Snow

Path to the Gravely

Uniberp got inundated a week ago:

I suppose it's usually only once a year, but I got caught being casual again.

I suppose it's because I only commit to a limited loss in each step that I do things so incrementally, that if I prepared properly and had a more confident view toward the future that I would prepare better, but it worked out anyhow, at least for this once more time.

I left the Gravely out by the tree after digging a yard of dirt out where I'm going to move the shed, and was faced with retrieving it through 18 inches of snow. Fortunately the little Honda snowblower was able to cut this path. The Gravely also needed a new power switch so I got to put that in using gloved hands in 15 degree weather. Then I got it started (after a battery charge), decoupled it from the dirt wagon and backed it out through this trench. 

Found some bolts and attached the snow cannon. After that  it was pretty much the old same thing. 52 year old tractor cutting through the Devil's Ice Cream Cake 300 feet down to the road. Made 4 passes (3 is sufficient but I had to come back up anyhow.) and did the neighbors sidewallk. Pretty much done for now. Forecast is only a couple inches more this week as the lake cools down.

It's too cold to go get pics now, the next morning but maybe later. It's zero this next morning.

 

Milling Machine Move

Dennis, Osmany, Jack and the milling machine on the drop bed trailer

Jack has a small, bench top milling machine. He's had it for a long time, long enough for him to become familiar with its shortcomings, shortcomings that make doing any kind of precision work a bit of an ordeal. So he looked around and found a much larger, floor based machine for sale a few miles away. Now all he has to do is move it across town and into his garage. This is going to be a bit of a trick because the machine weighs pert near 4,000 pounds.

Jack prepared for this event by reserving a drop bed trailer, borrowing a pallet Jack from our fellow gearhead Marc, assembling a selection of heavy duty do-dads and gee-gaws that looked like they might prove useful, and getting a number of friends to sign on to help.

Come the day of, I'm feeling poorly, seems something I ate is disagreeing with me, so I don't go, not that I would be much help, stove up like I am. But around noon, I get a call from Jack telling me that while he is all set, none of the other folks showed up either. I might be useless, but I have Osmany and I dragoon him into helping. Good thing too, I don't know if we would have been able to get the job done without him.

We drive to the pick up spot and at first we don't see Jack's truck because he has driven up the narrow ass driveway to the back of the house. It's 100 feet from the street to the back fence, and Jack is right up against that fence. The milling machine is sitting in an oversize two car garage. A path has been cleared across the floor. The floor and the driveway are concrete and in excellent condition. All we have to do is get the mill up on the pallet jack and we can roll it out and onto the trailer.

The first problem is to get the mill away from the wall. We don't make much progress until we learn that the concrete footer protrudes a good six inches above the floor.  With some wood blocks (cribbing) and a six foot steel pry bar, we (Osmany) are able to move it a foot or so away from the wall.

Now we commence jacking it up. We do this one corner at a time, 3/4" at a time. Lift the corner with the pry bar, slide in a wood block. Lifting up one corner also lifts the other corner on the same side, but we have our boards underneath the front and rear edge of the machine to give us enough space to slide the pallet jack in between them. Coming in from the front would not give us as much overlap over the tines. We don't want this thing tipping over or sliding off the pallet jack. Coming in from the side will give us the most overlap. Just tipping the base of this thing 3/4" is scary enough as it is. We repeat this like four times for each corner and now the machine is sitting 3" in the air, high enough to slide the pallet jack in.

We roll it out of the garage and now we are looking at a maybe 2" high rounded curb that we need to cross. Somebody thought a piece of 3/4" plywood would give us enough of a step to be able to get over the curb, but after jacking this thing up and rolling it out the door, we have a much better appreciation of how much mass we are dealing with. We don't even attempt to scale the plywood.

If Jack had backed the truck in, the curb would not be an issue. Jack tried several times to back in without success and he eventually gave up and drove in forwards. Now I get the big idea to unhook the trailer and wheel it out of the way so we can back the truck out. Backing the truck in without a trailer should be a cinch, and we should be able to reconnect the trailer easily enough and then we'd be golden. Hah.

Block the trailer wheels, disconnect the safety chains and wires and start spinning the handle on the trailer tongue jack. This goes on for while and eventually I come to the end, but the foot still hasn't reached the ground. I say it's done, but Jack is sure it will go farther, after all he remembers the guy at the rental yard pulling a pin out of a hole in the jack and that hole has not appeared yet, so there must be more to go. So we put Osmany on the crank. He gives it a turn and the jack breaks and the handle now spins freely.  Wonderful. We spend half an hour dismounting the jack and attempting to repair it, unsuccessfully.

We borrow a hydraulic jack and continue trying to disconnect the trailer. Everything is loose, but the hitch won't come loose from the ball. Jacking up the trailer simple lifts the back end of the truck. There must be some tension in the hitch, but we are unable to relieve it. It was baffling. I suppose we are getting tired.

Okay, nothing for it but to back the truck and trailer back down the driveway and for reason I get appointed. The driveway itself is fine, maybe ten feet wide, but we have the house right up against one side with several utility protrusions. On the other side is a one foot tall concrete curb and I get to back Jack's new truck and the new rental trailer down this gauntlet. No fun at all, but with a dozen or so back and forths, I get it done. Now we need to back the trailer up the driveway. Fortunately we realize that we only need to go as far as the front of the house as the driveway is nearly flat to the point. I go back and forth a couple of dozen times, but I've exhausted my trailer backing skill supply. We turn it over to Osmany. He has almost as much trouble as I did, but he eventually gets it lined up. 

I used to deal with trailers on a regular basis 50 years ago and my younger self would have had no trouble with this. But my experience soured me on trailers and I had successfully avoided them until today. I just hope it doesn't happen again.

Now that we have the trailer in position we easily roll the mill down the driveway and on board the trailer. Tie it down and away we go. Osmany and I are following Jack and Dennis back to Jack's house and I realize I am missing my gloves. No big loss, they are pretty old and raggedy. We get to Jack's and there are my gloves sitting on the fender of the trailer. Surprised to see them we surmise that I put them there and they sat there for the whole trip back to Jack's. No, that's not the case, I left them in Jack's truck and he set them on the fender when he got home.

Jack crosses his driveway and then backs up maybe six feet till the end of the trailer crosses the edge of the driveway. From there it's simple matter to roll the mill into his garage. Having a concrete driveway helps. Now we just have to repeat the jacking process in reverse until the mill is on the floor, then we can celebrate with a glass of Old Crow.

