Hot and humid. Of course. But I mean HOT and HUMID. Yesterday was both, but thankfully most of my day was in the shade. Not as much of a breeze as the day before but still not dripping with sweat unless I was in the sun. I’m getting some funny tan lines though.
I fought my way through the most difficult area yesterday, and things should go faster now. The access was so limited that just swinging the excavator from the hole side to the unload side, was a multi-step process. The 20 yard dumpster is almost full to the top. I won’t overfill it, I can stack material and move it twice if I have to.
Had to refill the excavator fuel tank. 5 gallons lasted all those hours. That’s pretty great. I was figuring 5-10 gallons per DAY. The skid steer still has half a tank. It did beep at me and flash an error code.
Thought I’d broken it, but the intarwebs set me straight. The engine had to ‘regen’ whatever that means, and you have to stop work while it does. Something to do with emission control, and it’s VERY expensive if you don’t stop and let it do its thing. It would be nice to have plain english errors, since there is a bright display screen for setup and management that doubles as a backup cam. No, gotta have an icon, and a number in a log. Programmers. Surprisingly hard to find good info online about the errors, and what the icons mean.
Had one scary moment when I got confused, went down instead of up, and raised the mini-ex onto one tread. I was already leaning back and that pitched me far enough I thought I was going over. I don’t think I was actually in danger of flipping it, they have a really low CG, but it felt like I’d F’d up big time. Took a few minutes for my heartrate to return to normal. The online advice, if you get yourself in trouble take your hands off the controls, worked perfectly.
——————————–
Today I’ll start with some electrical trouble shooting. When I ‘found” the power supply to the dock house, I only pulled the conduit about 10 inches, but it was enough. No power in the dock house. I will investigate that while Sunday morning is happening to everyone else. There are a lot of people at the lake this weekend, and no one wants to hear diesel engines at 8am.
I’ll just make a repair today. I’ll replace the line later with a proper branch circuit in some liquidtight conduit, or at least actual electrical conduit and not PVC water pipe. I don’t have everything I need to do that here yet, nor do I have the time. I hope that I just pulled apart some wire that was only twisted and taped, and that I didn’t rip it out of something hard to replace. It would be nice if his poor work practice helped me this time.
Then it’s back to digging a hole. A really big hole.
Meanwhile, Russia has promised to open the canned sunshine if anyone else FA and FO. I’d say, get some preps together. Lots of them. Stack it high.
nick
(and btw whatever has been eating the peaches off the tree has eaten all but TWO at this point. I don’t thing I’ll get a single peach.)
Last first post.
Train to the airport in Frankfurt today for a night in a hotel. Then fly to Atlanta tomorrow.
Did the check in online, have the boarding passes. Just need to scan the passports at the kiosk and get baggage tags.
Long trip. Not certain it was a good idea for a trip this long. We will have to rethink our next trip.
Generally good advice. A combination of “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” and “Stop. Observe. Think. Act.”
re Blowtorch Boy, it occurs to me that one should also start carrying packages of latex gloves and disposable shivs. If one should see such an event occurring, pull on a disposable balaclava and disposable gloves, go up, stick a shiv in his gut somewhere, and walk away.
re Saint Greta, it’s only appropriate that she be given a fake doctorate in theology, given that she’s best known for work in the Cult of Warmenism. However, a doctorate in theology didn’t match my memory so I checked and found that this will be her third doctorate, the first two being in law, of all things, and a doctora honoris causa which didn’t even specify a field; U of Mons (Belgium) wanted to honor her but couldn’t be bothered to come up with a justification for it.
Frau Greta [insert sound of horses whinnying].
Or maybe it should be the sound of V8 engines being given the “Cash for Clunkers” mechanical euthanasia, emitting one last rev befoe their engine blocks seize.
No. The theft gangs are very sophisticated in the operations. No sense in getting killed over some dirtbag going after a $40 weed whacker
For all of his effectiveness in Polk County dealing with the overabundance of pedos working on and living near the Disney property, even Sheriff Grady Judd has a severe problem with the organized theft rings going after EBay/Amazon Gold in places like Home Depot.
Ironically, even the property along I-4 outside Lakeland which used to be a big Kraft orange juice facility is now partially taken over by Amazon.
