August 30, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 30, 2016, ah, my own yard.
Five years ago today: August 30, 2012, I build Jenga-henge.
Nine years ago today: August 30, 2008, meet the new maid.
Random years ago today: August 30, 2015, the house that started it all.

           Now the fun starts. The damage estimates from Hurricane Harvey to Houston are already larger than New Orleans and Katrina. The repair contractors now have experience padding their estimates, see? It’s government money we’re talking here. But the one I like is the announcement from Louisiana that the instant the storm crossed the state line, the oil company shut down the biggest refinery, I think it produces a fifth of all the gasoline in the US of A. Face it, the Louisiana bunch have far more experience than you Texas rubes on how bleed disaster money out of DC. Katrina was just a little on-the-job-training for the prices that will start rolling now. Get your wallets out, it’s libtard time.

           This is what happens when you get yourself a welfare state. Instead of digging themselves out of the mud, they’ll go screaming to FEMA and FEMA will be waiting. Expect news reports like you’ve never seen them before. Earthquakes, floods, and landslides of news. Our economy is based on cheap oil while the rest of the world is the opposite. I’ve only heard fragments of radio news. I get the idea. Here we go again, but because these media reports are incomplete, I refer you to the following list of countries that did NOT come rushing to our aid.

           Israel. France. Cuba. Saudi Arabia. Japan. Germany. France. Egypt. Canada. China. Mexico. What? Wait on a second! That list said France twice. Yeah, well, especially France. France has a choice. And the whole world knows how well the French have been at making the right choices since the time of Napoleon.
           Brace yourselves for broadcasts of helicopters rescuing pet dogs and lineups for $12 per liter bottled water. And ice, don’t forget the ice. Even though there are no fresh groceries, the drinking public still needs ice. Future generations will look on Houston as the home town of the annual Libtardfest, now celebrated in sanctuary cities across the nation. Or the one I like is sending taxpayer rescue teams to people stranded on a cruise liner in the Gulf. Aren’t luxury liners required to have their own emergency gear? Don’t boat captains listen to the weather reports? Should we be paying taxes to rescue people with credit cards who are on vacation? Tell me again, which is the non-smoking lifeboat?

           Don’t presume I’d let anybody drown. I’m the guy that says save them, then send ‘em the bill. The Coast Guard, which gets its nose into just about everything except guarding the coast, should be shut down tomorrow and sent home, presumably to find real jobs. Instead of out there playing hero when the flow of illegals continues unabated. What part of illegal don’t they understand? Their rescue line is getting kudos for fielding “a thousand calls per hour”.
           You students who don’t know what moral hazard is should use that example. Are they calling because they have exhausted their own resources, or are they calling because they have smart phones and a number to call? That is moral hazard—the increase of irresponsible behavior when some people know they are covered.
           And I maintain that the Coast Guard should either stop the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs or be disbanded. They seem to accomplish nothing most of the time, thriving on spectacles of rescuing the incredibly stupid. They should be retained in a user-pay form, providing 90% of their time is spent actually guarding the coast. As for their usefulness to the average American, they are just another bloated bureaucracy accomplishing nothing. Mr. Trump, you want to save money? Well, you already got a navy, don’t you? Build that wall and build that blockade. We are being invaded.

Picture of the day.
Dude ranch.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s a photo similar to y’day, but this is more revealing. It is from the report sent to JZ, who never appreciates fan mail but gets reports anyway. (Watch for more on this plumbing, I ran into some expensive and difficult damages.) He time to time forgets the premise of this place was so the both of us could get out of Miami and back into the real, working, non-welfare world. This angle shows the new bearing wall which you’ve come to know and love. You can see through it into the bathroom. The plumbing is very straightforward and I may have a go at it myself. Or at least the [hot and cold] water lines and the easy drains. There’s a section of big pipe under there I think I’ll leave for a pro.

           The afternoon heat was merciless, think of it as the eye after the hurricane. But we got three sheets of flooring and some lumber over here by early afternoon. That’s it for work on the floor, as I had to attend to maintenance on the old red scooter. The muffler came loose again, I may have to locktite that assembly, The pieces have been repaired and over repaired so many times it now requires two wrenches, an 11mm and a 13mm. And two odd sizes of metric nuts. It’s not like the scooter likes being repaired either. When you tilt it over to get at the bolts, at least some gas is going to spill.