Pic of the Day

Arab Mowing his Lawn

I don't know what this is. Somebody dressing up for a photo? An Arab living in America who has totally embraced American gun culture? A refugee from a failed coup somewhere in the middle east who is expecting a hit squad from the regime he failed to topple? 

Do people in any other countries have big backyard lawns like we do?

I've heard rumors of people who have places out in the country where they go out and patrol the perimeter armed like this, but they are usually wearing blue jeans or military camouflage, not whatever you call Arab robes.

New Internet Connection

New guts for network box

Our connection to the Internet died a couple of days ago. The box hasn't been touched since Verizon ran fiber optic cable to all the houses in our neighborhood 15 years ago. Technicians came and replaced the guts in the connection box. We used to have a coax running from this box to the router in the basement, now it's just regular old twisted-pair phone line.

We have this photo because when I was putting out the trash last night I noticed the box was hanging open. Closing it up was a bit of a chore. The box is warped, so closing it up tight requires torquing it back into shape and then holding the lid in place while you put the retaining screw in. If you don't have it all the way closed, the screw will just snag on the plastic and as soon as you turn your back it will pop open. At least I think that is what happened.

Portland Adventure

Costco Gas Station Hillsboro Oregon

It seems I can only get things done every other day. I do something one day and then I have to take the next day off. Thursday I drove to Pill Hill, downtown Portland, St. Johns and Beaverton before heading home to Hillsboro. Oh yeah, don't forget the stop first thing at Costco for gasoline. Buying gasoline is an expedition these days. It's always been a bit of a nuisance. There is a Chevron station on Cornelius Pass Road that is an easy stop, but they want real money for their gas. I think they keep the price high enough so that not many people stop there, so when someone does stop, there isn't a big line. Fred Meyers has a fueling station half a block away but they have Fred Meyer prices so the place is always clogged with cars. Or it's closed. I haven't figured that part out. Have they run out of gas? Or maybe they have run out of attendants. Seems I've seen help wanted signs around offering $17 to $25 an hour. I would think that would be enough for one person to live on and possibly two. Pretty thin if you are trying to have any fun, or raise a family. Especially after they take the taxes out of your paycheck.

Pill Hill

Stopped at Pill Hill to drop off Andy's truck. He was here with two cars and his kids were in Alaska so he didn't need both, and I was without a car so he lent me his truck. Then he got sick, his kids showed up and eventually (two weeks later) I realized that they could probably stand to have the truck as well as the car. Of course I screwed up and left my wallet in the car. Wouldn't have happened if I hadn't stopped to buy gas. Wouldn't have happened if I wasn't getting senile.

Residential Electric Service Weatherhead
Not mine. Why don't I have a picture of mine?

Stopped downtown to drop off some merchandise and then we head up to St. John's to check on the re-siding project. Noticed the electrical service conduit used to have a couple of guy wires attached to the rain head, but they had been cut. I suspect this was done when the new roof was installed a couple of years ago. Question is, do we really need these guy wires? The power lines cross the street where they connect into the middle of the main line hanging between two power poles. How much is that line pulling on the top of the conduit? The conduit is not showing any sign of strain, but it's hard to tell just by looking at it. If we do replace the guy wires, the other ends will need to connect somewhere on the back side of the roof, which means caulking and sealing, always a dubious proposition. Bah, double bah and humbug.

2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor Warning Lights
The car-shaped icon at the bottom is the new one.
If it was in focus you see that there is a key inside the car icon.

Our stop in Beaverton was at the locksmith. I bought three new magic keys for my wife's SUV there earlier this summer. I checked all the remote controls when I picked them up, but I didn't check whether they would all work in the ignition. Turns out two of them were fine but the third one was a dud. Put it in the ignition lock, turn the key and it cranks the engine but it won't start. All the warning lights come on in the instrument cluster, which is typical, but also one that I hadn't seen before. Something about an invalid key or some such. Whatever. Cranked fine but wouldn't start. Weird. Evidently the programming didn't take, so yesterday we made it one of our stops in our round of errands. Didn't get there until after 4PM and we were there waiting while the tech went through multiple gyrations trying to get things sorted. He did, eventually, though it was after their 4:30 closing time. We won't talk about how hot it was.

Canyon Road Exit From Highway 26 Westbound

We won't talk about how I missed the Canyon Road exit either. The Canyon Road exit is just past the Sylvan exit at the top of the hill, Eastbound on Highway 26 (the Sunset Highway). The cute thing is that this exit merges with on ramp for people getting on 26 from Sylvan, so if you stay in the right lane it will just take you back onto 26. If you want to get onto Canyon Road you have to veer left at the bottom of the off ramp and follow the road through the underpass. The good part is that will put you on Canyon Road. The bad part is it will put you on Canyon Road. Evidently my subconscious decided it didn't want to be on Canyon Road so we got back on the freeway and went on down to 217 and hence into the heart of Beaverton where we picked up the other end of Canyon Road. It might have taken another minute, but I didn't have to take Canyon Road. Not sure why I don't like this stretch of Canyon Road. Is it because of all the new car dealerships? Or is there something alien about it? I don't know, whatever it is, it bugs me.

Jaume Serra Cristalino Brut

Anyway, that was all Thursday. Friday I stayed home, blogged and napped and drank a bottle of Spanish Champagne. I picked up a couple of bottles at the local Plaid Pantry the other day. $10 each. Costs a little more than fancy beer, but it's not as fattening. That's my rational, but at this point I don't care. What was curious is that it seems to be from a specific vineyard in Spain, it wasn't some mixed bag of something from a giant wine mixing conglomerate. Thought that was pretty cool, direct from a Spanish vineyard to me via the local Plaid Pantry, and only ten bucks.

The foil wrap over the top of the bottles was a bit of a surprise. It seems to be unusually stout. Is it all aluminum or is it some kind of polymer-aluminum foil hybrid? It looks like foil, it feels like foil, but it's awfully stout. I'm thinking it must be three or four mils (thousandths of an inch) thick. Would the vineyard really spring for the good stuff? They must be pretty proud of their product. Was the champagne really great? I couldn't tell you. I liked it, it was good enough for me.

Wrote all this last night but decided to hold off posting it until I was sober, fixed the typos and added the pix.

