wacky1980

so now i'm sitting here thinking about this whole thing. my lead plumber has been offsite all day, so his two helpers are the ones doing all the work. not entirely sure how honest these guys are. it's possible they fucked something up themselves, and are pushing off the blame on an easy target. maybe i should call the lead plumber to make sure i have my facts straight before unloading on the mayor...

oh, it ain't done yet. i made the mistake of checking in with the plumbers at lunch. they were HOT. we have already established that the city installed the meter too close to the foundation. turns out they also installed it about a foot deeper than they were supposed to. and they were supposed to leave a 3' whip (using the plumber's terms) outside the meter pit for the plumbers to tie on. the whip was only 5" and was stubbed off inside the pit. so the plumbers had to dig all the way down and cut through the pit wall to get to the stub on the meter (apparently that's a no-no because the plumber isn't supposed to touch anything inside the pit?). and now i'm short about 5 tons of rock because we had a big hole to backfill. the plumbers are a full day behind now, and won't be done until at least monday. the city's guy in charge of all things road, water, & sewer is a god damned idiot. he's been responsible for a lot of fuck-ups in the few years he's had the job. my brother-in-law is the county highway dept commissioner and has been witness to a lot of the fuck-ups. a couple years ago, the county made a promise to the city that they would not put their name on any projects for the city as long as that particular city guy was involved. BiL and i actually sat down with an alderman last night and had a conversation about this guy, and just how utterly horrible he is at his job. and now today, i'm gonna go talk to the mayor and let him know how much extra time and money this asshole has cost me with this water meter bullshit.

but imagine what happens when they captain planet on that pussy

he's testing you. or maybe he's making room for his new chopper? anyways, new day new update. i spent last night measuring and staking off the lot so the plumber could come in today and do work. he's currently burying plumbing, but just on the lot. he decided he's just going to stub off the sewer at the edge of the alley today, and not going to tie into the sewer main until after concrete is also done. the reason he gave is that it's another day's worth of work and he can do that anytime, so this gets him out of the way and the concrete guy in there a day earlier. i guess that makes sense, but he's already got all his crew and machinery here now so why not just do it now? eh, whatever, it's getting done and it's not like i have to pay him any more to bring everything back onsite in 2 weeks.

but now look at all the excuses he has to come visit his son. silver linings, my man. ~~~ concrete guy got his cuts all made and i had some rock and sand delivered for backfill when the plumber does his work, starting tomorrow. concrete is coming in next week. we're back on schedule. successkid.gif

right? it should have been the most minor thing too. oh well, it's done, so now we can move on with life.

and this morning, concrete and plumbing both decided to get to work. they kinda work in tandem anyways (plus, one recommended the other) and i think today is mostly prep work and a little digging around. would be nice if electrician had his shit together so we could have power turned on (like he was supposed to have done by monday...ugh), so the contractors could power some of their equipment. no, we have drop cords strung across the alley from the bar for now. and the city located their meter too close to where the foundation is supposed to go. we had everything clearly marked (the city even marked their own location), and they were off from that by almost a foot. if i was feeling rather assy this morning, i'd tell them to move it back about 6". but concrete said he can *probably* wiggle his shit enough to avoid it and still be good. i also learned something new about the meter install. apparently i have to purchase the meter and the pit, even though the city still owns it. cool, there's another $650 i wasn't budgeting.

watched the first two eps of CHERNOBYL last night. i feel like i have uranium 235 poisoning now.

so the water meter is being buried as we speak. i'm ok with this. concrete guy has tomorrow/thursday to do his prep work before the plumber is coming in. tangent. i went shopping last night for containers and dirt for the hops. we'll be growing about a dozen hop plants in said containers, mostly for aesthetics (hence the name "hop garden") but also to see if we can produce enough of a harvest to use them for making a few small batches of beer. i'd like to get about 5-10 lbs of "wet" hops from them in this first year. my biggest concern with that is whether customers are gonna leave them alone to do their thing. time will tell.

does streaking count? because i allegedly did that a few times in college. ok, a few dozen times. if we're really only counting sexy times, then i'm probably somewhere between 50 and 100.

beyond me putting my foot down, not really.

we're not meeting on-site weekly, just via phone. i remember messing around with Project in a college course, but that was in the windows xp era so i bet it's changed just a bit since then.

