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WEEK 41 2018

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Sixteen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002,

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Saturday 13 October 2018

Saturday - Beautiful weather, 65-70F, no wind.

AH came by and we determined that the GFCI circuit breaker was bad. The little local hardware store didn't have a replacement, so we went into town and got one. Everything is working fine now, yay!

I'll have to talk to Tim, I think there should be another breaker for the kitchen area.

And as I said: beautiful weather.

So I did some more fascia work after the electrical stuff, and finished it up. It looks startlingly better, considering that its just one layer of primer. There are some minor repairs that need filler still, and some caulking here and there, but the bare wood is mostly covered now.

Pretty tired afterwards, a long day and week.

Friday 12 October 2018 Friday - Nice weather.

I was pretty tired so just worked on the app for a bit in the morning. No huge progress to report there...

I did go and have lunch with Dr. G midday. We hadn't talked in a while and it was good to catch up over a surprisingly tasty lunch at Don Chato's in Crown Valley. We discussed STARS for a bit, and I went over some FreeCad documentation that I'd written some time ago.

Thursday 11 October 2018 Thursday - Pleasant fall weather, not much wind.

I continued sanding, repairing, and priming the fascia, this time on the west side of the house. In five hours I managed to do about 40LF. Pretty tired afterwards but it looks good (from a distance). The new paint highlights some repairs that still need doing.

The primer is white, but I do need to finalize on an external color scheme soon.

While ripping a plank for a repair the other day the exterior outlet circuit died. I've reset all the breakers and it's still dead. AH suggested looking for a GFI outlet somewhere that might be tripped - the house has a "whole house GFI" but sometimes people add individual units. So far I haven't found one.

I was reading up on Hurricane Michael. They are calling it a Cat-5 Hurricane, but truthfully the ground level winds were only Cat-1 or Cat-2, maybe 100mph or so. Damaging, but not the end of the world.

Everything is hype and/or lies these days in the media, even simply verifiable things.

Book #37 was The Proof House (Fencer #3), by K.J. Parker. It ends the series in a gloomy, depressing, pointless and horrible way. Parker is a good writer, but I don't know that I'd recommend his books to anyone.

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Wednesday - Nice weather.

I went and pulled weeds - mostly tumbleweeds - in the front of the house and the side yard, in the morning. This took a couple of hours and filled both the green waste and the trash bins. I had it all done in time for trash pickup. The green waste and trash go into the same truck...

Worked on the app in the afternoon, just grinding away at things.

In the evening we finished off Season 5 of Blacklist. The finale was a bit of a letdown, but there were several good episodes leading up to it, so it's all good...

Tuesday 9 October 2018

Tuesday - Pleasant weather, getting a bit windy after 2pm.

The hot water heater stayed lit, and it seems to be coming out a bit warmer and to be a little less noisy when heating. I only got a little buildup of out whilst draining - half a shot glass of solids perhaps, so I think there is probably a lot still in there. You could actually see little bits of copper corrosion in the white crystals.

I am tempted to put a new water heater in before I put in new flooring, but can't quite decide if I have more faith in an American-made heater built 20 years ago, or a new Chinese product? Also, $600 is a lot of money.

I painted the eave's fascia boards for the south side of the house and garage, and the front of the garage. This used up the rest of the first gallon of primer, and it was getting windy at 2pm so I knocked off. There is just the front of the house, so perhaps 80LF of fascia left to do. Then it's time for a water jet of the eaves underneath for the rafters and soffit area, then drying time, then caulking and spray painting, then finish painting on the eaves, then house prepping and painting... A lot left to do, but even primer makes it look better.

My friends gave me a nice Werner 6' ladder on my birthday a while back, perfect for this sort of stuff.

My hands and upper arms were feeling the burn in the evening.

Painting the eaves fascia with primer.

Book #36 was The Belly of the Bow, by K.J. Parker (Fencer #2). A good book, though a bit horrible in places - Parker doesn't hesitate to kill off characters, his battle scenes are pretty rough, and even his protagonists aren't always particularly likable or admirable.

N texted back, said she and S went and stayed at the Olea Hotel again for the one year anniversary, and had fun visiting the hot springs and stuff around there.

Dinner at the H's. The boys have mid-terms tomorrow...wow...seems like they just started!

Monday 8 October 2018

Monday - A very cool morning, 50F!

When I took my morning shower the water was tepid, and even turning the knob to HOT didn't help. It seems as though the cold temperatures had cooled my nearly empty propane tank to the point where there wasn't enough pressure to keep the water heater pilot lit.

I mentioned it to my neighbor, and he advanced his trip to Costco planned for Tuesday, and we went into town with his old F-250 and filled our tanks after lunch. It's the 100# tank, and it took exactly 23.86 gallons according to the meter there, for 100.212 pounds. At $2.20/gallon it was only $50 for over three months!

While the hot water tank was cool I took the opportunity to try to drain it of silt and scale. Not much came out - the tank dates to January of 1998, so it's probably massively scaled up inside. It'll be interesting to see if the banging and gurgling sounds are as loud in the future during heating as they have been.

I also had some issues relighting the water heater. There was so much air in the line that I finally had (at TD's suggestion) to disconnect the gas line at the controller and let it vent for about 5 seconds. After airing the house out I re-lit it (with help from AH) and everything is fine now, apparently.

I had worked all morning on the app, and it was now after 5pm, and past time to quit.

Ah, Apple, Apple, Apple.

While working on the app I clicked on an image in the asset catalog to delete it, and clicked OK in the dialog, without carefully looking at the dialog message.

Which was apparently: "Do you want to delete the entire Asset Catalog? (586 images)"

Why would there even be such an option?

Anyhow, "Undo" in Xcode won't undo that sort of operation. "Put It Back" no longer exists in the Trashcan.

Fortunately I had done a commit just before, and "Delete All Changes" rolled me back to a good version with the asset catalog still present. Only 45 minutes of lost work...

I can't even get angry about this stuff any more, it's just Apple's indifference to the developer manifesting itself one more time.

Sunday 7 October 2018

Sunday - Cool in the morning - wool shirt weather, but overall a nice day, windy in the afternoon.

Did my shopping, I needed quite a bit of stuff.

N&S's one year wedding anniversary. I texted her and wished her the best.

I was pretty tired, didn't do much in the afternoon. I meant to do my wash, but didn't get around to it. Did some reading.

Picture of the Week

Sunrise on the fall equinox

The fall sunrise on the Equinox, 2018.

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