Owls

Owl

Owls in our backyard. There is a wetland behind the house and we have occasionally heard owls back there, but this is the first year I have seen them. One was making a squirrel very nervous. The other was finding things on the ground.

Two Owls

Daring daughter took the photos. I took some as well, but no zoom on my camera, so they just show up as little blobs. We often see coyotes and racoons as well. No wolves though.

Summer's Coming

Me & Gus

It was 80 degrees yesterday, so I broke out a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. That's me & Gus on the couch settling in for an evening with Netflix. The mark on my arm is where I burned myself with the blade from the sawzall a month ago when we were breaking down the old kitchen in the new house. I was using the sawzall to cut through the silicon sealer that had been used to fasten the granite counter tops to the kitchen cabinets and it was slow going, the blade got really hot and I was careless.

That was then. Today it's supposed to be in the 60's and rainy.

Coyote

Coyote in our backyard

My wife caught this critter traipsing across our backyard this morning. This is why we don't let the cat out at night.

Last Thursday

Guantanamera - The Sandpipers
Driving down the road and this tune comes on the radio, probably KQRZ (the website is down). It sounds like they are singing 'for he's a guantanamera', but I check the lyrics and the only word I got right was guantanamera, which means 'a woman from Guantanamo'. No trace of "he's a", nor is there even anything in there could possibly be construed as "he's a". Huh. Just for grins, here's another link to a copy of the lyrics. This one goes to Google Translate and the URL contains the entire Spanish version of the song, which is just over a kilobyte.

Guantanamo? Haven't heard that name in a while. Wasn't it all over the news, what, a couple of years ago? With me it's a crap shoot whether I can come within a dozen years of being able to tell you when something happened. Mostly, something will come up in converstation and I will think it was a recent event, like a year ago and then I find out whatever it was was actually five or ten years ago.

Anyway, back to Guantanamo. Funny how the news only seems to capture our attention one crisis at a time. I suppose it's a form of entertainment, and possibly a little enlightening, even if it's only the light resulting from the flames from someone fanning the fire. Anyway, whatever happened to Guantanamo? Last I heard nothing had changed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I went to the eye doctor this morning for a check-up and got my eyes dilated. Driving down TV (Tualatin Valley) highway and I see a traffic light up ahead. It's a little far away and I can't make out whether it is red or green. No matter, there is a pickup truck in front of me. If the light is red, he'll stop, so it doesn't matter if I can make out the signals on the traffic light. We get a little closer and now I can see that the light is red. So okay, I don't need to rely on the pickup truck anymore, which is very good because he just sails right on through the red light.

The speed limit on Jackson School Road used to be 35 MPH, but a couple of weeks ago they changed it to 25 MPH because of construction, but no construction has been done. I suppose they were trying to get it done before the construction starts, but this is silly. And very annoying.

Service Calls

The O-man came by today. He wanted to get the oil changed in his car. I advised him to call Eric Heaton and schedule an appointment. I suspect that he drove out here to visit Eric's in person because he is like me, he likes to deal with people face to face. And he might have been able to get the oil changed on the spot. It used to be that sometimes worked. Lately though he's been very busy.

Whatever, we've got company, let's put him to work. What can we do? Well, for starters there's that floodlight over the driveway that's been burned out for a couple of days (weeks? months? years? how about friggin' decades?). Last time I worked on this, I wasn't getting any juice to the fixture. It was one of those "there's nothing wrong, but it doesn't work" situations. And then the inside of the attic where the light is mounted got plastered over, and, well, yeah, that kind of put paid to that project.

But today we got out the ladder (substitute 'O-man' for 'we' whenever the story includes someone actually doing something). We climbed the ladder, replaced the bulb, and boom! 500 Watts of halogen in your face! (I just learned that Halogen is spelled like halo, so halogen is like an abbreviation for 'halo generator', or maybe 'halo genesis' if you're into Latin.) The light switch has been sitting on 'ON' all this time. Probably should have checked beforehand. On the other hand, while turning the switch off beforehand would have eliminated the smack-in-the-face, it would have meant doubling the effort, as some would have had to:

• run up the stairs to turn off the switch.
• run back down the stairs to steady the ladder, while
• his partner climbs the ladder, replaces the bulb,
• climbs down.
• Now number one runs back up the stairs and turns the switch on.
• His parter confirms that the light is on, but number one can't really see it,
• so he runs back downstairs to see that the light is working,
• runs upstairs to turn off the light
• runs back downstairs to acclamation and celebration!

The bulb is a flower, very delicate, and during our first attempt it got cracked right near the end of the glass envelope. This allowed it to work for a few minutes (Hip, hip, hooray!) but eventually either the halogen leaked out or air leaked in (or maybe they were just exchanging ions as molecules are wont to do) and it appears the element combusted.

Halogen 500 Watt floodlight bulb after all the Watts escaped.

Down, but not out, we ventured once more into the breach, climbed the ladder (after making sure the switch was off), and replaced the bulb. I left it on while my wife and I went to Amelia's for dinner this evening and it was still on when we got back, so maybe it's fixed.

The rain sensor is our next project. A couple years (decades?) ago, I replaced the original irrigation timer with a fancy new Rain Bird SST 600s. This new timer came with a 'sensor' that allowed the machine to adjust the watering cycle based on the weather. The old timer worked fine, it was an economy model and the numbers on the switches never aligned with the switch position. It was just kind of annoying. Then a couple people recommended these new fangled gizmos, so I let myself get talked into it.

Knowing how much the time the sprinklers are set to run is really kind of pointless because all you can do is adjust the time, but nobody really knows what a 'good' time is, so you have to experiment. Mostly it involves picking a random number and then letting it run for a few days (weeks? months?) until you notice that the lawn is waterlogged or turning brown. I really don't even need to notice, my wife or Rob Benton, our lawn guy, will make it a point to inform me. Kind of an odd situation. I am become Keeper of the Irrigation Timer!

Anyway, a red light appeared on the timer's control panel indicating the sensor was out of whack. We took it down, cleaned it and put it back and it seems to be working. It appears to use a couple of CC's of cork on a spring scale to measure the rain and a thermistor to measure temperature. The spring scale looks like it uses touch-pad technology to measure the deflection of the scale. Nothing but a nylon stylus sliding over some pads on the circuit board.

