What did you do today?

[Tom Picciani]

A few days ago the morning low was 14. Today it is supposed to reach the mid 50's. I got a foot of snow on the lawn. Let it melt! Been working on rewiring my telescope. I have something like 8 wires going from ground to the components on the scope. I'm working on cutting down the tangle by putting a USB hub and a Power Pole hub on the tube. Power poles are something new to me. They use them a lot in amateur radio. My brother is making the RJ 45 and RJ 12 cables 8 and 6 wire assemblies with special connectors on the opposite end.

On a side note, my favorite Italian restaurant in York county opened for indoor dining and we finally got there. They're seating at 50% but there wasn't that many in the restaurant. It did fill up as we were leaving. Seafood Alfredo with shrimp and crabmeat over cheese tortellini with sun dried tomatoes. And as with most Italian restaurants, they give you 3 times as much food as you could possibly eat!

 

[Tom Picciani]

Good news is my cold water line was not leaking under the sink. Bad news is my entire run of hot water line is busted. ALL the way across the house. Got enough parts to fix two sinks. Friend patched it-- still leaked beyond the patch. Patched again.. He reported that leaks were pouring out from laundry room all the way to the bathrooms on the other side of the house. CPVC split down the middle all the way across.

I need to spend Wednesday cleaning bc Thursday my friend will be back to replace all of the lines with PEX. He's going to replace the cold lines too. He'll leave enough wiggle room to add tees for additional or moved lines.

Ideally, I'd like to get some PEX manifolds. One for hot located near the water heater and one for cold located in the laundry room wall closer to where water enters the house from the well. I'm trying to figure out the best sizes to get for manifolds. I wanted 1" inlet and end outlet with 3/4 side outlets but can't seem to find that. Not sure on the pipe size of the water heater outlet.

Last year my friend put in pex to bypass the water softener to the outside faucets. We used sharkbite fittings. So much easier. Like putting legos together. The manifolds are expensive. Better to put a piece of 1/2 inch plywood on the wall and then mount T connectors and ball valves. I.E., make your own manifold. HD and Lowes have all that stuff.

 

[highup]

Nothing seems to go well with you zannej does it
Found a place for you when this Covid is over
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rura...-less-than-the-price-of-an-auckland-home.html
And thats NZ Dollars which is about half of yours
Good deal for you

Looks like a good buy to me. If you own half the town don't you get to be the mayor, Secretary of finance, airport Manager and other good paying jobs?

 

[highup]

I bought a tiny altec Lansing Bluetooth speaker a few months ago. I use it a lot with my phone and the sound is fantastic.
Most of the time when I'm working no one is home. I find it's really neat to be able to listen to the radio that way.
Home I'm working on is occupied but the people are usually in the living room which is 60 ft away.
I decided to bring your speaker in yesterday and later in the afternoon I was listening to Sean Hannity. I keep the sound down low and move the speaker around so it's close to me. When I finish the room I was working in yesterday and vacuumed it all up, I offered to help move in a big piece of furniture. I click the button on the speaker but it didn't go off. Again it was on quite softly. When the lady came to check out the room, she asked me. "Could you please turn off the radio, my house is a House of tranquility"
I've been working there a week and a half and I've yet to hear the TV come on even though they've been home most of the time. They both read a lot.
I'm not sure if she doesn't like the radio being on, or if Sean Hannity isn't her most favorite person.

 

[DarisMulkin]

I learned early on to ask the customer about radios. If it was ok what kind of music did they like because some types of music pisses people off. To me rap being one of them.

 

[Floorist]

Worked in a house where religious music was played so loud we could not talk to each other. Put them on my list of "never again".

 

[Jon]

Didnt they convert you around to their way of thinking

 

[Floorist]

Didnt they convert you around to their way of thinking

I think they were Mennonite, there are a lot of them around her and they all have a radio blaring. They don't believe in televisions.

 

[highup]

I learned early on to ask the customer about radios. If it was ok what kind of music did they like because some types of music pisses people off. To me rap being one of them.

I had it on quiet so only I could hear it. I had the phone and speaker in one hand and a bag of scraps in the other. As I was going out the door in the mbr with the scraps, I set the phone and speaker down and when I pushed the off button on the speaker, it didn't go off........ no biggie I thought because in 45 seconds I'd be back in the house to grab some more stuff and I turn it off again. She must have heard me moving things out of the room and came to inspect. Has she arrived 30 seconds later, I would have already had the radio turned off.
Oh well, no biggie. They are nice people.

 

[highup]

I learned early on to ask the customer about radios. If it was ok what kind of music did they like because some types of music pisses people off. To me rap being one of them.

Rap rhymes with crap and there's a reason why.

 

[highup]

I'm getting good at invisible door guides. Here's the office closet's center guide pivot holes located, patterned, then holes 'punched' with a red hot piece of brass tubing, then the pins in place. Only problem is the lower pin positions are non-adjustable.
I'm not worried because the doors fit when I took them out.

 

[Jon]

Think we are dropping back to level two at midnight with us Aucklanders allowed to travel outside our area again

Guess what?
We are going into lock down again

Notice this bit
Auckland will go into alert level 3 lockdown for seven days from 6am tomorrow morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

The rest of the country will go into level 2 for a week from 6am tomorrow morning.

It comes after a new Covid-19 case was detected in the community this afternoon. The new case went to the GP in the afternoon yesterday for a Covid test - then went to the gym after that.

 

[zannej]

I can't stand rap! Especially mumble rap. My best friend's ex loves that garbage but hates real music. She listens to some stupid teenage girl who mostly mumbles and says a word describing female dogs all the time. One of the songs was like "white b****, horse b****, b**** b****, something b****, mumble b****"
And the chick is popular even though most of the words are unintelligible. And don't even get me started on "I missed the bus" rap.

