Personal posts page 61

Doors on car

in

I don’t know why I didn’t write this before. Perhaps I’ve just lost interest in this site because of the lack of people viewing it. Anyway, I have finally gotten new doors on my car. I came home from my trip to New York late July to find my Uncle Al had replaced the doors for me. $130 and he did the hard part for me. I am very happy with the results, and thank him for the surprise. I owe him one.

For those of you who hadn’t seen my car before, both front doors were in awful shape. The mirrors were missing on both sides, making backing up and lane changing more of a pain. The cops didn’t like the lack either, and they contributed to my getting pulled over at least thrice. The passenger side door wouldn’t open at all (in fact, Uncle Al had to cut it to get it off). The drivers side door wouldn’t close as it was supposed to. I had to tie it closed to the column to prevent it from swinging open, thus making both it and the door behind it for all intents and purposes unopenable as well. So I had to climb through the passenger side rear door. It was quite a pain, especially when driving other people. And finally, both doors were very rusted out at the bottom, and the metal was bending upwards, looking rather unsightly.

I am very happy that I can back up my car and view behind me much more easily now. Not having to climb into the car is a lot easier as well. A lot. I’m much less reluctant to drive others places now as well.

I had said of this summer that I’d get new doors or a new car. I’m glad the cheaper option worked out. I hope this car can last till I can find a diesel or electric car to replace it.

back to school

Well, this semester I started taking some classes again. I’m just taking three at Tri-C. I’m obviously doing nothing with my Hospitality Management degree, and have kinda lost interest in that, at least for now. So I’m considering getting some sort of web development / design degree.

Web design is loaded with freelancers, so I could potentially work without being tied down to a job, or make some extra money on the side. I could move around at will without worrying so much whether I could get a job where I’m going, though restaurants are pretty much everywhere as well. I could even potentially live on a sailboat, sail around, and do some freelance jobs whenever I need to at the nearest port.

I know many people learn web design on their own, but I need something to pull me into the industry. I’m hoping that Tri-C will have some sort of job placement program to help me find a job. I could work there a while to get experience that would help get me freelance work later. I’m also not capable enough in my web development / design after all the time I have spent on it myself. I think the classes will help fill in some gaps.

So anyway, I’m taking one web related class and two in other areas in which I have interest. The one is a Database Applications, which uses Access. I have learned a good bit about how to do stuff in Access. Hopefully I’ll be able to apply that to MySQL and PHP. The other two are an intro to psychology and songwriting. I’ve always been very interested in psychology and have read a lot on the subject, I’ve just never taken any classes on it. The class is filling in some basic stuff that helps me understand some of the stuff I’ve been reading. The songwriting: I’ve always been interested in music. I’ve been messing around on the piano for a while now, writing out short bits that sound cool, but they are nowhere near being songs. I’d like to be able to turn them into something more usable.

So hopefully the semester will go alright. So far it’s been going well, and I’ve gotten decent or good grades on everything so far. I’m trying to concentrate more on the material than the grades now: I can only remember bits and pieces from my previous education. I have to miss one week of classes to visit my brother in Seattle.

And I still have to talk to a counseler or someone to help me determine if I want to continue on.

Recumbent riding

in

I got an understeering short wheel based recumbent, a Jet-Stream two from Actionbent. I had a lot of difficulty even starting on the thing at first. I found it difficult to balance in that position and push forward on those high pedals. But I’ve since gotten better. I’ve found it requires a good push to get up to speed quickly. I’m still not good enough at it that I feel comfortable doing it regularly, especially on rough terrain, tight areas, and among other vehicles.

I had a lot of trouble steering the thing as well. My cousin Paul rode it for a bit one night, and pointed out that it has very noticable counter steering. On the upright bicycle, I’m quite used to the movements needed to make this work, so I don’t even notice it. The recumbent has me positioned very differently relative to the wheels, so it’s much different. On the upright I can easily lean to affect the steering. I’ve found that if I lean my back forward off the seat so I can tilt it, turning is much easier and I can take some quite tight turns. I couldn’t even do a U-turn in a two lane road at first, but I might be able to do it in one lane now.

