Tag Archives: technology

The View

John Henry (21st Century Version)

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One recent morning, our new neighbor discovered a fallen tree across her driveway. Blocked in; husband out of town; couldn’t get their chainsaw started; did we know any tree guys? Well, yeah, but not cheap, and not likely to be quick about it. 

I went out to take a look. The sweet smell of red oak, freshly broken open; about 16 inches in diameter where it crossed the driveway. Hmm. I bet we can handle this. 

I have three large log-cutting saws mounted on the wall of our living room. Two are ancient—six-foot two-person cross cut saws, one from each of my grandfathers. The paternal one is covered with enough rust scale to render it useless as a tool, but the maternal one is in good shape except for the dry-rotted handles. It has been used in this century; that’s when one weakened handle broke. Someday, I will make new ones. 

The third saw I bought new, 40-some years ago. It’s about three feet long, variously called a one-person cross-cut or a bucking saw. Straight from the factory, it was a disaster—teeth filed to random lengths and with no “set.” I had to re-file all the teeth and, lacking a saw set for such large teeth, set them with a small hammer. It took me years of off-and-on effort to get it working reasonably well. That’s the tool I took off the wall. 

The saw did me proud. In fact, I cannot remember a time that it cut better. We moved the secondary handle into two-person mode, and with the neighbor on one end and me on the other, we made short work of that oak.

The Saw and the Tree

Later that same morning, Nancy and I were removing leaves from our cul de sac. Nancy, with “her” leaf blower, would push them up into a dense pile. Then I would use a leaf rake to move the pile to the curb. Nancy was amused that I preferred the leaf rake, and mentioned Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel (old vs. new technology). I countered with John Henry against the steam drill (man vs. machine). 

It’s not nearly the same, of course. Mike Mulligan and John Henry, and the Luddites before them, were concerned about job security. While I have sometimes jumped onto a self-righteous soapbox, in truth my issues are merely personal preference. 

I don’t object to modern power tools. I have written before about our electrically-powered “Goat.” Additionally, we own two leaf blowers, a string trimmer, and a lawn mower—all cordless electrics with 21st-century battery and control technology. But there are times when a simpler tool works better for me. Take the task of moving leaves. 

I like my blower. (We have “his” and “hers;” hers is a later purchase, more powerful and quieter than mine.) They are great for moving a light density of leaves into piles or windrows. But when the pile gets large, a stream of air seems an inefficient way to make progress. That’s when I prefer a leaf rake and a tarp.

Nancy keeps reminding me how her physiology is different than mine—the mechanics of using the leaf rake don’t come easily to her. (This from the woman who can sit or crouch for hours at a time pounding paver bricks level with a rubber mallet. For me, ten minutes of that would have my back in torment. Different physiology.) If I had been elsewhere that morning, she would have finished the job just fine with her blower. She might have needed to draw on her backup battery, but that’s what it’s for.

What I most object to in fall leaf cleanup is the second hand noise of others doing the job with an ear-splitting gasoline-powered blower. I recently saw a cartoon in which a group of lab-coated types were staring at a whiteboard covered with formulas and diagrams. At the top of the board was the project goal: Design a quiet leaf blower. And one scientist was saying to the rest that they should give up and move on to something feasible, such as putting man on Mars. As I said earlier, we own two quiet blowers, so I know it is possible to move air with force and little noise—IF you are not wedded to gasoline engines. 

We have discussed getting a chain saw. Maybe one is in our future, but so far, I have resisted. Partly, I am not convinced that our need is great enough to justify the expense because most of what I cut can be easily done with a pruning saw. Then there is the safely angle.  A chainsaw is a dangerous tool at best. On our steep terrain, with me at an age when balance begins to decline, is it worth the risk? If I ever succumb to the lure of a chainsaw, it will almost certainly be a cordless electric. Noise is only part of my aversion to gasoline engines; their care and feeding is at least as big a drawback. My electric tools always start and never leave oily smells on my skin and clothing.

