I am not going to go on about the cost of materials. I will say that plywood has gone up 20% in the last month; other building materials as well. I found a good deal at the local ‘discount’ building materials location. This is 3/4″ MDO overlay plywood. It couldn’t be more perfect for my application since I am not planning on putting a finished floor, I am running out of headroom.
I have a few things I can do before buying materials again but my next major move is to buy framing lumber. I can start prepping my door for painting and cutting to size. I am also planning on removing the insulation around the duct work in favor of a more attractive solution like rigid foam. I can also start working on the rough wiring as well.
Today is going to be quick with some pictures of progress. I am moving slowly because I am trying to buy materials as I need them. I am also spending one to two hours a day working on the project, as soon as work ends usually.
Today we have some science you can get in to. My wife recently purchased the Brumate can cooler. The nice thing about this product is that it can hold either a 12oz or 16oz can. She already had the Yeti and we know that it works pretty well.
My problem is that I never have a drink that sits around long enough to get warm, but that is OK because we are doing this for science. How did they work? The initial check was straight out of the refrigerator.
Immediately, the uninsulated can was 45 degrees while the other two were 43 degrees F. After thirty minutes, the temperature was measured again.
This time, the uninsulated can was 49, the Yeti was still 43 and the Brumate was 46 degreed F. Clearly the Yeti was the winner of this quick test.
There are a few discussion points with my ‘science’. The first being why was the uninsulated can warmer than the other two? Could it be that it initially started out warmer and that not everything was in equilibrium in the refrigerator? That was a point that was not controlled or measured.
Second, what makes the Yeti better? I am not totally sure, but in order to allow the Brumate to hold both 12oz and 16oz cans there is a spacer that is inserted into the vessel. The spacer is filled with water and during this test the spacer was at room temperature. Therefore, there is a warmer mass inside the vessel potentially causing the can to warm faster. To be fair, I read on the website this morning that spacer can be frozen, which may make it perform the same or better over a longer duration.
The science is not settled, but the results were enjoyable. A Prost!
After a brief hiatus, I am trying to piece time together where I can. I am working more than full time, and my wife was gone over half of last week. In addition, I am trying to build an office so I can keep my feet warm while I work on this project (not to mention work). I had to spend a number of hours this last weekend gathering tax information as well as working but I cleared some of the fog out to come up with some ideas that I want to get out there.
I can feel some of my determination slipping. It is hard to work all day in front of a computer and then dedicate another hour or more to do this. My mental clarity starts to wane as I get into early afternoon and I want to do something physical after work.
An interesting thing happened yesterday. I was watching the piano player play at Worship and I was thinking about how much it appears that he enjoys playing the piano. My mind wandered a bit and I was thinking about how someone turns passion into a career. I was thinking about the local high school drama teacher and how he plays piano and sings and so forth. Since a career in music is a tough go, people that have a particular interest that career field find outlets that may be paying (or not) an related pursuit. At the very least, performing weekly is that sort of outlet.
For me, some of my passions could be money making while others seem to be money burning. But, it shook me back to looking for a way to convert my interests into a career. I have been so focused on making a good impression in my new job and focusing on everything that goes along with that that I forgot where I want to go. Don’t get me wrong, this job is fine but in my heart of hearts I wouldn’t be doing it if I had another option.
It sort of goes hand in hand with this week’s message; focusing on pleasing people instead of pleasing the Lord. I hope that I am right that I think our individual purpose will go hand in hand with God’s will. I believe that it is a test in keeping the mind and ears open. From what I have seen, when people find their purpose, they are happy and at peace with all that entails. Maybe I need to find my outlets outside of work and change my outlook or maybe I need to keep trying? I don’t know. But that stemmed a bunch of new ideas here, so stay tuned.
I have talked about my home some over the years. But, I don’t think that I have talked about the controversy. Within the county, the date built is listed as 1893. However, talking with a previous home owner it was his belief that it was built in 1873. The theory to the age discrepancy was that was when the first record was recorded with the county. It was his belief that this house was the original structure on the NE corner of the city and that all of the lumber was milled from the site. There is an older house on the block (1846) but it was moved from a different location in the city I was told.
What I do know is that this house has been extensively remodeled and almost none of the original detail remains. Both the exterior and the interior have been removed and replaced. The major model occurred in the late 70s. The original lap was replaced with T111, the windows were replaced, the plaster was removed, knob and tube wire was replaced with Romex and insulation was put in the walls. All changes that improved the livability and moved this house into the next century.
In 2016, we needed to paint the house. There was some rot in existing T111 and today’s building practice (and code) would not allow for replacement so we chose to add Hardi-plank on top of the T111. Subsequently, people started coming out of the woodwork that had a history with this house. We heard it was a boarding house in the 1950s and college apartments in the 1960-70s. One of them was the previous homeowner who brought us a whole stack of photos from before, during and after the remodel in the 1970s.
