I won’t go into any of the details regarding the damaged counter top, but its not going well.

On top of that, today I received some bad Voodoo at work:

Called the direct salesperson. No answer.

Called the vendors support phone #. No answer.

At this point I was sweating pretty hard. One more thing to try: Live Chat.

Got a person there immediately, who was on the phone with the warehouse and the freight company right away.

The short term answer: Chances are good I will get a product replacement.

How and when to be determined after the warehouse and freight company fight it out over whose fault it is.

The zinger… apparently the warehouse thought the faucet – which I did not receive and is not listed on the delivery slip- was also shipped… so that is also up in the air… where’d it go?

So I ran home today to receive the vanity and countertop.

We popped open the boxes for a quick inspection with the driver still there and everything looked to be in good shape.

The vanity cabinet is superbly built. The drawers function very well and the styling, while somewhat different looking in person, is nice.

The picture is grainy because its from my phone camera.

Once we had that all pulled out and cleaned off from Styrofoam debris, we moved on to the countertop.

That’s when everything quickly turned south.

I took out one of the cardboard corner pieces and was now able to see the cause of what I expect many headaches to come just beneath the plastic sheeting:

Waiting for some more pictures from the digital camera as Lethy takes them.

It was out of batteries but should be charged up shortly.

I do have to say, the countertop itself looks stunning… if you ignore the damaged enamel.

Starting a blog has been a great way to scrapbook.

It’s also been a reminder that no matter how fast time seems to fly, things tend to remain the same.

Work on the bathroom is proceeding methodically, albeit a little slower than I had originally hoped.

Ah, the naivety of last summer… thinking we’d finish before the wedding!

Right now, I’d be happy to finish before our 1 year anniversary.

So rather than boring you with pictures of the bathroom (I will do that tomorrow, vanity is arriving today!), I figured lets take a look at a small project from work!

The problem: Heatsink for the new server is too tall to fit in the case.

Solution: Cut a hole in the case.

Resulting Problem: Dust will pile up in the server wreaking havoc on temperatures and stability.

Solution: Solder some L-channel on and then the cut out on top of that.

Problem: I could only find aluminum channel. Soldering is a no go.

Solution: Rent an arch-welding machine….

Problem: I have no clue where to rent one, nor much of a clue how to use one.

Solution: Be a complete Hack and ghetto rig it.

From there it was pretty simple.

Glue on some channel:

Glue on a second set of channels coupled into the first:

Finally, glue on the cutout:

Still to come will be sanding it and repainting it… plus figuring out how to seal up the little gaps.

Been a little bit, so here’s what I’ve been up to:

1) Work

2) Sleep

3) Time with the dog

4) Bathroom renovations.

I was out on some consulting work the other day and I was excited to see this:

Kind of messed up that $4 a gallon is “cheap” gas.

Sadly I’ve been a slacker so no pictures of the bathroom updates, but Leif is always photogenic.

He’s savage beast, hunting all manner of creatures… like moths!

It’s been really hot so Leif decided it’d be a good time for a swim.

We went to the dogpark and his new friend Bandit, along with longtime pals Hershey, Hunter and Rudy went swimming in the stream:

A long day of running around in the heat and dragging me with him… and it became an unintended naptime.

Notice how we both lay roughly the same way, with legs hanging off our respective beds…

I guess the server upgrade at the office will have to wait until next weekend.