I recently encountered a website devoted to use of the scythe for haying and maintaining farm pastures. I once owned a scythe, sold it, regretted that decision, bought another. For some uses, I have not found a better tool. The website reinforced for me how little I know about using and, most especially, sharpening a scythe. I had never heard of peening one. I am not even sure that my cheap blade, stamped, not forged, is capable of being peened. I have had my scythe out a few times since we moved here, unsuccessfully tackling the mess in my meadow. Now I am inspired to keep trying. One thing’s for certain—I am not buying a gasoline-powered mowing monster for that meadow. We will find another way.

I have three antique wooden bodied woodworking planes, also displayed in our living room with the saws. One is missing its handle; one is structurally compromised; all are fussy to use, lacking the adjusting screws and levers of your basic metal-bodied Stanley from 150 years ago. I am not masochist enough to try to use them for real work, yet proud to say I have been able to coax a few good shavings from each. And, yes, there are web pages devoted to using wood-bodied planes, or even making your own. Maybe, someday.

Two closing thoughts: First, the author of the scything website mentioned that, for him, swinging a scythe across his meadow was a form of meditation. I get that. I have come as close to a meditative state while using hand tools as I ever did while practicing centering prayer. (Aside: This week’s Economist has an obituary on Fr. Thomas Keating, the father of centering prayer.) 

Second, to repeat, I maintain and use hand tools because I enjoy them. There is a special pleasure in felling a dead tree with my grandfather’s crosscut saw, or filing and setting the teeth on my bucking saw. Some fish. Some travel. Some read or knit or train bonsai. A former work colleague studied string theory for fun. No John Henry am I, no Paul Bunyan. Just a dilettante having fun.

The View

Oops!

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Tech:  “Did you pull the thermostat off the wall?”

We are outside with the HVAC technician. He has just forced our heating unit to come on (that’s a relief, it’s not dead) and is trying to determine why it was not working.

Me:  “No.” Pause. “That’s an interesting question. Do people do that often?”

Tech:  “You’d be surprised at some of the things we find.”

We have had a spell of unusually warm February weather. However, last night, it turned somewhat cooler, and the house felt cold this morning. A glance at the thermostat showed … nothing. No breakers are tripped, but the thermostat screen is blank.

The technician digs around for a while, then comes into the house to show us a section of the thermostat cable that has been chewed by some critter—a mouse, squirrel, or chipmunk most likely. The wounds were old, the bare wire corroded, and replacing that section has not fixed our problem. He thinks the wire-chewing varmints have been at work farther in than he has been able to go. He will have to come back tomorrow with a partner to help pull cable.

____________

After a chilly night and morning, our technician and his buddy are back. Nancy and I go about our chores as the two traipse in and out, with many trips to their trucks (yep, two technicians, two trucks). This sure is taking awhile.

We are out in the garage when they track us down with an update.

“Your electrician cut the wire. We found one end, but we don’t know where it went from there.”

“Cut the wire? How could they have done that!” Nancy explodes.

It hits me in a rush. “No, they didn’t. You did,” I answer.

Okay. That was unfair. I told her to do it.

____________

A little background.

One of the unsightly features of our new house was wire—yards and yards and yards of wire. Telephone wire and TV coax tacked around the exterior and poked through the walls into each room. The house was built in the ‘60s, and decades of added technologies were evident in wire under eaves, wire up and down walls, wire protruding from baseboards. The service boxes had multiple inputs and outputs. It reminded Nancy of the 1920s scene from Disney’s Carousel of Progress. We have given up landlines and cable TV, so we have been pulling down these wires with abandon. Indoors, too. Our remodeling turned up wires from defunct doorbells and security systems. Cut ‘em out!

Last week, we finally got around to fixing up the musty closet underneath the stairs. Painted, hung shelves. There was a wire running along the intersection of wall and ceiling. Nancy asked me if it was needed. Clearly it was not a power cable. “Cut it,” I said. She did. And did such a neat job of patching the hole in the ceiling that the HVAC techs could not see where the other end of that cable went. The critters that chewed on our thermostat cable were of the species Homo sapiens. They took a six foot long bite right out of that cable.

