It only took fifteen minutes to create a nice little fountain in the back yard. A piece of 3/4" copper pipe, about 8 inches down - above the frost line! - was spraying merrily. I turned the water to the house off, which didn't affect a thing. I tried pinching it with vise grips, which slowed it down a bit, then ran into the shop and made a serious clamp out of some 1x1-1/4 bar stock and some 3/8" fine thread bolts. Saw, deburr, drill, chamfer, tap, run... the vise grips had shown me the pressure side was toward the shop, so I pinched the line off there. Then I had to clean up and drive to LR to pick AB up at work.
Today, I got another 40 feet or so of trench dug, then made it next door. In one particularly rooty area I'd stop when I felt something, go in with the mattock, verify it was a root, and keep on going. The roots were stout enough to stall the trencher! I finally hit another copper pipe. Just cracked it; when I touched it, it quit seeping. I'll deal with it later.
So, I back off a foot, fire the trencher back up... back up another foot... and hit a THIRD copper pipe. Righteous. As in, water pluming above the roof. I managed to bite the hole with vise grips, then used the spare clamp I'd made this morning. Nope, this one has pressure on BOTH sides. So run back to the shop, break two bandsaw blades, strip a thread... yeah, I was a little spooked - finally get the bastard clamped off. In each case, it involved laying facedown in a mud shower, working by feel below water level, in opaque muddy water.
It was getting late and the mosquitoes were coming out, so I put everything away and called it a day.
I lack one 30-foot section. I'm having nightmares about hitting another copper pipe, or a cast-iron mystery pipe like near the foundation, that I forgot to mention. The trencher shined it up some, but whether it's gas or water, it's not leaking. Yet.
All utilities - water, gas, sewer - go to the FRONT of the house, and all the houses on the street. They've all been ripped up at least once in the last 25 years. The two houses across the street are vacant, and the one behind us (it has a wedge-shaped lot, the back meets both of mine) and its neighbors are another vacant house and an empty lot. The the one directly across the street from them is vacant too. Neither of the neighbors on our street (109 or 115) said anything about water problems, so the water has to be coming from a *long* way off. Still lots of pressure, to be only 3/4" pipe. Normal mains pressure here was 55 PSI last time I checked. And the pipe was scaly and crusty. The water meters are by the street, and have 1-1/2" iron pipe.
These houses were built for "temporary housing" for the ammunition plant back in 1943. They were arranged in a normal grid. Some developer bought them in 1947, dragged them into concentric curves, as was the style of the day, and ran new plumbing. I'm guessing the copper pipes date back to 1943. They were probably capped off when the houses were moved. Being government housing, there probably weren't any water meters, and I'd think they would have shut the water off... perhaps someone found the valve and tapped in for free water. AB's dad bought the house in 1957; she doesn't remember anyone ever digging in the back yard.
You can still see the depressed area and funny grass where I buried the power line in 1992. There is no surface indication of the copper lines *at all*. That, and the crusty surfaces, make me think the copper is original 1943 stuff.
Those suckers had to have frozen solid more than once. Amazing. On the other hand, the corner of the 113 house is always damp. I thought that was because it was normally shaded, but the dirt that came up before I hit the water line looked wet. I suspect one of those copper mystery lines has a leak somewhere.
I'll make some more clamps before I get started tomorrow; who knows, maybe I'll nail a secret gas line and blow myself up. [sigh]
Oh, and 20 minutes after paying $203.27 for a weekend's rental of a trencher, the guy who had been ignoring my calls called back and said he'd managed to borrow one and had it on the trailer. Sorry, it was noon Friday, I'd called twice, and I couldn't wait. This is freakin' NOVEMBER, next week we might have snow. And I stepped on a rusty nail; just keeping an eye for tetanus symptoms. It takes two weeks to see the doctor, and it'd cost $200+ to go to the emergency room, more if "we need to run some tests." And I ripped some fingernails loose digging for clearance for the pipe clamps. A trowel is on the list of things to pick up at Lowe's before I get started in the morning. I'm still too jazzed to sleep, and I keep wondering what I'm going to hit tomorrow...
I spent the rest of the day doing some hand work on the trenches, cutting brush, and other stuff.
They gave me the number to the "One-Call" people, who started off asking what state I was in. I guess it's something nationwide. Since I've watched no television since 1986, I figured it was something I'd missed. The One-Call guy was an asshole. He said he'd notify the various utilities, and they had two working days to come out and mark any underground stuff.
I built the workshop in 1992. I had to get a permit for that. While building, I moved the electrical service from the house to the shop, since the shop was right next to the pole. Then I buried underground-rated cable 18 inches deep between the shop and the house. I did not need a permit for that. The city inspector came out and stuck a yardstick in the trench to check, and then I filled it up.
