The New Planned Obsolescence

Obsolescence is such a nice word. I like how it rolls off my tongue. In practice, however, I despise the idea of obsolescence.  Today we associate it with phones that can no longer be updated (I miss my iPhone 4, thank you very much). It still functions and I use it as a camera for eBay listings. But it cannot connect to Verizon's network. It cannot be updated by Apple.

Phones are not refrigerators, however. The simpler ones are the only ones I will buy, and they do not require software updates. No smart appliances, ever, for me.

Once upon a time, Maytag had the reputation for simple, indestructible appliances. Hence their repairman, "the loneliest guy in the world," an ad-campaign worthy of Don Draper of Sterling-Cooper.

Whirlpool, a company whose appliances I have found cheaply made in recent years, bought Maytag and just last month, we paid the price for this acquisition. We'd done our homework after a lightning-strike burned up a high-tech Samsung refrigerator we owned. 

Maytag had high ratings, and I found a floor-model at a locally owned appliance dealer at a nice discount. It had a warranty. Yet in fewer than five years, our simple top-freezer model began to die a slow death. First, the drains would not work in the freezer, so water began to drip into the lower compartment. Then the cooling in the lower compartment stopped working, despite a service call from a locally owned and well-regarded repair shop.  

As the repairman told me, nothing save a Subzero may last more than a decade. Nothing. Companies build their appliances that way, using cheaper parts than they once did, to keep prices stable while getting us to buy replacements more often.

It was not always that way. My GE circulating fan has been in action since before I was born, and the 1940s Frigidaire in my parent's kitchen endured 30 years, until we moved out of the house. Yes, it had to be defrosted. Yes, it did not make ice save in those hard-to-employ metal trays.

Luddite I can be, I wonder what we have gained except a costly convenience and, on a more positive note, energy efficiency. I yearn for government action to punish firms for this wasteful practice, but that seems such a 20th-Century idea in our Cyberpunk present.

So we purchased a simple GE "ice box," a term I still like to use, for under $1000. No ice-maker, either. I am using plastic trays. I did purchase a countertop Frigidaire ice-maker from Amazon that does not require a water-line. It recycles ice that does not get used, melting and re-freezing it. So far we have yet to plug it in, because the GE fridge works well enough for Spring weather. Come Summer we'll need more ice.

I doubt that our new GE will last 30 years, which would also be about my own expiration date. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I am going to try...mightily...to only buy things that have a reputation for longevity.

The dumber the tool, the longer it lasts. Dumb as a hammer. Ever broken one of them?

"Darkness is Good for Us": A Contrarian Idea About Winter

I had planned a post to review some promising new rechargable flashlights we used on farm, when a story caught my eye on Firefox's home screen. At first I thought it clickbait, until I spotted Atlas Obscura. The word "Darkness" intrigued my roving eye, and I clicked. 

My class had just finished reading LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, a fine book for younger readers about a talented young man's journey to wisdom, focusing on his Taoist realization that darkness and light need to exist in balance. It's a contrary approach than that taken in much fantasy literature, where a Manichean division exists: Sauron vs. Aragorn, for instance. Darkness in Tolkien is usually metaphorical and dangerous. It tempts us to power over others, rather than power from within.

But Tolkien rises above moral dualism; he loved the natural world. In his books we get dark skies full of stars that the Elves enjoy. That literal sense of darkness as awe-inspiring and necessary brings us to a lesson from Moffat, Scotland that we might employ in our lives. To a small degree, we have been trying it where we live.  This quotation, by "Astrophotographer and dark skies advocate Josh Dury" struck me as particularly wise:

“If you squeeze the whole of human evolution into a single day, artificial lighting has been around for a minute,” says Dury. “Exposure to light at night can have serious health implications.” He adds: “It can particularly affect our body’s hormones, including the production of melatonin, which is responsible for maintaining sleep patterns and nocturnal rhythms.” 