____________

That was a costly six feet of cable. The only consolation I can see is that we are now among the infamous stories the HVAC techs can tell. I can just imagine a future conversation:

Tech:  “Did you cut a section out of the thermostat wire?”

Homeowner:  “No. Do people do that often?”

Tech:  “You’d be surprised at some of the things we find.”

The View

The Long and Winding Lint Road

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Our dryer failed. The one my parents gave us as a wedding present. Almost 27 years ago. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to!

I had opened the dryer to check on a load of towels, and found them stone cold and as wet as when removed from the washer. Tried different heat settings. Nope. No heat. Oh well, I didn’t really want a drill press. Deep in my heart of hearts, I was really wanting a new dryer.

Our dryer had been getting less and less effective, even when it had a working heating element. Two-and-a-half hours to dry a load of towels. I kept wondering whether the exhaust duct was filled with lint, but when I held my hand at the end, the flow seemed strong. Shows how little I know.

When we added on to our house a quarter-century ago, dryer efficiency was not high on our priority list, and we ended up with a long and twisting mess of a duct run. Half was flexible tubing draped around the backs of some cabinets; the other half, rigid metal zig-zagging inaccessibly through the HVAC chase. So actually checking on the extent of our dryer lint buildup seemed a can of worms I’d rather not open. But, with a dead dryer,  we’d be opening one end anyway. I did some research. Did you know that dryer lint is a major cause of house fires? Did you know they have these handy kits at your local hardware store for cleaning out the insides of your dryer ducts?

So we took the plunge. Actually, Nancy did the hard part. While I was napping (what are Sunday afternoons for?), she pulled the washer and dryer away from the wall, stripped out all the accessible flexible ducting, and cleaned the floor under the machines. And the walls. And the pipes and hoses and other nooks and crannies. Amazing how much dust and lint and unmentionable mess can accumulate behind and under an appliance.

I then did the cool stuff, chucking the brush from our new duct cleaning kit into my drill and spinning it through the inaccessible part of the run.

Worked like a charm, even going through two right angle bends. We reamed out an embarrassing quantity of dryer lint, gave thanks that our house still stands, and then faced how to replace the flexible stuff (and associated dips and turns) with smooth rigid metal ducting.

The latter took an additional half day: sawing out the backs of a couple of cabinets and connecting the shiny new duct sections. That oscillating saw I bought a year ago earned its keep.

The real stress, however, was buying the replacement appliances. Yes, appliances, plural. The washer was nearly as old as the dryer and had been requiring more and more vinegar to keep the musty odor in check. Fortunately, the dryer died during the Memorial Day sales. (Or are appliances like some other markets in which there is always a sale going on?)

How should we choose among the many brands and models and features? Do glass lids and sculpted sheet metal really add value? How many sensors and settings do we need? What is really useful and what is hype? Wifi capability? You’re kidding, right?

No wifi. I don’t want a close and personal relationship with my dryer. And I don’t want to give the cyber-sleaze additional portals into my life.

We ended up with an unmatched pair—a relatively unadorned dryer that looks like appliances used to look, and a glass-lidded, sculpted metal washer whose irresistible siren call was its huge tub size and its deeply-discounted closeout pricing. No more jamming oversized comforters into the washer; this baby could wash a car cover. We can barely reach the bottom.  A short person would need a step stool to empty it.

An expensive experience for sure! But some good came of it. We resolved a safety hazard. And we have this nifty duct cleaning kit. I’ll let you use it in exchange for, say, a half-hour of garden weeding? A cup of coffee and a Donut Palace apple fritter? The use of your drill press? Or just a few minutes of good conversation.

P.S. In the under-dryer detritus, Nancy found her wedding ring—the spare one, bought during her pregnancy. Our son had borrowed and lost it back in his middle school years. No wonder we couldn’t find it when we ran a metal detector over neighborhood yards!