I'd had to call the gas company to have them check for gas lines. They painted a stripe from the meter at the front of the house to the street. All utilities run forward from the house. I have a fenced yard, and I was pretty sure the gas company hadn't sneaked in some night and secretly buried a gas line in the intervening time, so I didn't bother to call before digging again.
I had thought about checking with the city before digging, but I didn't need a permit before, so I didn't figure I needed one again. Also, the city inspector had been a major asshole the whole time - I wound up dealing with both the local police and the city council - and the entire experience was so unpleasant I wasn't willing to involve myself with the bureaucracy if I didn't have to.
Moving right along, the Water Department guys said there would be some "damage inspectors" out later. They showed up about ten minutes after the first guys drove off. They asked, "why didn't you call One-Call?" One inspector went around the yard with a metal detector and some spray paint while the other asked my name and phone number. Then we walked around back and watched the guy with the detector. The copper line went from the back of the house, curved to the right under the 200-amp electrical lines I'd buried in 1992, across where I was starting to dig the electrical trench, and into the back yard of the lot next door. Next door, the line left the back of the house, then did a double question-mark before curving to cross the other line, and then they both connected to the water main. WTF?
The third pipe made a jerky curved loop around the house and back to the street; it went to the water meter. I'll replace that anyway, so no problem.
The inspectors said I'd need a permit, just go down to City Hall. I went down there and dealt with the City Clerk, City Engineer, and City Inspector. Each one asked why I didn't call One-Call. [sigh]. For what it's worth, my wife, who averages 40 hours per week of TV, had never heard of them either. For other people I've asked, it's been about 50/50.
Anyway, they said I didn't need a permit to dig, but I needed permits to hook up plumbing and electrical. "Generator" and "garden hose extension" didn't seem to register, but since the permit was only $9, I quit while I was ahead.
As opposed to my experience in 1992, every single city employee I dealt with was friendly, helpful, professional, and responded immediately. Heck, it wasn't a serious leak, I wouldn't have been surprised if the water department had taken a few days to come out. And I'm pretty sure the pipe I hit next door had been leaking under the house for years, which is why it was always damp underneath and around one corner. The One-Call guy was a jerk, but it wasn't the city's fault.
It's already detectably dryer around the back of the house. That one line has been leaking a long, long time. It'll probably take months for it to dry completely.
I figured Osama would win, and so he did. And I also figure this time next year, some of the people who had Osama signs in their front yards will vehemently deny it, just like they did with Clinton. And that's all I have to day about the election for now.
"You can *make* ammunition?" he asked. About a dozen times during the process... the idea that someone could recycle brass just blew him away. I already had the press set up for .38s, so he resized, primed, loaded the powder with dippers, crimped the bullets, and within an hour had a box of 50 fresh .38s. I stood back a few feet and directed; I didn't touch a thing. He was intensely excited. "You mean these will really shoot?"
We got to the range, I shot first, then let him try some of his ammunition. He was jumping up and down and screaming "YEAH!" between every shot. I don't think he even hit the target, but I've never seen anyone that wound up since.
He left a dozen rounds unfired, and took them to show people his cool homemade ammunition that he'd loaded all by himself. He'd shot pistols before, but apparently it was a whole different deal if you loaded the ammunition yourself...
I dragged that old Lee press out the other day and found some .38 brass in a box; I haven't owned anything that would shoot .38 since the 1980s. And I remembered what a kick Mike got out of it, putting powder and bullets together and making them go bang that afternoon. I don't think I've ever seen an adult male that excited, before or since.
Meanwhile, I hit www.lowes.com to see if there was anything about their damned "newsletter" there. Typical mess of Internet Explorer-based crap, spidery fonts, and pastels, nonresizeable, too. At the bottom was something interesting - you could get versions of the web page in "Canadian" (presumably French), Chinese, both "Mexico" and "Espanol", Vietnamese, and Korean.
I can just see it when they start putting up all the signs and packaging in six languages instead of two, and three of them are chicken track ideographs...
70% chance of rain today, so I'm not planning any work on the water and power lines until this weekend.
I guess the concrete is almost free; the rest is package and marketing...
Someone posted a link to this guy's site: http://www.ferfal.blogspot.com/
He's a guy living in Argentina, which apparently has had a bunch of trouble in the last few years. I was impressed with his thinking. Sometimes society just turns to crap, but you have to live in it anyway. It's a bit more complex than heading out to your refuge in the woods.
> why do people need guns?My brother's wife is not a native English speaker.
