Mocha Joe headliner fix, another groundhog trapped, problem with circuit #25, router problem, Inner Harbor day-trip, ‘Radio Lab’
(posted from home)
(This post covers 22 – 31 July, 2009)
--------------------------------------------
Friday, 31 July-
I blogged a bit this morning to try to catch up. I then talked Labashi into going to Fuddruckers for lunch, then we returned a pole-light to Lowe’s (we had found another we liked better at Waltersdorf Lighting). On the way home, we were talking about our upcoming trip out West and Labashi mentioned she’d like to have a small laptop so we don’t have to share while we’re on the road. Historically, she has kept a hand-written log but she began writing emails to family on our Alaska trip.
We were near our local Best Buy at the time so we stopped in to look at netbook computers. It appears one would do the job but I don’t know if it makes sense given the lack of a CD drive. I could buy an external CD drive but for the cost I may as well get a lower-end regular laptop. I’ll have to look into this some more and need to get moving on it.
Labashi saw another groundhog under our barn this afternoon so I’d better get the trap re-baited.
After supper I walked my six-mile loop while listening to Morning Report from Saskatchewan podcasts (I love listening to Sheila Coles) then we watched a ‘Closer’ and two ‘Weeds’ episodes.
--------------------------------------------
Thursday, 30 July-
Oops. I’ve lost track of what I did this morning. Late in the day I walked six miles at Pinchot State Park (from the dam to the water-tank on Ridge Trail) and back while listening to a new podcast. We had heard Ira Glass (on ‘This American Life’) mention ‘Radio Lab’ podcasts so I downloaded six of them today to try out.
I listed to ‘Stress’ and ‘Who Am I’ as I walked. I find the podcasts do a wonderful thing for me. They take up that part of my brain which would otherwise be thinking about the minor discomforts of walking. I don’t think about the little aches and pains – I’m just on cruise-control. I love it!
‘Radio Lab’ turns out to be an excellent walking companion. It has enough of a science component to make me feel like I’m learning something yet it’s really about the story-telling. And I love the fact that they have dozens of episodes on iTunes going back to early 2007. The ‘This American Life’ podcast only has the current podcast up so it’s easy to miss one if I don’t think to fire up iTunes for awhile.
That evening we watched ‘Wild Russia’ and ‘Deadly Catch’ on TV.
--------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 29 July-
This morning I continued re-doing some of the receptacles and switches on the #25 circuit. Then Labashi and I went shopping for a new pole-light. The old one isn’t causing our problem but the light socket is corroded and it’s time for a new one. That one was probably the original. It has been there the 28 years we’ve lived here and probably was put there when the house was built 32 years ago.
That evening I walked my four-mile out-and-back route, then we watched Closer 3.2.1 and Weeds 4.2.1 episodes.
--------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 28 July-
Today I drove the Miata to Chambersburg to meet with a property management firm. What a great day for an open-car drive, even though it was quite hot by the time I came home.
That afternoon I wrote an email to my brothers describing what I learned and then went for my six-mile loop walk.
---------------------------------------------
Monday, 27 July-
Today I spent the day working on circuit #25, trying to isolate the problem which keeps tripping the breaker. I shut down the entrance panel and tightened all the connections, then re-did the outlets and switches. ‘Re-did’ in this case amounted to taking all the wires out of the push-in connections and putting them under the side screws to assure a good connection. I found two somewhat-loose grounds, one very-loose ground, and two fell-out-when-I-touched-it neutrals. But I still can’t figure out why I don’t have power to my front-yard light. It has worked fine for years and is suddenly dead. I can’t get to all the wiring and can’t find the branching-off point to the front yard pole light. More work to come on this.
That evening I walked my six-mile loop, then we watched the last two episodes of ‘This American Life’, Season Two.
---------------------------------------------
Sunday, 26 July-
Labashi and I went to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor today for an art-break. We visited the American Visionary Art Museum. I had hoped to have a late lunch at their Joy America café but it closed recently when the chef let to open another restaurant. We had been to the café two or three times and always found something new and interesting to try.
After the museum we walked along Key Highway to Harborview, marveling at the new apartments. We were last in the area about five years ago and at the time there was just a big white plywood wall enclosing the construction site. Where we could see through, all we could see were old concrete docks extending into the bay.