I still have trouble staying straight on this bike. The handlebars don’t seem to be as easy to hold straight as on an upright bike. I still have to rest my arms on them as in a normal bike, but if I make small movements in my arms, it will wobble the bike a bit. This may seem as if it’s the same as on an upright, but I find I really have to put some effort into holding my arms steady. This can tire out my arms quickly. I’m going to have to experiment with different things, such as different handlebar positions and ways of holding the bars.

Recumbents are supposed to be faster than upright bikes in general because of better aerodynamics. Thus far, mine seems a lot slower than my upright. They say these bikes use different muscles. It certainly seems to hurt the tendons on the front of my knees if I try to push. Hopefully this is what’s making me go slow, and once I develop the recumbent muscles I should be able to go faster. I have seemed to be able to accelerate pretty quickly, which is good.

I’m not comfortable enough to ride the bike in traffic or for long distances yet. I’ll keep on doing short trips here and there, and hopefully I’ll soon get as comfortable on it as on my normal bike, perhaps even more so.

Recumbent purchase

in

Last month I purchased myself a recumbent Actionbent bicycle. It took a good while to get here. I had purchased it at the end of June with the hopes of having it ready for a trip to New York near the end of July, and it cut pretty close. It was a little confusing to assemble, since the instructions provided consisted mainly of small low quality pictures and very few words. I had to look at several different pictures and pages on the website to figure it out.

Unfortunately for me, I still was not able to get it finished for the trip: The seat they sent was missing a bracket to connect it to the frame. I thus could not attach the seat at all as it was supposed to be. I also was having trouble at that point with getting the rear derailler to work, but that simply required connecting the cable a little differently. I emailed the Actionbent guy. He gave no reply, but promptly sent something to me. It arrived while I was in New York. I was hopeful to ride the bike, but unfortunately, when I got back, I discovered he had sent the wrong parts. He sent to pieces that I already had. I sent him another email, but he neither replied nor sent anything this time. I guess I’ll let it slide: it’s a small two person business which as far as I know only has two employees. So for now I have tied the seat at the one point with a rope. I could probably fashion something similar to the bracket out of two properly sized right angle brackets, but I haven’t gotten around to that.

I had ordered a rear rack and a bag from Actionbent as well. I was a little leary about the bag, as only a brief description was given. It was one of those trunk kinds, but the description said it had zipout panniers. I didn’t figure they’d be very big, but I thought they’d be good enough for day trips. When I recieved it, though, there were no zipout panniers at all. Only regular pockets. I’ve since discovered that it’s a Sunlite Top Loader 1, while the Top Loader 2 and greater have the panniers. They sent me another pack when the sent me the new brackets, but it was the exact same pack. I got two packs from this, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Plus the panniers would only gain me about 100 cubic inches for the 2.

car running much better; distributor cap

in

My car had been missing and in general running quite poorly. It was bad enough that I always had to give myself lots of room when pulling out into traffic and had trouble getting up to speed on onramps. Up hills, I sometimes had to slow down to 25 mph in second gear to make it up.

A while back, I had looked at my distributor cap to see if it could be the problem. The points in it were rather rusty, they they still looked like they’d work. I bought a new cap anyway, especially since it came with new spark plug cables and boots. My old boots were feeling rather loose on the plugs, and I wasn’t sure how old the wires were. I planned to install that, but didn’t. I decided I oughta install the rotor at the same time, so the old rotor wouldn’t mess up the new cap (though I’m really not sure if this is possible, I wanted to be safe), and hadn’t bought one with the cap.

Finally, just recently, I bought a rotor and installed the cap. It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done on the car. Three easy bolts plus the boots on the wires held the cap on, and the rotor just pulled right off. The old rotor actually looked better than I remembered, but I replaced it anyway. After replacing, it started right up and I took it for a test drive. It seemed to be running better, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

After several days of driving, though, I was sure the car was running much better. It hasn’t missed once since then, runs smoother, and accelerates much faster. Hills are where the biggest difference is: I can now drive up and even accelerate with no problems. It is great. It feels like a new car (as long as I don’t look at it). If I had known such a simple fix would have such a great effect, I would have done this long ago.

copper plumbing

in

When I replaced my water heater, I also replaced the piping coming into the house. It had been galvanized steel, which was very rusty at some parts, and I replaced it with copper. Still, the rest of the house had galvinized. This made for constant cloggings of shower heads, faucets, valves, etc. with small bits of rust/mineralization. The water flow to my shower was so low I had trouble maintaining the .75 gallons per minute my water heater needs to stay running. The heat would often turn off when I tried to turn up the cold water to reduce the tempurature, causing it get very cold. When a valve broke and could not be removed with all my might, I had to run a line from the sink piping to the shower to still get my hot water. The water also always seemed dirty, and tasted undesirable, so I never trusted drinking it. I did cook with it though.

