Category: Personal

Rumor has it that the 10 o’clock hour of NRA News will feature a blogger who has been tracking the Eric Heyl column & follow-up.

I don’t really believe in Karma, because it’s for hippies. But sometimes you really have to wonder. If there’s one thing I’ve been praying and hoping for is that our company makes it. So if you believe in something like Karma, that would mean it all has to balance out in the end. Some bad things have to happen to make up for it. Let’s say I’m getting more optimistic about the job. In the past two weeks:

• Bitter’s check engine light goes on. Looks like the throttle body. Her car has the same engine as mine, and I had to replace mine. 600 dollars. The throttle position sensor goes bad, and that’s not a replaceable part. You have to replace the whole body.
• Before we can get it in to the shop to even get it looked at, she gets rear ended by a fish truck while on her way to restock on fish for our freezer. The fish truck has insurance that doesn’t want to admit fault and pay up, even though it’s a rear end accident, and there’s no doubt as to who is at fault.
• I have two breakers in my box blow up and damage the bus bar. Turns out the dead rat smell emanating from the dishwasher was actually emanating from the electrical panel and wafting into the rest of the house. I have fixed this problem for now, but only after much aggravation.
• Today I come home and the animals have chewed through my gas grill line yet again. This is the second time. The first time there was fat that had dripped on the line. I can deal. This one I’ve been keeping clean. This time was just for spite. What’s worse is I forgot to turn off the tank, so I lost most of a 17 dollar tank of propane. If I ever catch any critter anywhere near my grill again, it better run before I find my air gun and fire up the smoker. That will settle the question of what’s for dinner.
• Go to do the dishes after dinner, and the sink backs up. This happened when I first moved in and I had to auger it out. There is very little that’s more disgusting in the universe than auguring a sewer drain. I worked for a plumber when I was a teenager, and I can still remember “Get your hands in there. Nothin’ in there that’s going to kill you,” ringing in my ears. There are septic bacteria based drain clearing products, but I have no idea how effective this is. I’d like to know before I buy myself some cholera in a can.

So if I end up losing my job in addition to all this, seriously, screw the hippies and their Karma.

Busy weekend of home improvement. Actually, perhaps home improvement isn’t the right word. More like keeping the home from going to hell, which I spend enough time doing that I never seem to get around to any actual “improvement.” This house is now about 25 years old, was never properly constructed according to code (built by the first owner, who was an incompetent builder, according to neighbors.) This is the kind of incompetence I’m talking about:

Note the location of the electrical panel. I even uploaded it to Fail Blog (Please vote for my FAIL. The guy who built the house is dead, but it’ll at least make me feel like I exacted some karmic measure of revenge.) The basement is finished, so options for where appliances go is pretty much limited to this corner.

Since I can’t really reach the panel without contorting my body in ways it was never meant to, relocation is going to cost more in time, money, and aggravation than I’m willing to spend right now. I decided to see if I could work with what I have. First order of business is to map out where all the circuits go. No one ever did that. Any time I’ve done electrical work on this house it’s involved flipping breakers until the circuit I was working on went dead. So now I know where everything goes and have a chart of the breaker layout and what’s on those circuits.

The bus bar stab the two fried breakers were on I’m considering effectively dead, because I’m fairly certain the stab is heat damaged. But he bus bar itself looked OK. Took a trip to Lowes and got two new circuit breakers, and an infrared thermometer. I had a spare stab at the bottom of the bar, so I used that and moved one of the lighter circuits to it. The heavy loaded circuit with the dishwasher I moved to the top, and put a new breaker there too. That left the sump, which was connected to the other breaker. Sumps need a dedicated circuit, so I took two circuits that were pretty light weight and tied them together. That got me the sump back on its own circuit. Running the dishwasher, and a few other heavy appliances shows the box running at 75 degrees F, and the busbar at the same temp. No localized heating where the fried breakers were. Not much higher than ambient temperature. Only hotter spot is the GFI breaker at 81 degrees, which I would expect.

Took less time to do than I had on the UPS that powers the blog an Internet in the even of power failure. Long term I will replace the panel, but probably not until I’m close to selling. The solution I’ve thought up is to put in a tankless water heater, which would recover a lot of working room, and allow the panel to be shifted over a bit to get the 30 inches NEC requires.

Bitter and I have been noticing an odd odor in the house every time we run the dish washer. It was kind of a putrid, cat urine kind of smell. I had figured maybe a mouse had decided to make a home in the insulation and had died. I intended to yank the thing at some point. Wednesday night that odor was considerably stronger, enough for me to identify it as an electrical smell. Checked around the house and couldn’t find anything that was the culprit. I figured the dishwasher might be on its last leg, so told Bitter to stop using it. Came home last night and she said some lights weren’t working. Crap. Go check the breakers and they are all in the on position. So I start tripping them, until I hit one that just rocks back and fourth like there’s nothing in there:

Two, completely dead. Judging from how discolored and soft the blade on the bus bar is, my guess is that over the years, it’s become something less than pure aluminum, causing it to heat excessively. Some of the plastic cladding holding the bus bar in place melted down. The two breakers below it function, but their cases took some damage too. The whole panel needs replacement. That normally would be no problem, except when the doofuses who owned the house previously replaced the boiler, they completely blocked access. I can reach it enough to work on it, but it’ll be difficult and tiring. Bitter can’t reach the thing to even trip breakers back.

