Great video! I don't know what this guy is planning on building, but I will definitely be checking up on him. I had a job in Houston 50 years ago (!) delivering scissor-lift work platforms, much like the one being cannibalized in the video. I did some repair work like replacing hydraulic hoses and splicing broken wires. Most were new machines so they didn't require much work. So this is kind of like old home week. 50 years ago there wasn't much in the way of robots. Times have changed.
Totally enjoyable. Jonesy takes apart an ancient machine tool and gives us a history lesson along the way. It's funny how there seems to be a sharp dividing line between people who are mechanically inclined and people who aren't.
I first ran into Whitworth when I bought a custom Triumph Bonneville when I lived in Houston. It had an Italian front brake, so there were some metric parts. The engine may have been older than the frame, or maybe it was vice versa. In any case some of the nuts and bolts were American and some were Whitworth. It came with a set of Whitworth wrenches, which I had never seen before, or since, for that matter.
Whitworth has pretty much gone away, but back in his day, he was a big deal.
Uxorious - Uxorious (/ʌkˈsɔːriəs/) describes a husband excessively fond of, doting upon, or submissively devoted to his wife. Often used with a negative connotation, it implies a man is foolishly submissive or "controlled".
I know of what he speaks. It got up to 95 here today, and yes, we turned the AC on. Truth be told, 95 here feels a tad warm, but it sure ain't like Houston. I spent a couple years there and I have no desire to go back. Also spent a couple of years in Arizona where it gets frying pan hot, but you don't melt like you do in Houston. My oldest son was born in July in Phoenix and Grandma came to visit. We had the AC cranked on to keep mama cool. Grandma cooks up a storm in the all electric kitchen and I got a $400 electric bill, back in 1990. That's like what, $4,000 now? Suffice it to say I was not able to rhapsodize about it like Jerry Wayne here.
Note - I was almost able to spell rhapsodize without looking it up. Forgot the h. Surprised myself, since I don't think I have ever used that word before, at least not on this here blog.
A bit closer to home is his design for the Rice University campus, including Lovett Hall, and the Central Plant, disguised behind an Italianate loggia and a campanile* which hides the smokestack. His small All Saints Church in Peterborough, NH is said by some to be the most beautiful church in America. Indeed, some architectural historians argue that he should be much better known today, suggesting that his eclipse by Frank Lloyd Wright was undeserved.
* Italian bell tower
Rice University is in Houston, Texas.
Note about the image. The image Google served up was a bit fuzzy compared to the original on Facebook. Don't think I've ever run into that before.
I had never heard of the events he talks about, but they touch on things that I have heard about like Sam Houston, Santa Ana and the war with Mexico. It makes me realize how narrow my view of history is. And who knew that Mexico was once at the forefront of battleship technology?
Here we are again with another video from Matt's Off Road Recovery. Matt is my hero, he's living the life I would have liked, except I'm an old grump and don't generally like dealing with people. But building machines to do something, and designing improvements by the seat of your pants and then hammer-and-tongs getting after it and getting it built, that part is great. I had a job like that once, but it's only now, 50 years later, that I realize how much I enjoyed it. I probably could have made a career out of it if I had just cut my hair. Making a few connections might have helped, which I probably could have done, if I had cut my hair. I was in Houston for god's sake in 1975 with hair down past my collar. Dab burn hippie. Gave up my one true calling, moved to Austin, became a long-neck and started messing about with computers. That kept me busy, made me some money, and now here I am reminiscing about the life I could have had. If I had just cut my hair.
Matt is a Viking. He has red hair and a beard. He doesn't wear a jacket when it's cold. He never wears gloves even when he's picking up hot metal, which he immediately regrets. He doesn't do it often, but he never fricking wears gloves. If I was there I would be putting on gloves when I walked in the gate.