Now there's the garage door keypad. This thing has been trouble since day one, well day ten maybe. I had a lot of trouble finding one that would work, and then when I did, I found I had to reprogram it several times to get it to work. I quickly got tired of that program and just gave up on it. Nobody uses it, so it doesn't really matter. But gol durn it, I paid good money for that gizmo, it ought to do its job. So we open it up and poke and prod and look up the instructions on the Internet and reprogram it and it seems to be working. I think the instructions might be better than the ones that came with it.

We've done so well, maybe we should reward ourselves with a little basketball. Um, the ball's a little flat. That's okay, I've got a little 12 volt compressor we can use to pump it up. Except it plugs into the cigarette lighter in the car and we aren't getting any power. Check the fuses for both the cigarette lighter and the auxiliary power outlet and they are both blown. What the heck was the previous owner doing that he blew both fuses? I know, something shorted and the first blew, so since his machine died, he assumed the problem was with the outlet, so he plugged his machine into the second outlet and blew that one too. But then he crashed the car so it all evened out.

Inflation
No side hole

Needles
With side hole

We get new fuses, but now we have another problem. Hook up the compressor to the car, attach the needle to the nozzle, insert said needle into ball, turn on the power and pressure immediately builds to infinite (as indicated by the gauge), but the ball isn't getting any fuller. Examination of the needle reveals that it is only a hollow tube. Conventional inflation needles (at any rate, the ones I am familiar with) have a blunt, solid tip and a hole in the side of the tube a fraction of an inch from the tip of the tube. I find such a needle hiding in the secret compartment on the bottom of the compressor. Correct needle works and the ball inflates. One fat old man and one whippersnapper square off on the court. My first dozen shots were all airballs. All that could be said was that they were headed in the general direction of the basket. After I warmed up a bit I made a couple of good, on the move shots. Impressed myself, I did. But that lasted maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I was shot.

Monday

Rebecca Gibney as Lola Buckley (left) and Geraldine Hakewill as Chelsea Babbage

We sat down to watch season 2 of Wanted Monday night and ended up watching all 6 episodes and not going to bed till after midnight. Haven't watched any TV since.

Season 2 is a continuation of the story that started in season 1, except the McGuffin has inexplicably changed from a duffel bag full of cash to a safe deposit box key. There were some bone headed maneuvers early on that had me yelling at the screen, which annoyed my wife. So after two episodes I started drinking beer and after that the screw-ups didn't bother me as much.

Much of the story depends on blind, dumb luck and coincidences. Frigging unlikely, but it could have happened, and truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, so I'll give them a pass.

The two women are an unlikely pair. The older one has spent a lifetime keeping her head down and staying out of sight. The younger one lived a very sheltered existence, but when they get dumped in the shit they become each other's best friend. Very Thelma and Louise, except they don't kill themselves. They don't even die, and I appreciate that.

The Curse of Stuff

Self-storage lockers are the fastest growing business in the USA, at least according to the Internet. I can believe it. While we were raising our kids we were in heavy accumulation mode. You need stuff, so you buy it. But when you're done with it, if it hasn't been destroyed, you save it. I mean you paid good money for it, and maybe we'll need it again someday. Save it! It's valuable!

We are pretty settled in our ways now and most of that stuff is not going to be needed, we should get rid of it. But what if we do end up needing it? Buy a new one. The aggravation you save by not having to inventory a zillion things you probably will never need outweighs the tiny spark of joy you get when you realize that you need that widget you saved from 1909.

Goodwill is the obvious choice for some things, but not all. Things like tools. They are of interest to only a small proportion of the population, partly because firstly, only about 10% of the people have any aptitude for fixing things, and secondly because most modern devices cannot be fixed and should just be thrown away when they break.

I've been thinking I should put some ads on Craigslist to see if I can get rid of some of this stuff, but it's a hassle. It takes, time, you have to fill out forms, you have to be at least semi-organized, and you have to stick with it. It's a whole lot like work. My wife and I finally got together and started on this project. We've been at it for a couple of weeks and we've had some success. We've sold a couple of items and given away a couple of things and the relief we got from having them gone is palpable.

The hard part is setting prices. If you paid $500 for something that is still functional and useful (i.e. not obsolete), you don't want to let it go for $20. You're disrespecting the item, whatever it is. But you are unlikely to get $250 for it either, unless it's a musical instrument. There are two factors at play here. One is how much you want to get rid of it, and two is how long you are willing to wait. There are people out there who are religiously scanning the ads for bargains on stuff they can turn around and resell for a profit. But if you have some oddball stuff, it may be a few weeks before someone who can use it will bother to check the ads and give you a call.

I had a box of baseballs I was giving away. Took two weeks before anyone called. A $200 gas barbecue grill got no calls when it was priced at $100. At $50 it was gone in a week.

Beaverton

Beaverton Police & Court

Delinquent daughter got a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles last week telling her that her driving license was about to be suspended unless she took care of an unresolved court case. What unresolved court case? Some digging reveals that a speeding ticket was issued last fall. Since she doesn't remember getting stopped by the police, and you would remember something like that, we concluded that she was caught by an automatic speed camera, and since the ticket claims she was going 35 MPH in 20 MPH zone it was probably a school zone. The bill, if we are willing to simply pay it, is $525.

Well, no, we're not willing to pay it. Yes, she is liable for her own bills, but she is a student and I am financing her education, therefor we are not going to pay it if there is any way we can squirm out of it. So today we went down to the Municipal Court and looked at their evidence which were two grainy laser printed copies of photographs. One supposedly shows the driver. I couldn't even tell if there was a person behind the wheel but the delinquent claims she recognized her husband. The other photo shows the car's Florida license plate which explains why she hadn't heard about this ticket - they sent the notice to Florida.

Our only hope of getting out of paying the fine is to go to night court. We have a couple of hours to kill so we go over to the local Powell's Bookstore at Cedar Hills Crossing, the number 2 mall in the immediate area. I picked up a copy of Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon, one of my favorite authors. She started with science fiction and then wandered off into some other genres for a bit. I read most of her science fiction and some of her other stuff and she's great. For this one, she has returned to science fiction and it promises to be another swashbuckling space opera just like her others. I had a Powell's gift card so it didn't cost me any cash.

On our way out I took a stroll through the mall and was disappointed to see half a dozen empty store fronts. Not many people there either, but it was Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile the parking lot is being colonized by restaurants. The mall is still in good shape but these empty shops are making the future look gloomy. I'm kind of surprised since Beaverton has the worst traffic in the world. I avoid it if all possible.

