Monday, October 27, 2008

Smitten Kitten

A fine weekend it was, despite the cold and wind. You can always tell when winter arrives in Iowa. Not by the ice or snow though. Two words: Static Cling.
 
Last week was one long gray smear punctuated with insulting rain. I ventured out to work at the lodge anyhow, thumbing my nose at the 6:30 sundowns we're having these days. The gen kept up marvelously though it's that time of year to switch over to a 10w30 before the snow really starts flying. East shed roof soffit work is complete; I've been working on the west now the past few days. Things should be easy enough but there are dependencies that make such a task a non-trivial matter (compared with throwing some aluminum soffit up there). First you need solid blocking at the end joints and down the centers of the soffits to prevent the plywood from sagging over time. A trip up in the bucket yields all but the last block measurement (it depends on the others). Some have angled ends but the others are mostly 90's. Invariably all but one will fit OK, that one will require trying to carefully shave a 1/16" off without breaking out the miter saw and dragging it 100' in the dark, spitting rain, for one cut. The less appealing alternative is to shut everything down and try to pull the generator 100' through the wet grass and mud, make a cut, then drag it all back. With strings and straight edges the blocks can be put in. I designed the shed roof soffit overhangs so that only 1 sheet of plywood, split down the middle, would yield the necessary 16' run. When you're in the bucket you try to do as much as you can to minimize the trips up and down, not only because it takes some time but because the batteries get exhauasted pretty quickly. So, you measure for the exact soffit widths and head back down.
 
They also take paint on the face and edges, so you need to make sure you've planned on when you're cutting and rollering them to take advantage of the week's forecast. It makes no sense to work chronologically if tomorrow is gray and overcast yet today is beautiful and the plywood still needs paint. Figure a night inside to dry and they're ready to put up. Back to the prep work; J-trim along the building is next. After establishing a straight line under the lookout joists, some clamping creates a "shelf" to rest the far end of the aluminum j-trim on. Alternating drill bits and square-drive bits through the inside of the trim allows fastening to the siding with small screws without distoring the aluminum or binding it so tight it won't cooperate with the plywood. After the first section is set up, measurement and tin snips are required for the next piece. With vertical grooved siding insects could still come up behind the trim following the grooves, so some dark colored caulk does the trick, filling the groove behind the trim, but being careful so that none of it is easily visible from the ground.  Cut a double-J piece for the leading edge and you're ready for the (already cut width and length) plywood. Some pilot holes before you take it up in the bucket helps things along once you're up there wrestling with it.
 
Assuming the first sheet went in and lined up OK, only a couple screws can be put in (you'll need to play with it once the other sheet is up). Now though, things get tricky. The side soffit transitions "into" the rear, meaning you'll need angle and length for the second sheet of plywood. And don't forget the last block you didn't put in from earlier. You can put it in now using a straight edge and the previous blocks installed as your reference. Assuming you've got good numbers for your cuts based off the first plywood sheet, and that you've already removed the rear-most sheet of plywood already in place that was the rear roof-soffit, and that you've painted the cut edges in the plywood you're about to put up, you can now try…putting it up. Assume it fits on the first try, you go ahead and put in a couple screws. Now you need to know the angle of transition into the rear sheet; the circ saw and table saw can cut a piece of solid blocking with the angle you need. Put that in. Now, the trickiest part. Cutting out the relief area of the rearmost soffit plywood you took down so that the side soffit you just put in "transitions" into it. After the trimming and finessing and panels roughly installed, you can now drill and place the remainder of the fasteners. You'll still need to paint everything again to cover the screws, nails, and hand prints (you did readjust the first sheet of plywood to butt squarely now, didn't you?) But that can wait for the total-soffit-paint in spring. Congratulations. It' just taken you several evenings to put up some stinkin' plywood.
 
