Since my update last week, probably 75% of the siding is now up. There is still some caulking to be done as well as most of the painting. There is consistent rain in the forecast for the next two days so I am going to be switching gears on the outside and working on the inside.
In the interest of ‘edutainment’, I figure I should be working a little harder than just posting pictures of progress and a short blurb about it. I am going to try and get some helpful information in these posts. So, with that, here is a starter information about siding.
Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast by Hank Shaw was the April book selection in the Left Coast Cellars Culinary Book Club. Unfortunately, the club has been on hiatus since mid-March but that doesn’t mean that the reading doesn’t go on.
Hank Shaw is an author, blogger, podcaster and general media person. His focus is about cooking with wild sourced ingredients. He tends to collaborate with others in this space like Steven Rinella. If you are into this sort of genre, then you probably already know about him and his contemporaries.
The book is organized into three sections. Section one is about foraging, section two is about fishing and section three is about hunting. Each chapter in the section is grouped by a theme such as wild berries. At the end of each chapter there are five or so recipes focusing on the type of ingredients the chapter is about.
This is one of those books that I would consider a gateway into the subject. There is no possible way that a person can safely learn everything about foraging by reading this. Every microclimate and region in the country could support it’s own botanist/mycologist/herbologist from the vast diversity that is present. There is no mention of mushrooms, which is probably a good thing. Instead the focus is on high value, low risk choices like seaweed and day lilies.
Another potential roadblock to successfully implementing ideas in this book are access, equipment and knowledge. For example, in my state there is no ‘season’ for rabbit hunting. It does require a license to do so. There is public land about ten miles away, but I have rarely seen a rabbit. I think that to really do this successfully, having a flushing dog would be the only viable option. Dogs are not allowed in the public land without a leash.
Instead of focusing all of my energy into why any of these ideas can’t be done I think the best use of this book is to read through it and look for things that can be done. Almost everything has a season to when it is available and or legal (including a lot of plants). Plan times to obtain these items as family activities. A family charter for bottom fish and crab is something I can do in my area. Then be prepared to feast when the trip is complete.
I enjoyed reading this book because it is about 25% technique, 25% cookbook and 50% inspiration. So, it is not a page turner but it does get the mind stimulated about the possibilities. Over the years, I have learned that it is much more enjoyable to pursue the activities rather than read about them. But I find that I can more easily find the time to learn and think than I can do. For that reason, it is exciting to think about that next fishing trip or making blackberry wine.
I hope that you all had a great Mother’s day. I know that we did. It was more like a Mother’s Day Weekend. Friday, I hung a new chandelier. Saturday, we cleaned the house and hung pictures that have been sitting around. Sunday we had a picnic on the lawn, I installed a window treatment and we watched a movie to finish it off.
The picnic was delicious and while she chose the result, I went to work on how it was done. I thought that I would share.
The kids did a lot of the work, so I will help them develop their sense of presentation at some other time. But, the first item was a fruit salad.
Fruit Salad
Watermelon
Grapes
Pineapple
Charcuterie Tray
Assorted crackers
Cheese
Sharp Cheddar
Dill Havarti
Gouda
Parmesan
Cured Meat
Prosciutto
Salami, two types
Coppa
Pickled asparagus
Chocolate truffles
Salmon Spread – Mix ingredients for eveness
8 oz cream cheese
2 oz smoked salmon
2 tbls capers
2 chives, chopped small
Egg Salad Sandwiches
Sliced French Bread
Egg Salad
10 hard boiled eggs, coarsely chopped
2 stalks of celery, fine dice
1/8 cp finely sliced red onion (very small amount)
10 chives finely diced
1/2 tsp dill weed
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 cp french mustard
1/2 cp mayonnaise
dash of cayenne
Salt and pepper to taste
vinegar to adjust acid
Mix the egg, onion, celery, chives, dill and thyme. Then add the mustard. Add the mayonnaise slowly so as not to make your mixture too sloppy. Adjust your additional seasonings accordingly.
I added a little more vinegar to increase the acid at the end. So keep tasting as you go along. You might even want to leave it a little dry if you know that is what you like. There is nothing worse than an over goopy egg salad in my opinion.
Since the quarantine began we haven’t been out much. On occasion we have something that has to get done. In this case, we needed to get our exchange student to the airport at three AM. I was driving on the freeway and I thought to myself… “Wow, it seems the headlights are really dim. In fact, are they on?” So, I flipped the switch and the headlights came on again.
During that trip, it happened at least three different times. But, it wasn’t always both headlights. Sometimes it was one on either side of the vehicle. My first instinct was that it was an electrical problem. This Lincoln Navigator is a bit of a gremlin with electrical problems. There are what appears to be phantom errors with the parking sensors, check engine light, suspension monitor, etc. I check them with a code reader and reset and they seem to disappear.
