Expect Delays · 4:46am Nov 28th, 2018
YouTube bad captions, I guess
I don’t know whether to give y’all the five second rundown, or the longer rundown. Since I do tend to be rambly, it’ll probably be the longer rundown, especially since the super-extended version of Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor) is 25 minutes long, and I can ramble for quite a bit in 25 minutes. 
The short version for people who just read opening is that there will likely be no updates to The Haunting (or anything else) until Saturday or Sunday. Those who just came for the story tag can bow out now. 
I didn’t want to do that to y’all; I thought I had enough of it edited and ready to publish that I could stick to the schedule, and if things on my end had stayed like they were supposed to, I would have.
But, three factors all came crashing together into a lovely pile-up of . . . well, I won’t say misfortune or disaster or anything like that, because in the grand scheme of things, each one of those things is either something that isn’t all that unusual, or something that isn’t that much of a disaster. Taken all together, though, things get interesting.
The first, as I mentioned in a previous blog post warning about this exact possibility, is the play. We’ve got two more rehearsals until showtime, and of course we’re still struggling with lines, plus all the tech stuff, and really it’s exactly the thing that happens every time. Rehearsals are running longer than they should, we’re still fixing blocking, we haven’t got all our props yet, and so forth. At least we’ve got a set; we finished building that on Sunday. The doors work and there are enough tech screws and temporary bracing in place it’s not likely to fall over on anyone during the show. We’ve got our sound cues, too, and almost half the time they come when they’re supposed to.
Tonight we ran long--maybe an hour later than normal, give or take (we don’t have strictly-scheduled end times), and it ran the gamut from forgotten lines to one of the characters deliberately saying a line wrong to make everyone laugh. We did lots of do-overs, and we didn’t even have a full cast, which is a problem for characters who don’t speak all that often and are waiting for a cue that never comes.
I know I’m sounding kind of negative here, but there’s a long-held superstition in theatre that a bad tech week fortells a good play. It gives everyone a chance to get it out of their system, and to see what really needs to be worked on before the audience shows up.
The second thing is actual work. It’s busy, and among all the other projects, I’ve got to stuff an engine into a Traverse, and it’s got to be done by the end of the week. Yesterday, I had everything ready to go; I just needed to put jackstands under the cradle and unbolt the cradle bolts. Could have had it on the ground by 8am.
Except first I had to put a starter on a Dodge Ram. And then an oil filter housing gasket on a F-150. And a starter on a Fusion. And all four brakes on an Acadia . . . and I didn’t get back to the Traverse until 3pm.
Tomorrow promises more of the same. Thus far this week, I’ve gotten out of work 45 minutes late, and an hour late, and the rest of the week is likely to follow suit.
Also, as an aside: I like to do things out of season. I live in Michigan, as many of you know. A few years back, I managed to get frostbite on one finger in July, due to a malfunctioning AC valve. Well, now with three inches of snow on the ground, I’ve done out-of-season again; I got stung by a wasp who apparently lived in the Traverse--presumably where it was warm--and took exception to my removal of the engine.
Lastly, throwing the final wrench in the works, I mentioned last time around that my hot water heater had cast its withers. Well, I got that mostly fixed--it’s probably not entirely up to code, but it will work.
In theory.
I can’t test it, because my jet pump lost its prime, and thus far I have not been able to get it to re-prime.
There’s a much longer story there, and I will share it with y’all--because of course I will--but for now, I just haven’t got time to deal with it. It’s an inconvenience, but it’s not the end of the world. Still, if anyone out there happens to be a plumber and has great advice, I’m all ears.
Episode Screencap
So in summary, there’s little chance of any story updates or any exciting new content from me until the weekend at the soonest, for which I do apologize. Circumstances have just conspired to make an already crowded schedule simply untenable, and I have to do what’s known in the automotive world (and perhaps other places) as load shedding [something I might also blog about in the future, ‘cause it’s kind of interesting, even though I don’t know a lot of the nuts and bolts behind it].
