Lazy Sunday

Today is Sunday and my yard needs mowing. I was going to mow the yard yesterday, but I was hit by a serious case of don’t-give-a-damn. I decided to put off mowing until today. However, today is so quiet, so peaceful, that I hate to fire up the lawn tractor. The decibel rating from the lawn tractor’s puny 15.5 HP engine belies its small size. It sounds like a B-17 revving up its four engines and getting ready for takeoff. The outside temperature is only 82°F at 3:45 PM (2:45 by the sun) and a breeze wafts gently through my front window on its way to my back door. There is a lawn mower running somewhere in the neighborhood. I hear it but the sound is muted. There are no barking dogs to destroy the serenity of my neighborhood. There never are.

My yard is crisscrossed with mole tunnels. It makes for a rough ride on the lawn tractor. It bounces around as it traverses the mole tunnels, tilting this way and that. Nevertheless, I’ll put that thing in high gear and drive like I’m the Mario Andretti of lawn tractors.

The lawn mower I heard running somewhere nearby is no longer running and quietude settles on the neighborhood. Today would have been a good day to mow. Tomorrow will be about 10 degrees warmer. But then, that’s what air conditioners are for. I’ll take a swipe at the front yard and if I get too hot, I’ll come inside, mix a big mug of lemonade, and enjoy the coolness. Then I’ll go back out and mow the back yard. I don’t see me using the string trimmer tomorrow, but it has been known to happen.

Travels

My late cousin’s wife loves to travel, especially overseas. She has been to many countries in Europe and was most recently in London. Her plans will soon take her to Sicily (she’s been there before) and then on to four more countries. I can’t recall all their names but I know Nepal is one of them. I think another one is Bhutan, which makes sense because it borders Nepal so it’s right there in the neighborhood.

You can see sights over there that you can’t see in the USA. But America is a vast country and it borders another vast country—Canada. There are so many places and things to see in America. You could spend years traveling in America and not run out of places to see. People come here from all over the world to see just a few of these amazing places.

I’ve done some traveling in America. I’ve driven over the Rocky Mountains and down into the city of Red Lodge, Montana. I drove through Yellowstone Park and watched Old Faithful spouting and visited the beautiful, colorful hot springs. I camped in New York’s Adirondack mountains and swam in its crystal clear lakes. I’ve driven west across the Great Plains with its seemingly endless grasslands that extend to the horizon in every direction, and I’ve driven east across the southwestern deserts of America. I’ve driven through redwood forests in California and through beautiful Glacier Park in Montana. I’ve driven down the Pacific Coast Highway from Crescent City to Los Angeles. (On the way, I picked up a hitchhiking “biker chick” on a street corner in San Francisco and gave her a ride to L.A.) I’ve driven from Ventura to Thousand Oaks and on eastward into L.A. on the Ventura Freeway.

I happened to drive through Winslow, Arizona, just when that great Eagles song, Take It Easy, was playing on the radio. (“Well, I'm a standing on a corner In Winslow, Arizona / And such a fine sight to see / It's a girl, my lord / In a flatbed Ford / Slowin' down to take a look at me…”)

I sat on a mountaintop west of Denver and watched darkness descend on the city as the sun set behind the mountain I camped on. I watched the million lights of Denver sparkle into brightness. Lest you think I’m all nature-lover, I will add that the best stripper I’ve ever seen danced at a club in Denver! But that’s another story.

I walked beside the Grand Canyon and the Arizona meteor crater. I drove the Embarcadero along San Francisco Bay (torn down now, I think) to eat seafood in a dockside restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. I took a cable car to the top of Mount Sandia in New Mexico. (The Mount Sandia Tramway is the third longest in the world.) There is a restaurant on the top of the mountain and I ate dinner there.

I visited Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. It’s beautiful, but so is the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I stood beside Niagara Falls and I walked out on a platform far above the Niagara River.

I hiked into Linville Gorge (sometimes called “the Grand Canyon of North Carolina”) and walked beside the Linville River for hours before setting up camp for the night. When I ran out of water, I drank crystal clear spring water that dripped from a huge boulder beside the river and I filled my water bottle with it. It was the most delicious water I’ve ever tasted! In Boone, North Carolina, I spent time in a house on a mountaintop. The city of Boone lay far below and when dawn arrived I found myself looking down on surrounding mountains with their valleys shrouded in early morning fog.

