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Post by CampKohler on Mar 7, 2016 0:39:48 GMT
Perhaps that is why Floppy is quiet as well. Should we change the name of the forum to "Biggest Customers of National Healthcare?" (or whatever Obama is forcing on us?) ---- We are in the middle of a famous drought, so naturally it has been raining. It cleared up yesterday morning, so I went to Goodwill to pick up a bookcase I bought for 10 USD. Just as I got it tied down to the top of the car, it started to rain again! Thanks for nothing, rain god. I had to pour the water out and wipe it down before taking it indoors. Last night, I bought a second one for the same price, so I went again this morning to pick it up. It is 3" shallower, but the wood finish is much nicer (less People's Furniture Factory #3-ish). Luckily it was dry and the sun was shining and scheduled to remain so for a couple of hours, so I had no problems. Now it is back to slightly-sprinkly for the remainder of the day. ---- While doing the pickup, I checked the Great Depository out back of the GW. Someone had done a moving dump last night or early this morning, which can be deduced from the kind and nature of the items disposed. For example, food stuffs directly from the fridge is a dead giveaway. There are usually a collection of mismatched items, such as lids and tops for kitchen things that are no longer to be found, but were "too good" to toss out. Somehow these seem to be exactly what I need for the stuff I have no lids and tops for. There was also a bag of bath towels.* They may need washing, but look perfectly OK to me. Likewise I found several very nice looking golf shirts my size, which were distasteful only in that they had absorbed some kind of liquid, possibly toxic, that had recently fallen from the skies. Top that off with a Stanley utility knife and 40-watt glue gun, and I say it was a good day. ---- *I haven't bought a bath towel since I joined the air force in 1964 (and I still have those two towels I had to buy). They must multiply in people's closets somehow and escape into the night looking for empty Dumpsters (and for the deranged ones, the center of a street).
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 10, 2016 7:15:52 GMT
This has been brake mechanical repair week. As the rains have brought up lawn grass the size of small bushes, I had to get the lawn mower running. I tore the top of the motor off before I realized that the reason the motor wouldn't turn was because I was not squeezing the dead-man brake handle. After putting it all back together and adding gas, it then started on the first pull, proving there was not a thing wrong. My Saturn's front brakes started their screech to warn of worn pads. I bought a new set of disk pads and the bro-in-law refreshed my memory of how you replace them (read sat there and guided me through all the steps). All is well now.
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Speaking of the bro-in-law, I came up with three office task chair bottoms to be used as stools in his duck hunting club clubhouse. Unfortunately, the owner of the club just lost his lease, so the stools are no longer needed. I think I will store them until he finds a new club.
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I am dog sitting for this week while the sis and bro-in-law are on a trip to S. California to visit with his new stepbrother. Well, he is by no means new agewise, but his whereabouts were recently discovered after a genealogical search by my sister. (They met back east on a recent trip to visit relatives in the native mountain country of Virginia.)
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Post by eliseharris on Mar 12, 2016 19:23:22 GMT
Amazing what genealogy searches bring up. I recently discovered the father of my uncle [by marriage] was captured by the Germans and died in Buchenwald. I had visited the village where he lived (a street was named after him) and his grave, but he wasn't in the grave. He had been a member of the French Resistance and the Germans rounded up all the suspected resistance members and took them away in 1944. The family assumed he had been shot in the woods but didn't know when or whether it was actually what happened. fmdcde.free.fr/22500098ac0e77402/0441019bd113dc957/index.html#0441019bff1364e0f
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 12, 2016 22:13:43 GMT
I've been watching the TV series Evolution of Evil while dog sitting. It staggers the imagination of how cruel people can be. And they are still that way. We are very lucky indeed to live where we don't have to confront much of that, and if we do, it becomes nation-wide news in short order. ---- The sis and bro-in-law, through driving (no pun intended) rain showers, came home a day early, thus ending this stint of dog sitting. Remember, we are in the middle (?) of a drought. It was dry this morning, but will be raining again this afternoon and tomorrow. It should be clear all next week. My lawn, after just having been mowed down to 3" a week ago is back to 6", so next week I have to start in again (but this time without needlessly tearing apart the mower). ---- Yesterday I went to Sacramento City Hall to attend a hearing on my rejected contesting of a parking ticket. These was a roster of a couple dozen people, but I was the only one there. I anticipated an formal court-like setting with stern-faced city officials, but it was in a kitchen-sized room with just me and the very-nice (contracted) appeals lady, who seemed reasonable. I explained how and where I parked during the five hours I was parked at various spaces. I think it will go my way, saving 54 USD, but if it doesn't, I can appeal to superior court, where they would probably be a bit ticked off for me wasting their time. ---- This morning I found a small brushed-steel-front fridge in gorgeous shape, including still having its cord, in a dumpster. The last two found here had fatal defects, so this one will probably as well, but I can't seem to resist at least testing them. I learn something each time.