Because of the photos, I can see that the house is balloon framed. That is where the structural members span from ground to roof. That was a common practice late 1800s. There are two reasons why that practice has fallen out of favor. One is the quality of lumber is not the same as it was one hundred years ago. The second and bigger reason is that in case of fire, there is nothing (what is called blocking) to prevent the fire to spread between floors at a rapid rate.
Another potential clue I have seen is that the framing lumber is true to dimension and often rough sawn. Rough sawn means that it came from the mill without running through a planer. But, true to dimension is a bigger clue. I ran across this document while I was doing some quick research on the subject about the history of the lumber industry. It appears that lumber standards were adopted in 1902 for the west coast. Interesting, but not helpful if trying to figure out the year built before the standard or even milled on site.
I am still looking for the smoking gun. One thing I found while cleaning up under the house was this ‘Halls Catarrh Cure’ bottle. It definitely has an interesting story, if you are interested. My research indicated that it was from the was the 1890s period, but still not conclusive.
Maybe the best piece of evidence I have to date is this floor covering scrap. When we removed the carpet for my wife’s office space last fall, it exposed a jute backed linoleum.
I forgot that I took this picture until yesterday when I was chatting with my son about what I was going to do for a floor in the new office. He was telling me that a local lady was giving away used linoleum and I was trying to understand what he was saying. Strangely enough, I realized that we didn’t have any linoleum in our house and neither do a lot of people we know currently. Again, this is not conclusive, however I do believe that I could date the pattern, it would be a more solid indicator of age.
Finally, the county historical society does have a collection of photos. I have casually looked and have not found a photo of my particular house. I do believe that I can make an appointment and dig in more seriously, but I haven’t prioritized it over the other many other things I have to do. It might be as simple as just asking the question and having one of the curators point me in the right direction.
And so the controversy continues. Will it ever be resolved? Who knows, but I enjoy finding little things like this.
Good Saturday Night. I don’t normally write during this time, it tends to be family or spouse time. But, my son told me that he was using a laser pointer with the dog (acting like a cat). Since I missed Thursday and Friday, I thought I could sneak a little time on Saturday Night
To share video, it is easier to post it to YouTube and share the link; it is faster and more succinct. My wife is out of the house and I thought that she would like to see this.
But, the video is not the point of this post. I haven’t done this a bunch and when I look back on things it has been more than half a year since I posted to YouTube. When I was trying to shake the cobwebs off to figure out how to post a video, I went to my channel. I was looking at the stats and I have a video that has almost 10,000 views. I was fumbling around and my ‘About’ page has over 15,000 views.
That is astounding. Considering that I figured out that posting to YouTube makes the import to this blog very fast is the reason I put anything on there in the first place. My very first serious post was repairing a pneumatic nail gun. I did it on a whim, trying to figure out the best way to get content on this site. The first month that YouTube sent me an e-mail that nearly 1000 people had watched my video, I was shocked.
Sometimes, I get notification that there are comments. I try to respond to those. It is said that audience engagement is the number one way to build a following, and therefore monetization. However, I have never claimed to wanting to build a YouTube channel. I do however want to build something here. I don’t live or die on what happens there. But, when I went there tonight, I was shocked that over 15,000 people have looked at my ‘About’ page.
Since there is a link to my site on the ‘About’ page, I tested it and it works. My most popular videos are my repair videos (not surprising since those are the real non-personal ones). Those are the videos that run-away with the views at 100:1. The whole point of this is that I am shocked so many people have watched what I have put out there because it doesn’t seem to have translated here.
Nevertheless, I want to build sustainable content and YouTube is not the place to do that. See https://odysee.com/ for that. I haven’t bothered to setup an account yet because I haven’t produced anything recently, but it is on my short term list to do so. In fact, uploading to YouTube will also import to Odysee at the same time if you are setup to do so.
I am humbled and shocked to see the numbers. Despite the fact that I have had little interaction with the viewers of my videos I hope that I have helped people with the small issues that I have posted. That was the point of me posting this tonight and I hope that you enjoy Raya.
I am running late today, so trying to get this in before the day ends. Last night I read chapter seven so hopefully it is fresh in my mind.
This chapter is a trip into Winston’s thoughts and he is having an awakening. Intertwined in his inner dialogue, it is implied that he is writing in his diary. It seems that the process of writing is having a stimulating effect on his self analysis.
This chapter is deep as there are more than one line, vocabulary concepts. There is a good quote and some hard philosophical analysis. So, let’s tackle the quote first.
And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus on petty grievances. The ‘they’ in this context is the ‘Proles’. Winston is talking about the differences between life in the Party versus being on the outside and how the party is outnumbered by a four to one ratio. If they really wanted to rise up, they could easily overtake the government. This sentence validates one of the things I have been saying about politics. People that are focused on the left/right dichotomy are too busy fighting for their side and against the other that the politicians are robbing them blind.
