Ah, Grandkiddies...

Ah, Grandkiddies... they are a blessing from the LORD.

As we spent some time hanging out with Jim & Stella last night, Beloved Rib helped Amelia and Samantha with their "artwork". She approximated my self-portrait, but with green marker. Samantha eagerly came to show it to me.

Me : "You colored my hair green!"

Samantha : "Grandpa, you don't have hair."

Can't swat them for being truthful, can I?

--------------

Downloaded a copy of Dr. Benjamin Carson's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday 2/7/13. Proverbs 11:9, 11:12, 11:25, & II Chronicles 7:14

and just watched it again. Wow.

--------------

Went out to the greenhouse just after noon. Outside temperature about 28° but inside the thermometer was at 65°. Onion seedlings (now nearly pencil-thick) are green, and so are a few scattered lettuce plants. The 30 gallon black garbage can inside the greenhouse, full of water, has just a thin layer of ice on top; the one outside the greenhouse door contained a solid 30-gallon block of ice. Time to start planning the plantings.

The Tuesday night classes at Norton are all Γρίκ to me; but it is starting to make sense.

See ya narrow.

Serbian Lily-Nuts (бели лук)

I do go out of my way to avoid being politically correct, do I not?

One of my long-planned projects has been to clean and pickle some garlic cloves. Mixy likes to dig them out of the bottles of pickled peppers and dill pickles; we sometimes have a difference of opinion over who gets the last one in the bottle. Therefore it simply made sense to pickle some cesnak and forget the peppers and cucumbers for the moment.

This required that I peel the cloves first, and it took about 45 minutes per cup to get the three cups of Serbian lily-nuts I needed.

I also had to get some bottles of a proper size collected. Since I don't throw away very much stuff (pack rats prevent litter!) I had some 8 ounce jars from various items -- jelly, fancy roasted peppers, etc. -- on the shelf in the basement. They just needed some cleaning and boiling.

Then I had to scale down the recipe for the pickle. Obviously, I was not going to need 5 quarts of pickle. The following was the starter:

Just to make it easier, I decided to use the dill pickle variant, which calls for a 1:3 vinegar:water ratio. That meant that for 2 cups of pickle, I would need 1-1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of vinegar, and converting cups to teaspoons (48 tsp:1 cup) 5 tsp salt and 2-1/2 tsp sugar. I mixed that together in a saucepan and brought it to a boil.

Meanwhile, the bottles and their lids were hauled out of the boiling water, drained, and a nice sprig of dill was put in each. Dill? Yup, frozen from last summer.

Then the bottles were filled with the lovely cloves and the hot pickle was poured over them, filling the bottles to the bottom of the threads.

The lids were screwed on loosely and the bottles put back in the boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Then I let them go for another 3 minutes, just because.

Removed from the boiling water bath, the lids were given a final tightening and they were allowed to cool until the lids clicked down.

Of course, this stuff now has to age a bit. For that reason, I hid them from Mixy. Ha. Ha. Ha. When I think they have aged long enough, I will take them out of hiding.

Of course, I have more garlic in the garage that I can peel and can. I should probably do that, since I had quite a bit of it dry up on me last winter because it didn't get used. This is a good way to turn it into snack food. I also thought about sprinkling some hot red pepper in each jar but today was Be Kind to Mixy Day. Maybe next time.

I'm also going to have to investigate getting a beer bottle capper. Granny often told how, after moving to Canada and setting up housekeeping during the Depression, she and her sisters would scavenge beer bottles from the dump for canning tomato juice (Mason jars were nearly luxury items then). It would be fun to can garlic and chili peppers and salsa and home-made ketchup in beer bottles.

Just another project to have on the back burner for when I have nothing else to do...

Getting Spliced

One more task has been completed in the planned movement of the basement wall. The Cat 5 cables that were located in the ceiling box have all been relocated to the side wall and tested. This would have been a good idea even if the wall were not to be moved, since the cables from the router to the ceiling box occasionally lost contact from the movement of the floor joists, especially when the dining room had a big gathering in it. Becoming motivated to move the cables, though, was a major task.

The problem was that two of the cables would need to be completelyy re-run, and five would need to be spliced and extended to the new location. Mickey Axlebender was of the opinion that I should just install male and female connectors and extend them that way, but I was not confident that would work long-term, especially since the plan is to drywall the ceiling.

