It's NOT ABBA

A quite different take on the song Dancing Queen by ABBA:

http://svtplay.se/v/2161732/doobidoo/per_anderssons_och_annika_anderssons_folkmusik-abba?sb,k104108,1,f,-1

Oh... and if you hadn't guessed it, it's a spoof on Swedish folk music, not to be taken seriously.

Book Report

I've just finished the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's nest).

The first one I check out through the library here on a special order.  It was in Swedish.

The second one I bought at the airport on my way to Minneapolis in English in a paperback format.  I read it on the plane and was done with it by Wednesday.

The third one, I spent a couple of days looking for: it's not out in paperback, and as I don't want to add the book to my library, I didn't want to fork out the extra money for the hardback.  I tried to pick up the paperback in Swedish (42 kr or about 6-7 dollars), but due to arrangements with other book distributors, it couldn't be delivered outside of Scandinavia.  It could be purchased in electronic form, but the price for the electronic version was too steep (in Swedish).  But from Amazon I finally got the English version in Kindle format (with a free PC Kindle reader) for $10.

So, why would I bury myself in a novel that I don't want?  1)where's the suspense when you already know the ending?  2)the translation to English left a bit to be desired in that there was too much swearing and always the f-bomb. 

So why did I read it anyway.  It was well written (otherwise), I wanted to see how it ended, and there were lots of Swedish names and places, a number of which I had been to or was familiar with.  And it beat writing computer programs at night.

Round About... what??

I drive through a new round about that has been installed near our home on a fairly frequent basis. You all know the concept: traffic flows in a circle; if there's someone coming from your left, you wait until the traffic is clear before entering the round about. After you're in, you travel in a counter clockwise direction as long as you want to stay in the round about.  You have the right of way (except for changing lanes within a multiple land round about) until you exit. The ONLY way in is to turn right. The ONLY way out is to turn right. If there are two lanes that enter a two lane round about, the ONLY way in is to still turn right: right turn from the right lane entering into the outer lane of the round about, right turn from the left lane entering into the inner lane of the round about.

So you ask, why am I stating the obvious?? It doesn't take a civil engineering degree to figure this out.  So here's the punch line:
Explain to me what the three headed arrow means at the entry way to this round about:

However,  I'm pretty sure that turning LEFT into a round about is a bad idea, even if the traffic is light.  Going straight doesn't seem like an especially bright idea either, as there's no road in front of me... just the center of the round about.

Please explain what I'm missing.... 

Black Rainbow

So I went to help fix a clogged bathtub... and failed.

But there's a fire in the foothills to the West, and the smoke from the fire runs to the Eastern horizon.  I had to stop and take a picture (or a set of pictures) on the way home.  Photoshop, this isn't;  cell phone camera and paint.  NOTE: This is not a "cloud". It is smoke that runs from the the west to the far east. The left (bottom) end is facing west; the right (top) end if facing east.  If you're farther north, the smoke makes an arc from east to west; this collage is taken from south of the smoke plume.

Water Log: How Dry I Am: A/C Condensate Line

So after coming to the conclusion that the condensate line was clogged, I took a lesson from "There I Fixed It" and took matters into my own hands:

P-Trap before:

I should have taken this picture before I cut the pipe (and without the Walmart bag used to funnel condensate into a bucket) but cutting it gave me the access I needed to flush out the condensate line - and proved by leaking all over the place when I cut it that the drain line was plugged.  I couldn't get access from the far end - it's bolted to the floor with the tube going down the drain as part of another "fix" where the condensate was draining on the floor instead of down the drain.   I couldn't get access from the top end / inside, as one of the screws to open the access panel is inaccessible - hidden behind the ventilation pipe for the furnace.

P-Trap after:

The problem in just gluing the old cut line together was that I was going to have to likely blow out the line again.  So we now have a condensate drain line with features - not as fancy as the solution I found on the web, but close to it, considering that the solution found on the web was not available at the local big box store.  Note the options:
1)An access port, currently with a cap on it, but with a separate attachment (out in the garage) so that I can hook up a hose and clear out the line.
2)A valve at the top, so that I can block the clearing out of the line from backing up into the A/C coils and flooding.
3)The p-trap is lower.  If you want to know whether the P-Trap is blocked (I wish someone would make some clear PVC pipe...) open the access port.  If water runs out, the P-Trap is blocked and water is backing up.  If water doesn't run out, but is found on the floor, then I've wasted a perfectly good Saturday playing with the plumbing.

Good news is, when the A/C is running, you can hear the sound of water running down the drain.  So, it looks like I've "done good".

And here's the complement to the June 8th post showing the after of draining into the drain and not on the floor:

I had to bend the drain pan a bit to get access to the drain (the new water heater was bigger than the old.  The water heater drains into the condensate line, but just a little bit off the floor so that the condensate line drains into the drain.  I used a T rather than an elbow 1)because I had a T, and 2)so that if I ever want to drain the water heater, I can run the output right into the drain.

Help... We're taking on water!!!

This one has me stumped:

T

1. There is no water in the drip pan under the water heater.
2. The pipe draining the air conditioner condensate and the water heater drip pan is dry.
3. There was a half inch of standing water in the bottom of the furnace (about 2 gallons)
4. Water had seeped out from the furnace and was under the furnace, under the drain pan, and had dripped down into the crawl space, running down a drain pipe to the right of the water heater (not shown in this picture).
5. There was an additional 2 1/2 gallons puddled in the crawl space (fortunately none of the boxes in the crawl space got wet.
6. None of the pipes from the bathroom above the furnace room were wet; there are no signs of
So... where does 5 gallons of water come from that it ends up in the bottom of the furnace?