Uniberp came out to visit last week. He stopped in Seattle and gave us this report:
We attended an interesting presentation at the Museum of Flight, given by a retired engineer at Boeing, who worked on the investigation into the fire on China Airlines Flight 120, which caught fire on the ground and all persons escaped.
He described the design that resulted in a loose bolt from a leading edge flap puncturing the wing tank when the flap was retracted. The investigation resulted in a changed design to the flap that eliminated a micro-fine control of the flap movement, concluding the extra complexity was not worth the miniscule performance improvement.
He said "Those aerodynamicists, they use every trick they can, no matter how complex it makes it for engineering. One millimeter gap, ooooh we must do something." He was kind of dismissive of them.
Most of the docents seemed to be old retired Boeing guys.
But the most important thing is the paint. Oil based enamel is the most durable, and flows so well that spray is overkill, plus it takes a whole day to dry and you have the vapor to deal with.
If you do it before it's installed you still have to fill nail holes or clamp it in place with adhesive.
I'll work up to painting this whole place at some point. I delay because painting is my least favorite part.
Click on the Muskegon label to see other posts about this project. It's been going on for years.
At work today, as the days wind down for me, I was amused to see an email regarding performance of some of my tech team, using the phrase "... who really hosed that up...". Entirely unacceptable in the passive-aggressive culture that is self-styled enlightened corporate profit gouging, this email set off a flurry of HR involvement, senior management closed door sessions, and gossip enough to choke a goose, which is fittingly appropriate, culminating with the offending party being taken to the parking lot and thrown into a uncovered manhole..
I laughed, said "Finally some plain talk."
I had to explain "hosed" to one person, and looked up the origin, found this:
Hosers are nearly always white men. A hoser is, to a great extent, the Canadian equivalent of American terms like “hillbilly” and “redneck” – though without the overtly racist connotations of the latter word. A parody of the Canadian public service announcement “Hinterland Who’s Who” states that, “The hoser is often found in clusters, in habitats such as the Tim Hortons parking lot, Harvey’s and hockey arenas. Feeding mainly on a diet of smokes, coffee, poutine and beer, the hoser is a colourful animal — and a slob."
I am leaving the company I work for at the end of the year, and in the intervening time I am trying to keep good relations there.
It is a somewhat absurd and flattering situation, where I am required to scan in through the door 3 days a week, but have no real duties.
I can't help myself, though. I listen to a 10am daily meeting, but when it turns into a technical soapbox with various managers simultaneously skirting blame and taking credit for getting through the day's snafus, I feel the urge to tweak them and speak up. Yesterday I interrupted and asked them to confirm that the problem was "Issue A", and when confirmed, I cautioned them not to conflate that with "Issue B" although I did not use the word conflate because none of them know what that means. It cleared up the conversation and the next steps were settled in the next 2 sentences by my 2 compadre techs who are generally too timid or jaded to speak up in these bureaucratic feedlots.
The VP does not like to hear me speak since I announced I was leaving. My butting into a conversation with clarity confounds his efficiency model.
It was a really good tweak.
It's a miserable environment, with regular large layoffs, and people admittedly scared for their jobs. The cube farm appears to me most similar to an egg farm, with all the chickens in their cages straining their buttholes to produce an egg for the master so they don't go into the stew. Or maybe that's just me feeling superior. So I find a far flung conference room in the giant and 80% empty modern suburban office building on campus. I should try another building, although the scan report may show an anomaly. I don't know why I care about that. It must be habit.
To make my drive to the office worthwhile I consolidate my errands, and 2 days a week for the past couple weeks I've gone to Middle School at 12:45 to 'help' with the 5th and 6th period art classes. It is the most engaging thing I've done in years, basically just sitting with 7th-8th graders doing clay ceramics projects. My mere hulking presence seems to exert a calming effect on a sometimes disruptive group of brats. I hope to be going there regularly. It is an unbelievable contrast to the chicken coop. The time flies at school, whereas at the office it's just grim death.