Read the piece for inspiration. Moffat succeeded where other communities continue to blot out the sky, at enormous cost to our natural sleep cycles and the stability of our climate. Even low-energy LEDs require power to run, so they are far from carbon-neutral.

Even if we dim our own small lights, not all of us live in places where we can turn down community lighting to see the Milky Way arch over our suddenly tiny heads. We are puny, compared to the panorama overhead.

What can each of us do to bring back some darkness? I don't always succeed every day but:

• Steering clear of all screens for an hour or more before bedtime
• Leaving house lights off in rooms that are empty
• Avoiding the American trend of spotlighting a house to show it off at night
  
• Replacing interior and exterior lighting that blots out the night with task lighting where possible, and where not?
• Installing security lighting triggered by motion. Always-on means always injected carbon dioxide into our air.
  
• Considering where all lights point. We replaced large floodlights with equally bright but lower-energy LED floods pointing downward. That way, when we need to check outside during the time when Copperhead snakes roam our yards, we can see them. Once back inside, out go the lights.

Winter remains my favorite season, partly for the lack of hot, humid weather and the orderliness of a winter landscape, but also for the power of the dark sky. It's perfect for stargazing. This year I learned a few new winter constellations that I can, luckily, see where I live. Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Perseus became nightly companions. 

In town, it was Orion. That was about it. During a trip to New York City? Nothing except the Moon. Times Square is magical at night, but I'd not be able to live in a large city again for more than a short while. I'd miss the dark too much.

I hope that in years to come, we'll rediscover how powerfully darkness helps us, as creatures who evolved to benefit from both light and dark. 

Next time, the flashlights!

image courtesy of Wikipedia.

A Woodpile Essential

I love heating with wood, and I love managing a woodlot. We cut out crooked saplings, fell a few leaners, and cut up fallen trees from thunderstorms and ice-storms. I burn it all, soft or hardwood.

That can get some woodstove owners into real trouble, if they burn too much green wood. Creosote will build up, increasing the chances of a chimney fire.

Most hardwoods take a year to be ready, if you keep them dry. Pine can be ready sooner. That said, I'd not burn a stick if I didn't check it first for moisture content.

Enter the inexpensive moisture meter I picked up from Amazon or eBay (I forget) for under $50.

To burn well, the wood should have less than 20% moisture. I trust Cornell University's advice on this. A reading on a newly cut log of 100%, this site claims, means that a log's weight is half water!

Their information contends that indefinite storage can be managed, but in my experience, wood that is too dry may as well be cardboard. It goes up fast and bright without generating too many BTUs. I discovered that with an estate-sale load of firewood, mostly white oak, that I got at $20 for a full cord. It burned but the lightness of the wood told me it had been stored for many years. I was happy to be rid of it.  The R value was less than year-old pine.

Conversely, a few years back we bought half a cord of red oak that was under-seasoned. It was the first heating season in 10 where I had to buy some wood. We did not have our meter then, so I mixed the oak with seasoned wood and waited for spring, rather anxiously, since we didn't want to run our furnace and spend money that way.

The following fall, the remaining red oak burned bright and hot, and it warmed our house well. Still, I don't want to buy from that seller of "seasoned" wood again. He haphazardly covered his piles, and that's not enough to properly season wood, without air circulation.

So I recommend something like our Tavtool. I use it in the woodpile and check several sticks on the sides and the ends. The ranges vary considerably, and the values on the scope tend too rise as one goes deeper into the log. At first, this reading was 13% but it dropped fast as the tool wiggled. Still, it's in the right range to burn.

The images show a log from a small tree that came down a year ago in an ice storm. We cut and stacked it in March, in a south-facing shelter that holds about 1/4 cord of wood (4' high by 2' deep by 8' long). Here's the end of the same log.

I have never seen readings vary more than a per-cent or two, unless one part of the log had been rained on. If you are unsure, split a piece and measure inside one of the pieces. That will give you a heartwood reading.

Finally, keep your wood dry. We build wood-boxes out of construction scraps. Shelter is key to good firewood, as is stacking for air circulation. Piles on the ground can molder even if covered with tarps and around here, harbor Copperheads in the warm months. No thank you.

