Future Plans

I had blogged earlier about the retro-cool Turbotrain, and my desire to have one grace the layout, but the price of the model is rather crazy...it would mean getting that and nothing else for several months. So, I'm exploring other options for the next major purchase, and I think I've settled on a new GG1 locomotive:

I have one of these that I bought cheap at a train show back in '05, but it had a damaged body shell that I only made worse by attempting to repair the flimsy plastic. Plus, it would have required some rewiring to be compatible with my digital control system. Model railroading is one of those areas where you really get what you pay for.

Another company with a solid reputation for quality products has released their own GG1 model, and this one is completely compatible. Plus, it has a digital sound system, which is a model railroad dimension that I haven't explored yet. And the best part, it's about one third the price of the Turbotrain model. I think I'll save that one for the layout version 2.0, which I've started planning and will probably get around to in 12-18 months.

Comet Holmes easy to spot

I stepped outside last night to see if I could spot it...yep. It's pretty easy to find using the method in the link below...and it's not as low in the sky as it might seem from the description - it's about 30 degress above the horizon. I was able to spot it above the tall trees that I thought would block my view.

And my apologies if you can't see the pics in the post below. Not sure what happened there.

By Popular Demand

Here we have my fine downspout work, and the bread of unusual size.

mmmmm...bread.

Comet Holmes

There's an approaching comet that may become an interesting sight over the next several weeks.
Named Comet Holmes, it has brightened considerably in the last few days and should now be visible to the naked eye - no visible tail yet though. But right now it's one of the brighter objects in the night sky, appearing like a fuzzy yellow star apparently.
It's pretty low in the sky - about twice the width of your fist above the horizon. So unless you live out in the sticks, it's probably a good idea to wait a week or 2 to try and see it, as it should get higher in the sky as it approaches.
If you want to brave the cold, the link above will tell you how to find it.

In case you were wondering

The name 'Fatty Farkle' was my mom's nickname for me when I was about 1 or so. I think I got off easy, my older brother's was 'Shimmy Shimmy Cocobop'.

The bread loaf that ate Pittsburgh

My new sunday routine is to do some baking, usually a loaf of bread in the breadmaker. ( I know this doesn't qualify as real baking, but hey, I'm trying)
Yesterday, I went to just make some plain white bread. I didn't realize that I had grabbed a packet of quick-rising yeast instead of the normal type when I was adding ingredients. I found out a couple hours later when the lid of the maker was being forced open by the loaf. I left it in there longer than usual to ensure that the top would at least resemble bread instead of uncooked dough. This thing was about twice as tall as a normal loaf of bread...and it was very tasty alongside a pot roast and rice for dinner.

Slowly but surely

Yesterday, I replaced the downspouts along the driveway. Hopefully this will help with the water that suddenly started lekaing in by the chimney (based on the hypothesis that hte buried drainage channels have gien up the ghost) We'll see if it makes a difference. And don't call me Shirley.

Chicago needs an intervention

Behold the latest design for the 'Chicago Spire', which will be the world's tallest, erm, building when completed in 2011. I think they should have just said no to the developers.

The right wing and wildfires

Depending on who you listen to from the right, the California wildfires are either being caused by people who hate America , or people who love America...I wish the Republicans would get their stories straight. Don't they have the talking points memo out yet?

So, is it the work of terrorism, or the work of patriots? Or is it a predictable phenomenon, that was expected to be pretty severe this year due to drought ...

But who needs boring old science...nothing gets the base riled up better than some good old fashioned fear tactics and 'love it or leave it' rhetoric.

Finally done with college

I just decided to check how paying off the last of my student loans was going...it looks like they'll finally be paid off in about 7 months. And it's only been 13+ years since graduation.

My own worst enemy

Warning: boring train talk ahead...

Over the weekend, I decided to take care of some items that were not necessary, but had bugged me all the same. I repainted some of the rock facings to look more like rock and less like painted plaster, with varying degrees of success.

The other job I tried to take care of was upgrading the headlights on a couple of the Locomotives, which are dim or not working. I got a couple of them changed without too much trouble on the D&H Alco PA, so I was feeling bold and took on the biggest challenge, pictured above:

The light is mounted on a pc board inside, and several internet searches hadn't turned up much more than this fact and a couple of diagrams, but no advice on how to change the light itself. I figured I'd at least try to get a look at it so I could see what I needed for the job. So I removed the 2 screws holding the body on and...after 10 minutes of prying, I had succeeded in nothing other than snapping off a couple of the smaller plastic details on the body. I decided to quit while it was still in one piece.