TOO LATE we've been talking about this project for almost 2 years. and we now have the next 2 months to wrap it. plenty of time ..........

this is actually something i had considered. knowing how there are variables outside our control made it difficult to nail down specific dates for start/completion, especially knowing that step B being finished late meant steps C D and E would all be pushed back as well. i don't really have a good method for handling that, except just keeping everyone informed about the progress with weekly calls (which i've been doing for the last few weeks now). we're on a timeline, but it's got plenty of wiggle room as long as we continue to make progress.

well i'm definitely on a learning curve throughout this process. once we get the concrete done, i get to start doing work again (assisting the construction team while digging into my area of knowledge -- the bar build -- while on vacation from the day job for the first half of june). if we can keep this schedule from falling apart, that is... looks like i'll be reaching out to everyone again and confirming it asap. there's some buffer days in there for this exact purpose, so i'm not too worried just yet. as long as the city gets their meter installed and the concrete is chopped by the end of the week, we're still on track.

yep, i don't have one of those. i have my calendar with all of the schedules penciled in, but i didn't distribute copies to everyone. it seemed pretty straight-forward and everyone was on the same page, so i let it go at that. consider that my lesson for the day, i suppose.

i called that meeting last week to do exactly that, and everyone was there and on the same page at that point. city was supposed to be coming in tomorrow/wednesday because they weren't supposed to have all their materials until later today. so concrete was gonna make cuts today to prepare the slab for plumber, who was ordering his parts and was supposed to be coming in at the end of this week/start of next week. then the following week, concrete comes back in to pour the slab and footings. week after that, construction crew is supposed to show up to put up the buildings. we had a pretty solid plan for the rest of this month when we broke that meeting. i thought.

yes. i've never managed a project like this. the thought of hiring a general contractor never really entered my mind because we started out with a much smaller project and it grew just a bit over time. i'm learning as we go...learning that i'm never doing this on my own again lol.

i don't know what else it could possibly be about. i've heard that argument from people in the past and twitter is about on that level so it would make sense.

this is why i'll never work in the trade. well, one of the reasons. i hate being tied to other people's schedules. i also only have enough knowledge there to be dangerous, and i have no plans on furthering that education. now the city has backed off for the day because they have a water leak they're fighting. after i already pushed out concrete guy for a day. so now i'm trying to get him back in today to do his work. data & tv guys (same company) are supposed to be coming in later today as well, to do a site survey for the bar and the garden. we're moving to IPTV in the bar and i'm gonna try to talk them into letting me add the garden to the bar's account, even though it's technically a different property. i'm already planning to shoot wifi across the alley, and i'm hoping they'll let me do the same with tv since it's all from the same provider.

i'm not going to twitter to search out this debate. so is the other side something like "the soapy water touches my legs, therefore washed" or some stupid shit? because i can pour soapy water on literal shit, and the shit is still gonna be there when i rinse the soap off.

city just showed up, so i guess i'm getting my water meter installed today. wish they'd have let me know they were coming in early, because i had them scheduled for tomorrow/wednesday. supposed to have concrete guy coming in today to do some cutting around for plumber guy, and he won't be able to do his work with the city's machinery all over the place. ugh, come on guys. we met last week so we could avoid tripping over each other, and here we are, tripping over each other on the first fucking day of work. i like my shit to be on schedule and on time. these guys are causing me stress. but hey, at least shit's getting done, so i'm just gonna grumble to myself and keep going.

ok israel srs, i'm about to dry heave rn. huuuu. huuuuuuuuu. shit, i hate the dry heaves. huuuuuuu.