<completely unrelated>
Break a leg,! call a plumber! and Love Lamp!
The pump should have a plug to pull off the top of the impeller housing to pour water in to prime the pump. I don't think I've had to do anything on a Traverse yet, but that actually looks like a fun 3-D puzzle! I enjoy large jobs like that but as you ran into, having to stop to do the small, annoying B.S. sucks.Then add in how you said before that you are under staffed at the moment, you have my sympathy. Break a leg at your play. (What is the name of the play, what is it about?)
I really hope the play goes well. Good luck getting everything with that working smoothly.
Lamps? You’re behind the times. Now it’s all about grape surgery!
What are you talking about-those captions are the best.
Hay,no worries life tends to get in the way. Good luck with the play.
I’m going to be greedy, and hope that #BusyAtWorkAdmiralBiscuit means lots of potential posts about working on cars. Now, I appreciate that this is a site about pony_words, but something about your car blogs just makes me read them everytime.
Moths......
That's when something falls off the back of a truck and you find some extra pocket money under your couch cushions, right?
Mom and Dad had their jet pump replaced with a submersible. 55 years ago. I actually thought they were extinct.
Load shedding is everywhere, you are not alone... that is something we have in both comms, data and power distribution systems. When power generation or local transformers cannot keep up with the demand they 'shed' some load by opening breakers for less essential load circuits. In comms and data we 'shape' the traffic or 'shed' nodes to reduce congestion or volume.
Wasp in winter, eh? I am guessing everyone you told at work probably said "Only you, Admiral, only you."
Trouble priming a jet pump, eh? **Warning, totally not a plumber** Deep or shallow type system? When you try to fill it to prime it, can you ever get the water filled up to the prime point or does it just seem like a black hole the water disappears into? If a black hole, then maybe the foot valve(1) has stuck open? My brother had a deep jet system and sometimes would have to use his fire fighting pump to get enough water down the primer point of the old bore while firing up the electric pump because some crud would get stuck in the foot and let the priming water escape(2). The jet pump is long gone now as we eventually installed a solar powered submersible for him.
Hope the play, the Traverse and the 'Super High Quality, Admiral Approved' water heater repairs all work out OK and we'll be happy to patiently wait(3) for when the Overloaded Admiral(tm) is available to update both The Haunting Horsewords and Tales from the Workshop. Have fun, break a leg and may the water flow warm and freely soon.
(1) I think it was called a foot valve... you may call it something else....
(2) This was usually a very damp experience as when the jet pump kicked in you had a fire pump and a jet pump blowing water back out at you from the prime point (his prime point was on a pipe above the pump housing between the discharge and drive(4) lines). Not bad for us in a desert area but it would probably suck just a little for you while doing this in six inches of snow...
(3) For a given value of patient...
(4) Again, you may call this something else like venturi line but this is usually only used on deep bores, you may not have one ..
That picture looks like the engine just fell out of the car.
"Well there's your problem"
Here’s my plumbing advice: Don’t do the following.
Yeah, when it rains it pours. Hopefully everything works out and the stress and work load lessens to manageable. Hope the play is successful and I guess the term is 'break a leg,' but as a horse person I really hate that saying. Nowadays you don't so much remove the engine as remove the vehicle from around the engine by looking at that Chevy. Ugh. Sorry you got stung. As far as living critters in vehicles go, a wasp is tame. Ground hogs are worse...
4973760
Thanks!
Love lamp.
4973772
It does, and filling it with water has not yet worked. It’ll spit some air and water out when it’s running--but it’s just not building any pressure.
Avoid doing anything on a Traverse if you can. The engine compartment is complicated and tight.
This wasn’t a bad job, if I could have stayed on it. But I kept getting pulled off for other things, and then had to work to find my place again. Forgot a couple of things and so had to re-do a few bits because I put parts on in the wrong order. That kind of thing. It’s always better when I can do the whole job in one go, but of course that’s not always possible.