I decided a while back I wanted to replace all the pipe at some point. Since I intended to redo the belly of my house before winter (fast approaching) I decided to take care of it at the same time. A few weeks ago (I believe) I started, with the help of my dad. It was very slow going then, since I could only get him out once a week. I’m the only one who could go under the house, so I had to do most of the work for the bathroom fixtures. The other stuff simply was along the side. My dad actually ended up doing most of the work for this. The underneath part was very rough though. It is not tall enough to sit up under there, though luckily much more roomy than under a car. It’s very dirty and there is stuff impeding movement all over the place. Just to get in, I must manuever myself over an electrical conduit and under a sanitary pipe and then a steel beam. The belly board has been ripped out by previous owners and by me during this project, leaving fiberglass insulation all over. Movement in certain areas will knock fiberglass into the air, making for a very itchy and coughy experience. I had to shower after every time working on it. I got a plastic rain suit to keep fiberglass off me, but it got on my neck and wrists with no problem, and the pants eventually were torn to shreds from moving around down there. The project was very slow going, and almost every time I got much less done than expected.

We first rerouted the pipe coming into the house to make most of it within the belly (at least it will be once we replace the belly). We got that working quickly and easily. Then we planned to do the hot lines only, to leave cold water available as long as possible. Some of the line, notably to the kitchen, we would go an entirely different route than the old line. The bathroom lines took a more simplified route, but it still ran into the old line a lot. I had to cut out the old line, as I had no luck getting it out by wrench and had no reason to try very hard with that anyway. I used an angle grinder. Sparks flew like crazy down in that small inclosed space, and I couldn’t help but getting hit by some of them. They also caused a few small short-lived flames in the insulation and bellyboard. With most of the cuts, water would come out when I broke throught the wall, sometimes lots of it. I’d let it drain and then continue. It was a very wet job. I could’t cut all the way through the pipe, as the wheel wasn’t wide enough, but I came pretty close. There was perhaps half the top wall left, and I was able to flex it until it broke. Unfortunately, the old pipes running to the bathroom sink and toilet were too tightly packed amongst themselves, a sanitary line, and a wooden beam to be able to be cut out, so I had to move the lines slightly over. Because of the location of beams and sanitary lines, this led me to need to drill holes through some beams as well as the new holes through the floor. The holes through the beams were difficult, and one required us to get a smaller drill to fit in between nearby obstacles, as well as cut out more old pipe. The hot water was at a lower elevation than the cold so they could cross over going over to the kitchen, so I had to cut a partial hole in the bottom of a beam rather than through it. The first one was done with a chisel, which took forever and a lot of energy. That tired me out, and it was a very tight fit even after that. Later we got a rasp bit for the drill to do the job much much faster and easily. The rasp also helped widen holes to allow for the proper positioning of pipes. This was especially important for one hole that was drilled at an angle because the drill would not fit any other way.

At one point, I wanted to cut part of the hot line to get it out of the way to run a line to the shower. It was right next to the cold line. I realized very quickly, when lots of water started spraying on me, that I had cut the wrong line. Luckily my dad was outside and turned off the water. I was now without any running water and changed plans of which line I would complete first. I intended to complete the line just to the bathroom sink and toilet (they came up through the floor with the same line anyway) so that my house could at least be liveable, but that didn’t happen for a while. I slept at my parents house then, in addition to showering there, which gave me more incentive to complete the cold water line. I had a bucket of water that allowed me to flush the toilet only thrice. I had diarea the one day, making this hard to do.

