Darkoshi

all caulked out

2014-01-03T08:23:44Z

The brown silicone caulk I applied to the rim of the tub 2 years ago worked as I had hoped, in that during these last 2 years, no signs of mildew appeared on it. The brown color was truly unattractive, but it was better than seeing mildew.

Recently, however, a section of the brown caulk came loose from the tub. So I replaced the section with (not-so) new brown caulk. Unfortunately, that caulk was too old and never hardened. So it had to be replaced again...

At the hardware store, this time I found silicone caulk in a metallic grey color. Surely gray would look better than brown and would hopefully still be dark enough to mask any mildew that might appear over time.

So I decided to remove all the old brown caulk and replace it with the new gray one. I also removed the older light-colored caulk in the other sections, as it had gotten visibly mildewy in the meantime too.

The light-colored caulk had been the "Polyseamseal" brand. It was so well stuck to the surfaces that it was a right pain to remove. I had to use a razor-blade scraper with a lot of force. The razor blade ended up breaking.

I began to worry whether I was doing the right thing, using a silicone caulk again this time, as there had been other previous occasions where silicone caulk had come loose. Silicone caulk never seems to stick very well for me. The Polyseamseal one seems to stick much better. Yet I'd had other problems with the Polyseamseal one (like cracks in the middle, and it being a right pain to remove!!!)... Yet everything I read says that silicone caulk is the best kind for tubs.

As I had already bought the metallic gray silicone caulk, I went ahead and used it. The metallic gray color truly DOES look much better than the brown color did.

This time, I even caulked around the ends of the 2 handrails, which never had been caulked before. I had to first clean out a bunch of rust that had accumulated around the screws under the end cover-plates.

I know it is in vain, but I hope NEVER to have to caulk that tub again.

I had a mini-breakdown/tantrum while laying down the caulk. All this work! And it might all come loose again anyway! I went through all this work already in the past; why am I having to do it again and again?! Why do I have to do this kind of work during my vacations?! I hate this! It hurts my hands having to press down the trigger on the caulk gun! And no matter how much effort I put into it, and in spite of having more experience each time I do it, it still always ends up looking like sh*t! The bead never comes out nice and even. Even after I smooth the bead, some sections end up being a total mess. And then I have to spend time with toothpicks and q-tips trying to make it look better, but that only helps somewhat. Is there really any purpose to this caulking? Does it really even matter if water gets into the seams? The old silicone caulk that I removed seemed damp underneath, even in the sections where it hadn't been loose... maybe water gets underneath it anyhow. Maybe I'm going through all this effort for no good reason! Other people don't do this! What am I going to do when I get older and am no longer capable of putting so much effort into these tedious tasks?!

Sigh. I managed to get past the break-down with only a few tears, and without hitting anything, though I was tempted. What is it about rage that makes one want to hit things?

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I also finally replaced the toilet fill-valve which had been malfunctioning for over a year, but still technically working. Then I also had to replace the flapper which suddenly wasn't sealing well anymore. Then water starting dripping/leaking from the supply line! But it seems it may simply not have been tightened enough - hopefully I've fixed that now.

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Before (with part of the old brown caulk already removed):

After (nice and silvery):

Update (2014/01/12):
I'm really pleased with the new caulk color. Its silveriness, and the contrast between the color of the tub and caulk, looks very fancy. It looks just as good, if not better, than white caulk would have.

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work and not work

2011-07-02T06:20:00Z

Yesterday while working, I discovered that part of my DB2 database had been left in a quiesced state the prior day while testing the QUIESCE DATABASE command. I wasn't able to access any of my tables.
I was getting the error: SQL3015N An SQL error "-290" occurred during processing.
SQL -290 is "table space access not allowed".

I had a database backup, but didn't want to do a restore if I didn't have to.

When I tried the UNQUIESCE command, it told me that neither my database nor my instance were quiesced. Then I found out that there is also a QUIESCE TABLESPACE command. The "DB2 LIST TABLESPACES SHOW DETAIL" command showed me which tablespace was quiesced.

I think I tried the QUIESCE TABLESPACE command along with the RESET parameter, but got some error. Luckily, I found this page which explains how to remove a phantom quiesce. You have to first issue the QUIESCE TABLESPACE command for any table (apparently) in that tablespace, to gain control over the phantom quiesce. Then you can repeat the QUIESCE command with the RESET parameter to unquiesce it.