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 15, 2016 23:58:22 GMT
Yesterday I went to the county admin building downtown to pester them about my friend's road. I had been reading about adverse possession, and wondered what the county would do if my friend sued the squatter and lost (the squatter can't initiate the suit; the owner has to fail to defend his land). That is to say, if she lost and the judge awarded the squatter the land, would the county just assign a new parcel number to the land and it's done? You see, normally, if a land owner wanted to split a parcel, he would have to pay thousands in fees and the county would have to study it all to death (are there any Indian burial sites on the land, etc.) and then grant permission. In the case where the court, in effect, splits a parcel, does the squatter get out of all that? I stumped the lady at the planning desk, but got a card of someone in the Survey Section that is supposed to know these things. ---- I finished off the afternoon doing research at the Recorder's office. I found another missing deed and found their top-secret list of indexing abbreviations, one of which was mispelled. In the evening, I watched a library DVD, The Lazarus Effect. The only recognizable star was the heroine, played by Olivia Wilde, who was the lesbian doctor Thirteen on the TV show, House. Instead of good writing, there was a lot of scary music and joking around by sneaking up on each other and saying boo! What mediocrity! Technically it was lacking as well. For example, they used banana plugs as probes into a biological sample. Take a look at one with all its cracks and crevices. You would never get it sterile. The mugs just grabbed whatever was at hand and jammed it into the Petri dish. And the switch to turn on the experimental jolts of electricity would normally be a small button or maybe a timer, but I can just hear the director saying, "NO, NO, I WANT A BIG SWITCH. NO, NO, BIGGER!!" They used your typical beefy safety switch that made a satisfactorily-important clunking sound, but was somehow supposed to be dangerous enough to electrocute the heroine as part of the plot. They even had another female operating it wearing a big insulating glove. This was a safety switch! Duh! It literally was a relief when it ended, and I happily returned it to it's case.
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 16, 2016 20:57:11 GMT
Last night I watched the 1947 B&W film, The Bishop's Wife, starring Cary Grant, David Niven*, Loretta Young and a host of old, familiar faces, such as Elsa Manchester. Oh, every minute of this film one could see skilled hands at work on both sides of the lens. It was a bit sentimental compared to today's movies, but expertly done in all respects. Someone should take today's moviemakers and point their noses towards the screen and say, "See? That's how you do it!"
It is easy to forget that, except for a couple of kids, every person involved in the production is probably dead, but will live forever in some film vault if there aren't any nuclear wars.
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I bought an electric chain saw at Goodwill last night for 18 USD. If it wasn't for the need of 120 volts, I could send it to Elise to "mow" the miscellaneous tree branches lying around in her garden.
---- *At Goodwill, I found his book, Bring on the Empty Horses, about his younger days in Hollywood. It was well worth the 50 cents.
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 19, 2016 0:43:35 GMT
Last night I watched Five Easy Pieces, with Jack Nicholson and Karen Black. It is a famous film, but I had never seen it. The best thing was that it was the director's cut and had a commentary by the director and the interior designer (his ex), which told about all the goings on while filming. For the freedom of making the movie they way they wanted to in all respects, they simply had to bring it in under 750,000 USD. Whacky ending, but well worth watching.
