Category: Paul

Made it back to PA Tuesday and spent a few days with Sis. Now at Mom’s contemplating departure for my 40-year high school reunion in a couple hours. I’m afraid I can only vaguely recall little more than a handful of my old classmates never seen or heard from at all over the past 4 decades, despite carefully studying the reunion’s FB page. Should be interesting…

Of course it is unfortunate not all special interest groups and minorities feel 100% totally equal and accepted in our society. Put things in perspective and ask yourself in what country anywhere does that idyllic paradise actually exist? Or even compares favorably to the USA on that topic? Then contemplate where we stand today, compared to 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago.

What exactly are you protesting? Our flag and national anthem are symbols of the freedom and justice that allows you to protest and gives athletes of all colors and creed the opportunity to make millions of dollars playing a game. Are you protesting social injustice, or exploiting a hot-button to attract attention?

You definitely have the attention of this veteran who gave the best years of his life to defending your right to protest. But it’s not like you think. My attention to TV time watching pro football just went retrograde.  What a shame rascism rears it’s head in one of the few places the actual playing field even approaches level..

Staying in Buffalo tonight, after 2 days of driving from Denver – whew! I’m only 8 hours from Plymouth now, so the two loooooongest drives are done. Only real note from the trip so far would be: What the hell is up with Indiana? Isn’t our new VP in Washington the former IN governor? Hope he doesn’t contribute to running down the country and taxing the poor like the people trying to drive I-80 in his state appear to have been. The road is in terrible disrepair, service plazas run-down and filthy and they charge you $8.50 for the privilege. Wait – didn’t the Federal government build that road?

Pond is looking nice after a slow start this year. I had major headaches getting it properly sealed during initial startup last spring. Then I made the rookie mistake of letting an algae bloom go too far. But, it’s an ongoing learning process. I took a video and a few night shots to document current progress. Maybe next year will be the first relatively trouble-free year for our backyard pond. Time will tell…

We don’t get much in the way of visitors around here, so it was especially nice spending time with Carol ‘n Ron when they came to visit last August. I only just finished posting up the pics saved from their camera before they returned to PA. One in particular was a rare time-capsule view of Sis and me in Rocky Mountain National Park:

About a year-and-a-half ago I took a little cross-country trip to visit the folks back east. Beforehand, I decided to use the upcoming opportunity to test a hypothesis for aerodynamics affecting fuel mileage on the ’07 Dodge truck. Lifted pickups are the worst for fuel mileage, but I managed to keep this one averaging around the stock MPG level (18) with a tune and some other minor-to-major mods including a built trans with a tighter torque converter.
But there’s not much you can do about the lift, or so it would seem. Higher basically equals more drag from an aerodynamic perspective. Then I got to thinking about the aerodynamics and envisioned an air dam extending down from the front bumper. The truck is a road machine intended for towing trailers and hauling stuff, almost never going off the pavement anyway, so this is doable.
The prototype I created did well on the trip, with only a couple of minor issues needing corrected before rebuilding it to final spec. The front braces made from aluminum snapped right off the first time I bumped something hard enough. Steve, if you’re listening, you probably already found those laying alongside your driveway a year ago last fall. They are now made of similarly-sized strips of black delrin, an engineering thermoplastic used in precision parts requiring stiffness and dimensional stability. The skin was glued to the frame before, mostly for expediency’s sake, but now it is fitted separately with screws enabling easier maintenance if it ever needs repaired or replaced. I also added a little finishing touch by flaring the bottom corners out a few inches to give it a more appealing, streamlined look.

So after like 50 hours of work and around $200 worth of materials, was it worth it? To me – yes, absolutely! The biggest and unexpected benefit from it is noise reduction. Apparently alot of the interior noise developed at highway speed comes from turbulence created by air moving underneath. Can’t say exactly how much without before/after decibel readings, but the cabin is noticeably quieter inside now. And it’s good for a solid +1 MPG. Lifted pickups with big tires are notoriously poor fuel mileage machines, so every little bit helps. It still needs the seam where it attaches finish smoothed and that whole bottom front plastic area coated to match.

You are not going to believe this, so I took a picture to prove it;

With the meter running at 36.7MPG, Vehicle Info screen on the control console showed a range of 685 miles immediately after fill-up, upon re-setting the display. An actual 601.5 on the tank ain’t bad either. Amazing, really – for a car that runs low 13’s in the quarter on street tires.

It’s time once again for Frederick High School volleyball! Looks like Francie will need to step up…

It only took a year for me to get around to finishing the stairs portion of our flooring remodel. I suppose I just needed the motivation from Sis coming to visit tomorrow. I’m a function over form guy, so I had no problem climbing in and out of the basement on the un-finished steps. The flooring contractor wanted +$500 for just the stairs, so I did it myself for about $200 in materials. I wanted something better than the contractor would ever do, for any price.

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They’ve been working on the new Wetland Loop Bridge literally almost all year. I think that is what made me care less about getting the pond done any time soon. I learned my construction attitude from the contractors building this bridge for the town:

This bridge used to be a 4-ft. concrete pipe covered with dirt and road. It was washed out beyond repair in the big flood a couple years ago. The true story about why it takes 5 months to build a little bridge like this will likely not be made publicly available. Ostensibly the reason given was the crews were mired in a huge mud hole all though spring and early summer. I’m not even sure why we need a bridge there, but we have a good one now!

Took three whole months from March through early July, but it’s done. Admittedly, the pace of work was slow compared to what I used to do only a few years ago. It came out really well considering my inexperience with stone masonry. All told, the total price tag came to around ~$1k worth of materials, parts and tools. The big ticket item was a new hammer drill for the holes in those fountain rocks. Still need to hit the rough spots with the grinder and then apply a couple coats of sealer to the whole thing. I’ll get to that this fall after bringing the Goldfish inside and getting it emptied and cleaned out for winter. It’s gonna need a new cover then, too. The fun just never seems to stop.

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The LED lighting, particularly the fountain top, looks really cool. The top light fixture is a piece I custom made with a polycarbonate camera dome and some other miscellaneous bits and bobs. It creates a shimmering cloud of light around the whole patio area, but is masked from direct view so you’re not blinded standing there looking right at it.

Paul D. Shaffer Status Update: Retired! And that’s OK by me, because I really am “exhausted.” Apparently my unemployment benefit ran out. At least I haven’t heard about any extension. So if the government no longer considers me “unemployed,” I guess that means I must be “retired,” right? Excellent.

Now with Video! The video portrays just one of three separate operations performed. He also repaired a torn rotator cuff and and removed several bone spurs.
There’s another hole in back – 4 incisions total:

It was a mess in there. He also had to cut the subpectoral biceps tendon – too far gone to repair.

Made a 3-day excursion down to Raleigh for a visit with one of my oldest and best friends.  He’s been one of the premiere stone mason in the region for many years now and a catch-up for us was long overdue. We had a little outing to the Capitol Building with his wife Leslie, sister Vicki and mom-in-law, Doreen on Halloween day. Joe wanted to inspect the stone work to get a clue where some the materials he was presently working with might have come from:

Average speed for the trip: 1400 miles, 21 hours, 1 night (more like about 6 hours) in the Davenport, IA Walmart parking lot. Managed to keep it rolling just over the speed limit pretty much the whole way with minimal construction delays. Having good luck contacting long lost friends so far. I’ll be spending a couple days with Carolyn, then dad, then heading for NC to see Joe before the weekend of Nov 7th: