Paradise ponders, frozen elk edition...

Paradise ponders, frozen elk edition...  Yesterday morning Debbie and I took a ride up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to Hardware Ranch.  It had snowed the evening before, and had been below freezing since, so we were hoping for some beautiful winter scenery.  And we got it!  Here are some photos from the outing:

The wind was blowing while it was snowing last night, so the snow is all plastered to one side (the northwest side) of everything.  It stuck particularly well to the teasels in the first three photos.  The last photo shows a phenomenon that we haven't figured out yet.  When we look up at the mountain sides, as in the last photo above, we see swathes of trees flocked with snow – and other swathes that are still green.  Why are some trees clear of snow?

When we got up to Hardware Ranch itself, we could see that the elk were in their winter paddock, and the ranch crew were giving rides to kids (see photos below).  These rides are very popular with the local kids, and earn a good portion of the Hardware Ranch's expenses.

At home I took a couple hours to staple up lightweight canvas all around the periphery of our new deck, to hopefully trap warmed air.  Then I fired up a 20,000 BTU “construction heater” that's powered by propane.  Within 15 minutes, the deck had warmed up by 15°F – most excellent!  I'm going to use this to let me finish the deck wiring and tongue-and-groove ceiling despite the cold weather...

Music-synchronized Christmas lights...

Music-synchronized Christmas lights...  A few days ago, a friend (Michelle H.) told us about a home in Nibley that had a fantastic Christmas light display whose lights flashed to the music playing on a radio station.  Nibley is a town about 10 miles north of us, just south of Logan.  Michelle gave us rough directions, and last night Debbie and I set out on a quest to find it.  It wasn't hard at all to spot: the flashing lights were visible from one of the main roads in Nibley, and we homed in on it in just a few minutes.

This home does indeed have a fantastic Christmas light display!  The video at right is one I took last night.  It's only a couple of minutes long, just enough to give you an idea what the display looks like. The music that the lights are synchronized to can be heard on FM 100.9, which is a local transmitter for KVFX.  The selection of music wasn't exactly to our tastes, but no matter: the synchronized lights were gorgeous!

After we sat and listened for a while, we realized the music selections were on a loop that lasts about fifteen minutes or so.  This implies that the synchronized lights were hand-composed, rather than being electronically derived.  It's still quite impressive though.

If you'd like to see these for yourself, follow the map at left.  When we went (around 7 pm) there were about ten cars parked nearby to enjoy the show.  I can imagine that it gets much worse sometimes...

A Paradise resident I wish I'd been able to meet...

A Paradise resident I wish I'd been able to meet...  Richard Rallison lived less than a mile from our house up until 2010, when he died near here in a paraglider accident.  He was an electrical engineer who ended up working mainly in holographic optics, playing a big part in the invention of holographic bar code scanners, heads-up displays for high-performance aircraft, and much more.  He had a very well-equipped optics lab in an 8,000 sq. ft. structure right next to his house – that would have been fun to explore!  I've heard about him from several people here in Paradise; he was a out-sized character in a community that's got more than its share of characters.  I'm sure I'd have enjoyed getting to know him.

If you're curious, there's much more on him here, here, and here...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders ... Christmas decorations edition...  Our house is starting to look downright Christmasy.  A little elf named Debbie has been hard at work, with a little help carrying boxes up from the basement.  At this point I think she's just about finished except for decorating our Christmas tree (more on that in a moment).  Here are some photos from around our house:

Those candles are not real – all of them are actually battery-powered LED lights.  Some that she bought this year have remote controls, which kind of boggles my mind – they're quite inexpensive, and yet they come with such a thing.  Electronics have gotten rather crazy cheap!  One particular type of candle (the red ones on the mantle) are much more realistic than the others – not only does the light's intensity vary on them, but there is actual motion that closely resembles the wavering flame of a candle.  There's a clever little mechanism powered magnetically that creates that effect.  My hat's off to whatever engineer dreamed up that solution – it's clever and very good.

The tree isn't decorated yet only because I made a discovery yesterday: randomly “twinkling” LED bulbs are now apparently available.  I've been looking for these for years now, hoping that eventually some manufacturer would step up to do it.  I found these online, and I don't know yet how well done they are.  I'll post about them when I do (allegedly we'll have them in hand by Wednesday).

