Ninja News: Episode 4

Since it's been long enough since the last episodes of Ninja News here, here, and here, I figured it was time for an update.


It appears that Ninjas dabble in other things besides home improvement. Here is a great online comic book about a Ninja who practices medicine...when he's not kickin' butt. The guy's name? Dr. McNinja, of course.








Here's a cute animated cartoon about a ninja, who may or may not be named Fuggy Fuggy.










A crazed "ninja" shot dead by a guy with a .357 magnum. Read the article here.

I have a few problems with this story. First, everyone knows you can't kill a ninja with a bullet, unless it's silver. The only way to kill a ninja and ensure that he doesn't come back to life and kill you right back is to drive a wooden stake through his black heart. Everyone knows that. Oh wait, maybe that's how you kill zombie pirates, isn't it? Ummm, well you know what. I'm not going to tell you how to kill a ninja, because Superman doesn't go around telling people that he's allergic to Kryptonite, right?



Secondly, not everybody who dresses in black is a Ninja. Do you think this guy is a ninja? I don't think so, slick. A rebel maybe, but a Ninja? Not! Ninja's don't make computers that freeze up on you just because you installed software to steal music from the internet. Ooops, I meant borrow...definitely borrow.



Paris Hilton wears black. You think she's a ninja? Maybe if she found a ancient ninja master in the spirit realm who would be willing to let her trade skank for ninpo skillz, then possibly, but otherwise, I don't really see it happening any time soon.

Puttin' the Hood in Neighborhood

This Old House is probably my least favorite show. However, they recently did a show in DC, so I figured I would watch it. They say you learn something new everyday, so when I actually learned two things, I exceeded my quota. Things I learned from watching This Old House DC:

1. Somebody finally wised up and told Bob Villa to get his shinebox and go shine shoes someplace else;
2. how to match old cement in bricks.
   

Regarding number 2: in case you didn't know, in reaaaallly old houses, like a lot of the ones in DC, there is probably not real cement holding together your bricks. Portland Cement, which they use nowadays wasn't invented until the 20s or 30s, so older houses have "cement" made from lime and sand. The difference between the cement they use nowadays and old stuff is like the difference between CrazyGlue and the "glue" you made with flour and water in kindergarten.

So anyway, that stuff wears out and it's a real bee-yotch to try to mix up something to repair it that will match the old stuff (unless you dig out a lot of it and re-point your whole house). So when they repaired an old townhouse in Shaw, a gentrifying neighborhood (that put the "hood" in neighborhood), they matched the old cement perfectly. How? They took a sample of the old cement and dipped it in Hydrocloric Acid. The acid disolves the lime, and leaves only the sand. Then you take the sand and find matching sand, add lime and voila, a perfect match.

This episode of This Old House did not suck because it was unlike the other episodes. What makes the other episodes unrealistic and unwatchable is the following:

1. I wouldn't trust Bob Villa to shine my shoes (my regular shoes or my ninja climbing shoes), so I don't buy him as the host of a home improvement show;
2. the houses on that show are usually in the million dollar plus range and the repairs are usually more than most people pay for an entire house. (I'm sorry, but I don't give a flying fig about renovating the governor's mansion, asshat. I wanna' know how the easiest way to insulate a really old house that had NO insulation whatsoever, so that I don't freeze to death or go broke paying the gas company) who has half a million for a renovation budget???;
3. Something about Norm Abrams that I can't put my finger on makes me not like him. He's got that Unabomber thing going on. (I got my eye on you, man, so don't even think about it!);
4. they tend to try to keep those places like museums. Who the hell still uses plaster? If you need to repair it, that's one thing, but if it's so bad that you had to remove it, why not just put up sheetrock like a normal person...or a person like me.
   

So anyway, some of the sucky elements of the usual episodes of This Old House were missing. It was a small 2BR rowhouse in Shaw. It was sold for $1 to a charitable organization that renovated it and turned it over to a needy family. Why you would give a home in one of the most expensive cities to live in to a really poor family is beyond me. The city keeps raising property assessments every year at an alarming rate, so I don't know how they are gonna afford it. Why not give a house in Beverly Hills to a poor family? I think they would be better off using the$250k they spent on renovations to buy 5 or 6 houses for poor people in someplace like Alabama.

I don't think I would use that Hydrocloric Acid trick myself (I don't mind endangering myself by doing electrical work, but something about Acid scares the crap out of me), but I thought I would throw it out there in case somebody finds it helpful.

Dorkapalooza

Well, part of the reason that I got little accomplished this weekend was that I had to go to a conference on Friday and Saturday. In case you were wondering, it wasn't a Derivatives Conference. It was a confernce for Securities Dorks. If you don't parctice law and are wondering what the difference is between Derivatives and Securities Lawyers, I'll explain it. Derivatives lawyers are like securities lawyers, except smarter and better looking. There, I said it.

So, as you would expect from secutiries lawyers this thing was unspeakably boring. They had presenters that literally read every word from their notes without looking up. And they did it in monotone. These people are really bright, but incredibly boring. At future events I hope they balance the panels out by adding people like me who are incredibly entertaining, but have no idea what we are talking about.



The highlight of the conference was lunch when I went to the new SEC bldg to visit my friend who is moving to california. The bldg is all gray granite and steel. My friend calls it "industrial chic", but I refer to it as "the place where colors go to die".

Anyway, this was a downer because although we all know that DC is a very transient city, my friend "Sailor Moon", was, literally, the first friend I made in DC. We met at school during orientation. And now she is leaving for San Diego. But she is married and has a kid now and San Diego is probably a much better place to raise kids than DC. Raising your kids around wolves is probably preferrable to raisng them around politicians, so I can't blame her. I won't post a pic of her because she asked me not to. She is afraid of the wierdos who read blogs on the internet (apologies to the non-wierdos who read my blog, to the others: you know who you are).



On sunday I managed to get what I hope are all the plumbing parts I needed from Lowe's and I also managed to drop my computer off at the Apple Store. I need to go there tonight to talk to the people at the "genius bar" to see what's wrong with it and if I should fix it or buy a new one. You know, I like Macs as much as the next guy, but I think calling your technicians "geniuses" is a bit much. Anyway, having my computer back should enable me to upload pics of my new work. If I don't get it back soon, I'll use the wayback machine and post pics of stuff that I did before but I didn't have time to blog about.