This particular video is great for several reasons. One, we have Lite Brite's super modified Jeep - Step Child on the screen. Two, we have serious rock crawling with spotters and vocal directions and discussions about lines of attack and what the possible outcomes are. It's kind of nuts, but if you were ever in a situation where you had to cross uncharted wilderness in a vehicle, these would be good things to know. Three, we have buxom Brittany Williams on the screen. She certainly got my attention. Her husband, Kevin, is a lucky man. Seems they were both into drifting (making cars slide around on pavement without smashing into anything), so she ain't just a pretty face. Damn, she's good lookin'. I got the impression that Kevin is kind of a big wheel. Good for him. I hope it all works out. Here's the intro to their channel:
Miller Lite, Coors Light & Blue Moon Big Game Commercial | The High Stakes Beer Ad (Extended)
Miller Lite
Saw this ad while I was watching the Portland Trail Blazers beat the snot out of the Houston Rockets last night. Thought it was pretty entertaining. Damian Lillard scored 71 points, which is more than half of what his team scored. It is a new personal record for him.
And the water gonnna come in and we'll have no place to stay
I works on the levee, mama, both night and day
I works on the levee, mama, both night and day
I works so hard, to keep the water away
- Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie
The song dates from 1929.
The first chapter is all about Texas and the feral hog and fire ant problems they have down there, not to mention the flooding in Houston every time it rains.
P.S. I've posted Zepparella's cover of this tune a couple of times, not because it was better (nothing can match Led Zeppelin's version) but because I was shocked that girls would even like Led Zeppelin that much. It was an alien concept.
A half-track! Coolio, man. I don't know why these things are so cool, but they are. Possibly because they are military and they have treads like a tank, but they aren't any bigger than a truck so you could drive it on the road. Also, you hardly ever see them. I'm not sure if I have ever even see one in the flesh. This guy is going to take the body off so we can see how the drive train is put together, so I gotta press play.
But then I'm watching this guy screw around with a bunch of junk and it takes me back to when I was working on farm machinery in Ohio and aging high lift equipment in Houston. Criminently, talk about doing things the hard way.
Astronaut Mark Vande Hei returns to the USA from the International Space Station. He's been in space for almost a year. Evidently his daily exercise regimen worked because here he is walking down the aircraft boarding stairs. I remember seeing pictures of astronauts being lifted from Soyuz space capsules when they return to Earth. I thought it was because of their severely weakened state from spending so much time in space, but it seems it is just the initial disorientation that occurs when they return to a gravity environment. Also, apparently space exploration trumps petty land based squabbles.
Objectively there is nothing special about this building, just a plain ordinary building. Well, except for the jaggies, which appealed to me for some reason. Kind of reminds me of Pixels, or Legos.
My nephew Nick bought a Toyota pickup truck from a little old lady 'who only drove it on Sundays'. Turns out it has a blown head gasket, which got me to thinking about all the major engine repairs I have done.
Replacing the head gasket usually meant taking the head to the machine shop and having the head surfaced and the valves ground. I think the Pinto needed a new cam as well. Overhead cam, you know.
By the mid-1950s, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) had 220 normally scavenged and 22 supercharged Nordberg radial engines installed in its Port Lavaca, Texas aluminum plant. Combined, these engines could produce 475,000 hp (354,207 kW). The engines were arranged in seven powerhouses, consisting of around 40 engines each. - Old Machine Press
Since we are replacing the kitchen in the new house, I decided to replace the all electric range with a gas cooktop and I also decided to replace one of the wood burning fireplaces with a gas fireplace. To do this I need to run some new pipes to supply these devices with gas. I was originally going to hire a contractor, but that would require making phone calls, talking to people, scheduling the work and forking out a large sum of money. I've worked with iron pipe before, and I have a talented second, so we just decided to do it ourselves.
The big problem with iron pipe is if you need a piece of a specific length. Building supply houses like Lowe's and Home Depot carry pipe in a variety of lengths ranging from one inch to ten feet. You can use couplings to piece together a combination of these pieces to make any length you desire. The downside is you end up with more joints, joints that have to sealed, tightened and inspected. Plus a bunch of joints in a short length of pipe looks 'unprofessional', not that anyone is every going to see it.
My first thought was that this was an opportunity to invest in a set of Ridgid pipe threading tools. They are kind of expensive, something around a thousand dollars, but if you want to get the job done without a lot of screwing around, good tools are essential. The downside is that this is probably the only project I will need them for, and then I would have to fool around with getting rid of them. They are too expensive to just throw away, so that means selling them: placing an ad, answering calls, more dealing with people.
