dalesql

So it's been a heck of a year. Covid crazyness shutting down my entire industry. Still unemployed, collecting unemployment. Taking care of elderly mom. Nobody in my family or close friends died from the covid, nor even hospitalized.
Summer of hate in the political election. Riots, corruption, many people taking violence into their own hands to strike out against the folks on the other side, and violence begets violence in return. I rather despise both of the main party candidates, and the huge number of red flags of corruption of the vote is very worrisome, and the refusal of the various states to even start investigations makes me think that there is real corruption behind the conspiracy theories of vote tampering in the half dozen states concerned.
I've basically stayed hunkered down at home. Becoming a couch potato to a great extent. My main concern is mom getting infected. She doesn't get the flu vaccine normally, and I'm worried about her getting infected. She is 89, so it wouldn't take much to carry her off. So staying home, shopping trips every couple days for essentials is pretty much it. Had a big chunk of tooth break off just before thanksgiving. Wasn't able to get to the dentist until a couple days ago to fix it. Very inconvenient.
We had a couple of one foot plus snowstorms already, and I'm now convinced the electric snowthrower I bought last year is inadequate for heavy snows. So I'm now shopping around for a new gas snowblower, one with enough horsepower to handle heavy wet snow, especially the berm the snowplow leaves across the end of the driveway. The eventual plan is to convert it to run on propane, because most of the hassles of snowblower operation are related to the gasoline fuel, it leaves a lot of gunk in the oil, and it goes stale sitting in the tank after only a couple weeks. Propane is way cleaner burning, and stores indefinitely in a tank.
Waiting for the economic stimulus to hit the bank account and then gonna order the snowblower.
Hopefully the vaccines for covid will make it to general public level soon, so we all can get it and end all the quarantine crap that has the entertainment industry nailed to the ground. And then, hopefully my job will call me back. *Crossing fingers* I hope everyone is doing if not well, not too badly. Best wishes for a new year.

I learned today that the American Folk Festival in Bangor, Maine is ending. The festival this past august was the last one. I have volunteered on the festival since it started as the National Folk Festival. My sadness that I won't be able to go back up and see all my friends again next summer is huge.

I worked as the festival lighting and electrical services the whole time. Taking the waterfront site from hazardous waste site and abandoned railroad yard to the very nice park and event site that it is today.

I am wondering what is going to happen with all the electrical gear that the festival has accumulated over the years. Tent lighting equipment, power distribution, and hundreds of pounds of extension cords.

Sadness.

Its been a while since my last post. Been busy busy stressed at work. about a week before I went up to Bangor for the festival I got transferred to a different job at work. Now the shipping and recieving/ sales cage person for 4wall Boston. Its been several weeks of running as fast as I can to try to figure out the job without making huge mistakes. (Small and medium mistaks abounded) The warehouse got rearranged also, which required taking everything off the shelves so they could be moved, then putting everything back up in their new homes. Without delaying our regular business while this was going on. Lots of work.

Festival happened in Bangor again. Part of the site was a construction site as our old ops compound location is having a bank headquarters building built on it. Made things more complisticated, but we managed. Next year, sewer construction under the site starts, further tossing plans into a state of confusion.

I bought a new car. The old minivan has 193K miles on it, and the mechanic estimates are around four grand just for the things he knows about. So, decided that it was time to change. Shopped around, and found the fusion at a local used car place I've dealt with before. Picked it up yesterday. Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan. So I now have parked in my driveway room temperature fusion. (I'm gonna make that joke so many times in the next couple weeks. lol. )

Furpocalypse is in a couple weeks. I'll be doing parties again. Hope to have loads of fun.

Mom's health is mostly unchanged, but getting a little weaker. She needs help with getting up and going to bed, and someone to prepare her meals. She mostly sits and reads books, and watches a little TV in the afternoons.

So sunday last weekend (8 days ago) I went to the mall eyeglass shop for a eye exam and a new pair of glasses. I had the FSA healthcare money that had come out of my pay pretax, but with the unexpected buyout of ALPS, I had to use it or lose it by the end of the month. So got my eye exam, ordered safety glasses. seven hundred and some dollars. I did ask for the self darkening glass, which was $99 extra, and safety glasses, but nothing more. They called and said come pick them up.

So after work today, I stopped in and asked for them. The frames fit nicely, but when I looked through them, I quickly realized they were not the bifocals I ordered. No worries the guy said, they are transitions lenses, no line. I ask him to check the order, because I didn't order anything but basic bifocal safety glasses with the self darkening glass. He wasn't able to look at the order, so the manager had to come and look it up.