Maybe some before and after pics?

More Bubble Talk.

Well, since I can't upload pics until I get a new computer, or fix my old one, it would be pointless to describe the work I did recently. (I can't pat myself on the back properly without picks that confirm how awesome my mighty plumbing skiilz are). But I must say that I am very happy with Lowe's recently. They didn't have every piece in brass that I needed, but they did have most of them and the ones they didn't , they still had in both galvanized and black pipe (home depot had it in neither). Take THAT Home Depot! I also bought a cool Corldless Drill there (24 volts, baby!). But I haven't used it yet, so I'll wait to give you the product review.

In the meantime, I think I should expand on my previous bubble talk. Both to make it more understandable and prove my Derviatives Geek street cred.

So to fully expain the causes/effects of the bubble I had to think of how to explain it with everyday terms. Here is an analogy. Let’s say you open up a shop that sells ham and cheese sandwiches. You are making a lot of money at it, of course. So other people start to open up more sandwich shops. The competition pushes down sandwich prices and you make less money. This is how things work in the real world, until the government sticks it's nose into it. The government always sees a problem, then goes in and makes it worse.


The Fed Chairman sees the slowdown in sandwich sales and decides that, to avoid the prices of sandwiches going down (deflation!) he should print more money (i.e. lower the short-term interest rates). In order to prevent that money from being spent on other things (like cars), congress passes certain tax laws and subsidies to make sure that the money goes to sandwich shops (they make the interest on sandwiches tax deductible, and if you invest in a sandwich shop and sell it after two years, you pay no tax on the sale etc.). They also set up quasi-federal agencies (Fannie Mae etc.) to give below market government guarantees to loans on sandwich shops.



All of a sudden, lots of people start going to sandwich shops and the price of ham, cheese and bread go up. You used to be able to make a sandwich for a $1 and sell it for $3. The higher prices now mean that it costs you $2 to make a sandwich and you sell it for $4. After prices rise again, it costs you $3 to make a sandwich. You try to raise prices to $5, but no one buys your sandwiches, so you drop the price back down to $4, to keep the food from spoiling and you losing everything.

Now, here is where the problem comes in. As the price of ham, cheese and bread keep going up, soon it will cost more to make a sandwich than you can sell it for. That’s when you the sandwich bubble will end.

Now, onto real estate: If you hadn’t noticed, the price of energy has gone way up recently. (people blame the arabs and Opec, but that’s not the real reason). The price of steel is at record prices too (people blame China, but that’s not the reason either). The price of Lumber (damn Canadians!), cement (damn Katrina!) and Drywall are all up. In addition, copper(damn internet!), cocoa(damn Ivory Coast riots), steel, gold are all at record prices. So instead of asking “why are commodity prices rising” you can ask the opposite “why is the value of the dollar falling?”.



The value of the dollar is falling because we are printing so much money. They are printing so much of it, in fact, that begining in March, they won't even tell you how much of it they are printing anymore. With all that money floating around, just like in post-WWI germany, you have inflation in the price of raw goods. Now when the price of concrete, drywall, lumber, land and construction labor keeps going up, it will reach a point where it costs more to build these houses/condos than you can sell them for. And don’t kid yourself, this isn’t NYC, there is a practical limit on how high prices can go. Two government employees can’t afford a million-dollar first home, and two associates at a top law firm would barely be able to do so.




So, the reason the bubble will end, will have to do with rising commodity prices, not rising interest rates. There is only one real estate investor, Tom Barrack, who I have ever seen who said this will be the reason, not interest rates, for the end of the real estate boom. Although he doesn’t mention Mises or Austrian Business Cycle Theory, his description is pretty similar.



In fact, he sees signs of the tech bubble mentality in real estate. Too much capital is chasing real estate, he explains, with hedge funds, private equity groups, and rich investors all bidding on the same properties. "They've driven prices to the point where the yields on high-quality properties are like the returns on bonds, around 5 percent or 6 percent," says Barrack. "That's too low."





Now, what about interest rates? Well, some people think that The new Fed Chairman (or the old one) has some effect on mortgage rates and will cause the bubble to burst when he raises short-term rates. That's incorrect. Mortgages are affected by long-term interest rates that are priced at a certain amount over U.S. Bonds. Since we buy more from places like China and Japan than we sell, they have a lot of dollars. Dollars are like a gift certificate that can only be used in the US. But their holders are not buying US goods with these dollars, but they have to buy something with it. So they end up buying US Treasury Bonds. All those billions going into US Bonds has bid their price up, making the interest payable on them lower. SInce the interest on US Bonds is lower, the interest on mortgages are lower. WHen foreigners decide to stop buying US Bonds (because with the falling dollar, it makes it a losing investment) interest rates will go up. But, as I said, the bubble's end will be caused by other factors.

Now, given the history of past real estate bubbles, it's possible that prices won't collapse. THey may just stay where they are for the next 10-12 years (like what happened in DC prior to 1999). It all depends on how many flippers try to sell at the same time. What makes real estate bubbles different from stock bubbles is that non-speculative owners can hold onto their property and stabilize the market. This makes me less afraid of buying property in a place like DC where people live and work than in a place like Vegas where a lot of the price appreciation comes from flippers who have no intention of living there and who will sell at the first sign of trouble. Still, Anyone that tells you that real estate always goes up or that paying $800k for a 2BR condo (with a $700 a month condo fee) is a great investment is smoking some serious crack.

I'm not saying not to buy a house (I own one and part of another one), but make suer the numbers make sense and don't buy using a variable rate mortgage because you will get kicked in the financial nuts when the Chinese start shifting their assets from US Bonds to gold or other currencies like the Euro.

All graphs were from THe Prudent Bear.

iMac = R.I.P.

Well, it finally happened. My iMac up and died on me. I mean it's been acting up more and more lately, requiring me to re-boot at shorter and shorter intervals, but now it's totally gone. I tried it about a dozen times, but it gets to the screen with the silver Apple Logo and just stays there forever. I guess it's technically not dead then, it's in a coma. Should I try to keep her alive or pull a Terry Schiavo on her ass? And if I do, will Tom Delay enact legislation to stop me?

I was trying to decide what course of action to take.