 

 

The View

Knotty Problems

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My father-in-law asked me to repair some woodpecker damage on his house, which then led Nancy to expect me to repair the woodpecker damage I was trying to ignore on our own house. Ok, but not from a ladder.

I have a mixed tolerance for heights. I have comfortably rappelled from 100’ cliffs, a cherry-picker bucket, and a catwalk above the old Charlotte Coliseum (the first one). I have (not quite so comfortably) assembled, worked from, and disassembled multi-story scaffolding for the masonry outfit that employed me three summers in my late teens. None of the above held anything like the panic I feel on a 24’ extension ladder. On one recent task, my essential tremor, no doubt exacerbated by my nervousness, so shook my hand that I could not get the drill/driver bit anywhere near the target screw head. Nancy had to climb the ladder to do the job for me. Add in the number of friends and acquaintances injured by falls from ladders (one just days ago), plus the particular site difficulties below these woodpecker holes, and watch me head for the rental store. Scaffolding is cheap.

Both jobs are done now, and the scaffolding returned. I am relieved. This particular scaffolding experience was not without its nervous moments, and I am wondering if my tolerance for heights is declining with age. Am I ready to hire out future jobs? A more robust ladder (mine is a bottom of the line 200 pound rating) would not dance quite so wildly as I climbed, and might give a greater measure of confidence. But is this the point where I begin to think about the role of discretion in valor? Am I done with heights?

We had loaded the scaffolding into the truck for the return to the rental store, and I was tying everything in, when Nancy said, “You need to teach me that knot.”

The trucker’s hitch. It is a rare month when I do not find more than one use for the trucker’s hitch.

Many years ago, I bought a canoe from River Sports in Knoxville. They would not let me off the lot until I had demonstrated that I could tie the canoe safely onto my car. And “safely” meant multiple trucker’s hitches, tightly cinched down. That was, I believe, one of the more useful half-hours of my life.

I realize that knot-tying has gone out of fashion, as hardware substitutes for rope and knot. But hardware does not deliver the satisfaction of a well-tied tautline hitch or a bowline. Or a trucker’s hitch. If you know them, you are in select company.

Ah, the bowline! In my early twenties, I was privileged to be an Assistant Scoutmaster in a very active and rigorous troop. My own scouting days had been spent in a less-than-rigorous troop, and these kids taught me a lot. Including the bowline.

The bowline is a troublesome knot. It begins with a loop, and then you enter the loop, either from the back or the front, depending on which way you flipped the loop. To this day, I usually require more than one try to get it right. There is a mnemonic, “the squirrel comes out of the hole, around the tree, and back down into the hole,” that frankly never helped me one bit.

But, if you need to tie a bowline around your chest, as my climbing/rappelling young Scout charges often did, that’s a quick and simple, one-handed task. In the knot-tying relays, our troop always won. While the other troops were standing still, trying to figure out which way the squirrel was to come out of the hole, our boys were tying the bowline on the run, and our second leg of the relay was underway before the competition got the squirrel back into the hole.

I never learned splicing, and probably won’t. But my latest rope purchase came with some knot-tying instructions, including some I am not familiar with. Those instructions are here somewhere in my piling system. When they re-surface, I intend to learn some more knots.

Here’s one for the “If we can put a man on the moon …” category.

I am waiting for delivery of a replacement debit card. It has been in the mail for five business days. The bank will not get worried until two weeks have elapsed.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a cheap shot at the postal service or government efficiency. Those guys work against great odds, including Congress and you and me. However, during this same interval, the same postal service both returned a disk to Netflix and delivered my next one. Two way service in three business days.

And it is not just the postal service. The bank took more than a week to get that card out the door and into the mail. My last electronic funds transfer took three days. Them’s mighty slow electrons, my friend.