Court was pretty straight forward. The delinquent told her tale and the judge forgave her the $200 surcharge for not dealing with it in time, and since she wasn't driving the car she could file a 'certificate of innocence' (pdf) that would relieve her of the obligation to pay the fine. Now if the police decide that it really does look like her in the photo, they can press the case, but given the image they have to work with I think that is unlikely. She did have to pay a $15 fee for the suspension letter from the DMV. So spending the afternoon in Beaverton saved us $500.

The judge was very young looking. I thought maybe 25, the delinquent thought he was in his late 30's. I suppose that's okay, I mean judges gotta start somewhere right? But then we do a little more checking and find out the he used to be a she. Shocked I am. I mean I hear all the noise made by the rainbow folks, but I pretty much ignore it. I've only run into a few gay people and they generally behave much like straight folks, but I think this was my first run in with a trans-gender person. Well first that I know of anyway. And I couldn't have told that from seeing them in court. It was only from Google that we learned this.

P.S. The speed trap was in front of Jesuit High School on Beaverton-Hilsdale Highway. Who puts a school next to a highway? Beaverton, that's who.

P.P.S. The book link goes to Amazon. Powell's only has the audio-book listed.

South Waterfront Access

Route from South Waterfront to US-26 Eastbound, Portland, Oregon

I drove over to my daughter's apartment yesterday afternoon to water her Christmas tree while she is out playing jet-setter. Basically ridiculous, but when you are retired people find all kinds of things to fill your time, like water a Christmas tree that's 15 miles away. That's what I get for getting married.

South Waterfront is a 'special' kind of area. I think it all used to be industrial, ship building, iron and concrete, that kind of thing. Then somebody decided maybe it should be redeveloped into fancy offices and apartments, but nobody bothered to put in any city streets, so it's all private property and no parking unless you have a permit or a legitimate reason to be on the premises. On the weekend there are lots of empty spaces in the parking lots adjacent to  businesses, but they are all posted with 'violaters will be towed' placards. Now you might be able to get away with parking in one of those spots for an hour or two, but then again, some predatory tow truck drivers are just waiting for someone to violate the rules so they kidnap your car and hold it for ransom. I am not willing to take the risk, besides I am not pressed for time. I can legally park a mile away and hoof it. There is a path along the river that is open to the public. That is one thing the city did manage to do.

I suppose the lack of public parking is okay for businesses, they just have to provide their own, but it means there is no parking for visitors to residences. Maybe that's okay. Maybe all the people who live in the area's apartment blocks don't want any visitors.

Anyway, getting back home was super annoying. It was creepy-crawly all the way up Kelly from where Naito Parkway branches off, and then all the way to the top of Sylvan hill. I think the Zoo Lights might have had something to do with it. It was so bad that I checked the map when I got home to see if there was any other possible route. There are a couple, but I don't know if they would be an improvement. You could get on I-5 Northbound, but that would take you East across the river. You could take I-405 all the way around the city center, but you are liable to get ensnarled in traffic somewhere along the way. You could get on I-5 Southbound, but that will take you way down south to Lake Oswego. Kind of out of the way, but at that time of week it might not have been bad, except then you have to take 217 North through Beaverton, and that is always a shit sandwich. Instead of taking Kelly all the way up the hill to I-405, you could take Naito up to Clay Street which leads straight onto Highway 26. Clay is not great, lots of traffic lights, but I've never seen it as bad as Kelly, and Kelly is always a mess.

I've lived in a number of cities but I don't think I've ever seen one with as convoluted a set of streets as Portland. Maybe it's just a consequence of the terrain (hills and rivers) and short sighted planning (we'll only think about present, we aren't going to think about the future because nothing has ever changed in Oregon, and if we have our way nothing ever will. Except, okay, we'll allow this one new road). Of course Los Angeles has no shortage of visionaries and they are choking on their traffic problems.

Update 2 days later: Took the Clay Street route. It was at least as miserable as the original route. Had to stop for every freaking traffic light. Took something like 30 minutes to get from Front Ave to actually get on the freeway, a distance of like 12 blocks. I hate downtown Portland. Okay, I admit, it was the height of rush hour, but it still sucked big time.

The Roar of the Chainsaw, the Smell of Gasoline

Christmas Tree

Got the tree at Starkey's at the corner of Glencoe and NW Scotch Church Road. Formerly known as Larsen's. We have gotten most of our trees there. This one is a Nordmann Fir and cost $53. They had some Grand Firs and some Noble Firs, but no Douglas Firs. Seems there was a glut of them a few years back, so not so many new ones got planted. Takes ten years to grow a Christmas tree, more or less.

Oregon has these funny land use laws that are supposed to preserve farm land for farming, which may all be well and good, but it puts a crimp in the style of the nouveau rich techies who want a big house in the country. The only way you can have a house in the country is if it's on a viable farm. So what kind of crop do you plant? Christmas trees! So rich guys setting up their little 'farms' undoubtedly contributed to the glut.

When you bring a tree home, the first thing you are supposed to do is hose it down. This gets rid of any dust and critters who are living in your tree, and it gives the tree some water which it has not had for days. The next thing is to cut a inch or two off of the stump end so the live wood can suck water up out of the bowl.  Always before I didn't put the tree in the stand until I got it the house. Today I did it outside and it really works much better.

I fired up the chainsaw to make the cut. I tried cutting a tree with a handsaw once and it was a real pain. It probably would have been easier if I had the right saw for the job, but all I had was a selection of short, dull pruning saws, and an ordinary carpenter's cross cut saw. So now I use the chainsaw. Haven't fired it up since last Christmas. I had to start it two or three times to get the job done today, which meant I probably pulled the starter cord 50 or 60 times. But still, all I had to do was follow the instructions which were printed on the back of saw, and it started. Okay, I had to repeat the starting procedure a couple of times, but no monkeying around, trying to figure out what was wrong. Good job, Poulon. Amazingly the very same model is available from Amazon. Does this mean we have reached peak chainsaw? I mean, mine has got to be ten years old at least.

I think the monster tree we got last year was probably 15 years old. We cut off the bottom four feet or so leaving us with a nine foot tree. It was the first Christmas in the USA for my son in law, so we did the cut-your-own thing, and the pickings were we ended up were kind of slim. So we made do.