I get to work with clay and follow quite clear and supportive instructions from the teacher. Again, a massive contrast.
It could all be a delusion, that enjoying myself like this is just a downward spiral into ... what? Like I haven't been there several times before.
blithe: adjective
showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.
(I never knew is had a "callous" denotation. I've been called that, but I hope we are generally known as polite.)
Trying to pull the shed corner to the final position at the max pull of the cheap marine winch i bought years ago that didn't work for squat at least resulted in this cool sound. - Uniberp
They had to replace the power pole at this end of my private drive. It was loose and ready to fall. The power company showed up with 2 huge trucks and 6-7 guys. They augured a hole about 10 feet away from the old pole after marking the gas line, nowhere near it. I talked to the guy for a minute about the unused cable tv line but didn't think to mention the underground phone/DSL line. They didn't check. Again, 6-7 guys. Dropped in the pole, moved all the service, left. No internet. ATT came out and discovered Comed had cut the old line, ran a 300 foot temporary line on the surface with orange markers every 15 feet. It stayed that way for about 2 weeks. A guy shows up with a ditchwitch with a cable plow, did that in about 1 hour. 3-4 days later ATT shows up again and does the connect. That must have cost Com-ed $1000.
Back from Germany. Visited several cities, Nazi sites and Gothic cathedrals. Germans are really good at what they do and have built extremely well-functioning transportation, housing and food. Of course they've had 2000 years to get there, with not a few missteps along the way. They are also quite quiet and unsmiling. I think they are up to something.
Years ago I found a frypan at a WIlliams Sonoma store as a closeout. It was basic steel (not cast iron), heavy, and cheap and the reason it was a closeout is because at that time companies were just coming out with designer stainless clad cookware in shiny modern designs. Turns out all that stuff failed after a few years and the ugly little too heavy frypan soldiered on. It was the best thing for making real omelettes. It even works great camping.
So for the second house I wanted another one but could never find another in stores. In a housewares store in Koblenz I spied this and knew I had found the piece I sought:
Never saw one before. I had seen them online but I have been fooled before. Until I held it I was not going to risk disappointment again. I was tempted to buy it on the spot but customs would have charged me and like I said, it is heavy to travel with.
So I bought one when I got back. Highly recommended for anybody who enjoys cooking their own food. Steel is the difference. Not iron. And it has a longer handle.
I saw a play last night "The Revolutionists", which to me was kind of an odd thing, a sort of high-spirited telling of a playwright Olympe de Gouges during the French Revolution along with Charlotte Cordray, the woman who killed Marat and who was herself put to death, coupled with a comic turn on Marie Antoinette. The audience ate it up, as they were supposed to, but I was not that strong on my history and I had to sit somewhat aghast at the whole thing, How is it that people can put horrors like that, however necessary they may be, at arms length?
Maybe mine was the intended reaction and all those chucklers went home and read the history after.
The Revolutionists is a new play about four very real women who lived boldly in France during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
Playwright Olympe De Gouge, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen (and fan of ribbons) Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle hang out, murder Marat, loose their heads and try to beat back the extremist insanity in the Paris of 1793. What was a hopeful revolution for the people is now sinking into hyper violent hypocritical male rhetoric. However will modern audiences relate.
This grand and dream-tweaked comedy is about violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world.
Uniberp has got his latest Volvo project out and running around.
I got it on the road, including even a new modern passenger retractable shoulder belt in time to drive with Sheila to her extended family reunion, who are a bunch of independent farmers. Nobody noticed the car. Even so it was gratifying to get it running on the road. And it gave no problems over the 50 miles other that a few pops and pings from the reassembled bodywork and suspension as we bounced over the two track to and from the back 40 "glen" where the picnic shelter was.
But the car has me a bit confused. It has a strong rebuilt engine evidenced by the double valve springs and purple anodized valve retainers and the kinda obvious whine of steel timing gears. It runs very strong.
It also has a rear sway bar, which is something only racer boys put in their cars, and which a lot of street drivers on the Facebook group say makes the car handle worse.
