My kids have been into music for a little while now. Recently, they have shown a big interest in vinyl. In fact, the record player I talked about a few months ago was spotted by my son at a second hand store. They have been talking about having their own hi-fi setups in their rooms. During Spring Break, we stopped into a local record shop and one of my son’s bought a record. My other son bought a record at a second hand store.
One of my sons has a periodic appointment. If I get the chance, I slink away to the local Goodwill while I am killing time. There is a lot of junk but there is also some really good deals on vintage audio equipment. In this era of sound bars and Bluetooth speakers, quality equipment is passé. I have seen many of stereo receiver for $15-$25, literally pennies on the dollar versus original cost.
I have my eyes open for some alternate speakers and since I don’t really need them, I am being very choosy. When I see the right deal, I will eventually buy them. I have lately been thinking that since my kids are interested, that I could build them their own systems, one piece at a time. I saw this turntable marked at $12 so I thought it was worth a chance.
The last time I hesitated, I missed out on a Technics turntable that only needed a stylus (needle). It was pricey at $100, but I have seen many of them for sale at at least double the cost, depending on the model. So, I grabbed this one when I saw it. Goodwill does a minimal amount of testing. They make sure the device at least powers on. I figured that the price was pretty low risk if it didn’t work.
It turns out, this one also needed a new stylus. I bought a replacement at $22 and then I went for the real test. Setting it up, I found out that the other problem was two of the four rubber feet were missing and the remaining are rotten (bad rubber). That is why I have the clippers wedged underneath the table. I am planning on getting some replacement feet in the $10-$20 range and this old turntable will be back in business.
It played great. I put on Tom Petty and my son’s records and everything was perfect. I suppose all in, this will be a $50 purchase but a vintage player in today’s dollars is a way better than anything I can buy new at the same price.
End Your Programming Routine: I suppose I am in now on building individual stereo setups. This player won’t work without an amplifier. I need a receiver and some bookshelf speakers. Those are both much easier to find than a good turntable. Now, I am in the market for a third turntable as well.
This saying was an inside joke for a number of years. What it really meant was that Friday was a day that higher ups were gone and the workers were stuck in the muck. Really, it was someone else’s fun day, not mine. But, since we have had a number of weeks of heavy stuff on Fridays, I am going to stay light today.
What then shall we talk about? How about tool repair? You can find ax, hammer, maul, sledge, hatchet, etc heads at garage sales, second hand stores and even free. This is where this one came from. My son hauled it home from some job that he had. He proceeded to pour vinegar on it and there it set for months.
I didn’t know this but apparently, vinegar is a good rust remover. The problem is, the surface needs to be treated to it doesn’t re-rust. That is where it is at again, very rusty. I may someday spend some time with a wire wheel or something and try to paint it or even wax it but for now, I just put a new handle on it.
The first step is to select the appropriate replacement handle. This splitting maul required a round head to fit properly. This is also the right handle for the sledge hammer. The options are wood and fiberglass. I like fiberglass in a lot of cases, I think that they weather better if you are going to leave tools out in the elements (not really recommended, but it happens). The attachment is slower, using epoxy which needs to cure. Wood is quicker, cheaper and traditional.
Once the tool head is seated on the handle, you then drive the wood wedge into the handle. This wedge forces the handle tight to the tool head. Note: most sledges and mauls leave the tip of the handle out from the top of tool head. I am not totally sure of why, but I suspect that it lets the head slip a little when splitting. Also note that the wedge is oversized and must be trimmed or split in order to be hammered in correctly.
I chose to trim the excess off. I don’t have any at the moment, but I like to pour epoxy in the hole. I feel like it make a better bond of the tool head to the handle. I have observed older handles eventually wearing to where the head comes off again. This technique helps last longer I feel. Finally, hammer the steel wedge perpendicular to the wooden wedge. This will help lock all the pieces together.
Now, I have another working splitting maul. Lets talk about the economics of the situation. I paid $13 for the replacement handle. I checked a couple of sources (box stores) and I found handles running $20. I also checked the cost of a replacement. The cheapest one I saw was near $40. A comparable model with hickory (or ash) handle was $67.
