Lawyer Locks

We needed to wash laundry at Xavier's gun and camera ranch, so I finally got around to inspecting and repairing the washing machine today. I was pretty certain a non-sterile rubber exam glove had floated out of a pocket on my scrubs and clogged the pump. I took off the front of the washer and removed the hose between the pump and the basin. No glove.

Next, I took the advice of a lion's share of my readers and bypassed the lid switch. I put the washer on the spin cycle, and sonuvagun...... It spun. I got to thinking.... that's a dangerous thing. Years ago, washing machines did not even have this stupid lawyer lock on them. I broke out my wire spices and heat shrink tubing and made a permanent bypass of the switch, and removed it. We now have a load of towels spinning merrily away in the washer. Thank you readers....

When did we become so stupid that we need an electronic lock to prevent us from lifting a lid and seeing laundry spinning? Does the Maytag litigation crew think their customers will commit suicide by jumping into a washer on the spin cycle? I don't know...... All I know is I don't like lawyer locks on my guns, and now the lawyer lock is off my washing machine as well. I think I can handle the risk.

Memorial Day Wash

OK fellows, It's time to show my wife-mate the power of blogging. It seems as though our washer went kaput right in the middle of the cycle. The big bowl will not drain. I siphoned out about half the water and took off the agitator. that is about as far as I got.

Here are the facts. It stopped after the rinse wash cycle. I know this because the water is still slick with detergent. Nothing appears to be obstructed, but the large valve underneath the big bowl thing doesn't seem to want to open. I found nothing underneath the agitator. The electronics seem to still be working, and water will still pour in if the knob is placed on start.

It is a Frigidare Gallery commercial washer. If anyone knows of a website or a resource, or even where to go from here, please let me know. I can get back to it in a couple of days.

Thank you,
Xavier

First resource

The Wonderful World of Cable

"Wake up Xavier, the guys are here to install the cable."

"Huh? What? Cable? We don't need no stinkin' cable!"

It's just nine dollars a month more for basic cable. It's my surprise for you."

"Darling, I don't want a bunch of guys rootin' around the house, tacking cable to the outside and tearing stuff up."

"Xavier, they are waiting outside. Ilsa is barking at them."

"Good."

It's hard for some to believe that I have survived for forty-five years without entertainment being routed into my home on a co-axial cable. Frankly, other than local and national news, and occasional DVDs, I just don't watch it much. I never saw the point of paying to have the stuff pumped into my house.

Still, with analog television going the way of the dodo, I wouldn't be watching it at all without a converter box. So, yesterday, when my wife surprised me with a couple of guys ready to tack coaxial cable around the outside of my house, I sent them away and decided to run it myself.

The obvious route was through the attic, as the exterior source is on one side of our home, and the television is on the other. So, this morning, I climbed into the attic to detach the antenna cable and add an extra 60 feet of cable to reach the other side of the house.

Once inside the dusty attic, there were other chores to perform, of course. repair the screen on the gable vent. Reattach the heater duct to Little Darling's bedroom, and seal it off. Finally, after an hour's diversion, I joined the additional cable to the antenna cable, and I ran it across the attic, down through the roof in the heater compartment, and through the exterior wall where I wanted it hooked up. I sealed the hole with the cable running through it with caulk, and told my wife-mate to have the cable guys come and hook it up at any time.

It's time to go to the range.

Cooling Again

The air conditioner is cooling again. It took three hours for the guys from Service Experts to correctly diagnose and alleviate the problem. It seems the original installation back in 2001 was done poorly, and an underground wire was shorted out.

As far as the fish, I lost a Coral Beauty last night. Today, I know I lost a Niger Trigger, a Yellow Tang, and a Spotted Hawk. Several crustaceans are history. There was just no way to keep the brine cool enough. We tried baggies of frozen distilled water floated on the surface, but it wasn't enough. On the bright side, the Clownfish, the Picasso Trigger and several Damsels survived. A brown Trigger of unknown origin survived, although I wish he had succumbed. I still have not located the Clown Trigger. The max temp on the tanks was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temp was 84 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tonight I will perform mortuary duty and remove the live rock to get to the dead out. For now, I just want to get cool.

Not Again.........

I thank God today that the weather is unseasonably cool. The control panel on the air conditioner fried. Last summer, I went through the same thing. This time, it looks like a new control panel will be over-nighted and installed in the AM. I'm trying to stay cool and keep the fish alive until then. Water temp in the tanks in 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Ideal is 78. Marine fish are very susceptible to heat, as they have an entire ocean to find the optimal temperature. In a tank, they don't have that option. Distilled water frozen into ice in zip lock bags is doing the trick for now.....