Reminds me of when I worked for a well-known high-tech firm that did, among other things, large complex computer systems. Payday was one week after the end of the pay period. In order to get the payroll out in time, they required timecards two days BEFORE  the end of the time period. If your projected two days turned up surprises, you then filed an amended timecard on the first day of the next time period.

Apparently, that company is not alone. My all-time favorite Dilbert cartoon has him complaining about just that phenomenon, having to turn in his timecard before the end of the period. When the harassed secretary asks him how long he is going to continue bothering her, he replies, “According to my timecard, ten more minutes.”

The View

Further Encounters …

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Somehow, the following story seems a continuation of this earlier post.

Greetings from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority arrived in our mailbox the other day. The addressee shares my last name, but the first name was not a match. Still, I opened it.

It appears that someone pulling a trailer with Tennessee plates recently ran a toll booth on the NJ Turnpike. An automated camera snapped a photo of the back of the trailer and its license plate, then the communication between the great states of New Jersey and Tennessee associated our address and this not-quite-right name with the offending vehicle. Not-Quite-Right-Name owes the Turnpike Authority the unpaid $6 toll plus a $50 fine. I do not own—nor have ever owned—that trailer or one remotely resembling it. I have not been in New Jersey in years.

The form letter lists three ways to protest: phone, website, or mail (by completing a section on the back of the form and returning it). Since I had a question about what the form asked, I tried the phone option first. After getting lost in phone menu hell, where no option fit my situation, I hung up and tried the web. But the website claimed the “violation number” I’d entered did not match anything in its system. I rechecked that I had faithfully copied the number from the form letter and was rejected again. So I went back to the phone.

This time, I found the place in the phone menu from which entering “0” connected me to another human being. This representative of the Turnpike Authority checked my number, and stated that, as this was a first violation, she could waive the $50 fine if I promptly paid the $6 toll. I declined, explaining that no one of that name lives at this address and that no one at this address owns or has ever owned the vehicle in question. She remarked that I should have marked the envelope “return to sender” instead of opening it.

From this unhelpful start, we finally got to my question. The form has a place for me to indicate that I do not own the vehicle in question. But it also asks that I provide a copy of the vehicle’s registration. Huh? She was less puzzled than I as to how I would access the registration of a vehicle I do not own.

I have returned the form, sans registration copy, disavowing both the vehicle and the name. I suspect I have not heard the last of this.

If we start having unexplained lane closures on the Solway Bridge, I’ll be thinking New Jersey.

The View

Encounters with Progress

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Part 1. Modern Banking

My credit union has opened a new facility for the retail activity at its main location. In place of a long string of, mostly empty, teller stations, we now have just a few places for face-to-face banking, and some “interactive teller machines” (ITM), on which a real but remote teller is present by video link. I have used these a few times now, instead of waiting in the queue for a traditional teller, and the experience has been OK. Recently, I tried the new drive-through. Not OK.

When I drive up, I am faced, not with the familiar pneumatic tube, but an ITM. “TOUCH HERE” says the screen. I touch, a friendly face appears and asks for my account number, and a key pad pops onto the screen. I am thrown. For two-and-a-half decades, I have known my number. I use it frequently when banking online. However, for that same two and a half decades, when I physically “go to the bank,” my debit card has been the key to my account. I have it in my hand, am ready to insert it into the slot. Asked for my account number out of the familiar context, I go blank.

It’s no big deal. The card slot is there and I access my account the old way. But that start sets the tone for the entire transaction. I am here to deposit some checks. I need to endorse them. I am in Nancy’s car. Not a pen in sight.

Pneumatic tubes may be old technology. But they contain pens. ITMs do not. The friendly face on the screen asks me to look around to find the “ambassador,” who can provide me with a pen. It seems that new technology requires some poor soul to stand out in the weather and deliver pens to those who, like me, have arrived in a pen-less car. But it’s a cold, wet day, and the poor ambassador has apparently retreated inside to get warm. In compensation, (s)he has left behind piles of pens. Out of reach.