Soldering is very difficult in tight quarters. There was the plastic vapar barriers above and below the insulation, the subfloor, the wood beams, and the insulation that for whatever reason would burn somewhat even though it was fiberglass. We started off using heat sheilds, but I eventually gave up on them. It was too hard to keep them in place, especially when working by myself, and the heat would often just transfer through anyway. I found that if I carefully shot the flame at a certain angle so that it mostly curved around the pipe, I could minimize or eliminate the burning. In tight spots, though, it was impossible to eliminate the burning, and my house would get somewhat smokey after each of these. Fires of the wood would mostly got out once the flame was removed. They’d still smoke a bit and sometimes would glow, so I sprayed them thoroughly with a spray bottle. The plastic vapor barriers, however, wouldn’t always stop burning. I tried to cut them out of the way, but sometimes they still caught. If they were hot enough, the fire would somewhat quickly spread as it burned a hole in the barrier, dropping droplets of flaming plastic along the way.

Every time I worked I ran into some noticeable problem. I often ran into routing problems. The most noteable (or at least most memorable currently) of these was running the hot water line to the bathroom. I ran the long length to the sink (it seems much longer down there than inside the house) down through the same channel the old pipes were ran in, so it was very easy. Getting over to this run and allowing the shower to be hooked up as well, however, was not easy. The height the line was at was just above a sanitary line, touching it as it ran to the sink. I had chiseled a half hole throught a beam before to allow it to pass that. The sanitary line coming fromt the shower to the main run, unfortunately, was tilted, so I could not go over it. I ended up making two other partial holes through the beam to find a place I could come through with enough room between everything, and I even had some of the pieces for each of the routes.

Later on, I ran into problems with bad solder joints. I’d have to drain the lines and then unsolder, clean really well, then try to get the stuff back together and solder again. This became a crazy, long two night problem for the hot water line. This last Sunday, I had gotten the cold line to the kitchen working during the day with the help of my dad, and had also gotten the hot line cut and nearly ready to solder. I was thus done with the cold line and nearly done with the hot. I figured I could get it done that night in a few hours. I had to cut a few more pieces and then I prepared the whole thing and got it all in place to solder all at once. Most of the joints soldered very well, but I was a little worried about the one under the sink. It was the most surrounded by flamable material, as the one part of the elbow was actually resting on a wooden beam when the pipe was pulled down by gravity. I tried to solder it holding the pipe up with one hand and the torch in the other, then quickly taking the solder and trying to get it up there to sweat. It was very hard to manuever around to see both sides, and ended up being a sloppy job. I was a little worried about it but figured it was worth a try. I turned on the hot water, hoping it would work. Unfortunately, the union just below the heater was leaking like a sieve. I spent perhaps 40 minutes messing around with it, taping it with lots of teflon tape (and wasting a lot of tape in the process) to come to the conclusion that something must be wrong with it. Also, to my chagrin, the elbow beneath the sink started leaking. By that time it was rather late and I had to work the next morning, so I just went to my parents house to take a shower and sleep. Tuesday, I came back to the project, again at night. I was determined to finish. I bought a new union (8 bloody dollars) and installed that to replace the seemingly malfunctioning one. I drained the water from the lower union I had put in for that purpose, but unfortunately the pipes were at such angles as to not allow all the water to drain out. I put lots of heat into the elbow only to find it not getting hot enough to unsolder. I was getting rather angry and hitting the pipes rather hard to try to get the sweats apart. This of course dented the pipes fairly well, but luckily didn’t knock the important parts out of round or rupture the lines. I went into the bathroom, put my lips on the top of the valve there, and blew out the water. I spent quite a while doing this to make sure the water got out, and sure enough, I was able to unsweat the elbow. I made the mistake of only unsweating the one side of the elbow that had been leaking. I cleaned it up as best as I could in place and resweat it. It seemed much better. The pipe in the other sweat had been twisted during my removal attempts, and so had obviously been somewhat unsweat, but there was still solder in it. I figured that it should be fine and applied a bit more solder to be sure (perhaps that was a mistake). I ran the water. My union was mostly fine, though the connection to the water heater was leaking a bit. Unfortunately, the other sweat of that elbow was leaking a lot. I drained the water, blew through the pipes again, and tried to unsweat the elbow again. This time I hadn’t blew out enough water, so I had to go back, twice I believe. I finally got enough out to be able to unsweat, and more water that was rather hot came out of the pipe. This time I took the whole elbow off and cleaned it very well. The sweat looked good, and in testing held up. Through this whole procedure, I had burned the subfloor and other stuff pretty good, making my house visibly smoky. I went back in and retightened the connection to the water heater, then turned the water on. The union and connection at the heater seemed fine, but there was a noticable stream of water flowing through the hole in the floor beneath them. It was actually shooting up from beneath: the elbow there couldn’t take the pressure. I once again drained the water. Luckily, it was much easier with this one, as a union was pretty close by. Still, the floor was soaked with water from the leaks before, and it was dripping down. There was also a drip coming inside the pipe from the water heater. This made the unsweating and sweating process take noticably longer, though it still worked just fine. By this time I had determined that it was a bad idea to try to un and then re sweat only the broken side, so I took the elbow off, cleaned everything real good, and put it back together. It sweat nicely as well. When I turned the water on again, there was no real leak, though perhaps a slight drip from the union. Finally, after countless hours, I had my plumbing all done. It was of course, at this point, 0230 and I had to work that morning. I took a long hot shower and was in bed by 0430. I was rather tired the next day.