I stood on a beach at Hilton Head, South Carolina, and looked across the ocean waters to see the tops of buildings seemingly rising out of the water. I was seeing the tops of buildings in Savannah, Georgia, just over the horizon.

If I tried to list of all the great places I’ve been to in America, this blog post would indeed be a very long one. So I won’t do that. I simply want to point out that if it’s within your budget, you can visit many interesting places and do many interesting things without leaving America, without getting a passport, without contending with foreign languages you don’t speak, and without spending long hours on a passenger jet. And there is this: while places around the world may seem exotic to you, for the people who live in those places, America is the exotic land.

A/C Restored

In my last post I described the failure of my air conditioner. So I feel I should assure my readers that the one-week heat wave did not kill me and the a/c has been restored.

I bought an LG brand a/c. Some reviews said the LG unit was loud, and indeed it is somewhat noisier than my old GE unit. It also weighs less. Some of the parts, such as fans, are plastic instead of metal. The compressor is half the size of the compressor on the old GE unit.

A friend who lives near me, and his son and grandson, came to my house and installed the new unit. Actually, they began the installation: they carried the old unit to the back of my yard and put the new unit into the window opening. (The old unit was gone within 36 hours—picked up by a recycler.) Although the new a/c, like the old a/c, has side curtains designed to seal off the remainder of the window opening, they are nowhere near sufficient. So my friend returned the next day and we cut boards to fit into the side openings and caulked them and painted them, then we used joint compound to repair the inside of the window opening where winter air leaking in for years had destroyed some of the plaster.

The new LG has a remote control so I can operate the a/c without walking over to it. I guess that is progress of a sort, although I never considered walking across the room to be a terrible burden.

So my house baked in upper-90s heat while it was without a/c, but now that the a/c is restored, the temperature hasn’t gotten high enough to need an a/c. Today, for example, the high temperature was 77°. This is similar to the way the city’s tornado sirens operate. Sometimes in bad weather the city blows a tornado siren 100 feet from my house. The siren is loud enough to make you jump out of your skin. But it works. Every time that siren blows, the tornadoes stay away. The principle seems to be universal. I keep something I never need for 20 years and then one day I toss it out; the next day I need it. I pay $600 for an air conditioner and the outside temperature drops 20 degrees. I don’t know about you, but that’s the way the Universe has always worked for me.

A/C Failure

Three days ago my air conditioner died. It was running fine when I turned it off, but when I turned it on again, nothing ran—neither the compressor nor the fan. They would hum, yes—run, no.

I deduced the unit had a bad start capacitor. The motors, being single phase a/c induction motors, require a start capacitor. A single phase motor needs a start capacitor to make it begin turning, but the start capacitor is no longer needed after the motor begins turning. To verify my suspicion, I powered on the unit’s fan, stuck a screwdriver blade through the front air vents and into the fan and gave it a push. The fan picked up speed and began running normally. Yep, bad start capacitor.

I opened up the unit, thinking that perhaps I could replace the start capacitor myself. The wires on the a/c power cord were terminated with insulated push-on terminals that plugged onto spade lugs on the capacitor and the thermostat. The wire going to the capacitor was probably the culprit. I thought maybe I could take it off and clean it. But that was not to be; the push-on wire terminal and the capacitor’s spade lug had rusted together. I couldn’t separate them.

At this point I had several options to repair the unit. But there was also a downside to repairing it. One, it would take a while and I would definitely need help moving the unit, and I hate to lean on my friends more than I have to. Two, the unit is 24 years old and therefore likely to develop another problem in the near future. In fact, it already has another problem—the sheet metal wall separating the inside components (fan and evaporator) and the outside components (fan motor, compressor, condenser) has rusted through in several places. Three, the unit’s inside surfaces and all surfaces of the squirrel-cage fan are thoroughly coated with a mixture of kitchen grease, dust, dirt, pollen, mold, and whatever else happened to be in the air over the past 24 years. The nasty goop is like a black, greasy tar coating everything.

So I opted to buy a new a/c unit. I needed an 18,000 Btu unit that would fit an 18 inch tall window opening. After visiting all the local sellers online and then in person, I could not find a suitable unit. So I had to order one. I ordered the new unit on May 23. The store’s website informed me that it would arrive at the store on May 30.