 

May your woodpiles stay dry until Spring. And it's not too early to start stacking wood for 2023-24. We've burned about 2 cords, down from last year, but I need to replace them and one more to have the barn and wood-boxes full.

The Idiocy of Rural Broadband, Pt. 2

In an earlier post, I talked about the struggles with had with a local provider, finally settling on a Verizon hot-spot for our needs. 

It worked well but this post will warn other rural Internet users about a device often connected to televisions: Amazon's Fire Stick. 

 Our usage amounts to limited streaming (an hour or 90 minutes), one Yoga class online, and a 30 minute office hour meeting with students in a week. Thus we never went through more than 70 GB of our 100 before hitting the data cap and having speed slowed down. I understand from friends who watch a lot of films, TV, or play games online, that blowing through a Terabyte in a month is not unusual. 

Watching anything streaming meant attaching a laptop with a series of adapters that would make Rube Goldberg proud. An in-law with (of course) unlimited fiber Internet suggested Amazon's Fire Stick. We got the lowest-cost model, running 20 bucks with free shipping. It installed in a snap and we watched without issues a documentary about those who raise show chickens, plus an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. With Alexa and an intuitive control, I figured we had it made.

A few days later, Verizon notified us that we'd hit 90 GB of use on the 6th day of the month.

The verdict? Fire Stick. These devices will continuously auto-update (and the updates are not tiny) while the TV is off, as the device connects to one's router. Moreover, when using Fire Stick, it defaults to the highest video-quality possible, a Niagara of megabytes per hour. Finally, it plays previews and other features that devour 1s and 0s faster than a sailor on leave with pay in his pocket.

The solution is simple: unplug Firestick. We've used half a gigabyte since. We will plug it in again when we next watch something. But even then, the updates would begin to download, many of which we would never need. Thus there's some very good advice here about how to reduce data usage. We turned off all the data-gobbling settings right afterward, and unplugged the AC adapter.

We are considering Starlink, with its 1 TB cap, or awaiting the coming of fiber to our part of the county.

Many of you will not have that choice, and a cellular router of 4G or 5G may be the best choice. But watch those "smart" devices that hoover up data. These now include many appliances, security cameras, and the like.

Most of them can be dialed down if you know how. It's not in the interest of Big Telecom or firms like Amazon to tell you.

Incidental and ironic postscript: 

A Google search for the string "The Idiocy of Rural Broadband" turned up no hits for my own blog, one they host! Perhaps nothing shows because I refuse to run advertisements here.

Microsoft's Bing did turn my site up faster and as a second or third hit. I'm using Bing on my iPhone for the default search engine, for what that's worth, since it links right to Apple's map application (Safari does not take you to Apple's own map application, incidentally!). 

Google seems only to want to push advertisements to us, not feature free content. At least Microsoft, a company I've long mistrusted, got it right. 

Large companies are not our friends. They see us as revenue streams, not people. They have no one-on-one relationship as a locally-owned merchant or service may.

Act accordingly whenever you can. 

Image source: Tom Woodward at Fickr.

A Beginner's Tool Box, Part I

 

Some time back, I focused on four (+1) essential shop tools. Today I'll go out to the lumber-yard with my tool bag (or box) to focus on the hand tools for woodworking that every beginner needs. I use a lot of cordless and some corded saws and drills; more on these later. Lately, for a lot of simple jobs, I forego power tools. In fact, for a big job I went hybrid: I used a cordless drill to make pilot holes in 200 or so pieces of weather-board siding, fearing that my new nail gun would split the wood. Then I hand-nailed about 600 siding nails. Worked like a charm. The hardest part of finding the right ringshank nails!

With some luck, a beginner could score all of these tools and a decent tool bag for under $300. A good box may cost more. I won't go into brands in most cases. For saws and hammers, however, some work better than others. Buy the best you can. Check Facebook Marketplace, estate and yard sales, too. Some fantastic tools from the 50s-70s can be had for pennies on the dollar.