Amazon plowed under the most productive tomato fields in the world outside Tampa more than a decade ago building their first Florida facility.
Thought I’d broken it, but the intarwebs set me straight. The engine had to ‘regen’ whatever that means, and you have to stop work while it does. Something to do with emission control, and it’s VERY expensive if you don’t stop and let it do its thing.
Diesel, right ? It is the particulate (soot) filter. The soot filter captures all the diesel soot and then burns it off at regular intervals or when the pressure drop goes too high. The burning the soot in the soot filter is called regening. The regen process runs the engine at high rpm and opens the exhaust values to throw burning diesel vapor into the filter at 1,600 F. Only takes a minute or three to run. Generally runs every 75 hours or 2,000 miles.
The soot filter is a high maintenance item. Generally fails before 100, 000 miles. The same with the DEF injection system. If you have a diesel with these, plan for a high expense date with your dealer. Most people in the sticks just remove the systems when the warranty runs out.
I hate all the new vehicle icons. There is no explanation for them. And there is no standard for them either so each engine manufacturer comes up with their own. Neat, right ?.
82 F here on the West Bank of the Brazos River. Gonna be a hot one today. The cat is back from his adventures outside. The dog only stated outside 5 minutes at most. We are predicted for 97 F today, we will see that and then some.
I ran two water sprinklers yesterday for 9 hours. I suspect half of the water went into the air immediately. Our water is $7 per thousand gallons. Gonna be a $300 of water month I bet.
That reminds me – I need to check the sprinkler system this weekend, replace the busted heads, and get scheduled for anything serious.
I know that the AC installers killed the same head that various AC companies have destroyed practically every year since we’ve lived here.
The dry season usually never starts this late in Austin.
Got one piece of bacon left, one slice of banana bread and most of a mug of coffee. The eggs have graced my palate. In just a bit, the rest will be gone and I’ll have to start my day. No more delays.
It’s overcast with a breeze, and has gone up one degree to 81F already, just in half an hour. I think it will be hot.
Little bit of back pain this am. I’m going to have to do a bit more stretching and arranging than usual. Looking out the bedroom sliding door on a big open flat area where our deck will eventually be is some compensation though. I’m not sure what a contractor would have charged to do what I’m doing, but I’m sure it would be a lot. Especially after the big breaker didn’t break something. Like one of the stairs. Had to take that out in 2 giant pieces.
I have filled a 20 yard dumpster with broken concrete, and I’m about half done. I haven’t even started on the stairs. Astounding the amount of concrete old boy put in, and it didn’t solve his problem, only made it worse. Still, lasted his lifetime.
No more delay……………
n
I get one night in Vegas, now off to Yuma for a week. Back to Vegas for a week, then our week long training summit at the South Point Hotel. Then back to Texas and a conference in, gulp, Austin, but it pays well.
I’m thinking about xeroscaping the front yark in Tejas. The big oak tree makes it hard to grow grass in the front. Two neighbors have done that, so I guess the HOA is OK with it. I like the mostly white gravel with pea gravel for walkways. A leaf blower keeps it neat.
The old boy who built our BOL was a truck driver. He must have had access to a lot of building site rubble. The patio is sitting on a thick layer of that plus lots and lots of concrete. Not looking forward to removing it, but it’ll have to be done when we redo the patio to bring the lever even with the living room floor. The good news is that I will be able to put a basement under the patio when we do that.
Speaking of lawn maintenance, does anybody use a leaf vaccum and have a recco?
Downtown Austin has been grim since the Covid lockdowns.
Take armbands -er- masks just in case you walk into a place run by and for Good Germans. My GP still required masking in March but dropped the requirement after a front office house cleaning. At least, I didn’t have to wear a mask going in there last week.
Still, many in Austin long for ze old days, ja.
Classic Game Fest is in Austin the weekend of July 22. I always see something interesting at that show.
Some Programmers.
P.J. Brown wrote Writing Interactive Compilers and Interpreters, in the 1970’s.