Until tomorrow it's windows open, fans on, lights out, and a sprinkler on the roof.

Pruning Time

Several years back, I delved into gardening. I did not have much of a green thumb, I killed a lot of plants trucked into the local Lowes. I learned fairly quickly that tropical plants thrive in Louisiana's heat and humidity. I built a greenhouse to care for some of them through our short winter month. After one trip to Baton Rouge, we rode back home with the Jeep so filled with tropical plants that we had to brush huge leaves back to see the roadway. Bougainvillea, Bananas, Palms, Birds of Paradise, Cane, Heliconias, Canas, and Hibiscus. I grew them all. I also planted Wisteria and Pyrostegia venusta vines to "tie things together, and to provide a canopy of greenery on a pergola over our den's huge bay window in the summer.

Over the past couple of years, the tropical garden has been largely ignored, left to it's own devices. The huge live oak in the back yard is again providing shade that will eventually kill off the lush growth. When I paid tree surgeons to remove the oak limbs from above the house, and to take the grand old tree down to the ground, my wife cried. I relented, turning it into a "poodle tree" instead. Now, like a bad penny, it's back.

I learned later that tropical plants are incredibly invasive. The Wisteria and Orange Trumpet vines not only covered the pergola, but also the rear of the house. Today, I cut the vines back to within a foot of the ground. They were overtaking the house, and getting to the point that I could not keep up with them, separating clapboards and lifting shingles. Hopefully, the roots will not send up shoots. My wife-mate may be pissed, but sometimes you just have to take the law into your own hands.

While I was out back performing my thuggish pruning, I noticed the wild violet lilies blooming. Maybe if I cut back that oak.......

Chimney Mystery Revealed

Crap.......A few days ago, the noises inside the chimney subsided. I had hoped that the critters inside had vacated the premises. They had not.

Today, when I came home there was the aroma of death throughout the living room. I removed the damper from the fireplace, and poked around with a stick. Nothing jumped. I slipped on some size eight and a half Bio-Gel surgical gloves and tried to reach whatever was inside. No luck. Finally, I fired up my digital camera and began to blindly take photos.

I discovered no less than three raccoons in various stages of decomposition behind the back of the firebox. It seems the smoke shelf was never sealed off, and it was a brick pit approximately 30 inches deep. I strained to reach the rotting varmints. There was no way to reach them. I considered using endoscopy instruments, but they just would not be able to carry the weight. Plus, endo tools are not rigid, and I would most likely be removing the coons in chunks. Fishing equipment, gaffs, nets, none would be suitable.

I briefly considered squirting them down with kerosene and cremating the little bastards. Bar-b-qued coon must certainly smell better than rotting coon. There is, however, a capped off natural gas line for fire logs in the fireplace, and when I considered the risks of burning the house down or even blowing it to smithereens, I started to look at other options.

As the funk of decaying coonflesh affected my brain, I came up with a plan......For now, cover them with Great Stuff foam insulation. Make a layer approximately 12 inches thick. Then, take a day off work and fill the recess behind the firebox with concrete, burying the little rotten son of a bitches like Jimmy Hoffa.

Finally, I'm going to climb the damned chimney and cover the top of it with expanded steel. I'll seal that grate down with concrete as well. Then I'll stuff so damned much fiberglass insulation into the smoke chamber that it will be the most weather tight area of this damned house. To hell with it. We have a functional fireplace in the den anyway. The firebox of the living room chimney is painted with white enamel that will bubble and toast in the heat of a fire. That thing will never have a cheery blaze warming us as we sit around the hearth swapping stories in our old age. It's decorative. Instead we can watch Norm freaking Abram on the TV and shoot spitballs in his direction as we remember the dead coon days of yore......

Noises From The Flue

Brrrrruuuuuulipliplip! Brrrrruuuuuuliplipliplip! Brrrrrrruuuuuulipliplip! There has been an unsettling noise emanating from our living room fireplace. Ilsa heard it first, and found it intensely interesting. In the middle of the night, I heard it. Coons......It had to be raccoons. They are attracted to the cat food my wife-mate puts out on the front porch for the strays. Occasionally I will be greeted by the varmints as I pull into the driveway at night, my headlights grazing across their gleaming eyes with black masked faces.

