Bill Roper's Journal

Today, I managed to knock a couple of small projects off my list with help from K. The hand towel bar in the upstairs bathroom had been falling off the wall, so I took it down earlier this week and filled the holes with the heavy-duty spackle. By today it was dry enough to work on, so I asked K to fetch the huge level from the basement. Then she held things up while I positioned the towel bar using the level, made a couple of pencil marks, and took things back down so that I could screw the mounting hardware in. It seems to be holding nicely, the towel bar is reinstalled, and we'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, I had noticed that the "they don't work" chains on the ceiling fan in K's room did not seem to be due to a failing switch, which is a pain to replace. Instead, they were just routed very badly. I got K to help me take things down, rerouted the chains correctly (transferring a missing grommet from a spare piece of hardware that I'd saved), and now everything is working properly.

K now complains that all of her friends are going to ask her to fix things. Knowledge is its own reward or something like that.

In other news, when I was at Sam's Club yesterday picking up a couple of items, I decided to wander through the electronics department for my entertainment and discovered that you can now buy Starlink dishes at Sam's Club.

Clearly I am living in the future. :)

More progress today, as the fellow who was supposed to come and install our new screen/storm door has done so. It looks much less decrepit than the older door, which is a good thing.

I also had a doctor's appointment this morning. That's over for a while -- the follow up is on the morning when I'm leaving for Indy Fur Con, so I guess I'll go to the doc and then head south. :)

Tomorrow, there will be a lot of cleaning, as we have a house guest arriving...

Ran out to pick up a pizza tonight and had to go wait in the car for it to be finished. Had the radio on while that was going on and when I tried to start the car, the car declined and had to be jumped.

I thought the battery was newer than that. So now I am going to have to go get the battery checked out tomorrow.

*sigh*

I ran to Menard's over lunch and picked up one bag of assorted wire nuts (just because) and another bag of jumbo wire nuts. It took less than five minutes to hook up this five-wire mess with the jumbo nut, including testing to make sure that I had the appropriate AC voltage at the transformer. So far, so good.

However, it turns out that the old chime is toast, because when you press the doorbell, it does not ring. It just buzzes. This is not a surprise. But the transformer install is correct, so I was able to button all of that back up and put the attached light fixture back in place. This makes Julie happy, because it is good to have a light at the top and bottom of the stairs.

When I installed the new transformer, I installed a 24V model, because if I decide I want a wired video doorbell, that's the price of admission. I have now bought a chime that is rated for 24V which should arrive tomorrow.

I will decide at some later date if installing a wired video doorbell is worth the trouble. :)

Just for reference, anyone have any experience with wired video doorbells that will work with your existing chime? Many apparently don't. And most of them require a subscription to store video (maybe all of them do) and that is something that I will not be paying for, so a way to store video without a subscription would be a major plus.

Technology! Ain't it grand?

After you've lived in a place for a while, things start to break down. Today's breakdown was announced by my wife and children, who informed me that something is buzzing in the hallway. A bit of investigation showed that the problem was with the doorbell chime, which is buzzing in a nasty way.

So I did an Internet search and one common cause for this could be that the transformer is failing. I have now ordered a new, slightly more powerful transformer (in case I decide to install a Ring or similar doorbell) and will install it tomorrow, I hope. And then we'll see if the buzzing goes away.

The current transformer is sitting on the side of the junction box that also supplies the light at the bottom of the basement stairs, which reminds me of what we discovered when the house was being built. We would press the doorbell and it would not ring. The builder reported back that, no, the doorbell rang just fine. It turned out that the transformer had been incorrectly wired into the circuit controlling the light bulb at the bottom of the stairs so that it would only supply power to the doorbell when the light was turned on.

They fixed this.

Tomorrow, we'll see if this adds any fun to the equation.

In other news, earlier today, I finished importing the bass tracks that Jen sent me for the Crosstime Bus album and set up test mixes, so that's done. Yay!

Sam was good enough to come over today and help me remove the old mailbox post, which was sunk in quick-setting cement when we originally installed the beastie. This was made much easier, because Sam brought along a jack of ginormous size. When the chain was attached to a bolt that he threaded through one of the holes in the steel post (normally hidden; now a twisted ruin inside the outer aluminum post), the whole assembly lifted easily out of the ground. This made it possible to throw that mess in the trash and finish digging out the new hole.

