Snow at Halloween (!!!), iPad research and buy, brick-mold replacement

(posted from home)

(This post covers 26 – 31 October, 2011)

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Monday, 31 October -

Today I brought back another van-load from the storage unit. The basement is in great shape now after the dry-out, repainting of the walls and floor and setup of new shelving units. We're bringing back stuff as the mood (or need) strikes us, working around the jobs we need to get done before cold weather sets in.
The flood damaged two electric baseboard heating units and we had removed them as part of the cleanup. Today I installed the replacement units I bought online a few weeks ago. We tried to find these locally but apparently both Lowes and Home Depot now only offer the color white. Fortunately, we were able to get the almond-color replacements from the Home Depot web site.
That evening we watched 'The Big C' episodes from disk 2 of the first season.

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Sunday, 30 October -

We still didn't have cable-TV or internet service all morning but thank goodness they both came up around 1230 this afternoon. I had tried calling the cable company to get some idea when it might be back up but they had taken the phone off the hook so it just rang busy this morning. I had called around 2300 last night and they had a recording saying there were widespread outages but they had sent their technicians home for the day because of the dangerous roads. I guess I can't blame them but BOY it's quiet around here!
This morning I read a bit of 'The Paperboy' and my last offline copy of 'Leisure Wheels' (a South African 4x4 magazine). I then caught up the blog and helped Labashi hang her new artistic creation on the foyer wall. In this case 'hanging' includes going out to the barn in the snow to get the extension ladder!
We then called Mom and Dad on Skype and used the iPad's rear-facing camera to show off the new creation. Looks good!
The snow is greatly diminished now and the roads are dry and clear, thanks to 50-degree temperatures today.


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Saturday, 29 October -

Snow. Are you kidding? It's only Halloween (ours was two days ago) and we had six inches of snow today. Wunderground shows the airport measured 9.7 inches of snow. I had to shovel snow in October!!! That's so wrong!!!!! I'm normally in Florida by the time we have shovelable snow.
The snow was of course very wet and heavy and caused many power outages (the papers Sunday say 2 million people had outages in the Northeast). In our case we had at least twenty outages. The lights would go off for a second to five seconds, then come back on. Each time the cable box would reboot. After about ten of these I turned off the power bar feeding the electronics and went down to the basement and flipped off the breaker to the refrigerator. After things seemed to settle down that evening, I turned them back on but by then we weren't getting a feed from the cable-- no tv or internet for us tonight!
I had spent up the morning playing with the iPad and downloaded some killer apps. Thedolite HD is a an electronic theodolite-- you know, the surveyor's tool. Start the app and hold the iPad up and and you see a view out the iPad's back camera with multiple scales imposed on it--- GPS position, altitude, direction, azimuth, etc. Press a button and it takes a photo of the scene. Press another and it opens up an email dialogue: put in addresses and send it off lickety-split. Press another and the display changes to a Google map with your position marked.
We lost cable and internet late in the afternoon and we turned to reading. Labashi is working an art project but at this point is only going down a few times today to put on another coat of glaze. Otherwise, she's catching up on back issues of 'The Economist' (we had a trial subscription), 'The Week', and 'Smithsonian Magazine'. I'm reading a novel I picked up in Florida-- 'The Paperboy' by Pete Dexter. Also, I learned a bit more about how Zinio works on the iPad. I had opened two issues of magazines before I lost my wi-fi connection and those were downloaded to me. I could read them offline. The latest issues, though, hadn't been touched yet so I had nothing but pictures of the cover. Lesson learned. Open up the issues when they show up and let them download.
We would normally have been saved by Netflix DVDs but happen to only have one-- Californication Season Three, Disk 2-- and Labashi doesn't care for that. I watched it on the laptop while she read. Like Entourage, this one is getting stale.

