Quick, write that down... That would be a great title for some children's book...
But in this case, its my truck... I can't recall what my last update was, but I'm quite sure it wasn't good... I'm also too lazy to check...
Suffice to say that it may be one of two things at this point... Either timing on the injection pump slipped, or a $35 overflow valve has gone bad... The tools to do the timing are about $300...
One would think at this point I should be happy as I can see the end of the tunnel right?... Guess what, I just heard the whistle of the train attached to that light... The delightful person that last used the index pin built in to my engine to line up the cylinders to check the timing, seems to have forgotten to pull it out prior to starting the engine... Translation?... There is now a chunk of steel floating around my engine someplace... There is now no way to check my timing... There is presumably damage to the main timing gear inside the engine... I have found it impossible to pull out the timing pin in the hope of replacing it...
When am I going to catch a break with this?
I was over at TND, and Dogette mentioned her mom had a run in with a lovely individual on a plane that managed to spread out in to her mom's limited space... This wonderful soul also decided to get off the plane last, thereby attempting to hold up mom... This got me to thinking...
Once upon a time, I flew a lot... I mean a LOT!!!... Why?... Well I was doing installation work on a retail store chain that was putting in this fancy audio/video/lighting system... That's not important right now though... The point is, I spent almost as much time in the air as I did on the ground... I knew the airports east of the Mississippi like I knew the halls of my high school... Hell I knew aircrew by name in some cases... What that meant was I learned a lot about the ups and downs of flying... Security wasn't as tight then being pre 9/11, so it was less of a hassle, I can't imagine trying to do what I did then, now...
After a while, you get used to the etiquette of flying... Simple things like don't hog the arm rests... Don't have a 45 minute conversation with someone while you're standing in the aisle... Don't try to fit 6 pieces of designer luggage in the overhead... Etc... I simply have never understood people that don't get it...
For me, I always try to book a seat in an emergency exit row... I'm tall, and the additional leg room makes life way better on the plane... Then you get a couple choices on some planes... If there are two exit rows together (like over a wing most times) you can pick either one... The one further back will let the seat recline fully... That's nice, unless you have a kid behind you kicking the chair... If you pick the front row though your seat doesn't recline much if at all, but you will be free of anyone kicking your chair since children can not fly in an exit row... I learned to sleep sitting up, so I go for the front row... I also go for the window... No, I don't really care about watching the ground go whizzing by... The window does a couple things... First I can close the shade regardless of what the other people in the row want... Some times of day, you can get murdered by the sun shining in that window... Second, there isn't a flight in the US long enough for me to need a bathroom break, so I sit down, pass out, and don't get kicked by someone that forgot to use the john before we left... Also, you don't get hit by the beverage cart, and there's almost no chance of getting a drink spilled on you... This is minor, but I'll also be the first one off that plane pending we actually need that emergency exit... I don't worry so much about needing it, but I worry about someone that can't actually get the thing open if we do need it... I know I sure as hell can open the door, and get it out of the way...
Also, bring yourself a light sweater, or fleece... The plane is almost never warm, and if you're in a window seat, the wall is cool... Murphy's law also states that the idiot next to you will manage to get their air conditioning duct to blow on you when you are already cold...
When the plane lands, allow me to say RELAX!!!... Why the hell do people start standing up while the flight crew takes remedial door opening 101?... I can't imagine why the door takes so long to open, but it does, so just chill... Once they get it open and start moving, then go ahead and get up, grab your luggage, and get moving after the row in front of you has moved out... Don't sit there like some idiot with people passing you in the aisle... Don't chat to the flight crew on the way out the door, they really don't care how your flight was, and the people behind you are about to make sure even if your flight was good, your departure will be bad...
Simple folks... Why don't more people get it?
Well I managed bleeding all the air out of the truck that I can find, and still it dies at idle... To say the least, this is getting frustrating... Tomorrow, I'll jack it up again, and get under there with an inspection mirror to look for kinked fuel lines... Failing that, I think I may have to break down and install fuel pressure gauges here and there to find where the restriction is coming from...