I decided to splice the cables with solder joints. Drawing inspiration from some web pages showing how the specified twists could be maintained, I began the splicing. The first cable took nearly two hours; I was deliberately going slowly to make certain my work would not create problems.

Each twisted pair was cut and spiced in a stagger pattern, the wire ends twisted and soldered, then clipped short and bent parallel with the cable.

When they were all soldered, the twist pattern for each twisted pair was maintained fairly close to the specs. Perfection was more than I could hope for, but in testing each cable as it was completed, the throughput actually seemed faster than before the splice. That may be imagination, but I think that plugging the cables in horizontally may maintain contact pressure better than plugging vertically and letting the wires hang. In other words, it seems to be working better, but I don't think my solder job had anything to do with that.

The last step was to replace the cable jacket. The jacket that had been stripped off was trimmed to length, split down the side, replaced around the wires, and secured with electrician's tape.

Another job finished that hurt more to think about starting than actually doing.

Scraping the Bottom

In a lot of ways, Facebook is a fiasco. Certainly it allows contact between large groups of people, and it allows you to find long-lost acquaintances, often by chaining to other acquaintances. Of course, there are some acquaintances you would rather forget, but that is a slightly different problem ...

I need to stay more up to date via blogging. The advantage over Facebook notes is that there is less distraction from the trivia that oozes to the surface of Facebook on a constant basis. The disadvantage is missing out on the trivia. Thus, at times a disadvantage is an advantage in disguise. Next I suppose I will discuss the genius aspects of an oxymoron.

The garden is producing. Saturday I picked a pile of cucumbers -- note that I just skipped the opportunity for onomatopoetic excess -- and several tender little zucchinis. The latter I sliced into 1/2" wafers and froze on a cookie sheet, and then stored them in a baggie. Today I treated another threesome the same way.

I tried some of the bok choy a week or so ago and was disappointed, because it has failed to head the way the picture on the seed package showed. In fact, one of the plants began to bolt, so I yanked it and whacked off the top portion. On a whim, I brought the remainder into the house, not sure what I would do with it. This evening I chopped it into chunks and boiled some of it. With butter and salt and pepper it was actually acceptable.

The remainder has been cleaned and is currently in a colander waiting to go into the refrigerator. Between the cucumber salad and some Swiss chard at supper, and now this cabbage snack, I may be offsetting a good bit of the rat poison in my system. Wednesday we shall find out.

As for Uncle Emil's artifacts, I have to say that the bundle was not quite as advertised. There are some WW2 memoirs -- I think he was putting stuff together to try to write a book and basically only got as far as the outline -- and a series of letters from 1957-1959. What is there is an interesting picture of life at sea, but there is not the detail that I was hoping for to fill in the stories that Uncle Mike and Dad told. One thing is certain; Uncle Emil was a stickler for detail, and had both a flair for drama and a wicked sense of humor.

He also had the dreaded Hrubik temper. The notarized statement accompanying his official resignation of command on 24 October 1945 contains an apology for what he had "written in the heat of anger".

So I suppose I need to catalog the stuff and then create a blog page just for that. For now, I'll just post this : Capt. Emil Hrubik, on the flying bridge of his new post-war command, the S.S. William A. Henry (Matson Lines), 1946.

Legends

As a kid, I always thought Uncle Mike and Uncle Emil were somehow bigger than life. Uncle Mike was occasionally available to interact with, but Uncle Emil was mostly out to sea.

I think Dad looked up to his oldest brother with a sense of some pride -- Emil was the kid who left home for the sea, became a war hero of sorts, and ended up losing his Navy commission (as Dad told it, for refusing his orders). Somewhere around here is the photo of the ship that the Japanese torpedo bomber took out from under him in an Australian harbor; the story goes that he escaped through a porthole in his underwear, saving only his sextant.

Sunday night, while visiting Mom (Mother's day, of course) I got a call from Mixie saying that Bruce Banyai had called and would be calling back. Last night he called back. On one of his visits here we had talked about the passing of the Old Guard, the tape I had made of Mom telling of her childhood in pre-WWII Europe, and the fact that while I had finally located my grandfather's gravesite at Greenlawn, I had no idea where my Grandmother was buried. Dad had never said where, and Bruce said that Uncle Joe never talked about his childhood.

Well, the phone call was to let me know that Uncle Joe had finally talked. Bruce had set him down and recorded about 2 hours worth of video of Uncle Joe's reminiscences. That will be edited and turned into a DVD for the next reunion, whenever, wherever. But then Bruce dropped a bombshell.

