Ruminations

I don’t know what it is, but frankly I’m in a bad mood. I think I’ve had it with this winter. We were spoiled last year, but spring seems so far off. It’s also not easy living at the Lodge, or living in the country, for that matter. Every little thing is amplified compared to city life. 

A coworker’s idea of “rough out there” is walking from their car to the front door of work, and then back at the end of the day. My idea of “rough out there” is every time I go from the bedroom to the kitchen through the unheated space between, that’s typically in the high 20’s or low 30’s depending on outside temps. We keep coats at both ends. If you leave your water bottle at the bottom of the steps, it will freeze. The kitchen is kept at 40F to prevent water lines from freezing, the upstairs unheated until we get home. Then there’s the matter of lack of a garage, and if there was a garage, how about an electric opener? And then the matter of getting to the road. You walk half a mile into straight-line wintry mix, or fight your way down the lane, over the tracks, and through the snow drifts in 4-wheel drive hoping you don’t get stuck because Lord have mercy this thing won’t have warmed up ‘til you’ve gotten to work and your boots are back at the Lodge and the drifts are several feet high and oh let’s just forget it and go back to bed.

I am not complaining about the situation. I could sell it all and move into an apartment in town with a heated garage, save 10’s of thousands of dollars, untold hours, and live like everyone else. No, I am complaining about winter. I know people that live in 1800’s farm houses out in the country, car outside, secondary roads that see little plowing. We deal with it.

On that happy note, It’s mid-March. Here’s a rundown for the archives-

Parents arrived home last week from their snow-bird Florida living. I decided to take them, Cara, and my grandma out to eat at Texas Roadhouse where a fine-time was had by all. Of note, the owners could open a second Texas Roadhouse directly next to this one and pack it just as easily on a Friday night.

The parents also picked up their new car, a 2013 GMC Acadia, which my dad bought and ordered through Deery last month while he was still in Florida. Very nice.

And in that vein, the 1993 Chevy Blazer is starting to get a little rough around the edges. The exhaust is a little louder. The engine runs a little rougher under load. The trans might be slipping a bit more after several incidents of freeing it from various snowy tombs this winter. And worst of all..the radio stops after several minutes of playing. Volume dependent, of course. The louder you have it, the less play time you get. It makes for an interesting ride to/from work…you turn it up just loud enough to figure out the song, then take it down a couple notches. Then you decide if you want to listen to the radio more than be warm, and adjust the fan speed accordingly so you can lower the volume.

The new Menards is slated to open next week and frankly, I’m thrilled. The only reason I end up at Crossroads these days is for materials. Not a fun drive, and not cheap to drive over there, either. Now, being directly on the way home, I won’t have to accumulate a week’s laundry list before sacrificing construction time and making the trek. It’ll also be easier on new shrubs and trees since the interstate can be avoided. 

The "Proposal 4" plan for the University corridor was released recently and I'm at a loss for words. Roundabouts or not, nobody should have to lose their home because The City thinks they know best how to improve traffic. The plans have roads, trails and right-of-ways grabbing land from wide swaths of the corridor and for all the wrong reasons. If the impetus for this project is to improve traffic flow, then that's one thing. Reducing the lanes to 4 and replacing stoplights with circles will keep the same throughput, IF people can figure out how to use them. If not, I think I'd rather wait my turn at a stoplight then have grandma pull out in front of me because she thinks I have to yield to her. If it's to integrate pedestrian/bicycling traffic to make the corridor more relevant, that's something else. If it's the former, this could be accomplished with better signaling and re-pavement with something other than blacktop. If it's the latter, they need a better plan than putting pedestrians in the line of fire around the perimeter of a round-about. Underpasses for cycles should be considered as a minimum. The entire corridor is becoming less and less relevant anyhow and a shot in the arm from foot traffic is not going to change that. In fact, it might hamper development.  /End of Rant.

Time for a CS3 Update…. We are coming along nicely on the interior. This winter saw a flurry of activity right before the cold really set in. Got the LP trenched in, the furnace and ducting installed, the ceiling drywall put up and all walls mudded and taped. Next was the carpet, and the painting. Floor tiles in the kitchen along with the appliances from the Big Move. I finished up the bamboo ceilings in both the entry and the living room, and this month, have tackled most of the interior window and door trim and staining, built the light fixture for the foyer, mudded and taped the downstairs entry walls, and have been doing the electrical in preparation for trenching in the service entrance. The goal is to get the interior stuff finished by 1April and if I continue to knock out tasks every night, I should be on target. Looming activities include finding an acceptable kitchen countertop pattern and making the countertops, deciding on a floor covering for the upstairs entry, putting in railings for the foyer, trimming out the walls, and deciding how far to take the upstairs bathroom for the interim. To frame or not to frame.