Today there are hundreds of brand-new upscale apartments, each with a nice balcony. Unfortunately for the builders, they took too long to finish and now these minimum-$600K apartments don’t have a market and are unlikely to find much of one for years to come (unless you can sell them to bankers).
We used to visit Harborview because our sailing buddy kept his boat at the marina there in winter. We’d visit him on his boat and on one occasion used the boat as our hotel room for a New Year’s weekend visit to the city.
We were amazed to find the marina building had been completely enclosed by new condos and these are occupied.
We were so struck by the change in appearance that I briefly wished I had brought my video camera so I could show our sailing buddy how things have changed since he sold his boat. And that’s when I realized I couldn’t. Our buddy was the guy whose funeral we attended last September in Maine. Rest in peace, Cap.
After Harborview we walked to the nearby Little Havana restaurant for our late lunch. I had a good Cuban sandwich but service was slow and the place was too noisy to just sit back and enjoy.
Afterwards we walked back to the Inner Harbor and sat a bit by the Rusty Scupper then headed home.
That evening we watched ‘Weeds’ 4.1.5, ‘This American Life’ 2.1.3 and 2.1.4, and ‘Closer’ 3.1.5 and 3.1.6.
-----------------------------------------------
Saturday, 25 July-
Today I did my two-and-a-half-hour lawn mowing job in the heat of the day. Though it was quite hot, a light breeze made it tolerable.
I then took the KLR into town for an iced tea at Starbucks and to look around for motorcycle stickers at the Honda shop. I need just the right sticker to cover up a boo-boo on the headlight fairing.
Back home I spent an enjoyable hour or so researching ‘Alaskan’-model truck campers. I’ve been fascinated by these since the early Seventies when my Dad and I saw the original model on a beat-up old Jeep pickup driven by an old man who had made the long, long drive to Alaska. He was one of those crotchety, grumpy old farts who didn’t have much to say but just the look of him and his rig conjured up dreams of making the trip and made it seem possible. If that guy could do it, so could I.
The new-model Alaskan has a unique hard-sided pop-up design which would be great for minimizing wind resistance and eliminating clearance problems but they’re terribly expensive--- $24K for just the truck camper.
That evening we watched a ‘Closer-3’ ep, three ‘This American Life -2’ eps, and two ‘Weeds’ eps.
-----------------------------------------------
Friday, 24 July-
Today I started looking into an odd electrical problem we’ve been having. Twice now we’ve returned home from a weekend-long trip to find a circuit breaker tripped. That circuit has a UPS for Labashi’s PC so when this happens it kills the battery (the battery runs out even if her PC wasn’t on at the time (?!?!)). And today while working in the office I heard the UPS alarm go off. The breaker had just tripped again.
In thinking about what might be overloading the circuit while we’re away, I thought it might be our dehumidifier. But today I found the dehumidifier isn’t on that circuit so it’s a mystery.
This morning I restored my router security. For some reason the router went back to its defaults. I noticed the problem I lost connectivity twice in about ten minutes. When this happens I pull the plug on the router to reboot it and so had done that twice. I then noticed the network name had reverted to the default. This morning I went through the procedures to set up WPA encryption, rename the network SSID, and establish new userID and password for router administration.
In the afternoon I took the Miata into town, first stopping at the town park in Mt. Wolf to shoot basketball for a ½ hour or so on this hot day, then going to the Honda shop in East York to see what they want for a new Gold Wing ($21K).
That evening I walked my six-mile loop then we watched ‘The Closer’ 3.1.1 and ‘Weeds’ 4.1.1 and 4.1.2.
------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 23 July-
After my morning routine with FitDay and Brainiversity I drove to the Bass Pro in Harrisburg to shop. With the weight loss I needed some more size-L zip-off pants; the XLs are just too baggy now. I love these ultralight ‘World Wide Sportsman’ pants. They’re only $20 a pair (Columbia’s are now $40 and North Face’s $60), last forever, and dry very quickly. They’re particularly useful while traveling. If the day gets warm I can just zip off the lowers and zip them back on when evening cools things off. The one issue with them is a stupidly-designed rear pocket. Your wallet falls way too low, causing you to sit on the wallet while driving. But that’s an easy fix. I just put my wallet in the pocket of one pair and had Labashi run a seam just below it with her sewing machine, then duplicate that line on my other two new pairs. Ahhh—that’s better!
