Cuts And Runs

I said goodbye to an old friend yesterday: the lawn mower that I first pushed across lawns over twenty-one years ago now has a new owner. I put a wildly-popular ad on Craigslist earlier this week and sent it home to the first person who brought me the cash.

I had sold it once before, about five years ago to my buddy Scott, but got it back from him when he no longer had a need for it. I used it here until I decided I needed a mulching mower, at which point it took up its new home in the garage for the past two years.

Somewhere in my parents’ scrapbooks is a picture of a 125-pound me with the machine that launched my lifelong lawn care obsession. Goodbye, old friend! I hope to see your work as we pass by your new home on our occasional trips to visit Kelly’s parents.

Finger-eating Fan Pronounced Dead

One of the things I did on my get-stuff-done morning was retrieve the killer nonworking gable fan from the attic. After rigging up a plug and giving it juice, I determined the thermal safety breaker has tripped. The thermal breaker is a non-replaceable part which, when activated, turns the motor into a unique doorstop or lively conversation piece.

I’m still thinking it might be worth $50 to put up another fan. It gets to 130 degrees F up there, which makes the air conditioner work harder. The ideal solution would be to put in a radiant barrier but I think that would run $300 or more with the space I’d have to cover (~$.50 psf, if i recall). Maybe I’ll consider that in the fall (when it will also help with heating).

Why didn’t I get a degree in thermodynamics? Or curmudgeonry?

Job Front Progress

Looks like things are looking up on the job front. I have agreed in principle to a 3-month contracting position doing some interesting work. If things work out it’ll convert to a full-time job.

It’s not in the bag yet, and its not a full-time gig, but it is encouraging. More news as things firm up.

Spinning My Own Electrons

After reading the N&O story about businesses generating their own power, it made me wonder what it would take to do this at home.

The typical residential power rates are pretty high. If I converted to a Time-Of-Use plan and found an alternative way to cover my demand during peak hours, I wonder how much money I could save? Certainly not enough to afford a big, honking, million-dollar diesel generator, but how about a bank of batteries and an inverter? Or a smaller generator (preferably powered by natural gas)? What would it take to cover my air conditioning?

Of course, I don’t use nearly as much electricity as would be required to make this a worthwhile endeavor, but its fun to imagine, anyway.

On The Mend

I successfully played with the kids last night and safely tucked them into bed. To my surprise, I found the energy to read my book (Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life And Universe) and chat with Kelly before I went to bed. I also found my stomach much more open to food and drink, so I helped myself to toast and a glass of water or two. After spending the day fighting to keep things down, that was progress.

This was followed by a peaceful night of sleep. Upon waking, I got the kids ready to go, chatted with Kelly again, and took Hallie to her summer camp. T and I also stopped in at the office of $FORMER_EMPLOYER to drop some stuff off.

Kelly had called the Harris County (Ga) health department to get the pool checked out. That pool is considered a private pool and thus out of their jurisdiction but the fine folks there followed up with the resort owner to make sure the pool was properly maintained. It apparently was, or is, though the health department says that this far out, whatever bug may have been in the pool has long since disappeared. So we’ll never know.

Good to be out of the woods on this, though.

Feeling More Human

I’ve spent the day dozing and aching. By about 5 PM I began to feel somewhat human again. The timing is great because Kelly is leaving for the next two days so I’ll be parenting solo.

Wow, this has not been fun.

My Luck Runs Out

I became the latest victim of the stomach bug this morning at 4 AM. Because of my prior fundoplication surgery I may be in for a long recovery since I can’t, uh, empty my stomach.

If anyone comes up to you and offers to make you sick, don’t do it! Trust me on this.

Drupal To WordPress Migration Script

I’ve done some tweaking of the Drupal to WordPress migration SQL script that’s been bouncing around. I’ve put in SQL to migrate the user table. I’ve also used the REPLACE MySQL extension to change old links to my blog, as well as change the ‘–break–‘ tags to ‘–more–‘ tags.

Here’s my copy, where

  • wp_ has been replaced by mt_ (for my mt.net database tables)
  • mtdotnetMigration is the name of my imported Drupal migration database
  • www.markturner.net is my website address (to convert references in the content to mt.net posts)

If you use this script, you should change these values accordingly.
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