Mr. Chair... I PAID FOR THIS HEATING SYSTEM!!!

my annual salute to officious "moderators" who think they know it all, copied from an old sportcaster on the radio.

which arises because we woke up to no heat today, zero outside, and the thermostat sliding down to 56.  poked and fiddled, the reset button did nothing.  found we had power with the last dying chirp of the "growler" line detector's batteries.  cycled the breaker anyway at the panel.

shutting the maintenance switch off and turning it back shortly after got a click out of the burner controls, so downed it for a minute and then power on.  after a decent delay, the furnace kicked in and heated up nicely.  about three minutes into it, the flue got hot enough to equal one of the earlier cold-day "ouchies," so all is well for now.  particularly since the furnace walls were NOT hot, which is sorta significant ;)

didn't inspect this year on advice of our burner mechanic, so we're probably marginal on something (burner "eye", nozzle, ignitor tips) that hopefully we can catch next fall.  found and downloaded the burner manual, and it's all full of danger-fire and hotpuff warnings.  apparently nobody is supposed to know anything in the manuals except certified servicemen.

since ISO records indicate this house came by this furnace because of a claim, sounds like a good plan.  I suspect either the motor overheated and tripped the safety, or a preset on runtime against clocktime was reached and tripped the safety.  windows had been left open a crack in DeBasement because of varnished stair treads.

// edit 4/5/12 // replacing the vaporizing nozzle was the fix.  if it wasn't the issue would probably have been the transformer, which apparently now is not a VHV transformer, but something more like a voltage multiplier module, like old CRT TV set "triplers."  have not had to call the furnace guy back. it's expertise you pay for when you call.

too tired to get DeBased

we did sand everything down.  didn't put any new varnish on in DeBasement, but should tonight.  looking ahead, I don't like the idea of pulling every blinkin' wire separately for a 6x1 speaker system, two coaxes, Ethernet, video feed up from the theater amp, and a partridge in a pear tree... so I picked up another 500' spool of wire on my way into work.  now it's going to be purple and white behind the walls, in the conduits.

12 gauge stranded.  take your Monster (tm) cable and twist it in knots, guys, copper is copper.  if I built a micro-ohmmeter again (whipped one up in the 70s because I had plans) each connection would have ten times the resistance as the cable.  minimum.

did vacuum up the loose dust left after we swept Monday night.

oh, about life in DeBasement

got really DeBased over the weekend.  had Monday off, so we built 5 bookcases, 4 x 6 feet.  red oak.  cut 18 shelves.  red oak.  installed.  stained.  varnished.  lay about Monday with probable varnish poisoning while the heavy air prevented full curing.

Tuesday, flipped the shelves over and varnished the backs before coming to work.

probably do sanding and 2nd coat on the wall units (bookcases over lowers we built a week ago) tonight.

that's damn DeBased.

pave Moneyapolis, put up a parking lot. and a roof. and some grass.

(( I liked this so much after posting it at lileks.com/bleats , I stole it back for myself also.  do visit the bleat daily.  it's a good time with a good writer.  and the clicks do him good. ))

 

heh, stadium fail.  appears the Geniuses (tm) involved in stadium location are looking to bulldoze the Intertubes House of Wires...   511 11th avenue south... suspiciously next to the HumpDump.

 

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/138372054.html  ((limited number of clicks monthly, or subscribe))

http://mngateway.com/

it's an old high-tech business incubator that housed MN.Net back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the U of Minnesota Supercomputer Center across the street got on the 56K Connected Internet and graciously permitted other important colleges and businesses to share its vast connectivity.  it's now chock-full of ISPs and there are millions of dollars worth of fiber going in there that would have to be relocated.  every carrier represented.  I was a tech rep for St. Kate's when The Connected Internet went to a whopping 1.048 megabit coast to coast and one of those who voted to open the Internet to commercial endeavors.