I leaned my tallest ladder, the one I use to paint the gingerbread in the gables, against the chimney. I stuffed a flashlight and camera in my pocket, and up I went. A sturdy piece of wire screen covered the top of the chimney, but something had pried a six inch diameter hole into it. The noises did not sound like squirrels.......My neighbor keeps doves, perhaps they had taken up residence. Maybe a possum........

Then I realized my position, at the top of a forty foot ladder, looking down a brick passageway to God knows what. Shining a light and flashing a camera at God knows what. I never claimed to be the sharpest card in the deck, but I damn sure ain't the dullest. I climbed down and decided to live and let live. I'll just keep the flue closed.

Azaleas

"Dig 'em up and plant something tropical," I told my wife when we moved into the house of doom in 1999. I had no idea what azaleas were, and during the Fall, the old scraggly bushes were an eyesore to me. Hideous and frumpy. I could not understand why everyone in the entire neighborhood had the withering shrubs surrounding their homes underneath the live oak trees.

"Just wait," my better half said. She was right. Each spring, for a couple of weeks, we are surrounded by huge kaladioscopic mnounds of the most intense hues imaginable, from fuschia to crimson, to violet, as the azaleas burst into bloom. Ah.....The glory of living in the South, in the Spring.

She wanted me to take some photos of them this year. Here they are. Thank you, Sweetheart,for saving me from myself......Again.

Cooling.......

One of the little known facts about me is that I run saltwater aquariums. In my home, 675 gallons of brine, fish, coral and critters circulate in four glass cages. I actually got into the hobby about five years ago when my little girl wanted a Nemo. I ran a coral reef, a trigger tank, and a venomous tank as well as a crunchy critter tank. If you want to enjoy all kinds of sea life, you have to keep them separate.

I now have my air conditioning working again, but alas, many of the sea creatures did not survive. Although I kept the water circulating, and fans blowing across the top of the water, All but three two fish died. All the coral is gone. I'm in the midst of saving what I can, but I do not think I will invest so heavily in the hobby again. Perhaps I will acquire a Clown Trigger for one tank, and maybe a humuhumunukunukuapua, pronounced humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apu-a'-a, AKA a Picasso Trigger for the other. No more coral. Nemo did survive.

The house is steadily cooling again.....

3rd World Xavier

It's sweltering. It's criminally hot. I go to the Holiday Inn to get a taste of air conditioning, and then return home. I had not realized I had gotten so old. When I was a young man, a week or two in the equatorial Philippine heat did not bother me at all. I did not even wish for the rainy season. Instead, I wished for more time in the tropical wonderland. Yes, the heat and humidity was oppressive, but it was not as though air conditioning was a life support system.

If anything, this unrestrained and unrelieved heat has been showing me I am no longer a young man. In the PI, every building was constructed for optimal ventilation. Electric fans circulated island breezes through an intoxicating variety of flowers throughout the business area. If the one was not yet acclimated to the heat, a San Miguel and a pretty girl was always ready to help the process along. Jeepneys were open air rides about the communities. Once home, a person had the same system of constantly moving air to maintain equilibrium.

For two days, I've been studying my ass off during the cool less hot night hours, and today I must start to turn my biological clock around. I do not have the ventilation necessary to manage the ambient interior temperature, and my body can not take the strain. Inside the house is hotter than out in the yard. I find myself making more and more typos as my forehead drops sweat on my keyboard. Getting old is Hell. Today is Sunday...........When I come home on Tuesday.........

Damn It's Hot!

I came home from a 14 hour day at the hospital today to find a scorching hot house. What the hell. I checked the thermostat and breakers. The circuit breaker was tripped and would not reset. Damn. I went outside to the primary unit, and gave it the old sniff test. Through the upper louvers, I could discern the distinct scent of fried compressor windings. Crap. That's about right, I suppose. 102 degrees in the shade and the damned A/C decides to crap out on me. On the weekend.

I call a serviceman, who comes over to confirm my diagnosis. Compressors are giving up the ghost all over town in the heat. Luckily my A/C is still under warranty, and the serviceman tells me he can order a new compressor on Monday, have it overnighted, and install it while I am at work on Tuesday. Holy Jesus with a tire tool! Four freaking days, two of which absolutely nothing will be done? Yes sir. Is there a damned window unit for sale anywhere in this town? Hell no. I sent the family to the Holiday Inn.