Seeing is believing- Winston starts to realize that no matter how much someone can say something that is not true if you are seeing yourself, you can figure out someone is lying. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall to the earth’s center. All of those things are verifiable without too much effort an no one can convince otherwise.
Need to corroborate- Toward the end of the chapter, Winston states that he is writing this for O’brien. Despite his inherent distrust of O’brien, for some reason Winston is being drawn towards him. I think that this validates the point that we need people to socialize and empathize our situation. We will see if this is happens later in the book
There were other things of interest going on like the portrayed image of capitalist, the fate of some of the revolutionary founders and a little bit more about the life of the proles. There is one more chapter left in this section and then the book is going to make a turn.
One thing that people who don’t run a website might not know is that it actually requires active effort. Everyday when I login to the dashboard to begin writing, there is a Health summary on issues that are outstanding. Some are warnings and some are actual issues.
Today, I wasn’t able to login to the dashboard to write. I had some issues with the SSL certificate. It seems like every two months, there is some kind of problem with SSL. I suspect that if I ponied up some money, that I wouldn’t have this problem and probably wouldn’t have to make changes.
I bumbled my way through fixing the problem. I also found some suggested improvements, which I also made. One nice thing is that even though I know very little about Linux, I can usually search and find some answers on the internet. Even platform and provider issues there is usually some help.
Since I dont have time to generate a more material today, you will have to settle for a picture of my progress on the office project. It is slow, but moving one small piece at a time.
The next step is to remove the drywall to the right of the desk. I am going to frame around the block so that I can insulate properly because believe me, it is cold down here. More on that later.
I am trying to figure out where to go from here. It is increasingly difficult to prioritize the time to write, balance family time with work and accomplish all the other tasks that need to get done in life. More specifically, to what end? I didn’t start this because I was bored in life, I started to try and build a career replacement.
Maybe I didn’t use my time as effectively as I could have when I had it. I certainly was slow to get my domain started and branch out. I am not aggressive about the business aspects. The truth is, I have discovered that I really don’t want to participate in social media. I find the interaction a chore and somewhat detestable.
I guess that I would compare social media to shopping at Costco. Many people I know like to shop at Costco. There are some nice things about it, but high on my list is consistency of availability. I never know if what I want is available. I never know if what I want to see on social media is available and I don’t want to spend my time ‘shopping’ just to see.
Just like other social media, my branding has been a little all over the place. I suppose what I was trying to accomplish was interweaving life with skills. I have not been consistent with my delivery of good skills based content and have wandered quite a bit, particularly since I finished my remodel. I am making no promises here, but since I have a project going on, I should take advantage of the fact.
Since I spend a lot of my workday being cold, getting heat is a priority. I was looking at my subpanel trying to figure out what the unmarked breakers were and what space I had available. The upper left 20A 240V breaker was wired to a baseboard heater that is no longer installed and the target of my interest. But further to that, why did I have so many 240V breakers?
I found that I had one 20A 240V breakers un-used and one 30A 240V breaker empty. On top of that, there was some curious wiring. One leg of the bottom right 20A 240V circuit was tied to a relay and two 12V transformers that didn’t go anywhere. My speculation is that this has been an electrical free for all.
The DC wiring I think was for an internal vacuum system but I really don’t know. There is also heat tracing on all of the piping in the basement has not been connected since I have lived here. Maybe that is the reason? I was going to cleanup everything, but ultimately I decided to disconnect and remove all of the low voltage stuff. I have lived here over sixteen years and never knew or needed it, it is not likely I was going to miss it.
So, I have my circuit for my heater and I have space to add an office specific 20A circuit and I simplified my panel. I have built my Bill of Materials and made my cost estimate. It is almost time to really get started.
Today I received an interesting e-mail from the Boy Scouts of America. They still keep track of their alumni. They seem to do a better job than my schools.
I seem to remember getting one of these last year. I suspect that it has to do with my kids being part of the program and me putting my contact information in.
I have talked about some of my experiences before. I may be closer than others who do not have kids in the program or still remain in touch with local resources. So, I do get frequent reminders of the values and benefits from that standpoint.
Even though things have changed a lot, some for the better and some for the worse I still think that it an organization that provides value. One of the things that I find interesting is the growth and development the boys have throughout the tenure. The come in as fifth graders and leave when eighteen, if they stay the whole tenure. Most of them come in as children and leave as a true adult. There is a transition from a timid grade schooler interacting with high schoolers to leading a small organization over time.
When I listen to them talk amongst themselves I can still hear youthful optimism and naivete but to see them in action, the training pays dividends. It’s nice to learn skills and have fun but to be able to practice the fundamentals of leadership is the experience that I see valuable.
This is Easter and celebrating that Jesus died for our new covenant with God. We have eternal salvation if we want it. I hope that you have a great weekend.
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