It seems that after Aunt Maxine died in 2003, Uncle Joe was contacted about whether he wanted her collection of Uncle Emil's old letters, dating back to the beginning of their marriage. He accepted a large box of documents, but busy man that he always is, never took the time to look at them. Apparently several museums turned down the collection of a seaman's letters, and they were destined for the dumpster.

However, during the videoing, Bruce was asked whether he wanted to see the collection. Being the history buff that he is, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. He was surprised by what he saw; the letters were not only the letters home to a landbound wife, but also a very detailed accounting of wartime life as a Merchant Marine captain. From what I understand, it also contains a copy of his resignation letter as he refused to captain a ship he deemed unseaworthy, and a copy of the inquest into that ship's sinking several days out of port.

Bruce has asked me to archive that material. When it gets here, if it is what I think it is, a whole new blog should be devoted just to that archive. Stay tuned, don't touch that dial!

Wild Curves!!

The biggest problem I have with getting motivated is getting motivated. I've been working on the kitchen cabinet doors, however, and I'm down to the last two -- the doors in the small curved cabinet by the stove.

The curved section of the cabinet has an 8-5/8" radius. Building the door with MDF, I wanted the smallest possible segments for the smoothest curve. I decided to go with 1/2" segments. Laying it out on cardboard, I was able to figure on a 1.6 degree bevel; I set the saw at 2 degrees and played with the angle until it worked.



A form needed to be built to hold the segments in place as they were glued.



I used the trammel point jig for the router to cut the curves in the form; for some reason the radius that resulted was about 1/16" smaller than it should have been so I bent some shim stock to pad the form out.



Once I had all 28 of the segments cut out, and the two edge pieces (straight sections on the ends) I glued them up and clamped them with a combination of pipe and strap clamps. Wax paper strips were used to keep the segments from sticking to the form.



After it had set for a few hours, I began sanding the exterior. The interior, however, still needs work, and maybe some glue-and-sawdust filler. I went ahead and cut the hinge pockets and mounted the hinges for a test fit.



The exterior looks pretty good at this point. I know that once it is painted it will still be easy to see each individual segment, but the curve is fairly smooth. The important part is that the chief designer thinks its just fine. Suits me.

Garden News

Lettuce, red onions, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts are poking up in the greenhouse. Moved two flats of tomato and pepper seedling out there; they showed some drooping this morning. Whether it was from cold or too much water, I don't know, but I punched holes in the bottoms of the paper cups and the sun has warmed the greenhouse now. Some of the plants have stood back up.

I am seeing sprouts of a few of Dad's oxheart tomatoes -- YES! It took a long time for them to pop. Bek's Beefsteaks came up in just 3 or 4 days (fresh seed), the Rutgers and Romas took over a week (4 year old seed), but the oxhearts from 1992 took almost a month to germinate. At least I got plenty of seedlings from the 2007 jalapenos (the big ones) and wax peppers; the banana peppers are just now starting to sprout.

Put a 33 gallon black trash can full of water inside the greenhouse to act as a heat sink. We just haven't had much in the way of sunshine the last week or so.

Down 'n' Dirty

Yesterday I transplanted several dozen more of the garlic starts that came out of the tops I clipped last summer. Then I stuck close to a hundred garlic cloves into the ground in a second bed -- those were some heads of garlic that my neighbor gave me last Fall and which sat in the greenhouse over Winter (they were starting to show green sprouts, so I decided to bury them). After that some carrot and parsnip seed went into another bed. Its supposed to snow tomorrow.

Inside the greenhouse the cabbage and broccoli seeds are coming up. In the basement, Bek's heirloom beefsteak tomatoes are reaching for the sky, and her giant Chinese sweet peppers are poking out of the dirt. The Sweet 100 tomatoes, the Rutgers, and the Romas are all coming out as well.

Still looking for signs of life in the pot with Dad's oxheart tomato seeds from 1992. The big wax peppers, spicy banana peppers, the big jalapenos, and the little chilis are making me wait. I expect some activity in those pots any day now.

Spring is here. Have to go make a celebration.

Groundhog is Delicious

Got your attention, didn't I?

It is delicious. From Al's, or homemade. Or even from the garden, say some. Filet of Phil. Just not kosher at all.

Anyway, the date reminded me that I needed to check in with the Old Farmer's Almanac to see what I should really expect for a while. You can get a free two month forecast at 2011 Long-Range Weather Forecast and filling in your ZIP code.