Whooo, the transitions lenses were a hefty upcharge over bifocals. Glad I checked. He had to fiddle around with the computer to order the lenses again as bifocals, and I got a refund of about $250 on the glasses, knocking the cost of the glasses down to 400ish plus the 99 for the self darkening glass. Which was much more in line with my expectations of the cost of the glasses. I don't know if Pearl vision has their sales people on commission or not, but the salewoman definitely upcharged my order without my knowledge or informed consent. And I have to wait another week for the replacement lenses to be fabricated.

So, as a lifelong batchelor and indifferent at best cook, I now find myself cooking meals for my mom and myself. In being prepared for emergencies, I have a generator, fuel, keep a few cases of bottled water, and I bought one of those buckets of food that was a weeks worth of food for four people.
I researched emergency food a bit, and everyone reccomended actually cooking and eating some of the foods to see if we actually liked it. Better to know sometime when its not in the middle of a disaster that you really dislike the food you have. So I cracked it open, and made up a few of the meals. Bleah. Super over spicy for my taste. So I tried another brand, better, but not very appetizing.
Then I got diagnosed with diabetes, and discovered that nearly all of these foods run very heavy on the starches and low on proteins. I was searching for one that met my diet needs when this Patriot Pantry brand popped up on WOOT! That had a lot more beans and less wheat and rice in it's recipies, so I ordered a box. Not bad. Especially when I realized I could add some canned ham or chicken to the stew which made it a lot better tasting and better for my diet.
These also were tasty enough and easy to prepare. Basically boil water in a pot, stir in the contents of the pouch, cook for the specified amount of time, and done. Perfect for someone like me. So I got in the habit of buying them whenever they come up on WOOT! The timing is about right, I keep one bin in reserve, one bin I'm actually using up. When the bin gets used up, it usually comes around again on the web.
Last week, it came up again, and I ordered one. Then I realized I had clicked my old work address for the shipping address. I tried to change, but the site said cant do that, cancel and reorder. So I canceled and reordered. Monday, the package arrived, as expected, I took it home. Today, the package arrived with the exactly duplicated order. I called them about it, and they said not to worry, they wouldn't charge me for it. I tried to tell them to charge me or let me return it. Nope, keep the package, no charge. Okay. Free food. Yay!

So, in the last week, two noreasters blew through eastern mass. There is third one forcast for monday that may also wallop us. First one was mainly rain and high winds, and did major damage to the power network in southeast mass and cape cod. Second one started out as rain and moderately high winds, gusts only up to around 40mph. But it changed over to snow wednesday evening and it snowed all night. My town and a couple of adjacent towns took the brunt of the power damage. Thursday morning 76% of my town had lost power, including me.