This would be Brown’s 5th Deadly Sin. In the book he specifically uses the example of providing an error code, instead of text, for an error.
https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/sins.html
We have a currently have timing issue with our database library at work, and the text error messages are meaningless to the developers, many of whom have limited experience with SQL beyond a class in college.
IBM and their books of IEBxxxx errors. Hated those things. Even when some programmers provided text, the text is merely “Unknown Problem Encountered”. Yeh really helpful. Looking at you Microsoft.
Currently at the hotel at the Frankfurt airport. There was no way we could stay somewhere else and get a reliable connection to the airport. We have to be at the airport at 8:00 AM and based on my experience with the trains this time, I don’t trust DB.
re: Error codes instead of text
In the 90’s, one of the big movements at DEC was I18N (Internationalization). Every text string in a program that presented to the end user was required to be modularized so you could substitute a single different module to change languages.
Later, of course, those were run-time swappable with loadable images. So you could have an environment variable to switch languages instead of compiling different executables for each language.
The baseline result of this is that all messages were reduced to numbered codes, translated to text later.
I was very happy to be working on DoD projects, so I could ignore all this.
Slow going today.
I did in fact pull the wires loose from wire nuts. Unfortunately, I also broke the neutral about 10 feet from the end, and the break is where any splice would be underground. I may have to do something ugly and above ground for now. Hate that, but not ready to re-run the whole line. Since Old Boy ran it in water pipe, he used 90deg corners instead of 90deg sweeps. No back pulling for me. He must have built the pipe around the wire as he went. No way he pulled two #6 wires thru a single 90, let alone a dozen of them. No reason to pull #6 for that matter. Both black and no ground, btw.
I cleaned out another 6 feet of area. Had my lunch, now time to get back to it.
@denis, I thought about burying the broken concrete. For about a minute. No matter what it would end up messing me up later. The equipment rental dropoff driver told me about a site he dropped off at, where the contractor was getting ready to build a gas station plaza. When they started digging, they found an old tire dump. They’d already pulled out thousands, with more to go. THAT is why contractors build in ‘contingency’ and get more money if there is a ‘material change’ in the scope of work.
n
I have one of those Agri-Fab lawn sweepers. It does an OK job on the live oak “Florida snow” in my smallish yard – half an acre or so with three big old oaks. Spanish Moss tends to tangle in the pick-up brush, so that has to be cleared first.
I used to have one of those Craftsman 5HP lawn suckers that looks a lot like a lawn mower. It shredded the leaves and small debris pretty well on a couple of acres in the Mid-Atlantic filled with mature trees. The drawback was that the bag filled really quickly in that situation.
My neighbor there has one of those fancy vacuum systems with its own engine dragging behind his John Deere lawn tractor. It seems to do a really good job, although he has to empty it a few times when he cuts his grass in the fall.
RE: thievery at big box stores
I needed a smallish chain saw, as it is really silly (and maybe even dangerous) to whip out the Stihl Magnum for small branch pruning. I went to Lowe’s and tried to purchase a Husky Rancher, and they had to get the forklift to get the box from the top of the shelves. When I mentioned that seemed to be a lot of trouble for something that used to be stored under the display, the employee told me this story: The week before, someone came into the store, went down the chainsaw aisle and found that that only the chainsaws on display were accessible. He then went to a different part of the store and got a big axe, walked back to the chainsaw display, used the axe to break the tether holding the saw to the shelf, and then walked out of the store with an axe in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. I guess company policy is to let him walk and then notify police when he returns and is caught by the facial recognition system.
>> The online advice, if you get yourself in trouble take your hands off the controls, worked perfectly.
Same in auto (track) racing – if you get into a wreck, let go of the wheel lest you wind up with one, or both, wrists broken.
>> I’m thinking about xeroscaping the front yark in Tejas. The big oak tree makes it hard to grow grass in the front. Two neighbors have done that, so I guess the HOA is OK with it. I like the mostly white gravel with pea gravel for walkways. A leaf blower keeps it neat.
If weeds are a problem in your area consider laying down some heavy duty weed block fabric before the stone.
I have a big live oak in my front yard north of Austin, and I don’t lack for grass growing underneath it.
I use a mulching push mower, and the tree gets trimmed/fertilized annually by a service.
