Coffee 8-4-12

009to090 wrote:

VigIIPeaBurner wrote: Picked up some Sour Black from my local brewery, Weyerbacher, last night. got one in the fridge to chase off the heat later this afternoon. Sure is a different drink but it grows on your buds just nicely

Heyyyyyy, not that sounds interesting! What is the taste? does it have alot of bitters? ...8<...

Pretty mixed up but interesting, more like a wine - but not They brew a black ale and it's aged in Pinot Noir wine barrels with wild yeasts. Smells of wine and beer, tastes change as it hits your tungue. First come the dark malts, then the tannins from the wine & barrel with a bit of wood taste and then the sour hits but not hard.

I've still got my first plinker. Earned it helping a neighbor clean brush and trimmings from his plum trees when I was a kid. Nothing fancy but I still enjoy that old Stevens

SteveZee wrote: my old gal, my house cat is on her last legs.

Awwww... Pretty kitty. Sorry to hear that she's near her time. 16 is a good long life. Her memories will live forever.

LsFarm wrote:
DTE, my power company came by to check things out, after I presented photos of my voltmeter at a township meeting last week.. the meter was reading 105volts.
The DTE folks looked things over, measured the voltage at the meter, it was early in the day, about 10am, so my meter plugged into the
kitchen outlet was reading 110. The reading at the meter was 111.2, the other leg 111.8.. DTE considers 114 minimum.
So I said, wait till 4pm, when everyone else upstream turns up their A/C units, it will drop another 5 volts..

So they have a little meeting, and decide my transformer must be at fault.. the transformer feeds only my house.. and the low voltage
varies with the time of day and OTHER consumers of current upstream of me... not with my use.. they didn't get it.. and of course, Greg L

The way my electric utility troubleshoots these problems is to put a recording instrument on the line. They select a homeowners meter that has easy but out of sight access. They remove the meter an install an adapter cable that goes to a recording time of day voltmeter. A week or so later an engineer comes and plugs the flash drive from the recording voltmeter into his laptop. Depending on what he sees the transformer tap is adjusted and/or replaced. I had this done on my stepdown transformer line that feeds multiple homes. Just happened to catch the engineer when he was looking at the data. We had an interesting conversation about the process.

Getting such a test run is a challenge. I did it by making an end run around customer service and talking to the engineering department directly. Took a fair amount of detective work to find the right phone number.

Greg, hows the digital smart meter install issue you posted about months ago? Did the new meters get installed. My utility has a schedule for installing smart meters to all residential customers. It's a schedule that will take several years. My turn is next year. You can opt out but it costs you money.

Speaking of power trouble, did I post the story about my neighbor trimming grape vines off his service line with a chain saw?

Let's just say, he was lucky to be able to call the electric company and ask them to come out and install a new line!

Looks like I get Sunday coffee...yesterday was too crazy in the morning. My wife found out on Friday that some of her best friends from highschool were camping 1.5 hours away. She hadn't seen them in 15 years, and who knows when she would get another chance...so we loaded up the Tahoe and struck out for Warrensburg NY. It was our first real road trip with Ivan (and the Tahoe), and you would have thought we were going to Mexico for a month. Stroller, camping chairs, cooler, diaper bags, towels...lets just say Freddy's Geo wouldn't have been up to the task. Ivan napped most of the way South, and we had a great day with everyone. The ride home wasn't as great...Ivan refused to nap and was pretty cranky by the time we got home. All in all it was a good trip, and I was impressed with the gas mileage of our Tahoe...19.3 mpg average through the Adirondacks at 72 mph.

My EFM is still running for hot water with no fuss.

Freddy wrote:

SteveZee wrote: my old gal, my house cat is on her last legs.

Awwww... Pretty kitty. Sorry to hear that she's near her time. 16 is a good long life. Her memories will live forever.

Thanks Freddie

All we can do sz is give them the best life we can & that one looks pretty damn happy--I've posted this before, but it sure covers the the whole thing for me.

Yeah sorry to hear that Steve. I've got 4 of the little furry guys runnin' around here. I'm a big cat fan - our personalities are compatible. They are like family so I can only imagine what your goin' through. I agree with Fred - looks like a happy cat. You did your part well.

WOW a ragtop GEO! Never knew that was even an option! Either way, that top came out MINT! Nice job Freddy! You could make some big bucks re-doing classics, like any 60's era Impala, et.al.

Greg - what a nightmare your going through there! I absolutely hate when you know what the problem is, and yet the company REFUSES to listen. I've gone through this with internet & land-line phone with Verizon. They always want to blame the wiring in my house ... or have me unplug my modem (or whatever that DSL thing is) as if I haven't already tried all that crap. Seems to be standard business practice today - ignore the problem, then spend tens of thousands of dollars fixing things that AREN'T the problem. Geesh!!