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Today I tried to get an asp page (which worked on my old computer) to work on my new laptop. It's a relatively simple page which takes the posted XML request file, searches for certain elements in it, and based on which elements it finds, returns one of several hard-coded XML response files.

My laptop's IIS install hadn't included ASP, but it had included ASP.NET. So first I tried to convert my asp page to aspx. I was able to work through several errors, but then was confronted with some that I couldn't figure out.
Like these:
Could not find file 'c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\System.Web.HttpRequest'
and
Access to the path 'c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\System.Web.HttpResponse' is denied.
and
System.Xml.XmlException: Invalid character in the given encoding. Line 1, position 1.
The line numbers listed along with these errors weren't any help. When I commented out the referenced lines, the same error kept occurring, but on some other totally unrelated line.

So I gave in and installed the IIS ASP component, and tried using the original asp version of my page again.

I was calling the asp page from a java application running on Tomcat. But then Tomcat kept getting out of memory errors, even with an increased heap size. I'm not sure if the memory problem is due to a problem with the asp page, or with the java app.

I used to have a utility which let you intercept messages, so that you could check if they were being passed correctly. Instead of sending the message to the normal URL, you'd set up another port number, and send it to that port. Then the utility would capture it and pass it on to the normal URL.
Update: I found the utility I used to use; it was "TCPMon".

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The laptop still has the problem were it reboots itself without warning, while using VPN over wireless. I've updated the BIOS and the wireless drivers, and tried different versions of the VPN program, but the problem is still there. Several people with the new laptops are having the same problem, but so far, my company's tech support hasn't been able to fix it.

When not using wireless, the VPN can be frustrating too. Sometimes it will crash, and I won't be able to get it to work again until after rebooting. And today my laptop was frustrating me even more by repeatedly clocking with a dark screen when logging on to it, after I had rebooted.

My wireless keyboards must be built pretty well. I've banged them in frustration many times, but they haven't broken.

[2011/07/02 - updated with more details]

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dog rant.

2011-04-18T00:56:20Z

Damn those fucking dogs.

They tore up all my grass, so I wanted to lay down some new sod. It's hard enough keeping grass alive without dogs tearing it up. Qiao got me 10 squares of sod. Just a small area at a time. It took me a couple hours yesterday to dig up the earth and lay the sod. Then it took another couple of hours trying to hook up the hose and sprinkler to the faucet. Then while the sprinkler was going, I went to work drilling holes in the mortar in order to put a hose hangar on the side of the house. Because I can't leave the hose on the ground or the dogs will chew it up. And it's damn heavy to be carrying back and forth to the garage all the time. And the sod has to be watered every day to begin with

Today I finished putting up the hose hangar. And I went to buy more fencing, because I didn't have enough to surround the new sod. The metal fencing would have been $30 for 50 feet. I instead got plastic fencing, which was $10 for 25 feet and twice as tall - I could cut it in half and have 50 feet worth.

After getting home with the fencing, I looked out the window to see Serena already pulling up a piece of sod and trying to tear it apart. I yelled at her in fury and tied her up on the other side of the house. Then I got the plastic fencing up around the sod. The fig tree seems to be dead, so I took the tall folding fence that was around it, and instead put that around where the lantana flowers will be growing, to keep the dogs from ruining the flowers. In addition to the plastic fencing, I had gotten 4 pretty little snap-together pieces of plastic decorative fence, so I put those around the fig tree instead. Then I went to work trying to put the hose on the hose hangar, and hooking up the sprinkler again. Not 10 minutes into that process, I look over to see Serena chewing off the tops of my pretty little snap-together fence. GRRRR!!!!!

And now they'll probably tear down the plastic fencing and tear up the sod, and all that work will have been for nothing. And I'll have nothing but a big ugly muddy yard. I've already got a big muddy yard, and the soil is starting to wash away. I used to have nice grass in the back yard at least, but it has disappeared. It was thinning out even before the dogs moved in and started trampling everything.

And I still have to finish laying down bricks around the whole perimeter of the outside fence, to keep Serena from digging under it.

Those dogs make my life so damn hard.

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