Bogieblog

MonoTracer

For those really cold mornings or really rainy days, the wimpy biker (like me) needs the MonoTracer.  Hey, it even holds itself up at stops and stabalizes at lean angles above what one would normally be comfortable at. Unfortunatly, I would need another 2 jobs to afford it too.

Hat tip to CityBiker.

Progress Report on Siding

Here is proof that ther is headway being made on the outside of the house:

  The front was the last to be stripped of siding. WS was surprised to find plywood at the bottom, but that just means that there was no insulation there (except what we put up on the inside).
 

The contractor showed up on Monday, and I managed to get home early enough Tuesday to get a couple of pictures.

  All Plywooded up.
  Two new windows on the side of the house.

The rest of the week I haven't gotten home until well after sundown, so I haven't seen any of the siding that has gone up. It is not complete yet (the electric company decided not to do the standoff until Friday - they were scheduled for Tuesday), but should be done sometime next week.

Naturally they ran into a couple of problems. We had to get a plumbing guy in to repair the pipe that they nailed into (FHW pipe for the upstairs was run thru the overhang in front). Then yesterday they nicked an electric line (fortunately we shut off a lot of the breakers while they are working). 

There was also a casualty amongst my plates - the Indian Maiden with wolf fell and broke. My fault - I should have taken the plates off the wall. I'll be removing the plates from the front wall this weekend so that we won't have that problem when they do the front of the house!

All in all, the project has gone rather smoothly (knock on wood). Hopefully it continues on that path!

Ancient Burying Ground of Hartford

During our walking tour of Hartford, we stumbled upon the Acient Burying Ground. The Association was thoughtful and provided pamphlets that described different headstones, their styles and some of the poeple that were buried beneath them. We spent a lot of time ther looking at old headstones and monuments. What we found especially interesting was that there seemed to be a lot of people that made it into their 80's, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

  Early style of tombstone
  This person was 86 years old. There wer plenty of others that made it to be octagenarians.
  This guy died by "bloing up"
 
  This poor woman died in her 40's and is buried with 10 of her 12 children. Those 10 children all died shortly after being born.

  The oldest tombstone - from 1648

We could have spent a lot more time there, a small, ancient cementary surrounded by downtown Hartford, but we had to get back and check out of the hotel.

We saw plenty of other interesting htings, the different architectural styles were what drew us in the directions we walked. We had a great time on our self-guided tour and will have to make it back some time to see more of what Hartford has to offer.

Connecticut Tour

While in Connecticut for the concer, we took the opportunity to see a few of the sites. One of the first things we had to see was the building that had twin spires that we could see from our hotel room. We could only see the spires themselves, and just had to find out what they wer to. Much to our surprise, it was not a building, but an archway dedicated to the Soldiers and Sailors of the Civil War:

 
 

 

 

Next up was a closer look of the State Capitol Building.

 
 

Of course we had to get a closer view of the fountain that we could see from our room. We never did find a plaque for it. We thought it must look awesome at night with the lights on and water flowing, but it look rather spectacular even without those additional features.

 


 

That is enough picture goodness for one post. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Mini Vacation

Friday we went to Connecticut to see Rodger Waters in concert. We stayed at a Holiday Indd in the middle of Hartford. Since we are a Priority Club Member (meaning we redeem points for the room), we got upgraded to the 9th floor (the top floor). That might seem a downgrade to some, but only a couple of the floors got a decent view of the park across the street. Most lower floors only got to see trees and the roadway (and construction).

This is the view from our room:

 

Zoom in on the State Capitol

 

Zoom in on a fountain:

 

Zoom in on what we later found out to be a memorial to Soldiers and Sailors from the Civil War:

 

We only had to walk about 1 1/2 blocks to get to the concert venu and about 5 blocks to get to where BIL and SIL were staying (they had points for another hotel chain). Once we got into town, we walked everywhere.