Meanwhile, it is shaping up to be one of the hottest weeks on record for this time of year—possibly the hottest week. Yesterday’s high temperature was 92°. Tomorrow is supposed to hit 96°. Am I worried? Not at all. I know I will be uncomfortable, but I don’t think it’s going to kill me. If the heat becomes too much, I can spend a few hours at a friend’s house. Or I can spend a few hours at Mickey D’s, sipping Coke and reading a book. Or I can spend a few hours at a local bar, nursing a beer or two. Things will work out. One way or another, they always do.

Foreign Food

Will sobrassada be the next ‘nduja? Did you know that salami is the plural of salame? To further confuse us, salame is a type of salumi.

By the way, if you don’t know how to pronounce ‘nduja, Wikipedia says it is pronounced like this: ‘ndu ja. Seriously. I think Wikipedia are not being as helpful here as they probably think they are.

But back to sobrassada (not to be confused with soppressata which is an Italian word for a food that is similar). Just when we were getting ‘nduja figured out, the Mallorcans are putting sobrassada on the charcuterie board. And for you sobrassada fans who think it should be spelled sobrasada, just know I’m using the Catalan spelling. Sobrasada is the Spanish spelling. I know, I know—Catalonia is technically part of Spain, at least it is as I type these words. Tomorrow? Who knows. Spain is complicated.

You may be wondering, “Why does ‘nduja start with an apostrophe?” Why indeed. I suppose because it can. Foreigners, you know—it’s like they write and speak a separate language.

LG

My LG smart phone bricked itself. In fact, it’s worse than that, because at least a brick has functionality; it serves a useful purpose. Now when I turn on the phone, the screen says “Downloading update … do not unplug cord.” It delivers this message whether or not a cord is plugged in. The message stays on the screen for as long as the phone remains on. I researched the issue and discovered that there is (supposedly) a way to restore the phone to its factory settings. So I followed the procedure. It didn’t work. The phone remained bricked.

I have an LG TV. The TV works fine, but the remote quit working. Not all the buttons on the remote—just the power button. The TV doesn’t have a power button on it. In fact, it has no buttons at all. Without a remote, one can’t operate the TV.

A friend who lives nearby had an LG TV. It went ka-blooey (figuratively) and he got rid of it, but he saved the remote. When I told him about my remote going bad, he gave me the remote to his defunct LG TV. It’s a different size and shape than the remote that came with my set, but it operates my TV just fine.

I have an LG computer monitor. So far it has performed well. No complaints. Well, there was that time the monitor made a fzzzt sound and the screen went to maximum white-out brightness. It took a couple minutes (turn the monitor off and on; reboot the computer) but then I discovered the problem was the monitor setting. I turned the brightness down and all was okay again.

I used to like LG but the shine is starting to get a wee bit tarnished.

The BFS

My small city has three tornado sirens. To say they’re loud would be an understatement. One siren is about 200 feet from my house. It’s deafening even with windows closed. I call it the BFS.

Let me explain how it works. The sky darkens with clouds. Rain begins to fall. Lightning flashes across the sky. The rain becomes heavy and turns into a gully-washer. The lightning intensifies and thunder rolls across the city. After a while the lightning and thunder fade away and the rain slows then stops. The sky becomes brighter. Then the siren sounds off.

Maybe it’s not a tornado siren. Maybe it’s a no-tornado siren. Or maybe it’s just the city’s way of saying, “Missed us again, Mother Nature. Nah-nah-nah.”

It’s probably not a good idea to taunt Mother Nature. Especially considering that the city has already been hit by tornadoes several times with loss of life. Whoever is throwing the switch on that missed-us-again siren is playing with fire. Dear city government: don’t say I didn’t give you a heads-up.

A Mystery Once Again

I’ve written about this kind of thing previously. In Go Figure I wrote about strange, unexplained sounds in my house. In House Ghost I wrote about a can of bathroom cleaner that was teleported. In Odd Stuff I wrote about a couple of odd incidents, including a flashlight being knocked off the fireplace mantle directly into a wicker basket that I had just placed on the floor below the mantle.

But now it’s time for another mysterious true story. Two nights ago I went to bed at my usual bedtime. I was sober. I had not taken a sleeping pill. Twice during the night I got up to use the bathroom. I experienced nothing unusual. That is, not until the next morning.

I awakened and reached for my phone. I usually keep it on the corner of the dresser beside my bed. A heavy, metal table lamp sits beside it. I didn’t find the phone, so I got up on one elbow to look for it. I noticed the shade on the lamp was knocked askew. The lamp had been moved from its usual location and placed on top of the phone.