Dishwasher

Our dishwasher started making stinky smells, stinky like in burning electrical insulation. Well, this can't be good. It could be that some electrical component had failed and replacing the offending part may fix it. Or it could be that some other component, like the motor, has developed a problem that caused the suspect component to fail, in which case we won't really have fixed the problem and it will recur in short order. So if the motor is suspect, then we could replace the motor, but the motor for this 25 year old dishwasher runs $450. Okay, we're not going to do that.

Frigidaire Gallery Dishwasher

Thursday we made a return trip to Hutchins TV & Appliance and picked out a new dishwasher. Yesterday a couple of guys (Jerrod and Michael) from Portland Installation came by and swapped out the old one for the new. Dishwasher was $640, installation was $140.

First priority with my wife was that the new dishwasher should match the refrigerator we bought a couple of months ago. Friends of ours bought a Miele dishwasher because it's the 'best', and the price shows it: $1,500. No thanks, I don't need some overpriced, over-gadget-ified European fashion piece. Plain old 'merican fashion is good enough for me.

I do like the handle on the Frigidaire, it's just a very smooth curve. Some appliances these days go for the industrial style with big squarish brackets holding the handles. Cool until you run into one with your hip.

Style seems to be about the only feature that is different on the dozen or so dishwashers Hutchins had on display, which shouldn't be too surprising since most of them are all made by the same company. Our old Kitchen-Aid dishwasher was made by Hobart, the commercial food equipment company. They got out of the consumer end of the business a few years ago. Now Kitchen-Aid, Kenmore, Whirlpool, Jenn-Air, Maytag and IKEA are all made by Whirlpool.

Jerrod gave me a brief overview of the features and controls. Because it's new and modern, the dishwasher has a little display (the green number 30 in the picture above), that shows things like status messages and how much time is left on this wash cycle. Normal wash cycle now runs for over three hours! I don't think our old one ran for more than an hour, but then I never timed it. It might have run for six hours, but I kind of doubt it. I think I probably would have noticed if it was running all frigging day long. Jerrod tells me that dishwashers now have a soak phase. They spray the dishes with water and then just let them soak for a while to loosen any crusty bits. I suppose this is in the name of energy efficiency, and I guess that's okay.

Once we open it up and start loading it we notice a couple of things that we might should have noticed in the store, not that it would have made any difference, since all the machines seem be made in the same pattern, even the Miele.  The door is taller, so when it is open it sticks out farther into the room, which means it blocks the aisle more than the old one did. The door is taller because the tub is larger, which means the lower rack is lower which means you have to bend over farther to reach it. The racks seem flimsier, but plastics have improved in the last 25 years, so maybe they will be okay. Now that I think about it, maybe taller is better. Loading dinner plates AND tall glasses in the old machine required a certain amount juggling to get everything to fit and let the upper spray arm spin freely.

We are planning on remodeling our kitchen sometime in the near future. The biggest problem is that the cheap lacquer finish on the cabinets absorbs water, so everywhere that people have regularly touched the cabinet doors, the finish has turned into a kind of gray goop. Refinishing would solve that problem, but we've been here 25 years and my wife wants a new kitchen. I mean, all her friends have new kitchens and she's feeling a little pressure.

If we go ahead with remodeling the kitchen, I am thinking we need to raise the dishwasher by about a foot., just to make access easier. Unfortunarely, we would then lose two feet of counter space. The space under the microwave is kind of cramped, so could combine the two appliances into one stack so we wouldn't be losing any prime counter space, but the dishwasher really needs to be near the sink, so we are going to be interrupting the counter. Bah. Maybe we need an elevator for the dishwasher so we could raise to a convenient height for loading and unloading and lower it when we need the counter space. Gah, that sounds like a Japanese solution. This is America, why don't I have enough counter space in my kitchen?

P.S. After we bought our refrigerator, we stopped by Lowe's for something and since refrigerators were on our mind, we took a look at what was on offer. Geez, they must have had a zillion. Made me glad we went to Hutchins. Too much freedom of choice can be overwhelming. The selection at Hutchins was entirely adequate for my purposes and it freed me from too much freedom.


Devo - Freedom Of Choice DEVO's Freedom of Choice (link goes to original, un-embeddable, video) mentions

In ancient Rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead

So what was the poem?  A post on StriaghtDope points us to Burdian's Ass.

Plumbing

Kohler Elliston Faucet

I don't know whether to be disappointed with how miserable this whole business of plumbing is, or whether to be impressed with how well it all works. Our kitchen faucet has been leaking for a couple of weeks. If you turn the handle just so, it stops, but that's a nuisance, and so is the dripping. It's basically a valve, and when it's off it should be off, not sort of off, or mostly off, except for just this little, tiny insignificant leak. Bah, double bah and humbug.

Delta ball valve

So Friday afternoon I set about fixing it. It shouldn't be a big deal, all I need to do it remove the handle, unscrew the  top ring, lift out the ball and replace the two little seals that actually do the sealing. I've worked on this faucet before, and in fact I have a complete new faucet that Delta sent me the last time I ran into trouble, so I shouldn't even need to run to the store. Hah, fat chance.

The handle is held in place with a set screw. I locate the correct Allen wrench and, grunt, it won't move. I apply an adjustable wrench to the Allen wrench to get more leverage, and the screw breaks loose, which is good, and it starts to turn, which is also good, but after a bit it becomes apparent that it is not unscrewing. It is just going around. Now, technically, one shouldn't need to completely remove the screw from the handle, loosening it a couple of turns should do the job.

Delta ball valve

But as I recall, the pin that the handle mounts to has a flat spot milled into it, and if you don't unscrew the set screw far enough it will impact the end of the pin that has not been milled flat and the handle won't come off. Simple solution is to simple remove the screw completely, that way you know that the screw is not going to interfere with the removal of the handle. Except the blamed thing won't come out. It just goes round and round. I suspect that what happened when I applied the adjustable wrench to the end of the Allen wrench is that the screw just ripped the threads loose from the body of diecast handle.  Well, poop. Maybe the screw is loose enough that we can pull the handle off. No, that is not the case. Applying a hook end of a crow bar with extreme prejudice produces no change in the status quo. The handle stays in place.

Well, like I said, I have another complete, brand new faucet. Replacing the faucet will be a pain, but cost free, and since it is the same make and model, it should be relatively problem free. Hah, double hah, and triple humbug.

Business end of Delta faucet showing evil, gray plastic plug.