The other problem is PECO won’t pull the meter and reconnect without confirmation that I’ve met code, which means permits. This probably means a licensed electrician. Because of the boiler, one with exceptionally long arms. Or I have to pull the boiler out and reconfigure it so there’s room to work. I accept permitting for major work or renovation, but by this standard I’d need a permit to swap out a faulty main breaker. That’s not safety, that’s extortion. And how am I supposed to function while I wait, without any power, for the township’s code enforcement to show up to inspect the work?

Robb over at Sharp as a Marble is hitting the unemployment lines. If you’re in the Tampa area, and want to hire a .Net developer, I’m sure he’d be happy to send a resume. Speaking of resumes, there’s a chance I might be joining Robb in a week or so. I should get mine ready too. To some degree I’m relatively calm, because right now I’ve done all I can do to save the company. The decision as to whether to continue operating, and if so in what form, is out of my hands, and in a strange way that takes the pressure off. The past year has been a marathon to produce something of value we can partner with someone who can bring cash to the table. I am happy that we have achieved that goal. The question is whether we have something interesting enough, and with enough potential upside, to keep our tired investors at the table. We shall soon see.

Based on what I’ve seen, the market for tech people isn’t really that bad, and while my ten years of experience is primary in high-performance computing (HPC), cheminformatics and bioinformatics systems, there isn’t a whole lot that involves a computer that I haven’t done. If I have to go to the dark side and do software, I can do that. I could probably even go back to pure hardware engineering if I could convince someone I could un-rust those skills in a short amount of time. Database admin? I probably could swing it. General IT? Can do it in my sleep. Network engineer? Been a while for some aspects, but it’s not rocket science. The big thing on my mind right now is what to do next. But I’m hoping next will be continuing to do what I’m doing now, where I’m doing it now. I have my fingers crossed.

Bitter was in an accident on the way home from dropping me off at work (I left my car there for the weekend. Long story). She’s fine, but this will be the second tailgate we’ve replaced on this vehicle:

Unfortunately, my coworkers and I have to give a very important, potentially company saving presentation today, and so I can’t exactly just go home. But I plan to as soon as it’s all over so we can get the car into a shop and get the repair process started. I guess we’re also going to need to rent a car too.

BTW, what a strange world we live in when I can get a live pictorial update from the accident scene. Apparently someone switched lanes without checking, causing Bitter to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting him, and in the process a truck hit her from behind. Truck is at fault for following too closely, but the cop said the trucks insurance will probably blame the guy who switched lanes without checking. I don’t care who’s to blame as long as someone else pays for the damage.

UPDATE: I have taped up the window, and stuffed as much plastic material into the area around the broken door seal as I could. Hopefully it’ll keep the majority of the water out of the interior if it rains. Seems she was hit by a fish truck, which is kind of ironic since she was on her way to stock up on fish for our freezer. I should call the fish company and tell them I won’t sue if they send me some.

Sebastian requested some old family recipes for his birthday, and received scanned copies of them from a cousin this weekend. I’m now adding these to my database of recipes, but I need a little help from some of you who might be a bit older and have memories that stretch back a litter farther than my own.

At least two of the recipes call for half a can of evaporated milk, but they include a notation that half can sizes are “now” available. While I love old family recipes, this is one reason I hate old family recipes. I have no idea what can sizes were common when these recipes were written down. They are billed as Sebastian’s grandmother’s recipes, but one of them is cited as “Aunt Florence,” who Sebastian believes was older than his grandmother.

I know I can get evaporated milk in little squat cans like the sweetened condensed milk I have on hand, but when I looked at that can, it says 14 oz. I don’t know if that means the original sizes were 28 oz. or if there are (or were) 7 oz. sizes available. Any help or random kitchen/shopping memories would be helpful at this point.

In the meantime, I’ll have fun guessing the proportions of some of these old recipes that simply have the ingredients listed with no measures whatsoever. It could make for some interesting dining in the future.

It’s not really free, but I got a shareable coupon code from J.W. Hulme today for anyone who might be able to put it to good use. Use the purchase code luck1876 to get $50 off any purchase of $250+.

A few years ago, I bought Sebastian a shell pouch for use when he was shooting trap. It’s beautiful leather, and when I noticed a minor error, the customer service was amazing. They have gun cases, shell bags, and dog collars for all of your sporting needs. They also have luggage (including a carry-on I would love), handbags, and gift items. In the event you’ve been looking for some higher-end quality gifts, I figured I’d give a chance for people to save some money.

I have some carryover vacation from last year, five days to be exact, that I have to burn up before the end of March or lose it. For the next two weeks I’ll be taking Fridays and Mondays off, then for the last full week in March, a Friday off. I will try my best to not let this interrupt the normal blogging schedule, but needless to say I’m going to spend this time doing my best to reject my normal sleep/wake schedule by sleeping as much as possible.

I’m also not going to reject, outright, the notion of drinking during daylight hours during the periods when I have time off. This will either make blogging more interesting, or more hazardous. I will leave it to the reader to decide. But time not spent thinking about work is welcome, especially given the current circumstance of my work life being on the precipice of running out of cash to keep operating, which, sadly, includes running out of cash to continue paying my salary. Considering my strict “no pay, no work” policy, this is a disturbing possibility that could possibly be in my near future.