On the last visit to give a quote for the annual maintenance, the arborist for the service accused me of over-fertilizing the grass. I told him that I haven’t used anything but occasional insecticide under the trees since we moved into the house nine years ago, having learned my lesson about atrazine in Florida.
As for the sunny spots for the lawn, I haven’t fertilized in a couple of years.
I discovered today that I have two zones in the sprinkler system with problems. One zone is obvious, the heads near the AC systems, while the other will require a tech visit.
Thankfully most of the front yard is covered by functional zones so I can wait if the sprinkler service is backed up, which I assume they are this time of year.
The *Rock* in Round Rock actually references a large hunk of limestone sits underneath most of the area. Digging for sprinklers either involves a trencher for solid rock or digging golfball-to-baseball size stones out of clay. The install/repair companies earn every dime.
Some Programmers.
P.J. Brown wrote Writing Interactive Compilers and Interpreters, in the 1970’s.
This would be Brown’s 5th Deadly Sin. In the book he specifically uses the example of providing an error code, instead of text, for an error.
https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/sins.html
Computers of the 1970s did not have enough memory to provide string space for error messages. We never had enough room and had to overlay our software like crazy (16 or 17 levels IIRC) in order to fit in memory into the middle 1980s. The Univac 1108 had 2 MB of virtual ram and we walked away from that in 1981. The next limit was 6 MB on the IBM 370 which we held until 1987 when the Intel 16 mhz 80386 came out and changed the world. We had full 32 bit virtual ram with a intelligent memory management unit at that point. Plus the IBM 3090 came out with 128 ??? MB of virtual ram in 1988 or so.
Yep. Very true.
My copy is packed away but as I recall (from several decades ago so maybe not??) the error number was a pointer into a table that held the error message, so that the table was only loaded after
the compiler halted and caught firethe final print routine for the log and list files was called.The OceanGate wavier, if you’re interested, certainly not something I would have signed…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12226909/OceanGate-liability-waiver-asks-customers-responsibility-company-negligent.html
I find it interesting that TMZ has consistently landed the scoops on this situation.
Faux News owns TMZ now.
@Nick
I’ve used these to splice underground cables:
3M UF Splice Kit Underground Feeder Cable
Home Depot carries them. There’s also a variant that has a longer connector and can splice about a 6″gap, IIRC.
IBM error code ILF281 for the 360 left an impression on me that hasn’t faded since 1970.
Alan says:
Ah, but you’re not an adrenaline junkie, are you? Those guys WERE. A couple of them had already climbed Everest, and one had gone to the edge of space in a Bezos rocket. Their thought processes were probably “How close can I get to certain death without dying?”
“How close can I get to certain death without dying?”
Exceeded tolerance.
Nick, regarding your #6 wires in PVC water pipe with elbows, yecch! HOWEVER, I have always subscribed to the notion that codes can sometimes be interpreted as advice… If you are never planning to add any wires, and if the existing pipe can be repaired, here’s a thought. If done well, it should last longer than you.
Oh, time out. Are the #6 wires rated for direct bury? They should be, even if they are inside a conduit. I’ll bet they are not, so my solution is safer than the wires’ insulation.
@drwilliams beat me to the 3M splice kit, but both 3M and Home Depot shows these only go up to #8 AWG. Our power company uses UF crimp splices up to at least 4/0 wires. You might not be able to borrow the required crimper, and it is probably too expensive to consider buying. Another option is to use solder sleeves, which are available in very large sizes. Next option is something I have used with good success.
Stagger the splices so they are as far apart as possible, preferably at least a foot. Splice the wires by soldering with rosin core electronic solder. Wash the residual flux away with a suitable solvent and let dry well. Thoroughly coat the splice with a good 100% silicone RTV compound. Substitute a good silicone grease is you must. Cover with some heavy heat shrink tubing, making sure that some of the sealant squeezes out both ends as the tubing shrinks. Obviously, put the tubing on before making the splice. 😉
Fixing the broken pipe will be harder, but possible.
I have used this technique in moderately severe environments, such as under automotive hood locations, and underneath cars and trailers. Some are over 40 years old, admittedly here in the desert, but with a few years in the rust belt. They don’t fail. I have been told by reliable folks that they have done this in a salt spray boat environment with excellent performance.