My love of the twinkling bulbs stems from the incandescent twinkling bulbs we had on our Christmas tree when I was growing up.  I remember the year we got the two sets of these lights – my dad loved them when he saw them at Sears, and splurged on the two sets.  They were low-voltage lights, operated through a massive transformer, and for the day they were quite expensive.  Each bulb was roughly the size and shape of a birthday cake candle, and contained a thermal blinking mechanism based on a bi-metal strip.  The bulbs had coatings of various colors, four or five different colors in all.  When strung on the tree, the bulbs cast a shadow on the ceiling of the branches above it.  At any given moment, a random collection of bulbs was lit up, and it would change several times per second as bulbs lit and turned off.  It was like a movie, with colored lights and sharp shadows.  My dad loved to lie on the floor and look up at that show on the ceiling, and I'd lay there with him for long stretches, just staring up at the Christmas tree show.  I've longed to have that again.  Those blinking lights became hard to obtain right about the time I could afford to buy them (in the late '80s, a set like my dad bought cost over $100).  The few incandescent light sets that are still available have all the lights in series (electrically), so the blinking light bulbs won't work.  The “twinkling” LED sets have all been ones where the entire string of lights blinks on and off simultaneously – not the same thing at all!  I'm excited about these twinkling LED lights I've just ordered – they might, at last, give me something like what we had in my childhood.

A couple of days ago, our friend and neighbor Tim D. called and asked if I could help him with a couple of computer issues.  The first one was that his Internet access had gone down, and after six or seven hours on the phone with Comcast he still didn't have it working.  I went over and started checking things out, and it quickly became obvious the problem was somewhere between his computer's Ethernet port and the WiFi modem's Ethernet port that it was plugged into.  The first thing I tried was wiggling the cables – and that did the trick.  One of his connectors had some dirt or corrosion on a pin, probably, and just a little wiggle was all it took to clear it up.  That took six minutes, including the travel time to his house. :)

The second problem was a big more challenging: he was trying to make his brother's laptop usable.  The fundamental problem was that it had Windows 8 on it, and neither he nor his brother had any idea how to use it.  Nor did I!  But I have, perhaps, and advantage over him with my computer experience, and I was able to figure out enough to get some basic things running.  When I went to update his apps, I discovered that Windows 8 was no longer supported by Microsoft, but Windows 8.1 was – time to upgrade Windows!  That took us about an hour of fiddling around before I discovered that Microsoft's antivirus program (Windows Defender) was preventing the upgrade from working.  I'm so used to the Mac now that my default was to expect the upgrade installer to handle that intrinsically.  Not only did it not handle it, it didn't even notify us about the problem – it just kept reporting that it couldn't install with no explanation of why.  Sheesh, Microsoft – get with the program, will ya?  When we finally did get Windows 8.1 installed, we found, to our delight, that it now looked much more like versions of Windows we both knew and hated.  But at least we now knew how to find things.  That made life ever so much easier – we then were able to easily configure his brother's computer in a way that gives him at least a fighting chance at being able to use it.

It was very satisfying to be able to help on that.  It goes part way toward repaying Tim for all the help he gave me a couple of years ago...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...  Today's photos are all taken from a small photo album I discovered amongst her things.  None of these photos are dated.  They appear to be photos of her older sister (my aunt) Betty Over (nee MacLaughlin) and her family.  I don't know where they were taken, or when – or why my mom even had the album!  All of them are 2" x 2" snapshots, of the kind that the classic Brownie cameras made.  On each photo, left-to-right, top-to-bottom:

1. This photo was unlabeled.  The subject looks a lot like my youngest brother Mark, but I'm guessing it's actually one of Aunt Betty's (many) children.
2. My aunt Betty, my mom's older sister.  Her appearance here matches most of my memories of her, so I'll guess it was late '50s or early '60s.
3. Labeled “Mike”, so I'm guessing that this is Aunt Betty's son (my cousin) Michael Over.
4. Labeled “David and Gregory”, and I recognize the younger one as my cousin (Aunt Betty's son) Gregory.  I remember him as quite a bit younger than I was.  I don't remember David or his relative age.
5. This one is labeled “crashup” and it intrigues me because I don't actually recognize any of these kids!  The second one from the left looks like it might be my brother Scott.
6. Labeled “Gary” and I have no memories of him.

Conspicuously missing from these photos are Aunt Betty's daughters. 

A Dyson shout-out...

A Dyson shout-out...  Debbie reported a problem with our Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner this morning.  Problems are my job. :)  I've written about this vacuum before; we've owned them for about five years now, and we're still amazed at what a great job they do.  We're a bit of a conspicuous consumer of these: we have four at the moment, an older Animal we brought with us from Jamul, two modern Animals like the one at right, and a portable. 

Today I just want to talk about the engineering that went into these.  It's superb, as becomes obvious whenever something goes wrong.  The problem Debbie reported was that it would run, but weakly, for about ten minutes and then shut down.  If you waited an hour or so, then it would run again, the same way.  We've had this happen before, so I knew exactly what it was: the vacuum motor was working too hard, overheated, and then had to cool down again.  There are really only two things that could make that happen: either airway was clogged up, or a filter was so dirty that it couldn't pass enough air.