I already have a maul, why would I want another one, especially if I rarely use it? Remember two is one and one is none. But also, I have come around to having duplicate yard tools because I can have more than one person doing work, if needed. At least for me, it gets the tool head off the floor and makes a useful tool. I think the $13 was also worth the cost of the topic as well.
End Your Programming Routine: Let’s be honest, I probably didn’t need another splitting maul. In fact, I gave away one when I was cleaning up my father-in-law’s estate last summer. But, I was stuck with this one since my son brought it home. I will probably hold onto it and give it to him when it is time. Knowing how to fix tools is an important skill if you ever live rurally and it can save you time and/or money.
I had a busy weekend. It seems like I always have 20 things to get done in 10 items worth of time. At least, we didn’t have anything scheduled so I was free to spend the majority of my time on stuff that needed to get done. Something that has been bugging me for several years was that our deep freezer needed to be defrosted.
After last summer, we cleaned out my in-laws freezer (20 cubic ft, which was completely full) I could barely fit the contents in our freezer. It was not like it was particularly full, but the usable space was probably reduced by at least a third due to ice buildup. This wasn’t new news to me, It just put it in perspective that something needed to be done.
The worst time to defrost the freezer is when it is full. The second worst time to do it is in the summer, unless it is completely empty, then of course it is the best time. I was giving it some time to get emptied out, but I also wanted to get it done before it was warm. Not too warm, because I needed to transfer everything to coolers while I executed the process.
We bought this freezer for $50 in 2005. In fact, we used the U-Haul that we were moving stuff from the storage unit to our house to pick it up. So, it has been plugged in since that time and this is the first time I have ever defrosted it. There have been a few times over the years that the door wasn’t shut which is what started the ice growth in the first place.
Can I be honest? This is probably the best $50 ever invested. The amount of money we have saved by buying beef at $2 / pound when the going rate was $4 for hamburger, we have literally saved thousands of dollars and ate like kings. There is hardly a day that the door is not opened. Additionally, we have frozen berries on sheets and temporarily housed stuff for others. For me, a freezer is a must have.
We have to talk about the science of freezing for a minute. When ice melts, we know it turns into water. That water is 32 degrees (or a hair higher). In effect, it insulates the remaining ice as long as it is in contact, considering the outside temperature is 55 degrees. Why is this important? It means that the first step in defrosting is physical removal of as much ice as possible. Not only is this less total mass to melt, but it translates to speeding up the time dramatically.
That seems straight forward. I used a hammer and a wide putty knife to try and get under the ice that is caked in the coils. You need to be very careful not to damage the coil or you will have a ruined freezer. In my case I had ice above and below the shelves so I tried to chisel in the putty knife and lift.
Your best friend in defrosting is actually the ambient temperature. This is partially why I waited until spring was showing to do this. The other tool I used was a heat gun. This worked really well in melting small spots and places frozen around the tubing but it was slow. Literally, all of the freezer was dripping and melting while I concentrated on a small area with the heat gun.
You want to get all the water out. That will just re-freeze and begin the whole cycle over. So, I washed the dried blood out (that was from putting a whole fresh beef head in the freezer last year) and the sticky who knows what. Then I took a dry towel and absorbed any drops I could find.
All told, this probably took 12 hours to do. I did leave for four hours in the middle to attend the gun show. While I was gone, the ice was melting away just sitting there. I also took the opportunity to clean the outside and sweep all the junk from behind and under the freezer. For some reason, there was a lot of dog food. In fact, I even found dog food in the freezer. I am not sure how that got there, but I suspect the kids had something to do with it.
It doesn’t look like that much ice in the picture. This made being able to stack two pounds of burger to now being able to stack four pounds. Granted, it wasn’t that bad on every shelf but the top shelf I had already removed all of the top ice before I took the picture. In that case, I could only stack one whole chicken high. The other added problem was that the surface was not level and stuff had a tendency to slide or fall out if not precariously organized.
My mom used to defrost the freezer once every couple of years. We tended to fill it and then empty it growing up. In my case, inventory is constantly ebbing and flowing which makes it harder. One more tip, we didn’t have a heat gun so she would use the blower exhaust from the vacuum. It doesn’t get nearly as hot, but it does push a lot of volume of air. Finally, be prepared for water everywhere. Have towels and catch basins available. I did it in the garage, so the wet wasn’t a problem but a finished floor would have been a disaster.