Yesterday was too hot to do any kind of work, so I hooked up with a couple buddies & headed up north on the Roadliner to a mobile dyno guy who was set up at a Harley dealership. Put my Roadliner on there because it was running lean at idle/cruise (fuel injected ... so instead of turning a screw, I have to spend $75 for a dyno run ), & this guy has the latest greatest computer dyno in the state. Gained a couple Ft. Lbs. of torque from 2,800 rpm up to redline, plus cured the low-end leanness that was generating some BIG engine heat. There's alot of metal there ... and let me tell ya - it tosses that heat off BIG TIME! Even in this heat, she still managed to lay down 115 ft.lbs. of torque right to the ground. Take note of the intake air temperature reading on the chart in the pic. The temp is correct, but I'd bet the farm the humidity is totally wrong! I was sweating buckets, so it was well above the 27% stated!

My buddy beat my 91 HP with his Nitrous injected GSXR1000 crotch-rocket - he laid down a very impressive 184 REAR WHEEL HP!! Without the bottle, still 150 HP! He & I built that engine 7 years ago. Proud to have my fingerprints all over the internals.

Finally replaced the 26 year old radiator in our Marquis. Should have been a simple 15 minute job ... but you know how that goes - always multiply what you think it's gonna take by 8.

Bought the radiator from Advance Auto. With the coupon codes you can find online, you get parts REAL cheap ... but ..... there's a reason for that ......

I swear the metal surrounding the radiator was LEAD. It was about as strong. Trying to install the clips in the bottom, which secure the bottom of the plastic radiator shroud, the metal bent, twisted, & tweaked in every possible direction. I've never seen such a poorly made pile of *censored* in my life!! There was no comparison between the well-made Ford product, and this red china pile of *censored*! If we get 4 years out of this one with NO SALT, NO WINTER, I'll be amazed ...

So I install the rad, then I go to bolt up the top of the shroud. WHERE THE HELL ARE THE BOLT HOLES??? There aren't any. So now I grab my smoking DeWalt, shooting sparks & smoke everywhere, trying to drill 2 holes for the shroud mount. Luckily, because the metal is such *censored*, I drilled the 2 holes in less than 5 minutes with burned up brushes in the drill, and my dullest drill bit.

Hey Smitty, did the trans. cooler lines come out easily or did the tube turn with the fitting? I swapped the radiator in my '88 Marquis when I first got it and had to cut the cooler lines...dam things were totally seized.

No they came right out. We never drive this in the winter, which is why it's still able to be driven after 9 years of ownership.

Was a creampuff when we bought it - looked showroom. Only 68k miles on her. We had to drive it just 3 months of that winter in '03 - Jan., Feb., & March, so any rot happening is all from those 3 months. The rear bumper is starting to perforate through - if hit it would collapse in a heap, as the structure behind it is totally rotted away. Also a few cancer spots showing up around the body too. But overall this thing is solid for a MA car. Basically zero corrosion in the engine compartment.

Hello Everyone, missed out on coffee on Sat. I was out riding PA.
Sad news to hear bout your kitty Steve. We like cats around here too. It sure is sad when one goes away.

Nice pic Cap! My wife was just saying how she wanted to do something different this year, instead of our yearly visit to one of my relatives in VT. He's a through & through liberal .. and the political bickering that goes on when we visit is getting to be too much for her ... and myself. Sad state we're in today as a country ..... but anyway, we were thinking of hitting Steamtown for her vacation. I see the railroad tracks go right over that bridge there - hopefully I can ride the train over that thing.

Hi Yanche.. my smart meter was installed without my knowledge, and the only way I can get rid of it is to pull it out and hand it back to DTE.. and be off grid.
So for now I'm living with it..
The DTE engineer told me a bunch of horror stories about the 'smart meter's.. they aren't very smart.. they are made of plastic, and frequently melt down, he said they had piles of melted meters.. the old analog meters were made of metal, and never give problems..
The government subsidized instalation of these meters has become a boondoggle.. and instead of spending their money on keeping up the lines and
infrastructure, they are installing these meters.. So the lines are failing, but we have smart meters to report the outages.. big deal.

What's a shame, is that DTE didn't even know I had a smart meter installed, much less what they could read from it .. what a waste.

So the installed a much bigger transformer, and I still have very low voltage as the heat rises and the use of current increases. So DTE still has to do something to bring up the voltage on the supply line. I'm not sure how they are going to accomplish it, but by their measurements and stated guidellnes, my voltage is way too low..

After reading about smart meters, & immediately after my buddy had one installed on his house - without his consent - which fried his $200 computer board in his fridge that the utility blames on "his" wiring, I decided to fire off a letter I printed off a website I was directed to. Sent it certified mail to my utility. It tells them in no uncertain terms that their presence on my property without my permission constitutes trespassing, and I hereby forbid them from installing a smart meter, or any other surveillance device.

Agenda 21 is coming to a town near you ...