Category: Personal

Stopped briefly at New York Penn Station on my way to Boston. I do have to admit, this is nice, and we cruised through New Jersey at ludicrous speed, which is the right speed to go through that state at. Speedometer app on the phone says we averaged about 120 and hit a peak speed of about 140mph. I do have to admit, you combine this with no TSA and I have to admit it’s nicer than flying. Still frigging expensive though.

Starting tomorrow I have to take a business trip to Boston, where I’ll be until Thursday evening. I’m catching an Acela up there tomorrow morning, so we’ll see what this almost-but-not-quite high speed rail thing the left so loves is all about.

Posting may be kind of spotty, so I’ll be relying on Bitter more than usual. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to enjoy the city, but I might try to see a few things that are on the Freedom We Don’t Believe in Anymore Trail.

Many thanks for those who offered advice on water heaters. We did decide to go with a tankless gas unit because of the need to recover space to be able to reach our electrical panel. We called around to see what plumbers would charge for installation. The experience reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

I got a bid out of the gate at from Home Depot’s installers was 2500. Second bid was 4200 from a local plumber. Third bid was 1000, which is about what I expected the job to run. This is just labor for installation, and some parts. I had explained that we’ll buy the hardware. I would expect if I were to undertake doing this myself, the whole job would take me a weekend. I’d also have to buy a 250 dollar 6″ masonry coring bit to core the hole for the vent, and then rent a coring drill, if I didn’t want to feel like I was trying to escape from Alcatraz by chipping through the masonry with the tools I have.

I figure 10 hours would be a generous estimate for the number of hours it would take a pro. Given that, the 2500 bid was 250/hr and the 4200 bid was 420/hr. I don’t think the Endodontist who did my root canal was pulling down 420/hr. I could hire a decent lawyer for that kind of money! I’m wondering if the 4200/hr bidder ever gets people to accept those kinds of bids, but I guess people do or they wouldn’t be in business. Needless so say, we’re going with the 1000 dollar bid. For 4200 bucks I’ll chip through my masonry walls with an ice pick myself!

One thing I had to do yesterday was install an outlet in the area the water heater is going to be mounted to power the micro-controller on the unit. The most expensive bidder wanted a separate circuit, and I have no spare stabs in the box. That seems silly to me. I can understand a furnace, sump pump, or stove — something the integrity of the house depends on or is a heavy draw — but is it really a disaster if you lose hot water from a breaker trip? The low bidder just wanted an outlet, so that’s now done. Hopefully I can be done with taking showers out of a bucket of stove heated water by Tuesday.

Nice day in the neighborhood, so I decided to make today one of my two mile walk days. I was treated to kids riding all manner of unregistered motorized vehicles through the neighborhood, and a couple of other neighborhood kids playing with a pellet gun in the backyard, which is in flagrant violation of Township ordinances.

This would probably horrify most of our opponents, but except for the one kid who’s trigger discipline and backstop choice I wanted to correct, I wanted to go shake their hands and congratulate them for taking a stand against the man, and not allowing themselves to be pussified and lobotomized by our zero-tolerance-as-well-as-brains school system.

There are probably antis and other related busybodies who’d be calling the cops more often than George Zimmerman around here, but I’m glad to see kids trying to get away with a little old fashioned, somewhat dangerous, and just a bit illegal fun. It gives me hope for the future.

All the expensive roosters I’ve been putting off for so long because of financial uncertainty seem to be coming home to roost all at once. I need several expensive home repairs, a root canal (to be performed Monday. Oh, the joys), and there’s a few things wrong on both our cars I’ve been putting off. To top off the whole bowl of ice cream, last night I hear water running in my office. Not unusual, because the laundry room with all the appliances is on the other side in the unfinished part of the basement, and the laundry drains into the utility sink. But then I realized I had been hearing it for half an hour. So I go look and there’s water gushing out of my hot water heater. No damage, because it goes right into the sump pit, but now I need a new water heater.

So the question is, do I replace the tank or go tankless? My utility space is really cramped. I have no room to work. I can’t work on my electrical panel. It’s obviously not code. A tankless unit would fix all that. The problem is they are like twice as expensive as the old tank heaters. To top it off, the amount of work to put in a tankless is a lot more, as I’d have to make a wall penetration out the side of my house.

Anyone out there have experience with tankless hot water heaters? What’s your opinion? I’ve never owned one and never installed one.

Today, in fact the very moment I have scheduled this post to go up, I am creeping ever closer to being the stereotypical FMAWG (Fat Middle-Aged White Guy) of our opponent’s imaginations. It’s kind of funny how people say middle-aged to generally mean people in their late 40s and 50s, when it’s conceivable your life is half over, possibly, even in your late 30s. Especially for me, considering one grandfather made it to 76, and the other shuffled off his mortal coil at 59 in a case of chain smoking, raging alcoholism and poor diet that eventually lead to diabetes and shortly after a stroke.

