Personal posts page 61

Plumbing break

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I had my first split pipe a little over a week ago. The pipes froze for maybe the fifth time this year, on what might have been the coldest day of the year. I had put a lightbulb under the house, but it was no match for that cold and wind. I had shut off the water and opened the valves during the cold. After it warmed up, I put my space heater below the house to unthaw the lines (I had done this once before with fast results). It unthawed them, but I found one hot water line spraying out water.

I shut off the hot water side. Something made me think I had a leak in a cold water line as well. I think my toilet, which has a long delay for its valve to open after flushing, must have opened and when I heard the loud water rushing, I thought I had another leak. So I shut off all my water at my filter, which is inside the house.

For over a week I got my water from the filter: I had removed the filter part and was getting water from the hole that went through it. I boiled water for baths, filled jugs to use for teeth brushing, dish washing, and cooking. The water looked kinda junky, so I got my drinking water from my parents house.

Then one night I came home to find water dripping from the filter. When I went to shut it off, it fell apart and water was pouring out. I shut off my water at the main valve and had absolutely no water for a while. Luckily, the filter was not especially damaged, and I was able to just put it all back together. Evidently, the filter part holds a plastic plate against the valve part, preventing it from being pushed out. So I need to keep the filter on there.

Then I went underneath to fix the break. It was maybe a 1 inch break in the hot water line going to my kitchen. After some time of looking and crawling under my house, I determined that there was in fact no break in the cold water lines. I could have had cold running water that whole time. Without too much trouble, other than getting rather cold, I was able to cut out the old broken bit and put in a new bit with a junction. It held water just fine and finally I had all my water running again. I took a shower that night in celebration.

A few days later (yesterday) it got rather cold again. I put my space heater underneath the house just to make sure nothing froze up again. Unfortunately, a leak has developed, probably just at one of the soldered joints. I was worried about the one that had been there before, with how much heat I used to do some of the new joints. I’ll have to take care of that when the weather gets better. For now, I’m just shutting the valve till I need hot water.

New roommate

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Toby Manor will soon have a new employee. Dwight Henson, my roommate and bandmate for several years in the past, will be living here temporarily for a few months or so. He wants to stay to look for a job in his desired field (TV or film). He’s had no luck in the two years or whatever it’s been since he graduated, so who knows how long that’ll take.

The preparation for the move has been very rough for me. I’ve had to move all of the junk from my back bedroom to my living room to allow it to become his bedroom. I have a lot of junk, and it really fills up the living room. There is a narrow walkway between stacked boxes and piles of stuff. This of course took a while to do. I’m intending on having a large and long series of garage sales once the weather turns nice to get rid of a lot of this, and hopefully pare my stuff down to a much more minimal amount.

I’ve also had to clean up the bathroom, kitchen, and hallway, known as the communal areas. These have taken a good bit of time and are still not especially ready for their planned roles.

And of course, as is a tradition here at Toby Manor, I’ve had plumbing problems. I went more than a week without water because a pipe burst after freezing for maybe the 5th time this year. That plumbing is a pain and takes some time, since it is outside and underneath my house.

I’ve got lots of schoolwork to do as well. It seems quite overwhelming. I’m feeling enticed toward dropping a class or something.

Anyway, I’m worried that the new employee will want me to do all sorts of work to get the house up to his germophobic and more normal person standards. I won’t be able to do much at least till school is out. We will no doubt get into arguments about how to run things. Living with two people should theoretically be less work than one, but I fear the opposite will be the case.

There are bright notes of the move, though. This will provide me with some much needed social interaction, even if just with Dwight and his girlfriend. It could be cool playing cards and the like. The costs of living here will hopefully go down a good bit. I’m expecting utility usage to go up noticeably, but it shouldn’t overtake the savings of splitting the costs in half. And this whole thing will hopefully motivate me more to do things to get out of this rut I have dug myself into. It’s getting harder and harder to stay in this rut.

Fully entering the cell phone world

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I had stayed out of the cell phone world for quite some time. I don’t use the phone much, and cell phones cost a lot. A few years back I got a pay-as-you-go type phone, but it was quite expensive to actually call from: I rarely used it, and gave up on it when I accidently missed a payment date and lost all my minutes. Last Christmas, my Mom gave me another pay-as-you-go, with a bunch of minutes. I decided I’d try actually using this one. The first batch of minutes were all free for me, but even with a lot of them, I was able to go through them pretty quickly. When I ran out, it came time to make a choice.