I manage to get the faucet replaced without too much difficulty, but when I go to hook up the water lines I discover that there is a little gray, plastic plug in one of the lines. Why I didn't notice this before is one of those questions for the ages. In any case, it shouldn't be a big deal, it should just pop out. Except it won't, and none of my exhortations or conniving or cursing persuades it to move. Nothing for it but to pull the faucet back out and then when I have it lying on the bench I am able to apply my trusty Sears Craftsman Channellock, er, sorry, "arc joint", pliers and pry this evil spawn of the devil from its chosen abode and cast it into the abyss.

Reinstall the faucet and assemble the ball valve at the top, which for some reason was not assembled.  Put it together and turn on the water and the ball valve is leaking, not out of the faucet, but out of the top where no water should ever appear. Bah, bah blacksheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, I do, but it's all water logged.

I fiddled and fussed, but Saturday morning I finally decided I needed some new parts so I head down to Lowe's, but I can't get there. Someone has effed up on the road and traffic is massively snarled. I end up going to Freddie's and buying an off-brand seal replacement kit for $5, but by the time I've gotten home, I've written off trying to fix this faucet and decide to make another attempt to get to Lowe's and this time I buy a new, different faucet.

Well, of course it's different. We've had the Delta faucet for untold years. The last time I had a problem with it was nine ((9!) years ago. While it used to be you had a choice of maybe two or three faucets, there are now dozens, and since they are now fashion items (the plumbing department at Lowe's is called Fashion Bath), there are new models every year. I look over the selection and there are several models of several different makes. I need one that will mount in a single hole, so that eliminates the cheapest faucets. I want one with a chrome finish. I think our original faucet was white, and if you get something with an odd-ball (i.e. not chrome) finish, and something breaks you are going to have a hard time getting a part to match. This eliminates the most expensive models, which have some kind of brushed metallic finish. Besides, chrome goes with anything. So now I'm looking at the middle tier and there are several brands. Whether it's my own experience or the relentless advertising, the only ones I am comfortable with are Kohler and Delta, and I've just spent a bunch of time fighting with my Delta faucet, so let's get something different. It might not be any easier to work with, but it will at least be different, so to keep myself amused, I get the Kohler.

Steampunk Squid

When I open the box it is immediately obvious that the Kohler is different. Instead of short copper pipes protruding from the bottom like the Delta, there are a trio of long, black plastic hoses. Makes me think 'steampunk squid'. Both faucets are secured to the counter and sink by a brass nut that threads onto a big brass screw. Delta has threaded one of the three pipes emanating from the faucet. Kohler has threaded a big brass tube that encloses all three of the water tubes. In both cases the screw is about six inches longer than it needs to be (for my kitchen, maybe there are other counters where you need the longer screw) which means you get to spend a minute or so screwing the nut onto the shaft.

Master Plumber Ed Del Grande installs a Kohler kitchen faucet

The Kohler has a couple of screws that go through the ring (nut, photo above) that are to be tightened after you have the ring all the way up. This would not be a problem except that the screws turn easily in their holes, so easily that while I am spinning the ring up the big brass tube, one of the screws unscrews itself and falls out. Well, poop, that's annoying, but I should be able to screw the screw back into it's hole, except I can't. I am lying on my back under the sink and the ring is an arm's length away and I cannot get the screw lined up. I can get it started, but it is quickly apparent that it is not properly aligned and is now jammed. No help for it but to unscrew the ring so I can get it to a place where I can see what is happening. More fussing and fiddling but I get it done.

All that's left now is to connect the supply lines. The Kohler lines are equipped with fittings that connect directly to the shut off valves, so I need to remove the old supply lines, which is just as well as the hot water line was too short to connect to the new Delta and would have to have been replaced.  One of the shut off valves is leaking and I am thinking that once I make the connection it might still be leaking, but at least it will quit dripping, so I put a little more force on the wrench and it twists the tube, which crumples. Loosen it back a bit, put my channellocks on the ferrel and tighten it again. No help, the valve is still dripping. Now I realize that the valve is leaking around the stem, and not just through the valve seal. So over tightening the hose fitting was probably not a good idea. Let's hope I didn't do any permanent damage.

Keeney Shutoff Valve

The shutoff valves require a dozen or so turns to open or close. New ones are ball valves and only require a quarter turn. Replacing the shutoff valve requires turning off the water to the house. The valve to do that is twelve feet into a crawl space. I've been thinking about making an access hole in the wall so I could just reach in from the basement and turn it and since this is now day two I resolve to do something about it. I pick up an access panel from Lowe's, use an ice pick to mark the location from inside the crawl space, and then cut a hole in the drywall to mount the access door. Worked well, especially since the hole ended up being adjacent to massive storage shelves and not behind them.

Houses really should be designed that the plumbing connections are accessible from behind sinks instead of underneath, that way ordinary people could work on them. This might put a few plumbers out of work, but how many would it save from crippling injuries? The only people who should be doing this kind of work though are kids, who are flexible. Teenagers could probably handle it okay, it would be easy enough for grade school school kids and a piece of cake for babies. That's the ticket, plumbing companies need to make their fixtures so easy to install that babies could install them.

I got annoyed with the problems I was having on day one, so I cracked open a bottle of wine. Normally I will have a couple of glasses during happy hour, but by the time I had given up fighting with the faucet for the night I had finished the entire bottle. Usually when I exert myself on a strenuous mechanical repair project I will be sore and achy the next day. Did not happen this time. Oh, I had a bit of a hangover, but not debilitating, after all I was able to get the faucet installed, connected and working.

Oh yes, Delta has a lifetime warranty, and if I hopped on this problem when it first appeared, Delta would no doubt have sent me the replacement parts, no charge. But the problem is a couple of weeks old and it's time to fix it and $200 for a new faucet is cheap compared to the 500 or $1,000 that a plumber would charge.

Refrigerator

My custom refrigerator dust getter. Made by taping a short piece of aquarium tubing to the end of a standard vacuum cleaner crevice tool. I used electrical tape to connect the two.

Our 25 year old refrigerator has given up the ghost. It's been leaking water, off and on, little drips and drabs for a month now. And a couple of weeks ago the freezer quit freezing. Yesterday I finally got a round toit and cleaned out the dust from the evaporator coils on the under side of the fridge. It was bad, I hadn't bothered to give it a thorough cleaning since we bought it. How can you tell anyway? Everything is painted black, and it's dark underneath there. I spent a couple of hours vacuuming, blowing dust with the air compressor, mopping up the mess the compressed air made and then doing it all over again. I even made a special tool to get through the outer grill of wires and tubes. I got a heck of a lot of dust out of there, and spread dust all over the downstairs. Put it back together, plugged it in and let it run for 12 hours. I felt for sure that getting the dust out would cure it, but such was not the case.