Its just never easy...
Hey, if you hire my company to handle the scenery for your show, and then you refuse to provide the requested information, and then make decisions based on information that is incorrect, I am going to find it very hard to worry about the end quality of your show...
Just sayin' is all...
I bought my fuel transfer pump over the weekend... Yesterday, I fought the good fight, and managed to get everything torn apart, and mostly put back together... I did this in my garage while it never made it about 30degrees outside, thanks to the kindness of one of my neighbors at my shop... He lent me a propane fired radiant heater, and damned if it isn't amazing... It got the garage up to 50, or 55 I imagine... The garage isn't absolutely airtight, so I wasn't too worried about suffocating, but I still don't work in there for more than 2 or 3 hours, and if I get tired, or a headache, I'm out the door, which fortunately didn't happen... Near the end of yesterday, I went to drop in the new fuel filter, and discovered that I didn't have one... So reconstruction ceased for the evening...
Picked up the new filter today (along with a spare) and slapped it in... Bolted the starter back in place, and pumped the manual pump button a few hundred times to get fuel from the tank through the system, and the air out... Dropped the truck off the jack stands, and plugged in the block heater for an hour while I cleaned up a bit... Moment of truth, start the truck... Truck sputters and dies... Resist panic... Start truck again... This time it runs like a clock... Resist celebrating as it always runs well at idle... Pull it out, and let it warm up for a while... Drive to an ATM and get cash... Drive to gas station and fill tank with diesel... Check under the hood while pumping, and note no leaks... Allow mild satisfaction, but then I haven't really run it at speed yet and that's where the problem really presents itself... Run up to the interstate... Hit the interstate, and manage to reach 78mph before traffic stops dead... Allow mild celebration, but keep it under control, the test run was not very long... Run back down the side roads to the house... Truck dies at a light... Start and continue, but truck dies whenever attempting to idle... Coerce truck to get back to garage... Look under hood to find diesel on various parts... Sort of good as it simply means air in the system was killing the truck...
Let the truck sit, I have no time tonight to take another bath in diesel as I have to fly to Florida tomorrow morning (very early) for a site survey... We fly back tomorrow night, but quite late so the truck will have to wait until Thursday night... I am however cautiously optimistic as I suspect it is just a bleed bolt, or the filter cup nut based on where the diesel was... One can hope at any rate...
Do you remember when I was stuck in a world of shit regarding my plumbing?... Yea... I rambled on about it every single damn post for a time... Even made a header with a plumbing theme... It was all about getting my heating system sealed... Yesterday, I discovered a leak... I don't know when the leak started, but I assume it wasn't terribly long ago, as the system had certainly lost pressure, but not too terribly much water... I had noticed more flow noise, which is indicative of air in the system, but since I hadn't seen any water, I thought I was losing my mind... So yesterday, there it was starring me in the face... Water, running down my basement wall... It was a flow control valve gasket gone bad... I hate those bloody things with an amazing passion... Fortunately, I have the upgraded gasket material I used on one of the other units, and the punch was still sitting on my desk... No pressure in the system, so after shutting all the valves to get as much of a vacuum lock as possible, I pulled the top off the valve, dropped in the new gasket, and lost less than an ounce of water... Sealed it back up, opened all the valves, and opened the fill valve... Now, I would have preferred to deal with this next summer when the system is going to be cold, but I didn't have much choice... So the only part that isn't quite right is now my cold fill pressure will be under 12psi... I managed a fill pressure of 15psi at 140 degrees, and the system runs at 180 max, so the pressure is now a little over 22psi when hot... Not perfect, and I'll get a bit more noise as a result, but livable, and I don't have to drain out all the hot water... I'll get the pressure right next summer, and all should be well now...
Just another typical day...
