A: baby squirrels blown out of their nest.
We’ve got two here that were brought to us yesterday. They’re just now opening their eyes, so they are probably 5 or 6 weeks old. I know squirrels are tree rats. I know they aren’t threatened or endangered. I know that there are a host of animals that could use the extra protein. But let’s face it. Baby squirrels are adorable.
Pictures later.
I think I need a whole new blog category for water troubles.
The pH neutralizer arrived today, along with 150# of premium chalk and 25 pounds of “clean†gravel. I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow – first stop Lowe’s, then home to install it. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too bad.
Since we’re on the subject of water (again), had yet another fun experience. Earlier this week, K noticed a couple of inches of water in the pan under our hot water heater. Yep, it seems to be leaking. This is the water heater that I installed one year ago. It was a replacement for a water heater installed 4 years before by the previous owner.
The tendency of our appliances to rust, particularly the water heaters led me to test the pH. Ideally, it should be between 7.0 and 8.0 (or just neutral to slightly basic). Ours was around 5.5 or somewhat acidic. This is a reasonably common problem for people with well water and it causes all of the symptoms we’ve seen (including the degredation of all brass plumbing fittings).
Fortunately, they make a “pH neutralizer†which is really just a fancy name for a tank filled with calcium carbonate (which is just a fancy name for chalk) that water flows through. I’ve got one on order, it should be here tomorrow. Once I get it installed, I’ll see if I can get the store to honor the warranty on our current water heater and replace that too.
We had a batch of thunder showers come through last night. We got about 2, maybe 3, inches here. Sometime during the evening, K and I ask each other, “what’s that noise?†Turns out we had a leak in the roof that was dripping down (and through) the second story wall, onto one of the logs making up the first story and into the breakfast room. From there it was splashing onto the door to the deck and making the noise we heard.
All of which led me to climb the 45 degree pitch of a wet/slippery roof this morning, right before heading into a meeting at the office, with a tube of roofing caulk, patching up a couple of cracked shingles. We’re getting more rain now – we’ll see how well this holds.
Back when I was a grad student and just about to finish up, the school of engineering turned a class of 60 freshman over to me to teach intro to numerical methods for engineers. I tried to liven things up by emailing the occassional engineering funny to my students who even reciprocated. The following is a brief excerpt from an engineer identification test that was sent to me by a student.
To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into
one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2)
things that will need to be fixed after you’ve had a few
minutes to play with them. Engineers like to solve problems.
If there are no problems handily available, they will create
their own problems. Normal people don’t understand this concept;
they believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers
believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features
yet.
That brings me to an issue I’ve been having. A couple of years ago, we put in a new heatpump with humidifier, it came with a new thermidistat which didn’t seem to work too well. When the A/C cut on, the temperature on the thermostat rose several degrees, at one point jumping from 78 to 86, while the temperature in the area remained constant. I realized that the problem was the relays. The A/C kicks on, the relays heat up and the thermister gets hot. We called the installer, got a new thermidistat. It did the same thing.
We discovered that we could use a small fan to blow air on the thermidistat. That worked well, but was irritating. So we moved the thermostat to a place with more airflow. Same problem, but to a lesser degree – the A/C cuts on and the system jumps from 78 to 79. Of course, to get it back down to where it would shut off, the thermostat ran the A/C until the house had cooled to about 75. Bah.
Finally, this weekend, I opened up the thermostat and added some redneck engineering to it. I insulated the relays using cotton balls and tape. So far so good. If this didn’t work, the next step was to just buy a different model of thermidistat. But let’s face it, do-it-yourself insulation is more fun. So, for the record, we can officially put the design of the carrier thermidistat in the category of things that need to be fixed.
UPDATE: let’s spell carrier correctly, shall we?Â
I have a small request to make of the NC-DOT, if there are accidents on the interstate at I-40 and I-540 which backs traffic up 10 miles to NC-751, can we please, please make use of the expensive electronic information signs on the interstate to warn people? There’s a difference between a small traffic slowdown that you will soon get past and one that means you’ll be driving 5-10 miles at an average speed of 10-15 mph.
Took the day off and spent most of it working on the snake terrarium. Watching him pace (hmm, that doesn’t seem like the right word for a snake) his cage today made me particularly sad and motivated me to get about 95% finished. He could actually move in now – the only things missing are the decorative frames around the side vents. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the terrarium. There are a number of things that I would do differently next time, but some things will definitely stay the same. For example, I used plexiglass for the front which made the whole thing significantly lighter. The plexiglass was about $20 more expensive but definitely worth it. And here’s the (near) finished terrarium. Next time I post about this, we’ll be completely done and have the snake moved in.
In other snake news, K caught a picture of an eastern hog nose in its red phase in our front yard last week. S/he’s an absolutely beautiful snake. In case you can’t quite tell from the picture, the snake is extremely red at the front and it gradually fades to yeallow at the tail. Your science tidbit for the day: the eastern hog nose eats the occassional small mammal, but is particularly well adapted to eating frogs and toads. As you can imagine, the amphibians don’t like being eaten and have a tendency to inflate to prevent a snake from swallowing them. The eastern hog nose has its fangs in the upper back of its mouth. These fangs are used to paralyze and “deflate†a swollen frog to enable swallowing. The eastern hog nose apparently also plays dead if it can’t drive off predators. When it plays dead, it goes limp and sticks its tongue out – which, IIRC, is how I played dead when I was five.
To the left hand: It is clear that you no longer know what the right hand is doing. This weekend’s “accidental†dremeling was eerily similar to the wood carving incident in grade school where a supposed “art project†resulted in losing a chunk of left index finger. Combined with the great butcher knife massacre where we almost lost left thumb’s nail when it “supposedly†looked like a carrot, we have a pattern that can not be ignored.
These incidents will likely continue until we become the dominant hand and end the right hand reign of tyranny. That is all.
Just so you don’t think that I’m just a computer and photography geek, I wanted to update folks on another project. As I’ve said before, my wife does wildlife rehabilitation and managed to get conned talked into taking home a boa constrictor. Since they’re not native, he couldn’t be released once he was patched up.
For the past eight months, he’s been living in a smallish (75 gallon?) aquarium. Okay, that’s not really small unless you’re a 6.5′ snake whose looking to get to be 8’+. This presented a great chance to do some woodworking. For the past couple of weekends, I’ve been building a 5.5′ x 2′ x 3′ terrarium for the snake. I’ve got the main walls, floor and top cut, stained and coated with many layers of polyurethane. Today, I put the cabinet together, caulked it (the caulk is still fresh, it will dry clear) and started working on the door.
Overall, I’m happy with how it is turning out. Hopefully by next weekend, the door will be complete and mounted and the snake’s furniture (water and food bowls, hide box and heating pad) will be here and we can move him in.
Oh, and for those whom know our family history with tools, I managed not to injure myself until tonight when I dremeled my fingernail and gouged the finger. I don’t think it’ll need stitches.
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