What else is new? I broke down and ordered the Philips Hue LED bulbs for the foyer pendants. I think they’ll be a lot more fun once we have that newfangled Internet out there. Also, I’ve been spending some bucks on eb*y buying what 16mm films I can afford, mostly shorts. I’ll need some editing/winding equipment, too. Eventually this will all be part of the Drive-In project but I fear funds might limit how far that gets this year (assuming I can get over the siding hurdle of CS3). There’s new garage doors for the Lodge, a serious look at grading and improving the lane, a carport/standalone garage project, plus other things of import like an antenna tower, a replacement for the Blazer, a trailer of some sort, good old property taxes, and the rest. Bah.

Fast Feb

And so it came to be that I found myself on my hands and knees, cleaning the oven, at noon on a Monday. And somehow in my mind, the light coming through the glass block windows had me convinced that it was 80F outside. It must be. Blue skies, green grass, a light breeze. Now, even with the best of imagination, this would be rather unconvincing to any Iowan that's spent the past 3 months cooped up inside waiting for the ice to melt... the secret is having been in such a paradise only a few short hours before. And your head asking why you aren't living there.

Our Resort at Port Orleans-French Quarter

We spent last week in Orlando at Walt Disney World taking in the magic of the place, and magic there is. We picked up our Sebring Convertible, sorry, 200 Convertible at the airport and within the hour I was set with gold rimmed aviators and a fedora. Something about the weather must bring out my inner octogenarian. Also, Cheesy Puffs for Cara; a regional specialty.

Following the iPad's directions we made our way to our resort at Port Orleans-French Quarter. Now, when I say Disney sweat's the details, they sweat the details. From the spanish moss in the trees to the rivet heads in all the New Orleans ironwork. After unloading our bags we dropped the car off at the Disney car-care center, jumped into an Alamo shuttle that took us directly to Hollywood Studios, and strolled over to the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater for our 7:05 reservation with time to spare. Once again, it's the details that make fantasy reality. 

Hollywood Studios at Sunset

The Sci-Fi Dine-In, a drive-in theater...inside!

There's a lot of "retro" and new reissue stuff today. From countertops to table lamps. Let me tell you, Disney doesn't play that hackneyed game. I swear, they must design and fabricate damn near everything, from the cast iron building supports at our resort (in 1800's styles) to the wall tiles and wall paper in their restaurants. It's one thing to imagine a world and create it in animation, but it's something else to create it in the physical world when half of what you need doesn't exist at any cost.    

What's real? What's imaginary?

Oh, we had our days at the Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom, and even met up with my parents for a day at EPCOT. Words can't describe the places, or the food. We were on the Dining Plus plan which includes a table service meal, a quick service meal, and a snack for every day. Let me put it this way, a quick service meal would consist of something you might get down at Toad's. A big burger or sandwich, fries on the side, plus a dessert. A table service would be Brown Bottle territory. Except that when we ate at Tutto Italia in EPCOT, the food was prepared by an Italian chef and served by waiters that were actually from Italy as part of the Disney program. By the end of of the week we were leaving food on the plates, it was just too much! 

Quick Service at Ray's Cafe

Desserts at The Brown Derby

One of my favorite rides....Mission: Space and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The former utilizes a centrifuge with hydraulic-ram actuated pods that contain high def displays with a simulation of space. Once you climb in and buckle up (4 seats, 4 displays, 4 sets of controls to each pod), the controls and monitors tip towards you and you feel 2.5G's pull you back into the seat as you look out the "window" in front of you as if you were in the nosecone of an actual rocket leaving the pad. The forces and tilt match the video window as though you really left earth. It's quite an experience but leave many people feeling pretty sick. Because of that, a lesser version is also offered that keeps the tipping but does away with the g-forces.

EPCOT at Night

 

 The latter ride, with equally long lines, is based on the premise of a service elevator free-falling down a shaft in a haunted hotel. The elevator happens to seat something like 36 people, and actually does drop approximately 13 stories. In fact, you fall faster than gravity because the motors actually accelerate you downward. A computer program ensures the drops and lifts are random and occasionally 'elevator doors' open up to the outside while you're 100' up. Needless to say, it's got good seat belts. You'd be on the ceiling otherwise.

And so, running out of enthusiasm to share every minute detail, I'll let the following pictures do the talking....

Carousel of Progress- One of Walt's Original Attractions

Inside the Carousel of Progress

A Sneezing Lunch-Bird

A Hippo, Ducks, and one of many Herons

We Meet Tigger for Breakfast!

IBM Celebrates their 100th Anniversary

Cara checks out her car at GM's Test Track

We fight the crowds during extended hours..

A friend joins us for lunch..

Giraffes...Cool.

The Magic Kingdom at Night

Back to Reality

Updates

January Slough

For the most part, this winter has moved along briskly. For whatever reason, Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas. December came and went in a flash, and now Feb is waiting on the doorsteps. If we can hold off on major snowfalls from here on out, things should be smooth sailing.

The temps the past couple weeks have been downright bone chilling, a real contrast to last year. It might be 10F, or 14F, or somesuch outside right now, but it feels like a solid zero out there, and has all week. In the Lodge, with the plastic up, we do okay. This time of year I can’t turn the fridge any warmer without bumping up against “off”, which is a shame, because the vacation setting yields solid blocks of Diet Squirt. I suppose I could leave 2-liters’ on the other side of the downstairs plastic, but this tends to be even colder than the fridge.