End Your Programming Routine: I am happy this is done and I am glad that I spent my time on it. I can see everything and I have a lot more room. Like I said, this is something I have been wanting to do for years. Maybe I won’t wait so long next time (or maybe I wont have kids that don’t close the door properly). And, everything was still rock solid in my coolers when I went to put it away – no extra mess.
I had a good weekend. This was the first time I had Martin Luther King Jr day off since 1997. The weather was OK so consequently, I got some pruning and yard work done. I also got some work in the shop done, this was one of the projects I worked on.
About a week ago, I talked about my son’s bicycle problems. I communicated with the factory, and they weren’t going to touch this problem with a five foot pole (as I suspected). So, I went ahead and bypassed the factory switch. Here’s how it was done.
End Your Programming Routine: The repair took a little over an hour, the video slowed me down quite a bit. Then I have spent another hour editing this to get it where it is, so this is it for today. Keep looking for ways to reject the status quo in your life. Fix that battery.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr day and technically, I have the day off. This is the first time I have had this as a holiday since I was in college. Nevertheless, the show must go on at AltF4.co.
We have had some cold weather recently. Not cold like upper mid-west, but colder than normal weather as in significantly below freezing at night. I have a refrigerator in the (detached) garage that barely hangs on through the cold of winter and the heat of summer. I will use it as long as it continues to run. This was the first time I have ever seen canned drinks freeze and distort the can.
So, what actually happens? Eventually the outside temperature gets colder than the inside temperature of the refrigerator (and freezer). The unit has no capacity to warm itself and therefore the entire becomes the temperature as ambient. So, expect your refrigerator to freeze and your freezer to thaw.
Now, most compounds when frozen actually shrink in volume. Not water which is 99% of what is in this can. That is the miracle of life. Without the fact that water actually expands when frozen allow life to exist on the planet. It is how the Arctic and Antarctic have ice over the ocean but liquid beneath.
Carbonation is the act of dissolving carbon dioxide into a liquid. Dissolved doesn’t mean that it disappears, it is dispersed throughout the solution. The freezing point of water is significantly higher than carbon dioxide and freezing turns the individual atoms into a crystal structure. What happened here is that the water formed ice and the majority of the carbon dioxide left the liquid and blew out the can.
Impressively, the can didn’t burst, but it expanded everywhere it was possible. When the ice melted, the volume contracted again and the can folded inward. There were some other cans of Sunkist in the refrigerator that showed no signs of damage at all. What happened there?
Something you may know is that antifreeze is significantly comprised of ethylene or propylene glycol. Well, chemically those are alcohols. Sugar is also classified as an alcohol. It is also why they say animals are attracted to antifreeze because it is sweet. This is my theory anyway, there is enough sugar in the Sunkist that prevented it from freezing.
There were some ‘Mexican’ Coca-Cola’s in the freezer that completely iced up and spilled over. The bottle didn’t break, that I can see. The weak point seems to be the bottlecap. I suspect that as the bottle iced up, it put enough pressure on the cap to create a gap and release unfrozen liquid and the carbon dioxide.
Why did the Cokes freeze but the Sunkist not? Good question, Is it because one uses corn syrup and one uses sugar? I think likely. I suspect that on a weight by weight volume, significantly more corn syrup is used in place of sugar. Lastly, there were two bottles of prepared margarita drink. Those appeared to not freeze either.
End Your Programming Routine: I opened the water and it was flat. That means that the waters are done, the cokes were done and I have a mess to clean in the refrigerator. Fortunately, it was only a few things and not stocked full. Although it is possible that if the refrigerator was full, this may not have happened because of having enough thermal mass to keep the internal temperature from getting so cold. My advice is to watch the weather and take appropriate actions to protect items from seasonal damage. I don’t know if I will have do anything different but it is a data point to watch in the future.
My son is at the age where he is too young to drive and doesn’t want to walk. He has been an avid bike rider to school since he started middle school, about five years ago. Last semester we rewarded his straight A’s with an electric bike.
Now me… I am old fashioned. I don’t want any additional complexity on a bicycle. That is the point. My son want’s to electrify his 1969 Cougar. Maybe the new generation of car people will find originally restored not appealing or valuable? I think it is a mistake, nevertheless I told him it is his car.