Two more trips

in

Went on two more trips after over a month of no boating. This was a while back, in August probably, so I don’t remember it perfectly now.

One trip contained me, Paul, and Jamie. There were a ton of sailboats out there, so much that it seemed to me, who was steering, to be like an obstacle course. Most were out a ways from shore. We headed out to them, and when we got near the big array of them, the wind died down a lot, so much that we could hardly move until occasional gusts came along. We saw boats back near shore moving along just fine, so we headed back there. Indeed, there was a much stronger wind. It got rather strong at some points, and we were really able to move along. We saw a windsurfer well out from shore. I’ve never seen one near that far out before. At one point he fell over. He was very hard to see from afar, so we went over by him. He was struggling to get back up, but after several attempts, finally made it. We soon went back in, as Jamie needed to go I believe.

That was Sunday. The Thursday following that, me, Paul, Beth (Paul’s girlfriend), and Ally all went out. It was mighty chilly and windy. I was very glad I brought my windbreaker, but everyone else hadn’t, I believe. They were quite layered though. Beth and Ally both went inside the cabin for a while as we were heading back in. It was a short trip, as we went out late and it got dark quick. We did get to watch the sun set. A racing group went out just ahead of us as we went out. There was a lot of them, and they all went around doing various things. Most of them had spinnakers up at one point. We ran pretty close accross ones path when it was heading back in. As I sayed, it was rather windy, and we were really cruising and healing with both sails up. At one point while I was at the helm, a gust combined with a slight turn sent us tilting quite far over. Beth said the rail was in the water. I quickly let out my sail and Paul scrambled to release the jib. We then lowered it down. This reduced our speed a ton and removed almost all the heel. The way back in was rather dark, which always makes it hard.

Vacation 06: Maine

Last week I went to Maine. I went with Jamie and his girlfriend Chelsie. This was supposed to be our annual cousin kids trip. Unfortunately, Ally had taken off too much time from work for other engagements. Paul has no control over his work schedule. Neither were able to go. So it really wasn’t a cousin kids trip.

We went to the cabin of my cousin Kristen. We don’t see her much, since she lives in Maine. Last year, at Mimi’s funeral, she invited us up.

I packed Saturday and finished Sunday morning. I took all my stuff with me and left some at the parents house while I went to work. I worked pizzas from noon to 9 or 9:30. When I got off, I picked up my stuff from the parents, then went over Jamies. I sewed some pants and ate a bit of food while Jamie and Chelsie got ready. We stuffed all the stuff in Jamie’s little Civic hatchback. We put most of the stuff in the feet area of the back seat and then folded the seat-back down to make a large bed area. Jamie drove first. I was in the back. It was quite uncomfortable to sit up back there. We went to Macedonia to get gas. We then headed to 271. Unfortunately Jamie got on 271 South. We had to go all the way to the next exit to turn around. Then we were off.

I couldn’t get to sleep too well. Chelsie had some Dramamine, so she fell asleep easily. I talked to Jamie or tried to sleep while we drove up 271, then got on 90. We saw a vehicle with a brightly lit license plate; Jamie thought it might be a police car, so he slowed down. We were behind it for quite some time. We slowly gained on it. As we got closer and closer, it became more and more apparent that it wasn’t a police car. It was in fact a mini-van with a wheel-barrow strapped to the top, and a bunch of junk in the back to boot. We then sped up and passed him. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I fell asleep. I woke up in New York. I probably was asleep for a half hour.