Then I looked at the gardening section, and found 2011 Best Planting Dates for Seeds for Wadsworth, Ohio -- you need to fill in your own ZIP code.

Then, under Plant Guide: Vegetables, Herbs, & Fruit, I found the following:
That is interesting, because I tried a variation of this last summer in my new beds, mulching the potatoes with leaves. There is also a trash-bag version of the technique being popularized by an Indian Indian. I'm leaning toward the five gallon bucket alternative.

Just think -- the tables say I should be seeding my cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers indoors in just 3 more weeks. Spring is coming, groundhog or no.

Good Medicine

Last time, we left the hive to drink the potion. Opening it up two days later, we see that for the most part, they have ignored the syrup for fresh nectar that is available all over the countryside. Still, they have been sampling the special hooch...



...but we need to provide more ventilation, and the mite treatment needs to be added. Taking off the feeder and the inner cover, its obvious that the crew is at home.



I found a partial package of Apistan™ in my bee supplies; I'm going to try using that package up before I open the new one. It has been cool, dark, and dry in the closet, so the strips should still be OK. One strip is in the lower left corner, between the frame bars, and the other toward the upper right. The bees come into contact with the strip, and the Varroa mites die.



Since this colony is small to begin with, and the queen is going to be laying at top speed, treatment right now is critical. The mites attack the larvae; by the time they have matured, it would be too late to treat. It will be almost three weeks before the new workers emerge, and the older workers -- the original swarm -- will be weakening and starting to die off. If too many of the new bees have "crooked wing" because of the mites, the colony will not be able to maintain itself.



A different inner cover has been modified with screened holes for ventilation. It is hard to get too much air flow through the hive. As the bees bring in nectar, they change it to wax, for the comb cells, and honey. In the process, huge amounts of water need to be evaporated. If the moisture cannot be vented quickly enough, the result will be sick bees. Even in winter, air flow is critical. The colony can maintain 95°F around the queen in sub-zero temperatures, but must vent the moisture that is produced.



Everything is back together and its work, work, work as usual.

The Doctor is IN

Thursday morning Jesse called, asking if I was willing to pick up a swarm in Tallmadge. I was, but it would have to wait until evening; that was OK with the swarmees. About 7:30 PM I arrived at the site. The swarm was roughly the size of a big football, clinging to a chemical tank about six feet off the ground. I had a super stapled to a bottom board with a screen in the opening; I sprinkled some sugar on the top frame bars and brushed the ladies into the box. Most of them went in like a waterfall. A small group, about the size of a baseball, refused to play, and after checking thoroughly that the Boss Lady was not in their midst, I left them there to die. Nothing else to be done for it.

Arriving at home, I waited until almost dark, then pulled the screen from the entry. In the morning, the little buzzers got themselves oriented to their new location, and went nectar-hunting. Yesterday I noticed that there were some Nasty Bugs around; I watched one yellow-jacket go into the hive and then beat a quick retreat. I grabbed an entrance reducer and closed down the doorway.



This morning I headed out to Queen Right Colonies, where Denzil sold me some Apistan™ for the mites and some Fumagilin-B™ for nosema. Just under $50 for vet supplies. Imagine what the cost might be if I were running feeder cattle again!

I decided to start the feeding right away to build up the hive numbers, so I mixed up a half-gallon of sugar syrup with a half teaspoon of the antibiotic and set up the feeder. Opening the top, the bees were clustered to one side. Not a whole lot of them home -- it was a small swarm -- but my guesstimate is that at least half of them were out foraging at the time of the portrait.



A piece of baseboard was chosen as a riser for the feeder. The relief cutout on the back will allow some air flow for cooling, at least until the bees plug it up. The feeder is a plastic mayo jar with some 1/16" holes drilled in the lid, and works like a poultry waterer.




Tomorrow or Monday I'll open it back up to check the syrup level and at the same time install two of the mite strips.



Its good to bee back in operation. I'm going to do my best to keep this harem happy.

Speedex S19 Project

It was time already to get the old Speedex out of the shed and get to work on restoring it.


It's a neat little tractor, with all kinds of real tractor features.


The Lawn Chief towed it to the top of the hill, flat front tires and all.


The front hitch point, where I hope to be able to attach the snow plow in winter.