Then it occurred to me that there is probably a service that will cut and thread pipe for you, and what do you know, both Lowe's and Home Depot offer free pipe cutting and threading. It means a couple of hours of my time driving across town, tracking down the big box store's pipe guy and waiting while he cuts the pipe, but with my back problems I'm not good for much else. I can still drive and I can hobble the quarter mile from the car to the depths of the big box store where the pipe threading machine resides.
I stopped by Lowe's in Hillsboro the other day and found that their pipe threading machine is out of order. Now what? I am not going to Home Depot, the last time I was there, there was a long line of people waiting to get in because of the stupid COVID-19 restrictions. Haven't run into that at Lowe's, which makes me happy. Okay, maybe not happy, I still have to wear a stupid mask, so let's say just not too disgruntled.
I could call one of the other Lowe's (there are three of them, all about 20 miles away), but calls to any kind of big operation is kind of crap shoot as to whether you will get any kind of useful response. Yesterday for instance I called NW Natural (the gas company) three times. The first time I slogged through their robo-cop menu and after about a five minute wait I got connected to a woman who dealt with my issue quickly and competently. The second time I was on hold for 20 minutes and got disconnected. The third time I knew the codes and so was able to bypass robo-cop and got connected almost immediately. Like I said, a crap shoot.
Anyway, I decided to try a professional pipe supply company. Got connected to someone almost immediately and explained what I wanted. Told me he would get a quote made and email it to me. Haven't heard back yet and that was two days ago.
So I drove to Tigard, hobbled into Lowe's, found an employee and sent them off to find the pipe cutting guy. It only took about five minutes for him to show up, just long enough that I was starting to wish for a chair. Now we look at my list of pipes I want cut. Turns out most of them are below their minimum length of two feet, so I only got two pipes cut. With their fancy pipe cutting machine it only took a couple of minutes and there was no charge. Hard to beat that.
Old Gas Meter
The gas company came out and changed out the gas meter for a larger one. We need it to supply all the new doo-dads. We needed to hook up the furnace so they could verify that the meter was working properly, so we did. It's nice that the furnace is working now, it's been a bit chilly here the last couple of days.
Of course, when we hooked up the furnace it didn't kick on immediately. It had power and now it has gas again, what could be the problem? Near as I can tell, when we turned off the gas the house cooled down, the thermostat said 'more heat', the furnace began it's start up procedure, but because there was no gas, it didn't fire up, which caused it to shut down and set a fault code (the little blinking LED on the control board). Cycling the power was enough to clear the fault and get it going. The start up procedure is kind of interesting.
When I lived in Houston I had a job fixing machinery and one of the machines I was often called on to repair was a Mercury pipe threading machine. This was about 50 years ago. Iron pipe had been a mainstay for water lines but was being replaced by copper pipe. Mercury had been a going business but was now fading fast. Our biggest customer was a plumbing company that specialized in automatic fire extinguisher systems, which still use iron pipe. They are tiny portion of the plumbing business.
Molly's Game | Official Trailer | Own it Now on Digital HD, Blu-ray™ & DVD
A very great story. Molly Bloom was an Olympic class skier until she had an accident and through an odd chain of circumstances, she ends up hosting poker games. I don't really understand the attraction of gambling myself. I played poker at a friend's house a few times when I lived in Houston, but for me the cards were just excuse to hang out with my friends and drink beer.
The best part of the show was just the idea of people playing poker for those kind of stakes (think of some big number, it doesn't matter if it's accurate, there's probably someone who bet it). If I think about it, there must be a few people who do it, and maybe I just don't hang with those people. I wonder if there is some fundamental difference and what that difference might be. Or maybe it's just that some people like to gamble, and some people don't.
Still, I'm thinking there might be a hundred thousand people in the country who could afford to play in those games, people for whom losing $10K would be no more than a minor annoyance. Of course not every one who has ten million dollars is a dedicated poker player, and a dedicated poker player might very well buy his way into a $10K game with his last $10K.
Molly is a dynamo. No nonsense, straight shooter, straight to the point. She is so direct it's almost painful.
