Thank you Dick Freeman

A friend of mine passed away.  Dick Freeman.  I had the world of respect for him.
He helped me with my Blue 1976 MGB.
I have purchased one fine MGB he had when he passed away.  It is this beautiful White 1976 MGB V-8.
It is a thrill to drive this car.  It has a well tuned exhaust which has a growling rumble when you're out cruising.  It's purr is a rrrr-umble type exhaust sound.

This picture is of me in the White V-8 MGB on 57th street in S. E. Portland.

This is one fine MG.  Dick Freeman was a winner at the Concourse D'elegance in Forest Grove.  His Red 67 MGB looked like it was a show room car.

Thank you Dick Freeman.  Rest in Peace.

A Cat Can be a Best Buddy.

Otter was  it. A dignified, laid back male Ragdoll.  He was 15 years old.
This is in tribute to his faithfulness to us.  We miss him.

What's wrong with Adware.

Don't Amazon and  RD.A9.com  get it;
When they implement adware, don't they know the customer isn't going to look at their product if the adware software stops the user from seeing their advertisement or ordering their product.
It would be great for the vendor if the idea was to stop the sale of the competitor's product.

Who Thought This One Through

We gave Libya's military our foreign aid.

Now we're in combat with them, and Al Qaeda is joining the rebels!

OMG

Navy Boot Camp; Great Lakes Company 739 of 1966

Hi!
I was at the US Navy's Boot Camp, Recruit Training Command (RTC) Great Lakes from December 22, 1966 until May 9, 1967.
I am using my blog as a way to find other recruits who were there over the snowy winter of 1966-1967.
If you're a member of company 739 or fellow companies, I'd enjoy hearing from you.
After a twenty-two+ year career I retired from the Navy.
Our recent 21 inches of snow in Oregon brought back memories of that winter, and I am looking for leads as to where those other recruits may have gone or ended up.

Heater Condensate Pump

Okay. I'm hear to brag about my Loving Wife (LW) again.
So on the first day of freezing weather, we got up to no heat.
Freezing has been unusual here in West Linn Oregon until this past week.
I was due at work. So LW sent me off on my way and assured me she'd take care of the heater problem.
Our Trane furnace-air conditioner a TRANE XV90 has a condensate reservoir and pump which pumps the water to outside the back of our garage.
About 10:00 AM I called and we talked about the problem. LW told me the condensate pipe to outside the garage had frozen. Our heater has a shutoff mechanism which triggers to turn off the furnace if the condensate pump reservoir is overly full.
She disconnected the pipe and the heater started to work.
Then our neighbor who was venturing out in the snow and cold agreed to get her some pvc pipe and 1/2" hose.
LW hooked up the hose where the pipe had previously come out of the pump, and put a length of pipe under the garage door to protect the hose from the garage door. It worked.
Then the next morning, I discovered the pvc had frozen. I just put the frozen pipe into the sink and warmed it up. We now leave the hose in a bucket each freezing night.
Our one son's house has the same type of heater. His hose drains from the basement furnace to the condensate pump reservoir and then into the basement deep sink by the washing machine. The warmth of the basement keeps it from freezing.
We may take a lesson for the success of one installation over the other.
Our garage furnace is adjacent to our laundry room. It would be easy, but require a hole through the wall between them, to drain the hose into the toilet tank, bowl or sewer drain pipe hole there. We haven't decided yet. I'll let you know what we agree to do.

Lath and Plaster

So if your working on an old house, and it has lath and plaster, that is wood slats with plaster on top, what should you do to mount a switch box in the ceiling. If you cut the board, the lath, you cause the whole plaster system to be unstable. In my case it was compounded by putting in a feed to provide the electrical wire to the box on the other end of the same piece of lath. Unwittingly I had cut both ends of the same piece of lath. After the fact I realized to put the hole for one end in one board and the hole for the other in another board. Granted you won't be able to get the two in line nice and symmetrical like an obsessive compulsive might want to see it. But given the choice between the plaster being sturdy with a board behind it holding it up or not and being in a nice neat line, I'd have preferred sturdy.
My very clever LW came up with the idea to put a piece of plywood over the affected plaster anchoring the loose plaster with liquid nails onto the plywood which was then holding up the liquid nails, paint, plaster to the beams the plywood was anchored to. The wiring boxes on each end were held in place onto the beams screwed in as a sturdy solution to replace the structural integrity which was lost by the lath behind the weakend plaster not being anchored to anything.
Still it would have been easier if someone had told me don't cut into the opposite end of the same piece of lath.