The front wheels highlighted above were the hard bit. The 2 front axles are mounted on an independent assembly. This attaches to the loco by a screw, that fits inside a spring that allows the wheels some up/down travel. Think a 1/87 scale shock absorber. You can imagine how small these parts are.

After finding where the spring had bounced off to (twice), I went to put the assembly back on. I found that the wheels were now hovering about 1/8" above the track. I tried backing out the screw, thinking I had simply overtightened it. This lowered the wheels to the track, but on the test runs they were so loose that they would jump off the track at the slightest chance. After messing with it for an hour, I gave up, and resigned myself to having ruined one of my favorite pieces.

I decided to give it another look last night...I took it apart and looked it over...after a few minutes I realized I had put the wheel assembly back on upside down, which made all the difference.

So to make a long story short, I wound up back where I started. But at least it runs as well as it did before I started messing with it.

More rain, and more rain

The talking heads were telling us on monday that rain was coming. They were only expecting about .5-1 inch through tuesday night.
I knew something was amiss as I drove to work tuesday morning...the 4-lane road I take to the highway was a 2-lane road because of standing water. When I got home, they said we'd had between 3 and 3.5 inches in Cowtown. And it's rained all night since then.
Now, because it's been so dry this year, it's been hard to gauge the effectiveness of any basement work I've done.
But I think we're showing a steady improvement. Looking at the 3 'shop vac incidents' we've had this year...
In March, we had the worst flooding ever, with melting snow and heavy rain. It took at least a dozen shop-vac loads to get all the water up.
In August, we had a heavy rain over a couple days. I think the rain total was about 2.5 inches. By the time all the water was sucked up, I had filled the vac about 3.5 times.
This week, with the nearly 4 inches, the shop vac scale is at...1.5.
So no, it's not fixed, but I am on the right track. And I think my next round of work will help more.
It appeared that most of the water we had this week was probably my fault. Remember those roll-up downspout extensions I was so proud of? Want to know why you never see them? The one by the driveway wound up dumping most if its water at the point where it connects to the metal downspout, which makes it about as effective as nothing. So several dozen gallons of water were dumped into the strip between the driveway and house, instead of out in the yard as intended. Oops. I replaced it with a solid piece and we had no water after that.

We've decided on how to resolve the issue with water coming in on the driveway side of the house...we're just going to pave over the little strip of land between the house and driveway. All it is is a mulchbed and home to various weeds. And once it's gone, we can put some potted plants along that side to dress it up.

Is there a dentist in the house?

Shaunn's been having some problems recently with tooth pain, caused by his medications. One of the fun long term effects of some of them is that they attack the tooth enamel and gums, and it looks like this exciting time has come. It's been bad enought that his diet for the last few days has been soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
I got a couple of dentist referrals here at work, and he called them to get an appt. The problem is, except for normal dental coverage they only cover people with Medicaid coverage. And we make too much to qualify for that.
The shake your head part is that although he is on disability, and has some degree of health coverage, nothing he has covers any dental work. He's calling around today to see if there are any programs that can offer some kind of assistance, but I'm not very hopeful. Anyone have one of those teach yourself dentistry books?

We need HBO again

I'm missing out on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is one of the three funniest shows I've ever watched. I just read this little snippet about the latest episode...

Sunday night's episode of the HBO show was a classic case of art imitating life with the announcement by David's fictional spouse, played by Cheryl Hines, that she was leaving.

It was just in June that David and his real-life wife, Laurie David, separated after 14 years of marriage. The real-life divorce was filed by Laurie David, citing "irreconcilable differences." Their spokesman has called the split "very amicable."

On "Curb," the breakup was set off when Cheryl called hysterically from a potentially crashing airplane. Larry told her to "call back in 10 minutes" because he was having their Tivo fixed by a cable guy.
Safe but still rattled, Cheryl returned to declare: "I'm leaving, Larry. I can't do this anymore." "People ask me all the time, `How do you stay with him?'" she explained. "I always tell them, `There's another side to Larry that you don't see.' And then I just realized today, there's no other side."
Larry argued to no avail that the phone reception was bad and, besides, he was able to save her Tivoed shows like "Top Chef" and "Project Runway." The rest of the episode finds the couple's friends (some of whom are the REAL couple's friends), choosing sides between either Larry or Cheryl.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Matt and Bethany, who both turn 28 today, coincidentally. It gets even stranger...they're related! One might think they were twins.

Car Shelters and Storms

If I told you that I slept easily last night with the threat of severe weather, I'd be lying.