Code compliant? Of course not, but I would worry more about not having a ground wire. BTW, using the neutral as a ground and splitting off ground and neutral at the far end used to be common practice, and maybe code compliant in a few jurisdictions a while ago. I like this better than another method, which uses two ground rods to create a new isolated ground at the remote end. Check your codes, and especially local interpretations to see how to solve your problem. You might have an easy way out. I have seen electricians do things like this in a clearly noncompliant way, and even have it pass inspection. My final thought: make it safe first, compliant if possible. Keep inspectors away.
Live or die, they accomplished nothing worthwhile with their stunts and they consumed a great deal of resources. They could instead have wandered bad sections of town and fought muggers. If they succeeded, they’d have accomplished something productive. If they failed, at least they didn’t consume any resources.
Your mistake there is that these people care about the existence of muggers.
Muggers are only a problem for dirt people. The elite are isolated from muggers and dirt people by geography or security.
Given the family tree of the CEO, education, and professional experience, I smell Deep State. I believe the excursions provided valuable data to someone, even the failure.
It will be interesting to see where the submersible design ends up after what’s left of the company gets liquidated in the inevitable lawsuits.
“@drwilliams beat me to the 3M splice kit, but both 3M and Home Depot shows these only go up to #8 AWG.”
Sorry, wasn’t looking at the conductor size..
First, for completeness, the UF splice kit that I referenced before has this in the TDS
So my memory that there was a longer version was correct. I installed one of these when the power run to a well pump was cut. Ten years and no problems.
3M makes so many splice kits it’s hard to sort them. This page allows you to do it by conductor size:
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/electrical/splices-accessories/
but does not seem to be comprehensive.
The 3M Cold Shrink Inline Splice Kits 5740 Series is one possibility. The 5741 covers 8-4 AWG (see TDS):
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b10165393/
has materials (excepting the correct connectors, bought separately) to splice 3 conductors. It gives info on the proper connectors on page 3. To use this or other cold/heat shrink splice kits the good conductors would have to be cut so the shrink tube can be slipped over the cable before the splicing is done.
I have made single-conductor repairs using methods similar to JimB, but start with a self-bonding electrical tape such as 3M 130C before applying silicone.
“The Best Hard Science Fiction Books by Women” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-hard-science-fiction-books-by-women/
I have read:
7. Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh – 1981
6. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie – 2013
2. All Systems Red by Martha Wells – 2017
The list is missing Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joan D. Vinge, Andre Norton, Nancy Kress, Jo Walton, Seanan McGuire, and Elizabeth Moon.
Dan says “I’m considering hard SF to mean a few different things: the story could be technology-focused rather than emotion-focused, or be based on known physics as opposed to technology so futuristic that it feels magical. As with all my lists, I play pretty loose with the rules because I think it’s more important to get people reading good books than sticking to some arbitrary sub-genre definitions.”
>> Ah, but you’re not an adrenaline junkie, are you? Those guys WERE. A couple of them had already climbed Everest, and one had gone to the edge of space in a Bezos rocket. Their thought processes were probably “How close can I get to certain death without dying?”
I’ve been on the Cyclone in Coney Island, twice I think, does that count?
I guess I look at it as there are smart adrenaline junkie and those that are less smart. It’s hard to imagine them climbing Everest without the proper preparations (sherpas, O2, gear, clothing, etc.,) regardless of what the summit team wavier says. For Everest, there’s an infrastructure in place that you pay for, and if you’re a billionaire, I suppose you don’t mind spending for the best. Separate question is, does that diminish your accomplishment? Would they set out Edmund Hillary style?
So for the OceanGate, question then is, what, if any due diligence did they do before jumping in that sub?
>> It will be interesting to see where the submersible design ends up after what’s left of the company gets liquidated in the inevitable lawsuits.
In the
pocketshands of the lawyers of course…they always gonna get paid.The US Navy probably shot it to distract from the Hunter Biden sweet sweetheart deal.
Hunter has the Epstein files and is blackmailing everyone to keep him and the Dementia Don out of prison.
