Well, it’s Friday again. And according to my 6yo, it’s Eeyore’s birthday. He’s 15. Maybe there will be cake.
58F, 91%RH and breezy with partly cloudy skies. We’ve got outdoor school stuff this afternoon and evening so I hope it clears and stays clear.
Lots of errands and running around today.
In wider news, what did they think he meant when he said “Put America first.” ??
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-02/furious-world-responds-trump-tariffs-vows-retaliation
” Furious World Responds To Trump Tariffs, Vows Retaliation”
“Trump may think that trade wars are “good and easy to win” but the rest of the world disagrees, and judging by the barrage of reactions overnight from China to Europe, is rather furious ahead of Trump’s import tariff order.”
And then there is this, which is a mile from my rent house…
“Heartbreaking remains of missing woman who died while trapped in the WALL of her home when she fell through her attic and lay undiscovered until the house went into foreclosure three years on”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5452367/New-homeowners-discovered-missing-previous-owner-wall.html
I’ve been in a lot of attics. I’ve done a fair amount of residential construction and remodel. I have NO IDEA how one “falls thru a loose attic board” and ends up in a wall cavity large enough for even a small child. There just aren’t wall cavities open to the attic that would fit an adult woman. Something stinks here.
and with that,
I’m outta here for the day.
n
32º and snowy this morning. Rain turned to snow last night & came down pretty good. I “forgot” to run the thrower this morning, but I’ll be home in time to clear it for the wife to get to work. Kids’ school was closed. Interstate closed & trucks are detouring right by the school.
And I’m feeling a little under the weather myself.
Light rain but mom has a 9am doctor’s appointment. Nothing like moving a 90 yo woman with a walker around in the rain. She’s still pretty good on her own. Worse right now is the wife and her umbrellas. Not too mechanically inclined.
Something stinks here
Well, at least it did for a month or two. I find it odd there is a cavity in a wall that is large enough to hold a person. That wall cavity would need to be at least two feet in thickness. I would consider it more of an option that someone killed the lady, built a fake wall, stuff her in, sealed it up, then abandoned the house.
Of course such an investigation is akin to the police ruling a death a suicide when the victim was found shot in the head, twice, from self inflicted wounds.
It is 64ºF and slightly overcast in Galveston. Beautiful. TASB gave us a suite with great views of the ocean. MrsAtoz is President’s Circle with Hertz so we grabbed a Mercedes E350 for the drive. The car has more control knobs than Mr. Ray has warts on his back. One wrong press and you might eject the wife.
Re:household wall cavities. My parents old house, built in the 1920s (clapboard and probably about the same size as the one pictured in the article), originally had a coal heater in the center of the house. Probably mid century it was replaced by a natural gas floor heater, and the owner simply removed the coal unit and plastered over inside. At some point the house was reroofed and the protruding chimney taken down flush with the attic floor and some boards nailed across.
No one ever fell down it, and we only found it by accident whilst remodeling in the 1980’s, but the suggested cause of death doesn’t seem too implausible to me.
more control knobs than Mr. Ray has warts on his back
One has to ask how you know such intimate information. Wait, I probably don’t want to know.
the suggested cause of death doesn’t seem too implausible to me
In that case I would agree. Although why one would keep such a large space and not put it to use seems odd to me.
In Southern Oregon back in the 60’s a guy went missing. They found him sometime in the spring as they got to the bottom of the hay in the barn. He had apparently been in this farmer’s barn looking for something to steal (a guess on the part of the LEO’s of course, he may have been drunk out of his mind) and a stack of hay bales fell on him. Farm owner never restacked the bales as he was going to use them.
The smell of something dying, in a barn that had feeding stalls on both sides, that were ripe with manure, was apparently just chalked up to barnyard smells. The corpse had been eaten by mice and rats that are common in barns and was nothing but bones. They had to use dental records to determine the identity. The farm owner had discovered the bones as he was moving the hay to feed his animals.
Never got much news coverage if any and it was just local news spread by word of mouth.
Never got much news coverage if any and it was just local news spread by word of mouth
Is the world really that much weirder than it used to be or do we just hear about more things today? With 7×10^9 people walking around on this planet and the ability to hear any news about any one of them anywhere at anytime really shifts the perception toward the bizarre.
Also, with 7 billion people, just about anything that possibly can happen to a person is probably going to happen, statistically speaking.
Today is National Banana Cream Pie Day.
https://www.punchbowl.com/holidays/national-banana-cream-pie-day
WRT wide spaces between walls: My Maternal Grandparent home, built in the 1850s, had over almost 2-feet of space between the exterior wood sheeting and lath and plaster inner walls. Made for easy work when the electrified and plumbed the house. As a kid I once crawled up that void from the basement to the attic, using the lath like a ladder. Caused some interior plaster to pop, my Grandmother was not too happy.
Got a Ring Neighborhood Alert this morning of gunshots at a Days Inn about a half mile away. All the scanner traffic shifted to a scrambled channel.
At least our progressive goobernor is still afraid of the voters:
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/business/national-business/article202957114.html
Is the world really that much weirder than it used to be or do we just hear about more things today?
