Map showing the locations of the towns of Bisbee, Contention and Yuma, Arizona.
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Bisbee and Contention are in Southeast Arizona. Both are within 20 miles of Tombstone and Sierra Vista. Yuma is in the Southwest corner of Arizona, quite a ways away, so taking a train there makes sense.
It was a pretty good movie, good characters, some good acting, reasonable plot, but there were a whole bunch of nits that bugged me about it.
A Pinkerton man enlists four men to go with him to take their prisoner to the train station in Contention. They camp out along the way. They are being pursued by the prisoners gang and/or Apache Indians. One guy is supposed to be on watch, and where is he? Out in the dark, keeping an eye out? No, he is sitting by the fire with the rest of the bunch, looking at the fire, ruining his night vision. And when the Indians start shooting, do they get out of the light and hit the dirt? No, they run to the fire and stand around it like a bunch of ninnies. Hey, Indians, here I am! Shoot at me!
Then there is this business of laying down of guns when confronted by bad guys, and the one legged man running and leaping over the tops of buildings. And the really feeble reason for pursuing this job that is sure to get him killed uttered by the one legged guy WHILE being choked by the killer. And the fourteen times the prisoner does something that certainly justifies shooting him on the spot, and nobody ever does. And the way the Pinkerton man is too nice and fancy. Pinkertons were tough guys. You didn't get to be a Pinkerton man at $18 a day when everyone else is making $2 a day by being a pantywaist.
Oh, did I mention, the well fed, big and strong Chinese railway workers? Or the very smoothly graded roadbed? Or our gang getting in a gun fight with with another lawman's bunch over the who gets the prisoner? Or using electricity to torture the prisoner? Why bother with the wires are all that? And the prisoner did not really look like he was suffering that much from it. And was the prisoner ever tied up? No, that would have clapped a stopper over his shenanigans.
So it was a morality play. It would have played a lot better if they would have gotten the details right.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Toilet Repair
This is an absurd little story. The basement toilet has been a problem for some time. The handle misbehaved, sometimes jamming, sometimes swinging wild. Then a few weeks ago the chain connecting the flush lever to the flapper valve came loose. Since the end of the chain appeared to be intact, and I found no broken links lying around, I assumed that the chain had torn through the rubber tab on the flapper valve where it had been connected. Well, in that case, we need a new flapper valve, and since the handle is being difficult, we will get a new one of those too.
I remove the handle. This takes some doing. It is devilishly tight. I try turning it one way, but it does not loosen as expected. I try turning it other way, and that does not seem to help either. I am leery of turning it too far, I do no want to crack the porcelain. I work it back and forth a few times and it finally starts to loosen up the wrong way. The fool thing has a left handed thread!
I don't take the old valve with me. That would require closing the shut off valve, and those valves tend to be cantankerous and difficult. So I go to Home Depot and eye-ball their selection and pick out a new flapper valve that I think will fit, along with a new flush handle and lever. The old handle and lever is metal. Looking at the new ones I can see that there is a small metal tab about an 1/8" square that protrudes from the sleeve and interferes with the handle. This is what restricts the handles range of motion. On my old handle, this tab has broken off, which explains for its' unseemly behavior. Well, if this one broke, chances are a new one of the same construction (die-cast metal) will also break. So I pick up a plastic one instead.
Back at the house I install the new parts. Everything works as planned. Both the flapper valve and the lift handle fit and work together. Only problem is that the flapper valve does not quite seal. One tap with my finger and it seals. Okay, maybe it needs to operate a few times to become accustomed to the seat. Well, no, that does not help. It is just not going to work. We will have to get another valve. Back to Home Depot to pick up another valve. This time I have the original with me, so I have a better idea of which one to get. It is still a crap shoot.
Back at the house again I inspect the old valve. There is a rubber tab sticking up where the chain connects. On one side of the tab I can see a cut where the chain evidently pulled through the rubber. I pull the cut apart, but it does not separate completely. I look at the other side of the tab. There does not appear to be a cut on this side. What the devil? How did the chain get loose from the valve without cutting through the tab? The last link of the chain is quite whole. I can only surmise that the rubber valve was molded around the chain when it was made, and that the chain was not correctly positioned when this was done, and so instead of the chain going all the way through the tab, it became half way embedded. This was not as strong as it should be and so it failed. I take the old valve, connect it to the chain with a paper clip and put it back.
But now the handle sticks. The plastic arm has a bend in it that causes the end of the arm to drag very slightly against the front surface of the tank. Evidently the first replacement valve was slightly heavier than the original and this minuscule additional weight was enough to pull the arm all the way down. Not so with the original valve. Well, let us see if we can straighten this arm.