The big problem was that the hole in the ground was much larger than the amount of cement that we wanted to put into it. At this point, Sam suggested running to Home Depot and picking up some Sonotube to use to confine the cement. This seemed not entirely unreasonable, even it it turned the project into a two-tripper. I noted that I had a big sheet of corrugated cardboard in the garage that might be cut for this purpose.

And then I realized that I had the box that the new mailbox had come in. Half of that, sunk into the ground and surrounded by dirt, was just about the right size for the cement pour. Adjustments were made, the box placed in the ground, and the cement poured in. K was good enough to come out and help, attaching the hose to the well-covered spigot in the front of the house so that we could easily add water to the mix.

After that, we went in to rest for an hour while the cement set around the post (enough). K was delegated to comb through the removed dirt to remove the larger rocks and chunks of concrete and throw them in the trash. We then filled in the hole with dirt, attached the mailbox with minimum difficulty, and declared victory.

The new mailbox is slightly shorter than the old one, but appears to be within regulations. And just *slightly* further away from the curb, although I think there is no possible (legal) placement of the box that will prevent some damned fool from backing into it. (The previous mailbox was -- with high likelihood -- destroyed by one of the city snowplows backing up into it.) The new box is black, so it will contrast well with snow and sky, assuming that drivers bother to look.

I am considering the virtues of an international orange mailbox. I am not sure if anyone makes one.

And when I checked the new box late this afternoon, it contained mail.

I ran down to Tobias Music and picked up two of my guitars from their shop. The Guild 12-string is now repaired, having gotten a partial refret job and the bridge reglued. It sounds much better than it has in a long time.

The Guild 6-string needs to go to a different shop for the neck reset, because the shop at Tobias doesn't currently have a spray booth to fix the finish after the reset. That will be a project for a slightly later date, but not *too* much later, I hope.

I cannot find any of the cache of double-sticky mirror tape that I use for medicine cabinet repair. Since I still have a *lot* of cabinets to work on, I decided to just order another roll from Amazon so I can deal with the current moderately urgent problem.

It is, of course, arriving a day late...

I would say "One down, one to go", but actually it's "One has gone down to the basement, and the two fence panels in the back yard are *still* down and need to go back up." The new dryer is installed and appears to work. I will do some laundry in the near future to check on that. I still need to get the vent pipe moved, but I have a collection of more urgent projects that I need to get taken care of first.

One of those is getting the two fallen fence panels back up. Happily, the emergency fence repair stakes have arrived from Amazon, so when I get both kids home from school, we can make an assault on this problem. Ruby the Dog will be much happier when the fence is back up, because right now, she is not being allowed out in *her* back yard.

Dogs have rights, you know.

The pre-trip laundry is almost done. The house is about as clean as it is going to get.

There was a brief bit of panic earlier today when I was showing the thermostat to the person who will be staying here with Ruby and Sunshine while we are gone, as the display started flashing the low battery message. That was fine -- I replaced the batteries. Except that it *kept* flashing the low battery message. This is not so good.

Well, I had already planned a trip to Home Depot after lunch to get a replacement screw for the cabinet in the back bathroom, as one of the screws had gone missing on the door that I've been trying to fix. I could *buy* a new thermostat and install it before I left.

There are a lot of thermostats.

Eventually, I found one that is similar to the current one -- better thermostats require low-voltage power, which I don't think we have wired up there. Then I went to look for the screw. The knowledgeable person in the department escaped with another customer. The not-so-knowledgeable person couldn't find the odd screw I was looking for. I finally gave up, which made K happy.

I grabbed the cart, looked at the shelf on the other side of the aisle, and there were the screws I was looking for. Screws with a weird star head, but I now have 100 of them with the bit included, and the door is now back on the cabinet.

Meanwhile, the thermostat has stopped flashing the low battery message, so it may just have taken an old capacitor a while to catch up with the new battery. I don't know.

If it behaves itself while we are on vacation, the new (still sealed!) thermostat can be returned.

When we get back.

Time to go pack now. :)