Jamie drove until we needed gas. Mine was the next shift driving. I found it rather difficult to drive for a while. I was a bit tired and every mile seemed to take a while. Jamie and Chelsie were both asleep. Dawn came though, and at about 100 miles into my drive, the sun was up and I could see my surroundings. This helped the drive immensely, and the miles seemed to go by with ease. I got to see the sunrise, then trees and farms and plenty of other good stuff.

To be appended

imperfections

I went and saw a movie created by a friend of mine from high school, Matt Pallotta. He was always interested in making movies. This one was the first he’d consider professional, and the first made by his company Red Duck Pictures. It was at the auditorium of Cuyahoga Falls High School. There was quite an impressive turnout, filling much of the auditorium. I saw several Woodridge people there, some of whom were involved with the film. He said he was impressed by the turnout as well.

The movie was a romantic comedy. I’m not a big fan of those in general, but the film still was fairly funny at times. The production quality was quite good. The film stock looked of rather good quality, and it could easily have been confused with a regular high budget film, at least of 90s vintage. The shots were mostly set up well and didn’t have the jumpshots common in low budget films. It did seem to move a little slowly at times, but I find many films to move too fast. Makeup looked rather natural and real. The music, composed for the film, was also rather good. The speech was a bit hard to understand at times. Overall, I was rather impressed.

The humor one should expect from Matt Pallotta.

odd electric blanket occurance

I use an electric blanket every night during the cold season to keep warm at night. It does an amazingly good job at keeping me warm for the energy it uses: I can be toasty warm, even sweating, in a 45° room.

Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve occassionally had a strange problem while sleeping. The first time I remember was sleeping at my grandma’s house early in the morning, back when me and my brother would go there while my parents were at work. I wake up only part-way. My mind is only part way awake, and things move through it sort of like a dream, but concious of my actual surroundings. I will feel groggily awake, but I can’t move my body, sometimes at all, sometimes limited to extremely slow movement that requires a lot of seeming effort. I also often have trouble breathing. My breathing will often seem to stop working automatically, so I have to force myself to breath, but this too seems to take a lot of effort. It is somewhat scary and I feel like I may suffocate without being able to do anything about it. The way I seem to get out of this is to put a lot of effort into moving my body. After a short bit, I will suddenly wake up and gasp in air. This is not an especially common occurence, and I can go pretty long stretches of time without it happening at all and, consequently, me thinking about it. But sometimes it does happen frequently over a period. It seems to happen more often when I have been oversleeping or am taking a nap.

Yesterday, I was lying in “bed” while reading a book (web development). I kept falling partly asleep, then waking up and continuing reading. That’s a common problem for me. At one point, I fell asleep and then partly-woke up, having the same problem I often do. I dreamt the light bulb of the lamp near my bed went out, and I thought that was quite bad since it’s a fairly new compact flourescent. Then a night-light went out, one that doesn’t actually happen to be in my bedroom, but was in this dream. I wondered what happened, and suddenly thought it had to be a short in my electric blanket. I suddenly felt like a bunch of energy was going through me or something, it was really wierd, and this started giving me lots of trouble breathing and moving. I thought to myself “oh no”, realizing I would be able to do nothing to stop myself from being electrocuted. I tried and really slowly moved my hand toward the switch on the control of the electric blanket. At first it took a lot of effort and I couldn’t seem to move towards it fast enough to make it. I thought “please” and pushed on. I slowly sped up my movement and finally made it to the switch. When I turned off the switch, I suddenly woke up and felt the wierd energy feeling instantly dissappear. I could breath easily and move about just fine. I felt remarkably good, that kind of good you feel when you suddenly find yourself leaving pain, though this wasn’t ever actually painful. My electric blanket was turned off, though it had certainly been on before (I could still feel the heat). The light was definately on though.

I don’t know what happened there, but I’m now scared to use my electric blanket. Looks like I’ll have to heat the room a little better and wear some warm clothes, as I had been before I got the blanket, until I figure out what’s up.