Phil online

This week, Iraq voted for the first time in decades. Anti-Bushies might have scoffed that Iraq has voted many times in recent years. For example Saddam in 2002 received 100% of the votes in an election with 100% voter turnout. Zero votes were received against him. Pretty incredible! In 1995 Saddam was also elected, but there were 3,052 votes against him. I wonder what happened to those 3,052 people? Did they change their minds by 2002? If we can find one still alive, maybe we can ask him.

But my scoffing-fears were abated, when the Sunni came to my rescue. They boycotted the election. It may be claimed that the Iraqis have had regular elections over the past several decades. And it may be claimed that the Iraqis have regularly shown us up with their remarkable turnouts. But this election the Iraqis had something that they have been missing for a long time: the freedom not to vote.

I was reading this book about optimizing Google’s Adsense (What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense!). In it, Joel Comm describes how he went from $900/month in Adsense revenue to $15,000+/month! Oh, man! It was too juicy to pass up! One of the many things he talks about is integrating your ads into your site. You’ll have to read the book for all the details, but this plug-in should help.

So, I knew I wanted to put Adsense ad blocks in the middle of WordPress posts. I knew I could do it with some simple hacks to WP, but I thought it should be a plugin. It turned out to be remarkably easy to do, and (more…)

When we had the water turned on for the inspection, we discovered a water heater in the basement with a tiny leak. Of course, there’s no such thing as a small leak when you don’t have it going into a drain. So I shut off the water to the heater and turned off its gas supply. I added “Water heater” to our list of upcoming expenses.

But then I noticed the warranty label on the side. I called the company (Rheem) and gave them the serial number. They told me all about the heater, what year it was made (2000) and that it was probably the drain valve that was leaking. They offered to fedex me a new valve at no cost. I reminded them I don’t own this heater yet, and they said that was ok since I plan to buy it. Got the valve two days later.

And if this doesn’t fix the leak, they offered to replace the whole tank. Sweet!

Things are progressing Just Fine with the Castle House.

We had the home inspector out yesterday — for five hours! Whew! He didn’t find any deal killers, but he did find a couple of big things I didn’t see before.

• The rear deck supports are rusting at the base. Need to clean, paint and seal in cement.
• The deck needs better structural support (cross-bracing).
• There is another leak under the crawlspace. The foundation needs waterproofing.
• There are some A/C lines that need better insulation
• There are some electrical wiring problems in the breaker box
• The wood siding is part of a class action lawsuit whose settlement funds are expired

The good news: No fake stucco!
The bad news: Need a waterproofer! (And maybe new siding.)

We had a bit of a scare this week when a friend of mine pointed out that the photos looked like EIFS, or “fake stucco”, on the front of the house. We definitely don’t want that, and I did all I could to prove it wasn’t EIFS. But he wasn’t convinced until I had the home inspector over. Finally, I can say — it’s not fake stucco! It’s hard-coat (the good stuff). Whew!