December 2006 Archives

FJRPierre mentioned this great site on the FJR Forum: Sails

It has very detailed descriptions of masts, sails, yards, stays, and all the nitty-gritty of old-time sailing ships. A great reference when reading O'Brien or Hornblower.

I watched most of The Pacifier this morning. So-so, but a good way to pass the time.

Justin tore up his scalp on Christmas afternoon.

Tim Fitzsimon, the local independent appliance repair man that everyone around here uses, came out this morning to check on a few problems we've been having.

The refrigerator had two problems. About a month ago, it started dumping about a pint of water on the floor from the bottom once or twice a day. The ice maker had been on the fritz for about four or five months.

Tim cleaned out the drain at the bottom of the unit to solve the water-on-the-floor problem. On the ice maker, he cleaned it all out real good, and ran some tests that didn't really show a problem. We talked about how we use the ice maker and water dispenser, and I mentioned that both my kids like to drink large glasses of water all day, every day. By large, I mean huge - 32 ounces or more. I said that sometimes, I'll fill up a pot to make pasta for dinner, then the both Justin and Jeremy will come in to fill up their huge water glasses, leaving little or no pressure in the reverse osmosis water system. The ice maker requires a certain amount of pressure to work, it's possible that a few periods of really low pressure caused it to build up some ice dams, causing the problems we've been seeing.

Tim looked at it again, and we decided to try something before replacing the expensive parts. To make sure there's always plenty of pressure in the water system when the ice maker cycles, I'm going to turn the ice maker off when I get up in the morning, and turn it back on when I go to bed. If that solves the problem, we'll go with it, and if it doesn't we can replace the valves.

The free-standing freezer has been having problems with freezer burn. Tim checked everything out, and notice that the thermostat was set at 5 out of 6. He suggested we try it a 3.5, and also that we keep it about 3/4 full, either with food or with milk or soda bottles filled 3/4 full of water. This should help moderate the temperature cycles, and save a bunch of money in reduced freezer cycles.

Carole wanted the dryer vents cleaned out, and Tim said he'd do it, but he suggested we wait until there's a separate problem that needs him to dismantle the front of the unit - like replacing an igniter.

In the end, we kept the service call open for now. I'll call him in a week or so with an update on both the ice maker and the freezer, and we'll go from there.

Tim's the best.

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. - Seneca.

At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18--, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G--, the Prefect of the Parisian police.

I finished up Inside Man today. Terri used the inside vein on my right arm, and it was wonderful. They took a triple batch today, too. A good session all around.

Carole was tops in the SimStratics December standings for service lots on TSO, just beating Dan Oo. Very cool.

I've used Firefox as my primary browser for a long time, but I always left IE as the default browser on my office desktop for basically one purpose - clicking on the link in the timesheet reminder e-mails sent by Finance.

I installed the IE Tab extension in Firefox, and set up all the lame internal corporate URLs to automatically open in an embedded IE tab within Firefox. With that change, there's no reason to keep IE as the default browser.

It's unusually gratifying to see the Firefox icon on my desktop shortcuts.

By Eric Foner
Washington Post
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B01

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

I watched Inside Man this morning. Terri used the inside vein on my right arm, and it worked much better than the earlier tries with the middle vein on my left arm.