The 8 horse Briggs 190407 engine, with its 12V electric starter. Mice packed the space behind the flywheel with maple seeds, and possibly messed up the wiring to the capacitor. I cleaned out as much as I could, added a new muffler, replaced the gas line, and drained and replaced the oil. Wouldn't start. No spark at all.


Here's the PTO linkage, in case I want to add a mower deck or use a sickle bar.


The rear hitch -- a sort of three-point arrangement. It is a manual lift, though. No hydraulics on this machine.


The gearbox and rear pulleys. These are terribly misaligned. But then, so are the front pulleys. Replacing and aligning the sheaves ought to be simple, and I'll need to create a replacement belt cover and battery cover. I've already straightened some of the sheet metal on the hood.

As this project moves forward, I'll post more pix of the progress. Main thing for right now is to get it running.

Gettin' It Together

Today I took a little trip down to PhilCap to see if they had the caps I need for the iMac repair. They had one - a 10mF 50V 5x11mm -- for $1.64. Back home, I started looking for a cap supplier on-line, and stumbled across Allied Electronics. The prices were right, and the cap manufacturer that predominated was Illinois Capacitor. I ordered enough to do 2 "C" style power supplies, including another 10mF 50V 5x11mm for $0.11. Live and learn.

The order from Allied came to $9.76 plus $5.00 handling plus they will charge OH sales tax and probably about $6 for Priority Mail. Then I went to the Computek site and ordered the motherboard caps. Needed 25, but had to order 40 (minimum 20 of each type), which came to $28.55 including shipping and handling.

Picked up the Artic Silver Ceramique heat sink compound at Radio Shack for $6.70. I decided not to use lead-free solder on the installation; I have lots of 60-40 resin core in my toolbox. I'm ready to go when the caps get here.

The power supply is sitting on my desk, disassembled. Last night I whittled away all the silicone goop that Apple injected around the capacitors. They are ready to be extracted.

Maybe by the weekend I can be back up and running.

New Post

I thought I needed a catchy title for this post; there it is.

Progress on the iMac is nearly non-existent. Lots of other stuff to do. I miss having that machine running 24/7, with Mail open and Firefox just a click away. Not having access to iCal and Quicken is definitely inconvenient.

Bought a new soldering iron at Ace Hardware today. They kindly sent me a coupon to take $5 off any purchase over $20, so I used it. Its a Weller 80W with a 3/8" chisel tip, develops 900 degrees. That should be plenty of heat for the led-free solder on the boards.

Now I think I should also pick up a de-soldering iron from Radio Shack, and practice with it.

Still have not ordered the capacitors. I may be able to find some of them at the Shack or at PhilCap; if they don't have them, there are some on-line sources that have what I'll need. I did not order from J West Sales because they will accept payment only through Google checkout. Since I have no desire to give Google the right to run a credit report on me -- my credit is none of their nosy business -- I'll just find the parts elsewhere and use the normal payment process.

Fixed one lawnmower today. Tore apart the carb, cleaned everything out, and installed a new carb cable. Fixed the shredder (sort of). Tore off the head, scraped out all the carbon and cleaned the valves, and it starts easily and runs fine. Needs some major welding on the other parts, though.

'Nuff fer this post. Iff'n I write any more, the borer bees might get into it.

iMac Blues

My iMac G5 was purchased as a refurb from Apple, and it was a good thing that I bought the 3-year extended service plan. Almost immediately it had to be worked on; the Superdrive was refusing to read/write DVDs. Some time later, the computer died, and the power supply had to be replaced. Finally, just before the 3 years was up, it died again, and once again, the power supply was replaced. A few months ago (back last Fall), it suffered a hard drive crash, and I installed a new hard drive.

We've had a number of brief power outages, and several weeks ago I called home and the phone rang continuously; the fax modem did not pick up. Sure enough, when I got in, the iMac was dark. Following SOP, I tried a restart. After the chime, the Apple came up, and then suddenly the machine shut down. I tried again. The second time, the desktop picture came up, but there were funny squiggly lines across it, and when I clicked on a widget, the machine crashed. The third startup seemed stable, and the machine ran for several days before it began having problems again.

Diagnostic testing using the diagnostic LEDs seemed to point to the power supply again. I started looking for a replacement on-line. Then I came across a site which described fixing the power supply. It also had instruction for repair of the motherboard.

It seems that Apple, and a number of other manufacturers, in looking for a cheap supply of capacitors, had bought from a Chi-Com manufacturer that had cranked out defective units. The problem is so widespread that there are distributors on-line which sell replacement capacitors specifically to tackle this problem.

