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The periscope of Royal Navy submarine HMS Talent pokes above the cold waters of Kyle of Lochalsh, Scotland during surfacing drills in the in December 2009.

How did the photographer get this shot? Via daily timewaster

From Rise Of The Jewhunters:

The Jew hunter loathes even the idea of people living lives unrelated to the Jew hunter. Jew hunters have a character flaw: they want to make everyone else bend to their will. One method they use is to find a rule, viciously inflict it on others, and smugly preen about their moral superiority while doing so. It’s a repulsive failed personality. It could be some asshat turning the HOA into a thuggery or it could be the real deal; someone pointing out Jews to the Germans. Bad behavior is done on purpose and with pride. Malice inflicted falls on a spectrum but the motivation is always the same; pleasure at messing with someone else’s life coupled with the (false!) pretense that doing so is morally superior.

 From OldNFO:

A quiz… Kind of fun mental exercise. Some of the questions were easy, some I didn't know the answer. I had to reach way back into the memory hole to access answers to a couple of them.

Camp Town

Idyllic Camp Town

I'm thinking that maybe what we need are more tents. Not everybody wants or needs or can afford a house. A tent doesn't offer as much protection as a house, but they can be comfortable. Mostly I'm thinking about the homeless who are camping out on downtown city streets. I would think a campground who make for happier campers, especially if there was a soup kitchen in the center of it.

But I'm also thinking about our mindset, that in order to be a good, solid citizen, you need to have a house. Houses have many advantages, but I suspect that one of the reasons so many people are convinced that houses are the way to go is because people who own real estate promote the idea as being the only solution. To them, tents and camping are not a real solution to the housing problem. I think they are wrong.

Tents and tent materials are becoming ever more sophisticated. A  'permanent tent' is no longer an oxymoron.

Oil Leak

Title Screen from Timing Belt Change Removal and Installation on Mitsubishi Endeavor video

Started watching the linked video to see what we were getting into, stayed for the music, which is pretty good. I think it is all instrumental, no singing. The video can't be played from here, you have to go to YouTube to watch it.

Our 2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor has developed a small oil leak. Right now it's just an annoyance but I thought I should look into fixing it. Took it to a local auto repair shop, they wanted to to run a dye test for something like $200. I said no to that. I don't care where the oil is coming from, $200 could get you half way to getting it fixed.

Osmany and I crawled underneath the other day and from what we could see it looked like the rear valve cover might be leaking. Today we did some exploratory surgery. We pulled off the right front wheel, the splash shield from the wheel well, and the upper part of the timing belt cover. That was enough that could get a better look and now it looks like it is the rear camshaft seal that is leaking. Bah, bah and humbug.

Replacing that seal means pulling the timing belt and removing the cog wheel from the camshaft. It's almost as bad as having to replace the timing belt, which is what led us to the above video. I had the timing belt replaced about a year ago, er five years ago, and it cost around $1000. I wouldn't be surprised if just replacing this one cam seal would cost half of that.

Replacing the timing belt is a fairly straight forward operation, hampered of course by the tight quarters imposed by the transverse engine mounting, but this engine has a peculiar belt tensioning system that looks to be a real pain in the neck to set correctly (at the 15 mark in the above video).

Effing Windows

Kaspersky Logo

My wife has a Windows computer. She also has an Apple laptop from work and various other computerized thing-a-ma-bobs. She doesn't seem to care what kind of machine she uses. The Windows machine has been quietly doing it's job for a while, but today my wife mentions (she never complains you know, like I do) that the Windows computer has gotten very slow, so I go take a look.

First thing I notice is Windows wants to do an update. The message is a little unpleasant, something to the effect that you can either do it now or do it later, but it's going to happen bub, and there's nothing you can do about it. I don't want to get involved in a war with Windows, I cannot think of a bigger waste of time. It's like a constantly expanding amorphous blob. You might be able to beat it back and keep it at swords length, but eventually it will overwhelm you. Now if you were really clever and seriously determined to carry on the war, you might be able to carve out a habitable space in the midst of this alien, amorphous (did I mention green and slimy?) blob. There could be a challenge it that, kind of like erecting habitable bubble on Titan. An impressive technical achievement, but the longer you stay there, the shorter your expected life span. The only solution is to move to another planet, like Linux, which I have done.

Whatever. First thing to do is restart the machine. That takes a while, it's Windows you know. When I check back I see McAfee has scanned the computer and found a problem which it is willing to fix as long as I send them some money. No, I'm not doing that. I'll download a copy of Malwarebytes, but then I think maybe I should see what else is out there and somebody recommends Kaspersky, another name I recognize, so I download the free version of that. Then, in some random order, we restart the computer, download the real app (the first one was just a downloader, this one is like 200 megabytes or something and takes an actual number of seconds to download), dispense with an ad for something called Edge, discover an incompatible anti-virus program (McAfee), removes said troublemaker, and I think that brings us up to date. I'm going to go check on it.