Cousin Paul told me he could get me on his family plan at Alltel for $10 a month. I compared that with Tracfone’s prices. Tracfone would have had a slightly lower minimum price once I paid for their double minutes for life thing, but that wouldn’t be for a lot of minutes. I decided that, if I wanted to actually use it, I should just go with the Alltel. The contract worried me a bit, especially when I found out it was for the crappily ridiculously long two years, but I figured I’d live with that.

I bought a relatively cheap phone from Alltel, new. It’ll have cost me $60 if I get the rebate back with activation and all. It was a flip phone. It had a screen on the outside and mp3 buttons. It could play mp3s and movies. It had a camera. It could browse the web, though I had no interest in that bit because of cost. It worked pretty well, and I was relatively happy with it, except for some UI problems. I had it for about two weeks, then lost it during a trip to Seattle.

Buying a new phone with a contract already in place was ridiculously expensive. The one I had before suddenly became $250. The cheapest at that store was $150, and it was pretty crappy. Elsewhere, I could find down to about $100. So I decided I’d have to go used. I soon found online was the only reasonable place to find used.

In deciding what to buy, I found used phones still weren’t that cheap, though much more so than the new ones. For some reason, I thought perhaps I should just buy a combination PDA and cell phone. I had always wanted a PDA. I’m also very interested in touch-screen stuff. I figured one of the older models would be going for pretty cheap. I found that there weren’t that many models from far in the past, so I had relatively few choices. The newer ones were certainly quite expensive, no iphone or the like for sure (especially since none seemed to be made for Alltel). I always liked the Palm OS, wanted handwriting recognition for sure.

I found the Palm Treo 650 had all the features newer phones had, was available for Alltel, and wasn’t all that expensive. There was one locally on Craigslist, but it was from long enough ago that I didn’t even try for it. I returned, after many years, to eBay. I watched carefully, checked out all the ones available, picked the few I was willing to go for. I bid on several, sometimes going a little above what I wanted to pay and still didn’t get one. I almost gave up and went for the buy it now option. But I managed to win one. It ran $110 with shipping. Not too bad for a “smartphone”.

It shipped extremely fast, got here in a few days with standard shipping. I was quite happy to get my new toy, and played with it quite a bit for the following two days. I was extremely disappointed that Graffiti did not work with it. Stupid that a Palm PDA wouldn’t have that. I was extremely relieved when I found third party freeware to enable it. I also found that there was no way to directly sync Apple’s Address Book and iCal with it, outside of buying a utility just for that purpose. Palm’s Desktop software was rather outdated (hasn’t been updated in 2+ years) but it installed fine. It took a little while to get working, but once I did, it works just fine. The utility does use a bit of constant CPU power, so I turn it off sometimes. It has a calendar and address book app, so I should be able to at least import into those and copy that version to the Palm.

It took me a while to find good apps for it. Palm’s site had a software bank, but much of that stuff cost money. VersionTracker, though, has a good depository, and I found an even better one at softonic. I found some good freeware apps. They were remarkably easy to install. Just a double click in the finder set up a transfer for the next sync. I installed the Graffiti enabling app, a better alarm clock (the default one only had one alarm and wasn’t that good), and a few games. It’s sweet that there is a gameboy emulator for it. I’m still having trouble getting it working well, and haven’t figured out how to get my games over to it, but this could mean I can have phone, PDA type device, mp3 player, crappy camera, and gameboy all in one device.

Hopefully I won’t lose this one. I figured its larger size would help with that. I have full plans to get a silicone type skin with a belt clip for it. That should help a lot, and make it easier to carry as well.

So I called to get it activated. I had to have Paul authorize me to do so. Then, after attempting to activate it the way the guy told me to, it hung up to me and said activation failed. I then told the guy it was a Palm Treo. He said I needed to update my plan to their Smart Choice plan. They started at $69.99. I would obviously need to okay this with Paul anyway, since it’s actually his plan, so I said I’d hold off. Looking on the website, it looked like the Smart Choice plan would be $30 a month more for the main line plus $10 more for each other person. I have no idea why the other people would have to pay more. Since I’d be paying this increase, that’d take my $10 up to $60 a month, almost enough to pay for my own plan.

I was rather distraught with this and mad that Alltel would make me change plans when all I wanted was to use my device as a phone. After I calmed down, I figured that I’d call to verify the cost difference. If it was only like $30, I would probably go for it. It did, after all, have free unlimited data. If it was any more than that, though, that’d quickly overrun the cost of just buying a used regular phone. So I’d have to get another phone, and probably be able to sell this one for what I got it for, maybe even a little more. I finally called back Alltel, and got a different guy this time. I said I heard I needed to upgrade to the Smart Choice plan for my ‘smartphone’. He asked if I had bought it with a contract or used. When I said used, he said I didn’t need the smart choice for it. I was excited, though a little worried that it might not actually work, especially since dialing the setup number hadn’t last time. It took him a while (I guess he was trying to figure out a way for me to use minutes for data). He had my dial a different setup number. After two test calls, we verified: It had worked! After ending the call, I made sure by calling my own house. It worked. I was elated, elated enough to write out this ridiculously long post.