Today’s headlight is a complicated and potentially expensive proposition. Not only are the bulbs expensive, but there are also ballasts and igniters, that is to say a bunch of electronics as part of the assembly. A big shout out to p38fln on f150online. The advice was that if both are going out within 2-5 minutes of startup, that it is likely the bulb. So, I ordered two new bulbs at $54/ea. The worst case scenario was that I replaced the bulbs for no reason, but they are ten years old at this point.
There are a number of good videos on YouTube on how to change the bulbs. It actually is pretty easy to access them. By far and away, the most difficult item is to remove and re-install the T-10 screws that hold the headlight in place. It is not a real accessible place and little screws tend to be difficult to start.
Start by removing the two 10mm bolts holding the assembly in. Once those are out, there is a tab on the left (or right depending on which light you are working on) that needs to be lifted. Pull the unit straight out.
With the assembly free, remove the three inserted light bulbs by twisting and pulling. Then remove the connection to the headlight by pressing the tab and pulling straight out. Now the assembly is out to remove the headlight.
Remove the rubber cover to the headlight. With at T-10 screwdriver, remove the two screw that hold the bulb. Pull the lamp out and disconnect the electrical connection. Finally, remove the metal clip at the base of the bulb and swap it onto the new bulb. Reverse the process to install.
I am happy to report that I have had no headlight outages since replacement. This is a limited data set and I have driven the vehicle three times since. But, it was happening every time the lights were on before I changed the bulb.
From this experience, I would recommend doing your research. I saw a lot of effort and cost expended by others when a bulb change was the solution. Replacing wear parts make sense when troubleshooting and repairing anyway. I dont know what a shop cost would have been, but I would guess several hundred dollars, plus the hassle.
My son sees a medical specialist every couple of months for monitoring. That specialist works at the research hospital in Portland. For us, that is over an hours drive on a good day. Normally, I make the next appointment when we are at the doctor’s office. I try to make it where it will have the least impact on the school day or in other words ‘as late as possible’. That leaves us at the whims of rush hour traffic during most appointments.
As a life-long, small town guy I find rush hour traffic extremely frustrating. This is born largely out of my belief of the colossal waste of time commuting is. My two years living in the suburbs or Portland cemented that for me in the 1990s. I have tried very hard not to live or work where I had to deal with those frustrations.
First, I needed to get fuel before we left. The Mustang has a small tank to begin with at 16 gallons. With the low price of gasoline I filled the car up for $32. I almost always reset the trip counter when I fuel up because I monitor the fuel economy during that period. It is a habit that I have always done as a double check on the gas gauge.
During our trip, traffic was incredibly light. I would characterize it as Saturday morning. I think that we stopped at two lights in Salem on our way to the freeway and two lights once in Portland. For an appointment at three PM, we would start to encounter the afternoon rush hour at this time, however typically not terrible in the mid afternoon.
Our round trip spanned from 1:30-5 PM. I would have expected 1:30-6:30 PM so I was really happy about that. Now, the best part… the Mustang’s overall fuel economy. I averaged 29.2 MPG on that trip. I have never seen the economy that high before. I usually average about 20-22 MPG. For that trip specifically I have seen it as high as 26 MPG.
The net of this is that the Mustang can be more than double as efficient as my other two vehicles. I am typically no lead foot nor am I a hyper-miler. I enjoy the power sometimes, but it is hard to find a place where I can safely exert it because usually there are too many people about. That usually leaves me with merges or passes when I flex it the most. But, when there is little traffic, it is nice to see what can be done at a steady pace.
I may sneak one more in this week, just because rapid visual changes are about to happen. I have the lap siding to finish the south side. Nevertheless, I will talk about what has been accomplished since the last update.
It has been a structural journey over the last week. Sill replacement has been the focus. I replaced eight feet of sill from the south east corner of the window all the way past the front door. I started with completing the demo in the front. That took two days.
I continue to preach… the root of this problem is poor building practice. I believe that the reason I am dealing with this problem is that the driveway was laid right against the house. Wet cement touching non treated wood will lead to rot. The sill was cedar, which was good, but no match for bad decisions. Six inches of soil should have been removed before the driveway was laid so that it wouldn’t be against the structure.
I removed and reset the door. The rough opening barely allowed the door to fit (they were exact measurements – opening and door). Fortunately, the framing around the door was rotting anyway, so I restructured the framing to allow for 1/4″ clearance around the door.
Because of the thickness of the sheathing and siding, the door did not fit properly into the opening with the trim. That was all rectified so that there will be a unified trim look and hopefully a better fit inside.
The door also needed new structure under the threshold. The last opening was actually hacked out of the sill. Not only was the sill rotten, but the height and angle left the threshold sagging and a gap under the door.