The design of this new drive-through facility features massive waist-high blocks of concrete that form canyons leading up to the ITMs. Are these masses an architectural statement? A security measure to keep me from hurtling my car sideways into the adjoining lane? Behind me, on one of the blocks, is a pile of blue credit union pens. Trapped in the canyon, I can’t open my door. Fortunately, I am the only car in my lane, so I back up to the pile, launch myself half out of the car window, and—barely—reach a pen. Then I move forward again, grin sheepishly at the friendly face on the screen, and look around for a surface on which to write.

Pneumatic tubes may be old technology, but they have a flat side on which to write. If it were a warm day, perhaps the ambassador would be nearby and would have a clipboard for me. If I were in my truck, I would have a tissue box with flat surfaces. But my wife’s wagon has no convenient space for a tissue box. She uses soft-sided containers. There is no flat, hard surface in that car.

I shrug my shoulders at the friendly face on the screen, and back down the canyon again. This time, I have to back all the way out, so I can open my door, exit, and use the rough concrete surface of a canyon block as a writing surface. I scrawl “for deposit only” on each check, get back into the car, and move forward to the ITM. The friendly face is gone. Maybe it was her break time. The screen invites me to “TOUCH HERE.” I decline. I drive out of the canyon, park, walk inside. The line for face-to-face encounters is ten deep. I take a deep breath, walk up to the indoors ITM, and “TOUCH HERE.” I am relieved to get an entirely different friendly face. Acting as if nothing has gone wrong with my day, I deposit my checks.

Part 2. But Wait! There’s More!

That is just the beginning of a technologically “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” I am trying to buy tickets online for the play, “A Lesson Before Dying.” The website does not tell me which dates are sold out. Instead, it presents the entire slate of dates. I pick one, travel several steps down that road, learn there are no tickets left, back up, and repeat. I finally find empty seats. But I am not allowed to simply pay and exit. I must first “register.” Email address, password, credit card data, billing address, mailing address (I am not asking anything to be mailed, and there is no “same as billing address” option). Finally I complete the last blank. My finger is descending on the SEND button—and the session times out. Time is counted, it seems, not from the last activity, but from the first.

Now I am in limbo. (The one just outside the gates of hell.) I am not registered—I timed out. I cannot register—”That email address is in use!” Nancy comes to my rescue. Knowing she is in a race, she registers herself, beats the clock, and we finally have our tickets.

Later that day we go to the post office. We need a stamp for a birthday card. It is after hours. I let Nancy out near the door, then find a parking spot. And wait. And wait. Thinking she may have been mugged, I go inside. Reading the look on her face, I understand she has had her own adventures with progress. Stamp machines, it seems, are old technology. The new technology is kiosks that make the mailing of a simple birthday card as complex as mailing a package of Christmas gifts. A fun feature is the partial labels printed by the kiosks. City, state, and ZIP are pre-printed, but street address must be filled in by hand. When the label is pressed onto the letter/card/package, the ink smears. The work table is littered with other customers’ smeared labels.

I don’t think it’s just us. My grocery store, the new one that sells seemingly everything but tires and toilet seats, cannot keep its own brand of yogurt in stock. Cannot keep peanuts in the make-your-own-peanut-butter machine.

One more example. When the new credit union branch was built, the banks of deposit boxes were moved locked and intact. My box is and always has been in the cheap seats, the nosebleed section, the very top row. Even the tallest employees have to use the step stool. The first time I entered the new vault after the move, the bank of lockboxes looked familiar, but the ceiling seemed oppressively low and the lighting, well, absent. I could barely read the numbers on the top row. After the paperwork and the step stool positioning, the attendant unlocked my box and tugged on the inner container. Bang! It hit the light fixture. She tried again. Bang! “I can’t believe that!” she laughed. Finally, by forcing down hard, she was able to scrape it under the fixture.

I think I need to chill for a while. Sing along with Fred Eaglesmith. Treat myself to a snack. But wait! I’m out of yogurt. And peanut butter.