They cut out the normal cantilevered seat mounts from the body, evidently with the intention of of putting in more modern seats which I did (Volvo v50).
I'm going to post this picture on that group and ask them if they think it has been lowered springs, which is another performance thing people do to make their cars corner better.
My question is: if they were building a race car, why did they put such money into the body work and paint which was obviously expensive. Granted, it's kinda cool, but it's no dragstrip hot rod, and it's got new tires, skinny original size 185-SR15 street tires, on color matching rims.
I'll drive it a bit more (to get tacos and such) and I'll get it further put together. but so far it's not as relaxed as my 122 Wagon.
Uniberp took a flight on a B-25 with Air Adventure. He reports:
You can't see it in this picture, in fact that's not the Muskegon channel at all, but as we were flying over the flight officer painted down out the window and said "submarine" pointing to the USS Silversides at dock. Sitting duck.
The B-25B first gained fame as the bomber used in the 18 April 1942 Doolittle Raid, in which 16 B-25Bs led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle attacked mainland Japan, four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. - Wikipedia
We took a guided tour through the Hackley and Hume Houses the other day, big old woodworked like crazy, painted Victorians. Hackley really liked ornate wood and stained glass, Hume had a bunch of kids, so had more running room.
Turns out those houses were built at the same time mine was. Mine has a new furnace.
Uniberp is tearing out the old flooring in his cabin by the lake. Reminds me of when the boys and I were tearing out multiple layers of old flooring from the house on North Swenson. I even bought an identical crowbar. It's some kind of Stanley super bar.
So here is what I've been working on, 3rd year. Finished (nearly) the new steel roof this past weekend. In reality it only took like 6-8 working days to strip and replace the roof but i had long periods of recovery between so the roof took about 6 weeks. The 5th and 6th pics show some the extent of the gutting inside, and all new sewer, plumbing, HVAC, 2 additional bedrooms upstairs, It's still gonna take a lot to make it habitable. Siding done on 2 sides, the 4 sides showing are left to be done, about the same sq footage as already done. 18 foot cathedral ceiling. 1.5 bath. I demolished and removed ~30,000 pounds of debris (300 barrels, 10 at a time, to the county dump). Demolition is pretty much done, one section of ceramic floor to go. Some floor joists had to be replaced, I may replace them all at some point. The upstairs is all new anyhow, so new joists and flooring. It originally had 10 foot ceilings with a tall attic kneewall as well. Double lot. 30 x 30 garage on the alley. 2 blocks from Lake Muskegon. I got a DIY Foam-It spray insulation kit for the crawlspace foundation wall. For the cost of a 2014 Chevy Suburban. Plus $1500 property tax annually. Not really using any significant amount of utilities. 6 Attachments
He has a zillion times as much energy as I do. I might have had that much energy once, but it was a long time ago. Previous posts on this project.
Somehow my addled brain considers roofing the most manly of tasks, but like I said, I'm addled. I am still hoping to have this place habitable by summer but be warned any visitors will be pressed into service without humor, because i am increasingly defensive about the worth of this project.
It took several weeks of daily stairmaster to work up to this 4 day task (1 prepare, 2 strip old roof three layers, 3 rest and take 1320 lbs to dump, 4 cover with ice dam waterproofing) and that's one half of the roof. Recovered ok, i think, so far, maybe.
Well it depends on the neighborhood. Up here it can be done cheap. My criteria was city water/sewer/sidewalks with some amenities and open water nearby.
Almost anything you would buy, though, would benefit from a gut rehab. In that sense, only houses up to about 1955 were built with lumber, not plywood or osb. [Zillow listings]
At these prices it's of marginal benefit. Timing is everything. Boots on the ground give you an even better advantage. I think wait until the next crash. I anticipate a significant dip next year. The yield curve has inverted, and I think the market response will be a lot quicker this time through.