           All this activity usually breaks the strap holding the other end of the muffler. The factory chrome part has long been replaced by pipe strap, which, unless you work with the stuff, you may think is all pretty much the same. No sirree, there’s cheap strap, brittle strap, and for reasons I can’t figure, even strap that will rust over time. Let me check if I have to tell you this . . . blog rules say yes. These minor repairs took half the day because I slept funny. Got a stiff neck, which I can live with, her name was Sandy. Seriously, I can’t lift my right arm even to chest height. Had to stay inside listening to crazy radio.
           I’m a few chapters into “The Seventh Secret” but I advise against the book. Its premise is about hating all Germans because a few were Nazis. We know where this is coming from. Once more, I’ll just tell you the story minus the propaganda. An old German dentist affixed a tiny mend to Hitler’s teeth just near the war’s end. Hitler did not trust his regular dentist. The Soviets had identified Hitler by a jawbone and the dentist later noticed the pieces didn’t match. Nobody actually saw Hitler or Eva kill themselves and the bodies taken out to the bomb crater for cremation had been covered with blankets. Nobody heard the shot either, for the bunker doors were bombproof metal.

           This book was written in the 1980s. At that time, many wartime claims of German atrocities were being discredited by new evidence coming out of the crumbling Russian empire. These have been quietly dropped by the western press over time, an example being the retraction of the story that the Germans had been making soap from dead bodies. That was a total lie. Don’t be fooled, a retraction is not the same as an apology or atonement for dealing in lies, even allowing for wartime misinformation. It has been many years since the lampshade, for instance, was posted on the Internet. Today, not a single picture remains.
           My speculation is that the painting traded at the museum will turn out to be an authentic Hitler, but it will date after the war. Or the building in the picture will prove to have been built at that time, say, with architectural changes placed later. Let’s see how close I’ve got it figured. So far, the book says that Eva is alive. The book is otherwise fairly accurate and well-written. It gains nothing from all the pro-Jewish paragraphs that are a constant interference with the plot.


Quote of the Day:
“Clever people think
poor people are stupid.”
~ somebody called Norm McDonald.
           Talk about fatigued, I finally gave up for the day. I hosed down the open areas with critter ridder and went downtown for a beer. And to write JZ a report on that plumbing. He’s not a club member, but he has more construction experience than the rest of us. For now, I mean. If you use the Internet as a standard, almost everything about construction is pretty simple. Said report included some of the rubber and clamp joints I first mentioned here long ago.

           They are called “fernco” couplings and they are not cheap. But considering the labor they replace, it points to a bargain. Enough to convince me. The literature says they are approved for joining all types of plumbing materials from copper to PVC. Hence, I paid attention to what was available on-line. My plan is as simple as it gets. Cut out a section of metal pipe and replace it with a coupling that allows copper or PVC to branch off.

           I stayed put at the club although the place was unusually full of women. By that I mean I didn’t hit on any. Wise move, they all pretended to be available, but one by one, the boyfriends, husbands, shack-ups, and FWBs arrived. I know married women do this yet I never could figure out why. The world is full enough of slobbering jerks that encouraging them seems counterproductive to my thinking. It is easy to comprehend that an aging woman craves confirmation she is still a catch. But in a small town bar where everybody knows her name? Then again, I’ve always had a revulsion to married women who continue to advertise. It is second only to my loathing of women who entertain passes from strangers while they are on a date with me. I would say that has happened to me over a dozen women. Once each.
           And here is the link to the video I could not post. I thought it was a gif, it was an mp4. That's a technology I have not bothered with yet. Over-protective dog.

ADDENDUM
           A bit of bad news for my renovations. The plumbing is going to be a major effort, depending on how you look at it. I knew there was termite damage but I had a hell of a time finding their water source. Today, the mystery is solved. This is the old cast iron piping beneath the toilet, and the pipe running off to the left is the sink drain. It is totally corroded and has to be replaced. The pipe to the left is the tub drain and some kind of stack. Leave it be. But note those two recent 2x4” props on either side of the toilet ring. Somebody has Mickey-Moused this before.

           There are two ways to approach this. One is to fix what is there, the other is to replace all of this with modern PVC or similar components. That floor cannot be repaired without ripping it up, and I have heaps of experience with that. It will mean the toilet is out of condition for a while, but that is why the local libraries have such sparkling clean facilities. There is also the cost. This will not be cheap, even if I do the labor. In reality, the entire bathroom should be undone.

           The water source, and it was actively dripping when I found it, was hidden neatly behind another pipe. I had to get down into the pit before I could spot it, which explains why the last people couldn’t find it. You had to practically get under the house. The termite damage is extensive in this area. I’ll measure the pipes later today and begin plotting a solution. As for the other piping, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it looks like gas pipes were used, but most pipes look alike to me.
           Not to worry, however, since all the renovations done this year comes to less than $2,000 in materials. That includes the $400 materials for the shed. But this plumbing, it looks to be enough to really bite into the pocketbook. I’ll do some pricing over the next few days and get back to you.


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