Our new fridge, a Frigidaire Gallery 22.6 Cu. Ft. French Door Counter-Depth Refrigerator DGHF2360PF

It used to be that in a such a case I would redouble my efforts until I had completely disassembled the fridge and rebuilt it to my exacting standards. Only then, when it still failed to freeze would I have  considered throwing in the towel. Maybe I have gained a little wisdom is my old age, or maybe I have just learned to listen to my wife, or maybe that is the same thing.

So we went to Hutchins TV & Appliance this afternoon and bought a new one. I find appliance stores are good for us because they have salesmen on hand who are willing to talk about their products. I don't care much for such conversations, I prefer a spreadsheet with the facts, but my wife is more verbal and she likes to talk about these things, and salesmen are perfectly happy to do that. Besides her concerns are different than mine. For example, at first she wanted black stainless steel, but defiant daughter talked her out that, for which I am glad. I suspect this 'black stainless' is fad that will last a couple of years until some really ugly examples start showing up. Might not be anything wrong with the finish, but it is new, and special, not 'standard', and therefor suspect.

Interesting thing about stainless refrigerators: stainless steel is not magnetic, so your cute little refrigerator magnets will not stick to the refrigerator door as they have been doing since time immemorial. Horrors! This cannot be! Well it is, and it isn't. Different manufacturers have taken different approaches to the problem. Frigidaire has backed their stainless steel skins with a sheet of regular steel, so the magnets still stick. Whirlpool (or is it GE?) concocted a special blend of stainless steel that is magnetic, so the magnets still stick. GE (or is it Whirlpool?) said phooey on this whole magnet business, we are the future after all, and integrated a touch screen into the door.

Poking around for an explanation, I found this:

Austenitic stainless steels (such as a typical 300 series) are non-magnetic, whereas martensitic stainless steels (such as a typical 400 series) are magnetic. - Brian Barnhart

Rumor has it that when consumer appliances with stainless steel skins first started to appear, they were prone to smudging, but now we have smudge resistant finishes. I wonder just what the heck they are doing to make them smudge resistant, and how thick is the stainless steel skin on Frigidaire refrigerator? I suspect it may be only a few thousandths of an inch thick, kind of like aluminum foil.

There is also a problem with ice dispensers in these 'portal' refrigerators. The top portion of the refrigerator is refrigerated, not frozen, but the ice dispenser is up there as well. How do you deal with this? You install a minature freezer inside the fridge. Some companies put them in the door, which limits their ice capacity. In our fridge, the ice maker and ice storage are in a box hanging from the inside top.

Barbeque

Americana The Swinger

I'm not much for cooking. I can do it, but I have no particular interest in it. A cheeseburger is my standard go-to fare, and you can get one of those just about anywhere. Occasionally, for the sake of variety, I will get a plate of enchiladas or spaghetti or something even more exotic, like a submarine sandwich, but all in all, my tastes are pretty pedestrian.

Then I got married and now we are trying to save money so we're cooking at home, or rather my wife is cooking. Except we were living in Arizona so we don't want to use the oven any more than we have to, and my wife doesn't like having anything to do with meat (except eat it), so I get to grill the meat on our charcoal grill.

Our first grill was one of the ubiquitous clam-shells, stamped out of sheet steel, that you see at every big box retailer (very similar to the photo above except the lid was a faded, rusty green). It was kind of chintzy with these flimsy aluminum legs, but it worked very well for a very long time. We got it because my wife's roommate was on the verge of throwing it out and I said 'No!, I'll take it'. Being steel, residing out-of-doors and subjected alternately to blazing heat and drenching rain, it eventually gave up the ghost.

Weber Kettle Charcoal Grill

Fortuitously, the neighbors were having a garage sale where I picked up a Weber Kettle grill for $5 (like above, but blue). It worked well enough, except that the grill was too far above the fire grate. That may have worked well for people who wanted to slow cook their meat, but I've got no patience for that. I'm gonna throw on some steaks or hamburgers for ten to twenty minutes and then eat. This means that in order to get enough heat to cook quickly, I either have to heap up a big heap of charcoal, or wait for 30 minutes or so for the charcoal to get good and hot. I made it work for a number of years, but eventually I called bullshit,

Master Forge Propane Gas Grill

and went out and bought a gas grill. I mean, middle America can't be wrong, can they? These things are the standard by which the good life is measured, right? I immediately started regretting my purchase. You see, when you cook meat on a grill, the fat liquefies and drips down onto the hot stuff down below where it bursts into flame. If these flames are left unchecked, they will incinerate your meat and you will be left with nothing but potatoes, salad and charcoal for dinner. So you need to stop these flames. With gas grills there are two methods of doing this. You can stand there with a squirt gun and shoot out the flames whenever they appear, which is fun for about five minutes, after which it becomes a chore and you find yourself wishing for a bigger squirt gun, but why do we need a squirt gun at all? We just paid good money for this machine that is supposed to be the very pinnacle of cooking technology. The other method is to trim the fat off of the meat before you put it on the grill.

Now some people like to cook, like to handle knives, like to chop things up, but I ain't one of 'em. Besides, I paid good money for that fat, fat is an essential part of your diet, and the fat needs to be cooked, just like the meat. I'm going to eat it, and if I can't cook it on the grill, what good is the grill?

Now we come to the essential difference between a charcoal grill and a propane grill. You can restrict the air flow on a charcoal grill. Closing the lid and air vents when you are done cooking is how you 'turn it off' when you are done. While you are cooking, you can close the lid and open the vents and the fire will get enough air to burn, but there won't be enough air to support those burning-fat-conflagrations that are so damaging to your food supply.

Gas grills are wide open and have no air control because the last thing you want with a flammable vapor is an enclosed container, well, unless you are a cast iron, internal combustion engine, but I don't know anybody who uses their car's engine to cook.

So I wanted a better grill, one that:

• burned charcoal
• has a lid and 
• vents for air control and
• the grill height can be adjusted.

I looked and I looked and the American Swinger (shown at the top) is the only one I found that met all my criteria.

I would have also liked to have a built in ash receptacle that would hold an entire seasons worth of charcoal ash, but I could not find one.