Hawaii Renovation and New Computer

plus Angora Bunnies and a Gold Dust Day Gecko

Well, if things weren't busy enough, what with the new renovation, remodel, resurrection or what ever it is we are doing to the house next door, the computer decided to give up the ghost and do nothing other than make two beeps. Sigh! After a day of fussing at it, there were three beeps, but still a black screen. Maybe a dead video card? Well, it was a used computer when we got it and it's been here for a couple years, so I suppose it was a well spent $15 at a yard sale type of computer.

The old previous computer that Two Beeps had replaced had died from a bad power supply. We'd ordered a new power supply but found the Two Beeps computer at a yard sale before the power supply showed up, so the old computer had been hiding in a corner for the past year or so. So, the power supply was put in that one and it managed to work about seven minutes before it died to a black screen. Hmpf! So, the laptop - which has a bad keyboard, got the desktop's keyboard and mouse attached to it and that was working. Much smaller screen, though. So, we went to the store and bought a new box. A brand new computer, woot!

The new box is running Win10. Arrgh! It's really annoying to have to migrate to a new operating system. Well, the bunny database got shifted over and AutoCAD now functions, although it's still the basic AutoCAD and hasn't had all the modifications that the old version had so now there will be more time involved getting that put back together. Got the old computer resident MS Office up and running. Partitioned off a part of the hard drive and convinced it to be WinXP so now there's a place for the older programs to hang out. Still haven't tried to get Civilization II to run yet, that's always a good default older program.

So, with a new computer, one needs a new computer pet. This green gecko seems to approve of either the new computer or at least raisin bagels. You can tell that he's not a very big gecko since he's much smaller than a bagel. Although, those are the larger sized Costco bagels.

This little gecko is one of the newer 'Gold Dust Day Geckos'. They are brighter colored than the old brown house geckos we used to see all the time and they are much less fearful of humans. There's one who lives under the microwave and comes out for tasty bits. This one has been hanging out on the desk for the past week. Gold Dust geckos have a sweet tooth (do they even have teeth?) and like things such as chocolate milk, strawberry ice cream and raisin bagels. Although, he did only lick the raisin and not the whole bagel. He got the raisin as a 'take out' to eat under the monitor.

A Hawaii renovation is very similar to a mainland one, except there's less options for where to get construction supplies. Well, also, the houses in Hawaii are built differently. This one was built in the early 50's and is what's called 'single wall construction'. That means the exterior walls are made of 1" thick tongue and groove and that's all there is to the exterior walls. No studs, no insulation, no siding, just vertical tongue and groove boards. There's horizontal strips of wood called 'belly bands' which go around the house about half way up the walls, those help stiffen the walls. Hmm, they seem to be missing on that one side wall, although at some point someone had made that whole side 'double wall' by putting some framing on the inside.

That big brown pile of grass used to be some Guinea grass, there's been a yard service for the bank who owned the house for the past five or six years. Not sure what the yard service did to kill off the Guinea grass, but we won't be growing vegetables there anytime soon so no worries if it was poison. We won't get any bunny food from that yard since we don't know if the yard crew used poisons or not.

There will be a pretty good ocean view once we get the trees trimmed back a bit. The house hasn't been lived in for a few years, so the vegetation has gotten a bit tall. The yard will be renovated along with the house, but it's gonna take awhile. But, even though it's gonna be a lot of work, it's in town and has a lovely ocean view so it's worth fixing.

I'm not quite sure what they thought they were doing, but I don't think they were from around here. Apparently, the squatters which were next door a year or two ago, seemed to think if they 'fixed it up' enough, then it would become theirs? Maybe that's how it works in other places, but things don't work that way in Hawaii.

There were squatters, they said they'd bought the place, they had all sorts of strange people doing things to it, obviously some of them had chainsaws. Perhaps they thought it wasn't an important wall since it was 'just boards' or something? This is the front bedroom, well, used to be, anyway. The back and now only bedroom is the blue room on the right. They chainsawed out the wall between the front bedroom and the living room. They also chainsawed out the wall between the kitchen and the living room.

The ceiling dropped down about two inches after the wall was removed, I'm surprised the whole roof didn't fall on them. The tops of the exterior walls were pushed outward about an inch. There will be a beam and a little bit of wall reinstalled between the kitchen and the living room. That will support the roof and hopefully pull the upper edges of the exterior walls back in.

I'd planned on starting with replacing the wall between the front bedroom and the living room, but after checking for level and finding the top of the wall out of line, it will be better to start by putting the beam and bit of wall in the kitchen in first, to try to bring the exterior walls back to vertical.

After looking over the extent of what needs to be repaired, the exterior kitchen wall seems to be the starting point. When the squatters were kicked out, they took all their 'improvements' with them and did a lot of vandalism type stuff, too. Took the cabinet doors, the bedroom doors, the light fixtures, etc. Just really rude people, but anyone who would do this sort of thing to a defenseless house is probably worse than rude.

We will get some boards to make a beam, since those parts of 1" thick wall is still up there, we can sandwich a 2" x 6" or 2" x 8" on either side. Then the bit of 2" x 4" 'double' wall to hold them up and hide the back of the refrigerator. That should get the ceiling back up there, too. We will see how it goes in the next couple of days.

The New Year's babies are growing up and now we can see the differences between a pure English angora (Daisy on the left) and a hybrid Satin/German/English angora (Petunia on the right). Obviously, Daisy has fluffier ears and more 'furnishings' on her face, which is what you'd expect for a purebred English angora. Her ears also seem more delicate and not as stiff. Daisy has a more round and 'cobby' body shape. As a hybrid, Petunia's body is longer and more loaf shaped. Daisy has softer and slicker feeling wool. Petunia's is still nice, but Daisy's is nicer. We will see if Petunia gets to be heavier than Daisy when they're full grown.