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Showing posts from February 26, 2006

Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured oout what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heating eff...
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It is quite wintery out today. I decided to come upstairs and scan in this schematic that was inside the "G Stand" of my Astatic D-104 microphone. This is the mic I am using for shortwave. It is pretty old looking. I didn't have anything else to do (right) so I went out and got the bobcat stuck today in snow and mud. I had to yank it out sideways with the tractor. The drifts of snow are several feet deep. I have been mostly relaxing today, reading in bed even. The stove has been making the house nice and warm.
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My exercise regimen is paying dividends. I am somewhat surprised at the progress. I am running 3.1 miles (5k) in 24 minutes now. The amount of weight I use on almost all the machines has increased, except for the biceps. I have backed off a little bit on the overall routine just to take the edge off it. Further progress I am sure of, but I can take more time. Bonnie's sister is down this weekend and we celebrated Bonnies birthday. I made Baked Alaska. I did quite a bit of research before I started. My recipe was a combination of recipes I gleaned from the web. I made a 13 x 9 inch chocolate cake, cut into 6 pieces. I took a half gallon of french vanilla ice cream and cut that into 6 even slabs. I refroze the ice cream slabs in foil in the big cold freezer we have downstairs. Then it is time for the meringue. I used our own chicken eggs being careful to use the oldest eggs we had. I read that you should use eggs at least 4 days old. (That was difficult). I had about 9 or 10 eg...