The forecasters on the local news were throwing out all their favorite buzz words on the news (Damaging winds! Heavy rain! Hail! Significant chance of rapture!)
But....I'm guessing the storms weren't all they were cracked up to be. The shelter showed no sign of damage, or even strain from high winds last night. Either that or it's more stable than I previously thought.

The beer again

Here are the 4 new ones...the names aren't as exotic as I was thinking before but they're:
-Falstaff
-Piel Brothers
-Bonanza Beer
-Schlitz

Bonanza Beer is the only one I haven't heard of before...this might be a fake brand, but it's got the best design.
According to the site with the subtle name HO Beer Cars, the Bonanza and Piers cars are a little easier to find, and the Falstaff and Schlitz cars are pretty rare. Cool.

more beer news

I guess it's the theme of the day...
I ran across this story on Autoblog, from someone who asks the question -

What if gasoline was sold like beer?

Do you really know how much gas you use? Sure, you look at the pump occasionally when you fill up and see that you put 16 gallons in, but do you ever really think about how much that is?

You would if gas were sold like beer, in 12 ounce cans.

In my 1991 BMW 750iL, which gets ~17 mpg, I would only get 1.6 miles per can. That means that for my 37 mile commute to work I would have to open 23 cans of gas and pour them into the tank.

I would need another case just to get back home in the evening.

My motorcycle gets 48 mpg. That’s not so bad, right?

I’d still need more than 16 cans for the round trip. Looks like I need to get a bigger backpack.

No, I'm not suggesting that we all run off and trade our cars for plowshares...but it's definitely surprising to consider how much cars drink using a different yardstick.
I burn about 5 gallons a week, thanks to a short commute and not driving a gas pig. Even so, that's 53 bottles just by driving to work for 5 days. I'd rather have the beer.

All hail the beer train

One of the local train stores buys and sells used equipment, so it's interesting to see what can be found there from time to time.
On sunday, I hit the jackpot. Somebody had sold several boxcars to them representing several well known and more obscure breweries...
Sometimes local railroad clubs will do a group buy and have a manufacturer do a limited run of cars painted to represent a local favorite brewery...it's a fairly popular side project for adults who play with trains to collect various brands for their collection. They had 5 there I had never heard of before.

I can't remember the names of all of them now, but one of them is a 'Schlitz Malt Liquor' car, complete with the bull on the side. Schlitz, no it's not a limited or special anything, and it will rot your gut all the way through to your soul. But finding model railroad boxcars painted up in their livery is pretty rare. Ride the bull!

Shelter is done

Shaunn and I got the rest of the shelter put up. I had a couple of minor setbacks...

The anchor that broke the camel's back -
you can see it was starting to bend from
the effort

The anchors for the shelter are apparently meant to be installed by professional wrestlers. They are 30" long, and have an auger tip, so you're supposed to screw them into the ground. Doesn't sound bad, right? So I grabbed the largest screwdriver I could find to use for a handle and got going.
The first couple went in all right, but it takes about 30 minutes of turning, turning turning to get them in the ground. By the time I got to the third anchor, I was spent. After an hour, I'd only managed to get it about 6" into the ground. There were 8 of them in all. At this rate, I'd be lucky to be done by thanksgiving.

So I switched to plan B, went to the hardware store for some steel stakes, and hammered them down. This cut the time and effort by a factor of about 100.

After that, Shaunn helped me pull the cover on, which secured with a few brackets and bungee cords. And now, it's finished. I'm going to lie down.

Nostalgia

Ah, the late 1970s...when network television didn't bother with shows about cavemen, and instead showed programs like this...

Anyone remember it? If you're under 35, the answer is probably 'no'. It only lasted a few eps, as America was not really looking for the Love Boat on rails. But it burned deep into my 9 year old brain. Maybe not that deeply, all I really remember was the train had a swimming pool.

What happened to the water?

Because of the basement, we cringe every time it rains. We have had a stretch of good luck this year, or at least the basement has. Central Ohio has seen very little rainfall since March. And it's been so hot, that most rain we get is evaporated before it does any good.
I checked the weather history for the city at the Nat'l Weather Service to see if this was just a perception thing...it's not.

http//www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=iln

Since March 31, we've had:
- 35 days with high temps above 90 (including 6 in October)
- 9 days with over .5 inches of rain (none in May, one in April)
For the monthly totals, generally about half of those amounts fell in one day. The highest amount we've had in one day from March 31 to today, 2.37 inches, was due to a tropical storm.

So over the last 194 days...9 days with any rain worth mentioning. Going 2-3 weeks without any rain was not uncommon. Which is uncommon for Columbus. And this year's April and May were the driest I can remember.