Out of Control

 Construction is an expensive proposition. It’s even more expensive when there’s a contractor in the middle, padding the numbers. Thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with much of that. But eventually, you become numb to the numbers. When you’re a kid, $20 seems like a lot of money. By Jove, that’s 2000 Fruities! Eventually, just as you adjust to swiping your debit card at the gas pump for another $75 tankful, you start to lose touch with the “value”.   And so it is that I recently found myself looking at $600 toilets.

Now, hear me out… I have an interesting little challenge regarding the bathroom for CS3. My intention is that this will be the last thing wrapped up as part of CS3 as a whole. The challenge is that the bathroom is little more than 24” wide, approx 100” long, and must contain a toilet, sink and shower! The idea being utility in the smallest “reasonable” footprint. This means rejecting some extremes, like the Euro approach of making the entire room a shower stall, or semi-absurd thoughts of leaning over the toilet to use the sink. Because shower stalls don’t come this small (excepting motorhomes), this will be a custom job.  The custom job will visually tie into the floor and the sink both having sleek, angular styling cues that follow the general theme of the building. The problem is the toilet I have, one of those economy toilet-in-a-box, types, is of typical bland styling. (I bought it when the idea for this bath was basic utility). While it’s returnable, the alternatives I’m finding run 5 to 6 times as much. This, by itself, would be madness. I’ve bought cars for less. However…I’ve found some clever solutions in this price range that free up additional interior space by putting the toilet tank inside the wall, and hanging the bowl off it. For some reason, paying this much for an engineered solution seems “reasonable” to the inner-engineer..but ridiculous to the guy that says, “it’s just a toilet?!” In the interim, I think I’ll just put this on hold to simmer. Like I said, this is a project for next winter.

Speaking of justified “unreasonable” expenses…

This is my 2^nd Gen Nest Thermostat.

Shortly before Christmas it arrived to replace the temporary Honeywell Round t-stat in CS3. Every bit the iPod experience, everything from unboxing to setup was a snap. You simply screw the baseplate to the wall using the provided screwdriver (the plate also has a built-in level). Next, you connect your wiring to the spring terminals, and snap the unit into place. When the furnace went in, I knew a Nest was in my future and made a provision to provide +24v from the furnace into the regular wire bundle. But apparently I didn’t have this wire on the right terminal. On powerup, the Nest had a color snapshot on its screen of the backplate and the suspect connection.

After fixing that, I was in business. My “Away” temp is 40F which keeps everything in the building above freezing. The furnace now only runs a few hours a day to maintain this (and it keeps track of its usage), and when I’m working out there, I bump things up to 50 or 55F. Other advantages include adjusting the temp, scheduling, and tracking energy usage remotely. So on a Saturday morning, I can wake up when I want, grab the iPad and warm up the other building while I shower. Or if I change my schedule for the evening, I can make an adjustment from my work PC. There’s lots of other neat advantages but more has been written by others on that. The current problem…no internet connection at the Lodge.

Winter

This is what The Lodge looks like this time of year. Too soon to head south?

21Dec2012

The Airport Express

In June of 2004, Apple released the original Airport Express. I’m pretty sure I ordered mine that very month, possibly that week.  The lure of streaming music remotely to your stereo, and at the same time, serving as a WiFi bridge, was too much to turn down. My AEX got used sparingly, mostly re-transmitting the wifi signal at my parents place so I could use my Powerbook G4 out on the deck, and it also came in handy streaming iTunes to my tube amp in the dining room. There was a time when I wasn’t living at home and it sat idle, unplugged most of the time. And then the W22nd apartment years where it served as a base station transmitting from the sleeping porch, which spent a good chunk of the time below 50F thanks to Iowa’s generous other 3 seasons.

This last tidbit is important. I had known for some time that AEX’s were failing, even when mine was serving up webpages from a low-temp area and had lead a charmed life. It seems that continuous use and high temps would cause them to fail (or fail more rapidly). As it stands, thousands of these units up and quit, with death occurring on average at the 16 month mark (the problem is so serious there are statistical websites on it). The problem is in the power supply. A power supply designed and supplied by Samsung. It seems that low quality capacitors were chosen, and to make matters worse, their operating environment in the sealed unit exceeds their ratings, leading to rapid failure, which in turn causes damage (and smoke) to the power supply and other components.

So it was with interest that I was revisiting this subject some years later….Wednesday, actually. And that night, in a Lodge-to-CS3 Wi-Fi transmitting experiment, I got out my AEX, reset and configured it, and perched it atop a bookcase with a long extension cord. To my surprise, Thursday after work I went to sort and organize in CS3 and the sucker was dead! Reeking of failed electronic components.   

Now, there’s plenty of repair info out there on these, but the big trick is getting inside. Dremels, saws, and soldering irons used as melting instruments are the most popular (and recommended) method. I was lucky. A flathead screwdriver and a hammer worked for me. Sure enough, same failure mode. Now the big Q. Try to repair the supply? (new caps, surface mount components, etc) Or take the easy way out with an external wall-wart supply?