So now I have phone service again, plus a little electronic toy that I can carry around with me. I’ll have to verify that it is good over several days here, but I think it should be fine. I better not lose it though.

Vacation to Seattle

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I recently got back from my visit to Washington State. It was a pretty good trip, with lots of mountains, trees, and water, as well as sitting in a car. I managed to take 1050 photos there, and to lose my brand new cell phone, purchased just before the trip. And I got to see brother Jamie for the first time since perhaps March when he left for Seattle. I had to skip my classes for the week, but it was at a not so important time in them.

Saturday
My mom and I both flew up, separately, on the Saturday before last. I felt very cramped on the flight, but luckily the seat next to me was empty, giving me extra space. I had a small dinner of a microwave type fried chicken sandwich with tiny salad and M & Ms. I read my psychology book (for class) for a while, and somewhat watched without sound one and part of another movie. I think I dozed off briefly. I also watched out the window quite a bit. It was dark out for much of the flight, but seeing the small splotches of lights on the ground here and there was interesting. The clouds near Seattle were quite lit up, which was quite a site.

Mom flew up well before me and had to get to the condo we were staying at before I arrived, so I had to stay in Seattle for the night. I stayed at Jamie’s house (it took some time before the trip to convince him this was the way to go). It took some time to meet up with him, hauling all my stuff on the bus and then around the city looking for him. My new cell phone helped greatly with our meeting. We took the bus down to his house. It’s a small trailer, a large towable camping kind retrofitted to sort of have the normal fittings of a house, but somewhat crappily. I was skeptical when he said it would be hard to sleep more than two people there, but he was right. We ate pizza and I was introduced to the TV show the Office.

Sunday
I slept poorly and for a short period of time before hauling my gear back to the bus. Jamie had to stay and work the next two days, so it was just me leaving. I asked the bus driver how to get to the Amtrak station, and luckily it was the last stop on that line. Unfortunately, when I got off, there was no clear indication where it was. It took me some time of walking around, but I found it in a small, nearly not labeled building a little ways away. My mom called me as I was looking for it: she thought the train left an hour before it actually did, and that I should already be on it. She called just as a bum looking guy was approaching me, and he said something like have a good trip and walked away after I had been talking for a little while. I had to take the train to get nearer to the condo, a two and a half hour drive away. The train ride was quite comfortable, much more spacious than the plane, and there were not so many people in it. We picked up more at other stops, but I still was able to keep my whole two seats to myself. I slept for a while. I also watched the scenery. A man near me hadn’t payed for a ticket, and then was caught smoking in the bathroom, much to the consternation of the train workers. At our destination, he was seen sitting with a guard, apparently awaiting the arrival of the police, who showed up just as I left.My mom was there in Bellingham waiting for me. She had gotten lost on the way and had to buy a $5 map just to find the place. She brought her GPS unit, named Yoda, but he was of no help. She had rented an SUV, and we left in that.

We went back to the condo, about a half hour away, near the small and isolated town of Glacier. It was in the mountains, primarily a ski area. The area is remote enough that not only did our cell phones not work, our GPS units didn’t either. The satellite radio in the car cut in and out, though it did this even in places nearer Seattle. We spent the day staying in the area, going around the mountains. Many of the roads going up the mountains were one lane, and after a while they often turned into rough dirt/stone roads. We had to turn around the first one we went up because it was washed out at one point. It was quite hard turning the car around in the narrow one lane road. It was very cloudy, the clouds engulfing the mountain tops. We were quick to get above the level of some of the clouds. Much of these mountains were covered by trees, mostly conifers. But at the tops of some of them was snow and rock. This was my first good view of some snow capped peaks: I had been up top of one in New Mexico, but it had been at night, and I had seen some from planes before as well. There weren’t a lot of them, just a at most a few visible at a time. Later that day, when we drove up near the skiing area, we came to a small lake that had a nice reflection of some mountain tops. It’s called Picture Lake or something like that, and is supposedly the most photographed of that sort of lake. There were little birds near us that flew quite close. We also saw a decently sized waterfalls, evidently where many people had died.