1. Fix it myself. I don't need to worry about voiding the manufacturers warranty because it expired already. The bragging rights on this would be friggin' sweet, but I have no idea what I'm doing; it would probably take way too much time away from home improvement and naps; and I could potentially electrocute myself;
2. Get Apple to Fix it. This probably makes sense, but I would feel kinda silly paying $5-600 to get it fixed when I could buy a new one for about $1000. The plus side to this solution is that I wouldn't have to re-load all my CDs onto iTunes again, which takes forever;
3. Buy another Apple. The new Apples are sweeeeeet, but to get a decent one would probably run me $1300-1500 bucks ($1000 is for the cheapest laptop). Two problems with this, I'm not made of money and I worry about spending that much on a new one and having it crap out on me.
4. Buy a PC. I saw a commercial where you can get a Dell with a flatscreen monitor and printer and all that stuff for under $500. That's awesome, but it's still not a Mac, which would make feel like I'm cheating (plus, technologically speaking, I'm an idiot that has a hard time working my iMac, the thouthg of tinkering with a PC is scary mojo).

Either way, I have to make up my mind soon because Tax season is coming up so I need to figure out which version (Mac or PC of Turbo Tax to buy). In case you are wondering, the IT Gestapo has put something on our computers to prevent you from loading any software on your work computer. So I need to intsall it at home. The only way to alter one of these machines is to call tech support and have them send up an IT gnome with pasty-white skin and big coke-bottle glasses and freaky yellow eyes that have never seen natural sunlight. They also spit when they talk and ask you weird questions like "do you think that girl that hangs out in the hallway has a boyfriend". Then you have to explain to them that there's no girl in the hallway, that it's actually a couch. I'm telling you, we need to talk to HR about our mutant hiring policies.

Not having a computer also prevents me from uploading pics of the home improvement projects I am working on. So for the next week or so, you people will just have to take my word about how awesome my skillz are.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

I have mentioned before about how much I hate Home Depot. In particular, I hate the Home Depot on Rhode Island avenue in Washington, DC. The other one in Virginia sux compared to Lowes too, but it doesn't suck as badly.

Everytime I swear off that place, because of the surly incompetent staff or the fact they never have what I need, I end up going back there because it's closer than Lowe's. This weekend was no exception.


I used to laugh at Charlie Brown because no matter how many times Lucy would pull the football out from under him, he was always convinced that this time, things would be different. Well, old Charlie has nothing on me. After previous trips to Home Depot where they have been out of such basic things as solder and teflon tape, I realllllly swore never again to subject myself to the Kafka-esque level of stupidity.



Ninja: What do you mean you don't have teflon tape?

Depot Moron: We're out of it.

Ninja: This is the plumbing section. How could you be out of it?

Depot Moron: Well, sometimes we run out of stuff. It's not like we don't have anything, we got plenty of pipes.

Ninja: What good are pipes without teflon? How are you supposed to join them, with Duct Tape?




(this is a simulation of how I feel whenever I leave Home Depot. I don't really look like this guy though. I am more ninja-esque).








So this weekend, because I needed to be punished, I went to try to get some plumbing pieces. Brass Bushings to be exact. I needed to re-connect a couple of radiators and I needed brass pieces to go from the copper pipes to steel pipes, because if you connect copper directly to galvinized pipes, they react chemically and leak eventually. I always use brass pipes to connect copper to galvinized because the other solution (a di-electric union) doesn't work. It's a big scam. And a waste of money. And ummmm, it probably causes cancer. There, I said it.

So back to Home Depot. I am looking around and I didn't see any brass fittings at all (except for the teeeny tiny compression ones you use for connecting air lines) . And they didn't even have steel bushings in the size I needed either, that I could've used instead. So, despite my better judgment, I asked one of their crack plumbing staff about it.

Ninja: Where are your brass plumbing fittings?

HDMoron: We don't carry them in this store.

NInja: Huh? Why not?

HDMoron: Uhh, well people buy brass just for the appearance, but we don't have a lot of room to stock it, so we carry galvinized fittings instead.

Ninja: What? Brass is not just for appearance...what if you need to join copper and galvinized pipes?

HDMoron: Well, you could use a di-electric union.

Ninja: *sigh* okay give me one of those.

HDMoron: We're out of them.

Unfreakingbelievable. This reminds me of that joke where the guy tells the waiter he wants an ice cream sundae, but with no walnuts, and the waiter says "I'm sorry, we're out of walnuts, would you like it without almonds instead?".

Bubble?

The topic of conversation everywhere you go seems to be whether or not there is a housing bubble and if prices will continue to climb or "correct" and by how much. Whenever someone tries to give me their opinion on something like this, no matter how ill-informed they are, I pretend to listen patiently, then I tell them why they are wrong, and they don't believe me. But that's okay. No-one believed Einstein at first either...and I have better hair than him.

I'll try to post a more-detailed post about the reasons why in a future post, but, yes, I do think we are in a housing bubble. Now, for the record:

• the bubble will not end when interest rates rise, the end will be from something completely unrelated that no one understands...except me and a few austro-libertarian economists (and possibly that guy outside Starbucks with the sign spouting various conspiracy theories);
• interest rates will not rise when Bernake (Greenspan's successor) raises interest rates (the inverted yield curve is proof of that). It will end when China, Japan and Korea stop buying US treasury bills and artificially subsidizing our idiot politicians who spend like drunken sailors in a Saigon whorehouse;
  
• the bubble will end, as predicted by the Mises/Hayek Austrian Business cycle theory when rising costs of capital goods make the return on investing in real estate untenable (just like it did for the dot-com and telecom bubbles);
• the cause of the bubble is not supply/demand or a housing shortage as real estate agents would like you to believe. It is because Greenspan, and now Bernake, have increased the money supply (M3) to unprecedented levels (like Weimar Germany did after WWI);
• Greenspan is an idiot, and Bernake is a bigger idiot. Paul Volker rulz!

Given what I have just said (which I have been saying since I sold my condo in 2003) you may wonder why I bought a house last year. Or why, I just bought another one (with my dad and brother) in Florida. Or why I also bought one with him a few years ago, after I had already been predicting a "correction".