So I needed to examine all the airways.  With every other vacuum cleaner I've ever owned (and I'm old enough that that's a disturbingly large number!), this would mean an elaborate and confusing disassembly.  Quite likely, it would need tools that I didn't have, or even proprietary tools (Kirby, I'm looking at you, you Communists!).  Not with the Dyson.  One snap-off plastic ring (no tools), one sliding inspection window (no tools), and one snap-off collection container (no tools), and I could examine all the airways.  Total time: about 15 seconds.  Total confusion and frustration: zero.

Our problem today was a piece of cardboard that had gotten stuck in the airway, obstructing it.  One push with a piece of wire and it was out, and the vacuum as good as new.  A few seconds later, I had it all put back together.  No tools.

Now any manufacturer could have made their vacuums easy to assemble and disassemble, at any time in the past 60 years or so.  It's just a bit of engineering, albeit inspired engineering, and a decision by someone to design it in a consumer-friendly way.  There are no magic materials required, no high technology.  Just engineering, done extremely well.  Any manufacturer could have done it, but none did until Dyson came along.  There's lots of other superb engineering in this machine that's obvious at a glance, too – not least of which is the miniaturized cyclone system that Sir James Dyson is justly famous for.  Other manufacturers are doing some of these things now, but they're doing it because Dyson has been so successful, commercially – they didn't (and wouldn't have, I suspect) think of these things themselves.  So I will give my vacuum business to Dyson, should I ever need to buy one again – great engineering like that deserves a commercial reward...

Paradise ponders, winter wonderland edition...

Paradise ponders, winter wonderland edition...  Well, the snow arrived essentially as predicted yesterday afternoon.  By the time we woke this morning there were about three inches of the stuff on the ground.  I was out shortly after daybreak to plow it before it started to melt (that's what the forecast said was going to happy) and got sloppy, or worse, icy.  So I plowed the driveway, used the snowblower where the plow couldn't get, and just as I put the snowblower away it started raining.  Inside of 60 seconds the driveway was perfectly clear, and now, just a few hours later, it's dry.  That worked!

But there's much more snow in the forecast, including up to 8 inches tomorrow...

Yesterday a technician (a guy my age named Jim) showed up from Darrell's Appliances, a local outfit that's given us excellent service on two prior occasions, both times with Jim.  This time we had him out to check out our two ovens.  Debbie's been frustrated with them because the temperature seemed higher than what she set.  Before we called Darrell's, I used an electronic thermometer to verify that both ovens were, indeed, out of whack.  Jim used a more sophisticated thermometer, a thermocouple-based one, and determined that one oven was actually dead on, but the other was almost 150°F hotter than it should be!  We're guessing that the one he tested as dead on has an intermittent problem in the thermostat, and the other is just plain broken.  They're ordering new parts and he'll be back out when they come in.  He was in our house for about two hours, doing a very thorough job, and holding an interesting conversation with us the entire time.  Here's the main reason I wrote this paragraph: that visit will cost us $79, but we haven't been charged yet.  They aren't bothering with that until after the parts are in and he comes out again to actually fix it.  I just love the assumption of honesty that's so common here.  No muss, no fuss, unasked for – they just behave that way by default...

More memories...

More memories ... from my mom's photo collection...

Here's my mom (in the center), with my nieces Tami (left, the daughter of my brother Mark and his first wife Rolana) and Amber (right, the daughter of my sister Holly and her husband Warren).  The photo is dated (by the lab) as February 1986.  I'm guessing that my mom made the matching outfits.  The photo was taken in the living room of the house I grew up in, looking east.  Mark and his family were living at that time in the field off to the east, in a house that formerly belonged to my uncle Donald – a house that I helped build when I was nine years old, in 1961.  The door behind  my mom was our rarely-used front door.  The holly table I've mentioned before is to the right of it; it's now in my sister's home.  The rocker visible mainly in silhouette in the windows to the left is now in my barn.  In my dad's printing on the back: “Marci, Elinor, Tami”; my sister Holly wrote to tell me that this was wrong and gave me the correct IDs.  Marci wasn't even born in 1986!  She also notes that so far as she knows, this is the only “matching girls” outfit mom made that included one for herself.