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Friday, 28 October -

Yesterday I activated the iPad and spent a few hours playing with it. The more I work with it the more I understand the friendly advice to not think of it as a laptop replacement. The on-screen keyboard functions okay but will never replace a standard keyboard-- in fact now I need a keyboard for it (I think!).
Fortunately, I wasn't thinking of it as a laptop replacement. I wanted something that runs IOS but didn't want to pay the monthly phone bill of an iPhone. The critical decision-maker for me was learning I could turn data service off and on, i.e., pay for it a month at a time. For me that will be when we travel.
Also, I just have never been a fan of the small screen of the iPhone. It's amazing for a phone but I need a lot more 'real-estate' (screen size), particularly when looking at maps and web pages.
I installed 'Zinio for iPad' and immediately liked what I saw. On the MacBook Pro I could either see a full page of the magazine and not be able to read it or zoom in and get lost on the page. Now I can read a full page and if there are areas I want to zoom in on (like a photo), it's very easily done.
In my research on the iPad I had run onto several apps that appealed to me for travel. Backpacker Magazine had recommended 'Campwhere' and 'Maplets', for instance. Campwhere is a Google-map application overlaid with the locations of all the public campgrounds in the US and Canada. Maplets is a collection of localized maps, like the handouts at the National Forests and State Parks. I'm intimately familiar with the maps of Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Reserve so I grabbed them and examined in detail. Yep-- they're the real thing. And there are thousands and thousands of others. There are bike maps, trail maps, bus maps, city maps, etc. and they're actively soliciting others. This is a goldmine of maps!
I also installed the GoSky Watch apps for constellations and satellites. Start the GoSky Watch Planetarium app and hold the iPad up to the sky and it will show you the constellations and the stars you're looking at. It does not sense the stars, but rather your position on the earth and the direction and elevation you are holding the iPad. In other words, it will show you the same thing on a cloudy night. The satellite version (GoSat Watch) shows either a globe with the satellites superimposed on it, or a view of the sky at your location with the passing satellites moving across the view. Very, very cool!
I wish we would have had this in South Africa!
That afternoon I finished the brick-mold installation and caulked it with painter's caulk and used glazer's putty to cover the trim-screw holes. I'll paint next week when the weather's a bit warmer.
That evening we watched a few episodes of Entourage Season 7. I'm kind of bored with these guys and am surprised they don't take more heat for their frat-boy view of women.

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Thursday, 27 October -

This morning Labashi had some things to do with her parents and I had a few errands to run so I took Mocha Joe. I first hit two of my local gun shops, wanting to take a look at Ruger Single Six .22 revolvers. These are cowboy-style revolvers with an excellent reputation for accuracy and simplicity. I'm thinking of doing some squirrel hunting and after reading many recommendations for an appropriate (and legal) squirrel-hunting handgun, the Single Six tops my list. The Convertible model appeals to me because it comes with an extra cylinder for magnum shells (.22 WMR) in case I want to try that. The Hunter appeals to me with its rail for a dot-sight or scope. And the Single Ten model has not only a ten-shot capacity but also fiber-optic sights.
The East York shop had a Single Ten and an older (used) Single Six 3-screw (more a collector's gun). I liked the Single Ten right away. It felt right in the hand. And once I looked through the sights of the Single Six it was clear I'd want the fiber-optic sights. I could hardly find the black front blade in the shop so I know I'd have a tough time in a background of trees.
The Columbia shop had five Single Sixes but each had something wrong.... wrong barrel length, wrong grip, or wrong sights. But this little exercise did indeed help me make decisions on all the things I don't want.
Now I have to decide whether I really want to go ahead with this. I haven't had a hunting license since the mid-Seventies so may have to take a hunter-ed course. I'd have to work on my shooting skills but would look forward to that. I envision driving Mocha Joe to places like the freebie campsites below Dolly Sods (WV) or to PA's Tuscarora State Forest (Fowler's Hollow, perhaps) and camp there the nights before and after a day's hunt. The search for squirrels would slow down my hiking speed and give me plenty of excuse to sit and watch-- my fondest memories of my long-ago hunting trips. I'm guessing I wouldn't be a very successful hunter but I'd enjoy the heck out of being there.
After my visits to the gun shops I continued on to Lancaster's Park City Mall and the Apple Store. My goal today was to buy an iPad2. I've been looking at them and reading about them for a long time and today was the day to do something about it.
But things didn't go well at first. The store was crowded and it wasn't immediately clear how to get the attention of a salesperson. I decided to play with an iPad to reinforce my decision.
Right off the bat I had problems. I picked the YouTube icon as a place to start. I thought I'd look up a few clips I've seen recently and see what they look like on the iPad. I entered the search term “Bushlore” (the name of the outfitter we used in South Africa) and was surprised to not see the clips I was looking for. That's because the iPad had separated 'Bush' from 'lore' and was showing me videos of George Bush and some of various folklore topics. No matter what I did I could not get the videos I wanted. Finally, I figured out how to go into Settings and turn off the auto-correction feature. It had only taken me 20 minutes on the iPad to get what I knew was there but couldn't get to.
The other thing I wanted to see what what my magazine subscriptions look like on Zinio (I subscribe to two magazines about southern Africa travel-- 'Leisure Wheels' and 'Getaway' via Zinio). I used the Safari browser to get to Zinio and sign in but when I selected my magazines, I only got back a screen telling me I needed to install the free Zinio iPad app. But the demo machine wouldn't allow apps to be installed. No luck there.
I finally stopped one of the Apple guys walking by (I had been there a half-hour and never been asked if I needed any help) and he directed me to a guy with an iPad. He put me on the schedule and said it might be as long as a half-hour until someone saw me. I almost walked out. But then again, I could play with the iPad for another half-hour before committing to buy one.
To be fair, my specialist showed up less than ten minutes after I went on the schedule and he was very good. He answered my many questions and I soon was back on track. He quickly processed my order and brought an iPad and accessories to me. He scanned the items and swiped my credit card with an iPhone-like terminal he carried with him and I was soon out the door.
Once I got home