I gave up on maintaining the garden, the heat kept roasting the herbs. The only thing we were able to keep alive were the beans, and we only got a handful of pods from them.

I'm sure I'll change my tune when the weather does, but it's been a weird summer here. They're calling for rain today, but so far not a drop.

The Shed

No, not that mysterious chain of stores in Toledo. The Shed. Welcome to the West Side. Bitches.

Wood pile appears safe

The wood pile, much sought after by our neighbors, has remained unchanged for several days. I think we've weathered the onslaught.

When Clowns Attack

I didn't include the story, I think the headline speaks for itself:

Clown kicks in door, punches resident

What else do you need to know?

Bionic woman and Columbus Day

So, most feel that the ratings should be the villain of the show. And thus closes another poll.

Patrick and Bethany were down for a visit over the weekend, it was good to see them both. And no visit with family would be complete without a meal at El Vaquero. Good times.

To keep myself busy the rest of the weekend, I bought a garage (of sorts). I saw an ad for one of those vehicle shelters for a really good price, so before Patrick left town on sunday, he and I ran to get it before the shelters were sold out.

This is the model we got...I'll get some pics up of ours.

We wanted something like this for a while, but until the tree was removed, getting one would have been asking for trouble. This one was a steal - they regularly go for $499, but after rebates and all the discounts we got it for $139 plus tax.

Assembly of the frame was very simple, and only took a couple of hours. This was aided by no missing parts, and instructions that were written by someone with a strong command of English. The only thing that was hindering progress was the heat - if it wasn't 90+ degrees all weekend, it woudl have been a one day job. I was able to work on it for about an hour per day before the heat got to me.

The only annoying thing is that the anchors to secure it to the ground are not included, and you don't know this until you've goen thru everything twice and read the list of parts several times. So you have to make another trip to buy those, which I will do tonight.

Once it's anchored, I'll put the cover on - otherwise it would become a fairly large and unwieldy kite. And then our garage/xxl tent will be ready. I think it will also be a great place to have a mid-winter party, if shivering in the driveway sounds like fun, let me know.

If they can put a man on the moon...

Replica of Wright plane crashes during anniversary flight
ASSOCIATED PRESS

DAYTON - A replica of the Wright brothers' plane crashed Friday during a demonstration to mark the 102nd anniversary of the flight the aviation pioneers said displayed the first practical flying machine.There were no injuries, but the replica of the 1905 Wright Brothers Flyer III was damaged.

It's odd that after over a century of powered manned flight, we struggle with the ability to replicate the original airplanes. I'm sure the Wrights crashed plenty of times (I remember that Orville almost lost his life in a crash during an early demonstration for the Army), but they apparently took some elemental secrets of their aircraft with them.
Obviously the original designs left a lot to be desired and improved upon, as any subsequent aircraft demonstrates. But the act of flying them is probably just as much art as it is science, something that's lost in reverse engineering.

Guess the pundit

Which right-wing commentator feels that the nineteenth amendment is still a matter of debate?

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.

Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 10/2/07

Last I heard, Ann was single herself. I assume she meant to exclude herself from that blanket statement. I don't think that even Limbaugh has ever advocated the idea that women's rights should be rolled back about 90 years. Stunning.

Ever-widening stance

Senator Larry Craig has now decided that he will not resign from the Senate, after a judge dismissed his motion to have his guilty plea changed. Comedians say this is the best news to come along since they heard of the astronaut wearing a diaper.

The fun never ends

I'll bet you never saw this coming...the firewood, somehow, is slowly migrating from our side of the back fence to the neighbor's side. Really. Shaunn said he thought it looked different yesterday. So, I took a mental inventory of the neatly stacked pile last night, and there were 3 fewer logs this morning. I'm really too old and I think too mature to actually have to have a discussion with the neighbors about stealing f***ing firewood. I know we can buy a truckload for $50 anyway. So I'm just going to let it go, and let Claude spend the next several weeks staying up all night to steal wood, if that's what really makes him happy.

No big fans of the Hoff's work

Well, Bonnie won out as best technician in the last poll (not much of a showdown, since equal votes for her and 'huh?' were cast) And poor April got no votes at all.

This week it's a little more current - who should be playing Jamie Sommers' arch-enemy on the new "Bionic Woman", which is one of the most uninspired shows in recent memory?

Major hurty

Nothing will make you realize your age faster than a flurry of physical activity. I (along with several others) helped Nala and Giga move saturday. I still can't stay in the same position for more than about 15 minutes or my arms & legs start to lock into place. And I left early, so I can't imagine how the others are feeling. At least we got the job done without any major hiccups or trips to the ER.