One year ago today: November 16, 2024, Rosie’s Two Legs.
Five years ago today: November 16, 2020, should Mars be free?
Nine years ago today: November 16, 2016, my last turkey.
Random years ago today: November 16, 1982, remember the Dunphie.
Ha, look at what happened to my fence. This is a couple months on, I had put the pickets in place but either ran out of staples or it got dark. I left it and of course other chores means it got left for a month. And the pickets began to warp as shown here. Some may look at that and say, dang, now I have to repair that. The robot club says, y’know, I’ve never seen that before. Is this a chance to create a new fence design? Why did some warp and other didn’t? If I salvage curved pieces, is there something to build with them? Can other pieces be warped the same.
Another venture draws to a close. Today I delisted $1,292 in vacuum tubes because they were not moving. This leaves around 40 tubes all with price tags higher than $20. Some other method of selling these should be found, but eBay charges for listings that don’t move after a while. Fact is, eBay kind of sucks at selling small price articles one at a time. Besides my other dislikes, such as making basic features hard to use, the website itself is crappy. It carries the hallmarks of a startup that got lucky, now don’t dare change a thing because they don’t know how they got there.
The highest priced tube left is a triode for $115. I should be sleeping in, but I want that stove operational so I can make biscuits and muffins again. I use a mix, but I don’t skimp. Today a muffin averages $4.60 and regular coffee $3.60. Dunkin has quit posting prices online and Starbucks lists 25 different concoctions as “hot coffee”. I quit hanging out at Dunkin when a coffee and donut went over $3.00. I don’t really stop for coffee on the road any more, except in Maimi where I still get my prescriptions renewed. Yeah, yeah, I know, if this medicine works, why to I need refills?
Silence until noon, so I’m going to work on the wiring. Why so much neighborhood silence on the day I determined must end with baking muffins? Do they know I want to make noise? If so, how do they know? Time for another coffee.
Sure enough the wiring is wonky, the old range was wired for 30A, but had #8 cable, but it was 2-wire. My plan is to rip out the old 110V to free up breaker space. Shown here is the location I cut the wires in two and had a hell of a time pulling them out. You know, I just realized I don’t know the name of this box in the picture. I always called it a Carlon, but that’s a brand name. The problem was that conduit was packed so tight the insulation stripped when I tried to pull the wires.
Why bother? Because I figured a way to fake a three-wire cable, but I need to run both a small cable and a ground wire through that tube. That as not going to happen until I cleared some space. The day got too hot and that is work on the south side, where you don’t want to be. I called a staff meeting and went over the game plan. I’m going to rob the old 2-wire. This means I need some way to splice two 8-gauge wires. Hmmm, do they make such a connector?
Chinese rapeseed field.
(a.k.a. Canola oil)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Four hours and forty minutes work time, 9/10ths electrical. See that picture, that’s my first four-course meal since April. The muffins just came out of the oven, the biscuits are still browning. The two rear burners have turkey gravy and melted butter. What’s the fourth course? Um think fast—ah yes, the coffee. What you see is not what you got. Is the stove working? Yes. Is the wiring done? No, not by a long shot.
My decisions was innovate or go muffin-less. I bought the smallest pack of the biggest wing-nuts, two bucks apiece. Then I nibbled the 8-wires down three strands each and forced them into place. It was those messy waterproof type, which gets all over everything. While in the pit, I cleaned up some other wiring and water piping, carefully pacing the work. At this time, the old water heater and stove wiring is strung across the back corner of the kitchen. Working with thick cable has never been my favorite.
It was skeeter time right after dark, so I threw on the baking and checked out the other features. Everything works and it is pretty intuitive. Note that pot at center back on the stovetop. That’s one of my scout habits, keeping a pot of hot or boiling water to dunk my utensils in between use. A pity this photo doesn’t give the medley of wonderful aromas, I opted to use up my turkey gravy since, at today’s prices, I think I’ll settle for chicken. I liked turkey until the time JZ and I paid $11 for turkey wings at the Broward County Fair.
Staying up late to solve this stove dilemma, I can’t see any other way but to figure some way to run a whole new 8/3 cable down that existing conduit. This means the cable alone will cost 26% as much as the stove just in materials. It may take up to a month to make this decision. I am, for the first time in nearly 50 years, living without a long-term game plan. That is, living like most people around here. The location of all this wiring makes for nasty, tedious work.
ADDENDUM
In another classic Trump move, he has announced the DOJ is going after Epstein’s friends, including the Clintons. The twist is Trump has long fully admitted what his connection was to Epstein and the MSM meticulously avoided saying Trump had touched any underage girls. But they implied it, so no mercy. It’s simple logic, just because you go to a neighbor’s barbeque, does not mean you knew they were bank robbers. So Trump has the Democrats openly supporting the very criminals that Americans now dislike the most.
It’s yet another reversal, but now the Democrats want the files released—but in order to prepare a coordinated defense to what is coming. An educated guess says this means they have seen the files and know they are mostly lists and logs subject to interpretation. And they want to be the interpreters. But Trump is systematically dismantling the Biden/Obama/Bush/Clinton system of appointed judges that the Left was counting on to let them off on technicalities. They have to move fast.