This whole process was a slow go with jacking and temporary supports. I needed surgical cuts with butchery grade tools and cancer of unknown spread. I think we are through the worst of it and look forward to putting it all back together.
Also exciting news, we have agreed on a price and scope of work to reconfigure the bathroom, the entry door will no longer be in the kitchen, stubs of pipes will no longer be out of the floor and there will be space to add a washer and dryer.
I had another occasion to dig up what I call Techno-junk this weekend. It happens to be an old desktop computer from the Windows XP era. There is a circuitous route for why I wanted it in a minute.
I am having a problem with the headlights on our 2010 Navigator. They will just shut off without warning. Sometimes it is one side, other times it is the other side and sometimes it is both. When driving in town, you may not notice that your headlights are out, everything seems dim however. So, I wanted to use my scanner to check for any codes that might be present.
I didnt get any codes at all. My scanner is only configurable to the model year 2007. This scanner is upgradeable, by connecting it to the computer via serial cable otherwise known as COM. This is an old connection style, today it would USB. In fact, there are COM to USB converters, but I do not have one.
This machine we used three generations of operating systems ago. I think we probably used it from around 2005 – 2012. It does have a COM port and I have connected this scanner before. This computer has kind of lagged around, not for this reason but because it has personal information on it, including a lot of old photos. I have made efforts to remove these items but the total status remains unclear.
The first problem I had was that the BIOS battery was dead. Apparently, I knew this because a new battery was installed, but the protective sticker was still on the back of the battery. I installed the battery and set the BIOS clock. Then the cover was off, and there is some sort of proximity switch that prevents boot up without the cover.
I did get the computer running, I navigated through all of the errors and warnings to update the scanner. Then I started looking around to see what was still on this computer. I found a lot of music, iTunes worked perfectly and it notified me that the newest version was available for download. It even downloaded current versions of podcasts that I am still subscribed to.
When I launched Rhapsody, it blue screened. After reboot, it launched but it was a program that wasn’t used much so it really didn’t have a lot of data or function. While I was messing around, updates were prompted to install.
Twenty-eight updates were attempted to install. At least six failed, they were .NET framework service packs and things of that ilk. But I was sure surprised that there were any updates. I had several blue screens during the process so I am not sure what the real problem is. Now, the machine wont boot passed the BIOS check.
There are some warning lights on the back of the case. The status indication is that there is an ‘other problem’. Troubleshooting steps are to verify the connections of the hard drive and disk drive are solid. It kind of acts like a hard drive failure though.
One trick that I have used in the past is to remove the hard drive and plug it into a working machine. That bypasses all of the other hardware issues. If I can offload the data (one more time), this machine will finally be headed to the scrap heap.
Because my scanner is OBD II specific, there are no other updates that it will receive and the COM port will no longer be necessary as that protocol was ended in 2012. The scanner is as up to date as it will ever be. Some things will be lost forever like music downloaded with the Windows Music license format. That idea was not carried forward and will only play on devices originally downloaded. Tax years 2011 and 2010 are no longer relevant. Only photos are the prize.
I guess what inspired this post was my amazement that six years after support ended, I still had pending updates. I know that this machine has been on and connected in that time. This experience has driven a few planned posts as well 1) headlight resolution of the Navigator 2) repair of the Yamaha sound systems – I know what is wrong there.
I am still very much busy with my housing project. That is partially why last week was so barren. But I will be back.
One of the side effects of this quarantine period is a constant reorganization of furniture and settings in the house. The latest rendition of our TV area no longer has a place for the surround sound receiver and DVD player. The Xbox has replaced the Blue Ray player and the receiver doesn’t seem to be working.
Back when I first ‘made it’, we made an investment in a home entertainment center. This was the late nineties so the center piece was a nice Yamaha receiver and surround sound speakers. Later, a CD carousel was added and finally a cassette deck. I even spent numerous weekends building a custom entertainment cabinet
As technology advanced, there was a change in the configuration and usage of the equipment. The first real crack at obsolescence was when we replaced the tube TV with a plasma screen. The audio output on the new TV was digital fiber optic. I had to buy a special converter to change the optical signal to analog. That worked until it had to be reset every year or so.
To be honest, the idea of an nice audio system was stronger than the usage. Music has gone digital, despite having stacks of CD’s and cassettes. If I have a hankering for a particular song, I can look it up on YouTube. And my phone is much closer than the music in the living room. About a year and a half ago, I switched the CD player for the cassette deck for fun. We listened to some old mix tapes for nostalgia. That was the last time I heard it work.
I will admit that that I would get a little frustrated getting everything setup, then to move it and reconfigure it again. In our current house, I have wired the setup in four different places in two different rooms. For that reason, the system hasn’t been fully setup in the last year. We have pulled out the receiver for karaoke purposes from time to time.
