Obstacles and their resolution

 "All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and remembered alike." - Marcus Aurelius

The new dishwasher is in place.  

 I'm glad that I wasn't here for the installation though.  I learned this second-hand from the wife.  Apparently the installer didn't wire it correctly the first time, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for a while.  Thankfully the temporary improper wiring did not damage the electronics.  

When I arrived home, the wife informed me that the kitchen hot water was turned off by the installer due to a leak under the sink.  A compression fitting had *coincidentally* begun leaking while the installer was connecting the new dishwasher to the hot water supply - underneath the kitchen sink.  Upon arriving home, my first activity was to leave again - to the plumbing section of the hardware store, to purchase a new hot water fitting.  That connection above the left shut-off valve was the leaker.

I managed to get the correct compression fitting and get it to stop leaking, then sopped up the water and let the cabinet air out overnight.  Perhaps I should take up appliance installation as a side gig, LOL.

During the recent outage at the plant, the weather turned cold.  It dropped to 15F (-9C).  There was no room to drain the boiler out, so we had to manage the cooldown over the weekend.  Too cold and we would freeze and burst tubes in the boiler.  Too hot and work could not begin inside the gas turbine exhaust on Monday - it was a bit of a balancing act, but it worked out.

The cooling tower got overlooked for a while though, and ice developed in the fill on the back side of it, where nobody noticed.  Typically in the winter months, you have to knock ice off the support structure, but it doesn't accumulate much in the fill, because you can take a cooling tower fan out of service and allow the warm return water to melt the ice.  

 

However when you are offline, there is no warm water - and we aren't normally offline in the winter - so we missed it.  Fortunately the weight of the ice didn't pull the fill down.

It gets cold here from time to time :)
 

I had made videos and mentioned "arc gouging" in a previous post while repairs were going on.  Below is the result.  Prior to arc gouging, there was a bolted flange all the way across.  That flange was melted and blown off by arc gouging.

Was out in the plant the other day and noticed that our boiler repair guy had saved my temporary patch from the auxiliary boiler.  I'm saving it for a memento.

The snow marker stakes I also set up at the church.  I always feel bad when I peel off a layer of sod, knock landscaping bricks loose, or peel off a rain gutter.  I'm getting better at not causing damage, but it's taken a big investment in marker sticks.

The Mercedes is back to doing the Low-Rider thing again, since I've parked it for the winter and put it on a trickle charger.  The weight of the car has pushed hydraulic fluid out of the shocks, and it has now collected in the reservoir. 

I still have the rebuild kit for the lock-out valves that are supposed to prevent this condition.  As well, I still have the tubing wrench set to remove the hydraulic lines (and a spare filter), but it's taking me forever to get to this, because *everything else* has been falling apart even faster.  Can't catch a break!

Speaking of falling apart, the computer I built in 2020 failed to start up a week or two ago, and it beeped 5 times when I tried to power it up, and nothing showed on the monitor at all.  This was a new thing, and it was a bit unnerving, to be honest.  Five beeps means something has gone wrong with the CPU.   I ordered a brand new identical CPU, which arrived in a very reasonable amount of time.

Yesterday I had time to open it up and replace the CPU, but it still did the same thing - five beeps and nothing on the monitor.  Fortunately, there are some tiny red LEDs on the motherboard that indicate general trouble status, even if the display isn't working.  One of them indicated a video issue, and another indicated a CPU problem.  I pulled the video card out of an old machine and swapped it over.  Still no go.  

As a last resort, I pulled an old monitor out that didn't use DisplayPort video, and connected it up with an old HDMI cable.  Weirdly enough, the display showed up on the old monitor, using an alternate video cable.  I connected the new monitor using the HDMI cable, and it worked as well.  I may have simply had a bad DisplayPort cable - it was stretched really tight.  I never imagined that a failed cable would affect the computer like that...  Probably wasted $300 on a CPU.  It ain't cheap being too stupid and lazy to troubleshoot in advance.  Sigh.

On a happier note, I kegged the wheat beer that we made back in September yesterday.  It's a bit on the sweet side, and not as hoppy as I prefer, but it's really good stuff - it has that nice haze from the wheat proteins.  Although it's supposed to be a Blue Moon clone, I added quite a bit of honey, so really it's closer to a Belgian Witbier.

Below:  A commercial wheat beer for comparison - just so you know nothing is wrong with mine!  Most Americans are used to lager beers that look and taste pretty bland.

 Hopefully there's nothing too exciting or distressing in this next week, but Karma seems to have it in for me lately LOL.