While in the area today, I also had lunch at Fuddruckers, then hit Koups motorcycle shop to look around and buy some o-rings for the KLR and Concours oil filters. I then drove over to Ducky’s Boats in Middletown to see if they have any good deals on a center-console boat for next winter’s Florida trip. But I think I’m going to end up keeping my existing boat.
With the rain today I didn’t walk (and I’m recovering a bit from yesterday’s six miler). That evening we watched the second part of CNN’s ‘Black in America 2’.
------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 22 July-
I spent the morning updating the blog, then took on a long-delayed repair. Mocha Joe’s headliner fabric had worked loose right at the windshield. I believe this comes from my use of a sun-shade while he’s parked in our driveway. The sun-shade keeps the sun off the dash and seats but the heat is funneled up to the headliner. Also, as I take the sunshades in and out of the van, I bump up against the headliner, perhaps even snagging it a bit. Over time, the headliner had become detached about two inches back from the glass of the windshield.
I had found a 3-M spray headliner adhesive at Wal-mart months ago and just today got around to trying it. After masking off the area with newspaper and blue-tape, I sprayed on the adhesive in two crossing patterns with a ten-minute set time after each. Then it was simply a matter of carefully rolling the very light material back into place with a bit of stretching to avoid any wrinkles. All in all, it was probably an hour’s job.
That afternoon I went for a six-mile walk at Pinchot State Park. This time I walked from the far end of the Beaver Creek Trail around to the campground entrance station, a remote-feeling section. Shortly after making the turn to retrace my steps back to the car, I was caught in a downpour and was quickly soaked to the skin. And this wasn’t a great section of trail to be caught in the rain since it quickly turned to mud. On the other hand, I soon was like a little kid playing in a mud-puddle. I was already soaked so I might as well enjoy it!
Shortly after I returned home Labashi said our Havahart trap had caught another groundhog. I could see the trap shaking from the poor little guy’s frantic efforts to escape.
I threw a blanket over the trap to calm him down and then took him to a nearby wooded area and released him. That’s two of the four we had seen in the yard in June. I had caught one within a few days back then but the others disappeared until we saw one emerge from under the barn two days ago.
That evening we watched CNN’s ‘Black in America 2’.
****************** END OF POST ****************
(posted from home)
(This post covers 22 – 31 July, 2009)
--------------------------------------------
Friday, 31 July-
I blogged a bit this morning to try to catch up. I then talked Labashi into going to Fuddruckers for lunch, then we returned a pole-light to Lowe’s (we had found another we liked better at Waltersdorf Lighting). On the way home, we were talking about our upcoming trip out West and Labashi mentioned she’d like to have a small laptop so we don’t have to share while we’re on the road. Historically, she has kept a hand-written log but she began writing emails to family on our Alaska trip.
We were near our local Best Buy at the time so we stopped in to look at netbook computers. It appears one would do the job but I don’t know if it makes sense given the lack of a CD drive. I could buy an external CD drive but for the cost I may as well get a lower-end regular laptop. I’ll have to look into this some more and need to get moving on it.
Labashi saw another groundhog under our barn this afternoon so I’d better get the trap re-baited.
After supper I walked my six-mile loop while listening to Morning Report from Saskatchewan podcasts (I love listening to Sheila Coles) then we watched a ‘Closer’ and two ‘Weeds’ episodes.
--------------------------------------------
Thursday, 30 July-
Oops. I’ve lost track of what I did this morning. Late in the day I walked six miles at Pinchot State Park (from the dam to the water-tank on Ridge Trail) and back while listening to a new podcast. We had heard Ira Glass (on ‘This American Life’) mention ‘Radio Lab’ podcasts so I downloaded six of them today to try out.
I listed to ‘Stress’ and ‘Who Am I’ as I walked. I find the podcasts do a wonderful thing for me. They take up that part of my brain which would otherwise be thinking about the minor discomforts of walking. I don’t think about the little aches and pains – I’m just on cruise-control. I love it!
‘Radio Lab’ turns out to be an excellent walking companion. It has enough of a science component to make me feel like I’m learning something yet it’s really about the story-telling. And I love the fact that they have dozens of episodes on iTunes going back to early 2007. The ‘This American Life’ podcast only has the current podcast up so it’s easy to miss one if I don’t think to fire up iTunes for awhile.