Well, I think that because I bought a fixer-upper in an up-and-coming area of DC that I got it at a good enough price that I will still make money even if something happens to the housing market. Ditto for the house in Florida. My brother (a real-estate agent) found a house that was on a double-lot listed for, basically, a little more than the land was worth*. I bought a house with my dad in Florida a couple of years ago and despite him having to sell it because of a divorce (and overinvesting in improvements) we still did really well on it. So based on the past track record and knowing that their home-improvement skillz are way better than mine, I am pretty confident that things will turn out okay because, like in baseball, you have to wait for the good pitch and not just swing at everything you see. When I was telling people last year that they were crazy for bidding $50k over asking price, they would try to explain it to me...like I didn't understand real estate or something. Well, I understand that people who aren't on crack price things using a calculator and common sense, not your realtor's opinion, but what do I know? Or to use another analogy, you don't walk into a bar and start hitting on the first girl you see. You wait to see the one you want or wait until they are drunk enough that you become unbelievably handsome.

So I don't know what my point was with this, but I will try to post again about this (with charts and graphs) and explain it more detail when I am feeling extra geeky. I the mean time, just let me once again re-iterate who much I hate Home Depot. Everytime I swear I will never set foot there again, I do because it's way closer than Lowes or Harbor Freight, but this time I mean it...no, really!




*The agent had priced the house according to comparables on single lots in the area. If we had more time and money we would knock it down and build two houses for a lot more money, but I think it will be easier just to re-do the kitchen and turn the carport into another bedroom/bathroom to go from a 3 BR 1 BA to a 4BR 2BA, which should be worth a lot more.

Genocide is a Bitch, Man.

Okay, this will probably be anti-climatic, but if you remember here I talked about when I confronted those El Salvadorans that the Sudanese guy hired to make the pile of dirt in his yard bigger and block my driveway further (I think they encouraged the other illegal dumpers for free).

So after I confronted them, I took a picture of their license plate and one of them got up in my grill. And wanted to know why I took a picture of his truck plate. There is something you should know about me. I am probably one of the most calm people you will ever meet. At work, I'm the one that they always make the irate people talk to because I never lose my cool. But there are certain things (like dumping garbage in my alley) that set me off. Among the things that sets me off is when someone tries to intimidate me.



I'm only 5'8" and I weigh 155 lbs, but I am freakishly strong and I fight better than any derivatives lawyer in this town. I know that's like saying I'm the toughest kid on the chess team, but I am really pretty good at it...partly from growing up in Brooklyn, but mostly from fighting my older brother who is bigger and meaner than me (my brother was the victim of seven attempted muggings in NY, and only once did anyone get any money off of him). I never actually beat him. My record is 499 loses, 0 wins and 1 draw, but the process toughened me up. My brother now claims he was doing me a favor by ramming my face against furniture to practice WWF wrestling moves. Because now if someone on the street attempts to get me into a Figure Four Leg Lock, I'll know how to get out it. That's what passes for logic in my immediate family.



So here I am in flip-flops and shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter in front of 2 people in a dark alley and I did the dumbest thing imaginable. I put the camera in my back pocket and said "I took a picture of it because I'm going to turn it over to the cops...what are you gonna' do about it?" Then there was more yelling back-and-forth. I think since I wasn't in the least intimidated by them--and was half-nekkid--they thought I was a nut, and they might be right.


In between the yelling they communicated that they were working for the sudanese guy. I said "yeah?" then I ran up the stairs and started banging on the back door. The 6 sudanese guys living that room, who probably thought I was from immigration, turned off the lights and pretended not to be home. I kept banging and yelling until one of them opened the door and he claimed not to know who those guys were...and he said that none of them lived there; they were all just visiting a friend.

So I told the Salvadorans that I was gonna talk to the sudanese guy and if he didn't know who they were, I was calling the cops. And that was that.

I still haven't talked to the sudanese guy. I think I'll take the sage advice of others and just report them to the city. My latin machismo feels like this is the cowardly way to do it (I would like to just get up in his grill and tell him that if it's not out by next friday I'm coming to kick his ass) but that is probably the dumbest thing possible. As a libertarian, I also feel weird about narc'ing on someone. I think people should solve their own problems without government interference, but I don't think I can be rational with this guy, so I better let the city handle it.

I was talking to my neighbor about it and he said I should call the city too. I told him why I hesitated calling them before, you know, because of the genocide and everything. It went something like this:

Neighbor: yeah, you shoulda' called the city a long time ago.

Ninja: you're right. But the guy is sudanese...what if he survived genocide and I narc on him? That's not cool.

Neighbor: Yeah, genocide is a bitch, man...but so is garbage in your alley.

So here is the plan: this weekend I'm removing anything from my yard that would result in a fine to me, and I'm calling the city. This has gone on for a year, so enough is enough. I fill you in on what happens afterwards.

(by the way, the ninja pic is from www.askaninja.blogspot.com))

The Weather Gods

Well, I have been waiting for the weather to improve to finish connecting 3 radiators in my placee. Upstairs I need to re-connect one and downstairs I need to re-connect two. This will help the heating situation significantly since the thermostat is in the English Basement and it tends to get hotter in there (where all the radiators are connected) than in the rest of the house.

I put off re-connecting them because it's freakin' cold outside, and I need to turn the heat off all day, drain about 20 gallons of water out of the system, carry the water in buckets up the stairs to throw it out, then do some serious soldering on the radiators and hope that it doesn't leak.

This 3 day weekend would be a good time to do it. It was 60 degrees today. If it stays like this, it will be the perfect time to do it, but it's supposed to drop back into the 30s tomorrow. I hope the weather man in wrong. I don't want to disconnect everything, then figure out that something is wrong (or leaking) and be without heat for a few days while I figure it out. I work well under pressure, but not when I'm freezing to death.

In other news, throwing sawdust on my steps to keep the mailman from slipping on the ice looks like it was a bad idea. I mean, there is no dead mailman on my steps, which is arguably a good thing, but wet sawdust looks like cat puke on my stairs.

Upping the Ante

In an attempt to distance themselves from disgraced lobbyist/convicted felon Jack Abramhoff, prominent republicans have been going to extraordinary lengths.

Many lawmakers have donated his political contributions to charities,

Bush initially denied knowing him, then suppressed photos of himself with the criminal.

Some prominent Republicans have even introduced lobbying reform legislation to prove that they are no crooks.

