Sunday, July 31, 2011

Resistance Is STILL Futile

In August of last year, I wrote about a resistor going bad in the electronic board for the pool salt chlorinator.  A less than $3 part went bad on a nearly $700 board!  I was able to take out the old one resistor, solder in a new one, and all was good.  Well dang if it didn't happen again this year - the resistor stopped working.  Me, being the smart guy that I am, bought TWO resistors last year.  Installed one and put one in a safe place.  So this year I went to go to that safe place but could NOT find it!  I tore the house apart but couldn't find it.  So I ordered 3 more.  They came pretty quickly and I installed one (and put one spare in the control panel and the other spare taped to the owner's manual).  It's been a little tricky - I am not the best solderer and it is intricate work.  But so far so good.  I did learn a shocking lesson today that pulling a fuse on the board is NOT the same as shutting the power off at the fuse box...

Lucie had a good week at camp but her shoulder/rotator cuff pain is getting worse.  Going for an MRI next Friday.

I've spent a lot of time floating in the pool lately.  The water temp is in the upper 80's every day so I am making the most of it while I can.  When we first put the pool in, we had tree people come and cut the over-hanging limbs back.  They have grown back so we get a lot of stuff dropping in the water from the trees (and the critters that live in them).  Pretty much every day is a vacuuming day. 

Hard to believe tomorrow is August 1...

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Sticking Together

A couple of weeks ago the subwoofer in my Pathfinder blew.  Which means with every beat of every song, there was a rattly noise.  Ugh.  Drove me crazy.  Nice Bose system too - which you would think would be built to handle the sound no matter how loud I cranked it.  Anyway, it was a major pain to get to it to try and replace it and I could only get the bottom two screws out.  As I was working on it, I noticed that the center cone was separated from the outer paper material.  So I smeared a ring of glue around it and all is good!  Sounds perfect.

Our first tenting experience was not that great because of the hard ground.  So I dug out our queen sized air mattress and went to work finding and repairing the leak.  It has a built-in pump so I pumped her up and took it out to the pool.  I found the leak and remembered it was a spot that Jasmine had stepped on and poked a hole in it with her toenail.  So I went to work coating it with glue and putting on patches.  Seems much better.

Yesterday Lucie and I took a 2.5 hour drive down to Bethany Beach.  Really nice little area.  Of course it was 102ยบ out but at least there there was a strong breeze.  I wasn't too excited about sitting on the hot sand baking (even under an umbrella) so we walked around the shops and looked at things.  Nice time.  Stopped for supper on the way home.  It was pretty relaxing because Elliott stayed home with the dogs (Ashleigh was working) so we didn't have a curfew to beat.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Roughing It

Lucie and the family decided we needed a 9 man tent so they got one for me for Father's Day.  Anyone who knows us knows that my definition of "roughing it" is staying in a hotel that doesn't have room service.  So on Sunday night (we were all off Monday July 4), we put it up in the backyard.  Went up pretty quickly - especially since we had never done anything like that before.  They got me a battery powered fan and light for it too, but we had to put an electric fan out there due to the heat and humidity.  We all made our own nest in there with cushions and pillows and sleeping bags.  Of course being very careful to keep all bugs out.  We stayed in the house till about midnight before going out.  There were some power issues with the extension cord but pretty quickly we were all settled in and fine.  We kept the dogs in the house.  All was OK for a while but then I quickly discovered that my cushion was too thin (yes - the cushion was too thin.  I was not too heavy...).  So every pressure point seemed to hit the ground.  I slept off and on through the night.  Then it got too cold.  At 5:17 AM the birds started in so I packed up my pillow and went inside and went to bed.  Pretty fun though.  We will do it again and be better prepared.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Towers and Troubles

Today, yes during the holiday weekend, we made the 80 mile trip to Tower Beach in southern Delaware.  Took 2 hours to get 10 miles away, another hour to make those last 10 miles...  Anyway, it was a great day - warm and breezy.  The water was chilly but I got some sun and a nap.  Of course when we got home the sun was nice enough to point out exactly where I missed with the sunscreen....  We left the dogs outside and Mocha doesn't eat or nap when we leave her alone so she wolfed down her supper and flopped.

Had some cable modem issues - it would randomly reboot.  Annoying to me - devastating to Elliott when he is trying to play XBox online.  So I went to Comcast and picked up a rental to test.  If it holds up, I will know my old modem was dying.  It's only been a few days but the rental hasn't rebooted yet.

Got a weird pool issue - silt on the bottom.  It is very fine and wispy but dark.  It is not sandy or gritty.  If I wipe my hand over it, it sorts of fades away.  But settles back down on the bottom.  I have vacuumed it out with the filter set to WASTE so it doesn't re-circulate but rather pumps straight out to the yard.  The next day the bottom is silty again.  I may have to add some stuff to make it coagulate ("flocculate" is the technical term) and try to vacuum it out again.

Ashleigh is pretty much working full time over the summer.  Elliott is in vacation mode.  He got his report card - straight A's and is in the top 10 of his class.  He plays lacrosse Thursday afternoons and is driving.

My feet are doing much, much better.  The two cortisone shots, inserts, meds, exercises and wicked expensive new sneakers are really helping.  I thought it would be the end of my basketball career but the Doc says I have a ways to go...

No big plans for the 4th.  But tomorrow night will be the first night in the Hale family tent.  Should be quite an experience...