Spud's blog: Random thoughts and doings between Thanksgiving and Christmas

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than his own soul." - Marcus Aurelius

The sun doesn't get too high in the sky this time of year. The above picture was taken at 10:00 AM, and the sun had barely risen above the trees. It sure hadn't yet warmed up enough to thaw the frost. Before 3:00 PM, the sun has gone behind the trees again, to be seen for the last time.

The birds go through the bird seed and suet cakes rapidly this time of year. They need all the energy they can get with the cold upon us. We have to pay close attention, so that the food doesn't run out - because they've become dependent on seed that we provide. It's a responsibility that pays for itself with many wonderful and interesting visitors. Black-capped chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, northern flicker. The flicker is a fairly large woodpecker - it's not easy to tell size in the images.

The tree: Several years ago, we purchased a pre-lit Christmas tree with hinged branches. The hinged branches make for quick assembly and disassembly. Usually we get the branches fluffed up and the five sections of the tree stacked up in an afternoon. Unfortunately, while the tree is mechanically solid, it was saddled with extremely poor quality light strands. The lights were actually two-wire strands, so that if a single bulb failed, the entire strand went out.

Modern incandescent twinkle light bulbs have a small internal shunt, so that if the filament fails, electricity can still pass through the shunt and power the rest of the strand. This only works if the shunt doesn't also fail. These were pretty cheap bulbs apparently, because last year there were four strands that I couldn't get to work at all. This year I cut them off the tree, and we are attaching our own lights. The new strands are more light-dense. The bulbs are just a couple of inches apart, instead every foot or so. They are also LED bulbs, so they should have a low failure rate. These should last for as long as needed, while using much less power.

This relighting is taking quite a bit of time. My job is to purchase everything needed, take the twist out of each strand of lights, test them, and then cut off the unsightly warning labels. Afterwards, I tighten and cut off the zip ties. The wife does all of the installation.

Below: Getting there - slowly. Each hinged branch requires about 20 zip ties to hold the strands in place during both storage and display.

The bottom three sections are lit, and stacked up on the right. The fourth section (left) is half-lit. No lights have been installed on the top section yet. It's still sitting in a corner.

Above: Every other bulb has a zip tie holding it to a branch, and we are up to about 5000 bulbs at this point. 400-500 bulbs more should finish it up. Ordinarily we would have the tree up and decorated and the house finished by now.

Disease: I am not fond of doctors. I met quite a few pre-med students in college. They were uniformly motivated into the medical profession by lust for money and/or the status of being a doctor. Worse, they sucked up to the professors and cheated on exams. I didn't need to cheat to get good grades, so that means they were even more stupid than I am. As a direct result of my interactions with stupid and vain pre-med students, I refuse to visit a doctor. If a doctor sees me as a patient, it means that I'm either writhing in agony, or I'm unconscious.

Recently our daughter was exposed to someone who learned that they were infected with Covid-19. Since that time we had been self-isolating - until I was able to get my hands on some test kits.

Why these important test kits aren't available in Wal Mart for $20 like a pregnancy or blood sugar test, I have no idea. The kits are just as easy to use. There is no need for a "medical professional" (LOL) to be involved in this

You swab a finger with the included alcohol wipe. You poke a hole in it with the included stabby needle (AKA lancet). You put a drop of blood in the circle, add a couple drops of buffer to help liquefy the blood, and then wait a few minutes for the liquid to wick through the media.

Interpreting the results:

You should get a line where the letter "C" is, indicating that the test worked correctly and is valid.
If you get a line at IgM, you are currently infected.
If you get a line at IgG, you were previously infected.
If you get no line except for the "C", congratulations! You tested negative for Covid
If you get no lines at all, the test is not valid - do it over.

My test: One line at the "C" marker. Valid test, Negative result, 96% accuracy. Peace of mind, without the bullshit paperwork, or a day-wasting expensive doctor visit. What a fleecing machine the medicine, insurance, and pharma industries have become.

Car stuff: When I purchased the Subie, there was no power cord for an engine block heater, so I assumed that it didn't have an engine heater. I purchased an inexpensive kit from Amazon - It was $30-40 dollars or so.