I was also trapped at home. Two trees came down across my driveway, and a bunch of large branches came down, including one blocking the front walk. There was, also, about eight inches of heavy, sticky, wet snow.
After retrieving my butane stove, fuel for it, and some tea, I brewed up some tea to fortify me and mom for the day. By the way, wednesday was also mom's 90th birthday. So I had cake to further prepare me to do battle with the snow. Went out and shoveled snow. Which was exhausting, then I got to the large branches that had fallen and blocked the walkways. Retrieving a small handsaw, which was quickly found to be not very useful, I found a larger saw that while it was covered with rust, was still sharp as heck and much more effective at sawing branches into small enough chunks to be picked up. So two hours of that and I had the front walk cleared out to the street.
Unfortunately, my mom's home health aide, who comes on thursday to help her bathe, drove up and then drove down our unplowed driveway. Where she promptly got stuck. Since our power was out, she couldn't do that. So we shoveled and slipped around and shoveled some more for about half an hour before she made it back to the street and drove on to her next appointment.
I had talked to my older brother, who had also lost power, but was able to get out. He went to the store and bought a chainsaw. He got to the house and we assembled the chainsaw, figured out how to fill it with oil and gas, and get it started. Started cutting up the branches and trees that were blocking the driveway. shortly after we started doing this, my cousin showed up, in his plow truck. He helped us cut down and clear the fallen tree, and then put a rope on the partly fallen tree and used his truck to yank hard on it while brother was cutting it the rest of the way down. (It had partially snapped off about 20 feet up and was dangling over the driveway.) This kept it from falling against the house. It was then chopped up and unceremoniously tossed into the swamp.
Whenever I was taking a break from shoveling and clearing trees, I was also trying to get my generator started. It was immensely frustrating. I'd turn on the fuel and everything and start hauling on the starter rope. It would catch, start to run, then stop. This frustrating pattern was making me crazy off and on until about two in the afternoon, when I finally noticed that whenever I pulled on the starter rope, an old cloth rag that had been laying on top of the generator was dangling right in front of the air intake, and getting sucked in where the wet cloth choked the engine out. flipping the end of the rag up out of the way, and it started right up. Hallelujah! Spent an hour or so running extension cords in a window and around the house. Got the fridge working, the FIOS box and wifi, cordless phone, the stairlift, and one of the LED tape lights we used during reconstruction. So we had food, communication, and light. Things were looking up.
The new insulation in the house is way better than it used to be, the house was cool but still comfortable all day and all night. Since I had gotten all sweaty shoveling show and so on, I decided to take a shower that evening with whatever warmth was left in the hot water tank. Which was still full of hot water twelve hours or so after the power went out, and had more hot water in it the next morning for mom to give herself her morning washing up. Impressive.
But the house was getting colder and we needed to get the furnace going for some heat and hot water. So I hotwired the furnace to an extension cord and plugged that into the generator. Fortunately there was enough zoobs left in the generator to run the furnace also. Yay heat! Unfortunately only in the basement. The basement has baseboard hot water heat, so just needed a little circulator pump. First floor and second floor heat comes via forced hot air, and when I looked, the fan on the thing calls for eight point something amps, and I was pretty sure that the generator didn't have that many more zoobs to spare. So basement thermostat set to 80 degrees and leaving the door down to the basement seems to let enough heat come up to keep the house livable. Cool but livable.
Went to work friday, regular work day. Oh yeah, generator is using twenty pound propane cylinder each twelve hours. I had four full ones when I started, plus a partially full one to start with. Now saturday. Usual saturday chores. Garbage and recycling to the dump. Pick up mom's meds at the pharmacy. Shopping. take empty tanks to refill with propane. Well, the partial tank was one of the old style ones they can't refill anymore, so bought a replacement and filled up the tanks. Took mom to clinic for a blood test her doctor wanted as a follow up on something.
Eversource, our power utility, had been promising to have our town "substantially restored" by 6pm today. Around 430pm, I started seeing eversource vehicles driving up and down our street. This greatly increases my desire to get power back and my frustration at being without power. It's 10pm now, still running on the generator. Got the reverse 911 call from the police around 7pm saying only 15% of the town is without power now, and more resources would be coming in tomorrow morning.

I want my electricity back dammit! I have also resolved to increase my generator capacity. The current 4000 watt propane unit has worked great. Definitely never buying a gasoline powered generator again. Plans are in flux. One option is to take my old broken 5000 watt gasoline generator. (carb corroded by gasoline left in the thing in storage.) Have it repaired to run on gasoline, if it is repairable at all. Then convert it to run on propane. estimated cost is five or six hundred bucks. Then run two generators side by side in the future, with independent extension cords feeding various things around the house.
Another option, and the one I prefer, is to buy a new propane fueled inverter type generator that can sync to the first generator. I have no idea if this machine even exists to be bought. If unavailable or unaffordable, then the next option is just to buy a duplicate of the propane generator I have now, run them side by side with independent extension cord and transfer switch networks around the house.
I also need to put in correct generator transfer switches for the furnace and one or both of the air handlers. I've ordered a pair of UL listed single circuit transfer switches. The intent is to put one on the furnace and the other on the air handler for the first floor. Once those are installed, I'll do the experiment to see if my existing generator can actually support the air handler on top of everything else it currently is supporting. Crossing my fingers, that would be the best.
Once we do get done with the current power outage, I am taking the generator in to the shop for a long overdue oil change and preventive maintainance. Had it for three or four years and had no problems other than the starter battery is worn out.

I tried to go to arisia today. Just for a couple hours to visit the dealers room and see a few friends. Their lovely and allegedly much improved registration system wouldn't sell me a day badge. According to the obfuscatory staff person who kept repeating platitudes right out of Dilbert when I was asking about getting a badge. They were unable to enter new names into the registration database or print badges because the hotel internet was being flakey. Plus when I asked about implementing the backup system, I got evasive answers that mostly consisted of quotes from bad IT practices training films.

Well shuck my corn. I've never heard of hotel internet connections getting slow and flakey when a science fiction con is at the hotel, except for about 90% of the time. Why would anyone with practical experience in the real world setup a system that depends on a hotel internet connection? That is just about a textbook example of bad design.

I don't know the details of their system, but I know that it failed with a very predictable problem that should have been planned for. No, I'm not interested in running their registration system, I've been there and done that. Arisia is no longer my convention and I am even less likely to try to attend next year.

At around 11pm, the people at the nursing home called to let me and mom know that my dad had just passed away. No memorial service or anything, just remembering that it's been a year. I miss my dad.