That evening we watched ‘Wild Russia’ and ‘Deadly Catch’ on TV.
--------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 29 July-
This morning I continued re-doing some of the receptacles and switches on the #25 circuit. Then Labashi and I went shopping for a new pole-light. The old one isn’t causing our problem but the light socket is corroded and it’s time for a new one. That one was probably the original. It has been there the 28 years we’ve lived here and probably was put there when the house was built 32 years ago.
That evening I walked my four-mile out-and-back route, then we watched Closer 3.2.1 and Weeds 4.2.1 episodes.
--------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 28 July-
Today I drove the Miata to Chambersburg to meet with a property management firm. What a great day for an open-car drive, even though it was quite hot by the time I came home.
That afternoon I wrote an email to my brothers describing what I learned and then went for my six-mile loop walk.
---------------------------------------------
Monday, 27 July-
Today I spent the day working on circuit #25, trying to isolate the problem which keeps tripping the breaker. I shut down the entrance panel and tightened all the connections, then re-did the outlets and switches. ‘Re-did’ in this case amounted to taking all the wires out of the push-in connections and putting them under the side screws to assure a good connection. I found two somewhat-loose grounds, one very-loose ground, and two fell-out-when-I-touched-it neutrals. But I still can’t figure out why I don’t have power to my front-yard light. It has worked fine for years and is suddenly dead. I can’t get to all the wiring and can’t find the branching-off point to the front yard pole light. More work to come on this.
That evening I walked my six-mile loop, then we watched the last two episodes of ‘This American Life’, Season Two.
---------------------------------------------
Sunday, 26 July-
Labashi and I went to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor today for an art-break. We visited the American Visionary Art Museum. I had hoped to have a late lunch at their Joy America café but it closed recently when the chef let to open another restaurant. We had been to the café two or three times and always found something new and interesting to try.
After the museum we walked along Key Highway to Harborview, marveling at the new apartments. We were last in the area about five years ago and at the time there was just a big white plywood wall enclosing the construction site. Where we could see through, all we could see were old concrete docks extending into the bay.
Today there are hundreds of brand-new upscale apartments, each with a nice balcony. Unfortunately for the builders, they took too long to finish and now these minimum-$600K apartments don’t have a market and are unlikely to find much of one for years to come (unless you can sell them to bankers).
We used to visit Harborview because our sailing buddy kept his boat at the marina there in winter. We’d visit him on his boat and on one occasion used the boat as our hotel room for a New Year’s weekend visit to the city.
We were amazed to find the marina building had been completely enclosed by new condos and these are occupied.
We were so struck by the change in appearance that I briefly wished I had brought my video camera so I could show our sailing buddy how things have changed since he sold his boat. And that’s when I realized I couldn’t. Our buddy was the guy whose funeral we attended last September in Maine. Rest in peace, Cap.
After Harborview we walked to the nearby Little Havana restaurant for our late lunch. I had a good Cuban sandwich but service was slow and the place was too noisy to just sit back and enjoy.
Afterwards we walked back to the Inner Harbor and sat a bit by the Rusty Scupper then headed home.
That evening we watched ‘Weeds’ 4.1.5, ‘This American Life’ 2.1.3 and 2.1.4, and ‘Closer’ 3.1.5 and 3.1.6.
-----------------------------------------------
Saturday, 25 July-
Today I did my two-and-a-half-hour lawn mowing job in the heat of the day. Though it was quite hot, a light breeze made it tolerable.
I then took the KLR into town for an iced tea at Starbucks and to look around for motorcycle stickers at the Honda shop. I need just the right sticker to cover up a boo-boo on the headlight fairing.
Back home I spent an enjoyable hour or so researching ‘Alaskan’-model truck campers. I’ve been fascinated by these since the early Seventies when my Dad and I saw the original model on a beat-up old Jeep pickup driven by an old man who had made the long, long drive to Alaska. He was one of those crotchety, grumpy old farts who didn’t have much to say but just the look of him and his rig conjured up dreams of making the trip and made it seem possible. If that guy could do it, so could I.
The new-model Alaskan has a unique hard-sided pop-up design which would be great for minimizing wind resistance and eliminating clearance problems but they’re terribly expensive--- $24K for just the truck camper.
That evening we watched a ‘Closer-3’ ep, three ‘This American Life -2’ eps, and two ‘Weeds’ eps.
