sailing the NorSea

x

WEEK 6 2019 

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week

Picture of the Week

MAIN PAGE

Oxnard  Weather Underground
Click for Oxnard, California Forecast
Lancaster Weather Underground
Click for Lancaster, California Forecast 		Martinez WeatherUnderground
Click for Buchanan, California Forecast

Seventeen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002,		 Sixteen Years Ago, This Week, 2003 Fifteen Years Ago, this week, 2004 Fourteen Years Ago, this week, 2005 Thirteen Years Ago, This Week, 2006
 Twelve Years Ago, This Week, 2007
 Eleven Years Ago, This Week, 2008
 Ten Years Ago, This Week, 2009
 Nine Years Ago, This Week, 2010
 Eight Years Ago This Week,
2011
 Seven Years Ago This Week,
2012		 Six Years Ago,
This Week,
2013		 Five Years Ago This Week 2014 Four Years Ago This Week, 2015 Three Years Ago This Week, 2016 Two Years Ago This Week, 2017 One Year Ago This Week, 2018 ,


 



Saturday 9  February  2019
Saturday - Snow in the hills predicted.  More snow, since we got some earlier in the week!

Friday 8 February 2019
Friday - Cold and wet.

I received a text from my brother that the old place in Martinez is finally up for sale.  They are only asking $400k.  We sold for $330, and it's been sitting, empty and untouched for fifteen months - there is a new back door, but there is also damage to the kitchen wall that is new, judging from the pictures.  I don't think the flippers are doing a very good job...

Thursday 7 February 2019
Thursday - A day spent in various paperwork things.

The internet is finally back.

Most importantly was trying to get something fixed with Covered California.  Sigh.  Hours on the phone.  It looks like the process to fix a mistake is started.

Wednesday 6 February 2019

Wednesday - Cold, with small amounts of snow on the ground in the morning.  My brother in Reno tested that it was 6F and snow...

Working away on various things in the morning, trying to get back into programming after a disastrously non-productive month of January.

I did a very short walk outside, less than a mile.  Brrr.


And, around noon, I lost the internet entirely. So I read documentation instead.

Amusingly my friend's son apparently called Frontier about it and got their support person: "Yeah, we know, we're trying to figure it out. CLICK", and they hung up on him. He was offended but I just laughed: that's the sort of obnoxious thing that thing people old enough to remember "Ma Bell" and the other phone monopolies were used to.

Tuesday  5 February 2019
Tuesday - Rain and threatening clouds in the morning

Eventually the rain turned to hail.

In the evening it finally snowed, just a little.  Yay! Go "Polar Vortex" and "Global Warming"!

My brother up near Reno sent me some pictures of his snow - vast quantities, and it's single digit temperatures there, not our 25F.


It's good to have the pellet stove going. 

It went out a couple of times, but I think it's due to the size of the "HEAT'RS" brand pellets - they are often about 1.5" long, and the manual calls for a max length of 0.75". Occasionally the auger will dump a half dozen of these huge pellets into the burn pan and put out the fire. I mixed in some smaller pellets from a different brand and that seems to have solved the problem.

In fact, with the vast amount of ash removed during the repair process it is working and running better than it did!  Much hotter and even cleaner: less ash and less soot even after a days worth of heating.

Monday 4 February 2019
Monday - Rain.

I fiddled a bit with the pellet stove and got it to work. The official silicone hose, which connects the exhaust fan plenum to a back pressure sensor for any flue obstruction, hasn't arrived but I made a temporary fix.

Sunday I had bought a 1 foot extension flue flue pipe which I ran horizontally from the back of the stove to the existing vertical flue. I can now run the stove without it being in the chimney proper - I still need to track down the leak.

(The local pellet store had wanted $59 for the pipe - Lowe's had it for $10).

It seems to be working well, and I enjoy having the cheery little flames.  I'd forgotten how noisy the circulation fan is, but that's just part of having a pellet stove.

Sunday 3 February 2019
Sunday - Cool, but no rain.

CBS had, it turned out, a free stream of Superbowl 53, so I had it on in the background.  It was a real defensive battle, and not all that interesting to me to be honest.  When the stream died about 5 minutes before the end of the game I tried a few time to reconnect, and failed.  I didn't bother to check the score - someone sent me a text an hour or two later that the Pats had won.


I did a bit of shopping in town with S.  To thank A I bought a bunch of Porterhouse steaks for the family at Stater Brothers. I essentially dropped them off at the doorstep, not wanting to get too involved with the plague types...


I reassembled the pellet stove, with the special fan, oiled with the special oil.  Unfortunately I lost (it kind of looks like a cat toy I suspect) the little silicone hose that connected the combuster to a safety switch, and couldn't actually light it.  After going to four separate places to try and buy that type of high temperature hose I just gave up and have ordered it on-line.  Bah.




Picture of the Week

Suzy looking out the window
Suzy looking at a cat across the street, 2019.

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week