Ref Tech Rob

Well, I was able to get the motorized snake from Lowe's on Saturday morning. After forking over $45, I managed to get the monstrosity home, where my wife and I were able to wrestle it out of the van without impaling myself on the conveniently pre-attached blade. (My wife made a joke here about cut rate vasectomies--not funny.) Anyhow, I managed to get the thing going, relying on some helpful advice from Brian E., a friend of mine and apartment owner/handyman, and I got the drain "cleared" in only 3 hours! I got cleaned up and made it to work (3 hours late), where we had an interesting day and a nice holiday luncheon/farewell party (one staff member is leaving)/baby shower (another staff member). It was good to see former and current co-workers and I regaled one and all with tales of my "rooting" expertise. Then it all came crashing down. Last night, after running the second laundry load of the day, I walked into the laundry room to see undulating waves of sewage...

I had big high-tech plans for today: a few new blog posts, writing an online book review, adding some tutorial documentation to my online presence, doing some editing of our system's reference manual wiki.... Instead, it appears that I will be snaking out the main drain line of our house. Normally (isn't that a funny word in this scenario?) we would borrow our friends electric drain snake, but that one's out of commission, so we decided to rent one. However, the local hardware store decided they weren't going to rent tools anymore--I found out at 6 this morning when I showed up, bleary-eyed, looking for their rental department. So, instead of Home Depot, I decided to try Lowe's tool rental department, but those slackers don't get going until 8 o'clock. So here I sit, blogging about sewer lines with a cup of tea in my hand, waiting for Lowe's to open their doors so I can spend my morning snaking out a drain. Once I'm done with that, I get to go to wor...