This bike is heavy, it is almost 60 pounds. It is also designed to used with electric assist. That being said, it is very difficult to pedal without the motor working. Last week, it stopped working at least consistently. What I know, which is not much is that replacement parts are difficult to find, bicycle shops are out of sorts with this technology and anything on the drivetrain is proprietary and expensive. This leads to the odds of getting help as low. We are going to have to figure this one out ourselves.
We bought the bike used, so we do not know the origins or the complete history. Apparently, it is only sold on Amazon which makes getting help more difficult. I was able to reach out to the broker, but they are primarily interested in a warranty resolution, which I think we are beyond at this point. Here is what I think I know to date.
The charger is working
The battery seems to put out the right voltage
The switch sometimes works and sometimes does not.
Ultimately, I was hoping to find a bad solder joint or something loose. The switch is mounted to the board on the bottom with the two red wires. I cant see anything obvious from this angle and to get to it, I will need to entirely disassemble the battery. I am pretty sure that the problem is with the switch in that it works intermittently.
Here is my logic. A new battery unit is $250 which would integrate a switch and battery. However, I can cut the wires and bypass the built in switch with a new switch and mitigate the problem for $5. The worst case scenario is that it doesn’t work and I am out $5 plus the time. But, I would lay odds on the problem being the integrated switch. Further, The chances of me getting a replacement switch (or board) that works in the OEM configuration are extremely low. So, I don’t think I want to tear the battery apart for low probability fix.
I am going to give the manufacturer some of these details and we will see if they come through with any technical help. I am not holding my breath.
End Your Programming Routine: There are sometimes problems in life that we are going to have a difficult time handing over to someone else to solve. This happens to be one of them. I suppose I could just buy the new battery unit and solve the problem with money, but then I could just buy a new bike too. Truth be told, the battery could be rebuilt as well by identifying the bad cell and replacing it in the pack. Today I am point out the proper solution is to isolate the problem and then target a specific fix. This will likely be a video coming up.
I was thinking that I spent a bunch of time taking video about the process and that maybe I would get some feedback on how to make it better if I posted it. So, that is what I did.
Not having done this a ton, I am always surprised at how much work creating videos are. Whether it is holding the phone the wrong orientation or trimming beginning and end of clips to make good transitions, this five minute video took a couple of hours to edit (and that is with very little actual editing).
I suppose that if I am going to do more of this, I should invest in a few items to produce better quality. I need a tripod so I can get action shots as there is only so much you can do one handed. I may need another camera for better angles as well, like a GoPro for head mountability, I don’t know. Part of my hesitation is that is I am not terribly interested in creating a lot of video. What I do, I want to do well.
I was thinking about my interest in antennas and old tech and I started thinking about radios. I think I could get into amateur radio. I like approachable tech, science and DIY that seems tailor made. Plus, at least traditionally these were the ‘good guys’ in disasters like Hurricane Katrina. That seems right up my ally as well.
I don’t know yet, I need to do more research. I certainly don’t need another expensive or gear and time intensive hobby. I think preferably where I would start is a secondhand CB and a DIY antenna project.
End Your Programming Routine: I am keeping it short today. The whole point of spending time on the video was to use it. Since this video has been up a couple of days, I have already gotten some tips, so there may be another version in the works. I can probably reuse many of the components making this faster yet to do.
This one has been a long time coming. I actually planned on building this last year at this time. In fact, I took the materials to the Boy Scout Christmas tree stand last year to work on in the down time. I will explain my foibles below.
The only real cost to this project was the wire. I bought an entire spool at Habitat for Humanity for $3 because one of the real ends on the spool was broken. The reason this was a problem was because when unwinding the wire, it became a rats nest of wire. It took me hours to unwind and straighten. That is what stopped my progress last year. This year it got some priority because of my basement clean-up efforts.
Before I get too far down the road, the design and plans for this go to Dave Pederson at Trans World Radio which is a 501C ministry to connect the message of Christianity throughout the world. The reason it is cheap is so it can be built worldwide with salvage materials. Dave claims that this can be built in thirty minutes. I would say that it took me a couple of years (just kidding a couple of hours).
