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[OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
[OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#1
One of Brent's comments in the Halloween party planning discussion got me to thinking, and this is something that I'd like to see everybody comment on.

What things are all of the apartments set up with?

Obviously, all of the buildings have the things that every apartment building has - residences, utilities, etc.

Have they all been strengthened in some way? Westwoods has physical stiffening thanks to Belldandy, and Blossom has mystical bolstering thanks to Usagi and Rin. (I don't know whether Appartements Mont-Royal Sud would have the same mystical bolstering despite that being where Rin lives; there's a question whether the wording of the ritual would conflict with the whole Grail War thing, even if the Grail War is on hold.)

BA's suggested the Good Neighbor System - a set of sensors that alert all residences of physical attacks at any building.

Panic buttons are good. Blossom's is installed in Rob's cellphone, and connects directly to the Goddess's private line. But they know Rob does his best to have his building be self-sufficient (almost as if he's subconsciously expecting it to become the Silver Millennium Embassy to Canada) and wouldn't use it except in an actual emergency.

Bolt-holes for the non-combatants? With Washuu-tech, a pocket dimension in each building is possible. OTOH, Aria House is almost completely non-combatant; Brent might want something that turns the entire building into a refuge (especially after Cinder attacks).

Full internet access is a given (except at Warehouse 13, of course). Blackberry-level encryption is also a good idea - strong enough to keep casual prying eyes out, but not so strong that a non-paranoid government would become worried about it. Once the code on Akari's laptop is reverse-engineered, that could become the basis for an encrypted system that would worry non-paranoid governments, so we wouldn't use it except in emergencies.

What have I missed?

And a related question: What goodies does each residence have? These are things that make sense to be present in one or two buildings but not for other buildings.

Blossom would have an electricity accumulator and storage system as soon as Washuu can deliver one that can stand up to the task (which would depend more on Washuu's schedule than on her ability). This would give the building the capability to go off-the-grid (or sell electricity to the grid), as long as Makoto and Mikoto are willing to shoot it with electric bolts every so often.

I expect 7 Henrietta might have a studio - at least a practice studio, if not a recording studio.

Any other ideas?

This is a brainstorming thread - no ideas are too off-the-wall. (Remember, somebody somewhere had to suggest making a movie about a tornado filled with sharks, and look how much money that off-the-wall idea made IRL.)
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#2
Henrietta Street is a listed building, over 200 years old. Major changes require much red tape.

It's furnished in a sort of rundown Georgian style, la faded grandeur with a century of kipple accumulated. There are four floors - only one of which is currently habitable.

It has electricity, electric pumped showers and running water. It also has space to park a car.

It is, however, cheap for city-centre land, is in walking distance of major landmarks and is remarkably private due to looking like- and being - an old tenament.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#3
How much red tape? SI-Rob might be able to help cut through the paperwork, if you wanted to do something inside the building (and have the money for renovations). Can't get rid of it all, but at the least he'd be interested in making sure enough work is done so the building doesn't fall over in a heavy breeze.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#4
They might drop the odd brick on passersby but they'll outlast a nuclear weapon. These walls went up before the concept of value engineering.

Although, meeting Irish red-tape might well cause a minor meltdown. I suspect he'd make the mistake of approaching it like the agencies involved actually want to do their jobs and the system wants to work. Here this just pisses them off and makes them hate you - and then they will apply the rules. The utterly nonsensical ones.

I've been on the bad side of Irish civil agencies before and it's not a fun place to be. A company I worked with objected to getting penalty points for a fault with a system - because the regulation changed after we'd installed the system - and rather than admit they were wrong the agency went out and inspected every single system we'd done before the cutoff and dinged them for the exact same reason, while insisting the customers pay back the grant they'd received.

That went down well. It wasn't what killed the company, but it sure didn't help.

The Irish method is to just rubber stamp it and look the other way. Like the time I spent a weekend pulling down 'fireproof panels' in the kitchen at home when the builder wouldn't touch them. He knew what they where. I knew what they were. Nobody said a word because if we did we'd have to legally get an expensive specialist in while if I just ripped and sklipped I could plead ignorant homeowner if somebody bothered to point it out. Which the depot only wouldn't because then everything he has is contaminated.