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Post by eliseharris on Mar 22, 2016 15:27:25 GMT
Watched the musical version of From Here to Eternity on Sky Arts. I like it, though it probably isn't a perfect adaptation.
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 23, 2016 1:37:52 GMT
Elise, I hope you are coming out of your unhealthy funk. Maybe you need to drag a chair out to the garden and watch the frogs as a pick-me-up. ---- Yesterday, the end of this spate of rains was petering out, so that was an excuse not to mow the lawn. Being as the libraries are closed on Monday, I spent the afternoon at the Recorder's office doing more research. As all the PCs were in use and an elderly couple came in, I gave them my PC for a while. It turns out he is a retired USAF historian and is doing research on Camp Kohler, the place. What a coincidence. We swapped war stories of stuff we have found out. They found unique maps from the National Archives at San Bruno, CA. One shows the sewer system of the camp, which places all the buildings. Unfortunately, for anything large, you have to take notes or pix, because they won't scan it for you; you need to take a hand scanner and laptop to do it right. I found a document a few days ago that was indexed with a forward slant (/) in one of the party names. Up until the Internet, any punctuation was verboten and the computer system was blocked to prevent searching with punctuation to match. Then some dummy indexer started putting periods in names with .com on the end. That did it! Then you could no longer search for them because of the block. By the time I found that out, dozens and dozens of docs had been indexed with the dot, none of them able to be searched. The solution was to unblock for periods only and all was well again, because "everyone" knows to put a dot before com. Then I saw the slash and reported it, even suggesting that they not to unblock the slant in order to fix one miss-indexed doc. So what did they do? Instead of correcting the one doc, they unblocked the slant! So, far into the future, you will have to search with the slant and without the slant to do a complete search where there might be a slant. Dumb! The lady at the counter (who is a hoot) said she was going to call me Slash from now on, because it was all my fault. So I told her I was going to call her Dot. And we do.
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Post by eliseharris on Mar 28, 2016 10:42:48 GMT
I am in Wales for a few weeks. My birthday next week. I will try and get some videos made while I am here!
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Post by CampKohler on Mar 29, 2016 23:39:59 GMT
Happy birthday! If you have any sort of celebration, please video it for us. You don't have to wear any pointy hats on our account, though, but it would be fun to see what sort of presents you get. How about a gift certificate for a free parachute jump lesson? (Arf, arf!)
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It turns out I was wrong about no necessity of reprogramming the Recorder's computer to accept forward slashes. (Not that this was told to me; they remained absolutely mum about it, which is typical for the govt.) I happened upon some documents that had as party names the names of some trusts, e.g. "John A/Jane D Revokable Living Trust". Notice how they slipped a slash in there to separate the two spouse's first names. It turns out this happened a lot, so there are hundreds of these documents and they either had to reprogram or the laborious alternative was to individually correct the indexing for all these documents by removing the slash from each one. Guess which way they chose to go? In all my years down there I had never run across one of these before, so they must have some special way to search the database and find out how many there were (which you absolutely cannot do from the clunky public PCs we have to use).
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I have been finding some good electronics buys at Goodwill. Last week I got over 1,000 USD of various surround sound and hifi speakers for less than 80 USD. This morning they brought out a Samsung 2012 46" HD LED TV, but they couldn't get it to work. So they were going to dump it in salvage, but I said I would take it as is for 40 USD, and they caved. I am pretty sure there is something wrong with it, because there is a blink when you turn it on, but nothing stays on the screen. As this TV is new-ish, is a current product, and goes for upwards of 900 USD even today, I think it is worth fixing. (Even similar smaller screen TVs go for more than 60 USD there.)
At my next stop, I notice my wallet was missing. I quickly drove back to the GW, and there it was on the asphalt next to where I had parked, and nothing was missing. It was my own "ass' fault." Disaster averted!
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I got the front lawn mowed after about four mower fits. Somehow water from the last storm (we're in a drought, don't forget) managed to get in the gas tank. Even after draining out a goodly amount from the carburetor bowel, it would still die out after a few laps around, but I think it is finally all gas now. From now on, I am putting a waterproof cover over the mower when I'm not using it.
