2010 — 23 June: Wednesday
After yesterday's exploding plum, the discovery of a couple of bad patches on the remaining Bramley prompted a change of breakfast cereal fruit this sunny morning. Mind you, checking the time display on the water softener suggested it was already after 20:00, so that's a previously unsuspected 24-hour clock. I may actually get some hot water (other than from the kettle) by the end of today.
Exciting times! It also occurs to me that — with the removal of the hot water tank — I've lost an airing cupboard but gained a storage space1 with fairly high load-bearing capacity. By the time I've cleared all three of Christa's wardrobes I shall not be short of linen storage, I guess.
It's 08:37 and looking good out there. [Pause] The list of things to do gets ever longer.
Who gnu?
Rome had five good emperors, it seems. The last of them also being the last important Stoic philosopher. Well, someone has to be last...
... our philosophers (academics) no longer profess to help the average person answer life's great metaphysical questions. Contemporary philosophers might contemplate such abstruse problems as whether mental properties can be said to emerge from the physical processes of the universe; what the necessary and sufficient conditions are for self-interest; where the mind stops and the rest of the world begins — not, perhaps, the pressing existential questions2 presented by the normal course of a human life.
Meanwhile, pressurised water is now being introduced to its new home: my central heating pipework circuit. Exciting.
It's been many, many years...
... since I looked at any form of science citation index (though, when I last did so at the Hatfield Polytechnic, I recall being struck immediately by the parallels with Hal Draper's 1961 SF short story "MS Fnd in a Lbry"). There's a Chronicle essay (and loads of related comments) well worth skimming. Not too much changes, it seems. Source and snippet:
While brilliant and progressive research continues apace here and there, the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs.
The radiators heat. Domestic hot water flows in on-demand abundance. Showers and baths are back on the agenda. Brian is now dashing around eliminating air pockets and observing the steady state behaviour before draining it, flushing it while the water has had cleaner added to it, draining it, and finally refilling with scale inhibitor added to it. Excellent. It's 10:46 and heating up.
Industrial strength giant iPod
While tinkering with my second PC last night to do that batch of accumulated CD ripping, I stumbled across yet another way3 of crashing my "industrial strength" iMac. And I still haven't installed the latest load of flakey patches.
Plumbing the depths
The system drains beautifully (in previous visits, Brian had to assist the process more than somewhat) and refills equally trouble-free. I've been having the room thermostat, programmer, and expected changes in behaviour of the system (particularly the shower upstairs) explained. It's certainly more complex than the previous system, but very logical. As he said I would, I've started to think I should have had this done years ago. Still, it's supposedly never too late to learn.
In some strange way, upheaving the house plumbing infrastructure, redecorating, re-carpeting, even the new cooker(!), is all helping draw a firmer line under my previous life. I know Christa would approve, too. This strikes me as real progress. (Recall the timescale mentioned here that so appalled me just a month after her death.)
Of course, I'm now even poorer than the proverbial church mouse, but at least I should be toasty warm this winter in my little book / video / audio-filled sanctuary. Well, that's the plan for now. And I remain time and friend-rich for all my cash-poverty.
It's 12:25 and Brian's just about to refill the system for the last time, this time with the scale inhibitor added. With that, the magnetic inline "filter", and the fact that only softened water is going into the system in the first place, I should avert the toxic tar/sludge build-up that bedevilled the original system. That, too, is the plan. As are gas bills that go down. The efficiency rating of this new combi/condensing boiler should be around 92% which must be a Good Thing.
Only a matter of time... dept.
Our Oriental friends are shipping an Ubuntu 10.04 that looks for all the world like a Windows XP system. At least they didn't base it on the horrible Vista.
It's 17:08, rather horribly hot, and I'm playing a CDROM I've been lent of Don Henley's hits... "Actual Miles". I was unaware of this album, though a little online searching enabled me to pull down a track listing that differed by one from the tracks I have here. Most are taken from his first three solo albums, all of which I have. So it was an interesting exercise from memory to identify them all. The one I don't know was "The garden of Allah" (which, as it seems to have gone previously unrecorded, is hardly surprising). One of the delightful things about Don Henley is that you can actually distinguish the words of his lyrics. The other is that, so far as I can tell, his titles invariably include a phrase from somewhere in the lyrics.
At 18:49 I've decided I need my next batch of food. I've been having fun (of a sort) with two PCs and the iMac all on the go at the same time. But I'm hungry and starting to yawn which almost invariably prompted Christa to say "You need something to eat". You know what? She was right.
Later
I'm nearing the end of Pushing Daisies season #1, breaking off to delight in doing the dishes with on-demand hot soft water. Pretty cool :-)
My domestic reassembly can't really start until I've had new carpet fitted in what was Christa's study. At that point, I'll be able to use it as a buffer store as I clear first my study and then Peter's room in turn for their new carpets. I shall then begin life anew, not as a trainer of performing elephants, but as a shelf putter-up extraordinaire in her study. In fact, that's the only living space in the house (apart from my bedroom) currently without any shelving at all on its walls. And there's a cogent reason for that.
About a year after we'd moved in, we noticed an alarming crack spreading along the top of the wall between our bedroom and Peter's room. Both these rooms are directly over the living room. It turned out (when we finally managed to force the builders to come back and explain themselves) that said party wall was made of breeze blocks resting on a pair of wooden joists rather than being a lightweight stud wall. I will never understand why they didn't use an RSJ, but they did have the decency to go out of business shortly afterwards. In the meantime they hammered some pieces of slate into the gap that had appeared at one end of the base of the party wall, and we filled in the crack along the top, painted over it, and vaguely kept an eye on it for several more years.
Christa wrote down their explanation and advice at the time...
... and I found her note just a week or so ago while emptying her study. The living room ceiling has stayed where it should even with nearly two decades of a waterbed above it, so I assume the load calculations were pretty conservative. The present bed (cause of the argument with that lady from Peter Green) is much lighter than a waterbed, of course.
It's approaching sleepy time — 23:01 already — once again (yawn). There's probably just one more day of onsite plumber remaining... removing the cold tank, the small header tank, and as much dead pipework as humanly possible, from the loft. Let's hope it's not too hot tomorrow.