-----------------------------------------------
Friday, 24 July-
Today I started looking into an odd electrical problem we’ve been having. Twice now we’ve returned home from a weekend-long trip to find a circuit breaker tripped. That circuit has a UPS for Labashi’s PC so when this happens it kills the battery (the battery runs out even if her PC wasn’t on at the time (?!?!)). And today while working in the office I heard the UPS alarm go off. The breaker had just tripped again.
In thinking about what might be overloading the circuit while we’re away, I thought it might be our dehumidifier. But today I found the dehumidifier isn’t on that circuit so it’s a mystery.
This morning I restored my router security. For some reason the router went back to its defaults. I noticed the problem I lost connectivity twice in about ten minutes. When this happens I pull the plug on the router to reboot it and so had done that twice. I then noticed the network name had reverted to the default. This morning I went through the procedures to set up WPA encryption, rename the network SSID, and establish new userID and password for router administration.
In the afternoon I took the Miata into town, first stopping at the town park in Mt. Wolf to shoot basketball for a ½ hour or so on this hot day, then going to the Honda shop in East York to see what they want for a new Gold Wing ($21K).
That evening I walked my six-mile loop then we watched ‘The Closer’ 3.1.1 and ‘Weeds’ 4.1.1 and 4.1.2.
------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 23 July-
After my morning routine with FitDay and Brainiversity I drove to the Bass Pro in Harrisburg to shop. With the weight loss I needed some more size-L zip-off pants; the XLs are just too baggy now. I love these ultralight ‘World Wide Sportsman’ pants. They’re only $20 a pair (Columbia’s are now $40 and North Face’s $60), last forever, and dry very quickly. They’re particularly useful while traveling. If the day gets warm I can just zip off the lowers and zip them back on when evening cools things off. The one issue with them is a stupidly-designed rear pocket. Your wallet falls way too low, causing you to sit on the wallet while driving. But that’s an easy fix. I just put my wallet in the pocket of one pair and had Labashi run a seam just below it with her sewing machine, then duplicate that line on my other two new pairs. Ahhh—that’s better!
While in the area today, I also had lunch at Fuddruckers, then hit Koups motorcycle shop to look around and buy some o-rings for the KLR and Concours oil filters. I then drove over to Ducky’s Boats in Middletown to see if they have any good deals on a center-console boat for next winter’s Florida trip. But I think I’m going to end up keeping my existing boat.
With the rain today I didn’t walk (and I’m recovering a bit from yesterday’s six miler). That evening we watched the second part of CNN’s ‘Black in America 2’.
------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 22 July-
I spent the morning updating the blog, then took on a long-delayed repair. Mocha Joe’s headliner fabric had worked loose right at the windshield. I believe this comes from my use of a sun-shade while he’s parked in our driveway. The sun-shade keeps the sun off the dash and seats but the heat is funneled up to the headliner. Also, as I take the sunshades in and out of the van, I bump up against the headliner, perhaps even snagging it a bit. Over time, the headliner had become detached about two inches back from the glass of the windshield.
I had found a 3-M spray headliner adhesive at Wal-mart months ago and just today got around to trying it. After masking off the area with newspaper and blue-tape, I sprayed on the adhesive in two crossing patterns with a ten-minute set time after each. Then it was simply a matter of carefully rolling the very light material back into place with a bit of stretching to avoid any wrinkles. All in all, it was probably an hour’s job.
That afternoon I went for a six-mile walk at Pinchot State Park. This time I walked from the far end of the Beaver Creek Trail around to the campground entrance station, a remote-feeling section. Shortly after making the turn to retrace my steps back to the car, I was caught in a downpour and was quickly soaked to the skin. And this wasn’t a great section of trail to be caught in the rain since it quickly turned to mud. On the other hand, I soon was like a little kid playing in a mud-puddle. I was already soaked so I might as well enjoy it!
Shortly after I returned home Labashi said our Havahart trap had caught another groundhog. I could see the trap shaking from the poor little guy’s frantic efforts to escape.
I threw a blanket over the trap to calm him down and then took him to a nearby wooded area and released him. That’s two of the four we had seen in the yard in June. I had caught one within a few days back then but the others disappeared until we saw one emerge from under the barn two days ago.
That evening we watched CNN’s ‘Black in America 2’.
****************** END OF POST ****************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home