Proving that he is more anti-corruption than the rest, Vice President Cheney recently shot a lobbyist in the face. That's right. He met one of the most powerful lobbyists in Texas and did what any upright american would do: he shot him in the face with a 12 gauge, then ducked the reporters and went into hiding to ummm, fight terrorism...and corruption. Ted Kennedy, eat your heart out.




"Never let it be said that I am soft on corruption" said Mr. Cheney.










In home-improvement related stuff. It snowed 10" in DC this weekend. I didn't want to shovel out my car and driveway to get some salt for the front of the fortress (because I am a lazy turd on the weekends). My metal stairs, however, are probably lethal to people who walk on them without a ninja's cat-like reflexes (like my mailman).

So what to do? I've seen old ladies use regular table salt in a pinch, but I don't have the cheap regular salt that old ladies use. I have the pretentious yuppie sea salt that costs like $12 for a little jar, so forget that idea.




Then I decided to use a bunch of the sawdust from my table saw in the basement. I threw it on my steps and I didn't see a dead mailman when I returned so I guess it worked. The wet sawdust looks kinda nasty, but It's biodegradable and it will probably blow away when it's dry, which will keep me from having to clean it up....sweeet.


(not my actual workshop...mine is a lot smaller and marginally cleaner, as far as you know).

More Ninja News: The Valentine Edition

Sometimes, as far as you know, people say to me: Ninja, why don't you make Ninja News a regular feature on your site, and have regular updates like once a something, man?

Here are my thoughts, reduced to word form:

1. There isn't a whole lotta' ninja news, so a regular feature might be difficult (although nothing is impossible for a shadow warrior);
   
2. "regularly scheduled" ninja news is almost an oxymoron. Ninja's are by nature unpredictable. So for the news to be authentic it must be completely unexpected (like a valentines post the day before Valentines day...didn't see that one comin' did ya?);
3. don't tell me how to run my site, dude. Seriously. Criticising my website, my plumbing, or leaving 20 cubic yards of dirt in my driveway for a year will really upset me;
4. don't end your sentences with "man"...unless english isn't your first language, in which case, I'll cut you some slack.

Without further ado...the latest Ninja News:



Well, I came across fellow Shinobi who runs a blog called Ask A Ninja. In it, you can ask shadow-warrior related questions (you can still email me with questions about drywall, marble saddles, hardwood flooring and Feng Shui). In this episode, he addresses the issues of Ninjas and dating.







If you’ll recall, the issue of Ninja’s and blind dating were discussed in a
previous issue of Ninja News. Keep an eye out for the forthcoming film on the subject by this Indy filmmaker.



Neither of these two shorts address the issue of whether ninja’s celebrate Valentines day. Let me answer that one: Unless you want your girlfriend to rip your nuts off and shove them down your throat before she rips out your spleen and feeds it to her two cats (one of which already hates you)…then, yes, we do celebrate it…with Tapas.

I Hate Genocide Too...but...

Ugggh. Here's the dilemma. I have this neighbor who is from the Sudan. Because of where he's from, I can't help thinking that this guy is some kinda' refugee whose survived famine and genocide and ended up buying a run-down house in a gentrifying neighborhood and proceeded to systematically make his house resemble the his former homeland (i.e. a shithole). Actually, the front of his house is very presentable. The back of his place, that shares a driveway with the ninja fortress is where I have an issue with this guy.


This is a pic of the back of the house. Look at the landing on the stairs. A nice stiff breeze could knock that down.













Here's some background:

He has a bunch of sudanese people living there (like 3 or 4 to a room). Half the sudanese population of DC lives there, except for him, of course. His house has a crawlspace, not an actual basement. So he hired some contractor to dig until the 30" crawspace is 8" deep so that he can turn it into an apartment and (and use it to exploit some more of his countrymen by over-charging them on rent and threating to deport them when they complain).

So the contractor blocked part of my driveway with a dumpster, which made it harder for my dump-truck guy to get into my yard to get rid of my debris, and hired a bunch of day laborers to do the digging. Now "underpinning", where you dig below a house's foundation is dangerous because if you do it wrong, the place can collapse and you don't have a house anymore.

Besides being very dangerous, it requires people who really, really know what they are doing. Somehow I doubt such people can be found in the parking lot of Home Depot.

Here's where the problem starts:

After taking out about 5 dumpsters full of dirt, there was a couple of months of no activity whatsoever. But the dumpster was still blocking part of my driveway. I can still get around it easily, which is why I have been patient...you know, because of the genocide and everything. I later found out that Sudanese guy wasn't paying the contractor, so he stopped coming back. Well what about his dumpster? Funny you should ask. Eventually he came to pick up his dumptster and dumped all the remaining dirt right in Sudanese guy's yard. It has sat like this for months.


Every time I drive by that pile of dirt I get more upset. It;s hard to tell from that pic, but the dirt is like 6 feet high and twenty feet long.








Here is what it looks like from another angle. If anyone has actually been to the Sudan, you can confirm that this is what the place looks like.







Because that a-hole has junk in his yard, other people come by in the middle of the night and throuw out other junk (like old furniture and bathtubs) instead of paying to take them to the dump.






I decided to be a little more patient since I heard that he hired a new contractor.

But the new "contractor" has been adding to the pile. I assumed that he would eventually bring in a dumpster and take it out, but I saw him taking some shower doors out from his truck (from another job, probably) and throwing it onto the pile. So now, I not only have to deal with his crap, but someone elses? I went outside in my flip flops and shorts (in the winter) and confronted these jokers. Their really lucky I didn't ninja-kick them back to El Salvador! (atucally, only one guy was from El Salvador, the other guy never said anything so I would probably ninja-kick him to New Jersey...a fate worse than death!).


[Okay, this post is getting too long...I'll post the rest of it in a day or two]

The Antithesis of Suck

I have unintentionally acquired a new hobby. No, it's not stamp collecting, Indian cooking, or poking people on the metro with a stick; it's loading my CDs onto my new iPod.



This may not seem like an actual hobby, but it takes up more time and mental energy than the above-mentioned hobbies. I got this beauty for my birthday. It was a gift from the Toolbelt Diva. This was really surprising because I was on Insensitive Boyfriend Probation ("IBP") at the time and was half-expecting a kick in the nuts on that day, but I have to admit that I enjoy this gift much more. IPods are awesome. They are the antithesis of suck.