These two photos look older than they actually are – the lab dated them as November 1969, but they look more like the '50s to me. :)  Both of these were taken in the living room of the home I grew up in.  They're showing a group of women quilting.  I remember seeing this a couple of times, and this photo was taken while I was still living there.  The only woman I recognize is the second from the left in the second photo; that's my aunt Marian (my uncle Donald's wife).  The woman just to the right of her, in a blue blouse, might be Mrs. Evelyn Denholm (and that's confirmed by my sister Holly), a family friend.  None of the others ring any bells at all, and unfortunately the photos are not annotated.  Since my mom isn't in them, I'm assuming that she's the photographer.  Holly tells me a story about one of these get-togethers, in which everyone was invited to bring some baked goods.  Our dog, Boots, “taste tested” every one of them by nibbling off the edges of the treats.  That must have been funny!  Holly also tells me that one of the quilters was Mrs. Kiernan, the first grade teacher that she, Scott, and I all had.  I have no memory of her appearance, so I can't identify her (and neither could Holly).  In the first photo you can just make out a thermometer mounted outside the large picture window.  That was an alcohol thermometer that a landscaping customer (I've forgotten which one) gave my dad.  He asked me to mount it, which consisted of screwing two screws into the outside window frame.  Sounds easy, but it was actually quite difficult: that frame was made of oak!  I didn't know about pilot holes back then, so I screwed those two screws straight into that oak and got a couple of blisters on my hand for my thanks.

This photo is undated, and is marked on the back in unfamiliar printing (large and crude): “Town Road”.  I've no idea where it was taken, by whom, or why; I include it here mainly because my mom kept it in the same envelope as some of her favorite photos of her dad.  Perhaps one of my siblings can give me a clue?

What a smile!  My mom printed “Marci” on the back, then scratched it out and printed “Tami” above it.  It's dated (by the lab) January 1987.  I can't quite make out what her shirt says – maybe “I’m a little Chillie”?  My sister Holly thinks this might say “Phillie”, but I think that spelling is actually “Philly”, and there's no sign of an “s” for “Phillies”.

The lab dates this as December 1958, and that is our Christmas tree, in our living room with the big picture window in the background.  I remember my mom taping those cards to the window a couple of years; the alternative arrangements was to have strings of them high on the walls.  I remember that coffee table well; I had to repair the legs on it several times.  Those legs screwed into metal brackets that were in turn screwed into the bottom of the tabletop; those screws kept stripping out of the soft pine when too much weight was put on the table.  The photo was apparently taken at dawn or dusk; you can just make out some of the scenery outside through the window.  In the distance there's a white house.  That would have been to our west, and it must have been the Ball's house, though I don't remember it as being so close.  I remember that big pot.  It must have been a gift for her that year.  I don't remember it as a gift; I remember it as the source of some of my favorite dishes. :)

Finally, here's one that's a bit of a mystery to me.  The photo is undated.  On the back, in very neat but unfamiliar printing:  “Took this at Mt. Ranier (sic) two years ago I believe Fawn Lily.  Remember?”  Google shows many images of similar flowers called Fawn Lily, so I suspect that's correct.  My father knew any number of people who might have taken such a photo, and who might have visited Mt. Rainier.  I found the photo in a pile of photos of nursery stock (plants in pots), where it stuck out like a sore thumb...

A better map of the 2016 election results...

A better map of the 2016 election results...  Friend, former colleague, and not-yet-escaped Californian Simon M. sent this along.  It's an interactive “prism map” of the county-by-county election results (a snapshot of this is at right).  The color of each county shows a summary of how the county voted, from dark blue for massively pro-Clinton to dark red for massively pro-Trump.  That much is familiar, as it's been used on many web sites.  The height of each county shows something else, though: the relative number of votes in each county.  Here you can see why even though most of the area of the country is red (pro-Trump), the massive number of votes in the blue (pro-Clinton) counties has even more votes.  Most of this map actually looks like a bunch of blue towers on a red lawn.  Utah has its own small blue tower, in the counties encompassing Salt Lake City.  All of the other blue towers are also counties containing cities.  On the entire map there are just a few reddish towers.

As I mentioned, the map is interactive.  Play with it for a few minutes and you'll gain some insight about the geographical dimension of our country's polarized politics.  For example, take a long look at Texas.  I spent some time looking at the population desert that is the part of the American West that I love, and that I live smack in the middle of – that bodes poorly for our future, I'm afraid, with massive populations all around us.  There's a blog post about the map as well.

Paradise ponders, broken weather forecast edition...

Paradise ponders, broken weather forecast edition...  The current weather forecast calls for a low temperature of 27°F today.  The current temperature is 7.1°F.  Apparently the weather man can't be bothered with looking out his window!  I ventured outside, very briefly, in just my jeans and short-sleeved shirt – I dashed out to turn on the yard lights when I let the dogs out.  I wasn't sure how awful it would be, but it actually wasn't too bad.  I got my coat on before I walked over to my office in the barn a few minutes ago – I think that 50' or so would have been too much in shirtsleeves at this temperature!  I enjoyed the crunchy granola sound my feet made in the snow; it's very different when it's so cold.