Do not let your box look like that! Now here goes for picks:

A Toolbox Saw: A small crosscut saw can do a lot of serious work. I've got two by Stanley called "Fat Max" that I love.

A Hand Plane: These can cost big money, but a savvy DIYer can find excellent antique planes for under $50 that need some refurbishment. I sold a pile of them for $20 each at a farm-swap this year. I've kept several others in good shape for my own use, having seen new planes that run $100-$200. I use planes occasionally for a final fit on a piece of wood, when only a little bit needs shaving off. You'll find many other uses for these versatile tools. Here's a beauty from the article "Unlocking the Mystery of Hand Planes" at Wood News Online.

A Level (or two): Spirit levels come in many lengths, but for the toolbox, get a shorty of 2' or less. Get a vintage one at a yard sale or FB marketplace. They can be had cheaply.

A Framing Hammer: I love Estwing's hammers. I think mine is a 22 oz, which my friend Jeff Warren recommended for it's power but also because a heavier hammer simply wears you out. That's my brand-plug. I've used Stanley claw hammers for years, but a framing hammer that is well made does all a claw hammer can plus has better ergonomics. The  longer handles let a framing hammer do more of the work, at least to a point. 

On a Habitat build once, since the nonprofit will not let volunteers bring nail guns, they issued claw hammers to a bunch of unskilled folk on a framing job. I joined in but I quickly got found out: I drive nails well. Me and the Estwing then got a hell of a workout, since the other volunteers were bending more nails than driving them. They got other tasks while I ended up sore for days. I must have driven 300 nails that day but we stood all the walls before sunset. I felt suddenly Amish.

A Dead-Blow Hammer: This works great for lots of tasks where you did not wish to leave a Mark. The modern plastic version is full of shot. I find it great for tapping in a board when building. The one pictured is 10 bucks at Harbor Freight. I find a cheap one like this works as well as fancy ones. It's an occasional tool. I'd aim for a weight of 3 or 4 pounds. They can scale up to sledge-hammer size!

 

A Nail Puller (or three): I use these often, sometimes in partnership with the puller on the framing hammer to remove nails. I like having a big and little one handy. 

Carpenters Clamps: I have some favorites and will recommend them: Irwin bar clamps. I have dozens of clamps, from antique C-clamps to some beautiful wooden clamps, but the Irwins are a delight: they snug down with hand pressure and release fast. I've used them for holding things during auto repair, too: the plastic jaws, if clean, will not scratch metal. Start small for the tool box, with a pair of shorter ones, but you'll end up with huge ones soon enough, hanging on the wall of the shop.

Wood Chisels: You'll need this for many small jobs to shave off a tiny bit of wood when joining things. Get a set.

A Magnet: Nails and screws and essential parts fall into the grass. Get a magnet on a handle to find them. It saves money and keeps you and others safe later. I once kept half a dozen bored college students occupied on a Habitat for Humanity build, when the crew had no more work for unskilled helpers, by asking the kids to walk the site with two buckets: one for nails, another for screws. We found a gallon or so of each. The one pictured is 8 bucks at Harbor Freight. I have some that are long bars scavenged from machinery, and put on cords to drag over the ground. Sure beats a flat tire on the pickup truck!

Roll of Masking Tape: Tape? Sometimes I need to hold a small piece of trim and don't have a helper. Sometimes I've used tape to mark a spot I'm going to cut, or to keep a piece of wood from splintering when I saw it. It's a cheap companion. And if you want to write measurements on wood without writing on the wood itself, tape to the rescue.

A Speed Square & a Try Square: I managed to finally use a Speed Square to measure angle when we made rafters for a run-in built over an old shipping container. It's the first time I've done that. I then used the square to check the angle on other rafters from a chicken-coop kit. The second tool I love is my try square. These tools often have a small level built in, but for me the magic of the try square is its ability to mark a straight line on a piece of wood that needs to be cut with a circular saw. I use a Sharpie or a pencil.