Another end of october, and another Furpocafright is over and done with, for me at least. I read on social media that there is a leftover booze party going on there tonight.

Ran two parties this year. Friday Pie is no Lie party. Featuring tabletalk mini pies. Bought from the tabletalk factory outlet store in Worcester. When I ordered the pies, I asked for a variety, heavy on the pineapple and peach. What I got was about half pineapple, a quarter peach, and a quarter everything else. Which was a little dissapointing. next year, I think I will select and pack the pies myself. The next morning, I went over the the pricerite supermarket near the hotel and found they were selling mini pies for the same cost I paid in the factory store. So I think if I do pies again, buy way fewer in worcester, and restock from local supermarket for the saturday night party. Bought a total of about 18 dozen. Leftover from both parties was about five or six dozen. Some of which I brought home to bring into work tomorrow, most of which I left in the convention Zoo space.

Used the slushie machine with just plain sugar water in it, and fruit flavorings you added to the cup yourself. The slushie mixes from festaurant depot worked the best, so I'll stick with them mostly. the ice cream toppings also worked, but were a lot messier with serving spoons and so on. Cola syrup as a flavoring was also popular, but less so than the fruit ones. Half gallon of Wildberry, about the same in pineapple, slightly less of the peach, about a quart of cola, a quart and a half of lime juice, half a quart of lemon juice.

Notes for next time: Drip tray and big drip tray for the slushie machine needed. People are sloppy so spills, and there was constant drip of condensation on the outside of the tank. Also, bring a cell phone charging squid for party guests. Irrisistable lure for folks with dead cell phones in this age of social media.
I think I need to be a little more descriptive of what the party will feature on the flyers. Emphasizing the all ages friendly agenda and laid back character of the party. Need to do them well ahead of time, not leave them to the last couple of weeks.

PS. Power went out at home around 2am monday morning. Power not back by monday afternoon, so I fired up the generator and ran extension cords around the house to get the phone and fridge working. Power came back tuesday during the day. It's friday now, and people I know are still in the dark from that storm.

I did prove that the CO alarm in the house works. I had the generator about ten feet from the house, but the exhaust happened to be pointing at a window that was open a crack for the dehumidifier hose. Alarms woke us up, and once I opened a bunch of windows, moved the generator further away and pointed the exhaust away from the house. Alarms shut down after a bit and we went back to sleep.

I'm back from festivating in Bangor, and it's been an eventful couple of weeks.

First in family health news, Stephanie, my niece in Seattle had a much more serious case of the cancer than initially thought. So Wesley couldn't come east to take care of mom while I was in Bangor. Meals and wheels was able to add a supper to her delivery schedule, so that handled her meals weekdays, and my oldest brother was able to take care of her meals on weekends, do her laundry, and so on while I was gone.

Stephanie had her surgery yesterday. The doctor told her that her chances of survival were 50/50. So, fourteen or so hours of surgery later, she spent the night in the intensive care ward, and moved to a stepdawn unit this evening. The cancer had destroyed nearly all of her inner ear, so she will be totally deaf on that side, don't know about the other side. I'm praying and sending good thoughts her way. She is on some major pain medications still, and lab results are not back, so things are still full of question marks. I expect there will be chemo in her near future, which is another huge insult to her body. All I can do is support them via telephone.

In house news, the construction loan came through just before I left for maine, so paid the contractor up to date. He got the subs back on schedule and is working the punch list. replacement refrigerator was delivered today, so we now have all appliances in the house. Need to assemble fridge and install icemaker, and hook up water to it. Three day weekend coming up, I hope to be washing furniture and putting it back into the house, weather permitting.

The festival had some bumps this year. We had to rearrange the site due to construction, and cut some things due to lack of budget. Predictably, bunch of folks were unhappy with this. They will be even less happy with the changes we will have to work around for the next couple of years due to sewerage tank construction on the festival site.

We also had some vandalism during setup. Several tents had large slashes in them, and one of the power distros got tossed into the river. The police evidence tech was able to get fingerprints from the distro once we fished it back out of the river. So had to give the police my fingerprints to eliminate them from the mix. The water was salty brackish, so when we get the thing back from police evidence in a year or so, I expect that it will be less expensive to buy a new one than try to repair it.

I continue to be very pleased with the lowering cost and increasing brightness of led rope lights and strip lights. They are lower power consumption, are now about equivalent lumens as the same length of incandescent festoon lights, more durable, pack into smaller storage space, and are easier to install and remove from tents. Win all around. Next year, gonna buy more and take a pass through the existing inventory of festoon lights to recycle the more broken ones. I figure in four or five years, all the festoon lights and quartz floodlights will be gone.