One year ago today: April 30, 2017, my inclination to distinguish.
Five years ago today: April 30, 2013, unadvertised fees.
Nine years ago today: April 30, 2009, reads like DNS.
Random years ago today: April 30, 2008, send her to Dairy Queen.
This is tarpaper. It’s in the process of being sliced to fit between 24” on center rafters. It’s the recommended moisture barrier between the interior of the roof and the attic insulation. Approximately 18 pieces like this per bedroom, the fun part is getting it up there and into position. You’ll see below I partially solved the problem by making a mold. By using only 4-foot sections at a time, I can slide most of the big pieces into place with a stick and a nail. Then dick around with the small pieces afterward. I’m putting three lights up there, all scrap or outdated pieces salvaged from old work.
Code also says there must be a smoke, heat, and carbon dioxide detector in every room. And that they must be wired in series, so when one trips, they all go. That must make for some lively false alarms. Fortunately such wiring is no challenge to an Arduino buff. They also require a battery backup, but in the wisdom of the building code people, the specs are in some separate publication that I will have to hunt down.
The circulation of this attic fan is another vague calculation. Square footage doesn’t make sense, since attics can be all kinds of shapes. The few I’ve found that quote cubic footage don’t specify how often the air should circulate. They don’t give clear instructions for the positioning, either. My own logic says the hottest parts of the day are where your fan should be located toward. See my thinking there? If the fan is facing the hottest spot, it would need to pull air in from the cooler spots, which makes sense to me. In my view, that would be the north side under the trees, or in the evening, the east.
After sleeping in, a rare after-gig privilege, I got to the coffee shop where I heard two ladies giving these teens some crappy advice about playing music in a band. I recognized the one kid, he jams over with Bradford. Their biggest advantage is they don’t play metal. The advice, while not wrong, was not the best advice. You get that from people who sit in audiences a lot. For example, they told them they would get tips from the ladies if they played a lot of slow songs. My experience is different, women very rarely tip. You will get tips, yes, but that does not maximize either your tips or the number of happy people.
So the advice isn’t wrong, but you should strive to make the most people happy. It’s better to have a room full of mostly happy people than one where an identifiable group is pleased at the other’s expense. Women will tip, but trying to guess why, that’s a moving target. The reality is more that you should play music which makes them dance. This increases the likelihood of men then dancing, and that’s where you get your tips. Few things spell success like a crowded dance floor. Two women dancing are far more likely to do it to fast music. But I said nothing [to these people], since I didn’t know what was going on.
I’ve learned a lot more watching what audiences do than from listening to what they say. One possible explanation could be people sitting and talking naturally say certain things that are different than if they are dancing. By and large, people who are not participating will cook up all kinds of unrealistic scenarios. That, and most people are terrible at interpreting situations at face value. So it could also be that I’m making a choice whether I’d listen to women who are sitting, or women who are dancing. I know what my tip jar says.
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Next, I got most of the gear needed to put in my wiring. The part I won’t do myself is the final connection to the sub panel. One thing is clear, the electrician’s code and parts are quite intentionally labeled with confusing terms. I touched on this before, but now I am sure of it. The boxes things came in contain all kinds of names and phrases not listed in the instruction manuals. Like computer books, this is your certain signal that you are dealing with the most persistent brand of assholes, the kind that pretent they are looking out for you. If that were so, the box would say “panel” instead of “circuit breaker load center”.
Harrumph, new saws and tarpaper. There comes a time in everybody’s life when things like this are the top story of the day. Don’t laugh, some of you, because that point came a lot later in my life than it will in yours. And I can still pack a dance floor. Just not usually on Mondays.
This next photo is a temporary jig made up to pre-bend the tarpaper into the shape between the rafters before feeding them through the access hatch. It is too shallow to stand up in there, so please not advice about laying down a ladder to crawl on. The minimum length ladder is too long to bend into the available curve. What I have in mind is laying down three 2x6” planks, for a 17-1/2” of wiggle room, maybe four planks. Then walk them along the route as work progresses. Other than the insulation and that attic fan, the only work up there is the now-required switched light in every room closet size or over.
Now it is early evening and I have an itch to go out. I mean, I did carry off the gig as a bass solo and that calls for celebration. Instead, I’m staying in to read and research the building materials and codes mentioned today. For instance, here is an attic ventilator with a thermostat and humidistat. Guaranteed whisper quiet. It says 2100 square foot attic, so is 1620 CFM enough? I hope so. That’s what I want. And only $89.
Mentioned because somebody is going to call the SPCA, the weird hillbillies up the street have locked their indoor dog outside in the yard for days on end now. They feed it and all, but when left alone the dog barks incessantly. It has gone hoarse after all this time and it is a pitiful thing to hear. I’m okay, inside my soundproof rooms, but I’ve had occasion to work outside all weekend. It’s the same old story, they shower attention on it as a puppy, then later shun it. The poor animal does not understand what it’s done wrong and howls for attention. Stupid, stupid, stupid, inconsiderate people.
ADDENDUM
“Darwin’s Radio”, a less painful way to learn about molecular biology. The book is accurate but to be so, things get kind of academic. I wonder if I would follow it as well if I had zero knowledge of the field. Other than the search for the DNA, the plot is pretty standard. Gorgeous research babe married to her former professor. There’s an eye-opener into the misuse of government funding that more people stand to be aware of. The lobbying that goes on to secure government funding for the next global threat. What’s worked well in the past would include banning DDT, global cooling, global warming, save the whales, and in an all-too-familiar recent pitch by big pharma, the stockpiling of vaccines, “just in case”.
I don’t recollect the right terms, but the thousands of “inert” chains of DNA in the human genome appear to be the results of previous virus or bacteria attacks. They represent the built-up immunities adults have to most “childhood” disease. The theory goes that over time, this DNA become fragmented, but under the right circumstances, it can recombine and start an epidemic. In this case, so far the reader is supposed to suspect this occurred around the Chernobyl meltdown. A condition that causes “sexually experienced” women between 21 and 62 to have miscarriages. Talk about targeting your audience.
The book plainly states the condition does not attack virgins, the female kind of course I mean. Who would care otherwise? It’s that forgotten part of humanity that should be missed much more than it is. Highly under-rated, I’ve always thought its allure was due to things I’m not prepared to discuss. But read the lies in any personal want ads by women over 30, and you’ll piece together what I mean. It seems loss of virginity changes most women from “this is fun” to “gimme gimme”. And it is hardly just an American trouble.
