One year ago today: March 1, 2017, the importance of support staff.
Five years ago today: March 1, 2013, WIP
Nine years ago today: March 1, 2009, a rant on ‘no-skill’ jobs.
Random years ago today: March 1, 2004, possibly an office memo?
I have a partial answer to why this room has taken so long. Shown here, I’m relocating the A/C wall cutout from the left side of the window to the right side. Not visible is the entire electrical wiring and outlet that has to be relocated from up under the floor. Why this change? Easy. I may not be a TV watcher, but that is the only logical spot in the room to put a screen without having a window directly behind it. I don’t believe it but I’ve heard there are people who actually watch TV in the daytime. What a waste of life that must be.
How quiet was this day? Quiet enough to get me to read electrical codes and form opinions. This place is going to need a subpanel. That’s cheaper than a new larger panel. The reason is the latest code requirements involve a separate and dedicated line to many more appliances than when this place was built. There are also more appliances, such as a garbage disposal. The air conditioners are considered an appliance. And I’m going to move the one in the new room over to a space near the closet. It does not need to be in the center of the largest wall.
Back to plumbing code. What I found out is there are a category of electrocution deaths in bathrooms that are wired wrong. The outlets in a bathroom, whether connected to appliances or not, must be ground fault and on a dedicated circuit. This makes sense, but also reveals the code is not addressing one side of the issue. That the components themselves are not being manufactured right, for instance they don’t make a switch that will only work if wired correctly. It seems to me that the wealthy industrialists could produce better product, even making them incapable of doing harm. But it is cheaper in the short run to pass the cost on to the public in the form of building codes.
Why build something better when you can make the buyer shoulder the cost of making it safe to use? Hence, within a few decades, you have electrical designed in 1923, but hundreds of pages of installation code. And that code is nasty stuff. It is not like you can look up one section on bathrooms that tells you all you need to know. Wrong, the height above the floor and the requirement for GFCIs are found in different sections with no cross-reference. I also found that all bedroom outlets must be AGCI, that’s the type that prevent sparks when the plug is yanked out by the cord.
The code is vague and impenetrable to most people. It is written in bureaucratese and meant to be read by somebody who already knows what is going on, electrically speaking. However, electrical permits are easy to get and the inspection is fairly cursory. They didn’t even ask what some of my unlabeled wiring was for. But he checked to make sure every last light switch worked. The easiest thing to check, duly noted.
The electrical code is also ambiguous. For example, the code requires that cable be run through a 3/4” hole in the center of a stud, but that hole must be 1-1/2” from either edge of the stud. Do the math. (There is another provision in a different part of the code that says you can use 5/8’ holes and leave 1-1/4”, but you would not know this unless you read the entire book, like I did. This takes hours.) I believe the code, like most law, is intentionally vague to always give the bureaucrat the apparent psychological edge. It’s disgusting.
View from the Shard.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Having a case of radio overload, I worked in silence all afternoon. One can only take so much local radio, with their canned news and flea markets plugs. There is nothing to do in Polk County, so why make a radio show about it? The job requirements to be a disk jockey must be on par with becoming the dog catcher. Then, the audience can’t be much different. Today I heard two cuss words that would have shut the place down in my day, and an interview that would have raised the hackles of any feminist twenty years ago. Did I get that right? Raised the hackles? If not, get it from context. It was after dark when I knocked off. The club is trying to ramp up Thursdays by hiring entertainment, which in Florida means Karaoke or a guitar player. So, I went downtown.
Did I mention I’m writing another song? This one spoofs the lack of accomplishment this country has suffered ever since the space program spiraled into decline after Apollo. How the cold war stopped, but not the expansion of the military. My very first song concerned with politics in any way. I’m getting further into the book “Chromosome 6” which does pick up after around seventy pages. But hold off, since I’m finding passages that only make sense because I looked into the topic some years ago. Most of the characters so far are pretty bland. It’s like they are a bunch of guitar players or something. Ha-ha, I had to get that dig in there. Anyway, we just know there is an evil scientist up to no good on an island around here somewhere.
The book even has a secret map. This is the Cogo river estuary in Africa. I can’t resist a book with a secret map. Here it is. So I guess it isn’t that much of a secret anymore.
That was my day. The only new item is after reading the building code, I decided to redesign the ceiling fan enclosure and to use recessed lighting in the closets. If this isn’t as thrilling as living in Miami after one is 40, then you aren’t reading the signs. I watched the DVD “About Schmidt” with Jack Nicholson. Probably one of his more disturbing roles about a man who retires and doesn’t identify much with his world. He looks at his wife and wonders who is this old lady who is always around his house. Somebody tell that poor guy to learn to play bass. And write songs titled “Back in the USSA.”
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