My original plan today was to build this antenna and embed the YouTube video. Right now, I have built the antenna and the video needs to be edited and assembled. Part of why I am dragging my feet a little bit is that I don’t see any improvement with the antenna. So, I don’t want to post a video that is marginal or potentially useless. Or said another way, I am spending some time testing it first.
Getting into antennas is kind of a vortex of science namely physics. I am positive that there is a lot to know that I don’t, but I do at least understand some of the basics. Did you know that every AM antenna is is a big coil of wire situated inside the radio? For that reason, the quality of AM reception is always directional or how the radio is sitting.
Building an exterior antenna without connections to the radio and in theory get better reception does it by in some ways concentrating the signal. My goal is to ultimately connect it to my receiver without a bunch of monkeying around with the antenna each time I want to change the signal frequency. So, I am not going to be real happy if it turns out that I need to adjust the location of this antenna frequently.
It turns out that AM radio stations turn down their ‘power’ at night. In my quick research, it seems like the amount of environmental electromagnetic interference is reduced. This would cause some stations to stomp on other stations because of the lack of interference, hence reducing broadcast power to keep them separate. This plays an additional problem with reception as marginal stations usually are even worse at night. Ironically, some stations can be found from long distances at night due to signal bounce. I have heard stations from San Francisco and Calgary Canada at night.
Simple interference itself, is a subject that has lots of gotchas. The best way I would describe it as a Gaussian Field (take a look at that math). Ignoring most of the technical information, wires carrying electricity, fluorescent ballasts, LED transformers and all other powered devices emit interference in a bell shaped pattern. Non-shielded cables (like antennas) are subject high degradation when the lights are on. It is not a lot of fun to sit in the dark listening to the radio, especially when the benefit of radio is that ability to do things concurrently. Grounding itself is not as simple as attaching another wire to ground as it can create a loop causing additional interference.
My CCrane radio is marketed at least as the best AM reception available in a radio. I do admit it is pretty good, it is still subject to the electromagnetic interference from power usage. I can get stations on that radio that I cant get anywhere else. Testing this new antenna on a lessor quality device is probably worth doing. I did try it on the receiver loop as well without effect. So, my tests will be ongoing before I declare this thing done.
End Your Programming Routine: The truth is, I got better reception by splitting the signal from the dipole antenna (for FM). That may have to do with the coax cable being outside and shielded rather than the shape of things. There is more to come on this subject as I haven’t finished my testing yet. There are other designs that use more expensive electrical components, or maybe the loop isn’t big enough or maybe I just don’t know how to use it? I am not sure yet but the quest goes on.
Stubbing out this week’s content, I was looking back at the previous years. My first deliberate post was December 10, 2019. That means that I just passed two years this last Friday. Now that I know that, I will pay more attention in the future. I have talked about it, but today I will talk about the origin story.
If you look back in the archives, there are two posts from 2016. For those of you that do not know, you can create a free WordPress site. There are definitely some limitations but that is where I worked in the first year (2019). But I am going to go deeper today.
It all started back in 2014. I was coming off of a blistering travel schedule. My company was working on the biggest project that we had ever won and I was one of the key players in the project’s success. The owner’s of my company had decided that they had reached the pinnacle of what they could do alone and decided to try and get the company positioned as a larger company. Our 30 person operation suddenly became a 200 person company.
As a result of the new company operations, they decided to shuffle people around and consequently, I got put on another project that was in bad shape. It was described to me that they needed a ‘strong person to re-energize and change the course of the project’. That was the beginning of the end for me. Maybe I will talk about this period some more later but to keep a looong story short, I was miserable.
Because it is ultimately germane, I will add a little more. The problem with my new project was not the people working on the project, it was the owners and management of the new company. The project was undersold to win the job. Then, they kept insisting that I recover the money to which the customer kept saying no. I looked like an ass on the project and the management kept insisting that I keep sending change orders. This caused major conflict on multiple sides.
After working for three different companies, I realized that my best chance on happiness was going to be working for myself. I needed the ability to run things the way that I wanted to do it. I have mentioned this before but I have listened to ‘The Survival Podcast’ since 2008. It was probably the first podcast that I subscribed to. In the early days, it was all about hard skills and items. Over the years, it has morphed into more of a lifestyle podcast.