First I try just bending it with my hands. It is surprisingly rigid and I get the feeling that much more force will cause it to snap. Next I try pouring boiling water over the bend, but this has no effect. Lastly I use my wife's blow dryer. It has a narrow nozzle, perhaps 1/8" by about 2". I turn it on high and direct it at the bend for a minute. I give it a try, but it doesn't give. Put it back in the heat for another minute, and boom! It bends as easy as kiss my hand.
So now we are back in business. I imagine the paper clip will eventually corrode, or perhaps the other half of the rubber tab will fail, but I have spare parts a plenty now, and should be able to deal with it, if I remember where they are. But why should I have to go through all this? Why are the valves in toilets so archaic? Think about all the time wasted by people all over this country spent fixing these fool things. You would think somebody could come up with an economical solution to this absurd situation. Evidently you would be wrong.
I remove the handle. This takes some doing. It is devilishly tight. I try turning it one way, but it does not loosen as expected. I try turning it other way, and that does not seem to help either. I am leery of turning it too far, I do no want to crack the porcelain. I work it back and forth a few times and it finally starts to loosen up the wrong way. The fool thing has a left handed thread!
I don't take the old valve with me. That would require closing the shut off valve, and those valves tend to be cantankerous and difficult. So I go to Home Depot and eye-ball their selection and pick out a new flapper valve that I think will fit, along with a new flush handle and lever. The old handle and lever is metal. Looking at the new ones I can see that there is a small metal tab about an 1/8" square that protrudes from the sleeve and interferes with the handle. This is what restricts the handles range of motion. On my old handle, this tab has broken off, which explains for its' unseemly behavior. Well, if this one broke, chances are a new one of the same construction (die-cast metal) will also break. So I pick up a plastic one instead.
Back at the house I install the new parts. Everything works as planned. Both the flapper valve and the lift handle fit and work together. Only problem is that the flapper valve does not quite seal. One tap with my finger and it seals. Okay, maybe it needs to operate a few times to become accustomed to the seat. Well, no, that does not help. It is just not going to work. We will have to get another valve. Back to Home Depot to pick up another valve. This time I have the original with me, so I have a better idea of which one to get. It is still a crap shoot.
Back at the house again I inspect the old valve. There is a rubber tab sticking up where the chain connects. On one side of the tab I can see a cut where the chain evidently pulled through the rubber. I pull the cut apart, but it does not separate completely. I look at the other side of the tab. There does not appear to be a cut on this side. What the devil? How did the chain get loose from the valve without cutting through the tab? The last link of the chain is quite whole. I can only surmise that the rubber valve was molded around the chain when it was made, and that the chain was not correctly positioned when this was done, and so instead of the chain going all the way through the tab, it became half way embedded. This was not as strong as it should be and so it failed. I take the old valve, connect it to the chain with a paper clip and put it back.
But now the handle sticks. The plastic arm has a bend in it that causes the end of the arm to drag very slightly against the front surface of the tank. Evidently the first replacement valve was slightly heavier than the original and this minuscule additional weight was enough to pull the arm all the way down. Not so with the original valve. Well, let us see if we can straighten this arm.
First I try just bending it with my hands. It is surprisingly rigid and I get the feeling that much more force will cause it to snap. Next I try pouring boiling water over the bend, but this has no effect. Lastly I use my wife's blow dryer. It has a narrow nozzle, perhaps 1/8" by about 2". I turn it on high and direct it at the bend for a minute. I give it a try, but it doesn't give. Put it back in the heat for another minute, and boom! It bends as easy as kiss my hand.
So now we are back in business. I imagine the paper clip will eventually corrode, or perhaps the other half of the rubber tab will fail, but I have spare parts a plenty now, and should be able to deal with it, if I remember where they are. But why should I have to go through all this? Why are the valves in toilets so archaic? Think about all the time wasted by people all over this country spent fixing these fool things. You would think somebody could come up with an economical solution to this absurd situation. Evidently you would be wrong.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
TV
My wife and I like to watch crime dramas on TV: CSI, Law & Order, Without a Trace, Cold Case, etc, but the number of ads you have to sit through is annoying, to say the least. So last year I broke down and bought a TiVo. I do not like having to pay the $14 a month subscription fee, but the price of the unit was so far below anything else that could have done the job, that I went ahead and bit the bullet. I brought it home, plugged it in, and programmed it to record all the shows my wife and I like to watch. I came in a couple of days later to watch one of these shows and it was nowhere to be found. It seems that someone else had come in after me and programmed the TiVo to record the shows THEY wanted to watch. Gol durn kids anyway. Daughter did have a legitimate excuse. The one show she really likes is on at the same time as the one show I really like, but she also has a dance class at this time, so she cannot possibly watch her show while I record mine. So I yielded and let the children rule the TiVo.
