Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Bubba Siege




I don't have much of a front porch, it's merely a set of brick stairs with a railing precariously attached and a pair of shrubberies providing enough privacy to make it a passable perch for the pleasant perusing of periodicals and publications.

Until recently. Over the last week or so the shrubberies surrounding ny building have been vanishing, one-by-one.



My outdoors cat used to love the shelter provided by the shrubs that aren't pictured here:
I have a bad feeling about this. I fear my landlord is planning some major renovation to the exterior of the building and that my apartment will be under Bubba Siege at some point in the very near future.

If you are a renter, you might already know what a Bubba Siege is. It's what happens when loud, vulgar and often drunken contractors set up a semi-permanent camp outside your apartment window while they go about painting/renovating/repairing the building in the noisiest manner possible. They never seem to go away and yet they never seem to make any progress towards their goal

Professional Bubbas are amazing. They can do in weeks what it would take a layperson hours or even days to accomplish, and they can do it at a decibel level rivaling that of a live rock band...if your town has a "classic rock" station ( i.e., one that still has Boston and Foreigner in daily rotation), the Bubbas will have it tuned in and cranked up. Remember Styx? You do now.

To make it worse, it looks like I'll be unemployed during the upcoming Bubba Siege- a Siege is not so bad when one has a day job, as there is no way in hell you can get a Bubba to begin work before 9 or continue after 5, so they have usually departed by the time one returns home, but a Siege will make one's home uninhabitable at peak hours. If one has no money, the library and the public parks will become indispensable resources , as well as providing valuable training grounds in case one is forced into homelessness.

Job in doubt? Spend money!

My new PC is not here yet, but I have already upgraded my monitor, having found a 20" LCD widescreen for $99...sweet!

It turns out that my old PC's CD drive was causing my woes.Windows wasn't recognizing it- I went into BIOS and disabled the CD and set the PC to boot off the hard drive first ( no A: drive in machine) and it worked fine- I temporarily installed a borrowed CD drive, defaulted BIOS back to boot off the loaner and it worked with no fuss, so voila , problem identified. But not fixed.

It's a drag , because I will have to find another way to move 25+ gigs of audio files from Old PC to New PC...a data-stick thingie comes to mind...it also shouldn't be hard to find/borrow an old IDE drive for free, so no way in hell am I buying a 50-buck drive for a PC that's two days away from being mothballed. There are a lot of ways to transfer files these days...might be able to FTP 'em...who knows?
Eh, cross that bridge later, right?



What game am I playing? Hint: You can get killed by pots and pans. My old PC can barely run it, but the new one should rock...I hope I can survive the virtual kitchen!

9 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

plus they will be banging on your door to use 'the terlet'....
so..? you got laid off?..fuckity fuck fuck fuck...come to west, we'll run the village bakery together..

Craig D said...

"What game am I playing? Hint: You can get killed by pots and pans. "

Bringing Up Father: Maggie and Jiggs WARZ II?

AngelConradie said...

I have often wished I was more into gaming in any form... it looks like fun until I sit down and attempt it- then it infuriates me!
Sorry bout the pending builder invasion.

schlep said...

I felt sympathy for your black and white cat as I was walking by the other day - he looked distressed to be so exposed on the porch.

Anonymous said...

That sucks that whatever rennovation had to be done involves hacking down the shrubs, I hope they plan tot replace them. (Workers blasting their music - any kind of music) outside gripes the hell out of me.)

schlep said...

When my place was painted last year the two bubbas chose to listen to a fire-and-brimstone evangelist blasting away idiotically on the radio all day...Styx isn't so bad really...luckily I had a place to go and get away for eight hours!

McRaven said...

I am a renter and I do know what you're saying. My bathroom needs some big time fixing and Bruce and I have decided to do it ourselves. Not even going to tell the 85 year old landlord...he wouldn't hear me anyway. :) Good luck with yours.

more cowbell said...

HA!! A Bubba Siege! OMFG, hilarious.

more cowbell said...

HA!! A Bubba Siege! OMFG, hilarious.