$1000 of techno junk
There was no room for the audio system in the new TV setup. So I thought I would set it up in the basement. First I tried the tape deck – no sound. I checked the speaker wire, that seemed fine. I switched the audio cables, those seemed fine. Then I tried CD player, thinking the input might be bad and that was jammed. So I took it apart and found a CD lodged in the mechanism. But I managed to get the drawer stuck.
So, here is where I am at, I may be able to repair the CD player given enough time and effort. I am pretty sure that one of the electronic components is burned out in the receiver – but which one? The whole thing is frustrating and disappointing. Can I, will I and even if I do fix this will I even use it?
I hate to throw away something that was once so nice. I am not sure whether I will try to repair it. I am too deep in my remodeling project to spend any time on this at this time. So, for now it is going to get stacked with the other junk like college text books that haven’t been used in 25 years.
There is a saying in preparedness “two is one, one is none”. What does that really mean? It means, have redundancy in your life. Because if you count on one item/system and it fails, and you have no ability to fix it or work around it then you are in trouble. The other reason to look at redundancy gives you the ability to breathe and assess the situation. There is nothing more desperate than someone that has nothing to lose… so to speak.
During the pioneering era, it was said that an ax was life. With an ax, you could grow food, contain livestock, cook, build shelter, etc. Without an ax or the ability to use it you were in a tough situation. Looking out a bit farther than that consider a file to sharpen the ax, tools to replace the handle. That is the kind of planning that redundancy leads to.
If there is nothing that this pandemic situation could have taught us, that is having income that is resilient to the economy or multiple sources of income. This can be an intricate and deep subject however, having savings is one way to weather the storm. That is not redundancy per se but using this gap time to build redundancy would be a good idea. If you can get a little bit of traction going, then you have the ability to ebb and flow into making more or less of an income when you need it or want it.
To get a little ‘tacticool’, there is a saying that goes “There aren’t many situations that $5000 and Glock cant get you out of”. I am sure that you are not dense but you can only buy or force your way out of tough situations. I really don’t recommend force except for the gravest extreme self defense. As we all know, we live by exchanging money. It is the number one redundancy to have in place.
In today’s society, it is hard to justify items as a place to focus. Most people have enough in the way of clothes or cookware or even critical tools. I would say a vehicle is maybe the only ‘necessity’. It allows us to work, obtain food or seek help for medical or security reasons.
Nevertheless, examine your situation. You may have others that depend on you such as livestock or pets. What do you need to do to ensure their safety and security. Is fencing critical to protecting them? You might need to have the ability to repair a fence in the middle of the night. Having lights and wire and staples makes your fence redundant.
Municipal systems are fairly robust. In most cases water, gas and electricity will be the last systems to fail. But they do. Having a generator to run your freezer in the meantime so a year’s worth of meat isn’t ruined seems like a good idea. Having alternate ways to cook or heat and now you have the ideas to evaluate.
I hope that this makes an impression on your needs assessment and encourages a look at redundancy. Focus on the things that really matter in your life like food, water, shelter, safety and sanitation. Having a backup Xbox is great but you might get a little thirsty.
Looking at the forecast for the rest of the week here, there is definitely rain all day today and it looks iffy until next Tuesday. There are supposed to be dry days but gray with mixed showers until next week. That is a real bummer when you are trying to button up the exterior of house.
So, I thought I would show some progress and then talk about how I am going to work around it.
First of all, I guess that I have been pretty lucky in the weather lottery. Many times in April, it can be just as wet and cold as December, just not as much light. So, the fact that I have had three weeks without a lot of rain is pretty remarkable.
The house wrap is on the back and side (as shown). I have barely touched the front as I can see there is rotten sill. That will have to be repaired before we can button it up completely. My current strategy is to work on those two sides until I run out of materials. I am guessing that will be at the end of this week.
I did drag some of the T-111 and trim boards into the basement for painting last night in preparation. Today, I am going to try and make some progress on pre-painting before installation. It is much easier to paint materials on the ground and touch up nail holes and such when installed than trying to paint everything in place.
Aside from that, I did some drywall damage cutting the rotten studs out and replacing so I can switch to inside. The window trim will have to be modified now that there is a new window. I am vacillating around replacing or cleaning the drywall in places. The main reason is that I think the carpet is in reasonable shape and I am worried that it will be ruined if I start cutting chunks of drywall out and mudding it up.
Lastly, there is always clean-up. At least the way I work, things come out of the shop and get thrown back on the bench when returned. Saw dust piles up and it is kind-of a mess to work in and around. I have been doing it on the weekends as preparation for the next week, so it is not horrible but it bugs me to see things in disarray.
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