Sweden Deals Body Blow to EU Climate Change Agenda
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/25/sweden-deals-body-blow-to-eu-climate-change-agenda/
100% Green Energy and Net Zero are simply communist schemes designed to bleed the West into poverty.
The kraken got it. Don’t wake the kraken.
@all you guys, thanks for the splice info. My neighbor pointed out that since I had the machines here, I should dig up the line and see what’s what. Oh my.
Short story- I made a splice, taped up all the abrasions that penetrated the jacket, and re-connected the bare wires to the dockhouse (two circuits wirenutted to the #6). Turned the breaker on an no joy. So doing a proper splice won’t help, there must be another break somewhere.
Longer story.
Everything outside the house is fed by a 50A 220v breaker in the house. That goes to a ‘workshop’ were there is some other sketchy electrical, mainly more breakers for a welder outlet, an RV outlet, and all the stuff downstream… of which the next stop is a shed. In the shed there is a disconnect with fuses in it, that sends power down to the dock.
At the dock, there is a 100A breaker panel, NOT rated for outdoor or damp, in the rafters of the dock. It powers the boat lifts, the irrigation pump, lights and outlets on the dock, and … the two circuits in the dock house (which include lighting, outlets, and a window AC unit. This is all hella-sketchy.
SO … Since my quick fix didn’t work, I started following the buried pvc pipe. And found a previous splice within the first 6 feet, where a sprinkler pipe crossed the power, and presumably damaged it. SO I keep digging, and the pipe isn’t headed toward the dock. I can SEE two pipes that come out of the ground and go to the dock, one is broken open and you can see the jacketed wires inside. 5 black #6s… More digging. The pipe crosses another pipe, and I can see that THAT one is definitely one of the ones coming out of the ground, so now I assume it’s sprinkler valve control cables, which DON’T actually need to be in conduit… More digging and I can tell which direction it’s going, and I figure it crosses the conduit bringing power down to the dock. So I dig where I think they will intersect.
Found it. It’s a T fitting. Instead of running the line for the dockhouse in it’s own “conduit” from the panel to the house, he ran it part way IN THE ¾” WATER PIPE, BACK UP THE HILL WITH THE CONDUCTORS COMING DOWN TO THE DOCK. Then after 20 ft, he used a T to branch off the pipe to the dockhouse.
I can’t even imagine how much harder that was than to run it separately. He had the trench open, he could have just laid in another pipe. For that matter, he could have run it on the surface from the dock to the dockhouse. That is what I’m going to do.
I’m going to cut the branch just past the T, cut the conductors, and try to back pull them. They only have to go about 4 inches to get out of the T and into a straight pipe, so I should be able to pull them at least to the broken pipe just before the dock. I’ll put a pvc cap on the T to keep it water tight. I won’t touch or affect the conductors from the shed to the dock panel.
When I install a new panel at the dock, I’ll include a local main breaker, and GFCI breakers for the rest of the stuff. I’ll use liquidtight flexible and PVC conduit to run two circuits to the dockhouse, surface mounted to the outside of the house, and never underground at all.
I had planned to do most of it anyway. I’ve got some boxes, conduit, flex, priced the panel, and have wire at home… I just didn’t want to do it this week.
For now, the fridge door is open and there are no lights in the dockhouse.
So much extra work to do it WRONG.
n
btw, as Mike Holmes says on his show, the code is the MINIMUM and along with inspections protects the homeowner. (I know, there are petty tyrants, jobsworths, etc, but if you do it to code it probably won’t kill anyone and won’t burn the place down.) If Old Boy had even TRIED to use the good, common sense parts of the code, it would be SO MUCH BETTER.
@Nick, wow, what a mess.
And this all passed the home buying inspection?
I looked at Dan’s list. I’m glad he included Pat Cadigan, for some reason all the baby ducks forget that there were women writing stories about LGBTEIEIO DECADES ago.
I’d also add Melissa Scott for Trouble and Her Friends, and most of her other books as well. Her newest stuff is not like her older work. She was very prolific for a while and I really liked her.
As usual Dan’s list is very heavy on current Tor authors and people who were on the wrong side of the Hugo/Sad Puppies kerfuffle.