This fall, as my son John has a surfeit of computer systems, he gallantly allowed me to use one to build a DVR (Digital Video Recorder), for the price of a mere 22" LCD display. The TV tuner card that is an essential component of this project was only $60. It is also known as a "frame grabber" and a few short years ago they were horribly expensive, as in hundreds of dollars. Then there was the remote control from Microsoft and the receiver that plugs into the USB port. That was only $35. Lastly was the cable from the video card to the TV. The video card has an S-Video output, which is very similar to Y/C (Luminance / Chrominance (is Chrominance even a word?)). Unfortunately, I blew out the Y/C input on the TV a while back while fooling around hooking up video cables while the TV was on. Someday I intend to look into it and see if I can find the problem. It is a 36" CRT and weighs close to 200 pounds. If I can fix it where it is, it would save a major moving operation.
Anyway, back to the video signal hookup. I dig through my box of collected audio/video cables and pull out an S-Video cable, which I hook up, but as expected, it does not work. I find many other interesting pieces, including S-Video to component video (RGB), but nothing in the line of S-Video to composite, which was the standard for hooking up VCR's, and which my big CRT also has. I look on the web, but I am not really finding anything until I come across an $8 cable with an S-Video connector on one end and a composite connector on the other.
http://www.buyextras.com/6febuprsmato.html?gclid=CMnfzML92o4CFQEyYQodCTnoSA
This is weird, no conversion circuitry? Just a cable? Well, $8 is no big deal, let's give it a shot. It shows up in the mail a few days later, I plug it in, and lo and behold, it works! This is very strange. Someday I may even find out what is going on here.
So now I have all the pieces in place. Let's give it a whirl. Watching live TV, while not perfect, seems to be acceptable, but watching a recorded show is painful. The picture quality is significantly worse, even unacceptable. Perhaps there is a setting that can change this. I look but the recording format seems to be set to "Best", so maybe that is all it can do. Well this sucks. What am I going to do? Some more research perhaps, or maybe my son the whiz kid can find a crucial piece of information, or maybe I will try Linux. Sadly disappointing.
DVD's
We usually rent DVD's from the little Mom & Pop rental store (Wheels Video) next door to Hank's grocery close in to downtown Hillsboro. We buy a monthly pass for $25. They do not necessarily have the best selection, but it is adequate for us. My oldest son cannot tolerate the boundaries imposed by such a limited selection, so he has a subscription to Netflix. I do not want to have to wait for a movie, so the local rental store suits me better.
My daughter wanted (needed?) a couple of movies that the local store did not have, so my wife went to the local Hollywood Video store to rent them. The week goes by and they need to go back, so I return them to Hollywood Video. Later that night we get a phone call. Seems the movies have been returned to the wrong store, so my wife has to drive to the store on the West Side of Hillsboro, the only Hollywood Video I knew of, and take them to the store on NE 25th, which I did not even know existed. OK, I knew there was a video store there, but I did not know it was Hollywood Video. What kind of crummy outfit is this? Banks have branches, libraries have branches, but Hollywood Video stores are independent of each other? Just one more reason not to deal with big corporations.
This fall, as my son John has a surfeit of computer systems, he gallantly allowed me to use one to build a DVR (Digital Video Recorder), for the price of a mere 22" LCD display. The TV tuner card that is an essential component of this project was only $60. It is also known as a "frame grabber" and a few short years ago they were horribly expensive, as in hundreds of dollars. Then there was the remote control from Microsoft and the receiver that plugs into the USB port. That was only $35. Lastly was the cable from the video card to the TV. The video card has an S-Video output, which is very similar to Y/C (Luminance / Chrominance (is Chrominance even a word?)). Unfortunately, I blew out the Y/C input on the TV a while back while fooling around hooking up video cables while the TV was on. Someday I intend to look into it and see if I can find the problem. It is a 36" CRT and weighs close to 200 pounds. If I can fix it where it is, it would save a major moving operation.
Anyway, back to the video signal hookup. I dig through my box of collected audio/video cables and pull out an S-Video cable, which I hook up, but as expected, it does not work. I find many other interesting pieces, including S-Video to component video (RGB), but nothing in the line of S-Video to composite, which was the standard for hooking up VCR's, and which my big CRT also has. I look on the web, but I am not really finding anything until I come across an $8 cable with an S-Video connector on one end and a composite connector on the other.
http://www.buyextras.com/6febuprsmato.html?gclid=CMnfzML92o4CFQEyYQodCTnoSA
This is weird, no conversion circuitry? Just a cable? Well, $8 is no big deal, let's give it a shot. It shows up in the mail a few days later, I plug it in, and lo and behold, it works! This is very strange. Someday I may even find out what is going on here.
