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Showing posts from 2017

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 out 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 draft (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 heat...
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We are back from Central America, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. It was a very good trip, most excellent. Overall, we had only pleasant surprises, an excellent hotel in Guatemala City, fantastic experience with Mayans, active volcanoes, boats, islands, and we learned much about the area. We started in San Jose, Costa Rica and took a bus to Managua, Nicaragua. It was 10 hours of riding and a 5 hour delay at the border for immigration and customs. One of the pics shows the "Passport control" process for our bus. In Nicaragua, we spent time on Lake Nicaragua and Ometepe island. We got to peer deep into the earth at bubbling lava in Masaya volcano. We flew from Managua to San Salvador, El Salvador. We visited the Mayan pyramid at Tazumal and the archeological site found at Joya de Ceren. We also went to the city of Granada. Then we flew to Guatemala City. We took a long day trip crossing the Honduran border to visit the Mayan pyramid at Copan. lastly,...
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We have had some snow in Duluth GA today. A picture from my office window. So far (amazingly) the roads and drivers seem to be ok. It is Angie's Birthday today so we arranged some snow.
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Some pics from our drive from Ohio to Georgia.