Maybe not as much as I would enjoy one of these, but then again, where the hell would keep something like that? Actually, I am only half-kidding about that one. My sister-in-law was upset that I was more interested in pics of the cement mixer that my brother bought than I was in looking at pics of their kids. In my defense, everyone I know has kids, but how many people have really awesome construction equipment in their yard? I rest my case.


I mentioned before that I am borderline-retarded when it comes to all things technical. I can lay marble tile like RainMan plays blackjack, and talk about asset bubbles like Alan Greenspan, but ask me how to attach a file to an email and I'll call tech support and ask for help using phrases like "paper-clip box thingy" and "scrolly wheel in the middle of the mouse device". Although this is uderstandable at work, where I have a PC, my failings are made more obvious when I tell you that at home I have an iMac. Yes, I have trouble working it sometimes...but that doesn't make me a bad person.

When the Diva assured me that I didn't need to read the directions, install a CD driver thingy, play with FTPs or WMV, JPGs or MSGs, I found that hard to fathom. But I did literally just plug it in, and the iMac did the rest. It imported every song I had illegally downloaded onto my iTunes and whenever I add my kosherly purchased CDs, it automatically updates my iPod to add the new songs and playlists. I wish I had a secretary that was half as smart as my iPod. Actually, my secretary is half as smart as my iPod, so don't get me started.

I didn't realize how many CDs I had until now. The beauty of it is that sooooon, I will delete all the sucky songs from my playlists (you know, the ones that you hit the "skip" button all the time for) and I will be left with the most wicked awesome playlist in the entire universe. Something like that would pro'lly sell for $6-8 bucks on the open market. But I won't sell it to anyone. I'll just keep it and tell complete strangers how awesome my play list is and how they can't have it, no matter what...mostly because I'm selfish, but partly because I like to freak people out on the metro. You know...by poking them with a stick and stuff like that.

How Much for Your Soul?

My boss paid me an unintended compliment. She saw some some pics of my marble bathroom (I show those pics around the office like most people show baby pics) and asked if I would do some work at her place...for money.

This is flattering, but not a good idea for several reasons:

1. My house is only half-finished, so I shouldn't be taking time out from it to do side projects;
2. I do home-improvement like I do law. No, that doesn't mean "incompetently". It means that I am a perfectionist and take my time to make sure everything is meticulously perfect. If I charged for home improvement by the hour it would be so expensive that it would be unjustifiable. If I charged what a contractor would charge, it would take me so long to do it, that when you figured out the hourly rate, it would be less than minimun wage;
3. My boss has the ability to promote (or fire) me. When I unintentionally cause a flood at the ninja fortress, I can laugh about it afterwards, but I don't know if she will see the humor in such episodes;
4. She lives in Bethesda, and the only place I am allowed to work on in Bethesda belongs to the Toolbelt Diva. Which reminds me, I need to take some pics of the "repairs" her ex did (with scotchtape!) before I fix them so that you readers can all tell her how much better skillz I have than her ex (you know, drywall skillz, nunchuck skillz, bow-hunting skillz).

Moreover, I enjoy home-improvement stuff because I do what I like when and how I like it. If I took money for it, I don't know if I would like it anymore. In fact, while I don't mind doing stuff for free for friends, the thought of taking money for it seems kind of odd. Especially, if you think about it in other contexts:

Boy: Hey, would you like to go on a date with me?

Girl: No thanks, I already have a boyfriend.

Boy: What if I pay you?

Girl: huh? What kinda girl do you think I am?

Boy: You know what kinda girl I think you are. I just wanna' know how much!

See...it's kinda weird, isn't it. Plus, if I took money for it, I think it would make me like a real contractor, which is not something I see myself as (I wasted too much money on all those degrees). Although my dad and grandpa (and a lot of my uncles) were contractors, and I have a lot of respect for it, my family didn't have the best of luck in that profession. My grandfather died on a construction site (in front of my dad), and my dad broke his back on a contsruction job (in front of me), and I almost died on a construction site. This would've been particularly tragic since I have no kids yet. I think it's pointless to die unless your passing can inflict irreparable trauma on one of your heirs. Sort of like a gift that keeps on giving. A kid can lose an inherited watch, but it will takes years of therapy to keep your gruesome death from haunting their memory. And if things are ever slow in the spirit realm you can always go visit and move furniture and make strange noises. You, know...because it's tradition. Ahhhhh, family...good times.

So basically, construction is really dangerous stuff. Statisically it's way more dangerous than being a doughnut-eating cop, which is only slightly more dangerous than being a baker...no, really, you can google it if you don't believe me. Plus doing construction is hard. And I'm used to sitting in an office all day. And not risking life-ending injuries.

Being a lawyer is not very dangerous. I guess divorce lawyers occassionally get shot by people they sue and criminal lawyers occassionally get killed by people they release from prison (in some sort of karmic justice), but being a derivatives lawyer is a pretty sweet gig. Besides the money, which is the best part, no one ever comes in with an AK-47 and guns down an office full of lawyers because they don't like the new revisions to the ISDA Master Agreement.

I think I enjoy my job. Although not as much as my friend, Viet-Mom, who told me yesterday that the only way she would ever leave her firm is if they carried her out...either in a pine box or a straight jacket. What devotion!

If I did ever decide not to be a lawyer, I don't think I would trade it for construction. I think maybe I would be a writer, a standup comedian, or maybe I would open up a restaurant. But not a big fancy one. I want the small intimate kind where I can throw people out if they don't like the way I cook the steak.

Waiter: Well, I took your steak back to the chef and told him you said it was undercooked. He wasn't too happy about it.

Customer: I don't care. I'm the customer, and I'm always right...right.

Waiter: Look...when I said he wasn't happy about it, I meant he went to his car to get his samurai sword to disembowel you with it. I think you better run away...now.

Mmmmmmmmm.....steak!!!

More Ninja News: Film at 11

Okay, I mentioned before that on the odd occassion where there is ninja-related news, even if not related to home improvement, it would be discussed here because the shadow warriors' exploits would not be denied on any site where I have editorial control. If you remember that news article Here about that ninja being evicted from his apartment and fighting the cops (guns vs sword), maybe you have wondered what it would be like to rent a place with a ninja? Well wonder no more. Apparently somebody read that article and maybe wondered enough to make a short film about it. It takes a while to download, but the effort is definitely worth it. I give you: A Ninja Pays Half My Rent.


