My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on December 4, 2017

It is hard to believe, but I finally winterized the pool and in the same weekend brought home a Christmas tree, put the wreathes up and modified the lighting we use on the house in December. The first years we used 150 watt incandescent floods (also had halogens at some point), then I switched to compact florescent floods for the last decade which cut back the wattage and this year switched to some super bright LED floods that only draw 17 watts each (shockingly little).

The new LEDs fit the standard fixtures, but are priced high enough to make me wonder. In hopes of making them last, I’m adding an additional o-ring to the base in hope to keep the rain out. We’ll see?

On a side "techy" note, I put my Particle Photon to work with a high amperage 110 volt relay in order to control the lights for the detached garage/poolhouse. It works great using my iPhone as a controller with the Blynk app.

Category: Energy, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: christmas, closing, flood, house, led, lights, pool

Posted By RichC on December 3, 2017

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Category: Archive, Personal, Photos, Science, Space | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, astronomy, drew, family, katelyn, night, sky, supermoon

Posted By RichC on December 2, 2017

After updating my iMac to the latest High Sierra MacOS, a root log in security flaw was discovered and had users scrambling for a temporary fix. I followed the advice on 9to5Mac, but Apple quickly sent out a security update. Safe again?

Another install has been a major update for Mozilla and their popular Firefox browser. It is suppose to be much faster than competitors and claims to be more compatible with more of what we use on the web. Since I always have two browsers running on my desktop, I was happy to update and wanted it to work with all that I normally use, but quickly found out that their new Firefox Quantum 57.0.1 is still not able to use the Google Hangouts communication tool built into Gmail. Bummer. 

Category: Apple, Computer, Software | No Comments »
Tags: apple, browser, firefox, high sierra, macos, mozilla

Posted By RichC on December 1, 2017

Most Apple iPhone users (as well as Android users) have been using a smartphone as a flashlight for years with only a few innovations. The simple swipe up and click on has been relatively straight forward until the addition of brightness levels.

With iOS11, the text description has been eliminated (???) but the brightness level now has 4 settings plus an off. To control brightness, access the flashlight app and press firmly to bring up the level control, then chose your brightness level.

<– previous iOS | New iOS 11 –>

Category: Apple, Cellphone, How-To, Technology, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: apple, brightness, flashlight, ios11, iphone, tech friday, techfriday

Posted By RichC on November 30, 2017

As someone who had an early interest in cryptocurrency as a replacement for product and services exchange, the recent rise of Bitcoin is nothing more than frightening. Supply and demand obviously has traders of this public ledger block chain protected transaction “currency” excited and like all manias, is concerning since eventually trading profits will be too attractive for speculative traders not want to cash in.

Who knows when the bubble will burst … but even as someone who likes the idea of a stable and secure world cryptocurrency … this is currently just ridiculous gambling.

Some suggest it is on par with the dot-com boom and crash, which maybe true, but personally I’d go back a few more centuries to ‘Tulipmania.’

Tulipmania was the first major financial bubble. Investors began to madly purchase tulips, pushing their prices to unprecedented highs; the average price of a single flower exceeded the annual income of a skilled worker. Tulips sold for over 4000 florins, the currency of the Netherlands at the time. As prices drastically collapsed over the course of a week, many tulip holders instantly went bankrupt.

Tulipmania reflects the general cycle of a bubble: investors lose track of rational expectations, psychological biases lead to a massive upswing in the price of an asset or sector, a positive-feedback cycle continues to inflate prices, investors realize that they are merely holding a tulip that they sold their houses for, prices collapse due to a massive sell off and many go bankrupt.

EDIT 11/29 afternoon: Since I wrote this early Wednesday morning, I figured it would at least be appropriate to show what happened in the afternoon. If you own Bitcoins, you need a strong stomach.

Category: Business, Financial, History | 1 Comment »
Tags: bitcoin, bubble, cryptocurrency, currency, dotcom, mania, trading, tulipmania, tulips

Posted By RichC on November 29, 2017

One of the best YouTube channels for car lovers is Jay Leno’s Garage. He always has something interesting and the older I get the more I appreciate his highlighting cars I remembered and envied.

The 1974 Porsche 914 (or previous up to 1972 version 914-6 GT) was my ideal teenage car as it was still a realistic dream car (aka: affordable. Although I always thought of my 1974 Mercury Capri below as sporty and HALF German).