As for me, on Monday, I will start a two day course to learn new procedures. I need to study like hell. I've already loaded the study CD and algorithms on my computer, and I guess I will have to endure the devilish heat to prepare. Hell, I've been through worse, I suppose. Time to start designing.......

This Damned House

Monday morning........

"Hey Xav, Whadcha do this weekend?"

"Morning Kat. I bar-b-qued half a hog went bike riding went fishing went to hear Beausoleiu went to the range saved a couple of lives on overtime sparred in preparation for the next Friday night fights gelled out and did nothing don't want to talk about it."

"It's always good to talk about these things Xav........"


"So now everyone's a damned psychiatrist?"

"Relax Xav..... And change your shoes........You're tracking in mud."

Later.............

"I understand you had an interesting weekend Xav."

"It was a good 'un Doc."

"Wife said she saw Lil Darling standing in a hole with a shovel on her morning jog........"

"Ya ever notice the varieties of palm trees that folks are planting around here? I bet three quarters of them won't make it past December. Stitch?"

"'Stat. You're planting a palm that close to your house?"

"No....How 'bout that damned Venus Williams?"

"You had a chance to watch Wimbledon along with all that digging?"

"Pumper."

"Thanks."

"Ever pay a man to clean out a drain and then have him go knock a hole in your damned pipe instead of using the clean out fitting you graciously provided when you laid the sonuvabitchin' schedule 40 field line nine years ago?"

"Yeah, the assholes generally toss half a coffee can on top of the hole they break in the pipe, and cover it right back up."

"Then the roots come.........."

"Yeah......Damned roots....."

"Stupid bastards."

Sonuvabitchin' brain surgeons."

"Hey......Didcha hear about the neurosurgeon who had to get his pipes fixed? After the plumber fixed them, he handed the neurosurgeon the bill, and the Doc almost went ballistic. He did a quick mental calculation and said 'Damn.....I need to go into plumbing.......I don't make half that, and I'm a freaking brain surgeon!' The plumber said 'Yeah, I know what you mean. I didn't make shit as a neurosurgeon either.'"

"Heh......"

"Ya know....Next case is a plumber........"

"No shit? Got a coffee can?"

This Damned House

The pipe had apparently leaked for some time. The sill was weakened as a result. Yesterday, as my wife washed dishes, I noticed a torrent of water rushing from between the clapboards outside of our home. This morning, I cut away clapboards to gain access to the pipes.

PVC under the sink was joined to lead pipe, which was then, in turn joined to cast iron. The lead pipe had burst. I replaced all the lead pipe with schedule 40 PVC, and then decided to leave the clapboards off so the wood could dry.

Unfortunately, once I cured the leak, I encountered a clog that was further down the line. I climbed up on the roof to access the vent with an electric rotary snake, and after 45 minutes or so of roter rooting, the drains ran clear.

Next up........Repairing the sill. Don't watch This Old House with your wife while in the real estate market. It isn't worth it!

This Damn House

"Honey......It's a historical house in a historical district..... All the fixtures are original to the home. It's a beautiful home with 14 foot ceilings and it's on the National Historic Register........."

Norm Abram and Tom Silva can kiss my wet PVC glue stained butt. Let me inform the young men who are house shopping with thier soon to be or newly married spouse of a little fact.....Old houses suck. If you enjoy spending your weekends repairing obsolete crap that was cobbled together 50-100 years ago with bubble gum by Bubba's Fly by Night Plumbing and Carpentry Ingenuity Company, then buy an old house.

Yeah, the landscaping is established...........and boring into the clay pipe to the sewer main. One of my first homeowner jobs eight years ago was replacing 90 feet of old clay field pipe with schedule 40 PVC. The damned pipe was three and a half feet underground! Still, it was better than calling Rotor Rooter every month. My house was a rental for over thirty years. The previous owner did things like repair pipes with old automobile radiator hoses and clamps. I have found wiring held together and insulated with band-aids. Band-aids! He didn't care, as long as he could do it for nothing, do it quick, and shut up a complaining tenant for another month.

Today I replaced the fill valve in a toilet, and repaired pipes to a sink that were slowly leaking in the den. It should have been a simple job, over in under an hour. I knew better, I scheduled the entire day to get this crap done. Now, the job is done. Right. Finally. Young husbands, if your house shopping wife starts to watch This Old House or other programs of that nature, turn off the television. Shoot the tube if you have to. It ain't worth it!