If you look at the picture above, you will notice that the cord can unplug at both ends. This is pretty weird - you would think the end under the car would be potted (sealed into the heating element to prevent water ingress), but it's not. When I crawled underneath the car to install the heater, there was already a brass heater screwed into the #2 cylinder water jacket, but there was no power cord to be found. #2 cylinder is the front cylinder on the driver side.

I had a bit of a dilemma at this point. Should I simply plug the new power cord into the old heater and hope that it worked? If it didn't work, I'd have to jack the car back up again later to work on it. I decided to start with everything new. I drained the coolant, replaced the old heater, ran the new power cord out through the front grille, and then refilled the coolant.

I bench-tested the old heater, briefly powering it up and touching it with my thumb. Big mistake - it was insanely hot. A tiny immersion heater that warms an entire engine gets freaking hot when it's not submerged in coolant. It was really painful, and that blister lasted a long time. I kept the old heater, because it certainly worked.

Does the Subie really need an engine block heater? Nope - It's a snow monster. It always starts up just fine, no matter how cold it gets. But I *really* dislike shivering while the engine warms up - and the "heated seats" warm up slower than the engine does. When the engine has been pre-heated, warm air comes out of the vents before I get to the end of the driveway.

To save electricity (and money) I put the engine heater on a heavy-duty timer - it only needs to heat for an hour before leaving for work. It would be really wasteful to heat the engine all night long.

One of the things you'll probably want to do if you decide to plug your car in: Place an obvious reminder to yourself that it's connected to a wall outlet. If you are barely awake and drive out of the garage with the power still connected, you might do some damage. I use a little wooden clothes pin attached to the extension cord, and clip it to the bug deflector.

There are other winter issues with cars and garages. In wetter regions you have to deal with wheel well slop in your garage. The alternative is leaving your car outdoors to be buried in snow.

After you return home, four ice turds will fall out of your wheel wells and begin to melt on the garage floor. For this reason, you can't store anything made of cardboard on the floor - that stuff needs to be up on metal shelving or moving dollies.

Below: A very minor amount of crap from under the wife's car. This goes on all winter long.

After a few hours, you will have four huge puddles of water, gravel and sand on your garage floor. The water is melted snow, the gravel comes from the driveway, and the sand comes from the county snowplow/sanding trucks. At this point you back your vehicle out, use a floor squeegee (or a stiff push-broom if there is a lot of gravel) and push the water and sand back outside where it belongs.

You still have a wet garage floor though. That water will evaporate, humidify the air, and rust everything ferrous in your garage. To prevent this situation, it's a good idea to run a dehumidifier, and keep the moist air from corroding your tools and vehicles. A dehumidifier also helps to speed up the floor drying process. You get to do all this in addition to shoveling snow from your walkway and driveway, sometimes several days a week! Things to ponder if you are considering relocating to a cold/wet climate. Below: A small dehumidifier with a one gallon reservoir - it gets emptied daily when the snow is deep the cars bring a lot inside.

The shop has a much larger dehumidifier with a pump that removes water from the reservoir. I'm not in the shop consistently enough to dump a full reservoir. The dehumidifiers shut down when the reservoir gets full, so the pump is a better option out in the shop. I route the tubing into the deep sink during winter months, because it would freeze if I routed it outdoors.

It's going to be a weird Christmas - I can tell that much already. No shopping, no cards, and so far no tree or decorations. I may try to drive to Boise on one of my few days off between now and Christmas, and bring my mother here for a week or two - there's no way she's getting on a plane at her age with Covid getting so out of hand. A lot depends on the weather and some of it depends on my stamina and level of rest. We shall see how that prospect goes - I'm not that thrilled, but it's on the table...

Edit: Woke up early for work and got a little bit further on the tree. I will be very glad when it's finished. I slapped together a small stand for the top section part of the tree (up front). The top has a slightly smaller diameter trunk than the other sections. The wife isn't too happy with the results. She says it looks like a "mall tree". LOL.

Edit: It's taken a while, but the tree has finally decorated and we have moved on to decorating other stuff. Below: The wife's collection of tree ornaments.