Posts from — January 2010

Why isn’t anyone selling a safe and hygienic heated toilet seat?

Would it be too difficult to have a heated sock and underwear drawer?

You can’t use an aquarium heater in the tank of the toilet, because it would be out of the water when you flushed. Maybe a float switch that turned it off when the water was below a certain level. Electrical hazard?

Given how long it takes for the hot water to get hot, would it be worthwhile to install a mixer valve and fill the tank with hot water in the winter. How long would it stay hot, and would it help?

Doesn’t someone sell shoe/boot warmers? I seem to remember them from New York.

Can absolute zero actually be colder than the ceramic tile in your bathroom if you miss the bathmat when getting out of the shower?

I’m ready for it to get warmer.

The USGS is reporting a 7.0 earthquake 10 miles Southwest of Port au Prince, Haiti at 3:53PM CST.

There has been a lot of activity in the Caribbean lately, and Port au Prince isn’t exactly designed to withstand something like this.

Five days, 120 hours, no warning, and the blithering idiots sent me e-mail during the middle of this mess asking if I would like to buy some more services from them.

It was a system “upgrade”!!!! They blew up DSL for a major portion of Florida for over 4 days. I got special treatment because they moved my line to a different device, but the record wasn’t updated to reflect the move because the servers crashed during the software upgrade.

I have to go shovel out my in basket after not picking up e-mail for 5 days!!!

He Moves

Meow, meow, meow, meow…

[Editor: Yes, a new picture of Vinnie moving about to stay warm. I didn’t see any snow early this morning but it was drizzling all evening into the night. They are expecting wind chills near zero and I believe it. Before the rain it got up to 60°, but we won’t see that again until some time next week.

Friday Ark

Delay in posting courtesy of CenturyLINK high-speed Internet services that takes days off at random intervals for unspecified periods of time.

С Рождеством Христовым to my Orthodox friends who are still waiting to see how the calendar reform works out.

Today marks the Feast of the Epiphany, end of the twelve days of Christmas, and Día de los Reyes in Spanish-speaking countries.

This is the customary day for gift exchanges in many Christian cultures because it is the day that the Magi finally arrived in Bethlehem with their totally inappropriate gifts after putzing around for over a week because they didn’t want to ask for directions.

Well, I was right to wait, because nothing surrendered to anything smaller than the 18-inch pipe wrench, and the union that supposed to make this quick and easy, still didn’t surrender.

Instead of 15 minutes, it took an hour and a half, not counting going to the hardware store for a new union, and some new pipe. In the cold, nothing wanted to move because of the contraction, and the heat gun didn’t convince it.

Fortunately there was a convenient bit of pipe to cut through, and an added set of hands to convince parts to line up so they could be tightened.

The valve broke internally, which is sort of weird to see a ¼-in brass rod just snapped off like that, although I do remember seeing a large pair of Channel-Locks in the hands of the computer tech, and I don’t think he uses them for setting DIP switches.

Tomorrow I will be replacing a water valve. Replacing this valve will involve shutting off the water to ten houses during one of the coldest spells of weather we have had for a very long time. This involves working with galvanized steel pipe that was installed when Harry Truman was President, so putting a wrench on it always includes the possibility of it snapping off in a very inconvenient place.

I got stuck with the job because most of the real plumbers have gone out of business, and the few that are left can’t handle the volume of work, but are afraid to hire help.

This affects my Mother, and involves a friend. The friend is a computer technician and should never have touched a pipe wrench. Electron flow and water flow are not the same, no matter what your physics teacher told you.

They wanted me to do this at 9pm, in the dark, in the cold, with no access to parts. They think that you just take out the bad part and put in a new one. They don’t consider the possibility of something else breaking in the process. They are young – they will learn.

The Naked Politics blog at the Miami Herald is reporting: Jim Greer is out

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer just made it official in a call with members of the executive committee: He’s resigning as of Feb. 20.

Greer has had several foot-in-mouth episodes recently, and is a friend of Charley Christ, so the whackos have been after his head in their pursuit of moving the FGOP further to the right. This isn’t directly tied to Rubio’s Senate bid, but it will be seen as a sign of his increasing strength in the party.

Personally I would love to see Rubio beat Christ, as it would make it much easier for Meek to win the election. Charley Christ is a popular guy. He hasn’t really done anything, but he is personally popular with a lot of people, especially in the real center among voters. He would be the odds on favorite to win, if he got through the primary. It looks like the same brilliant plan that cost the Republicans a House seat in the NY-23 race, could cost them a Senate seat from Florida.

Susie Madrak notes that the usual suspects are preparing to raid Social Security and Medicare again.

First of all the reality of the deficit. There are very few people in this country who don’t actually run a deficit. They call it different things to avoid recognizing it for what it is, but it’s a deficit.

If state and local governments issue bonds for a project, they have a deficit. If an individual has a mortgage, car loan, credit card balance, they have a deficit. If you spend more than you earn, you have a deficit.

One of the “gifts” that contributed to the current mess we are in is the belief that people shouldn’t pay off their debts and save money. This is based on the almost constant inflation that was finally reined in by the Fed. Unfortunately the Fed encouraged this behavior by making easy credit available, convincing a lot of people who should have known better, to use it.

Now, after ignoring the problems of the deficit during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years, the deficit hawks are back on the attack during a Democratic administration. If they were really concerned about the deficit, they would be backing tax increases or cuts in defense spending, but those moves would affect them and their friends, so they want to steal the money from the FICA taxes, that are only paid by people who work for a living.

Bill Clinton’s surplus was all FICA taxes, not income taxes. The income taxes were close to paying for the government, but not quite there. The income tax cuts that the Shrubbery enacted were a redistribution of payroll taxes to the wealthy. They stole from the poor and gave to the rich. Now that they are going to have to repay all the money they looted, Pete Peterson and his fellow travelers want to steal from the poor again.

Just a reminder that if you are visiting Central Florida during cold snaps, you will want to wear a sturdy hat and watch the trees for falling iguanas.

From the Weather Underground:

Thursday Night
Breezy. Mostly cloudy. Chance of snow in the evening…then slight chance of snow after midnight. Lows 25 to 30. Chance of snow 30 percent.

It’s going to warm slightly, so it can SNOW!

The high for the entire state today will be 59° at Key West!

The orange juice isn’t supposed to be frozen until after it’s in the can!

These people can’t drive in heavy dew, and they are going to get SNOW!

Update:

Sunday
Sunny. Highs in the mid 40s. Lowest wind chill readings 1 below to 9 above zero in the morning.

Wasn’t the deal hurricanes, but no freezing?

Recently I have been forced to fill the car every six weeks, instead of every two months, and that was annoying. So I decided to use the bike more and extend the range of places I would use it.

My original bike was one abandoned by a former tenant of the apartments my Mother manages. It was saved in case the guy realized he would need it. When he didn’t come back after several months, I decided to use it, because no one else seemed to want it.

The reason he left it was obvious after I looked at it as a possible source of transportation – it needed new tires and tubes, as well as a new chain. This is how free stuff costs you money.

So it was OK, but I wasn’t using it as much as I should have because of the design of the frame. I have short legs, and they don’t reach the ground while sitting on that bike.

Finally, I bought a new bike with the necessary frame, after running out of sources for a used one. It came partially assembled and I have to fix some of that before I can add the final bits and put it on the road. The rules for routing control cables are simple: as short as possible, no kinks, and no restrictions to the movement of the handle bars. This is common sense, not rocket science, but whoever did the partial assembly obviously has never seen a properly assembled bike.

So, in addition to all of the other things that are going on, I have to find the time, and a place to complete this, while not freezing, and without the possibility of somecat converting a vital part into a cat toy.

The Agonist is having to deal with a denial of service attack, which is always a pain.

Those of us in the South, are dealing with the COLD: It’s morning somewhere 10° in Missouri, Fallenmonk 15° in Georgia, Yellow Something Something 25° in Houston, while Suburban Guerrilla is complaining about 25° in Philly.

Meanwhile, Kryten is putting up with the heat of mid-summer in Australia.

I blame Al Gore, and Michael Moore is probably involved.