A Ninja Pays Half My Rent


Of course, the benefits of living with a ninja are:

1. quiet;
2. pays rent on time with money from ninja-related activities;
3. can get in through window if you have lost your key.

The downside is that he is a master of the shadow arts and assassination, so you might want to find out who he likes in the superbowl before you start disparaging the opposing team (some ninjas are really devoted to their hometeams).



and here is a fat kid ninja-dancing to techno music. This is probably not newsworthy, but fat-kids ninja-dancing will always have a special place in my heart and on my website.

Bad Mojo

As if I didn't have enough problems...I find out that I have bad Feng Shui.

I wathced a feng shui video over the weekend and found out that the shape of my rowhouse is bad Feng Shui. I watched the video for the same reason that you get a physical or get tested for a venereal disease. Not because you think something is wrong, but because you want someone to confirm that everything is okay. But my setup is seriously bad mojo. Almost every rowhouse in the district has the same set up (door on the extreme right or left side of the front of the house). I guess that's why this city is so messed up. If that weren't bad enough, having my stairs in front of my doorway is also bad feng shui. My good chi energy can go down the stairs and escape out the door, apparently.



This isn't really my house, but my hallway/door set up is eerily similar. Man, you can just feel the good chi leaking out of there, can't you?





Here is an, ummm, artist's representation of what happens when chi (which is invisible) travels down stairs and out the door. Not good! I need all the good chi I can get.







My bedroom is also at the end of a long hallway, which directs the bad chi straight to my room. I need to deflect that bad chi by placing a windchime in front of my door. You might think having a windchime indoors, where there is no wind, is ridiculous, but then again you've probably never been hit in the face with some chi, my friend.




This is scary. A long narrow hallway is like a bad-chi tunnel directing bad mojo RIGHT at my bedroom. What were these architects thinking in 1910?






My bed is directly facing the door. That means the chi hits me right in the face when I'm laying there and makes it hard for me to sleep. Well, actually I usually have the opposite problem--staying awake--but who the hell wants to get hit in the face with some chi? I can fix that one, but now I gotta move the TV and worry about glare from the window. I don't know what's worse, having bad Feng Shui or not being able to watch Sqwuak Box on CNBC before I go to work.

Here is what I mean about my bed. My bed is set up like example number one. I got that bad chi travelling down the long chi tunnel and hitting me head on. Freakin' chi, man!







My bathroom is also in the upper left corner of the house (which governs prosperity), so my money/prosperity chi could be flushed down the toilet (literally) if I don't counteract it with a crystal or a plant. I think a crystal would be better. My friend Shamus McIrish is visiting next week from outta' town and if I got a plant there he might poop on it as a practical joke. But even the Irish know that it's bad luck to poop on a crystal.

The Real Fat Ninja

As I was getting dressed this morning, I resolved to go to the gym at least 3x this week. What prompted this rush of workout fervor? No, it's not a New Year's resolution. That's only for communists and Oprah fans. I put on some pants that I haven't worn in a couple of months and they were tight on me. I assumed they shrunk from the uhhh humidity at my place, but my vain metrosexual gene kicked in and I decided that humidity or not, I could stand to lose a few pounds.

Well, I didn't work quickly enough...I sat down at the office with my coffee and chocolate muffin and while I was stuffing my fat face, the unimaginable happened. Yep.




I split my freakin' pants. This is some sorta' karmic lesson about calling my brother "fat ninja".

Now I gotta' sneak out and walk 10 blocks to the nearest store that actually sells mens clothes and buy some trousers before I get fired for indecent exposure.

(actually, there is a Burberry store about 8 blocks away, but I don't feel like spending $400 on a pair of pants.)

Yesterday was my birthday, so I guess this is the universe's gift to me. I always knew the universe was a practical joker.

The Hole Nine Yards...

In a previous post I mentioned that I had a problem with a hole that I cut in the floor to get at a pipe in one of my previous trial-and-error plumbing lessons. So this is how I ended up fixing that big hole in the floor.





I started by cutting a groove in the pieces that I needed to take aout with a circular saw. I also drilled a hole on the end so that I wouldn't be cutting too close to the end with my circular saw (didn't want to damage the adjoining piece).






This is the circular saw I used. I borrowed it from my freind Easy Rider. I lent Easy Rider and his fiance, Maple Leaf, a mitre saw that I wasn't using so they could do some molding at their place and I borrowed their circular saw to do this project. By the way, there's nothing wrong with your monitor. That saw has a freakin' laser attacthed to its head.






That's almost as good as a shark with a freakin' laser attatched to its head.

I should mention that I am old fashioned and I don't have ANY cordless tools (except for a cordless screwdriver that I have no idea how it came into my posession). I only use stuff with cords because I don't think cordless has the power I need. I usually think that if something's not working out, I just need a bigger, more powerful tool and I can get the job done. But this cordless worked surprisingly well. Maybe I'll give up my dinosaur ways and get a cordless drill next.




After I cut a gouge in the wood with the circular saw, I chiseled out the planck that I needed to remove. This was pretty difficult since the chinese chisels I got from Harbor Freight kinda' sucked. I have gotten good stuff from them in the past, but these chisels really suck the big onee.






Then I pried it out with a chisel and/or pry bar.











This is the drill I used. It's a Black & Decker Firestorm series. I don't mind giving them a free plug (but I would whore myself and endorse them for cash if they offered it). I also have an angle grinder and jigsaw by B&D Firestorm. It's nice suff, definitely worth the money.



Here is a simulation of what it looks like to pry the wood out with the pry bar (if you have invisible hands).






On the new replacement piceces of wood, I cut the tongue and the bottom half of the groove off so that I could drop the wood into the existing holes. Without cutting the toungues and grooves of, I wouldn't have been able to wedge them in.







Okay, I couldn't figure out how to fix that hole without spending a half a day bracing it from underneath. Then I had a good idea. It was bordeline genius, if I do say so myself. I added these deck supports underneath. It's at least as strong as 3/4" plywood. and I installed it in like 45 seconds...Sweet!









Then I carefully cut around the pipe and finished fixing the hole with new boards.















Like this....now all I have to do is re-connect the radiator and I can blog without the help of the little space heater that could.