I had Altec Lansing speakers a long time ago. Didn't know they were still in business.

Jon, you're right about things not going well. LOL. Sorry to hear about lockdown.

Thursday I took my friend to Lowes-- bought a ton of stuff (good thing for military discount-- almost canceled out the sales tax). Still came out over $600 in pex & fittings. They were almost out of the little tees we needed. Found one full pack of 5, a 5 pack that had been torn open with only 2 fittings left, and two fittings floating around in the bins. Took over 2 hours to find stuff & had to get an employee to get the pipe down off the high shelf. Some stuff was out of stock so we had to make do with other stuff.

I got somewhat thick painting coveralls with hoods for us plus a head sock for painters to wear over our faces under the hood. Should have gotten goggles too.

I crawled under first to trace back the main water supply line from the water heater. Friend couldn't find it. I crawled as far as I could-- squeezing through stuff. Had to dig at some points to get through some areas bc the ground is not even and some places it's too shallow to crawl through. I shook the pipe up and down until my friend could see it. Then I had him feed me some PEX so I could get it over to the water heater. I observed a bunch of wires not in conduit (which I know was not my father's doing-- he had gone under and put everything he could in conduit bc I got somewhat zapped as a kid when playing under the house). Turns out the AC guy ran a new wire and didn't bother to put it in conduit-- I need to call him and chew him out on that. I told my friend to watch out for exposed wires bc I could feel the juice coming off of the 220v one when I got near it.

I spent probably an hour under there and had trouble getting out- damn defunct galvanized pipe got in my way. I was swearing at it and kicking it. Friend went under after I climbed out- huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. Got dirt in my eyes so goggles would have been nice. Friend was able to get closer to the water heater than I was. Unfortunately, he didn't see that wire in time and got zapped pretty bad. Hit his head and lost control of his bladder. He continued on and tied in a couple of the hot water lines but we lost daylight. He capped the rest and after waiting for glue to cure enough for a leak test, we turned water on. Nothing seemed to work though & we were too exhausted to figure out why at the time. We agreed to resume the next morning.

In retrospect, I remembered there were 2 separate lines going in-- 1 for hot and 1 for cold. I also remembered a box just right near the house but it had gotten filled in. Friend found it the next day. He was still too sore from getting zapped and from crawling around under there to do too much. But I realized the cistern needed to fill more. No leaks in the well shed at least. I shut off water to the cow's waterer, went inside and found tub on full blast (brother turned the handle the wrong way). Once those 2 things were off, water heater started to fill, toilet filled, sink water worked. So cold is still hooked up.

Gonna shut off AC power next time (it's the only thing on that would run 220v & be in that location).

I'm going to try to get some sleep since I'm still exhausted. More work will resume on the pipes once we have had a few days to recover.

 

[Jon]

People have been told they have to self isolate for 14 days after having a test until results returned

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid...-2-jacinda-ardern/OWBIIXGYZQIPJL36WZYZKSEWH4/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/300240898/businesses-exhausted-by-alert-level-changes
Think I would be going into hiding if it was me

 

[Floorist]

A Covid relief bill backed by Democrats could trigger billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare and other federal programs, like ones that support unemployed workers and student-loan borrowers, if it's ultimately passed.


The funding cuts would take effect in 2022 and last for several years.

 

[zannej]

I didn't do much today. Intended to stay home and sleep but realized I had to go to the store to get something for dinner.
Fed mom and am now trying to rest. Got a headache. I started taking some new vitamins to see if they help. Got a heating pad on my shoulder since it's giving me grief.

 

[highup]

A Covid relief bill backed by Democrats could trigger billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare and other federal programs, like ones that support unemployed workers and student-loan borrowers, if it's ultimately passed.


The funding cuts would take effect in 2022 and last for several years.

Instead of just throwing money out they need to be selective. They're giving this out to people that have been employed too. I'm off for extending unemployment, but there's no reason to make unemployment plus these extras to equal more than a person would work when they were normally working. I think they're just buying votes for 2024.…... and 2022.

 

[highup]

Finally got my carpet job done today.
Every bit of a job has been slow going. It doesn't help with my 5-hour days.
Because the carpet was one piece and four and a half feet wide the bedroom needed two seams with a second one being 6 inches away from the windows on the far side of the room. I borrowed a Koolglide iron to do all the seams on this job. Being on concrete this would have been very difficult with a regular seaming iron because the long seam had a bow in it. I was able to set up my stretcher to close the gap and get about 3 to 4 shots with the iron before letting the same cool and moving my stretcher to the next location. I was thrilled with the where is the seams turned out.

 

[highup]

That job I was talking about is about 20 miles from town. When I got done with it I kind of went sideways to another job about 12 miles away. It's a modular home and I'm going to be starting that one on Monday. The Finnish guy is there and I wanted to see how things were coming along and make sure they had the heat on. Along with small road I was driving on there was a clear cut and sun was most of the way down. Last time I was almost a road it was a forest and you couldn't see the sky.
There is one of looking root ball sticking up in the air. I saw it on the way to the job so on the way back up I stopped to take a picture. I wish that there was a blazing sunset to go along with this.

 

[Tom Picciani]

Instead of just throwing money out they need to be selective. They're giving this out to people that have been employed too. I'm off for extending unemployment, but there's no reason to make unemployment plus these extras to equal more than a person would work when they were normally working. I think they're just buying votes for 2024.…... and 2022.

i was thinking the same thing. Then I realized that any money put into American hands will be spent. Any money that is spent means more jobs, especially for low wage earners. Besides that, some people who have jobs now, were out of work earlier and need money for back rent and other stuff.