Wednesday, November 22, 2006

R.I.P. Lambie

Many of you have been introduced to Christie's Blog, but if you haven't, I encourage you to read it. The first story (a two-part story) tells how we lost our pet lamb. He was a sweet little guy, and he deserved better. We are trying to honor him by not letting his value as a food animal be wasted.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

High Tech: 1, Mother Nature: 0

With all that wind on Friday, my satellite internet service wasn't working. I hoped it would clear up by Monday morning when I had to telecommute to Chicago again. Monday morning came around and the internet was still down. It was funny, because it seemed to lose its signal each time the wind blew really hard. I went out on the deck and eyeballed the dish's line of sight and noticed a tree was waving in front of it.

When we installed the dish, that tree was a good 3 feet to the right of the dish, but the high winds pushed the top of the tree over in front of it. I got the chainsaw and dropped the tree, letting the wind push it over right where I wanted it. It was about 40' tall and still had lots of greenery at the top. I hate cutting down a live tree when we have so many standing dead, but in this case technology had the trump card because if I can't connect to the internet I don't get paid.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Aunty Em, Aunty Em!

Do you hear that?! That isn’t coyotes, it is the wind howling outside. Good thing we’re safe and sound inside.

As is usual for Friday night, our neighbor Sarah came over to have dinner with us and watch West Wing on DVD. We’re up to Season Six, where President Bartlett has the MS attack on his China trip. We had to turn up the volume a bit so we could hear over the blowing wind. We had just started the second episode of the evening when there came a knocking at the door.

It was Jarred, our neighbor. A tree was down on the road and he couldn’t get home. He wanted to borrow a chainsaw because he really didn’t want to hike up to his place in the dark to get one. We grabbed both of our saws and headed to the downed tree. This thing wasn’t the biggest tree in the world, but with all of its foliage, it formed a barricade as tall as a man. Jarred and I started at opposite ends, limbing the tree so we could get at the trunk. Once all the limbs were out of the way, we cut the trunk and rolled the log to the side of the road. (Tomorrow I’ll go back with a truck and drag that log to the house, it will make good firewood. :)

The job done, Jarred ran me back to the house. I stowed the chainsaws in the garage and wished him safe driving. He drove up our driveway, and then started to back down again. Yep, in the time in took him to drop me off and turn around, a tree had fallen across the driveway up by the road. I grabbed a saw and trudged up to the top of the drive. This was a little tree, one cut, then the two of us pushed it off to the side. This time, I sent the saw with him, wanting to make sure he could get home.

Back inside Christie and Sarah had finished the episode and were ready to watch another. After the third episode, in which President Bartlett struggles with his disability and watches his last China Summit fall apart, Sarah went home. Not wanting to take any chances, we sent our other saw with her in case she had to clear any trees.

She did. A while later, our neighbor Regis stopped by to return the saw we sent with Sarah. He was coming up the hill and arrived in time to help her chop up yet another tree. Good thing she had a saw with her, huh?

What do you want to bet that every single resident of this mountain has a saw in their car/truck tomorrow? Heh, I wouldn’t take that bet!

Monday, November 06, 2006

Water, water, all around. (Or, why it was raining in the garage.)

Sunday morning. A rare opportunity to sleep in. I woke up from a dream in which I was searching for a bathroom. You all know what that means, right? I stumbled to the bathroom, did my thing, and headed back to bed. I only got a few steps because the toilet was making a whistling sound. Darn, I was SOOOO looking forward to sleeping in.

I knew this whistling sound from experience, the cistern that supplies our water was empty. We don't have a well, we have an underground spring, which is captured in a cistern up on the hillside opposite the house. The cistern is higher than the house, so our water pressure is supplied by gravity. It is a sweet setup. That is, unless someone leaves a water hose running overnight. It happened a few times this summer, which is why I knew the whistling sound.

Still in my PJs, I put on my mud boots and headed outside. I was going to turn off the hose and go back to bed. Peculiarly, the hose wasn't on. I opened the hatch to the crawlspace under the house and cocked my ear. Nope, no sound of running water (as from a broken pipe, which also happened this summer). OK, where else do we have pipes? The garage.

In the summer of '05, we had a young couple living in the apartment above the garage, and they installed a water line from the house to the garage. Predictably it froze in the winter, and in the spring of '06, there was a tiny crack seeping water onto the garage floor. I patched it with silicone tape and went on with life. Well, this lucky Sunday is when the pipes really cracked, and it was raining in the garage.

One of our winterizing tasks was to crawl under the house and turn off the water to the garage so it would not freeze again. Now seemed like a good time. Christie volunteered to do the crawling, bless her sweet, angelic heart! From deep under the house, she called out "Which valve do I close?" I told her it was the one on the line to the garage. She called back "There isn't one."

I'm trying to keep this blog family friendly, so I won't repeat what I said next, or about whom. What it came down to was that the only way to shut off the garage was to shut off the main valve. Nice.

Home Depot here I come. Christie went back to bed and I drove to town. I got a 3/4" valve and PVC cement, then headed home. The 3/4" valve did not fit the 3/4" pipe. This is when I learned that there is a difference between CPVC and PVC. I bought the wrong thing.

Fast forward to 9PM, we finally have the right parts to install a valve, so we turned off the main valve and put in the new valve. The PVC cement needed 2 hours to cure, so we left the water off overnight. This morning we turned the water back on and everything looks good, no leaks.

It is currently raining outside the garage, but I'm told that is normal.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I have the power!

At last, our primary generator is working again. Over $400 later, and putting some old parts back on, we have the 15kw propane generator charging the batteries again. There are still a few minor parts that need changing to get it running smoothly, right now it tends to backfire on startup. However, it is only about $20 worth of parts, and I can install them myself.

For the gearheads out there, we had the points and the condenser replaced, and the generator seemed to have good spark, but would not start. The tech suggested a new pressure regulator, which I installed myself, but didn't solve the problem. I checked each component of the fuel delivery and found them in working order. The tech came back out yesterday, and finally got it running by putting our old condenser back on. Evidently the new one was bad, out of the box. We've ordered a new distributor cap and rotor to complete the electrical overhaul, and that should help with the backfiring.

I'm still primarily a software engineer, but each time we get something fixed, I quiz the guy until I understand why it failed. I'm getting to where I almost understand internal combustion engines and how they work.