Well, yesterday I did manage to actually finish the last bits of the mud room wiring.  Even better: our builder showed up with the trim for the inside of the new front door, and he installed it.  This trim was tricky because it had to fit the curve of the arched top window – that's a bit hard to do with wood (though not impossible if you happen to own a steam cabinet).  Arched windows are common these days, though, and the construction industry came up with an alternative: flexible trim made out of a rubbery plastic, pre-curved to approximately the right radius and then adjustable (slightly) to fit the actual window.  Now I have a new job: caulk and paint that new trim. :)

I received a Fedex package from Tesla Motors, and of course my first thought was that they were going to tell me my car was ready.  Alas, that was not the case – though the first sentence was encouraging:

“Your Tesla Model X will be ready for delivery very soon.” 

Of course, “very soon” is one of those painfully ambiguous terms that could mean five minutes or five years.  Sigh.

So what was this package about?  Well, it turns out that it contained a temporary registration and an application for an actual registration, along with a form declaring delivery outside the state of California.  The temporary registration was for California, though – as was the application for actual registration.  Ack!  I thought there was some mistake, and immediately called my Tesla contact.

That's when I got a little education into the silly things that Tesla has to do in order to sell cars in Utah (and most other states, too).  They are not licensed to sell cars in Utah because the car dealers lobby has successfully (so far) lobbied to require new care sales to be handled through a dealer – not directly from the manufacturer.  Of course, Tesla has no dealers, they only sell direct.  This much I already knew, but I also knew that I could buy the car directly and then pick it up from the Tesla showroom in Salt Lake City.  I wasn't clear why that was ok even though the showroom wasn't a dealership, though.  Well, now I know.  It's because I have to buy the car through the state of California, then transfer my registration to Utah.  Tesla can deliver the car to Utah, but they can't actually sell it to me here.  So we play this silly game of buying it in California but delivering it to me here.  There's no money involved, just a bunch of paperwork – wasting everybody's time and energy but accomplishing nothing.

It's another great example of government getting in the way of a simple transaction, then of a business cleverly finding a way around the issue.  In this case, Utah – generally very much a pro-business state – is actually making it harder for Tesla to do business here, but is protecting a group (new car dealers) that donate a great deal of money to politicians each year.  At the same time, they're dealing themselves out of some sales tax revenue – I'm paying California sales tax, not Utah (and if you know me well, you'll understand just how much that pains me!).

The car dealership's behavior is certainly understandable: they make their money mostly on maintenance and warranty repairs, kickbacks on financing, upsells, and some on the direct profit margin of the car sale (though that's much less than most people think).  When cars broke down every few hundred miles (as they did when I was young), one could make a good case for the need of a dealer nearby, with a stock of parts and expertise.  Cars these days, though, are vastly more reliable than they used to be – and at the same time, modern logistics has practically eliminated the need for local stocks of parts (you can overnight a part from Shanghai if need be).  Then there's the fact that the Internet allows the instant delivery of any car's maintenance manual to any garage, almost anywhere on Earth.  What essential function does a dealer provide these days?  None, is the obvious answer.  So now that they can't justify their existence on business grounds, they've managed to get laws passed in many states that mandates their existence – and without those laws, they'd almost certainly be out-competed by alternatives.  One such alternative is Tesla with their direct sales model and manufacturer-provided maintenance, so they're fighting it as hard as they can.  I think they know that they're fighting a war they'll lose in the long run, but like a drowning rat they're paddling as long as they can...

Why most customer support organizations would like to strangle their engineering teams, part 77,432...

Why most customer support organizations would like to strangle their engineering teams, part 77,432...  This morning we received an electric heater that we bought to warm up our sun room in the winter.  The room is built with double-pane glass, but there's no heat to it, so the cold seeps in anyway.  We got one that resembles a wood-burning stove, complete with “flames” and glowing embers.  The photo at right is the store photo of the model we got.

Naturally, it was a kit, though it was an easy one: I just had to screw 12 screws into the four short legs.  I put it on its legs, turned the power switch on in the back, and started test it.  I could turn the front-panel power button on and off, control the timer function, and adjust the brightness of the fake flames and embers – but when I tried to set the temperature, I just got an “E3” in the numeric display.  I figured that was an error code, so I read the manual from front-to-back trying to find it.  No luck.  Then I called the manufacturer's service number (to their credit, prominently written on the manual) and got a recording saying they'd get back to me within a day.  I left the requested message and figured I'd be lucky if I heard from them within a week, given the season.

