February 3, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 3, 2019, lots of small cars.
Five years ago today: February 3, 2015, no over-niters.
Nine years ago today: February 3, 2011, dry, clear, and flat.
Random years ago today: February 3, 2005, the move to flatscreens.

           Taking some time for research, I’ve found that CPVC is not the best material for passive solar heating. It expands and contracts, and this is made worse when painted black and set on metal heat collectors. The plastic gets brittle and breaks. One alternative was a product called APEX tubing, not to be confused with PEX. This is the clear hose used in salt water aquarium or marine use (but good luck finding out for what). Reports are that like PVC, the tubing is cheap but the fittings soak you, no pun intended. Furthermore, when watching videos the ones that measured the highest output temperatures did not specify the input water temperature, nor state the rate of water flowing through or the performance after a few minutes.

           It’s not all work over here. Look at my shadow on the flowerbed. And my doggie shadow critter. Alas, to get a convenient spot for a canopy for the Yamaha, I may have to relocate the flowers. As foreseen, I have been aarped by my own bank. You cannot withdraw money from your own account without a current “bank card”, even if they know you as a long-term customer. And where they used to just mail you the replacement card, you now have to both show and have your ID recorded to get it. Furthermore, you can’t mail it in, you must show up in person.
           I suspect it is a move to discover just how many out-of-state people have bank accounts here. And that leads to the next question of, “Why?” Good thing I keep a rather large buffer in other accounts so I can work around this. Most people don’t find out until they get refused cash and are forced to fork over such things as out-of-state driver’s licenses and passports and such. Myself, I have plenty of time to deal with the situation, but remember what I said about getting state ID a while back. They’ve changed that, too. I keep several state IDs as a convenience, but it also added and extra step to anyone trying to snoop. That will now be harder to accomplish.

           Have you heard of iHeartMedia? Over 90% of Americans hear them. That’s your Clear Channel people, and they are getting rid of the fat. Namely the first major replacement of humans with robots. Facts are many DJs already sound like robots and most of them only make $12.50 per hour, the entertainment equivalent of minimum wage. The stations are automating the entire process down to choosing what music to play. Referring to the layoffs as “employee dislocation”, they canned hundreds which the Post describes as a bloodbath. The new system uses the PyTorch framework, free software from Facebook.

           The idea is the PyTorch deep-learning mode will soon mix music so well that live music will no longer need to be, well, live. Clear Channel is keeping some humans (referred to in A.I. as “meat”) because they are still smarter than computers. For now, that is, but with a twist. My prediction is that the situation will follow the model established by TurboTax and the law. That is, rather than computers getting smarter, the system itself dumbs down to what the computers can already do. That’s why I got out of accounting.
           I could have used some A.I. assistance on how to level my bathroom floor. But I figured it out on my own. At least I’m still smarter than the computer. For now and only until they change the way floors are made, nomsayn? Here’s a picture of coloring the Tiger, another instance of what the Reb calls “granny art”.

           The flooring has to come up, which means uninstalling the new toilet. Upon examining my photos of the work done leveling the house, there is a 1/2” drop between the building wings. You don’t notice it because the drop is in the hallway, but in the bathroom, it is too noticeable. So I’m getting this down for reference. My logic is that the joists have been so strengthened and braced and propped that only a seismic even will cause any more settling in my lifetime. Thus, rather than level the joists, I will put cross-members between them and just apply the floorboards in the other direction. This will wreck the new wax ring on the new bowl, so I spent the $20 and got a flexible ring that can be repositioned as many times as needed.

Picture of the day.
Foroyar Hotel, Faroe Islands.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           I misread my auto insurance policy so went in to see my agent. He says it is a common error. According to the wording, I do have underinsured coverage, but it is limited by another clause to an amount equal to my bodily injury coverage. I understand that I am actually insuring the other driver in case I cause an accident, but I had my own injury clause backwards in that it is my own coverage that caps the damages they will pay out, not the other guy’s lack of it. I know that’s a bit screwy, but it means if I only have $25,000 in bodily injury coverage, I can only tack on another equal amount, which is only $50,000 total. These days, that’s a broken leg.