I found a page on measuring pitch with a speed square, a page with other uses for that tool, as well as a nice resource with all sorts of neat marking tools and advice on measuring here.

A Pair of Rules: I love retractable tape-measures, but I have also begun to carry a folding wooden rule. Why? When you are measuring a long distance without a partner to hold a tape, the old-school wooden rule lets you work solo. Otherwise, I always use a tape.

 So that's my list. What did I forget?  I'll do another post on tools for working with metal and, just maybe, rudiments for my favorite haunt, the auto-shop.

Thanks 2022

 I do believe that I have given thanks in this space before, so in no particular order:

• Courage to say “no,” when a publisher let me know that my planned first-year textbook would cost students $200 per copy.
• Hope from the Midterm results. Evil got its due, and while it could have been better, it could have been far, far worse. I have recurrent bad dreams of neo-fascist militants who worship a certain evil man coming down our driveway. Guns won’t save us. What will? Community and fortitude.
• Perseverance, a related idea. I fixed things on the farm that seemed un-fixable at times: a stalled diesel tractor, a balky electronic ignition in an old truck, an old lock for our pop-up camper.
• Curiosity to try new things, from listening to some new music, reading new authors, to visiting the Grand Canyon. 
• Gratitude that my wife and I enjoyed relatively good health and prosperity. My own arthritis has been stable and my flexibility improved. A good osteopath, Yoga class, and diet have keep my as limber as possible at my age. We found a talented visiting vet to tend to our livestock dogs, and two of them with persistent health issues have also enjoyed better health in consequence.
• Luck when we had a porch finished, despite delays in materials or builders’ mistakes, the fallen white oak that guaranteed enough firewood, or decent fishing so we brought home dinner a few times.
• Company of others, fighting my antisocial tendencies to visit with family and friends.
• Temperance, not a virtue of mine, whenever my academic job seems pointless, my students anxious and depressed about the world we are leaving them, and my university ever more corporate, concerned more at times with branding than substance and learning.
• Restraint, also not my strength, when I kept my mouth shut instead of screaming. I am still working on that one!
• Knowledge to know when to “call some guy” to fix or make something, when to quit for the day, when to stop looking at screens, or when to let others have the last word.

So you get the last word. Tell me what makes you thankful in 2022?

Slowing Down To Save Time

Yes, this sounds paradoxical. But one thing that 10 years of rural life have taught me is this: when you have plenty of space to put things, you can get sloppy about it.  

That is not my tool box. Not by a light year. But before talking about why,  let's consider socket sets. Yes, sockets.

I have hundreds of the things, mostly inherited. The few dozen I brought with me from town were well organized in an old tool box I once purchased with S&H Green Stamps. I could always put my hand on what I needed, fast.

Finding myself with three places where we store equipment, I could see why my father-in-law put tools everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Unlike my small stash, however, these tools were not sorted. He worked at a breakneck pace and the work was good, but organizing things for later use? He called that "piddling," and it was not real work to him.  He had buckets of tools, jars of fasteners, and sockets every darned place you could imagine.

I'm Type-A about clutter, so it drove me bonkers until I discovered a simple truth about any pile of stuff: if you go after it methodically and do not add more stuff, it will eventually sort itself out. So this Fall, I began to organize sockets: 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" drives, SAE, Metric, "deeps," "shallows," six-point and twelve-point sockets. I have specialty ones for removing oxygen sensors and spark plugs.

I am nearly done, and guess what? I have a full set for each of the places where we park tractors or cars. My father-in-law was always hunting for just the right size. When I'm done, I won't have to do that any more. Any sizes I'm missing I'll buy individually, until everything is ready to roll without me walking to another building to get one measly socket.

Makes one wonder what we might do if we addressed every mess that way. We confront messes daily but if we also clean up a little bit daily, without adding to it, we might save our mental health, our neighborhoods, the places we call home. 

We might save the world.

Creative Commons image from Publicdomainpictures.net