Unfortunately, it got dark before 1700, so we didn’t have much time to see things. It and the clouds also made for slow shutter speeds on many the photos throughout my trip.

We ate dinner at a local restaurant called Graham’s, somewhat famous for having been in an early movie. It was a somewhat interesting place. The menu was part of a newspaper that told the history of the restaurant and some other informational tidbits. It had a small variety of somewhat strange items. I went with a stir-fry like dish which my mom had the night before and recommended. It was pretty good.

We called my dad, as we did every night. We lost cell phone service near a strange tree with blue christmas lights in the middle of nowhere at the side of the road on the way to the condo, so we usually tried to call before that. There was a phone at the condo area, a regular phone put in a payphone like terminal for the whole condo to use. We had to use a long distance card with it the couple of times we called from there.

Synopsis of rest of trip, perhaps to be filled in later
Monday
Long drive to shore. Saw Deception Pass, a passage of a river through a narrow gorge, with turbulence that turns over kayaks. Saw a few beach areas, view over bay.

TuesdayDrove to Seattle to pick up Jamie. Took ferry to Orcas Island. Drove up tallest mountain on the islands there. Nice view around, across bay. Could see many big snow capped mountains off in distance. Tried to get into rec room at condo for quite some time, but must have closed early.

Wednesday
Showed Jamie mountain area, mostly what we had seen already, but a bit more. Went up Twin Lakes road. Made it over several rough washed out spots of road, but had to turn around at one very bad one. Got somewhat good views, but was cloudy and of and on raining, preventing good mountain-top views. Jamie and I played ping-pong and swam in pool.

Thursday
Were going into town, so I brought my cell phone. Set it in car next to me, was last I saw of it. Went through Canada to a small bit of the US on a peninsula off of Canada. Got stopped at first crossing, didn’t hear what guy said, so waited in car for a long while before I went into the nearby building, at which point I was told that we were supposed to have come in. The cop guy there seemed to have a strange air of importance, and told me to keep my distance when I got close to him to point out our vehicle. Soon after we were let leave. Other three crossings much less eventful. All had long waits, especially last one, with long lines of cars. Bought no MSG ramen soup at gas station that Jamie ended up getting. Rocky beach on peninsula with lots of seaweed, giant driftwood, plenty of birds on water, decent view over bay of some islands. Not very worth trip through border crossings though.

Friday
Power went out, so woke up 45 minutes late on big driving day. Checked out of condo, drove down past Deception Point towards Olympic Peninsula. Saw sea lions or something in water as drove past, but construction plus missed exit prevented our stopping. Took ferry (much shorter ride) to Olympic peninsula. Walked short way onto 6 mile long sand dune thing with light house on its end. Saw seaweed, giant driftwood. Drove up mountain road to dam, small and uneventful, turned around. Went toward another mountain road, road closed, had to turn around. Dark, had to head to Seattle. Long lines with huge number of cars took ferry to Seattle. Dropped Jamie at home, went to hotel. Briefly used free internet, slept well in bed.

Saturday
Dropped my luggage at Jamie’s. Had pancake breakfast with Jamie. Mom left for early flight, dropping Jamie and I at REI store. Spent much time there looking at ultralight rain garb and the many, many other camping items. Very nice place. Bought small duffel I later used in place of another, slightly smaller and less handled bag, for the flight. Also some camping soap and a durable reflective blanket. Walked around town. Tower had too long lines, though view would have been nice, passed on it. Took space train further downtown, saw Pikes Market. Top floor had food with lots of fresh fish, fruit, also crafts. Narrow lane very very crowded, difficult to walk. Maybe four other floors with antique and other type shops in old-time mall-like setting. Played instruments for a while at Lark in the Morning store. Walked for a good while till found Teriyaki restaurant, ate large meal that I couldn’t finish. Walked good deal more looking for wooden boat place, couldn’t find it. Dark. Went to coffee shop to use internet to find best bus schedule for me to catch my flight. Also looked for shop with used camping gear, but was too late to visit it. Went back to Jamie’s home for a while via bus. Didn’t get to do much other than repack my gear better before I had to leave for my bus. Bus was rather late. Gear easier to carry with better packing, still rather difficult, especially first one which ended up fairly crowded. Second one, guy saw my transfer slip was old, had to pay but couldn’t find money with all my stuff, had to pay on exit.

