Where to begin?
Well, those radio tubes from 50-miles away – misdirected by the USPS Coppell mail and storage place to Arizona and God-knows where today… still isn’t here. But 8 days now to go 50 miles is damn near walking speed.
Which left time for plumbing.
When Our Hero Last Reported…
The high-use faucet outside (back of the carport under the screen porch) had let go due to getting colder than planned. Froze. Brass cracked. Ordered a new one, put that on a bit too tight – so it broke the mail PVC pipe fitting.
No worries – quick trip to dig out the water shutoff (at least it wasn’t raining, so no mud….). But, first, you check your water valve shut-off tool to make sure the caked on mud (from the last POS adventure in muddy clay) has fallen off on the shop floor somewhere!
Which is then followed by the 300-foot jaunt out to the road to find the meter shutoff with your fingers in the cold dirt (which snakes love during hot weather!!!):
Now, with the broken PVC to be cut off, the question became “Which approach?” Been talking to doctors all week (medical device project) and so the “prep for surgery” is mighty important. The choices were a battery power saber saw, the PVC Pipe Cutters, or the battery baby Sawz-All clone. I took the latter – had a fresh battery in it from another recent homeownership disaster, so rather than put it away, I grabbed It.
Moments later, back at the table saw (generally one of the only clear horizontal surfaces in the whole shop), I admired my nice, even handywork:
Now (putting on some purple primer and slathering on the hot and wet set glue and the new fitting on the somewhat shorter pipe) I contemplated how not to make the “same mistake twice.”
You see, the reason I over-tightened was that bullshit teflon “joint tape” and I have never gotten along. I had an old tub of Oatey pipe dope, but that was used for plumbing on the Mayflower so time for an update:
While the mess of glue dried outside, I hit the web to see what the current best practices are. Really? “Apply the pipe dope to the male fitting only, making sure it’s dry…” (I’d heard that about personal lubricants, too…hmm..)
Back to the scene of the crimes against plumbing, the job was done in short order:
I left off the fine points (turn off hot water heater elements so you don’t burn out an element, don’t forget to blow fresh water through the system before re-energizing. Tell Elaine the washer may sound like it’s having a fart attack the first time she runs it from water in the lines – don’t freak – that kind of thing.
Point is, it’s not a hard thing to fix plumbing so it doesn’t leak. Just a pain in the ass and so I bought an extra one of everything (and a new pot of hot-set glue and the cheapo fitting, too) because it something goes wrong once, it’s only a matter of time till is screws up your life again, anyway.
More Projects this Week?
Oh, hell yeah. Elaine yelled at me Thursday there was a raccoon on the deck. Two of ’em, turns out, had climbed an obscure part of the screen in the stairway down to the car. And the break-in was way up by the ceiling.
So I shut down the streaming video (so son G2 would not call and bitch me out for being 76 and on a ladder) and set about putting in new screwing trim (like the choice of words, lol. Sounds better than “framing 2-by’s.) and so they haven’t been back.
On the way back to the shop, I decided this will be the Spring I will do the updated railing to the BBQ deck…so took a “before” picture for that project.
Heard tell from neighbor Dan that there have been some burglaries going on when people aren’t home. Not a concern – me and the pistol don’t go anywhere. But I decided times were going to get sketchier so maybe I should get some 10-foot hunks of chain and secure the genset…
(Which we had to use for a 2-hour outage this week. Started right up, Total down time was less than 3-minutes. Don’t you dare cheap out and miss electric start!)
And since the UPS driver got that $14,500 super zero-turn, I figure the shaggy lawn machine might need to be chained down, as well:
Now, to take the mower, thieves would have to take the outbuilding with ’em, in addition to planning a visit to the ER if they make it that far with a 7.62 slug through ’em.
Inside the shop, assembly was completed this week on a whole list of backed-up projects including a 30-gallon wheel-around diesel dispenser.
I am sick of hefting 5-gallong jugs of the stuff up into the tractor. This way I can just spin the pump. However, again, a chain and couple of padlocks there, too. Once it gets filled, no telling what the street price of diesel will be up to. Though we save a few bucks running farm diesel. But that meant a four point lifting sling and strapping and…oh God, does it ever slow down?
Radio Notes
buddy Doctor John is eyeing an extended end-fed end-fed half-wave antenna for 160 and 80 meters. Which is up in the 400 foot range. I told him I found a 49 foot fiberglass antenna pole on eBay for $157 including something for Gov. Abbott and the UPS feller’s new rider payment.
Should be along one of these days.
STILL pissed about Coppell Texas USPS misdirecting my set of 7059 vacuum tubes for the SHallicrafters Sr-400 which is actually working pretty damn well. Talked to a guy in central England on 20-meter this week and the crowd on 3806 could hear it fine. Though it sounded a bit “tinny” to a few of the guys. Usually when that happens the audio chain is in need of fresh (and maybe slightly larger) audio coupling capacitors and fresh cathode bypass caps, as well.
When THAT is all done, then I’ll plug in an old Curtis electronic keyer (or one of my Hallicrafters (W9TO) keyers. The Curtis is smaller snf has more fiddly-dials. The T.O. I don’t know if you ever ran across the magazine Nuts and Volts but they had a dandy article on the return of Morse Code in 2017 and the T.O. keyer was one of the highlighted products.
eHam gives it a solid “5” out of five reviews, as well. And a clone that I picked up from K7SZL a billion years ago got me up to 35 Words a Minute while I skipped homework throughout high school. Didn’t open a single book the whole time. (Later, in grad school, I discovered how to read and that led to the 4.0 GPA – but honestly, don’t know what I would have done with that kind of thing earlier in life. Though, considering my pal (the Major) did run mostly 4 point oh and did 20- in the Army, maybe I didn’t miss as much as I thought. We talk about things like that now and then.
At any rate, it sits on the desk, all dejected by competing “other works.”
And something for the “little lady” of the house?
Besides Raccoon Proofing, the Sequel? Um…the new trampoline got assembled (China is getting revenge on America by instructions!) and the new “vibration plate” works very nicely. Why, I can now compress a whole hour of exercise into about 10-minutes of vibration and jumping.
So as to get back to napping quicker! (Just kidding. Sadly…)
Major topic on 3806 this morning was the expansion factor of ice – water gets 9 percent bigger when it freezes. So, figures the assembled multitude, all this “melting ice caps” is crap without that 9 percent less volume of water (from ice) is figured in. Global warming was supposed to have us all dog-paddling by now…but hey! Don’t pay no mind to the facts.
Still no sign of retirement, yet. I must be crazier than either of us thought…
Write when you...yada, yada... and tell WmoRR to to drop by 3806 if he’s up early. That was fun a couple of weeks back.
George@Ure.net ac7x
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