Now that you know the secret, would you finish the west soffit for me? I painted the last cut sheet Friday night after work and managed the j-trim and caulking. Got everything put away just as the rain was starting again. Met up with Cam and Ben at the Panther and witnessed the strange goings-ons. Save for one or two people, maybe, by 11PM there was no one over 40 in the place. We shot several games of pool against team Bocephus Jangles, with me proving just how bad I've gotten the past two years. On the upside, they've got Clap for the Wolfman in the juke.
 
Sat AM we were up, at 'em and on the road with the parents, Bandit and an enclosed trailer. Managed to knock out a prelim design for another outdoor construction project on the way. We moved Brittni out of her Minneapolis abode and had too much fun (at least me anyway) with the neighbor dog, Tripper, that bares a striking resemblence to a young Bandit. 


With everything moved out, Cara, Britt and I did some shopping, including Swank Interiors where we spent too much time and money. I came away with a set of NOS aluminum tiki-torches, a 50's clock-radio and a pyrex kitchen graduated-cylinder. Both of them restrained me from buying yet another set of colorful juice glasses. Another notable was trying to find Macy's Home, pinpointing the couch I've had my eye on to see color swatches, and then befuddling the gentleman in the basement with odd carpet requests. Back in CF by midnight.
 
Saturday was a fun departure and sleeping in Sunday was a welcome change. But I did want to at least accomplish my list of tasks at the lodge before heading to the parents for dinner and a going-away/bday party for Brittni. One little problem. The western wind was blowing almost everything sideways. People. Powerpoles. Cars. Trees. You name it! 30-50mph would not have been unrealistic numbers, especially out in the country. I resigned that it would be pretty stupid to pilot a sheet of plywood from the bucket in that weather. So I planed and ripped cedar for corners, put away the 150' garden hoses, blew out the hydrant line, loaded up the latex paints, etc. Then hefted the 4 large lead-acid batteries out of the picker to bring home for a proper charging, doing my best to keep the acid off my hands. Sunday night: Pizza, laundry and squirrels with cameras.
 
 
 

Monday, October 20, 2008

Wisconsin's White Lies

Another weekend moving at accelerated speed, though I must admit, I did what I could to put the brakes on starting Friday afternoon. The workload came up, squashing my half-day plans but still left me with an hour of early escape. Managed to do some grocery shopping on the way home which included such things as a jug of 10w-40 and macaroni salad. A winning combo.
 
From there it was the standard rush to get to the lodge. Met up with Fernando and surveyed the work. Unfortunately, the rain earlier that day had not been kind and some touch-up work was needed on the EIFS. I worked from the bucket to put up blocking for the east shed-roof overhang before heading in to cleanup around dusk. Met up with Ben, and later in the eve, Cam, at the PL for draws and pool. The full house had quickly dissipated by the time we broke out the cues. I wasn’t quite ready for bed when I got home, despite having a big day in front of me. So, I decided to take a stroll around the hill (buzzing) and campus (dead) and try out my pipe with a UNI blend I had picked up. If you're going for effect, it's a good one. All smoke and no substance (college years anyone? Ha). Recommendation? Best to avoid this one.
 
Up and at 'em Saturday! After washing and some tidying the 85 FBCd'E was ready for winter and the '76 ready for the road. By noon the sun had burned off the haze and the trees were starting to shimmer. We made the annual Northeast trip to see the colors and stop in a few of the small towns on the way. Had ourselves a picnic at Pike's Peak which was really bustling. In the time we were there two different bridal parties had arrived for photos; some pretty hideous dresses too. It was a little chilly but the colors were right at their peak and well worth the trip. Cruised around 65-70 and climbed some pretty steep hills along the Mississippi; pulled in a respectable 12.2mpg.


The infamous Stark's provided a trunk load of Hamm's, Blatz and Frontier Whiskey.
 