Plenty of time waiting in airport for flight, read psychology book. Flight boarded slightly late. Rather empty, after women moved, had my row of three seats to myself. Looked out window at darkness a bit. Soon lay down across three seats, fell asleep. Slept till descent approaching Cleveland airport. Woke with sharp pain in ears, like they really needed to have popped many times over the flight, but couldn’t because I was asleep. Every once in a while the right would make strange, loud noises. Ears didn’t pop till after got home and slept. Arrived early. Dad picked up, drove me straight home. Stay awake for a bit unpacking and looking for cell phone. Fell asleep and slept till 1500 or so when parents called. Invited me over for dinner of chili. Looked completely through Mom’s luggage, still couldn’t find phone.

Doors on car

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I don’t know why I didn’t write this before. Perhaps I’ve just lost interest in this site because of the lack of people viewing it. Anyway, I have finally gotten new doors on my car. I came home from my trip to New York late July to find my Uncle Al had replaced the doors for me. $130 and he did the hard part for me. I am very happy with the results, and thank him for the surprise. I owe him one.

For those of you who hadn’t seen my car before, both front doors were in awful shape. The mirrors were missing on both sides, making backing up and lane changing more of a pain. The cops didn’t like the lack either, and they contributed to my getting pulled over at least thrice. The passenger side door wouldn’t open at all (in fact, Uncle Al had to cut it to get it off). The drivers side door wouldn’t close as it was supposed to. I had to tie it closed to the column to prevent it from swinging open, thus making both it and the door behind it for all intents and purposes unopenable as well. So I had to climb through the passenger side rear door. It was quite a pain, especially when driving other people. And finally, both doors were very rusted out at the bottom, and the metal was bending upwards, looking rather unsightly.

I am very happy that I can back up my car and view behind me much more easily now. Not having to climb into the car is a lot easier as well. A lot. I’m much less reluctant to drive others places now as well.

I had said of this summer that I’d get new doors or a new car. I’m glad the cheaper option worked out. I hope this car can last till I can find a diesel or electric car to replace it.

back to school

Well, this semester I started taking some classes again. I’m just taking three at Tri-C. I’m obviously doing nothing with my Hospitality Management degree, and have kinda lost interest in that, at least for now. So I’m considering getting some sort of web development / design degree.

Web design is loaded with freelancers, so I could potentially work without being tied down to a job, or make some extra money on the side. I could move around at will without worrying so much whether I could get a job where I’m going, though restaurants are pretty much everywhere as well. I could even potentially live on a sailboat, sail around, and do some freelance jobs whenever I need to at the nearest port.

I know many people learn web design on their own, but I need something to pull me into the industry. I’m hoping that Tri-C will have some sort of job placement program to help me find a job. I could work there a while to get experience that would help get me freelance work later. I’m also not capable enough in my web development / design after all the time I have spent on it myself. I think the classes will help fill in some gaps.

So anyway, I’m taking one web related class and two in other areas in which I have interest. The one is a Database Applications, which uses Access. I have learned a good bit about how to do stuff in Access. Hopefully I’ll be able to apply that to MySQL and PHP. The other two are an intro to psychology and songwriting. I’ve always been very interested in psychology and have read a lot on the subject, I’ve just never taken any classes on it. The class is filling in some basic stuff that helps me understand some of the stuff I’ve been reading. The songwriting: I’ve always been interested in music. I’ve been messing around on the piano for a while now, writing out short bits that sound cool, but they are nowhere near being songs. I’d like to be able to turn them into something more usable.

So hopefully the semester will go alright. So far it’s been going well, and I’ve gotten decent or good grades on everything so far. I’m trying to concentrate more on the material than the grades now: I can only remember bits and pieces from my previous education. I have to miss one week of classes to visit my brother in Seattle.

And I still have to talk to a counseler or someone to help me determine if I want to continue on.

Recumbent riding

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I got an understeering short wheel based recumbent, a Jet-Stream two from Actionbent. I had a lot of difficulty even starting on the thing at first. I found it difficult to balance in that position and push forward on those high pedals. But I’ve since gotten better. I’ve found it requires a good push to get up to speed quickly. I’m still not good enough at it that I feel comfortable doing it regularly, especially on rough terrain, tight areas, and among other vehicles.

I had a lot of trouble steering the thing as well. My cousin Paul rode it for a bit one night, and pointed out that it has very noticable counter steering. On the upright bicycle, I’m quite used to the movements needed to make this work, so I don’t even notice it. The recumbent has me positioned very differently relative to the wheels, so it’s much different. On the upright I can easily lean to affect the steering. I’ve found that if I lean my back forward off the seat so I can tilt it, turning is much easier and I can take some quite tight turns. I couldn’t even do a U-turn in a two lane road at first, but I might be able to do it in one lane now.

