Whatcha doin????

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by TrustGzus, Aug 16, 2018.

  1. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    I guess the issue is whether they get enough to need to shovel it. I kinda like the idea of never having to shovel snow again but wouldn't want to never see snow again. Sometimes I'm tempted by those setups where you have heated pipes under the driveway and an extra furnace, so you just crank up the furnace and it melts the snow. If I did that I'd want to angle the driveway so I'd just need to melt a thin layer before the rest slid out into the street. The plow dumps enough on the end of my driveway, it would be nice to melt a layer underneath it and dump it right back where it came from.
     
  2. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Fun day today. I've been trying to figure how cold and noise get into my house so easily and figured I had a problem under the canopy of my porches. So I had a local handyman come in to remove the metal trim (I could have done it but wanted it done with enough finesse that I can put it back up later) and today I got busy breaking things.

    The first thing I hit was a side porch, trimmed with what looks like drywall and in really bad condition. Because I'd have to replace it all anyway I just ripped it down, broke it up and bagged it ready to go out with the trash. What I found behind it was much less ugly than I expected but I did find a nice big hole in the side of the house. It looks like it only goes through the outer layer of the brickwork but it's obviously the sort of thing that lets cold inside the hollw bricks, and also means noise can get in.

    The second porch was much bigger. My original plan was to rip down all the wood trim and replace it but then I figured replacing it, even with the cheapest plywood I could find, would probably burn through $3-400 or so, as well as being a serious hassle. So I used my hole saw and drilled some holes in it so I could figure out what I'm dealing with. And, as expected, I found beams resting in holes in the wall with big air gaps all around them. Not as many of them as I expected, but enough. So now I need to figure how much of the trim I need to tear down so I can get in there and stuff the gaps with rockwool and foam.

    Along the way I found where the cables that power one of the porch lights leave the house. That also looks like a hideous job, and one that must have an air gap all the way through the brickwork because the cables go from inside the house to outside the house. I'm not sure just what I'm going to do with them - we have two switches and two porch lights, so I'm tempted to try and wire them all together so that both switches operate both lights. I just need to figure out how (whether?) I can get a length of 14/3 cable to one of the switches without ripping walls apart. I need to get some more things rebuilt before I break any more rooms.
     
  3. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    Move to Dallas/Ft. Worth. My sister tells the story of her first winter in Dallas. It snowed and, being raised in Central Illinois, she dutifully went out and started shoveling off the sidewalks. As she was doing that a neighbor came by and said "why bother? It will be gone by noon." And it was..
     
  4. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Now maintaining optimum Ketone levels. Blood G decreasing slowly from dangerous highs and stable.
    I will never go back.
    Grateful in Montana.
     
  5. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    First x-country ski of the season. Nice to get out as a family.
     
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  6. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    First bag of drywall went out this evening for collection tomorrow. I have two more bags of trash lurking on the porch waiting to go out and another one mostly full in the basement. Might as well get full value out of the trash service we have.
     
  7. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Congrats.

    It is a lot of work, moving away from what we were raised or told to believe was the proper diet for the last 50 years... i.e., mostly carbs, 2ndly protein, low fat

    But it is worth it, in the long run. The difficulty is, in my mind, primarily that the farm/industrial food complex is geared to create sugar and carb addicts, and it is very difficult to swim against the stream.

    it simply requires planning, which means effort and thought, and sadly, for most of my life, eating has been unintentional and as programmed.

    My wife and I were talking yesterday about the need to get serious again and really plan for our weekly meals.
     
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  8. Athanasius

    Athanasius Life is not a problem to be solved Staff Member

    That, and basically every doctor you meet will tell you that you're crazy and killing yourself. Or that's been my experience:

    - Whatever you did it's helped your liver, keep it up
    - Stay away from a ketogenic diet though

    So uh, which is it doc?
     
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  9. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    I've gotten that also. "Be careful, ketones devour muscle tissue." Mythology.
     
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  10. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Hey, I learned about a new form of government today from one of my wife’s cousins...
     
  11. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Do tell....
     
  12. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Sorry, uploaded image didn’t work

    ineptocracy

    a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
     
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  13. Athanasius

    Athanasius Life is not a problem to be solved Staff Member

    So kind of like the form of government people my age envision?
     
  14. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Somnambulance:
    Gave up my lovely $100.00+ honey-cured ham, a gift from my employer (too many carbs) to the family gathering where it was consumed, without fanfare, tout-sweet (no pun).
    Giving thanks!
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2020
  15. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

     
  16. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Reminds me of a work meme that said something like

    We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little we are surely qualified to do anything with nothing.
     
  17. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Nordic walking machine. No more blisters, no oglers. Never imagined such a perfect device . Blest!
     
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  18. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    Did 7 or 8km with the dog yesterday on real skis. Not enough people here to ogle. Did some skating and hockey with the kids today at the local outdoor hockey box. Discovered some new muscles.
     
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  19. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Took advantage of the warm weather lull - one more ton of firewood and one more ton of round logs for nighttime. Last of readily available fir but their are still quite a lot of dry, smaller diameter pulp fir & pine logs. Warm, dry weather(?) - will cut some more, fully aware of how winter can turn wicked and stay that way (like the locals).
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2020
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  20. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Fun and games with wires today. I tried something new a few days ago only to find when I turned it on there was a spectacular bang and everything went dark. It turned out the main house breaker had popped. I talked to an electrician friend and he thought about what I'd tried to do, then he talked to one of his coworkers who knows a lot more about the theory behind things and his verdict was that I'd done everything right and there was no reason for the big bang. So now I've wired up a variation of it, and left the front of the box hanging off so I can be absolutely sure there's no stray earth wires touching anything they shouldn't.

    Just in case there are any more spectacular pops I'll save turning it on until it's light outside. It wasn't fun trying to pick my way around assorted power tools, across a dark basement room to find the stairs, to get upstairs and find my phone so I could use the light from it to find my work light, to go and get everything turned back on again. I don't really feel like doing that again...
     

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