It seems to have completed. We shall see.

Tone

Ozark Season 3 Episode 9 Mystery Symbols
Clockwise from upper left, gas pump, cell phone, Man bun, Cadillac key fob.
I had a hard time deciphering the man bun on the big screen. If you need a clue, the image is a negative, the white area is hair, the face is black and facing to the left. All you can really see of the face is the eyebrow and the eye.

Season 3 of Ozark is basically about Ben, Wendy's bi-polar brother.

We watched the last 2 episodes of Season 3 this evening. At some point Wendy (the better half of our cartel abetting suburbanites) becomes convinced that Helen (the big shot Chicago lawyer) is making a play for power (in the drug cartel hierarchy) solely from (near as I can tell) the tone of Helen's voice. I couldn't hear it, but then maybe I don't know Helen well enough to be able to detect nuances in her tone. Funny how emotion can creep into our voices even when we try to conceal it. And of course, Helen is making a play. It backfires rather spectacularly.

Engineering Dilemma

Step up from the Living Room to the Dining Room

The living room in the new house is a step down from the kitchen. My wife got the idea that we should raise the floor so that everything on the main floor is at the same level, no steps. I'm generally in favor of flat floors. Steps might make it more visually appealing, but do you really want your home to contain traps for the unwary? I mean, does every time you walk into the living room need to be a dramatic entrance? Besides, if we raise the floor, we can get rid of the soffit covering a heating duct in the master bedroom. Maybe.

The living room is kind of large, and it is just over the master bedroom, which is nearly as large. Yes, the house is a little odd. The entrance and the living room are on the top level, all the bedrooms are on lower levels.

Typical Two by Twelve Floor Joist Framing

Anyway, we've got (24) 20-foot-long two by twelve's on twelve inch centers spanning the floor. The floor is going to be raised about seven and half inches, the width of a two by eight.  Can we run the two by eights cross wise and on top of the two by twelves that are already there? And can those existing joists support the additional load? We want the stringers in the built up section to be cross wise so we can move the ducts from the soffit. I don't think two by eights, 24 feet long can be counted on to support much weight, and since the new subfloor is going to weigh at least twice as much as the old subfloor, we might have a weight issue. We might have to run the two-by-eights directly inline and above the old joists and splice them together to make stronger joists. That might be stronger, but it would be put a serious dent in my plan to move the heating duct.

I'm good with math, but figuring out how much all this wood would weigh, how much weight the floor is expected to support, and how much weight these different arrangements of sticks can support is something for someone who's familiar with all those numbers. Shoot, this problem might even be odd enough to make it interesting.

Harbor Fright

Dasco Cat's Paw

The boys & I are ripping up the #$%%^ pseudo-plywood subfloor in the new house and we realize a cat's paw would be a good tool to have. I have one, or at least I think I do, but it's over at John's house in North Portland, which isn't all that far, but it's over a windy, bumpy road, and Home Depot is a little closer and it's just a straight shot down Cornell Road. Time is money and how much can a cat's paw cost anyways?

Not sure why, but I think I should tell you I didn't take Cornell all the way to Murray, which is where you ought to turn if you are going to Home Depot. Instead I turned on Cedar Hills, took it to the freeway (26) and thence to Murray. I suspect I was on autopilot because that's normally the way I head home, but I'm going to claim I went that way because I have aversion to all the traffic lights I would have to deal with if I went down Cornell.

Whatever. I get to Home Depot, find a reasonable place to park, get out of my car and as I start walking toward the entrance I realize there are a couple of dozen people queued up, carefully spaced apart, waiting to get in. It's raining. I'm not going to stand out in the rain, waiting. I turn around and head to Harbor Freight, just a couple of miles away. Quickly locate a cat's paw and pick up a medium small crow bar as well. Funny about that. They had big crow bars, giant crow bars, tiny ones and small ones, but no medium / regular sized ones. We already have a three crow bars of various sizes and this one seemed like it might be a good addition to my set. Of course, we can't find the big one, which is why I was tasked with getting another one. Thought it was at John's as well, but it turns out it was at the new house, just hiding.

Harbor Freight Cat's Paw

The cat's paw worked for a day, or maybe two, but today it gave up the ghost. The broken cross section looks like is made of compressed coal wrapped with thin steel shell. Yeah, Harbor Freight tools, when you only need to use it once.

Spray Sock
This is the one I bought. Found the picture on Ebay.

Went to ACE hardware today to pick up some masks and a replacement cat's paw. They were sold out of masks, no surprise there, but they had a painters sock, which is just stretchy thing you pull over your head so you aren't breathing paint particles when you are spray painting. I don't know how well it would work with dust, which is what we wanted it for, and who knows how well it would work against a virus. I suspect not very well. The cat's paw, along with about half of their hand tools, was in a cage that required a sales person to unlock. The cat's paw cost about $12 at ACE. The one at Harbor Freight cost about $4.