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Wednesday, 26 October -

I spent the morning on the web, mostly researching handguns and iPads.
Late that afternoon I began the long-delayed project to replace the brick-mold around the back door-- the mud-room door. I'm surprised how the wooden brick-mold (the trim around the door) deteriorated so quickly after the last time I replaced it so this time I'm going to use vinyl stock.
I had started this project a few months ago but very quickly abandoned it when I realized the newer-style caulk was much more difficult to remove than before. I had given it a try with utility knife and putty knife and they did very little to the hard-rubber-like material. My downfall at the time, though, was the fact that the right tool for the job was on the job-site in Chambersburg.
So today I had the right tool-- Labashi's Bosch multi-tool. The scraper attachment is just the thing to cut into the hard rubber and work your way under it to the point it can be pulled off. That job still took the better part of an hour and I went through three batteries (fortunately they're rechargeable).
Once I had the old brick-mold off, I still had a lot of work to do. Cleaning up the door frame was easy enough but then the challenge became what to do about the wooden door frame itself. The last inch or so was wet-rotted.
I cut off the lower one-and-a-half inches of each side and cut vinyl stock to fit. The problem, though, was how to attach it-- there was nothing there. On one side I was able to run long screws down at an angle to secure it. On the other, though, I had to dig out wet wood back to the good 2x4 framing and put in blocks to build it out. I finished that job but by that time it was supper-time. After supper I cleaned up the area and covered the frame with duct tape to protect it from the rain due tonight and tomorrow.
That evening we watched “Meek's Cutoff”, a somewhat-odd film about a small group of Oregon-trail travelers in the mid-1840s. They have had the bad luck to have taken a shortcut which turns out to be anything but. Their guide, Stephen Meek, has led them astray and it's not clear why. Is he incompetent? Is he leading them away from the 'main stem' to rob and kill them? Is he right about how vicious and bloodthirsty the Indians are in this area?
If you liked 'Gerry', you'll probably like this movie. If you'd prefer a more traditional movie structure, you'll likely be disappointed in it. I'd have to say I fell more on the 'disappointed' side as the movie ended but have since thought about why it was done as it was and what I learned. In the end, I'm glad I saw it and, in fact, will watch it again sometime down the road.


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