The Pack is an expression that gets used by stagehands in referring to how scenery/equipment/road-boxes/whatever gets put in a truck... The Pack is something that at times is a very serious matter... Touring shows are the most serious about it as they want to get the most stuff in a truck as possible, without damaging it, and keeping it in the right order to come off the truck... In many theatres, you either don't have room to take everything off the truck at once before its set up, or the theatre simply can't take that much stuff for a show... So the shows are typically designed with the ability to downsize them... What that means is you had better figure out The Pack... There is no perfect Pack... It's an unachievable goal, but you can get close... For the big shows that we do, that involve cross country trucking, I typically draw all the stacks of scenery, and road-cases in three dimensions, and place them in a three dimensional truck box I have drawn... That gives us a good start, and lets us determine just how much truck we will need... Some people have an almost spooky ability to pack a truck by eye, almost perfectly, keeping everything locked in place by everything else... I typically can pull that off, but I'm certainly not perfect...
The thing that brought this to mind, was an attempted lumber delivery today... If you were paying attention right there, you noticed the word attempted... At around 11am today, the lumber guy showed up... Now I don't have a regular lumber delivery guy, I get whoever happens to end up with my load on their truck/van... For the most part, the guys are decent... I mean they do this for a living, and they don't want to have a miserable day, so they usually pay attention to their Pack... When the doors opened on the van today, there was my stack of luan, right at the bottom of the pile... There was no chance in hell I was shifting all that crap for the delivery guy... I sent him off to do his other runs, hoping that he'd be back before the end of the day... No such luck... That means I'll have to wait half the day at least Monday since my stack will again be at the bottom of the pile...
All he had to do was look in the back of the van before he left the yard... Idiot...
I dropped my truck off at Dodge yesterday, so they could check it out today... Now, you may not recall, but around 2 months ago, I started having issues with it... The diagnosis then from a diesel truck place was injection pump... The most expensive aspect of the engine with the exclusion of the block... So they did that, and in the process blew the computer up... So they fixed that, and said it was fixed... It wasn't... SO back it went... They then found they had timed the pump wrong, and fixed that, claiming all was well... It was not, and I couldn't take it back to them, so it was off to a dealer... Well the first dealer told me they wouldn't look at it as I needed a diesel specialist... That seemed fair if weird since they sell the damn truck... So I went to the dealer they recommended... That was yesterday...
Today, they called... They informed me with great authority that the problem was the fuel itself... Nothing mechanical... They had checked the injection pump and the turbo system, and all was well... Just burn off the fuel, put new stuff in and I'd be fine...
A word about diesel fuel... The fuel you buy at a gas station is #2 diesel fuel unless you live someplace like Alaska... If you by chance have an oil fired heating system in your house, you most likely use #2 fuel oil... The difference between the two is that they add a red die to the fuel oil, and don't charge the highway tax when they sell it... It works exactly the same in the engine... I can not begin to tell you how many miles I have driven on the stuff over the years... (warning this is not a legal activity, do not try this at home...) At any rate, I had the stuff in my tank this time because my girlfriend had just filled her fuel oil tank in her apartment when the boiler died, and the landlord converted to gas... So there was this 270 gallon tank of essentially diesel fuel just sitting there, and I'd hate to see it become a haz-mat cleanup down the road... So I was using it... That's what is in the tank now... Remember the only difference is some red die, and its got no tax on the price...
They claimed the problem is the fuel... They claimed it was the fuel because they see the red, and know something is different... They are idiots...
A word about the Cummins engine in my truck... That engine can run on #1, and #2 Diesel, #1, and #2 Kerosene, JP 2, JP 8, Jet A, and a couple more I can't recall... Its pretty much a multi fuel engine... Yes I would expect a little less or a little more power on a different fuel... I Expect to possibly damage the exhaust system running something odd... However, running #2 home heating oil in the truck, will not, and can not cause intermittent power issues... Intermittent is the key folks... If it was a fuel quality issue it would be an across the board issue...
In the process of some other research today, I think I have it figured out... It should be the fuel transfer pump... That should cost me a couple hundred bucks for the part... I can do it myself, even though it will be a pain... I will be ordering that part in the morning... Hopefully by next week, I will be able to get the damn thing installed and I can close this chapter in my life...