I still have trouble staying straight on this bike. The handlebars don’t seem to be as easy to hold straight as on an upright bike. I still have to rest my arms on them as in a normal bike, but if I make small movements in my arms, it will wobble the bike a bit. This may seem as if it’s the same as on an upright, but I find I really have to put some effort into holding my arms steady. This can tire out my arms quickly. I’m going to have to experiment with different things, such as different handlebar positions and ways of holding the bars.

Recumbents are supposed to be faster than upright bikes in general because of better aerodynamics. Thus far, mine seems a lot slower than my upright. They say these bikes use different muscles. It certainly seems to hurt the tendons on the front of my knees if I try to push. Hopefully this is what’s making me go slow, and once I develop the recumbent muscles I should be able to go faster. I have seemed to be able to accelerate pretty quickly, which is good.

I’m not comfortable enough to ride the bike in traffic or for long distances yet. I’ll keep on doing short trips here and there, and hopefully I’ll soon get as comfortable on it as on my normal bike, perhaps even more so.

Recumbent purchase

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Last month I purchased myself a recumbent Actionbent bicycle. It took a good while to get here. I had purchased it at the end of June with the hopes of having it ready for a trip to New York near the end of July, and it cut pretty close. It was a little confusing to assemble, since the instructions provided consisted mainly of small low quality pictures and very few words. I had to look at several different pictures and pages on the website to figure it out.

Unfortunately for me, I still was not able to get it finished for the trip: The seat they sent was missing a bracket to connect it to the frame. I thus could not attach the seat at all as it was supposed to be. I also was having trouble at that point with getting the rear derailler to work, but that simply required connecting the cable a little differently. I emailed the Actionbent guy. He gave no reply, but promptly sent something to me. It arrived while I was in New York. I was hopeful to ride the bike, but unfortunately, when I got back, I discovered he had sent the wrong parts. He sent to pieces that I already had. I sent him another email, but he neither replied nor sent anything this time. I guess I’ll let it slide: it’s a small two person business which as far as I know only has two employees. So for now I have tied the seat at the one point with a rope. I could probably fashion something similar to the bracket out of two properly sized right angle brackets, but I haven’t gotten around to that.

I had ordered a rear rack and a bag from Actionbent as well. I was a little leary about the bag, as only a brief description was given. It was one of those trunk kinds, but the description said it had zipout panniers. I didn’t figure they’d be very big, but I thought they’d be good enough for day trips. When I recieved it, though, there were no zipout panniers at all. Only regular pockets. I’ve since discovered that it’s a Sunlite Top Loader 1, while the Top Loader 2 and greater have the panniers. They sent me another pack when the sent me the new brackets, but it was the exact same pack. I got two packs from this, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Plus the panniers would only gain me about 100 cubic inches for the 2.

car running much better; distributor cap

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My car had been missing and in general running quite poorly. It was bad enough that I always had to give myself lots of room when pulling out into traffic and had trouble getting up to speed on onramps. Up hills, I sometimes had to slow down to 25 mph in second gear to make it up.

A while back, I had looked at my distributor cap to see if it could be the problem. The points in it were rather rusty, they they still looked like they’d work. I bought a new cap anyway, especially since it came with new spark plug cables and boots. My old boots were feeling rather loose on the plugs, and I wasn’t sure how old the wires were. I planned to install that, but didn’t. I decided I oughta install the rotor at the same time, so the old rotor wouldn’t mess up the new cap (though I’m really not sure if this is possible, I wanted to be safe), and hadn’t bought one with the cap.

Finally, just recently, I bought a rotor and installed the cap. It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done on the car. Three easy bolts plus the boots on the wires held the cap on, and the rotor just pulled right off. The old rotor actually looked better than I remembered, but I replaced it anyway. After replacing, it started right up and I took it for a test drive. It seemed to be running better, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

After several days of driving, though, I was sure the car was running much better. It hasn’t missed once since then, runs smoother, and accelerates much faster. Hills are where the biggest difference is: I can now drive up and even accelerate with no problems. It is great. It feels like a new car (as long as I don’t look at it). If I had known such a simple fix would have such a great effect, I would have done this long ago.

copper plumbing

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When I replaced my water heater, I also replaced the piping coming into the house. It had been galvanized steel, which was very rusty at some parts, and I replaced it with copper. Still, the rest of the house had galvinized. This made for constant cloggings of shower heads, faucets, valves, etc. with small bits of rust/mineralization. The water flow to my shower was so low I had trouble maintaining the .75 gallons per minute my water heater needs to stay running. The heat would often turn off when I tried to turn up the cold water to reduce the tempurature, causing it get very cold. When a valve broke and could not be removed with all my might, I had to run a line from the sink piping to the shower to still get my hot water. The water also always seemed dirty, and tasted undesirable, so I never trusted drinking it. I did cook with it though.

