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WEEK 18 2012

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First Post, 17 March 2002

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2011

Saturday 5 May2012

Saturday - Working, down in Ventura County. Limited internet access, no no blogging for a few days at least...

Friday 4 May 2012

Friday - Since it was predicted to be warm next week, in the 90's, I had to fix the bearings on the swamp cooler today or risk frying my cat. It turned out to be a fairly easy procedure, with limited time on the ladder.

The bearings are "pillow bearings", which in turn have a little "U" shaped housing, which is in turn fastened upside-down to a cross bracket.

You can buy the bearings without the housings, but it only saves you fifty cents per bearing, so I bought two. I assumed that the old bearings would be frozen on to the shaft of the fan, and spent a couple of hours searching for my gear pullers in the garage. I used that effort to good advantage, and things are a bit more orderly now in the garage. It turns out that I didn't really need them, and just a bit of prying removed the key at about the 8:00 postion, and twisting got the old unit off and the new one's slid on without difficulty. Total elapsed time was probably under an hour and a half.

The new bearnings did take a fair amount of oil, I guess they are shipped dry, but running the unit all night without any problems assured me that things were OK to be left unattended.

I still want to clean up (de-rust) and repaint the fan and a couple of other spots, but it can wait until I have time.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Thursday - Still a bit sore. I worked most of the day on programming stuff. I was tempted to do some yard work stuff, but held off. I know from experience that I'll just get sucked into stuff and wouldn't get any programming done if I did.

Book #47 was Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three, by Ian Douglas.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Wednesday - I pulled a muscle or something in my leg while working on stuff yesterday - too much time on a ladder, perhaps - so I mostly just worked on cleaning things up, putting tools away and so on. No work until Saturday, and the weather is pretty temperate, so I'll let the leg heal up a bit before seeing if replacing the squirrel cage bearings are going to be a doable task.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Tuesday - I worked all day on the swamp cooler replacement. The old one had to come out, and the squirrel cage motor and bracket transferred over. The new unit is bigger, so I had to get a new belt - a good idea anyway, the old one was about shot. We had to detach to exhaust and control section from the old unit and then fit everything into place and mark it for screwing and bolting onto the new unit. The new unit had a bigger exhaust port, so we had to also get some galvanized metal and cover the extra area. The old support needed to be realigned and painted, the turnbuckles adjusted, and since the new unit was shorter there were some 2x4 shims to put under it, which also needed priming and painting. The old pump was shot so I picked up a new one.

I had the help of A in the morning, and he came back in the afternoon for another round of fitting and adjusting. It was definitely a two man job. A bit after 7:00pm in the evening it was ready to go, so I kicked it on, fan only, and let it run.

At 9:00pm there was a tremendous squealing of bearings, so I shut it down. I'll have to replace those. Somewhere in the garage is a gear puller. I'm not really surprised, both bearings showed signs of leakage and took way too much oil, compared to the few drops that my 14 year old Essick unit took.

I haven't sealed the gap between unit and house, so it'll be relatively easy to take the whole unit out, if we must.

It's odd, the case itself has almost no signs of use, but there is corrosion on the squirrel cage, and of course the bearings are worn out. I wonder if someone re-used an old blower unit in the new case?

The weather is only going to be in the low 80's, so it's safe to leave the house with the unit not working, if need be. It was predicted to be in the high 90's, which had me worried, but the weather liars got it wrong again.

Once I get the bearings fixed I also need to replace the pads and paint the support the appropriate shade of tan, and I should be good for another 14 years or so...

Monday 30 April 2012

Monday - A little more yard work done, and a bit of Xcode stuff. Tomorrow I have someone coming over to help with modifying and installing the new-to-me swamp cooler - they are just a little too big and bulky for one person to handle safely. Not much else going on.

Went over to a friend's rental house and reprogrammed the sprinkler timer. It had no backup battery and the power had gone off :-(

Sunday 29 April 2012

Sunday - The grass already needs mowing again - and it's only been a week.

Spent morning until mid afternoon working in the yard. I'm pretty tired, but I got a little more painting done, and some more plants planted. As a matter of fact all the new ones are planted, so now I don't have to worry about them expiring in the pot - they'll die in the earth as God intended.

Book #46 was In The Lion's Mouth, by Mike Flynn. This is the sequel to Up Jim River (2011's Book #13) and we are exposed to the further adventures of the mysterious secret agent Donovan and the people around him.

The powerful Ravn Olafsdottr, a Shadow of the Names, slips into Clanthompson Hall to tell mother and daughter of the fate of Donovan buigh. In the Long Game between the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery, Hound and Shadow are mortal enemies; yet a truce descends between them so that the Shadow may tell her tale. There is a struggle in the Lion’s Mouth, the bureau that oversees the Shadows—a clandestine civil war of sabotage and assassination between those who would overthrow Those of Name and the loyalists who support them.

We get a better idea of who the Names are, finally, and what is (really?) going on in the backstory of this series. Well done, and I look forward to the next book.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Bird in San Diego's Zoo.

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