Continue reading "Mini Vacation"

Doings at the Bogie Estates

I'm feeling pretty smart (OK, WS should feel pretty smart for his idea) about putting the greenhouse over the peppers. Here is what I harvested early last week:

 

The can opener is there for size reference. Those were the large peppers - some of the plants were loaded with smaller peppers. I'll have to check today to see if there are more for the picking.

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WS started stripping the siding from the house on Sunday. The neighbor got his deer early (bow hunting), so he was bored and decided to join in:

 

I'l have to get pics of the rest of the house before the siding guys come in this week. They dropped off the plywood on Thursday. WS covered it up with a tarp as we were supposed to get torrential rains and wind (we did). WS started on the front of the house yesterday afternoon. He will finish it today and take all the trim off the inside of the window. Just in time for the siding guys to come in Monday.

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I start my new job tomorrow. The first test is to see if I remember to take the left directly after turning right onto Rt 77. Since February of 1989 I have taken a right at 77, and kept going on to Milford. From there, I have had 3 different destinations, but the first 28 miles have always been the same. The challenge is to overcome 21 years of conditioning!

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Fall has really gotten here with relentless winds of 20-30 MPH, which we have had for the last 10 days or so. The mornings have all been down in the 30's and the afternoons maybe up to 50 (most aren't that high). Overcast seems to be the most common sky phenomenon even when it isn't raining. We got another 2.5" on Friday, so we've gotten 8-10" in the last couple of weeks. Good for the rivers, streams and swamps that were suffering anyway.

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Those are the short takes from the Bogie estates where change is not only in the air, but seems to permeate several other aspects of our lives.

Cooling Down

The fall temps have been here the last 5 days or so, and the house is surely feeling it. In the morning it has been down to 62 degrees upstairs (downstairs is still a warmish 66 degrees). The sun has shone plentifully, but there has also been a lot of wind, so the upstairs has only gotten up to 65 degrees - even with the dehydrator and crock pot going most of the day.

WS stripped off most of the siding on either end of the house yesterday (getting ready for the contractor), so I am holding off on starting the heater. Somehow I just can't justify heating the house when a lot of it will go out the walls (there is insulation, but no plywood - a thing that will be remidied by the contractor). Plus, we don't have much oil, and can't fill the tank until the contractor is done with the wall behind it, so would rather make sure we have warm water than heat up the house. The woodstove would get too warm, so that is out too.

Sweatshirts are the dress of the day.

Short Reading Assignment

Double Trouble features an essay .

That's the offer America gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington wonder why there are no new jobs...

Seriously good read (and fairly short - will take you all of 2 minutes to read).

 

Battery Wars

A month ago, or so, I went to use my label maker, which runs on 8 AA sized batteries. After scrounging up that many; some from the drawer of batteries and some from remotes, I was able to make my labels. I returned all the batteries when I was done.

I know, I know, you are asking why you might think this is even somewhat interesting. It's not, but the following is (at least to me).

During my next trip to the major discount club, I had AA batteries on my list. I picked some up of a widly recognized brand, but as I got close to the checkout, I saw a dispay with the store brand. I could get twice as many batteries for the same price. I thought about it a bit, then figured they were made by one of the same name brand factories, so sure, I would take them.

I had the opportunity to use a couple of the batteries; my cordless mouse gave up the ghost yesterday morning, so I turned to the store brand batteries as they were closer. Much to my surprise, these batteries do not work well in my mouse, the cursor is jerky, slow and sometimes just loses itself. I figured maybe the mouse needed cleaning, nope. So, I replaced the store brand with a well know brand and all the issues cleared up.

That doesn't mean the batteries won't work fine in something else, just doesn't work well in my cordless mouse.

I've done the experiment for you, so now you don't have to.

Fail - in More Ways than One

Chan, over at the Weekend Pundit, had an interesting failure notification on his computer.

And I thought the useless garble of non-English that the failure messages usually comprise of were useless!