I now have the instructions for the fix, and started collecting the necessary tools. Here are some shots of the problem:


Motherboard, showing bulging caps (red marker added by me)


The bulging is evident here and in the next picture


While only 2 caps appear to be damaged, the advice is to replace all 25 of them.

The real problem, probably the cause of the failure of the MOB caps, was in the power supply :


Here you can see that one of the caps is leaking. That is NOT marker on the top of that capacitor; it is capacitor juice. 8 of the 11 are bulging


The scorch marks on the PS cover show how hot this got.

The cost of replacement capacitors is about $60. The cost of a replacement motherboard and power supply is more than the value of the computer (well over $700). I picked up a T-10 Torx security bit today (for opening the "No user serviceable parts inside"), and I'll be getting an 80W soldering iron. One supplier I found sells the caps for about 50 cents each, but you have to order in multiples of 20, and that supplier doesn't carry all the caps for the power supply.

For anybody with a 17", 20", or 24" iMac (Intel versions as well), sooner or later you will need to either replace the power supply or replace its capacitors. I'm curious now whether that was the problem in Maria's G3 Blueberry iMac. When I'm feeling real fixy I'll have to peek inside that one. It would make a nice email machine for Granny.

Dis'n'Dat

1. Granny is coming home Thursday
2. Planted onions, cabbage, broccoli, and some more lettuce in the greenhouse Saturday
3. Started soaking some of Dad's old (1992) pepper seeds in HOHO (that was Bruce's suggestion, that HOHO would possibly provide extra O to break dormancy); they have swelled up and I need to get them in potting soil

Spring is Coming

Yesterday I was able to get into the greenhouse for the first time since the beginning of the year. Had to shovel away almost a foot of snow from in front of the door; in spite of the melting the snow is still piled around the sides from where it slid off, and the door had been blocked by several feet of snow that had accumulated through normal snowfall plus drifting.

Outside, it was barely above freezing. Inside, the temperature was a balmy 56 degrees. The lettuce I planted in the Fall with a hope of having fresh greens at Christmas seems to have survived. We shall see. In a day or so I maybe there will be some new growth, I hope, and then perhaps there will be home-grown salad for Easter.

The sweet basil and pepper plants that were left over the winter need to be cleaned out and the soil improved with some manure and lime in preparation for planting.

I need to get a thermometer with a probe in order to take the soil temperature a few inches down. It is March; time to seed onions, cabbage, broccoli, some more lettuce...

Any more suggestions as to what I should try to grow in there?

Makin' yer mark

It has been a hectic week, but the petition signing is under way. Between wrapping up a work project, and the death and funeral of Carl Demiter, there was no time to spend on the petitions.

It would be possible to get the entire 50 signature complement from one ward in Norton, but hopefully we can get signatures from other areas as well. It would be nice to be able to file by the end of this next week.

Have to be careful what I write here from now on, lest I run afoul of McCain-Feingold. There are too many laws designed to keep power out of the hands of the people.

Stai tooned.

Hard Drive

It happened. The dreaded hard drive crash. The iMac suddenly was lost in its own case.

I was able to access the drive in target mode and update my August backup of most of my files. The I tried to let TechTool repair the drive. The repair failed. So I tried to do a reinstall of the system software. The reinstall failed with the upgrade to Tiger; installed could not find some disk sectors. Bad drive, failed its physical.

Ooops. Forgot to do a recent backup of the Quicken data. Too bad, so sad.

Off to Best Buy for a replacement. A 500Gb WD Caviar Green. $75.

The instructions on the Apple Support page were simple enough. Out came the 160Gb Seagate, in went the 500Gb WD. Into Disk Utility to do a partition - 160Gb Avram, 160 Gb Yitzhak, remainder in Yakov.

In go the system CDs. Now for the fun of setting up, then updating to Tiger (I will NOT be upgrading to Leopard, because there is no Classic support in Leopard and I like some of the Classic apps). Then all the hastle of rebuiding the important files from the backups. Oh, joy.

Moral : a backup external hard drive is a good investment.

Moral : if you have it, use it.

Gittin' the Runs

As 2009 ran out its string and 2010 crawled out of its crevice, Joonyah and I shot the breeze, lamenting the trampling of the Constitution by the current Congress. We again tossed around the question of who might represent OH-13; that is, who might be in the running to raise the moral and intellectual quality of the occupant of that seat.