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Post by CampKohler on Apr 3, 2016 21:12:06 GMT
This morning I saw another HD TV at Goodwill, this one was considerably smaller, but priced at only 30 USD. I hauled it over to the test area and plugged it it. When turned on, some streaks appeared across the screen, but clearly there were four hammer-head-sized black blotches showing that something hammer-head-like had broken the screen in those places. Just my luck. ---- Out back of that GW, someone had tossed a nice little Samsung microwave into the Dumpster. Luckily the homeless did not find it first and cut off the cord, so I will be able to test it easily. The turntable and turntable driver were still in it. My fingers are crossed. ---- Yesterday I went to the Sylvan Oaks branch of the Sacramento Public Library, because they were having one of their periodic used book sales. (This Streetview shot just happened to be taken during a previous sale.) Now all of the 28 branches do this, but this branch is the only one I know of that sets out boxes and carts of books for free that they can't imagine anyone would buy. Some of these are surprisingly useful, such as cookbooks, computer books, etc. Plus I snag all the VHS tapes (" Cure foot fungus in 82 easy steps!") to be reused by recording over the blah content. I came back with a stack of books two feet tall, some of which are for relatives for their hobbies, etc. One was a kid's reader which I will save for my grand niece, who is getting ready to start school. Click to enlarge; click Back to return.
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Post by CampKohler on Apr 8, 2016 0:01:30 GMT
Yesterday I goofed off entirely and spent it reading Grisham's Pelican Brief, which is pretty good.
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The day before, I tested out a little fridge cube I found in a Dumpster, and it works perfectly!
I also tried out the Samsung microwave that I found in another Dumpster. The LED display is not as bright as I would hope for, but other than that, it seems to work OK. The thing was complete with glass turntable and driver, too.
What is the matter with people, throwing away a perfectly good appliances? Oh, well, if I am going to find them, I suppose someone has to toss them out.
Driving down the street, I found an Epson 3-in-one printer, all shiny and bright, in a spot that an apartment dweller does yard sales and occasionally leaves things behind. The paper tray was missing.
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The pull start cord on my mower broke. Home Depot had no replacement part in their mower section (which was sadly lacking), but they did have some suitable parachute cord at only 9 cents a foot, so I bought 15' of it. It was slightly larger in diameter than the original, but worked OK. I am about 3/4 done with the mowing. The grass is so high that it clogs the mower discharge chute, so I have to stop it, pull out a couple of handfuls of grass, restart and continue mowing.
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Post by CampKohler on Apr 12, 2016 22:23:48 GMT
It rained lightly for two days, because we are in a deep drought. Yesterday, I started back in on mowing the deep grass. Mow, stop, unclog, repeat. There is maybe an hour more to do, then it will be short enough that I can keep up with it when mowing at a walk. It usually takes about four mowings until it stops growing for the summer, at least stops enough not to attract the fire department's attention. I figured out how the water is getting in the mower gas tank over the winter. It is not leaking in from the sky, but rather moisture in the air is entering the gas cap vent and condensing. So the answer is not so much covering the mover, but covering the filler hole with plastic wrap to seal it and then screwing on the cap for the winter. That's my theory, anyway. ---- At the above mentioned Friends of the Library book sale, one of the free books I got was Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist. It's about the perception of happiness, which would be a pretty dull subject except for the comedic talents of the author. The interesting thing is that the book appears to be a Sacramento Public Library book! Looking in the system, one volume was lost and paid for, and the other was due in Dec, 2015. I am going to find out if this book is one of the lost little sheep. How did the Friends get it?
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Post by CampKohler on Apr 13, 2016 21:17:41 GMT
Upon inquiry at the library, the free library book I got was paid for 2.5 years ago. You have only 6 months to get back all but 5 USD of the 25 USD lost-book fee, so whoever it was is two years too late, so I'll donate it back to the library after I finish reading it.
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More mowing. For some reason this year, the grass right behind my house is tougher and clogs the mower more easily than that of the front and far back of the lot, and so I can stand it just so much a day. The back yard is 1/2 done, so I will just have to keep grinding (literally) away for three or four more days.
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