Month: September 2011

Chain Reaction

We have ceiling fans in every room in the house (except the bathrooms) and they rotate slowly keeping the air circulating. Yesterday morning I noticed it seemed kind of dim at the breakfast table. The fan in the dining room has four glass shades with gas lamp looking bulbs hanging from the bottom and one was burnt out.

Last night I unscrewed the dead bulb and it spun way too easy. The glass came out leaving the metal base still screwed into the socket. No big deal, it has happened before, so I went to the tool box and got my needle nose pliers. It is usually an easy job to pry away the metal rim a bit, grab the socket and unscrew it. Not this time. That bulb base was snug, almost seemed like it was cross threaded. I spent 15 minutes grabbing and twisting and instead of backing the base out, all I was getting was little bits of the metal in the jaws of the pliers.

I was going to have to remove light fixture from the fan to get this thing out. I unscrewed the three screws around the outside of the light fixture and dropped the light down some so I could get to the wire nuts that connected the fixture to the fan. While holding the light up with one hand I found one wire nut, but the black wire went up into the fan. Dang, the connections must be inside the bottom part of the fan.

Still holding the light fixture up with one hand I unscrewed the two screws holding the top plate of the light to the fan. It didn’t come loose. It must be held on by that threaded tube in the center. No amount of spinning loosened it. Tiring of holding up the light with one hand I made a command decision, I cut the black wire.

Now that I have the light fixture down at my level, I recommenced to removing the stuck bulb base, unfortunately no amount of grabbing and twisting the base would free it. I tried to back out another bulb and it did the same thing, glass part came out easy and the metal base stayed in the socket. I guess it is time to buy a new light fixture.

I then disconnected the cover on the bottom of the fan so I could get the light fixture base plate off. As I removed that piece from the fan I noticed that the plastic fan speed switch was broken where it came out of the housing. I grabbed some glue I have in the garage and tried to piece the switch back together. A few minutes later when everything was dry I put the switch back through the hole, but it came apart again as soon as I tried to screw the nut on. I gave up at that point figuring we would just go buy a new light fixture and new a switch on Thursday.

This morning I took the switch to work to try using some super glue. It work a lot better than the household cement I had, but it didn’t last through a good solid tightening of the nut.

So today after work we visited a BBHIW for a switch & light fixture. The replacement switches were not in the first couple places we looked, so we had to resort to asking for help. Felt kind of bad about it, not so much because I had to ask for help, but we seemed to have interrupted a personal conversation between two employees to do it. She led us to the switches, one aisle over from where we found some other repair parts, and while we had her attention we asked where the ceiling fan light fixtures were as well.

Because most ceiling fans these days come with the light fixture already included, the selection of add on lights was very limited. They had some 19.95 school house lights, but none were in bright brass which is what we needed to match our fan. As a matter of fact, the only one that came in bright brass was a multipurpose one with 4 different colors, but it had a price tag of $39.95! That and the cost of the switch, $6.95, put us close to $50, to just repair something. A brand new Hunter fan with light fixture was $65.

So, because one light bulb burnt out, we ended up buying a whole new fan.

Crater Lake Panorama

I know, I know, I should have used a tripod and I should not be zoomed to my widest angle lens setting, but at least I managed to get a series of photos, unlike my failed attempt at the swinging bridge later on on the trip…

Fantasy Land

I don’t know exactly how they score them (I could look it up I guess*), but I hope that the combined total of 1 Wide Receiver and 1 Tight End don’t usually add up to 40 points. Right now my team is winning it’s “Game” 93 to 55, but my opponent has the two aforementioned position players from the New England Patriots who play on Monday night.

*OK, I looked it up: Every 10 receiving yards = 1 point, 2pt Receiving Conversion = 2 points & every TD Reception = 6 points.

To keep the siblings from quibbling, after breakfast out and grocery shopping today, I washed the Miata. The rest of the day was spent inside watching NFL football. Why? See above.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1065

Redbird Creek


Redbird Creek from the Lookout “Tower” in Fort McAllister State Park.

Just one GA State Park cache today and we counted it towards Bryan County as well. Since Thursday we managed 15 caches that counted as 21 towards our Georgia Challenges (13 counties, 5 DeLorme pages and 3 State Parks.) After the second day in a row of coastal Georgia we both agreed that we have seen enough salt marshes to last us for awhile. Which prompted Donna to ask why we never tired of the other coast’s big rocks and pounding surf? The only answer I could come up with is that it reminds our lizard brain of the sound of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb.

The blue-violet baleen has really needed a bath. Poor thing was just covered in jet exhaust film from ten days in an airport long term lot and the past three days worth of squashed low country bugs. This afternoon it got just that and an internal cleaning as well.

Crooked River


The sun reflects off the Crooked River as viewed from the Georgia State Park of the same name. Six caches, five counties, one DeLorme page and one GA State Park.

5,000 Train Cars


We originally thought that when we returned from out west, we would use the remaining days of the week on vacation to go Georgia State Park geocaching. Then, while we were on vacation, we thought we might just go back to work on Thursday & Friday, to save the vacation days for use at another time. Well, we ended up going with Plan A.

Spent about 15 minutes with a couple of train enthusiasts chatting railroading while we waited for a train to pass by here at the Folkston (GA) Funnel – From Wikipedia – With virtually all rail traffic headed to Florida passing through Folkston, the rail lines through the city have acquired the nickname “The Folkston Funnel”. As many as 60 trains a day pass through Folkston heading into and out of Florida, which some years draws ten times as many railfans as people who live in the city. To provide for a safe (and advantageous) viewing situation, the town has followed the example of another high-density rail town, Rochelle, Illinois, and has built a platform for visitors, along with picnic tables, chairs, BBQ pits, restrooms, and grills. And at night, lights shine from the platform onto the double rail so if someone wanted to, he or she could watch after sunset. Trains that come from the north move south toward Savannah, go through the Folkston Funnel, and arrive in Jacksonville. Trains that come from Florida do the same, just the opposite direction. At the covered viewing platform, there is an active scanner running and visitors can listen to train engineers as they run the trains through. As of 2006, there is also free WiFi for laptop users.

The Purple Wale passes 5,000 miles somewhere near Dublin, GA. We find 8 geocaches in 6 different counties, also fill in 3 DeLorme pages and snag 1 State Park.

Thanks Washington State


Way back in March when we started planning our just completed trip, I went to the websites of the three states we were visiting and ordered up travel guides and maps. About a month to go before we hit the sky, we realized we never did hear from Washington State. So I went back to the Washington State Tourism website and filled out the request again.

Guess what was waiting for us in the mail when we got back yesterday?

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1064