As I get further into it, my panics about structural integrity lessen. It is actually fairly sound, despite being chopped up and sorely neglected. I was able to comfortably stand on the roofing planks, although some are showing dry rot in spots, but largely solid. Hence, steel roof will be easiest to install. Mind you I am doing this as probably the last restoration for this place. In 50 years it will need to be demolished, if there is a civilization, that is.
I have no idea what living there would be like, it could be harleys and breaking glass all night. I hope not, but ya never know.
The weather/climate is the big factor. It is just getting tolerable outside. WInter was hard from Dec1 until now, almost 4 months. I would like to think I could spend 4 months a year writing by the fire, but maybe not. I may have to camp south.
Roofing is high because nobody can do it themselves. It's brutal. Your friends and relatives would never speak to you again if you recruited them.
Everyplace is going to suck in some way. If it's all nice, you have to pay excessively. If it's reasonably priced, you have to put up with morons occasionally.
Success. I found a 1/4 breaker bar $9, by Crescent, at Menards.
Drilled a relief hole sideways into the aluminum threaded boss to
relieve the stuck pig bolt before it twisted off and I would have had to
remove the engine which would have been necessary because it would have
leaked oil like a sieve.
Yes this preventative
maintenance needed to be done. There are seals around the spark plug
holes that harden and leak and fill the spark plug tube with oil.
I'm
impressed with Grainger's price. I suppose having a supply chain that
can deliver whatever you need has its benefits, but I am still surprised
by the premium they charge.
A long time ago I had a Subaru. I think it was a '69 model, give or take a year or two. It had 80 HP and got 30 MPG. Gas only cost a quarter, but minimum wage was only $2.25. If memory serves, the car cost $1400 used. I got my parents to buy it for me on the premise that I wasn't never going to college. I suffered through high school and I was thoroughly sick of school. I drove the shit out of that car, from Ohio to Florida, California, up and down the West Coast, back to Ohio and eventually to Texas where, after being crunched twice and two major engine repairs, I sold it for parts. It was a little tin box, but it went fast enough to keep up on the freeway.
Subaru's are very popular here in Oregon. They are especially handy if you go to, or over, the mountains in the winter time. I don't like them because I suspect the viscous coupling they use to connect the front and rear drive axles is some kind of Japanese bullshit, i.e. a very expensive component that you can't repair yourself. If it fails the least you can expect is you'll have to buy a new one from the dealer for half the price of a new car. Of course if it never fails, it's not a problem. I have no evidence to support any of this, just my feelings on the subject. I suspect that the only cars that use this technology are Subaru and some overpriced German snobmobiles, and being as Chuck rhymes with Cheap, I ain't spending any money on these kind of gimcracks.
If anyone who spends considerable time driving on snow covered roads asked me what kind of car to buy I would recommend Subaru without hesitation. The odds of having to make an expensive repair are so low that it doesn't merit consideration. But emotions are not logical. The pain of having to fight for traction on snow covered roads is something you will carry with you long after you have forgotten how much you paid for anything as mundane as a car repair.
A friend of a friend makes a little extra money during the summer by buying Subarus in Florida and driving them to Oregon, which strikes me as pretty weird, but then we did score a deal on my daughter's Mazda in Florida. That was the one bright spot in our ill-fated adventure to Miami.
Dennis ordered a new screen for his phone. It came in this very cool box. The box is very light and very rigid. It feels like it is made of wood, but since the panels are only about 1/16th of an inch thick, it's not. Model makers use wood that thin, but I have never seen any mass produced item use wood that thin.
Box, open
So what is it? Uniberp tells us it is likely Bagasse MDF. MDF is really cheap, flexible, particle board used for interior trim on houses. It is used wherever you need a nice finish but no strength. The apparent rigidity of this box is probably due to its small size.
Bagasse is what's left over after the sugar has been extracted from sugar cane.
Bagasse board production line with annual output 30,000 cubic meters
The video shows a Chinese factory producing large MDF panels. They are much thicker than the panels used to make this box, but it's the best I could find. The ChinaSanMin company seems to be totally involved in this business.
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