Thanks! It’s called Harmony Romances--a sequel to Ladies of Harmony, and it’s about a bunch of grumbly old ladies planning a wedding, gossiping, and so forth. I’m the lucky bastard that gets married at the end of the play.
4973780
Thank you! Everything’s going well except for the water; I still haven’t got that going.
4973784
Yeah, and I have no idea what the grape surgery thing is about. Not the slightest clue. I prefer moths.
4973798
I haven’t seen the episode yet, so I have no idea if they’re accurate or not.
4973801
Thank you!
4973803
Oh, it will. I’ve got to write the followup blog to the sad Cruze, and I’ve got one about getting the right information from a customer, and probably another tirade about my manager’s shenanigans, possibly this time about him lying about stuff. Dumb, pointless lies.
4973818
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4973839
Sure, we’ll go with that.
4973840
They’re not extinct; in fact, you can still buy them. One of the pros of the system is that I can get to the pump, easily (it’s in my basement). The downside is that they’re kind of temperamental, although this is the only serious malfunction mine’s had in the last ten years.
4973860
I kinda knew about that from the power generation side of things (rolling blackouts were a plot point in the novel Overload, and like most of Hailey’s books, it was well-researched), I just forgot. And spent the last week not getting enough sleep, due to the play and everything else piled on top of that.
What can I say, I just like doing things out of season.
It’s a deep well (I assume). Two pipes to the well, so it’s got the venturi down there which it uses to force the water back up to the inlet side. I can get water filled to the inlet side; in fact, it hardly takes any at all for that to happen. It’s possible that the foot valve got stuck open, and that’s how it lost its prime in the first place, I’m not sure. The other possibility that seems kinda likely is that there’s a check valve in the head unit that’s stuck. Could be that the pump just coincidentally failed. Or else there’s a problem with the pressure tank, but that’s something I can’t get out of the system without some more plumbing work--there is no shutoff valve to that tank.
I’ve got the water heater plumbed in but not wired yet (didn’t have time, and what’s the point since there’s no water in it anyway?); the Traverse is done, paid for, and gone, and I’m all set to start back up with the updates for The Haunting and blogs in general.
Yeah, I’ve been getting some good water spray even at the too-low pressures that my pump’s managing. At least I’m in the basement, which is nice; and it’s a walkout so it can’t flood too deep no matter what goes wrong. On the downside, there are a bunch of electrical wires in close proximity to the pump, and I can’t turn off the circuit that powers the pump.
I’m almost certain that since it’s a two pipe system, it does have a venturi line.
4973874
It did just fall out of the car, although it took some help on my part to make that happen. Essentially, though, if you weren’t concerned with lots of breakage, there are only about sixteen bolts that need to be undone to make this happen. If you are concerned with breakage, there are a few more bolts and lots of electrical wires and various pipes and hoses that need to be unhooked.
4973894
Don’t worry, I’ve seen that episode and have healthy respect for what a hot water heater can do if it malfunctions badly and if all the safety interlocks are removed.
And here I was thinking that I should replace the T&P valve with a pipe plug to assure no leaks.
4973911
Well, we made it through the week and everything that had to get done got done, we’ve had our first performance of the play and nobody threw tomatoes, so that’s all good in my book. Still no running water, though, but now that the craziness is over, I’ve got more time to deal with it, one way or another.
It’s honestly not that bad. I’ve done way worse. Took about two hours to remove it, and now that I know what I’m doing, I could do the next one faster. Some guys drop them like that to do the timing chains, since it makes that job way easier. It was certainly more fun overall than the time I put head gaskets on a Ford Econoline conversion van.
My only experience with ground hogs in vehicles is that they run away when you chase them out, and they’re typically kind of slow and dopey but can run quick when they have to. I also once found a raccoon the size of a bear in the trunk of an Oldsmobile. Scared the heck out of me; I slammed that trunk lid back shut real quick.