Both. Social media and almost instant communication have changed the world. Now when someone commits an evil act they know they will get wide spread coverage and their 15 minutes of fame. I think this makes people weirder as they want to seek that fame.
The result of this has been school shootings, where one wants to outdo the last shooting, see shooting as a way to expel their anger. Mass attacks are the same way. Someone that wants to die sees the way to go in a blaze of glory doing as much carnage as possible so that everyone knows who they were.
That and the pussification of males in school. No longer are school fights tolerated. When I was in school the combatants met after school with boxing gloves and supervised by a couple of coaches. They beat the snot out of each other with no permanent damage. Generally settled the issue for good. Now the males are sent to the office, given a coloring book and some crayons and told to color their feelings. Some psychologist, a wimp unto themselves, dreamed up this solution. And because they have a PhD they must know the solution. Instead they are the problem.
@Ray Thompson: :two thumbs up:
means I agree for those of you in Rio Linda
Update on the “shots fired” report I got via a Ring Neighborhood Alert earlier:
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/crime/article203101164.html
Well, UK building standards are…variable. I’ve seen some beautiful work, but I’ve seen a lot more shoddy stuff.
One of my standard examples was an apartment we lived in for a year or so. It was a very old building, where running water was added during a relatively recent remodelling. So this pipe comes up the outside of the building, goes through the outer wall. So far, so good. This pipe is lovingly encased in a wooden box the whole way up to about 2 feet from the wall of our apartment. There, the box ends, a huge hole is bashed in the wall, and the pipe goes in. That’s it, that’s how they left it.
The same apartment: the overflow to the kitchen sink was never hooked up. The wallpaper in the living room was upside down (it was plants, this was kind of obvious). There were just zillions of places where the workmen couldn’t be bothered to finish a job, or even to do it halfway right. Typical UK. Given that kind of care in the building trade, it’s not surprising that they might waste a bunch of unnecessary space in a wall.
FWIW, even when I lived in the US, I never understood why they make attics where you can put a foot through the ceiling below. What a crappy way to (not) finish off an attic. I always put boards down, at least in the areas I needed to access.
@brad
FWIW, even when I lived in the US, I never understood why they make attics where you can put a foot through the ceiling below. What a crappy way to (not) finish off an attic. I always put boards down, at least in the areas I needed to access.
Priced plywood lately?
I never understood why they make attics where you can put a foot through the ceiling below
Some of that has to do with ventilating the space and keeping mold from forming. The other part is there may be electrical wiring and junction boxes in the ceiling. It is against code to make junction boxes inaccessible and thus flooring in the attic would hide the junction boxes. The other part, build the house as cheap as possible.
I have seen many houses that were wired with 14 gauge wiring rather than 12 gauge. That limits the amount of current to 15 amps on circuit whereas 12 gauge would get you 20 amp. The sheaths on 14 gauge wire is white, 12 gauge is yellow, 10 gauge is orange. The difference is minor but is a major pain if you want to add outlets. Using the smaller wire “may” save a $500.00 on a house. But when a builder multiplies that by a couple hundred houses in a large development it all adds up.
The big thing wrong with computer security
@medium wave, thank for the links, /sarcasm on but AlGore (who served in Vietnam BTW) invented the internet so nothing can possibly go wrong./sarcasm off
I have yet to see anything invented that is human proof. Too bad the internet makes it too easy for even the innocent to get led astray.
“The Challenges of Opening a Data Center — Part 1”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/choosing-data-center/
The big thing wrong with computer security
http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/1803/index.html#x180302
The only safe computer is an air-gapped computer. Good luck with that. It will never change as the attackers continuously learn new methods.
Eye tracker arrived today. Global marketplace, made possible by cheap hydrocarbons and SCIENCE.
n
“Texas sets early voting record in nonpresidential year”
https://www.lmtonline.com/news/politics/texas/article/Texas-sets-early-voting-record-in-12721373.php
“Democrats represent a major reason for the records and have been out-voting Republicans since the start of early voting on Feb. 20. There have been 25,000 more Democratic ballots than Republicans have cast. That is a big change from the last two gubernatorial election cycles when Republicans dramatically outvoted Democrats in the primaries by well over 100,000 in each year.”
I don’t think that Texas will go blue this year but, we are going to come very close to it. Texas may go blue in 2020 though.
We may see the Junior Senator, Ted Cruz, go down though. His opponent is being funded out of state very heavily.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
A wet wall might have enough room.
@Nick
Eye tracker arrived today
That was speedy.
“there may be electrical wiring and junction boxes in the ceiling. It is against code to make junction boxes inaccessible and thus flooring in the attic would hide the junction boxes. The other part, build the house as cheap as possible.”
The latter, more than the former. If you plan to actually put a floor in the attic, then you just put the junction boxes on top of it. Better, attach the wiring and junction boxes to the rafters, so nobody trips over them. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the “cheap as possible” bit.
Of course, I’m now coming at this from the Swiss perspective, where houses are seriously over-built. If I want to hang up a picture in a new spot, it involves a hammer-drill, because even the interior walls are solid brick. There is a fairly new trend to wooden construction, but even the wooden houses are basically bomb-proof.
medium wave, thanks for the link. It looks like a very interesting article. Not only that but it looks like something I might want to make a habit of reading.