The Time Sink

So the water heater... Sometime Saturday is when I'm guessing it started leaking; by Sunday morning it had saturated the sheet rock covering the stand both it and the HVAC blower/heater sit on. Water was out onto the garage floor, under boxes and bookshelves and generally resetting the game clock for the day.

Sister Ann's (she of Summer Poetry fame) husband is a contractor so Shelley contacted him and asked for assistance when he was available (later in the day); I started in moving boxes and sorting things to dry. As soon as I had that somewhat under control I drained and disconnected the water heater and started demolition of the damaged area. When Brad got home from church he became my apprentice while Shelley and Daniel took on the support services duties (warm food and someone clean to bring the outside cleanup tools into the messy area).

Several hours later we had things down to the studding and sheathing and were drying that with a heater and fan. Shelley and Uncle Dave took off to get the replacement water heater; then Dave and his son Daniel (his apprentice) set the new unit and did the hookup with assistance from Brad and me. All in all it was right at twelve hours from discovery to replacement, but man do I have a lot of things to put away in the garage once the area is completely dry...

...and yes, I was way tired yesterday morning and way, way stiff; I'd used muscles I hadn't used for a while and I hadn't been in 'contractor mode' since the days when I was the plant manager. ...but things are drying out nicely and Brad picked up a whole new skill set that may prove useful. I suspect the upcoming three-day weekend will be taken up with moving the shelves back into place and putting the printing supplies and such back on them. ...and resorting and reboxing the stuff the had to be 'just dumped' from the cardboard boxes that were soaking up the water.

Listen, Murphy, it's time to go play in someone else's sandbox, okay? We need just a little break from your shenanigans, if you wouldn't mind. Go make it snow in Florida, or at least Ohio; we'd like a few days (weeks?) to deal with your latest...

Today I'll work on a photo note for Lynn regarding the mushroom up on the blog yesterday. I'd wandered out on a very rainy day to check around the house as the winds and rain had been very intense. As I came back from the area of the Japanese garden I noticed one of our 'melting mushrooms" (so called because they start melting with a black ooze as soon as their caps are extended) growing under the one redwood.

I made note of it as the lighting really wasn't adequate; but since the mushroom was nearly six inches tall I did want to try for it. Later in the day, the rain slackened a bit and I wandered out again, this time with my camera, my release cord and the old computer wrist support I sometimes use as a stabilizer for the camera. I took my series and the one I liked the best was the one with the light from the sky giving a 'three-quarter' moon effect.

EXIF data: Exposure was for 1/8 second at f5 at an ISO 200 with the flash suppressed and a -.7 ev.

This week marked the retirement of my aged but still game Win95b box at work. Yep, time and advancing software finally reached a tipping point. Darn, but I hated to see that machine go...

I built it in the Fall of 1997 for what was supposed to be an NT admin machine, but it ended up running Win95 after the NT license went to another box. ...and since Dave's book came out not long after, I dialed that machine in with all his tricks and a few of my own. Heck, it even ran Firebird (I never tried Firefox <g>) and Thunderbird, but the writing was on the wall when Symantec stopped the updates to Norton. Yeah, the old one where you paid once for software (and for just the basics, not a trash pile of crud that would hose your machine).

So down it went, the hard drives spinning down for the last time (yep the originals) and the fan noise from the blowers I had in there disappearing (allowing me to cut the stereo volume by a third <g>).

It's supposed to be one heck of a rainy day today; that'll be a good metaphor for the entire weekend. This morning Daniel and I will be removing the rest of the linoleum from the kitchen and dining area and scraping the floor to have that ready to go whenever things are ready for the new flooring to go down. We'll also probably pick up a dishwasher and get that in; this hand washing stuff gets old real quickly (yes, I've been spoiled by technology).

...and once that project is done, it'll be time to tackle the garage and start moving all the shelves and boxes back from whence they came prior to the flood. ...and maybe throw some stuff away in the process. After that (if there is an 'after that') I think I may start on the projects I had slated for last Sunday!

I'm thinking Shelley best have a crane on standby to help haul Daniel and me out of bed this morning... Yeah, we managed to get the linoleum pulled up (two layers; what to they do, just keep adding on until the ceilings are seven feet away?) and most of the bonding removed before we ran out of energy yesterday evening. ...but man, that was a lot of just heavy labor getting the job done.

It also was a good chance to work with Daniel; he and I don't get to do all that much together, but we had a good afternoon. ...and the kid's a worker! He pulled his own throughout the entire time; I was impressed.

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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