Given that, I am making a concerted effort, at 38, to get into better shape. I’m trying to walk at least a mile every day, and do two miles three times a week, weather permitting. Cutting back on liquor, beer, and wine, and laying off the candy when I’m in the office. I just don’t want the extra calories. My goal is to drop weight slowly, just like I put it on.

But hey, today’s my birthday, so screw all that. I’m going to eat some cake with a bourbon chaser, after going out for wings and beer. Bitter is making me yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which has been my gold standard since I was a kid. And I still have the cake dish my mother used to use.

Making some wine this weekend, and printed on the side of the high-capacity 8 gallon bucket I’m using as a fermenter is this:

I just can’t believe how insane we are as a society that we allow people to store dangerous buckets like this in their homes. Especially in homes that have children. Where is the common sense? Who is thinking of the children? I can’t understand these selfish wine drinkers who think their need for a cheap buzz outweighs the safety of our children.

UPDATE: Someone on Twitter ponders why I need such a high-capacity bucket. Isn’t 3 gallons enough? Again, where’s the common sense!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ll catch up later.

UPDATE: Back from the dentist. The good news is that the cause of the problem was a filling that was too close to the nerve. That’s the reason I always had a lot of temperature sensitivity with that tooth. Dentist said it was just a matter of time before the nerve got irritated enough to become inflamed irreversibly. It’s good to know it wasn’t my fault, for not catching something sooner. That also explains the sudden onset, and rapid progression of pain. So I have a medicated filling, pain meds, and an antibiotic to deal with an infection that was getting started. That should get me through until I go for the scheduled root canal.

Normally I dread the novocaine needle, but this time I welcomed it, because I knew it would mean sweet, sweet relief. We’ll see how things go when it’s completely worn off, but being just about completely worn off, I already feel better. I want to thank Dr. James Beam, who’s prescription was the only way I made it through the weekend.

Finding it difficult the past few days to concentrate on the blog. Several years ago I had a molar filled that was borderline root canal territory. It’s never been quite right since, with both pressure and cold sensitivity. I’ve always meant to get it taken care of, but I generally am the type of person that will avoid dentists if I can. About a week ago I get some pain in that tooth that wouldn’t go away. Now it’s more than a couple of ibuprofen can handle.

Some whiskey and a few ibuprofen get me to sleep, and while I’m sleeping I don’t seem to have much pain, but it’s off and on during the day, and when it’s on, it’s on. I’ve had bad cavities before that needed root canal, but this has been worse. I’m not getting any facial swelling so far, which is making me wonder if I cracked the tooth. Whatever it is, I’m getting to the dentist as soon as I can. I was hoping to hold off until the insurance kicked in, but I need relief now. Hopefully it’s not so bad, and a temporary medicated filling will fix me up until a root canal can be scheduled (with insurance). I’m not to keen on the idea of paying a molar root canal 100% out of pocket.

I’m getting way more experience with dental pain relief than I ever wanted. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I got Tylenol with hyrdocodone, which I didn’t find to be that much more effective than ibuprofen. I’ve generally found ibuprofen the best solution for dental pain. If you want to talk combination therapy that works well, but that your doctor will never recommend to you, ibuprofen and a three or so shots of whiskey is highly effective. Just make sure it’s ibuprofen and not Tylenol, which does bad things to your liver in combination with alcohol. This is very good at easing the pain, and anything you do feel through the buzz you don’t really care so much about :)

My apologizes for the light posting today, when there’s a good bit going on. My grill arrived this afternoon, and begged to be put together. I ordered it Tuesday, and it arrived today. Amazon Prime is awesome. Sadly the weather today was kind of lousy, so tonight wasn’t the night for the inaugural cookout, and I had planned to make a big pot of chili that will be lunch for the next several days. I decided on the Weber Spirit E320, which isn’t often sold in stores. I love my Smokey Mountain, so I decided when our last 150 dollar Lowes special rusted out, I’d go for something of higher quality. It was a snap to put together, and feels like a much more solid grill. I think Weber makes good stuff.

But either way, putting together the grill has to either cut into blog time or work time, and work pays a lot better by the hour. Plus, I’m trying to move my monstrosity to the mansion (my other office, that’s not my home office) tomorrow, and have to do a few things with the old job tomorrow that somewhat relate to the new job (don’t ask how). I’m running a small HA cluster in my loft right now, which is getting warm. I’m afraid of my electric bill if I don’t make the move soon, like tomorrow.