April 16, 2018

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 16, 2017, Easter munchies.
Five years ago today: April 16, 2013, I have a suggestion.
Nine years ago today: April 16, 2009, Mel loses a billion.
Random years ago today: April 16, 2014, as many as he can afford?

           [Author’s note: ah, now I get it. The reason for the mess-up with Google last fews day was related to their hijacking of the IXQUICK browser add-on. Now, you cannot even log directly on to the IXQUICK servers, which I previously used exclusively. Try it, the address is www.ixquick.com/eu. That’s the European servers. Now, you are hijacked to StartPage, which is quartered in New York City. I keep seeing announcements that StartPage and IXQUICK have merged, but I won't believe it until I see it [stated] on a bona fide IXQUICK European server. These companies are mortal enemies.

           The Google system was wonky for the entire time it took them to contaminate web searches using IXQUIK. IXQUICK worked by stripping away personal data from your web searches and piggy-backed on around ten engines. StartPage uses only one: Google. I have switched to Duck Duck Go, but interestingly, Google has not learned the lesson when it was heavily fined in Europe for censoring searches. Now, even if I type in the complete blog name, StartPage does not even bring this blog up in the first five pages (click on photo to enlarge).
           Nor can you get through to IXQUICK using any browser affiliated with Google, such as AltaVista (owned by Yahoo!) and I’ve had trouble with FireFox. For those who use a search for this blog, DuckDuckGo works because you don’t have to download and install it. Am I being punished for using IXQUICK all these years?]

           The blog guidebook says time to mention food again. Except I haven’t really had any for 138 days. Except chicken. You can have all the chicken you want. With all the spices you want, but that’s it. Tell you what, though, I finally got used to the taste of soy milk. Lo-fat soy milk. Then I thought if could learn to actually like powdered milk, then I’m okay with health food. See how nice I am to you. I stop and go get a special picture. Maybe I feel some misguided sense of attachment to my readers, I mean, this is, after all, the Internet. Everything can and will be used against you.

           As happy as can be about the show evening last, I took the entire morning off. An extra coffee downtown, and an extra hour reading. It’s seriously harder to find things I have not read before that interest me, note that is a highly qualified statement. There’s always lots to read if you don’t care what it is. The oddball topic that got curious was hot water heating. I guess I always thought it was actually hot water in those radiators. You know, those clumsy pipe units under the window sill that never worked right. I did not know they worked on steam.

           So I read the specs on how such a system was supposed to operate. What a dumb theory to start with. Downstairs you had a boiler which produced steam. This steam ran through regular plumbing pipe to the radiator, where it condensed back into water, which by gravity ran back down into the boiler. At least that is what is supposed to happen. I was thinking while reading this if these people were pulling my leg. Steam? But that would explain why those radiators mostly sat there and gurgled instead of heating the room up. Or overheating one corner while the rest of the room was shivering cold. The kind of room cranky old lady landlords like to rent to college students. I speak with authority.
           The first thing I’d do if I bought a house with a boiler heating system is replace it with a real furnace. I say that now, but I understand that in each generation houses are intentionally priced to make sure the purchaser must spend a lifetime paying for it. That doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for upgrades. I would not have attempted what I’m doing [with my cabin] if I had to work full time. There seem to be two “hot water” heating systems, one is the boiler-radiator thing and the other is a type of baseboard heater that runs along the baseboards with fins that radiate heat into the room. I mean the boiler type, but either must have been a real pain to keep the room at a comfortable temp.

Picture of the day.
Queenstown, New Zealand.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Finally admitting the impossibility of fixing the gas gauge on the scooter, I rigged up a small gas bottle in the jockey box that carries 3/8ths a gallon of gas. The gauge does work, but only until there is around a third of a tank, then it collapses to zero. After that it is all guesswork and I’ve pushed to home before. Now, that gas reserve will give me the range to always get to a station. Then I decided to finish drywalling the north bedroom wall. That didn’t happen. It required 3 hours 50 minutes for me to install just ten feet of material. It is not taped or mudded yet. This should have taken twenty minutes.

           And this time I measured exactly to the sixteenth of an inch. For reasons unknown I have never been able to cut panels that fit. Determined not to let that happen this time, I measure three times, using the same tape measure. Yet when I put the panel against the wall, almost every receptacle cutout was between an eighth or a big eighth of an inch out in both directions. I give up. I am jinxed when it comes to drywall. That’s no reason to stop, however, because I’ve become an expert at patching things over with the mud. The wall is mostly done. I used this day of cool weather to work on it, so it was not bad.

           Here’s the photo of the wall so far. The A/C cutout has a temporary patch, in case I didn’t say it is skeeter season. But only at night, which is why I had to wait until this morning to snap this photo. I don’t have any flash cameras. Waste of money, if you ask me. I mean, ask yourself how many pictures you actually take in the dark. Then ask yourself why? Nah, wait till there’s enough natural light. You may notice the cutouts for the window and receptacles are all on this new sheet (see photos over previous few days or is that weeks) and that slowed me down considerably. Plus, drywall is really a two-man job. That window frame formerly housed the A/C unit and most of the wood needs repair. That’s okay, I’ve become proficient with that to an extent.
           This wall is also part of the Faraday cage. It further contains three circuits, newly installed, including the dedicated 20 Amp line to the A/C. All of this took time, and still have to tape, mud, sand, paint, and reinstall the window casings. And there are three more walls, one of which is the backbone for the entirely revamped central electrical corridor that replaces the spider web wiring of 1945. That idea has proven so convenient (for making modifications) that I am considering the same for the plumbing.

           There’s another late winter blizzard up where people who don’t know any better live. And it plunges the cold here down into the 70s during the day. You notice that when you drive a motorcycle in short sleeves. And that’s something I wanted to talk to you about. The scooter makes an instant difference. My gas budget this month is only $66 so far (for those who recognize the number, it is coincidence and the month isn’t over yet). Back to using the car two or three times per week rather than twice a day and that’s mainly because of the band, which leads to the next topic.
           Entertainment. It’s established fact that playing on stage is my entertainment. And that’s cause a drastic drop in my entertainment budget. Expect it to drop even more if things pick up. Remember how I went 5-1/2 years during the last decade spending less than $1,000 total on entertainment, most of that was going to movies. That’s correct, less than a thousand out of pocket over five years. When I’m on stage, I never have to buy my own drinks. Mind you, if I go out afterwards spending tip money, that always more than offsets any budgetary loss. And we have not yet begun to play out. My budget so far this month is less than half of the same period in March.

ADDENDUM

           Off and on for months now, I’ve been searching when time permits for the location of that old railway right of way through this property. I know it is there because the postal code changes in the middle of the block and the grade on my property is better than across the street. Failure after failure to find any maps had me convinced somebody has expunged all records of that spur line. Ah, but today, I found an old survey done in 1960 concerning historic buildings in the area. If you remove each file from the plastic protector, there is a map of the area. Although my house is not an historic place, I know the farmhouse south of me is. So I pulled that map.
           There it is, that diagonal line just right of where I’m pointing. That shows where the center of the rail line ran, and if it extends the usual 36 feet on either side of the tracks, that bites off the whole corner of my property. If so, I could claim to be in either county as far as taking advantage of things that arise not to my liking. Like strange bylaws and unwelcome attention by inspectors. For those of you who might retort the inspector is just doing his job. That may have been true at some time in the distant past. These days the inspector’s job is to make sure as much of a file as can be is kept on what the homeowner does and passing the cost on to him as a “permit fee”. I have never seen an iota of proof that permits (for non-trade work) have ever resulted in a better or safer community.

Last Laugh

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++