Yea, its a post about posts... Railing posts... Tired of them yet?... You can't imagine how over these things I am already, and I've only done mock-ups...
We got the pricing off on them today... I only sent them off today, because the producer has a budget meeting in the morning... Really I wasn't ready to send them off since I was waiting for some numbers back, but the request came in at 4pm, so I rushed off a safe quote by 5pm... 5:10 as my partner and I were walking out the door, the phone rang that we knew would ring, but we had hoped to beat it out the door... The numbers were too high, and could we take a closer look at various aspects...
Back off with the coats, order a pizza, and dive in to the numbers and plans... When it was all said and done we had shaved almost 11% off the bottom line... We didn't cut in to out profit margin, we just got the quantities of material and labor a bit closer to what they really will be, rather than the very safe quick numbers I had done... We also got the producer to drop a very expensive and time consuming aspect of the railing posts... It was a trim detail that was going to cost a fortune to do...
So I got stuck with a pizza dinner, and had to stay late to shave money off the bottom line... It didn't really cost me anything, and it eliminated a highly annoying aspect of the design... All in all a good day when you are used to far worse phone calls... 'Course it doesn't leave much room to squeeze any more cuts out of the bid when they decide its too expensive tomorrow, but I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it...
I haven't had cable since I bought my house... Hell I didn't have any wire in the walls for most of the time really... It's been a few months since I ran the cable wire around the place, but I still never subscribed to a service... It is simply an expense I don't really need right now, and for the most part I can live without TV... Yes there are shows I miss watching, but I don't really feel it's effecting my life...
Today, after a day of dealing with snow, and then spending a number of hours resurrecting an older computer for no real reason other than I wanted to try it, I thought I'd try hooking up an antenna to the TV in the living room... Hell when I was growing up, we didn't have cable, because my parents didn't want to pay for it, so we existed on antenna alone... There was always something on to watch... Mostly I watched a lot of MASH back then... So it was almost preordained that when I got the thing wired up, and the channels I should get programmed, that the first show that came on was in fact MASH... And honestly, I don't know how its possible, but I never saw this particular episode before... Very strange...
Last night we got the first snow of the season... The fine folks over at AccuWeather were calling for a coating to an inch for my area of New Jersey... Typically that means we'll get next to nothing, because I live in this strange little tropical section of New Jersey, where my parents to the north get clobbered, and my sister to the south gets hit, when I get a cloudy day... Weird... But helpful at times... This time though, there was no way in hell we were going to get a miss... I watched the front come across, and it was big enough that there was no escape this time... However, I wasn't sweating it, because I had started up the snow blower three weeks ago to make sure all was well, and failing that, the shovel never breaks down (and I even have multiple backup shovels, but that's for another post...). So I went to sleep knowing I'd have to deal with something in the morning...
I woke up at 7:30 (which should be a crime on a Sunday) and noticed my skylight was covered with snow... That seemed a bit off since we were only getting a coating to an inch, and that skylight leaks heat like a sieve... I knew then, that we got a bit more than predicted, but hell, it still wasn't going to be a big deal...
On with the boots, coat, gloves, and out to the garage, noting it was about an inch and a half of heavy wet snow... No problem... The snow-blower is huge... It runs well... It has starter that plugs in to the wall so you don't have to pull it, or worry about batteries being dead... It was also almost out of gas... Shit... Clean off a car, go get gas, com back and deal with the snow... Still, I was only annoyed I hadn't filled the tank when I had started it up earlier... Whatever...
Rosanne's (I don't know her name, but here after, the neighbors to my left will be Rosanne's family) son was out shoveling... He wandered over to the fence when I said good morning, and asked with complete honesty... "Geesh, who saw this coming?
Um... Well... Everybody?...
Yea... That again...
So we did mock-ups of two posts and a pair of rails for the designer, producer and sound guy to check out... From earlier conversations I figured we were ok, if not ideal... They were using a speaker that didn't have a built in amp so we didn't have to run power to them... I checked that because the only way to fit the speaker in the post was to take apart the rather large connection that sticks out the back of the damn thing... I sure as hell wouldn't take apart a power plug, but speaker cable is low voltage and it'd just be annoying...