this is getting really strange.  the age of The Big Cigars is long over in Moneyapolis, but there are still sneaky political fixers who tilt the mirrors and redirect the smoke and change the landscape behind the scenes without long meetings at the Minnesota Club or suppers at Manny's.

apparently the lofty digs and spacious parking lots of the Strib, almost bought 6 years ago until the real estate markets caught their first cold of 2007/2008 are not lofty and spacious enough for a modern stadium.

why not bulldoze the whole dayamn thing down through HCMC and Abbot Northwestern hospitals, and over to the Crystal Courts of the IDS Tower?

these Moneyapolis boys are mad, MAD, I tell you.  put the darn stadium in Arden Hills and be done with it.  that's where the Howling Wilves want it anyway.  and there's getting to be no practical cost difference between the many and shifting Minneapolis sites and Arden.

 

Arden Hills or LA, baby, stand up for Arden and the Vikings!

Hola, amigos

ain't had much time to rap at 'cha lately...

oh, wait, I just feel like I've been rolled up in The Onion and left by a nasty plate in a buffet.

it's been a slow week up here, Cheryl and I are all tired out.  still got the chest cold.  so there hasn't been much of an upchuck on how life in DeBasement is going.

we gutted the last stinky closet Christmas Eve, rocked out the closets Christmas Day.  taped during the week, painted and put up shelving New Years Eve.  got the doors ondownstairs.

as of a week ago, the cabinet bottoms are all cut out, but not assembled.  basement is fully painted, lit, the fans are up, the light boots are on the can lights, all the outlet plates are on except for the media stuff.   the initial stall down there a week ago was from the 60s sander coming in with 40 grit on it.  Sunday I finally got some other sandpaper and the newer sanders downstairs.  and then Eric came over to scavenge some wiring stuff for his garage project, and one thing leads to another, and phooey.

he's got 22 light fixtures up in the 2+1 stall garage.  (snif) I've only got 8.  and about 8 big 100-watt equivalent CFLs on the main garage light switch.

I tell ya, it ain't fair!  I have more stand tools!  I need more lights!  WAAAAAAA!!!!!

-0-

stuck working first Saturday in February because I picked it in early December for the "weekend of the quarter" requirement.  so that means I can't take the ham tests in February.  oh, well, more study time.  get a couple weekends in on DeBasement, and really, the rest down there for a week or two is staining and varnishing by Cheryl, and then a long day of trim work.  so I will get the studying in, and get the fake HP-23A power supply clone built for my heathkit.  it's going to work out in the end.

coming up, two days of below zero lows.  a taste of winter.

I'm really feeling much better... .

stress test results are in.  see the doctor next year, if you're not hurting, we're not entering.

so I should be off the cart for a while.

workout-stiff and shoulder-sore from work, I'm thinking I don't have a safe place to put the trackball, and straining the ol' strongarm.  nothing new there, either.

Cheryl and I have both been unusually tired the past few weeks, probably part of The Crud that is going around.  only one thing to do, and that's sleep it off.

we don't yet have any special plans for the holidays, which is good, because we still have some DeBasement left for us.  evening and morning services, fix another turkey, burp and roll around for a few hours and conk out.  yeah, we ARE two WILD AND CRAZY PARTY TYPES!!

not.

positives and negatives

on the good side of life:

ain't dead yet, don't let the smell fool you.  but I will have a radiologic stress test Friday to make sure.

we might be out from under the $600 water heater we ordered before a larger spill confirmed the devil threatening to ruin all of our DeBasement work was the softener.

we bought furniture for DeBasement and the living room, because it really looks like a couple nice hard weekends worth of work, and we can paint, slap up the bookcases, carpet, and move in.

we ducked nasty hard cases of flu, but Cheryl's still droopy, and I've been a little out of sorts for several weeks.

stuff that isn't so great:

it's winter, and it's cold.

we are still not done with DeBasement.

the cat is still having the occasional social error.

none of the Christmas stuff is up, and if it doesn't happen this weekend, might not happen this year.

the Lottery Loon is still laughing wildly... at us.  looking for recipes... .