One day she took some prepackaged cookie dough from the refrigerator - the stuff that comes packed so it looks like a sausage. She was getting ready to open it when my brother told her she should knead it first.
She looked at him and said, "I *do* need it."
I always think of that when some earnest person asks why I "need" guns, or a 160mph motorcycle, or a multi-ton machine tool, or two pickup trucks. The gulf of incomprehension is similar. I don't "need" them. I don't "need" electricity, or shoes, or blood pressure medication, or any of the other conveniences of modern civilization. Heck, I don't even "need" fire; I could look for grubs under rotten logs and eat them raw, just like other primates do.
> How can an educated man say things like "I have been misunderestimated" > and "Is our children being educated?"Some day I'll have to see if I can find any audio clips of these alleged Bushisms. I have a strong suspicion they're like all the "Quaylisms" the media purported to have come from Dan Quayle, which years later, some of the "journalists" involved admitted they'd made up themselves. Maybe they felt like Dan Blather - it's okay to lie, if you know it *should* be true.
"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye."
- Brian O'Blivion, "Videodrome"
> Judging by the local radio stations, 'classic-rock' is the most common > format. The 2nd most common is probably the crap that passes as 'country > music'. It is the youngsters that listen to (c)rap music.Around here it's mostly "country", one national-generic-chain "rock" station, one headbanger-metal station, a couple of "easy listening" stations (big band and '60s soul), a few crap stations, and way too many religious and talk radio stations. Those should all go back to AM where they came from... I don't know of any Mexican stations here yet, but I haven't checked in a while. Once the advertisting-to-content ratio exceeded 50% I turned them off and went to CDs and MP3s. I'd make someone a nice deal on a Yamaha or Fisher tuner...
Since the USA is not a monoculture, music selection doesn't correlate well with "class" or economic status. Your major divisions are rural/urban and local racial mix.
I'll hang up if I'm on hold on the phone and whuppa-thuppa crap music comes on, and I'll walk out of a restaurant that plays shitkicker country music. I've done it many times, and I'll probably do it again.
And don't even get me started on restaurants and businesses with multiple big-screen TVs turned to competing channels...
>> And don't even get me started on restaurants and businesses with >> multiple big-screen TVs turned to competing channels... > (Or a bar describing itself as a "Sports Bar" just because it has more than one TVSports bar, my ass. The idiot boxes are *everywhere*. I took my wife to a doctor recently, and there were two of them in the waiting room, turned to different stations, with the volume as "earplug" level. We wound up having to use hand signs at the receptionist.
I would have walked out, except we'd driven half an hour crosstown, and the precert-referral-HMO paperwork bullshit already sucked, and there was no guarantee a different place would be any better.
So I pulled my usual routine - I wrote her name and my cellphone number on the register, and we went outside and waited.
> Other political nursery rhymes include "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary", > about Bloody Mary: aside from giving her name to a drink, she > attempted to convert England back to Catholicism by the simple measure > of burning Protestants at the stake. The silver bells and cockle > shells were emblems of saints that were picked up on pilgrimages, and > the "pretty maids all in a row" were icons of the Virgin Mary.I've seen similar Dan-Brown-style "origins of nursery rhymes" before. The whole thing seems far too convoluted and indirect to me. English politics in those days tended more to mayhem than extended allegory.
Other people have spent way too much time trying to "prove" that "Alice In Wonderland" was a political treatise. Usually, they're the same people who try to prove Skylab was built to dimensions hidden in one or more Egyptian pyramids, etc.
> IIRC, whenever prison, fed or state industries tread on private > industries, domestic or foreign, prison labor always loses in court. > It was quite sometime ago that, in Texas at least, license plates > are not made by convicts. 'Bout the only prison endeavors here that > I am aware of, is they grow some of their own food on 'prison farms'.I get a transmission rebuilder magazine called "Gears." There was an article last year by a guy who'd bought a couple of torque convertors that had failed in service. Replacing them under warranty cost him a chunk of money. He didn't get a lot of satisfaction from the vendor, so he set about tracking down the place that actually rebuilt the convertors. He eventually traced them to the State of Florida prison system. They had bought themselves some equipment and set themselves up in the torque convertor rebuilding business using prison labor.
The State of Florida is competing in the open market, but they're not paying taxes, Social Security, or unemployment, they're exempt from OSHA and EPA regulations, and their workforce doesn't cost them anything. We don't need Chinese imports; we have slave labor in the market right here.
You might have read a lot of IT jobs are coming back from India. It's true - but they're all phone support jobs. Prison systems, both state and privatized (that's something I'm not going to rant about at the moment) are jumping into that in a big way. Places like Dell use prison call centers, because they're even cheaper than outsourcing to Bangalore.