           It costs. This increases my premiums by 50%. But now that I sometimes have precious cargo, I have little say in the matter. These insurance companies have fine-tuned their policies to the point few consumers fully understand what is covered. I had to drop coverage to the minimum of myself and one other person in my vehicle. A third passenger would be taking their chances, insurance-wise.

           Here, I found a picture of the new improved wax ring. This is not messy and it can be repositioned. Plus it will move better until seated. The neighbor was over and we’ve locked the chickens in the henhouse. There they stay until they learn it is home. His landlady was getting on his case. The challenge here is training the dog to protect them. He will when they are in the other yard, but over here the situation changes. My yard is the most heavily wooded and both foxes and raccoon droppings can be found on occasion. I will possibly line the chicken coop with hardware cloth and insulate that with a covering of cardboard. Raccoon can be vicious and the hillbilly knows that I can’t patrol the yard constantly. You be sure to check back soon for pictures of the new bathroom interior. I went for the cedar fence pickets to give it that classic Texas outhouse appeal. I got a citi-fied dispenser and an looking for a place to put the magazine rack.
           Here’s a shot of the new leveled flooring, admit it, what other blog would show you pictures of plumbing like so? Well, I mean other than the kazillions of experts who post youTube videos and contradict each other. You know the crowd, always use a pipe cutter, never use a pipe cutter. They are not here to help out. Besides, this is pretty cramped working quarters. If I have time soon, I’ve got some photos of the “leveling” process. This was gronk work and each piece had to be custom-fitted. Fifty trips back to the chop saw. Once again, I planned ahead to make any future repairs easier. That philosophy has saved my bacon many a time on this project.

           What I mean by that is the number of times that I start what seems to be a small task, only to discover a previous repair. This bathroom seeming took a year, but to do it right involved a lot more than can be easily seen. The new flange shown in this picture was preceded by tremendous logistics. In the big picture, to get to this stage, I had to move walls, dig trenches, install new wiring, and completely re-design and rough in the kitchen plumbing, laundry, sinks, shower, and soon a new hot water tank. Any shortcuts would just have made things worse.
           I predict by late tomorrow I will finally have a permanent floor back in the bath area. Did I mention . . . yes, I did. Leveling the building made the show enclosure work itself loose. I see there are some pretty fancy replacement styles over at the lumber yard. I’m keeping the original tub, but everything else is the latest available. The décor may be Texas outhouse with granny art on the walls, and maps of Tennessee hiking trails, but the fixtures are super. You’ll see.

           I tried to do a blog backup, but over the years, the formats have changed so much they will not save as a batch. It seems easy, just copy all the files. But years like 2018 alone, because of the increase in videos, and 2019 with the growth of gifs would require some 22 DVDs each. I may have to invest in a terabyte drive strictly for managing the blog backups. Additionally, I’m about to decide on changing all photos to 640 x 480 jpegs. Over the years we have a variety of cameras and formats that pretty much do as they please. I will accept the loss of detail on the larger photos, since in 30 years I’ve never found reason to need any digital picture rendered clearer than seen on a monitor.
           At present, I’m still using the Sony, which takes gigantic file space before I detune them. I won’t switch to png for lots of reasons, the least of which is because they are trying to shove them on us. They quote the transparent background feature so often I suspect it may be their format’s only attribute.

ADDENDUM

           Oh boy, yard work. Here’s the clip of weeding the flower bed near the back fence. Once again a temporary post becomes too popular to delete. Watch as I accidentally pull up one of my prized pansies. That’s what I get for being a speed-weeder. What, you didn’t see that one coming? I’m learning the importance of full sun when the package says that. These slow growing flowers have shade in the mornings. I’ve found another collard green growing wild, which the neighbors find more impressive than I do. They keep growing a stalk after I pick the leaves. Is that edible? On-line sources don’t cover this part of the growth cycle. Do you cut it down, or preen it? Can it be coaxed to grow more leaf than stem?

Last Laugh