I'm looking at a house right now (Philly suburbs) that was built in 1849. Everything is level and plumb, which I've never seen before in a house that old. Most fucked-up layout I've ever seen: you go up the stairs and right into the bathroom, and then you access the two bedrooms from the bathroom (the house originally didn't have a bathroom at all, of course). It's one thing to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go, but another to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go.

My parents bought a lake house in Ohio a couple of decades ago. When we gutted the interior, we found that the entire house had been framed with 4' lengths of 2x4 with none of the "studs" at exactly right angles. Most fucked up thing I've ever seen (except maybe the bathrooms in Atlanta where the floor was just non-PT plywood laid directly on the ground) but somehow the builder had ended up with the walls perfectly level and plumb.

He said it had to have OJ Simpson in it, too.

Is that still good in Philly? The one in Media has taken a hard nosedive recently.

Why is spray foam insulation typically rated at R-6.5 per inch when XPS foam board is rated at only R-5 per inch? If it's basically the same stuff - polystyrene extruded with blower gases - why wouldn't the material produced in a factory setting (with presumably greater consistency) have at least the same R-value as the material produced and applied on-site?

Since R-6.5 is the rated R-value for polyisocyanate foam board, and because spray foam insulation is available in both polyiso and polystyrene form (with polystyrene being the most common), I wonder if manufacturers are just claiming the polyiso R-value for all of their spray foam products regardless of what their actual type is.

Everybody was friends with Eno - even me back in the '90s, briefly. I was writing a piece of music composition software and sent him a beta copy and we interacted via email for a while.

I love "Rockets Tail" but I'm ashamed to say I never noticed that it was Gilmour on guitar although you're right it's obviously him. I think I was too discombobulated by the shrieking Bulgarians.

Huh, I knew David Gilmour "discovered" and produced Kate Bush, but I didn't realize he sang backup on "Pull Out the Pin". You would have improved my teenage years!

Now do Tangerine Dream. I listened to them but for the life of me I can't remember what the connection was. Those guys just never played with anybody else.

It's surprising how many weren't, though, even progressive bands. Pink Floyd wasn't connected, nor The Who (they may be by now, or maybe I missed the connections back then).

As a teen in the early '80s I was so into Yes that I refused to listen to any other band unless they were connected a la six degrees of Kevin Bacon to Yes via common musicians. So King Crimson was OK because of Bill Bruford, Peter Gabriel was OK because of his bassist Tony Levin who was also in King Crimson, Vangelis was OK because of Jon and Vangelis etc. etc.

My local record store owner knew about this fetish and one day called me out for it, saying I was fucking stupid and missing out on a lot of great music because of it. He was of course totally right.

Edit: I just remembered that one of the bands he turned me on to was Big Country, which at the time had no connection at all to Yes. Ironically enough, they later did a collab with Kate Bush who had later on sung on a Peter Gabriel song.