floor behind where the dishwasher is.) The guy looks at it and says "Oooohhhh. The cable won't go that far. Do you still have the cable from the last one?"

"No because I'm an idiot and I assumed that an electrical appliance would come with its own cable."

"Yeah it's just dishwashers."

"If Apple ever gets into the home appliance game, Whirlpool is done."

"Okay, anyway if you order a cable from Home Depot, then text me and we'll set up another appointment. It'll take 20 minutes tops."

He left and I went to HomeDepot.ca and found a good 10 meter cable and ordered it. I picked it up (curbside pickup) the next day. Then I texted him and told him I got a long cable. (We're up to 5 service people for appliances.)

No reply.

Maybe just telling hime I got a longer cable wasn't enough. Maybe I needed to actually ask for an appointment. I texted back.

No reply.

Now, as of January 14^th to at least February 11^th Ontario has moved from lockdown to stay-at-home. So, he may not be able to even come for another 4 weeks. Not that I can know until he gets back to me.

Update: The dishwasher guy came and installed the dishwasher on Monday, January 18^th. (Same guy as before, but who knows who he's been in contact with in the last week, so I'm counting him again. 6 service people for the appliances.)

But my removal fee has not been refunded. So I called BestBuy (Wednesday, January 20^th. I'm told "You case has gone to the head office on January 15^th, and you should get an email about it by Friday evening."

Yeah. Right. Okay. Whatever you say.

I also tell him the story of the door reversal, and how the delivery guys had such a hard time doing that and took pictures and said they'd send them in. I asked if there was anything in the file about that.

Nope.

Final Update (hopefully): I did get the email from head office on Friday that said the refund should show up on my credit card in 3 to 5 business days. It did show up on Monday, the ^th of January. So now, this chapter is complete. The appliacens have arrived, been installed, paid for, registered, and reviewed on BestBuy.ca. And the whole process only took 2 months, and caused 6 service people to come into my house during a global pandemic.