MORNING
First order is a progress report on welding. Why? Because, while I have not yet personally welded anything and have told Agt. M if I electrocute myself he can have my red scooter, the activities associated with welding have already proven a
For those who are keeping up with the technology as I learn it, a problem with these copper lugs is corrosion and electrolysis. I kept bucking off the cable ends and reattaching new lugs. It turns out the enemy is water, particularly salt water, and also small arcing and sparking inside if the copper of the wire does not completely contact the lug. The problem is solved with plumber’s solder, not the relatively expensive electrical solder I had been using.
It turns out the electrical solder, with it's lower melting point, is subject to remelt inside the copper should the cable experience over-amperage. This is a common problem with robotic circuits, where different segments of the control mechanisms draw different currents. We are looking at that problem separately.
4:30AM. Gee, I must be an early riser. Either that or one of the effects of insomnia is that it throws off the rest of your patterns until you go circadian again. To this day I can’t understand how I worked a 9 to 5 so many years. I scrounged my whole premises to find a book I had not already read only to come up with a dissertation on the dams of India. You know, those ancient edifices of their culturally superior civilization, gigantic hydroelectric dams. Or at least says the book, but not directly, just implied in every second sentence.
NOON
I just came from a consultation with my retirement expert. It appears I’ve made several grievous errors in my planning, but if it is any consolation, millions of my generation, the tier-two Boomers, have done the same. I allowed for a certain flexibility but not enough, which I will now go through with you, but only the basics that apply to us all. No personal information here--everything applies to a situation, not me individually. And any of you nearing retirement age damn well better listen up or find out the same information the hard way.
Now, this next sentence is important. Today, certain departments are increasingly adopting the point of view that those who planned ahead were “taking advantage” of the system, and they mean it in a bad way. (What, you did not 100% trust the government with your future!) The gist of the matter is that very few of us could have remotely predicted how the goalposts would get moved.
Reviewing several competing on-line services for managing retirement funds, I see that none of them offer pro-active game plans either. They are all knee-jerk operations, giving advice that applies only to how the laws read at this point. Do they not see the big pattern, that the money required cannot come from the poor or the rich, but only the middle class?. Pssst, that’s most of us. What I need is a strategy to come out ahead, but only ahead of other retirees, not the whole shebang.
The bad news was as things now stand, I may have to return to work for at least 18 months when I turn 62. Not now, but in the future when I turn 62. Otherwise, I meet with woe at my full retirement age of 67. This is a horrendous body-blow to my long range plans. I have the option to return now, but to maximize, I would wait until later when tax exemptions take effect. I am concerned here not with total income, only my long-range take-home portion.
Now back to my situation. My specialist says that unless I do something stupid (my words) like get a stressful job or start smoking, I can expect to live another 12 years. If I get beyond that, add another 8 years. Without revealing any details, I can tell you five years ago I made some decisions that did not come close to including another potential 20 years. Obviously, I should build a robot that does things for me. Hey, don’t rule that out—I certainly now have the time to do it.
NIGHT
Look out, it’s Igor! Not an uncommon reaction to my first welding lesson. My first join held, but I butchered it badly. The jury is still out if I should publish that photo [of the join]. But no problem with my picture of the full safety gear. Apron, leather gloves, etc. What did I learn today? Those who chuckle must be pretty sure nobody will ask them the same thing.
The pieces, unless securely clamped, move on their own. But each project likely has to be custom-clamped, so the best advice I can give is to overdo it. The training videos rarely mention the need for a super steady table that allows fitting the clamps. The table I used was a half-inch too wide for the jaws of my standard Home Depot clamps, another engineering coup.
I took the resulting mess and examined it. I burned through the steel at places and left gaps in others. There is a pretty piece of eye-hand coordination required between the time you position the welding tip, reach up to your goggles, and begin zapping the junction. And cutting the metal pieces to be welded is another technology in itself, one we do not have. I attempted to place a cutting disk on my small grinder to discover it is designed to prevent just that.
ADDENDUM
Wow, great popularity on my expose on wood stoves. I understand most people who own them praise them and you cannot trust anyone to tell you the full extent of the back-breaking toil needed to operate these things. I call that the “Bonanza Syndrome”, where the barn is thirty feet from the house but they never step in or smell a thing.
I’m not an expert. But I can tell you most kitchen wood stoves will not hold a fire overnight. They will heat the room, only so long as the firebox is full and in the winter tray (it moves up or down). The first person up in the morning quickly learns to stir the ashes live coals or you will be lighting a new fire in the icy cold. This is also because if the fire goes out, the blizzard wind can come down the chimney no matter how tight you close it.
When we moved to town, we had an airtight wood heater. These, I don’t know about, as the old man always filled that one himself. Since he would definitely have forced me to do it if possible, there must be something to operating an airtight I don’t know. But they only have to be loaded with one log twice a day.
If I was considering wood heat, there is a new generation of “boilers” that burn wood pellets that I would look into. They have a small auger that feeds the pellets into the combustion chamber a little at a time. There are other models that burn logs at ferociously hot temperatures to use up everything in the wood, even the smoke. But anyone who imagines a wood kitchen stove as a cozy heat source has plainly never used one before.
Read my lips. Wood heat is inefficient. Wood stoves are a logistical nightmare. You gain NO, repeat NO, energy after accounting for the chain saws and haulage and the acres of land required to operate them [stoves].
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