Since I was already tinkering with the air-cooled VW’s in the 1970s, the 914 was an attractive and sporty step up; it was also the entry level Porsche. Unfortunately for me, a Porsche is one German car that has evaded me over the years and a make I haven’t owned … yet … who knows, there may still be one in my future?

Category: Automotive, Video, Volkswagen | No Comments »
Tags: cars, garage, jay leno, porsche, video, volkswagen, youtube

Posted By RichC on November 28, 2017

As someone who is relatively comfortable with ecommerce and shopping for the best deals online, I don’t think I’ve ever been as frustrated as I was on Monday.

Brenda and I had semi-planned to do a little more shopping "online" this year and since Cyber Monday is generally a "good deal" day to shop for items, we figured it would be the day to shop. The indecision as to "what was a good deal" backfired as searching Amazon as well as the many online stores, conglomerated sites and checking the  WikiBuy Chrome plugin left me more agitated than usual this time of year (for WikiBuy info see the Maria Bartiromo FoxBusiness video clip below). Isn’t technology is suppose to make things easier?

Category: Computer, Holiday, Shopping, Software, Technology | 1 Comment »
Tags: christmas, cyber monday, cybermonday, foxbusiness, Holiday, Shopping, wikibuy

Posted By RichC on November 27, 2017

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Category: Music | No Comments »
Tags: album, america, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, sister golden hair

Posted By RichC on November 26, 2017

Better late than never in posting a few photos from our Thanksgiving day dinner and family time over this extended weekend. My brother Ron and his family were all able to get together at our house this year with our two new additions: Annalyn (Katelyn and Drew) and Teagan (Keira and Ben). Thankfully all of us live in Ohio and travel was a non-issue. since the weather was great.

Brenda always enjoys setting the table in the dining room and she pretty much over-did the little extras and "trimmings" this year. I know we all appreciated it (my mother would have especially enjoyed it) as we all ate our fill. Brenda made a special effort to use items for the table each of our late moms … as well as grandparents. So nice.

The turkey and trimming were delicious and we all enjoyed the time together … likely knowing it may be less and less as each or our children marry and will have their own family traditions. For now, it was great to be together.

Our kids were around for the day after Thanksgiving and we all had fun watching some football, a Christmas movie and playing the board game Settlers of Catan. We waved goodbye to Katelyn, Drew and Annalyn on Saturday watching them drive off in their new 2018 Volkswagen Tiguan (click play for video).

Category: Archive, Holiday, Personal, Photos, Video | 1 Comment »
Tags: corbett, family, Holiday, Photos, thanksgiving, turkey, video

Posted By RichC on November 25, 2017

A reader wrote me a long email last week after noticing my chainsaw post and had a couple questions regarding how I sharpen the chain/blade on my chainsaws. I really had not giving it that much though since my sharpening technique is probably not expert or appropriate advice. So reader be warned.

Over the years I’ve pondered buying a cheap electric chainsaw grinder, but always suspected the low cost ones were "janky" (Ha! I’ve been looking for the appropriate post to incorporate that word!). The other downside is in heating up the tooth and losing hardness … besides how often do most of us really need to sharpen the chainsaw?

So I do it the way most homeowners have for years … a round chainsaw file (kit on Amazon). My dad had a special guide tool that I sort of which I would have inherited, but then again I’ve always taken the chain off the saw and filed it in a bench vise.

So here’s the method in 5 short steps:

1. Remove the chain and put the guides in the vise. Measure the angle of the grind and add a couple guide marks on your vise (see photo below).
2. Mark your starting tooth and use a "flat file" to knock down the depth tooth using the gauge (see Amazon link above) or so that the "bite" of the chisel tooth is about 1/32-1/16 inch (more for bigger saws … less for lightweight trimming or smaller CC saws as well as electric saws).
3. Use the round file to stroke the gullet keeping the file level and in alignment with the marks on the vise. I don’t sharpen often, so I may file more than most just to be sure each tooth is equally sharpened (if not, the saw will not cut straight).
4. Flip the chain and do the other  side the same.
5. I use my finger to check "hook" sharpness and often use the non-knurl part of the file to bend back the burr on the sharpen edge, then take a couple more light strokes to clean up the edge.

Category: Advice, Archive, Personal, Photos, Tools | No Comments »
Tags: blades, chain, chainsaw, firewood, mcculloch, sharpening