Apparently nobody spoke to the sound guy regarding this... They all came in and then set about trying to convince me that it was ok to take apart a 110 volt connection and leave it just taped in place... Um, not on your life was my basic reaction... We actually argued at length about it... In the end we reached a consensus, which means I almost got my way... They are only going to take the very back off the connector, which leaves all the wiring covered, and the connection locked in place... I will build the post a tad larger, and make the back panel thinner to make it all fit together without ruining the design concept...
We could have avoided all this if they had just gotten the information I had asked about very clearly to me 2 weeks ago... Now, all is well, but I look like someone that is inflexible... Hell I don't give a damn if the sound guy electrocutes himself screwing around with open wiring... The problem is that since the post is a full enclosure, I become liable, because the speaker is now an associated part of the whole... Hell the post is all wood, so there is almost no chance of a problem... Its that almost that set me off...
Whatever... We start making posts next week...
So its the first of December... I don't know how many shopping days are left until Christmas, and honestly, I don't really care... I mean its the first, right?... It shouldn't really be a problem if I were to order something right now that is in stock, and expect it to get here before Christmas right?... Apparently, Amazon sees things differently... They can't manage to get 2 books I want shipped to me before January 3 if I order them right now...
What. The. Fuck?...
I guess I'll actually have to venture out to a book store... Note to self, start shopping in September when attempting to use the "easy" method...
Update: Apparently Barnes and Noble have figured out the vastly difficult concept of putting a book in a box and sending it on its way in a timely manor...
If Bob Vila is hocking it for Sears, don't buy it for someone you actually care about this holiday season...
Remember the sitcom Rosanne?...
Yea... My neighbor sounds just like that and doesn't look any better...
At times my life is pure hell...
So the show that shall remain nameless, but has happened before, has thrown a couple new twists at me... The design this year calls for a band of white to wrap the entire room roughly 6 feet up to almost 14 feet up... That's easy really, and I've done that before... The trick this time is they want to have control booths, and observation areas besides just the walls... So the first thought is using scrim... Scrim for those of you that don't know, is a somewhat unique mesh we use in the arts. In the case of white (or any light colored) scrim, if you light the front and not the back, you see the scrim. If you light behind the scrim, and not the front, you see right through it... Magic... But that magic works best about twenty feet and further away... Not up close and personal like a corporate meeting... But that's the road they want to travel... They even understand that it isn't going to work perfectly, and so they suggested a double layer of the stuff... This is where you can tell the corporate people from those of us that cut our teeth in theatre... Every single person that has toughed it out in a theatre scene shop has been down this road... Its an ugly road... Literally a nauseating road... One that will give you a migraine at best.... Its a little something called Moire Effect... Check out a little sample of it here... Now multiply that out to say a 40' x 20' area, and don't use something so benign as a couple circular patterns... Scrim is little rectangles, with a finer thread that cuts them on a diagonal... The scrim is never pulled evenly so the lines are straight, so the whole thing once you combine two layers will start undulating on you visually, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it... Any little breeze (like say air conditioning), and little movement (like say breathing) will make the pattern drive you absolutely mad...
Now, you can get this using any kind of mesh in front of any kind of mesh, scrim in theatres just seems to be the worst I've run across... I don't ever do it... I don't even put insect screen in windows on stage (which works beautifully instead of glass or Plexiglas incidentally) if they are considering a scrim application... My experience is not unique... Yet somehow, a designer with 20 years more experience than I have building has specified a double layer of scrim in the control booth windows... There would certainly be no trouble with the client looking in... but since the people in the booths have to look out all the time, perhaps this isn't such a good idea... I mentioned this... I was asked to do it anyway, and we'll just have to see...
I wonder how much of a sense of humor the people paying this guy have... They're some of the people that will be stuck in the booth for entire days...
Its gonna be another long one folks...