That's pretty much how bureaucracy gets dealt with. By blind pig ignorance. Nobody has to do any work and things get sort of muddled through.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#5
Sounds like any installs we do there would have to be on the quiet.

I suspect Belldandy's trick of stiffening molecular bonds (that she used at Westwoods) would help with the building defects and open up those other floors, and the Good Neighbour System is just a set of sensors we can plug in anywhere. Neither of those requires doing anything that's visible outside the building, or needs a permit. Unless there's an Irish requirement if you want to change the laws of physics... which I wouldn't put past them.

(Idea: Get Kazari in to run the cables and install the controlling server for the Good Neighbour System. That would let her know how non-privileged people actually live.)
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#6
My building is 1950s/60s vintage in coastal southern California, which means it was built with zero insulation.  It was a good idea back then, but not really viable now as temperatures have increased a lot since then.  So my complex is in the process of being renovated, which means no hardening the walls please -- the contractors will find it much harder to work.

I've sort of taken a different approach than Rob here with regards to the ownership.  We started with a pot of money, with which we're expected to handle all of the renovations.  Between Alicia and I managing the finances and builders and materials, we've managed to get higher quality with lower costs.  So if the business is well handled, Ciel is smart enough to just leave us alone while we make his property more valuable.  Greed is good.  Also he's getting one Hell of a tax break for low-income housing.

I'll note that according to canon (the AQUARIA pre/sequel), the gondola guild actually tried to get Alicia to join the back office while she was (will have been?) only age 19 and still one of their biggest tourist draws and the only undine at one of their companies.  This still seems like complete madness to me -- which honestly happens just about any time I try to apply logic to Aria.  But she's a good enough manager to run a small company well.

And then Sonomi will arrive, and won't have much else to do for a while, and she'll help manage the building too.  I'm not really sure what to about her company and fortune.  Will it just pop up later, and they expect her to return to work?  Or is Ciel still running a toy company, and need an experienced toy company executive?

Oh, uh, back to the apartment building.  A security system with cameras and the like would be good, and the Good Neighbor System would be helpful.  Sakura's Shield is probably enough to defend the building, especially if someone would be kind enough to teach her ritual magic.  I think I'd prefer magical protection rather than mundane.  Six of my residents lived in the Martian equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg, so they're actually not that interested in hi-tech stuff.  (Except maybe that pipe organ that controls the gravity on Mars, which logically means... never mind.)

As far as the entire house being non-combatants... hmm.  Most of the residents are people with minimal fighting skills.  The undines all know some basic oar-fu, so as to deal with customers who won't take no for an answer.  I assume it's similar to naginata styles, and why am I thinking about Sumire Kanzaki now?  Maya is a wildcat with 1e D&D housecat stats, which is to say "can kill a first level character in one round with good rolls on claw/claw/bite".  Sakaki and Kagura aren't actually warriors, but are athletic enough to defend themselves in a fistfight.  Kero and Yue are guardians by nature, centuries old, and really useful in a fight.  They each have a bit of magic, and can draw on half of Sakura's deck each.  (And no, Brent, you can't ship Weiss/Yue because he's already taken... sort of.)  Eventually I'll have Will Riker and Geordi LaForge around, and they're real military officers.

But the big question is our magical girls, and Shaoran.  We have our three youngest characters with the most combat experience, strange as it was.  And none of the rest of us, mostly adults, wants to see them fighting.  They should not have to do this, this is our job as adults, right?  And we don't want them to get in a situation that they don't really understand, even precocious as they are.  But the dynamic is unbalanced, as any one of them is more powerful than the rest of us adults combined.

Can they stand doing nothing?  As the Thomas Fire burned a swath across my hometown last winter, I thought about what I would do if I was Sakura.  I'm a giant otaku, I know.  She had cards that could have helped, like Watery, Windy (wind suppression), Earthy (firebreaks), and Rain.  What would it feel like to see people's houses burn down and know that you can stop it, but maybe you're not supposed to?  This is where the whole idea of Cinder entering the plot came to me, out of tragedy, and our of Sakura's desire to do something.