I decided a while back I wanted to replace all the pipe at some point. Since I intended to redo the belly of my house before winter (fast approaching) I decided to take care of it at the same time. A few weeks ago (I believe) I started, with the help of my dad. It was very slow going then, since I could only get him out once a week. I’m the only one who could go under the house, so I had to do most of the work for the bathroom fixtures. The other stuff simply was along the side. My dad actually ended up doing most of the work for this. The underneath part was very rough though. It is not tall enough to sit up under there, though luckily much more roomy than under a car. It’s very dirty and there is stuff impeding movement all over the place. Just to get in, I must manuever myself over an electrical conduit and under a sanitary pipe and then a steel beam. The belly board has been ripped out by previous owners and by me during this project, leaving fiberglass insulation all over. Movement in certain areas will knock fiberglass into the air, making for a very itchy and coughy experience. I had to shower after every time working on it. I got a plastic rain suit to keep fiberglass off me, but it got on my neck and wrists with no problem, and the pants eventually were torn to shreds from moving around down there. The project was very slow going, and almost every time I got much less done than expected.

We first rerouted the pipe coming into the house to make most of it within the belly (at least it will be once we replace the belly). We got that working quickly and easily. Then we planned to do the hot lines only, to leave cold water available as long as possible. Some of the line, notably to the kitchen, we would go an entirely different route than the old line. The bathroom lines took a more simplified route, but it still ran into the old line a lot. I had to cut out the old line, as I had no luck getting it out by wrench and had no reason to try very hard with that anyway. I used an angle grinder. Sparks flew like crazy down in that small inclosed space, and I couldn’t help but getting hit by some of them. They also caused a few small short-lived flames in the insulation and bellyboard. With most of the cuts, water would come out when I broke throught the wall, sometimes lots of it. I’d let it drain and then continue. It was a very wet job. I could’t cut all the way through the pipe, as the wheel wasn’t wide enough, but I came pretty close. There was perhaps half the top wall left, and I was able to flex it until it broke. Unfortunately, the old pipes running to the bathroom sink and toilet were too tightly packed amongst themselves, a sanitary line, and a wooden beam to be able to be cut out, so I had to move the lines slightly over. Because of the location of beams and sanitary lines, this led me to need to drill holes through some beams as well as the new holes through the floor. The holes through the beams were difficult, and one required us to get a smaller drill to fit in between nearby obstacles, as well as cut out more old pipe. The hot water was at a lower elevation than the cold so they could cross over going over to the kitchen, so I had to cut a partial hole in the bottom of a beam rather than through it. The first one was done with a chisel, which took forever and a lot of energy. That tired me out, and it was a very tight fit even after that. Later we got a rasp bit for the drill to do the job much much faster and easily. The rasp also helped widen holes to allow for the proper positioning of pipes. This was especially important for one hole that was drilled at an angle because the drill would not fit any other way.

At one point, I wanted to cut part of the hot line to get it out of the way to run a line to the shower. It was right next to the cold line. I realized very quickly, when lots of water started spraying on me, that I had cut the wrong line. Luckily my dad was outside and turned off the water. I was now without any running water and changed plans of which line I would complete first. I intended to complete the line just to the bathroom sink and toilet (they came up through the floor with the same line anyway) so that my house could at least be liveable, but that didn’t happen for a while. I slept at my parents house then, in addition to showering there, which gave me more incentive to complete the cold water line. I had a bucket of water that allowed me to flush the toilet only thrice. I had diarea the one day, making this hard to do.

Soldering is very difficult in tight quarters. There was the plastic vapar barriers above and below the insulation, the subfloor, the wood beams, and the insulation that for whatever reason would burn somewhat even though it was fiberglass. We started off using heat sheilds, but I eventually gave up on them. It was too hard to keep them in place, especially when working by myself, and the heat would often just transfer through anyway. I found that if I carefully shot the flame at a certain angle so that it mostly curved around the pipe, I could minimize or eliminate the burning. In tight spots, though, it was impossible to eliminate the burning, and my house would get somewhat smokey after each of these. Fires of the wood would mostly got out once the flame was removed. They’d still smoke a bit and sometimes would glow, so I sprayed them thoroughly with a spray bottle. The plastic vapor barriers, however, wouldn’t always stop burning. I tried to cut them out of the way, but sometimes they still caught. If they were hot enough, the fire would somewhat quickly spread as it burned a hole in the barrier, dropping droplets of flaming plastic along the way.