I'm all for rehabilitation, but competition in the market is a whole different deal.
>> I guess you haven't heard "country rap" yet. > No. There can't be such a thing.Denial is good. Earplugs are better!
> I still remember the day I found out about Muslims and female > circumcision.That phrase makes me grit my teeth; some schmuck in the media didn't know what he was talking about, and the rest of them copied him without bothering to check, and now only a handful of people know the correct meaning.
There is a procedure called "female circumcision"; it's much like removing the foreskin of a male. It's normally done if the clitoral hood is too tight, and it's cut back to relieve painful pressure on the clitoris. It's a simple office procedure.
What the media keep calling "female circumcision" has a correct name - "clitoridectomy." That's the removal of the clitoris. It's a considerably different thing; the difference between being circumcised and having someone cut your dick off.
> http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/02/D8HBT4CO1.html > > A 20-year-old was found by a Wal-Mart employee in the bathroom Sunday night > after he sat down and was glued to the toilet seat.Presumably he glued himself to the seat... it's been a while since I've seen a public toilet anywhere that wasn't smeared with feces or urinated on, instead of in.
I'm not aware of any glue that would remain tacky until someone sat on it, then bond so tightly he couldn't get up.
> > Paul B made it very clear that BMW screwed the C1 because they never had > > obligatory training for all new owners.Obligatory?
You can buy a boat, a submarine, an articulated truck, a 180mph motorcycle, or even an aircraft without any obligatory training, though depending on where you live, you might need something before you're allowed to operate it in public.
BMW created a scooter with handling so strange some feel they should have had obligatory training to anyone who purchased one? What happens to the various friends or relatives who might ride the thing? What about second, third, or eighteenth-hand owners?
>>http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kuri/brain/fuze.htmThat's either a different site than I found last year, or it's been changed about. I found a bunch of pictures I hadn't seen before.
It's not *quite* Art Deco, but it would fit right in...
I showed the pictures to my wife a couple of days ago. The exchange was interesting.
Me: "Here, look at this."
[click, click...]
AB: "I don't like it, it's too big."
Me: "What do you mean, it's too big?"
AB: "I don't think I could hold something like that up."
Me: "But you don't ride motorcycles."
AB: "I'd ride something like that."
> > I disagree about the not being seen aspect. People see what is at ground > > level and above (traffic cones). They don't see things that appear suddenly > > (fast accelerating bikes, for example) and stuff they don't expect to see > > (almost anything of any size).In the USA, "I didn't see it" is somehow seen as mitigating culpability when someone is involved in a collision. A crash with fatalities is an "accident" in USA terminology.
Drivers regularly "don't see" school buses that are twelve feet tall and as long as a small mobile home, Code 3 police cars with lights and siren going, garbage trucks with strobe lights on all four corners, or anything else they slam into while digging through their CD pouch or dialing their cellular phone.
Doing the sit test, we found some seats *felt* narrower or wider, probably due to the shape of the side bolsters or butt pocket. Some of the "sporty" seats apparently had steel rods in the side bolsters, which would probably work fine if you had a size-32 butt and liked to gymkhana, and they locked you into their chosen position, which gets uncomfortable in short order. A flattish seat that lets you move around is more comfortable over the long haul.
> The great thing about a flat tax is all the special > deductions and fancy trickery will go away, more or less.That's *not* a desirable state of affairs, politically.
We have a labyrinthine and changing tax code so that the powerful can reward their sycophants and punish their enemies, both under the guise of serving their electorate.
Remember, the Parliament's usurption of the Crown's ability to collect taxes is what undermined the British right of kings. Not some ill-defined desire for democracy.
Money is power. And if they can take your money, *they* have the power.
Remember the old "IRS T-shirts" from the mail-order places in the '60s? "IRS - We've Got What It Takes To Take What You've Got." And that's a fact, Jack...
>> What you might not appreciate Ernest is how the Capital V resembles a >> good old British V sign, and who knows who 2 ?In North Little Rock, Arkansas, there's a billboard on the offside of Interstate 67 with a large picture of WSC, two fingers in the famous V. It's not one of the common photos; this one was apparently taken late in his life, probably in the 1960s. The text says, "Never, Never Give Up."
For the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out what they're selling.
> Ever since its secret domestic wiretapping program was exposed, > the Bush administrationNote this is the exact same "program" (the National Security Agency) employed by the Clinton, Carter, Johnson, and Kennedy administrations, and Eisenhower administrationsm, was started by the Truman administration, and re-funded by every Congress since.
One line into the article, and they've lost credibility too badly to bother finishing the paragraph, much less the rest of the article.