It's an uneasy equilibrium for me as a writer because I don't know what she should do.  I know what she wants to do, but I'm not sure if it's the right choice.  It's close to the same choices made in Sailor Moon, choices that thirteen year olds should never have to make no matter how many times they've been reincarnated.  But that's more clear because if they do nothing, rocks fall everybody dies.  But the case of people losing their houses, versus an eleven year old taking it upon herself to firefight.  I don't have an answer for the morally right answer, and I feel like Tomoyo would have that answer, which makes her really annoying to write as she has information that the author doesn't.  Sad
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#7
@Dartz: It's canon that Belldandy restored the temple where she lives in Tokyo by undoing entropy - having all the missing and broken bits go back to where they were when the temple was new. We could use that dodge on your listed building: "No, none of this is new; it's all original wood and plaster. Get somebody in from the museum to check it if you want." If you want a cleaned-up building with four usable floors, write the scene where Belldandy comes to visit. (Of course, she's a busy woman - she still hasn't visited Ottawa as of November 2016.)

@Labster: Rin Tohsaka knows ritual magic, and the major Fate/Stay Night characters are in Montreal.

And sometimes there are no right answers - conflicting morals and ethics make any choice a bad one. I should be exploring that more in my stories, too.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#8
The building for mine doesn't actually exist, however, the design is a local standard built since the 90's all along the beaches around here when not putting in highrise condominiums

That said, things like the generator and waterwell are personal standards of improvement that I have developed from living in hurricane alley for 40 years
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#9
Good point. I'm not really a prepper but there is a giant freaking strike-slip fault that could go at any time nearby. I should add enough stuff on the ground floor to allow us to go without water or electricity for a few days. It's going to be empty down there most of the time as most of our people don't drive, but we will need to fit in Tomoyo's wardrobe limo and enough space to drydock a gondola. I guess I should learn from other disasters and not put stuff down there, but there are geographical reasons the area doesn't really have to worry about tsunamis -- not facing any major offshore faults for thousands of miles, and large islands offshore.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#10
Westwoods was restored to its original 'like new' state by Belldandy using that same counter-entropy spell.

Afterwards, Washu has been going around and using small carpentry drones to renovate a portion of the units into Japanese-style. She has also been upgrading the appliances in all units. Primarily: hybrid solar-fired/gas-fired (it can still be awfully warm at night here) evaporative AC systems with zoned indoor units; on-demand gas-fired water heaters for the kitchens and the bathrooms; kitchen appliances that meet with her and Sasami's approval, and all-in-one laundry machines.

The Laundromat at the complex has been equipped with two three-load washers (for the lazy bums that like to wait until they're all out of clean laundry), two eight-load washers (for futons and other bedding), and matching dryers. The swimming pool is largely unchanged except that Ben equips it with a diatomaceous earth filter to replace the old sand filter, as well as a heater to use in the event that there hasn't been enough sun to heat the water lately.

Benjamin works diligently to keep everything running in tip-top shape, carefully seeing to the maintenance of the vehicles and appliances all throughout the complex. (Lord Phantomhive is actually quite pleased with Ben's thorough maintenance regime, as he knows from first-hand management experience that well maintained machines have far less downtime.)
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#11
I work in HVAC for a living..... Though with little AC because nobody actually wants it outside of offices, and even then, proper air conditioning is a rare thing - even in cars.

One thing to remember about Dublin is that it is a Viking city, and Belldandy would know this.

With regards to restoring the building - there's a small problem in that it'd also restore a lot of the electrical wiring and the indoor plumbing away. Of course, Gods and stuff. Probably better to work on it and then just timber it up and dry it out.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
RE: [OOC][RFC] Standard and specialized gear for apartments
#12
(09-09-2018, 05:15 PM)Dartz Wrote: I work in HVAC for a living.....   Though with little AC because nobody actually wants it outside of offices, and even then, proper air conditioning is a rare thing - even in cars.

One thing to remember about Dublin is that it is a Viking city, and Belldandy would know this.

Well, you'll just have to call her Verðandi, then. Smile

(09-09-2018, 05:15 PM)Dartz Wrote: With regards to restoring the building - there's a small problem in that it'd also restore a lot of the electrical wiring and the indoor plumbing away. Of course, Gods and stuff. Probably better to work on it and then just timber it up and dry it out.

In canon, Keiichi stood in the middle of the spell area and wasn't affected, so Belldandy's good enough to be able to exclude elements.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown


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