Tune in Next Time

Okay, I finally snapped a few pics of the my Crazy Sudanese Neighbor's yard. I'll try to upload them and post about it before I have to turn over my computer to the Apple Care people so they work their Mac Magic on it. It's probably the logic board that's jacked up, which is expensive...grrrrrr. I looked up "logic board" on their website which describes what a logic board problem would look like:

• Scrambled or distorted video
• Appearance of unexpected lines on the screen
• Intermittent video image
• Video freeze
• Computer starts up to blank screen

Yeah, I got all that stuff. I notice that it takes longer to get completely screwed up when I am using Firefox than it does when I use Internet Explorer or Safari. That's why I was hoping that it was related to some kinda' virus that I might have picked up on the one occassion when my computer may have accidentaly visited a p0rn site for like a half a second. I think my friend was using it at the time...no, really.

Unfortunately, the Mac girl said it's probably not a virus. Mac useres are too benign to write viruses (or is it Virii?). We're like a race of benevolent Yoda creatures. And even if there were a bad apple (no pun intended) among us, no one bothers to write viruses for computers with a 5% market share...what's the point.

I was hoping I could fix it with a cheap anti-virus program, but the Mac girl told me that Mac's OSX operating system is Unix based and virturally indestructable. She said it's most likely going to be the logic board and it's going to be $150 an hour for the labor and about $400 for the part.

I should mention that I would rather dress up like Mickey Mouse and get kicked in the nuts HARD than pay $550 just to get my computer working the way it's supposed to work in the first place, but I digress.

In case you can't picture that, this is how much I hate to give them $550 just to get my computer working again.

I'll also post about what (little) work I did this weekend about how jacked up the Feng Shui is at my place. Who knew? See y'all soon.

I Smell Like Tahiti

Well, to prepare for an important meeting today I did what most crazy people do: I stayed up late watching bad TV and got up early to get a tan.

This week has been kinda' stessful because of family drama, realationship drama, house drama and work drama. So I needed to retreat to my Jedi meditation chamber.



This thing always makes me feel better. But I have to admit, I can't close the lid on it without thinking of Darth Vader in his meditation chamber.












He must tan a lot. I don't think I could get that dark, even if I went everyday.

Keep it real, Darth!







I had to give a presentation today and I was a little nervous because:

1. I hate public speaking more than John Aschcroft hates the Constitution;
2. annual reviews are coming up, so I want to leave a good impression;
3. I just came from the tanning booth so I smell like Coconuts.

I hoped nobody would notice about the last part.

Boss: what's that smell?

Ninja: I don't smell anything?

Boss: It smells like Tahiti.

Ninja: Oh yeah....that's me. I uhhhh, had some coconuts for breakfast.

Boss: you eat Coconuts for breakfast?

Ninja: Only if I'm out of Mangos.

Now, in case you are wondering what I do for a living, I practice in an area of derivatives law that is so obscure that my boss and I have to fly in separate airplanes because if we both died in a plane crash, this arcane knowledge would die with us and the financial markets would return to the dark ages. The world would resort to the barter system and you readers would be paid in salt and chickens and return to serfdom. Seriously bad mojo.

Anyway, I was having trouble focusing and couldn't even remember stuff on my one-page cheat sheet no matter how much I re-read it. Then, when the meeting came, I was saved. You know how in the Odyssey, Odysseus was saved by Athena, the goddess of wisdom just when things looked their bleakest? Well, Theta, the greek goddess of derivatives took pity on me and pumped some knowledge into my brain.

I was lucid, I was quoting statutes, rules, Supreme Court precedents, obscure legal theories, dissenting opinions. It was unbelievable. Man, I gotta go offer up a sacrificial pig or something as thanks for that save. I wonder if I need an actual pig or if Theta will take some proscuitto instead?

[note: I shoulda' posted this yesterday. My review went well too. My bosses said that I am freakishly smart and doing my job well, but to stop coming in to work wearing cocoa-butter cologne].

If I Don't Get This, I Will Never Feel True Happiness

I was at a friend's place recently and I think I saw the coolest piece of furniture ever invented by man (aside from the vibrating recliner with built-in beer cooler). It's this thing right here.

I think I mentioned that my Apple iMac is having problems and I may have to decide to get rid of it and buy a laptop instead if it turns out to be too much money to fix. (I think it's the logic board. I have no idea what a logic board is, or what it does, but it sounds expensive).

If I did get a laptop, this thing would be perfect. I could sit in bed, drink my over-priced yuppie blend coffee and blog away 'till I'm good and ready to face the world.

There are a couple of problems with this scenario.

1. I don't need another excuse to keep me laying around in bed;
2. I love my iMac and I don't know if I could put her down, like a lame horse, just because she is injured;
3. this thing is sold in Walmart. I don't have any moral reservations about buying stuff in Walmart, but I'm worried that someone might see me there and look at me differently when I stop into Dean & Deluca for some gourmet yuppie-blend coffee. You know, like they no longer believe that I am REALLY a yuppie...those judgmental bastards!
4. technically, I already have a laptop (a Windows one) that I never use because I could never get the high-speed internet card to work right. Common sense says that I should try to get it going, but I think I need to buy an Apple laptop. Once you get hooked on heroin, it's tought to switch back to pot.

This is what my beautiful baby looks like. (please get well soon) It's like a work of art. She's beautiful. If she was a girl, whe would look like this:







and I would probably marry her...even though she isn't a blonde or redhead and she dresses kinda' trampy.

I hope she wears something more conservative when she meets my parents...we're Catholics, after all.

Here is the link to where they sell it at Walmart. Other places charge like $100 bucks of for it (it's $60 zt the evil empire). I'll probably buy it at Wally's. I'd pay a little more if they had it at Target so that I can avoid the long lines and surly staff, but I don't think I'd pay twice as much for the pleasant shopping experience.


http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4213503

Ooops...

Okay, I mentioned that my computer skillz are not anything to write home about. I even have trouble working my home computer, which is an Apple. I'm pretty sure they can teach chimps to use Apple Macs right after they have mastered sign language, so I have no idea what that says about me. I have no idea what I did wrong, but my latest post didn't show up on the Houseblogs webfeed thingy. So, in case anyone is wondering, I DID post my marble pics and you can check them out by scrolling down (even I know how to do that). Enjoy.