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WEEK 29 2013

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First Post, 17 March 2002

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2012

Saturday 20 July 2013

Saturday - Well, I can't get to the web page today. Not sure what is up. I've noticed that I occasionally lose contact on a weekend for a while, so no big deal....

Book #32 was Retreat and Adapt, by Thomas DePrima. This is the umpteenth A Galaxy Unknown book, I don't know why I bother to read them, OCD setting in after I read the first I suppose.

On this day, in 1969, I was sitting in front of my parent's old console TV, with the rabbit ear antenna's adjusted just so, watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Friday 19 July 2013

Friday - Picked up some lumber for the paver edge restraints. I've been avoiding this task for about 3 years, maybe more, time to get it done. Miserably hot even picking up the lumber and getting it cut in the morning.

Helped transport my friends goat card to her place of business. The little disabled kids are going to go crazy over it... And, apparently, one can rent trained goats. In fact there is a whole section of the 4H manual devoted to goat carts! The car was designed for show, and static display, so it'll need some reinforcement before it can be used. In particular the wheels are fallen apart.

I also gave her an external CD/DEV drive. Her iMac at her office had a failed CD drive, and she has a number of games for the disabled kids that run from CD. We discussed taking apart the ancient unit to fix the drive, or replacing the whole thing, but then I remembered the antique Plextor external read/write drive ("Works with Windows XP!") in my closet. The iMac recognized it as an external USB device and runs things from it without any trouble. I don't know if it would write anything, but that function isn't actually needed, so everything is hunky dory.

The thermostat arrived for the dryer, so installing it is a task I'll probably tackle over the weekend.

Thursday 18 July 2013

Thursday - The guy installing the swamp cooler came by and picked it up in the morning. Hopefully it goes well over there.

It's hot, but there is a high haze - apparently there is a large fire out in Palm Springs, 111 miles away. Generally we have a stiff westerly wind, but it's been unnaturally calm, and of course high level winds can move in a different direction of those near ground level. At one point you could see clouds of fire, but now it's mostly just smoke high in the air.

The financing is proceeding. It's a bit like dealing with detective Columbo: "Just one more document Mr. Hahn, then we're done..." There are rumors that the housing market is softening, even in red hot Texas. I wonder if I can refi my refi? This makes the third refinancing in 19 years.

My own swamp cooler, with new pads and oiled bearings is keeping up with the heat, for the most part. The humidity in the afternoon has been low, less than 10%, and that makes a huge difference.

It makes me second guess the mechanical air conditioner purchase, but just a little. We get several weeks of humidity every fall, and the swamp cooler efficiency drops, so that you get maybe a 10 degree delta of 100% humid air inside, which is gross when it's 100F+ outside.

Wednesday 17 July 2013

Wednesday - Typical mid-90's weather in Lancaster. Some high thin overcast now and then.

The day was kind of devoured by little things. A visit to the bank for refi stuff. Putting new pads and a new pump into the new-to-us swamp cooler, and cleaning and prepping the bottom with that "spray henry's" stuff. This is actually a side draft window unit, but the guy installing it will take off the exhaust port and controls, since the house is already plumbed for side-draft and an interior wall mounted thermostat.

Interestingly the property management people had recommended a company that gave a $1300 estimate. Between the cost of a slightly used unit and a handyman she had the total out the cost door is more like $600. You have to wonder if the PM company was getting a bit of a kickback? It's mounted 8 feet up the wall, which is why were aren't doing it ourselves.

Since we were already at it I took the chance to replace all the pads on my own swamp cooler, and re-oil the bearings.

Also picking up a little goat cart that S wanted to get. Lunch with another friend, the one whose Piano I helped move the other day.

Paying bills, and more bills, buying stuff and more stuff. I seem to be hemmoraghing money this month.

While picking up some kitty litter at WalMart I walked by the electronics section and happened to notice that they had keyboards for Macs for about the same price as Amazon. Not having arrow keys has been a consistent minor thorn in my side while programming, so I bought one. It's more modern and low profile. I prefer the form factor of the older one, but it'll do.

This was sitting on my front door screen the other day. Yuck. Thank god insects are as small as they are.

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Tuesday - Keeping busy, doing this and that. It's time for mid year bills, among other things. Car insurance, boat insurance, boat towing insurance, renewal on one of the cars, and so on. For some reason Barnes & Noble wanted to double bill me, so I called and fixed that little issue.

S's rental has a swamp cooler that is failing, so she bought one off of Craigs List and left it in my garage to have some maintenance done tomorrow, before installation late Wednesday or Thursday. This turned out to be a unit that we saw at a yard sale for $350 on Saturday. The seller wouldn't dicker, but here it was three days later for $300.

