Something to finish the weekend with.
FWIW, Amiko is married to Scott Kelly, who is the Kelly twin who spent a year at ISS.
Category Archives: General
The Midland Flood
Wow.
I’ve driven through that area countless times on the way up to our cabin at Houghton Lake (we always considered Lake Sanford the half-way point from Flint), but I’ve never actually been in downtown Midland. I hadn’t realized the lake was artificial, dammed by the Tittabawassee. I wonder if this will affect Dow Chemical (the major industry of the town)?
Kathy Kinsley
She was a tech nerd and coder who started blogging about the same time I did, I think, back in late aught one. She lived in Cape Coral, and I remember when she went through Hurricane Charlie and her car was damaged, in 2004. I talked to her once when we were living in Boca, on the other side of the state, I don’t recall what about. I never knew how old she was, but apparently she was just a year or so younger than me. Rest in peace.
[Update a while later]
Wow, this post is already in the top 10 Google search for “Kathy Kinsley.” Not sure whether to be proud or frightened.
LA Traffic
We’re driving down to Tustin today for a meeting, so I checked out Sigalert. The entire area is green, averaging 65 or 70. They don’t even bother to do traffic on the morning news.
A New Fundamental Theory Of Physics
Has Wolfram found one?
Haven’t read this yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
Admiral Whitey Feightner
RIP.
The second world war continues to pass from living memory.
Spain And Italy
…have been abandoned by the EU.
Between this and Brexit, I don’t think the EU will survive.
Quarantine Lessons From Spaceflight
Meanwhile, we’re back home. As noted, we did drive up to Cambria (with the cats, which was…interesting — it was their first road trip, and Ember cried most of the way). It was relaxing up there, but a little weird, with all the restaurants being closed except for delivery or carry out, and most of the motels empty (we had a vacation rental across the street from the beach). We drove up to Ragged Point on Saturday (which was also closed except for gas and the general store), but no further into Big Sur, then perused the elephant seals on the way back to town. Not that many on the beach; it was just past mating season. A few week ago the beach at Piedras Blancas would have been full of them, fighting and fu**ing (I could have just written “mating,” but I liked the alliteration), and the mothers and pups trying to avoid being crushed by the bulls.
Did a three-mile hike Sunday on the bluffs above the ocean, and shot lots of pictures of breaching and fluking gray whales and their spouts as they migrated north. Very weird being up there on a weekend with so little traffic. I may post some, after we look at them to see how they came out.
Got back to Redondo Beach yesterday (the lack of heavy traffic on the 405 through Sepulveda Pass and West LA on a Monday afternoon was a little eerie), and now get to put the house back together after fumigation. The cats (who cried all the way back) are looking around and at each other like they’re wondering “Was that all some sort of weird dream?” Not infected, as far as we know (seems unlikely, considering that we were already hermits before this all started; it’s an introvert’s paradise).
[Update mid-morning]
One thing we saw up there that we never see in LA: Stars. We were across the street from the beach, and it was quite a dark neighborhood. Orion was very obvious, and I could easily see the Pleides naked eye. Milky Way wasn’t obvious, though.
Electrical Problems
We’ve got a circuit out (most critical issue: Patricia’s upstairs office). No breaker is obviously tripped. Guess I’ll have to open the box.
[Late-afternoon update]
I appreciate the comments, but have heard nothing I don’t know. Fun fact: When I was a kid we didn’t have breakers; we had fuse boxes.
And yes, I know that some wags will say that when I was a kid, electricity hadn’t been invented.
[Update Saturday morning]
Bad news: There’s voltage on all the breakers. Not sure how to trace where the line opens up. Don’t know how much an electrician would charge, but I might be able to buy some kind of tracer for the same cost.
[Bumped]
[January 27th update]
Threw in the towel and called an electrician. It took them an hour or so to run down the problem; a bad neutral line in an upstream outlet. Buried behind oak cabinets that were earthquake strapped, of course.
Good deal, though, for $225, plus they fixed a couple other things that had been an issue for a while.
[Bumped again]
Home Improvement Follies
I had a bulb flickering in the over-the-sink fixture. It’s a GU4-style bulb with two pins that you twist counterclockwise or clockwise, respectively, to get it out or in. I picked up a new one (or, rather, three new ones, because they don’t sell singles) at Home Depot, and went back home to replace it. It was seemingly impossible.
They give you a suction cup with the light fixture to grab them, because they are flat, and recessed into the canopy. The suction cup grabs them fine, but it can’t transmit any torque; it just turns on the surface of the smooth glass. I eventually managed to get enough pressure on it with my fingers to twist the old one out, but the new one was even harder. First, you have to find the two keyholes to insert it into, by the braille method. Then you have to twist it clockwise to lock it in and make contact for the juice. I could. Not. Do it. The glass was just too smooth to get a grip on it.
I was also getting tired of standing on a step stool and reaching up to fight with it, so I ended up removing the fixture itself so I could work on it on the kitchen counter.
I put duct tape on on the bulb, in hopes that it would give me a better grip, leaving some extra on the sides for a handle to turn it with, but when I started to torque it, the tape just turned itself off the bulb face.
I put more tape on, and trimmed it to fit so it wouldn’t get caught on the inside of the canopy. After much cursing, I found the holes again, but I still could twist; the tape itself didn’t have enough grip with my fingers. Finally, I grabbed a pair of scissors, and put the points on the circumference of the bulb, which finally allowed me to exert enough pressure and torque to lock it.
I reinstalled the fixture on the wall above the sink, and finally my long national light-bulb nightmare was over. I spent at least an hour on it that I could have used for more useful things.
Anyway, consider this a tip for anyone else who has to do this.