Every time I worked I ran into some noticeable problem. I often ran into routing problems. The most noteable (or at least most memorable currently) of these was running the hot water line to the bathroom. I ran the long length to the sink (it seems much longer down there than inside the house) down through the same channel the old pipes were ran in, so it was very easy. Getting over to this run and allowing the shower to be hooked up as well, however, was not easy. The height the line was at was just above a sanitary line, touching it as it ran to the sink. I had chiseled a half hole throught a beam before to allow it to pass that. The sanitary line coming fromt the shower to the main run, unfortunately, was tilted, so I could not go over it. I ended up making two other partial holes through the beam to find a place I could come through with enough room between everything, and I even had some of the pieces for each of the routes.

Later on, I ran into problems with bad solder joints. I’d have to drain the lines and then unsolder, clean really well, then try to get the stuff back together and solder again. This became a crazy, long two night problem for the hot water line. This last Sunday, I had gotten the cold line to the kitchen working during the day with the help of my dad, and had also gotten the hot line cut and nearly ready to solder. I was thus done with the cold line and nearly done with the hot. I figured I could get it done that night in a few hours. I had to cut a few more pieces and then I prepared the whole thing and got it all in place to solder all at once. Most of the joints soldered very well, but I was a little worried about the one under the sink. It was the most surrounded by flamable material, as the one part of the elbow was actually resting on a wooden beam when the pipe was pulled down by gravity. I tried to solder it holding the pipe up with one hand and the torch in the other, then quickly taking the solder and trying to get it up there to sweat. It was very hard to manuever around to see both sides, and ended up being a sloppy job. I was a little worried about it but figured it was worth a try. I turned on the hot water, hoping it would work. Unfortunately, the union just below the heater was leaking like a sieve. I spent perhaps 40 minutes messing around with it, taping it with lots of teflon tape (and wasting a lot of tape in the process) to come to the conclusion that something must be wrong with it. Also, to my chagrin, the elbow beneath the sink started leaking. By that time it was rather late and I had to work the next morning, so I just went to my parents house to take a shower and sleep. Tuesday, I came back to the project, again at night. I was determined to finish. I bought a new union (8 bloody dollars) and installed that to replace the seemingly malfunctioning one. I drained the water from the lower union I had put in for that purpose, but unfortunately the pipes were at such angles as to not allow all the water to drain out. I put lots of heat into the elbow only to find it not getting hot enough to unsolder. I was getting rather angry and hitting the pipes rather hard to try to get the sweats apart. This of course dented the pipes fairly well, but luckily didn’t knock the important parts out of round or rupture the lines. I went into the bathroom, put my lips on the top of the valve there, and blew out the water. I spent quite a while doing this to make sure the water got out, and sure enough, I was able to unsweat the elbow. I made the mistake of only unsweating the one side of the elbow that had been leaking. I cleaned it up as best as I could in place and resweat it. It seemed much better. The pipe in the other sweat had been twisted during my removal attempts, and so had obviously been somewhat unsweat, but there was still solder in it. I figured that it should be fine and applied a bit more solder to be sure (perhaps that was a mistake). I ran the water. My union was mostly fine, though the connection to the water heater was leaking a bit. Unfortunately, the other sweat of that elbow was leaking a lot. I drained the water, blew through the pipes again, and tried to unsweat the elbow again. This time I hadn’t blew out enough water, so I had to go back, twice I believe. I finally got enough out to be able to unsweat, and more water that was rather hot came out of the pipe. This time I took the whole elbow off and cleaned it very well. The sweat looked good, and in testing held up. Through this whole procedure, I had burned the subfloor and other stuff pretty good, making my house visibly smoky. I went back in and retightened the connection to the water heater, then turned the water on. The union and connection at the heater seemed fine, but there was a noticable stream of water flowing through the hole in the floor beneath them. It was actually shooting up from beneath: the elbow there couldn’t take the pressure. I once again drained the water. Luckily, it was much easier with this one, as a union was pretty close by. Still, the floor was soaked with water from the leaks before, and it was dripping down. There was also a drip coming inside the pipe from the water heater. This made the unsweating and sweating process take noticably longer, though it still worked just fine. By this time I had determined that it was a bad idea to try to un and then re sweat only the broken side, so I took the elbow off, cleaned everything real good, and put it back together. It sweat nicely as well. When I turned the water on again, there was no real leak, though perhaps a slight drip from the union. Finally, after countless hours, I had my plumbing all done. It was of course, at this point, 0230 and I had to work that morning. I took a long hot shower and was in bed by 0430. I was rather tired the next day.
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