But an hour later, the phone rang and a friendly lady named Jolanda asked me what was going on.  I described the issue to her, and she said “Oh, you have the interlock switch on - you need to turn it off.”  I had not seen any interlock switch, nor did the manual mention one at all.  I did find a “heater enable” switch, and I had turned that on.  I told Jolanda that, and she said that that was the interlock switch, and it needed to be off, not on.  Huh?  You can see the switch and label on my unit in the photo at left.  Does that look to you as though you need the switch to be in the off position in order for it to work?  One can only imagine how many calls their poor customer support people are getting!  And all because some disconnected-from-any-sense-of-reality engineer decided that turning a switch on should turn the heater off.  I asked Jolanda if this “feature” was limited to this model, and she said “Oh, no, sir - all our heaters are made this way!”  You could cut her contempt for engineering with a knife.  I decided it would be better not to let her know that I was a retired engineer. :)

Pearl Harbor Day...

Pearl Harbor Day...  75 years ago today the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  Over 2,000 Americans were killed, and more than 1,000 wounded.  The attack led directly to the American entry into WWII, both in Europe and in the Pacific.

A few days ago I read that amongst Americans under 40 years old, less than one in ten can identify the nations that were the attacker and defender in the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Less than half of those could place the event in the correct century, and only half of those in the correct decade.  Sometimes I'm a bit relieved to know I won't be around when that crowd is in control...

Paradise ponders, snowy future edition...

Paradise ponders, snowy future edition...  Check out our ten day forecast at right (click to embiggen).  All that purple area represents periods with a significant chance of snow.  If we were to hit the maximums on the snow forecasts, we'd have 26" of snow on the ground.  Yikes!

I did a bit of electrical work on the mud room yesterday, including the only challenging bits remaining (locating the holes I'd cut into the OSB sheathing before wall board was put up).  I've got a half hour or so to do today, and then the mud room is completely finished and ready for the cabinet maker to get started.  Woo hoo!  Well, come to think of it, that's not quite true.  On the outside of the mud room I have yet to mount a doorbell switch and the house numbers.  Next spring, when the ground becomes workable again, we'll be putting in a walkway to the driveway, putting stone over the concrete porch, and mounting railings.  So probably I should say the mud room is now usable.  Still a huge milestone for us!

Yesterday we had a load of firewood delivered, the first firewood we've actually purchased up here.  This is because we now have an actually working fireplace that we are using on a near-daily basis, and we've run through all the split firewood our neighbors gave us.  Also I wanted to get hardwood instead of the (mainly) softwoods we've been burning; it burns cleaner and hotter.  So I located a source, and he delivered his last available load of hardwood yesterday.  It's about 2/3 of a full cord, nicely cut to 16" or shorter, and split in a nice mix of sizes.  It's all dry, and best of all, it's all a mix of species: black walnut, black locust, oak, maple, ash, plum, apple, Chinese elm, and some others I can't identify.  I feel guilty burning some of this stuff, as it's gorgeous.  In fact, I've asked the vendor to save me some full logs (not split) for turning on the lathe next year.  He gets all this wood from the tree trimming he does, so it's all from people's yards within about a 50 mile radius.

We had our first fire with this wood yesterday evening, and it was all we'd hoped for: five piece of wood burned like a blast furnace for six hours; our heater didn't run at all in that time.  The recirculating hot-air system in our fireplace works great with such a hot fire.  One thing I didn't really anticipate: the hardwood smells good when its burning.  So far the plum wood is my favorite for the aroma.

Paradise ponders, almost single digits edition...

Paradise ponders, almost single digits edition...  As I write this, the temperature outside is 10.1°F; it's clear and the sky is full of bright stars.  My walk out to the barn at 5 am was a veritable crunch-fest – the snow remaining on the driveway had partly melted and then refroze in the cold night, turning the powdery snow into something like a fluffy ice cube.  I ventured outside onto our deck in just my shirtsleeves; it didn't really feel all that cold to me.  Acclimated, I am becoming...

Yesterday I got the lighting in the mud room all wired up and tested.  It all worked on the first try, amazingly enough.  The photo at right shows what our home's new entrance looks like at night, with both the chandelier inside the mud room and the lights outside turned on.

This lighting was just a bit trickier to wire up than you might think, because there is a feature we wanted that complicates things.  We wanted the outside lights to come on under either of two circumstances: when motion is detected outside, or when the interior chandelier is on.  We did not want the interior chandelier to come on if motion was detected – only if the switch was turned on.  Making this work required a double-pole, single-throw (DPST) relay.  The relay is energized when motion is detected.  When there is no motion detected, the outside lights are connected to the chandelier's switch.  When there is motion detected, the outside lights are connected to power.  Simple enough, but more complicated than a simple switched light.

Back in October, when the county inspector came out to check over the mud room's electrical work, this relay circuit was the subject of an amusing (for me, anyway) conversation.  The inspector had a basic idea of how a relay worked, but had never seen one used in a building.  He didn't know if there were any code requirements.  I showed him my circuit diagram, and he was completely lost.  Out loud he said that he didn't know any basis on which he could either approve or disapprove the work.  He asked me if I knew what I was doing. :)  I had mounted the relay inside a standard 4" utility box; other than the relay itself everything about the installation was bog-standard.  So, desperate to move the inspector past this obstacle, I pointed out that the relay was UL-approved.  “Well,” said the inspector, “that’s all right then!” – and with that we were approved. 