Don't forget, George W. Bush and his administration are also responsible for solar flares, earthquakes, hurricanes, and several cartons of soured milk in the elementary school cafeteria in Dothan, Alabama.
> According to the Treasury Department, America's first 42 Presidents (from > George Washington to Bill Clinton) borrowed a combined total of $1.01 > trillion from 1789 to 2000, > Between 2000 and 2005, President George W. Bush has borrowed $1.05 trillion, > and he ain't done yet.
Where did he borrow it from, and what did he spend it on?
If you're talking about the national budget, that's not under the President's control. The President of the USA is not a king. Heck, even Elizabeth doesn't have control over Parliament's spending, unless she just shuts them down and pays the bills herself like James did a few hundred years ago.
> This is no different. Convenience is key, and has a real cost associated > with it. For me, the choice is this: 1. Apply time and manpower (or > internpower, as the case may be) to opening and converting roughly 10,000 > spreadsheets for OpenOffice's anal-retentive (read: strict) formatting > policies and retraining workers, or 2. Spend $5,000 on licensing for MS > Office and continue producing, manufacturing, exporting, and making money?The problem isn't Excel vs. Oo, it's that your users only know Excel.
I remember when there was more than one spreadsheet - 123, Quattro, Javelin, BoeingCalc... there was more than one word processor, too.
Now the whole world thinks "computer" == "Microsoft Office."
> I get depressed when I see the slimness of the possibility that people are > going to realise the extent to which they are being brainwashed then robbed > by Microsnot.Microsoft bought the media, then the Newbie Effect took over. For a long time, due to the rapid expansion of computers in the home and workplace, most people were newbies. And all they've ever seen is Orifice, which they think is "Windows." Or maybe "the computer."
That's the main reason I'm so unhappy with all of the major Linux distributions. No, I don't want them to look like Windows, and I don't give a damn if some Windows user might get a warm fuzzy looking at an X desktop or a clone of a Microsoft application suite. If I wanted Windows, I'd run Windows, not X duded up to look like Windows.
> > The presidents that we are most living with the consequences of > > are FDR (WW2) and Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam)WW2 was Roosevelt's problem, but much as I dislike LBJ, it's hard to pin Vietnam on him. The French approached Harry Truman first for help in French Indochina, and Truman basically blew them off, which probably made political sense at the time since Korea was very unpopular. They approached Eisenhower after he replaced Truman, and Eisenhower started sending them "advisers" as well as CIA ops teams. Kennedy did the first big troop commitments, and Johnson merely upscaled them.
If you read much about it, it becomes apparent that the US State Department had a whole lot more to do with Vietnam than any clear Presidential policies. It wasn't until LBJ that any President devoted more than passing attention to the conflict; it was all "not invented here" to the various incumbents, and nobody wanted to get any stuck to his shoe.
> > That's 'cos Bicycles (Dangerous, injurious and primitive) are Respectable.Bicycles are Healthy, and Green, and Conservationist.
> > Motorcycles (See above, but with engines) are Not.We've all seen "Easy Rider," we know all about motorcycles and the people who ride them...
According to the USDOT, the median speed for motorcycle fatalities is 30 miles per hour, and >90% of all fatalities happen within 3 miles of home. Bicycles can travel 30 miles per hour, and are usually operated within 3 miles of home. So, surely they're at least as dangerous as motorcycles... bicycles have no warning lights, laughable brakes, no tax, registration, or safety inspection, no mandatory insurance, no special bicycle license, no helmet, gloves, or leathers... yet somehow they are perceived as "safer" than motorcycles.
I say, put 'em in helmets and protective gear, add lights, speedometer, and other equipment, tax and inspect them, and make them jump through hoops for licensing and insurance... after all, bicycles are dangerous, and it's for their own good. Who knows how many people are maimed on bicycles every year? Police reports are seldom filed when a bicyclist winds up in the quadraplegic ward... hey, if I'm miserable, I might as well share it, right?
> A guy I work with is constantly getting sick and passes it to the other > project managers. He comes to work until he's basically on his death > bed...then gets 4 more people sick and one day I come in and the building > is practically vacant because everyone is sick.We had one of those at a place I used to work. We called him "Typhoid Tom." He liked to brag that he had never missed a day of work. Maybe so, but there were times when his wife helped him in the door.
I stayed as far away as possible.
The company brought it on themselves. Their policy was "no sick days", and you could be summarily fired if you missed more than three days per calendar year. Dealing with things like drivers' license and plate renewals, doctor's appointments, etc. required major hassle just to get a few hours off - and those hours counted against you in a sliding scale.