And FFS, I couldn’t even read the Ancillary Justice books. Gah. Enough. One trick pony.
n
Geesh. The whole Gulf has bathwater temps tonight.
Something’s coming.
Not to worry, the airbag deployment will quickly remove the hands from the steering wheel. Generally into the window for the left hand, whatever is on the right for the right hand. That collision with the left window will like cut the hand or break a bone. Voice of experience. An airbag deployment will save the life but will still leave bodily damage, and is incredibly violent.
Night in the hotel. Got an email this morning that Delta changed our flight from 11:00 to 13:40. Not at all happy with the change. We could have stayed in a much cheaper hotel outside of Frankfurt and been able to make the connection.
And this all passed the home buying inspection?
@EdH, moot point… because I did the inspection. Yeah, I saw about 90% of it, and knew it would ALL need to be replaced. Once you say, “It’s horrible and all needs to be replaced” the few specific horrors that I didn’t see wouldn’t have impacted the decision to buy.
We didn’t need financing, so we didn’t need an inspection for the bank loan. And the market was such that after looking for five years, when it became available we jumped. Got the heads up on Saturday night, called the seller Sunday, went to see it Monday and verbally committed to buy it before we left. The seller said “I’m not gonna work with you any on price. I priced it for the land, and dock. It happens to have a house on it.” We bought it ‘as is and where is’.
She also said “please don’t scrape it and start new, I grew up here.” We did the math and decided to fix it because many of the costs would be the same for new construction. We would still need a foundation, still need electrical, still need new septic… We do have an upper limit to the amount of improvement but it’s not a flip house, so we can exceed market if we want to.
And scraping the lot and starting new would mean years before we could live here, and buying some sort of temporary trailer or tiny home in the mean time.
The extent of the plumbing failure was a bit of a surprise. I expected to change fixtures, not pipe. He’d replaced the cold lines already, and I could see issues with the hot, galvanic corrosion, poor techniques, wrong materials. We knew there were likely hidden issues, and pretty quickly it became clear it was going to be a complete repipe.
The electrical was one of the first things we had fixed, new service drop, new panel. I like my breakers to NOT have been on fire.
Septic came next, then foundation work.
The work I’m here to do this week is mainly earthmoving to re-grade and fix drainage issues, prepare for the foundation guys to stabilize the hill (foam injection to counter act the issues with building on soft sand fill…) and clear the path forward to putting in a deck or patio. I had the chance to correct an issue with the hill pushing the dockhouse into the lake since I had the big machines here. Cutting in that new clear space on the uphill side of the dockhouse was when I ‘found’ the power line.
There is always something more to be done.
Running the machines is very satisfying. But it’s really hot and tiring too.
nick
I couldn’t agree more with that. One inevitably needs to make a hole wherever the previous waste was swept under the grass carpet. Much easier and better to do as you have … get it taken away in a skip (container/dumpster).
The compensation is that you are near the Salt Lick. Mmm…. BBQ.
We have had a few scorching hot days here at the BOL. 31C (about 90F) in the shade at 6pm. Too hot for outdoor work. The forecast is for a substantial drop in temperature today, so up at 06.30 this morning and out in the garden while the house is still casting some shade. Got to get the former vegetable patch cleared and seeded with wildflowers… Wish me luck!
Good luck!
I didn’t scatter my wildflower mix this year and I regret the oversight.
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>> Not to worry, the airbag deployment will quickly remove the hands from the steering wheel.
@Ray, no airbags in professional race cars, which was the intended reference. In-car driver cams can give an interesting view during a crash. Sorry if it wasn’t clear.
Re unhelpful error messages, back in the 90s I was working with ACCELL (a 4th gen language – remember them) from Unify and every so often it would crash/stop with Error 0, looking this up in the manual revealed “Error 0 – No error has occurred”! 🙂
Completely unreproducible, it would drive us testers nuts.
I missed that part. It is amazing the number of cameras in race cars. I noticed that during the Indy race, especially the crashes.
Delta has changed our gate twice. Still two hours until boarding. I asked for Sky Club access due to the delay. Nope, Sky Club in this terminal is closed.
I did get patted down by security, belt checked, legs rubbed, shoes checked by removing insoles. Annoying. No Covid stuff though.