That made me curious, and I did some research into the building code myself (it's all online here, so that was easy).  I found just one reference, where it was mentioned (but not clearly mandated) that the relay be mounted in a metal box (I had used plastic).  I found no other mentions.  I'm guessing, therefore, that the use of relays in construction is really rare.  I'm surprised by this, as using relays in home construction could save a lot of copper wire (by running power straight to fixtures and outlets, instead of out-of-the-way through switches.  The U.S. Navy used this technique extensively on the ship I was stationed on (and, I presume, in other ships as well).  Their implementation was actually pretty clever: the circuit breakers in the central panel doubled as SPST relays; they were controlled by low-voltage switches connected by relatively tiny wires.  I could easily envision a modern equivalent where the circuit breaker/switches were controlled digitally and the switches using RF instead of wires.  How convenient that would be!

Paradise ponders, electric walnut edition...

Paradise ponders, electric walnut edition...  Yesterday was a day of getting things done, for me.  That was very satisfying, I'll tell you.

I'm listening to Christmas music as I type; Pachelbel's Canon right now.  I love Christmas music!

First thing in the morning, I went to work on the threshold between the mud room and our entranceway, which I've mentioned before.  I figured it would likely take me all day to get this right.  I had envisioned building it as three separate pieces of walnut: one on the bottom, matching the tile line in the mud room, a second on the bottom matching the tile line in the entranceway, and one on top that was shaped so that you didn't stumble on it, but which was tall enough to engage the weatherstripping “sweep” on the bottom of the door.  The first photo below shows the hole I was filling along with the three pieces of wood I cut; mud room on the left, entranceway on the right.  The second photo shows all three pieces of wood assembled in place, but not yet glued.  The third photo is the same, but with the top piece removed.  Next to last photo shows all the pieces in place and glued, and the last photo the same but with two coats of Watco natural penetrating oil finish.  Amazingly enough, it all worked on the first try.  It looks great, and seals the door very nicely.  We care about a seal here because we know the mud room will always be cooler in the winter: it's a small volume with all but one side exposed to the elements.  The only hitch I ran into during this work was that some of the mastic from both tile installations had to be chiseled out (hence the hammer and cold chisel visible in some of the photos).  I was all done by 10:30 am!

The weather outside was frightful, so I went to work on some interior electrical work that had remained unfinished.  First up: the sun room (photo of finished work at right).  I installed the three lights on the one solid wall.  That went without a hitch, except for the minor problem of figuring out how to get a ladder in there.  The only other thing left to do was the covers for the switches and outlets, and now they're all in.  Last night we tried the lights after dark, and they work great: lots of nice, even light throughout the sun room.

I still had most of my afternoon left after I finished this.  The temperature outside had risen to a balmy 38°F, and the forecast had this being the warmest day for at least ten days (and maybe all winter, for all I know), so I bit the proverbial bullet and decided to put up the lights on the mudroom exterior (photo of finished work at left).  My fingers are full of dry-weather cracks, made worse by both my Raynaud's disease and my pernicious anemia, so working out in dry, cold weather was ... unpleasant.  I got them both up, though, along with the motion sensor (just visible at the top of the arch).  I had a small challenge with the last step, mounting the motion sensor: the cover of the electrical box was missing its bolts, and nothing in my collection of bolts would fit.  I made a quick run to our local hardware store and bought 4 pairs of bolts: one pair for each of the weird sizes that it might possibly be.  It turned out to be 10-32 bolts that were needed, the last one that I tried.  Of course!  I couldn't test these lights, as I still have some interior wiring to do.  I expect to be working on that today.

By the time I'd finished with all this, it was about 3 pm and starting to get dark.  Earlier in the day, on one of my million or so trips to the barn for parts and tools, I noticed a 24 year old mare (Sally) belonging to one of our neighbors (Nick and Maria S.) standing in the corner of another neighbor's field right near my barn.  I went over to say hello, and noticed that its right rear ankle was bloodied.  I texted the owners, along with Tim (the field's owner) to let them know, including the photo at right.  All of them were in church, though, and weren't looking at their phone.  Just as I sat down for a rest, Debbie looked over to see her being harassed and bitten by Tim's two geldings (who are much larger than Sally).  They actually knocked Sally off her feet.  So up and out I went, to see if I could lead Tim's horses away and into another paddock.  Just as I got out there, everybody got out of church and called us.  Within a few minutes, we had Nick, Maria, four of their kids, Tim, his wife Jeannie, and I out there with the horses.  Tim has been around horses all his life, and immediately knew what was going on: Sally was coming into heat.  I hadn't noticed any of the signs, but later I did see them (raised tail and winking vulva).  His geldings, despite missing some parts one might think would be essential, were very excited; the larger one had probably kicked Sally, and hence the cut.  The wound got examined thoroughly and appeared to be a shallow cut above the hocks, so not serious so long as its allowed to heal.  A thorough washing was prescribed, along with possible veterinary treatment if the cut turned out to be deeper than it appeared, and Sally was led off to be in her own paddock.  I had two roles in this little animal drama: sounding the alarm (which I'm glad I was able to do!) and holding the lead while Tim and Nick examined the ankle.  This morning we saw Sally in her own little paddock, looking a little lonely but physically ok.