One of the lifestyle items was career and income. The host, Jack Spirko made the transition himself into podcast host from a career in a technical industry. He was heavily influenced by Gary Vanderchuck’s 1000 true fans model. The summary of that model is that you need 1000 people that believe in your work to the point where they would give you one day’s wages to support it. If you have that, then you have enough to survive.
I started the site on WordPress in 2016 as an attempt to get started. Things got better in late 2015 but I knew in my heart of hearts I was kind of dead inside from the whole experience of 2014. My hope was that I was going to grow an entity to the point where I would simply be able to leave my job. What I didn’t count on was that I was mentally checked out and shortly after starting the site I abandoned it.
After I quit my job in 2019, I needed six months of downtime before I could think about the future. I started my job search and I figured I could parallelly develop my content business since I was on the computer anyway. I started writing daily to build discipline in priority and also to see if I would actually like doing it as a career. Quickly, I prioritized writing over the job search and I started doing it daily.
After writing on WordPress for nearly a year, I knew that I would have to take the next step with a proper domain and site. First of all, when I picked my blog name, I misspelled Resurrection. My original idea was that it would related to my career change. I thought about keeping it but then I didn’t want to repeat how to spell the actual site name all of the time, specifically on podcasts. Plus, I didn’t want to answer why it was spelled that way, which was a hasty mistake.
I took a major step in late 2020 with the transition to AltF4.co. I now had the freedom to make this what I wanted to be. I could build ecommerce, I could directly embed content without going through a third party like YouTube, I could collect mailing list data and all the things that are necessary for a content business. The down side to all of that was that at the same time, I started working again. All that free time I had for a year and half was gone without me really turning it into a business.
End Your Programming Routine: From time to time, I bring up the Toolbox Fallacy. I clearly have the desire and the discipline to post but I haven’t actually made it to a business. As much as I enjoy this part of it, I don’t know if I will have the drive to actually convert. I don’t exactly know why. I am going to investigate podcasting into the new year. That comes with it’s own set of challenges but it is time to take the next step.
It has been a while since I produced a YouTube video. I find it strange that my channel has gained subscribers and views with so little activity. The YouTube channel was always to support this blog endeavor. With that, I have been busy enough that I find it difficult to spend a lot of time building multi-media, see my problems with getting podcasting going.
It’s not that it is completely out of sight, out of mind. Often, I think when I am almost done with something that I should have videoed it. Sometimes when I wasn’t working, I would go back and redo things to get pictures or videos to post. There is also some things that never made it onto a published video because I didn’t deem the quality good enough and I didn’t want to redo it.
As long as I am blathering about unrelated things to today’s topic, I found a workaround to my editing problem. I downloaded a plugin to use an alternate editor than the default WordPress editor. It works on all devices, but it has more limited functionality and is a little more difficult to use. The default one has imbed capability for YouTube and gallery layout for photos, but at least this one works.
I am posting using my iPad this week. I purchased a Bluetooth keyboard to be able to type better and it is OK. At least I don’t have to tote around multiple laptops. For now, I am happier with how things are working.
This turntable was purchased second hand. It is possible that we overpaid at $30 but I don’t think so. It needed a new belt and a new stylus. Of course, I really didn’t know that but I speculated that it was just some maintenance to get things working.
Since getting it to spin, I have been pretty busy so I haven’t played around with it much. I do see a huge difference between the chintzy, suit-case style that we tried out a year ago and this one. The sound is much richer and base heavy, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
Additionally, a couple of the records that we bought were used and the good songs really didn’t play well. I suppose that was due to wear. I am now happy to say that they play nicely on this turntable. I do hear a slight sound level difference when the song changes to the worn spots in the record, but it still sounds good.
All in all, I would call this a success. I still have some challenges with a CD carousel. In fact, I bought a second one but it neither are working properly. Maybe I will make another video about repairing that piece of equipment if I can figure out what is exactly wrong. Right now, it would be a video about a failed attempt, not super helpful.
End Your Programming Routine: I am looking forward to getting my table built so I can move all of this audio gear into my office. There is nothing like rocking out while you are working or changing the sound as your mood changes. The computer speakers are a distant second to quality audio sound; they work but are un-inspiring.
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