I looked further around the room. The wastepaper basket had been turned over and was lying on its side. My pillow was on the floor on top of the wastepaper basket. The blanket on my bed was on the floor. What was going on? I set things aright and went about my morning.

At lunchtime I decided to make a sandwich, so I reached for a partially consumed bag of bread sitting atop the refrigerator. I untwisted the twist tie and opened the bag. I looked inside. All the slices of bread had large holes in the center of them. In fact, they were little more than crust.

I inspected the bag. There were no holes in it. I know for sure that the opening in the bag was securely closed with a twist tie. An ant couldn’t have gotten into that bag. And even if a mouse got in (without leaving a hole) it would have had to climb up the side of the refrigerator to get to the bag of bread. Can a mouse do that? And why would a mouse only eat the inner part of the bread and leave the crust untouched? Are mice that picky about their food?

There was no explaining any of it except, perhaps, for a mischievous poltergeist. But if that’s the case, at least the poltergeist gives me occasional fodder for my blog.

It Might Be A Kludge

I’m an engineer. Or used to be, but once an engineer, always an engineer. It’s a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. And the two recent MAX 8 airliner crashes got me to thinking.

Engineers have a word they sometimes use: kludge (or kluge). It’s pronounced like ‘klooj’. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

A kludge or kluge is a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, and government.

Jackson W. Granholm, in his 1962 article "How to Design a Kludge", defined it this way:

‘An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole’; a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or 'bodged' together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution to a fault or 'bug'. ...

Back to the airliners. When Boeing designed the MAX, they started with a model 737. One of the changes they made was to install bigger engines. Ground clearance was already limited, so the engineers redesigned the engine attachment pylons, moving the engines forward and higher. This gave the engines more ground clearance, but it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing the jet’s nose to pitch up under certain conditions. This nose-up condition could cause an aerodynamic stall, in which the wings no longer generate enough lift to keep the plane in the air. So, problem.

Engineers addressed this problem by adding to the flight-control software something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). When MCAS detects a nose-up condition, it takes over the flight controls and pushes the nose down. The current working theory about the two crashes is that, due to a faulty sensor, MCAS pushed the nose down when it wasn’t supposed to and flew the plane into the earth.

To my engineer’s eyes, it looks like Boeing engineers created a problem when they moved the engines, and in order to compensate they installed a “fix” that came with its own potential problem. If MCAS isn’t a kludge, I think it skirts the definition uncomfortably closely. That’s my opinion, of course. I’m sure Boeing would vehemently deny that it was anything like a kludge. And yet two MAX airliners have crashed within about five months.

To be fair to the Boeing engineers, MCAS can be turned off from the cockpit. If the air crews had done that, the crashes could probably have been avoided. But the crews were apparently not aware of why the plane kept nosing down, or not aware that they could turn off MCAS, or both.

Crowned

This is how a snowball gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down a hill.

Last week I developed a toothache during the night. When morning arrived I phoned my dentist and was able to see him the same day. He took x-rays, tapped on some teeth, and decided the problem was tooth #19. He said it needed an extraction or a root canal. I opted for a root canal because I’d like to keep as many of my teeth as possible. The dentist said that because of the nature of the tooth, he didn’t want to do the root canal. He said I needed a specialist. So his “people” made an appointment for me with an endodontist. The short visit with the dentist cost a mere $98.10—pretty much what I expected. I don’t think you can sneeze in a doctor’s office without paying a hundred or so dollars.

I went to the appointment with the endodontist. She was a very nice young Indian woman (why are so many doctors from India?) and I have nothing but nice things to say about her. She diagnosed (correctly) that the problem was tooth #18, the tooth adjacent to #19. After the root canal procedure, she told me to get a crown on the tooth “as soon as possible”. Her “people” spoke with my dentist’s “people” and I suddenly had an appointment just a few days away. Cost of the root canal: $1175.40.

Today I got a temporary crown on the tooth. I’ll get the permanent crown in eight days. Apparently it is made in California and then sent to Virginia by Pony Express—hence, the week delay. As I was leaving the dentist’s office I stopped to pay the bill for the crown: $1530.90.

So I started with a toothache and $2804.40 later I’m more or less exactly where I was before I got the toothache. That’s life.

But wait, it gets better. The dentist informed me that the tooth adjacent to the just-crowned tooth also needs a crown. And oh yeah, there’s a tooth on the other side of my mouth that needs a crown. Why don’t I just leave my wallet at the dentist’s office? He’s getting more use of it than I’m getting.