So now I have all the pieces in place. Let's give it a whirl. Watching live TV, while not perfect, seems to be acceptable, but watching a recorded show is painful. The picture quality is significantly worse, even unacceptable. Perhaps there is a setting that can change this. I look but the recording format seems to be set to "Best", so maybe that is all it can do. Well this sucks. What am I going to do? Some more research perhaps, or maybe my son the whiz kid can find a crucial piece of information, or maybe I will try Linux. Sadly disappointing.
DVD's
We usually rent DVD's from the little Mom & Pop rental store (Wheels Video) next door to Hank's grocery close in to downtown Hillsboro. We buy a monthly pass for $25. They do not necessarily have the best selection, but it is adequate for us. My oldest son cannot tolerate the boundaries imposed by such a limited selection, so he has a subscription to Netflix. I do not want to have to wait for a movie, so the local rental store suits me better.
My daughter wanted (needed?) a couple of movies that the local store did not have, so my wife went to the local Hollywood Video store to rent them. The week goes by and they need to go back, so I return them to Hollywood Video. Later that night we get a phone call. Seems the movies have been returned to the wrong store, so my wife has to drive to the store on the West Side of Hillsboro, the only Hollywood Video I knew of, and take them to the store on NE 25th, which I did not even know existed. OK, I knew there was a video store there, but I did not know it was Hollywood Video. What kind of crummy outfit is this? Banks have branches, libraries have branches, but Hollywood Video stores are independent of each other? Just one more reason not to deal with big corporations.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Planetary Gearsets
Digging through my old notebooks, looking for sketches of my mechanism for changing time zones on an analog clock, I came across a chart that shows the gear ratios available from a planetary gearset. I put it into a Google spreadsheet here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pE93ibhhw1_hytd_VGJiHHg&hl=en
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p
Grow Island
I came across yet another "Grow" game the other day. This one is called "Grow Island" I played with it for awhile, but I did not have the patience or inclination to work it out for myself, so I looked up the solution on Jay is Games. This game has two very different solutions (conclusions?). For some reason I transcribed the solutions to my own document:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgz3q3nn_37d23sfg
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgz3q3nn_37d23sfg
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Toy Clock
You may be familiar with toy clocks, those with no working parts. Just a couple of hands fastened to the center of a clock face, used by kids when constructing buildings from blocks and by teachers when trying to teach them to tell time.
These kind of toy clocks have a short coming that could be easily rectified and would go a long way towards helping kids learn to tell time. If the hour and minute hand were connected by gears then when one hand was moved the other would move in concert with it. This would establish the rule that these hands follow.
The gears would not need to be complex. A twelve to one ratio is all that would be needed. This could be accomplished with two pairs of gears. One pair with a three to one ratio, the other with a four to one ratio. Using one pair with 15 and 45 teeth would give you the three to one ratio, another pair with 12 and 48 teeth would give you the four to one ratio. Summed together they both give 60, which means they could all use the same pitch and the distance between centers of the two pairs would be the same.
Of course someone will complain that the kids will get their fingers caught between the hands. This could be alleviated by painting the minute hand on a disk and putting it behind the hour hand. With this arrangement there would be no opportunity for pinching fingers.
These kind of toy clocks have a short coming that could be easily rectified and would go a long way towards helping kids learn to tell time. If the hour and minute hand were connected by gears then when one hand was moved the other would move in concert with it. This would establish the rule that these hands follow.
The gears would not need to be complex. A twelve to one ratio is all that would be needed. This could be accomplished with two pairs of gears. One pair with a three to one ratio, the other with a four to one ratio. Using one pair with 15 and 45 teeth would give you the three to one ratio, another pair with 12 and 48 teeth would give you the four to one ratio. Summed together they both give 60, which means they could all use the same pitch and the distance between centers of the two pairs would be the same.
Of course someone will complain that the kids will get their fingers caught between the hands. This could be alleviated by painting the minute hand on a disk and putting it behind the hour hand. With this arrangement there would be no opportunity for pinching fingers.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Fighting Dirty
I read something in the paper the other day that was a little disturbing. The gist of the story was that while things were getting worse, financially speaking, for many of Bush's supporters during his administration, they continued to support him. I view the GOP as a gang of kleptocrats, but even if there were all proven to be criminals, that would not necessarily keep them from getting elected. The Democratic party needs some kind of philosophical club with which to beat these people over the head. Bush had a primo club maker in Karl Rove, whom I detest, but I have to admit he got the job done. I would hate to have to stoop to his level, but if that is what it is going to take to kick the criminals out of office, then so be it.
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