We did a little exploratory work. Visiting the sites of all four Boards of Elections in OH-13 (Cuyahoga, Lorain, Medina, and Summit) revealed that no candidates had filed for 2010 yet. That is OK; the deadline for filing for the May 4, 2010 party primaries is February 18, 2010. For independent candidates, the filing deadline is May 3, 2010 (because independents don't have a primary).

Looking at the FEC requirements, an individual is not considered a candidate (even if he has filed the petition and is on the primary ballot) until he (or [a] person[s] authorized by the individual) has[ve] raised of spent more than $5000 for the campaign. There is a provision for voluntary registration with the FEC even if the $5000 threshold has not been attained, but the possibility exists (although highly unlikely) that a candidate could be elected to a Federal office without tripping the requirements. Posting the information we have uncovered on this blog, because no formal efforts have been made toward candidacy to date, is a sort of grey area that may or may not fall under 11 CFR 100.94 & 100.155.

The Ohio Administrative Code, (111-1) states, "The rules set forth in Chapters 111-1 to 111-6 of the Administrative Code shall apply to the nomination or election of candidates or support for or opposition to ballot issues in state and local elections. Nothing in these rules shall be construed as limiting or regulating federal elections, and those committees, parties, candidates, or funds when they participate in such federal elections." I would assume from that statement that only FEC requirements would apply (and as with any such assumption, I could be wrong).

If I were to run, would it be as a party candidate? Yes, for two reasons. Firstly, I have been republican in my leanings my entire life. A republican form of government was to be guaranteed to all the States under the Constitution, and a respect for the Rule of Law is essential to the maintenance of individual liberty. While other forms of government may extend individual rights, no other form of government protects individual rights.

Secondly, the regulations for access to US Representative candidacy in Ohio state that a major party candidate needs 50 signatures to have access to the ballot, a minor party candidate needs 25 signatures, but a non-party candidate needs signatures totaling 1% of the number of votes cast in the district in the last general election for governor. Looking at the stats for the 13th District, there were 297,680 votes cast for Representative, and assuming that about the same number voted for governor, the minimum number of signatures required for an Independent candidate to access the ballot in OH-13 would be about 3,000. In Norton 1-B there are just over 100 registered Republican voters; it would be possible to access the ballot as a Republican for the 13th District, covering parts of 4 counties, without even leaving my own precinct to gather petition signatures.

Of course, there is always the tantalizing challenge of running an illegal campaign (WhatifI) under the guise of Libertarianism.

"See, here is deep water, what doeth let me to jump in?" [calm down, that is a paraphrase]. When I last ran for Congress in the 13th District (2000), the situation was quite similar. Just before Thanksgiving of 1999, Mickey Axlebender Thirdson and I were bemoaning the fact that no Republican candidate had yet appeared to challenge the Democrat incumbent. He said that if I ran, he would manage my campaign. I stopped at the BOE, picked up a petition packet, and off we went. In about two weeks time, we had our signatures. With a total expenditure of about $300 (never even made it onto the FEC's radar screen), and with the Summit GOP endorsing my party primary opponent, I picked up 42% of the primary vote. In fact, a part of Stark County was in the District back then, and the SOS's stats show that I actually won -- quite handily -- in the Stark County portion of the District. [But, mind you, Stark County is vastly more conservative in its politics than Summit!!]. Thus, I have no doubt that my governmental views would resonate with a substantial portion of the electorate in the 2010 climate.

However, the run in 2000 did cause some discomfort for my Better Half, who was concerned over family privacy issues and the exposition created by a political campaign. Thus, my first concern is her consent. She has said that I can do whatever I want, and such a statement has dangerous undertones. I would prefer to have her support, indeed, I need her support. She willingly complied and followed me thousands of miles in previous attempts to joust at windmills, but in those days we were both a lot younger and more resilient.

Another concern is the support of my church. In 2000, I had the support and encouragement of most of the Elders I talked with, but my responsibilities at that time were quite different. I don't doubt that I would have the encouragement of the congregation, but the bigger question is whether or not it would be to their benefit.

Finally, there are the career considerations. I am on my way toward General Certification and new levels of accomplishment in my profession. Despite my age, I could be productive for another decade or more before senility rotted my cognitive functions. Becoming a US Representative would likely be a terminal career move.

Stay tuned, this is only the first day of 2010.