Speaking of air conditioners my friend Tim picked up a little casement style air conditioner, from a Craigslist seller in San Clemente. It is a bit narrower, 14.5" rather than 16", and will fit in my slider style window easily. He dropped it off at the office in Ventura and I'll pick it up - and leave some cash for him, - next time I'm down. Which will probably be next week.

The USB speakers arrived and seem to work OK. Sounds from iTunes and from the app all come through OK.

Book #31 was On Whale Island, by Daniel Hays. Interesting.

Hay's was the author of My Old Man and the Sea, which I guess I last read in 2004, about sailing a very small boat around Cape Horn with his dad. It was a success, and he lived for a while on the proceeds. Then, married with a stepson, the money runs out. He had bought an entire island years earlier, off of Nova Scotia, with an inheritance, and he convinces his wife to move to the island for a year. It isn't all that coming-up-roses of a stay. Things are rough, and he's pretty straight with the reader about problems with his stepson, problems with his wife, and problems with his own ADHD and his other psychological issues.

Monday 15 July 2013

Monday - This would have been Dad's 89th birthday. It's amazing how much I still miss him, and my mother.

Over the fourth we were discussing various 4th of July stays, with appellations like "the cabin", "the beach house", "the troll house", "the little place". It actually sparked me to do a bit of research on my fourth of July stays. Between the blog and pictures I came up with this:

Year	4th	After
2000	Cayucos & Martinez	Martinez
2001	Lancaster
2002	Martinez	Lancaster
2003	Beachfront	Martinez
2004	Beachfront	Lancaster
2005	Beachfront	Martinez
2006	Martinez	Lancaster
2007	Beachfront
2008	Yosemite	Martinez
2009	Troll House	Lancaster
2010	Ocean Ave.	Lancaster
2011	Ocean Ave.	Martinez
2012	Ocean Ave.	Martinez
2013	Ocean Ave.	Lancaster

The beachfront house was great to sit in and watch the passers-by, human and animal, but we never got good days and the upkeep was minimal. Only one of the two bathrooms ever worked over a five year span, and it had no door, just a cloth. The "lawn" was 100% stickers & burrs, the kitchen was minuscule and the carpet was threadbare.

But we'd probably still be renting the beach house, but in 2008, a year when I actually went to Yosemite instead, the rental agent gave it to "an old customer" in preference to S, after five years! So we decided to look elsewhere. That was the year of the "tiny house" in Cayucos, which must have been pretty darn small. The following year was a rental in something that looked a bit like an old garage converted to a house. It had a four foot high inter story area, with bunks, that the kids loved and hence the name "the troll house". But the accommodations were pretty spartan and strange. Tim and his family stayed in an attached unit, which was also rather odd.

The Ocean Ave. house is much further from the beach, but big and new and clean and everything works....or did. It's slipping a bit now, sockets too worn to hold plugs, a broken toaster, dirty patio - small stuff though, compared to the other places.

Now that I think of it, there was a stay in a condo at the north end of town, once. It was nice, and had a great view of the Rock, but the owner lived in the adjoining unit and sat out on the balcony, talking on the phone continuously, all day, about her various medical issues. Ugh. We didn't go back. It may have been in the late 1990's.

Sunday 14 July 2013

Sunday - It's getting hot. Too hot to work outside after about noon. S came by and we stripped the peach tree of the netting and the remaining good fruit. My inability to completely cover it with netting meant that a lot of fruit was half eaten by birds. And a lot more very ripe fruit - both peaches and apples - is on the ground and needs to be picked up.

My dryer has been frying my clothes regardless of any setting, Cotton/Permanent Press/Delicate, and I was thinking of buying a new unit. But my friend S said that she had fixed her newer front loading unit with a $20 part, so I did a bit of research on the Internet. Apparently the overheat is likely due to the temperature sensor failure, a $6 part. So I've ordered on off the Internet. It essentially sits in the exhaust duck duct and shuts the gas off at 155F, and back on at 130F. A clogged line will have a similar effect, but my line is fairly clear.

I also ordered a set of USB digital speakers for the old Mac Mini. When I put it back together after inserting the new RAM I was concerned about a certain ribbon cable that I had almost pulled off the board, but things seemed OK on boot up. Except that sometime later I realized I had no sound. A bit of research revealed that the cable I was nervous about was, indeed, the audio cable. Or rather, it's fitting to the processor board, far too small to re-solder. I thought I was pretty well scr**ed, but it turns out that you can get sound out through the USB ports, $12 for the speaker set.

I'll let S use the mac mini at her house, and she can run whatever bits of code I send her way in the Xcode simulator.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Southwestern Desert Dinosaur

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