The old depot in Prairie has been converted into a pub and while driving by it a neon sign in the window caught my eye, "Schlitz on Tap". I pulled the car over and went in for a look. From what I could tell from the tappers, they were bluffing. An 8' wide enamel neon sign hung from the tall ceiling inside boasting "Drink Blatz!". It appeared to have been restored. That's when I knew it was too good to be true. Turned around and walked out, much to the bewildermint of the crowd at the bar.
 
You can guess Sunday's activites by now. Windy as all get-out, whatever that means. Spent the day in the bucket handling the east shed soffit install and had to vacate a bat from his perch. I put him over by the trailer and sure enough, he eventually calmed himself and presumably climbed up behind the wheel well. Painting. Sawing. Tidying the yard. The wind wasn't quite Chaplin-esque, but got close. Cara came out at 4 and did some mowing and we put up snow fencing around the yews and secured the young crab apple.
 
Overcast, some rain, low 50's forecast for this week; as long as I don't have to break out the boots, I won't complain too loudly.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Against my better judgment...

Splitting the Atom - A Primer in Oversimplification
 
The whole idea is to start a chain reaction. What happens if you bombard a fissile isotope with neutrons of sufficient quanitity and velocity? One is likely to be absorbed into the fissile isotope's nucleus. Consider U-235, (ok, 235U), a common reactor isotope. When it absorbs a neutron you end up with U-236 which is highly unstable. It fissions, "breaking down" into other lower level products and releases quite a bit of kinetic energy (heat); it also releases 2-3 free neutrons. These 2 or 3 neutrons are absorbed into other nearby nuclei, which in turn fission and release their own free neutrons. What you've got is a self-sustaining chain reaction a.k.a. critical mass.
 
This is great for a bomb. Ever hear the phrase "weapons grade" plutonium? It basically means it's highly refined stuff, much more so than the fuel in nuclear reactors, since the idea is lots of power density and an extremely fast release of that energy. If you can bring two masses of fissile material together (creating a supercritical mass) faster than the time it takes for spontaneous fission, you've got yourself a great bomb. PU239 is ideal for its spontaneous fission probability, but bringing the masses together like with Uranium would be too slow. In this alternative the idea is to "crush" a sphere of PU239 using traditional explosives, compressing the material into a density (and quickly enough) to go critical. Seperating the TNT from the nuclear payload pretty much guarantees the weapon is "safe".
 
But what about harnessing nuclear energy for electricity? In this case we want a controlled reaction. How to do that? If we absorb free neutrons, we effectively put limits on the chain reaction taking place. This is the function of control rods in a reactor core. Expose more of the rods and you absorb more neutrons.
 
In a traditional elec plant coal or gas is burnt releasing heat, the heat turns water into steam, the steam drives turbines, then the steam precipitates back to water through cooling towers (or pumped into cooling ponds). Nuclear plants operate the same way only the fissioning atoms are generating the heat in the reactor. In fact the towers one associates with a nuke plant are not reactors at all, they're cooling towers for the coolant. The one caveat is that the water circulating through the reactor becomes radioactive and so cannot be pumped through cooling towers or ponds directly, rather, the cooling system is a closed loop and transfers heat to a secondary cooling system through heat exchangers, much the same way a car transfers heat in liquid-form to air through a radiator (heat exchanger).
 
How safe are they? Nuclear plants have a lot of backup systems, including containment vessels around the reactor, emergency cooling systems if pumps should fail, systems that initiate a SCRAM when parameters go out of limits, and so forth. That said, we can't forget 1. Murphy's Law,  2. Corporate Bottom-Lines and 3. People can be pretty stupid.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Weather....

OK, no nuclear incident listings yet. However...

It's 8:30 PM Friday night. 
Temps are perfect, windows open.
Big party across the street (homecoming going on of course).
They have Roxette cranked.

Love it.
That is all. 