Paradise ponders, swinging from the chandeliers edition...

Paradise ponders, swinging from the chandeliers edition...  It seems like I spent most of yesterday on the road – I made two separate trips to downtown Logan to get parts for the work I'm doing in the house.  In the morning I hung a five-lamp chandelier in our new mudroom.  It looks nice, and it should throw plenty of light in there (can't test it yet, because I can't energize the circuit until I mount the two outside lights).  Today I'm working on the threshold for the door between the mudroom and the old entranceway.  This is a complicated piece of wood (black walnut) that will not only act as the door's threshold, but will also adapt between the slightly out-of-alignment tile patterns and slightly different sub-floor heights.  I'm going to use three pieces of walnut glued in place (well, at least that's the plan).  Each piece will be separately planed and sawed to fit its respective niche, and hopefully all three can then be glued together in place.

Yesterday afternoon, feeling lazy, we went out to eat at a place we've only been to once before: El Salvador, aka Los Primos.  The first time we visited was last week, with our friends Jimmy and Michelle.  We had a great meal then, and loved the homey, family atmosphere.  Today it was fairly busy when we got there, and we were the only non-Hispanics there – definitely a good sign for the authenticity of the food!  Debbie ordered the carne asada plate (first photo), and I had a chicken gordita (second photo) and carnitas sope.  Both were great, but the gordita was my favorite – so I ordered a second gordita, this time carnitas.  We had Jarritos from bottles for our drinks.  We were there for just over an hour, and only saw one other non-Hispanic family: German tourists.  This place hasn't been discovered yet!  Great food, friendly and smiling waitresses, and happy people all around us.  Even with a generous (and well-earned) tip, we got out of there for under $25.  It's on the south side of Logan, too – closer than any of the other restaurants we haunt.  We'll be back here often, I'm sure!

Debbie update...

Debbie update...  Short version: she's doing great!  She's walking now without any aids, and her gait visibly improves daily.  Her physical therapist has started preparing her to do her remaining therapy at home – he and his special equipment will soon be unnecessary.  Yesterday, for the first time since her injury in May, she used a normal treadmill for her exercises – a huge step!  She came home with a detailed printed set of exercises to do at home, with an emphasis on developing her bones.  She's still got a long way to go to get her muscles (especially her quads) back up to snuff, and her knees are still sore after exercise, but everything's moving in the right direction, and she's got nearly a normal range of motion in both knees.  She has very few activities that she can't do yet, but I think that list will be empty within just a few weeks...

Paradise ponders, Christmas party edition...

Paradise ponders, Christmas party edition...  One of the things we cherish about living here is the acceptance of us by the overwhelmingly Mormon local community.  One example of this: we were invited to the Christmas party for the Paradise church's Ward 2, which covers the area our house is in.  This was a chance for us to socialize a bit with our friends and neighbors, and for Debbie in particular to get out on her own two feet (no walker, crutches, or even a cane!).  The best part of all, for us: everyone there welcomed us as part of their community.  That's such a comfortable and safe feeling...

We had a lovely time at the party last night.  There were lots of people we know, and some we've become quite close to, and also some new people to meet.  Smiles and happy people were everywhere.  Home-cooked food was served for dinner (a fine roast beef dinner for the adults, macaroni-and-cheese and Swedish meatballs for the kids), with enough cookies and cakes to fatten us all up.  The highlight of the evening was a reenactment of the Biblical story of the birth of Christ, by the kids in the ward.  It was beautiful and cute, and with the entire audience comfortable in each other's presence, very relaxed.  A few of the kids were clearly enjoying themselves on stage, but most of them were terrified, of course – but they did it.  The audience cheered them on, encouraged them, laughed with them when something went wrong.  It was all very sweet, and reminded both Debbie and I of some childhood experiences.  It also brought home just how different the local culture here is from that of California, where we spent decades not feeling like part of the community.

We love living here!

Some photos of the kid's re-enactment, and the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Claus: