what did you do today? (2008-2015) (closed)

[Moemg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bestwifeever I'm thinking those are his clothes on the rock at the left?

Wow you are right ! Now I know while Lena is always smiling even when she has to sleep in a tiny tent in the pouring rain !

[harley]

I'm suspecting that if this is high elevations in Nevada, that water is cold enough that very little would be visible, be it water snake or trouser snake.

[Meadbh]

You mean......shrinkage?

[davemartin88]

Getting ready for winter, we have plenty of free firewood on the property so decided to put a woodstove in the basement. Test fire this morning. Will burn a couple of small fires like this in order to get the paint burning smell out before we have to close the house up. The stove is in the basement but close to a central staircase that will conduct heat upstairs. We also look forward to nice, warm, floors on the first floor. Need to get busy gathering up some more wood!



You can see that we haven't finished this area of the basement- I put up an 8' stud wall with an electric outlet for the stove blower so I wouldn't have to remove the stove completely later. All the clearances are set for the finished walls. Hopefully, we'll finish the room this winter.

[thoreau]

Ordering a new Pacific Energy Summit model with EBT some time next week. Its a big 3.1 cu ft firebox. Can't have delivery until Late October, Hope we can still get wood then. Also need to order insulated chimney pipe for the flue that goes up the center of the house.

[martyp]

This is more: What did I do the last 3 weeks? Each of the last six years I've had an annual reunion with several of the guys I met in college in 1974. This year the meetup was in Chicago. I am the first of us to ER and since I had the time I decided to drive there from the San Francisco Bay Area. I haven't done a road trip is a dozen years and haven't done a solo drive like this in 35 years. I took a northern route through Glacier National Park. I took a more southerly route back through the Black Hills and Yellowstone. It was a long (6000 miles) but rewarding trip. Gave me some ideas for a road trip for when my wife ER's in a couple of years.

[FinanceDude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbbamI Ok...I'll say it....I'm trying to discern if Al had any clothes on.

Retirement means clothing is optional, right bbbamI?

[FinanceDude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meadbh You mean......shrinkage?

Seinfeld episode?

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FinanceDude Retirement means clothing is optional, right bbbamI?

Clothing is optional in some occupations as well. ...or so I've heard.

mmmmm, hmmmmm....

[HFWR]

From an old Wolfman Jack recording: "I rocked so hard on that last song, my engineer asked if I had hydraulic lifts on the seat of my pants. He's crazy man; I ain't wearing any pants..."

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbbamI Ok...I'll say it....I'm trying to discern if Al had any clothes on.

I was wearing my birthday suit.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl I was wearing my birthday suit.

Needs pressing.

[ls99]

Comcast internet problem solving.

Network was dog slow to non-existent.
Tried the usual reset modem, router, pc etc.. The connectivity was so bad a speedtest would not complete. Stopped alltogether halfway through.

So called comcast cust. svce. Several times. The lesson for today was that customer service depends on customer willing to complete a customer satisfaction survey.

The first call I declined the survey. The rep was so-so, no solution to the slow network problem.

The second call about 20 minutes later, signed up for the survey. The rep was most helpful, we tried all the same exercises as before. But magically "without the rep doing anything to the modem" the network speed went from near zero to 18 Mbps download and 2.3 Mbps upload. Their claimed service level is 15 Mbps download and 2.0 Mbps upload speeds.

Go figure.

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo Needs pressing.

LOL!

[Nords]

Painting. Nearly five hours of it. Overhead with extension poles on stepladders.

Last week we primed the plywood sheets for both the familyroom & lanai before the contractors cut the grooves into them. (Imitation planked ceiling to match our livingroom.) We were going to prime the grooves and paint the sheets their final color before they went up into the ceiling.

But two weeks ago we had primed the ceiling beams & rafters and watched them get pretty scuffed up as they were hauled up and put in place. We knew we'd have to do the ladder work to paint the framing connectors & hurricane straps anyway. While we were debating the issue it started raining, so we decided that we'd run out of time. The contractors put up most of the ceiling on Friday and have just a few sheets left to finish both roof peaks.

So today was lots of ladder work. It turns out that an eight-foot stepladder actually does let you reach a 14-foot ceiling.

We're hoping to catch up tomorrow, and we'll also paint those last few sheets their final color.

Next week we're taking the photovoltaic array off the kitchen/livingroom roof for the contractors to add the insulation & reflective foil that's also going on the familyroom/lanai roofs. When that's finished, I'm going to put in new racks for the panels. The end result will be over 900 sq ft of south-facing roof. It can either hold our 3300 watts of used PV panels (that have paid for themselves) or 10-15 kilowatts of modern panels. At that capacity it might be worth the money to contract with HECO as a wholesale producer (paying a feed-in tariff) than to continue as a net-metering customer. I have more research and spreadsheet work to do before we make that choice...

[freebird5825]

We drove back from the Boston area today. Mr B's Mom was very happy that we came out on a whirlwind 3 day trip to celebrate her 84th birthday.
And yes, he brought one of his books to do homew*rk and a chapter read-ahead for Monday AM's class.
Mr B took us through the craziness of Route 495 and got us onto the Mass Turnpike with no drama. I took over in Ludlow MA when he got road weary.
I let him take a much needed snooze in the passenger's seat for the next 3.5 hours. I found a few good rock stations, manually scanning for a decent signal as we drove through the mountains.
It was a gorgeous autumn day, partly sunny with light road traffic. The Berkshire Mts were ablaze with reds and oranges and yellows of the maple trees, with plenty of deep green pines as contrast. The exposed rock cuts flanking the highway were gleaming - white, red and green granite with brightly flashing mica. Awesome!
Once we cleared the traffic of Albany NY, the rolling hills above the Mohawk River valley were painted with blossoming goldenrod, fully ripened cornfields and ground level grasses turning yellow, brown, and rusty red.
Scenery like that is so refreshing when faced with a 5 hour drive on the MA-NY interstate system.

[davemartin88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronstar That dome is incredible! Keep us up to date on your telescoping missions. And to think that I thought I was having a productive day building an Ipad stand and cleaning the gutters.

Here's a view of the dome on the deck from across the valley. It was really cloudy and foggy here this morning. We've had nothing but rain and clouds since the dome went up so haven't even moved my equipment in there yet but hoping late next week will be better weather.

[davemartin88]

Found a walnut tree on our property so cleaned up about 3 dozen walnuts that had fell to the ground. Did some research and after cleaning off the husk, looks like they need a few weeks to dry before opening them to get to the meat. These are black walnuts and the meat is in smaller pieces than the "normal" English walnuts that are most available at the store. Will see if they turn out edible, left half the nuts on the ground for the animals and there are still a lot more on the tree.

I also put some grass seed down in the backyard only to have the biggest/heaviest rain in weeks this afternoon so sure I will have a nice stand of grass at the bottom of the hill.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by davemartin88 Found a walnut tree on our property so cleaned up about 3 dozen walnuts that had fell to the ground. Did some research and after cleaning off the husk, looks like they need a few weeks to dry before opening them to get to the meat. These are black walnuts and the meat is in smaller pieces than the "normal" English walnuts that are most available at the store. Will see if they turn out edible,...

Black Walnuts are significantly more bitter than English. They're good, but a bit of an acquired taste, so don't think in terms of the walnuts you are accustomed to.

-ERD50

[Khan]

Managed to get new smart phone doing some stuff. Blasted phone is smarter than I am.