I lost too much time fucking around with that stupid DVR computer today. I should have given up earlier and started reinstalling. Backing up hundreds of gigs of unwatched shows to USB hard drives wasn't exactly going to go quickly, so I got that started and began the dreaded carpet pulling.
Two of the worst spots that Luna destroyed, not counting my former office/spare bedroom that I pulled up last year, were the two landings on the stairs. Even years later, her nasty pee smell would on occasion waft across the living room, given the right temperature and humidity. With the new installation coming Friday, I wanted to get that aired out. So I decided to do the two landings.
It was the most vile and disgusting thing I've ever done. The cheap pad with no lamination sucked that cat piss right up, and has been holding it there for a very long time. I wanted to throw up. My nose was running and I was coughing and it was not easy to keep it together. The tack strips had retained quite a bit of the nastiness too. Fortunately I have a tool designed to pry off the inside of a car door (needed it for my first car to change the locks) that works really well getting them up. Many of the pad staples had rusted to nothing, so pulling them out was not easy.
It was so bad that it didn't take long to realize that we couldn't occupy the house this way. I had a little of the old enzyme cleaner that neutrailzes the stink, so I sprayed that down. Then I went out to Home Depot to buy a mask and some Kilz spray paint to seal in whatever lingered. It worked pretty well on the upper landing, but I may need another coat on the lower one.
Meanwhile, the DVR reinstall seemed to fail at every turn. First I couldn't use my USB keyboard so I couldn't "press any key" to boot from the optical drive. Then the DVD I had for XP was failing, so I had to burn another from my MSDN image. Then once XP was installed, I couldn't get the driver to install for the wireless card. I screwed around with that for a good two hours before I just plugged the ethernet into my laptop and shared its connection, just so I could get BeyondTV up and running. Five minutes into House and NCIS, I had it finally recording from the HD and cable tuners. I still need to get the network issue figured out, plus get the USB HD tuner up.
On a positive note, some good old-fashioned technology, my snow blower, worked like a champ. Primed the fuel, made one pull and it started right up. I was shocked. I figured the oil and gas mixture would be like glue. I poured in the last of the mixture, which I think I mixed about two years ago now. The five gallons or whatever went a very long way.
If I don't get to work soon, I'm going to be completely batty. I need to get out of the house in the worst way.