BMEWS'd

Occasionally I find myself on a new kick. Studying, absorbing, learning all about a topic with high intensity as quickly as I can. The upside is that the knowledge influences future ideas, the downside is that I forget 99% of the important stuff in short order. Last winter I was on a mainframe kick. In the matter of only a couple weeks I had sketched out designs for building my own relay computer, optimized operator controls, calculated cost estimates, worked out an instruction set, read tomes of interviews with computer pioneers, even discovered, and read, cover-to-cover, the operating procedures for the UNIVAC computer system. And for a little while, should I have been dropped into 1955, I could've taken the helm and started warm-up procedures on the mercury memory tanks of such a beast. But like I said, I forget 99% of this stuff. Little good is does me now.
 
A quick stroll through the Rod Library the other night accidentally ignited a renewed interest (I tend to return to some of these topics every now and then). I caught the back cover of a 50-year old magazine touting BMEWS. If ever there was a winning acronym, that'd be it! Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. It was the first system to detect potential nuclear attack from the Soviet Union from long range ballistic missiles, scanning the skies over the north pole from three different global installations, all scanning, processing and reporting back information to Cheyenne Mountain, CO. Truly a feat, and to read stories of those that worked on the project, quite impressive. The system went on line in '59 and also served to track satellites. As the Cold War progressed, so did technology, with the Soviets creating low-orbit weapons that could target the US from the southern hemisphere. BTW, if you do any reading up on BMEWS, you'll quickly discover the "Moon Alarm incident" which I find, for some strange reason, terribly interesting. On October 5th, 1960, the moon rose line of sight with the Thule installation radar signal. Alarms sounded and tracking data indicated a potential threat from the skies, though no impact prediction reports were generated. The two other installations online confirmed there was no threat. What had happened was that the moon itself had reflected the tracking signal, returning it in a 2 second round trip. Once understood, modifications were made to prevent a recurrence. Any threat of this incident sparking WW3 is pretty slim.
 
But, where am I going with this Cold War ramble? I don't think many people realize how close we came to a total nuclear halocaust. And not just once, but an alarming number of times, and I’m not talking about anyone losing their head and pressing the button.  It would be several years before something seemingly obvious, like a Hotline to Russia, was established. If you're like me, you'll find some of the incidents assinine, some of it unbelievable, but of course, hindsight is 20/20. You might also realize, that no matter how invincible you or I may occasionally feel. We really are not in the driver's seat. These incidents arose with an understanding of the technology, and a temperance of control. Today we have countries coming into nuclear power without a 60-year social learning curve, and in some cases, with an agenda that mutually assured destruction may be a good thing.
 
Of course, if you're like me, the price of gas weighs heavier on your mind than whether we'll get nuked tomorrow. In 2008 such things can't happen…right?
 
Stay tuned.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

"Let me offer you some bad advice"

Back after a few days off. This time it was non-business, rather, a wedding on the Ohio River. Just goes to show though how quickly one can forget the work-a-day demands and expectations when you're thrown 600 miles from anything resembling normalcy. Until you check your work email. (note to self: don't do that)
 
Aside from the wedding and meeting Cara's extended family we were able to do some exploring ourselves. Managed an IKEA stop on the way to Cincinnati where I left with more ideas than anything. Love the fabric, but so expensive. Found a Macy's Home that had the couch I was wanting to see in person. Marked "clearance". Hmm. Of course no one could be found for questions in the dim 80's lower-level of the place. Saturday then we parked smack-dab in downtown Cinci and took a stroll. Stopped in Sak's, Macy's, Cara had a look in Tiffany's and I almost bought an italian hat at the famous Batsakes of Cincinnati. Came _this_ close. A stroll through an area undergoing urban-renewal yielded a few stores that were right up our alley.
 
There goes September. The morning drive requires the heater and jackets are starting to pop out in the parking lot. Now we enter that month that either pulls-through for us or folds over like a wet paper plate, letting November steal the show. I need a few more nice days though, with EIFS work to do and foam to put up the temps have to be pretty decent. We'll give it a shot this Sunday.