Travels in Fairfaxistan

Installed the programmable thermostat yesterday evening. Went very well, on the surface. The screw driving bits for the drill made quick work of the fasteners. When I went back upstairs to turn the power back on, however, I found that maybe I never turned it off, after all. Oy.

Set the programs, things seem ok - except for the fact that the temperature still reads 72. I wonder if disconnecting the thermostat while it was still powered, stalled the furnace or something.

Installed some outlet baffles in the exterior wall outlets today. Supposedly you lose a lot of heat through these holes in your wall, and as cold as these things feel, I believe it. Sometimes I can even feel some air movement.

So you get these little foam pieces that just fit around the plugs, and should block the hole (if they were cut conservatively, which mine didn't seem to be).

Remove plate, put in foam, return plate. Couple bucks for the foam, couple minutes of time, and supposedly I'll get a return on my energy bill. I dunno, though. They still feel pretty cold.

Usually I self-paralyze by setting up dominoes and then refusing to knock the first one down. "Well, I can't do A until I do B, and that can't happen until C..." etc. In this case, I had the communications gear sitting on the floor of the utility room and the shelf + brackets on top of the laundry. But I finally got a bug up my ass and attacked mounting the shelf to the wall

Pulled out the stud finder, which seemed to output some close, but not identical, data. The center of some of the studs seemed to float a little. It's very possible that this was due to the collection of lines in the wall, drifitng left or right, and it was picking them up instead of the studs. I marked off the areas that most consistently registered hits, and then positioned the first bracket. I leveled it, and marked out the screw holes in the wall, and then grabbed the drill. I quick prayer that there weren't any current-bearing lines behind the bit head, and I had three neat holes to hammer drywall anchors into. Once I had the bracket mounted however, I discovered that it was leaning about a quarter inch to the right. Being not quite sure how to deal with that, and unwilling to let that derail my attempt to finish, I quickly advanced to the second bracket. It was slightly off-camber, so I'm not sure what's happening between marking the wall and mounting the bracket. It's not unsightly, for sure. I placed

It's certainly not the most amazing or ambitious home improvement project, but I think it kinda counts as the first thing I've "built" for the condo, so I consider it a win.

Remaining:
* Screw shelf to the bracket
* Find shorter CAT-5 cables to pretty up the wall a bit
* Cable-tie all the cords together, for the same reason.