What were you doing at 4:00 am?

Over the past few days, we've noticed that our air conditioning unit would turn on to cool. but then would fail to turn off after reaching the desired temperature. It would go a degree or two below and we'd catch it and turn it off. The other night, Heather turned the a/c back on and forgot to turn it off. So, when I got home yesterday afternoon, it was 67 degrees inside the house. That's going to be a nice electric bill. :) Since the unit is cooling fine, we figured it was just the thermostat. I did some research on the web and saw the type I was going to need. I got the essentials (voltage/for a heat pump/etc) , because our original thermostat isn't made anymore. So, after heather got home from work, I went to Lowe's and got a new one. nothing fancy. Just a digital, non-programmable replacement for the one we had. I got home, took the old thermostat apart, labeled the wires and got it about half way wired when they called me for supper. The Father-in-Law had come over to see the grand kids and cook supper for us, so I didn't want to make him wait for us to eat. After supper, I went back to finishing up the wiring. Everything went together fine and I flipped the circuit breaker to run it all back one. You are expecting me to talk about a fire aren't you? Nope. Everything worked fine. The temp was low enough in the house where the a/c unit didn't come on, so I didn't give it another thought. As we went to bed, the thermostat read 74 and the house temp was 74. Good to go.

About 3:15 am, I woke up. I was hot. Crap. Well, I thought, we've had the problem with the a/c the last few nights, maybe I was just used to sleeping in the 70 degree temp and 74 feels warm right now. I'll think anything to keep me from getting out of bed. A few more minutes and I couldn't take it anymore. I was getting hotter. Crap. I had to go see what the temp said. The readout said 78. Crap. The fan was running, so I walked over to the vent in the floor and put my foot over it. Hot air. Crap! I shut off the unit, pulled off the face plate, got the installation manual and proceeded to check my wiring. My wiring looked good. Crap. So, I got on the web and started researching my original thermostat, the new thermostat and wiring diagrams for units to see exactly what wire was designated for what. After some trial and error, a lot of reading and cross-referencing, I finally figured out the problem. There was one wire that had a double designation on it. "O/B" that I had read earlier that evening as "D/B". Since there was no "D" on the wire plan, I wired it to the "B" post. Once I saw what the two designators were for and that it was actually an "O" and not a "D," I figured it need to be wired to the "D" post and not the "B." I rewired my thermostat and by 4:00 am, the bottom floor was cooling down nicely. The rest of the family doesn't even know I screwed it up. Of course, putting the story out on the web won't help me keep my secret very long, but keeping my ego intact has never been a high priority for me. If it was, I wouldn't write half the stories I do on here.

"God looks after fools and drunks" or "Not my time to die"

If you've been reading my blogs, you know this first picture is the way we store the Rag-A-Muffin in Dad's hanger. We took about a month and a half of trying to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling. It was trial and error and even a little damage to the airplane, but in the end we figured it out. The winch is mounted on the beams in the ceiling and hooks to an "eye" bolt mounted on the hanging frame that attaches to the airplane wing bolts by carbines and fabricated metal slats. Just in case the winch fails, we have 500lb rope that is secured from the hanging frame to the hanger wall and from the tail section to the far side of the hanger. It all works pretty well.

Today, Dad and I decided to meet at the hanger to try and finish up the radio push-to-talk switch I started installing last week. I got to the hanger before Dad and opened it up. After I pulled the Tomahawk out, I lowered the Rag-A-Muffin. I undid all the safety lines and then I noticed it was a bit cockeyed with the Port side wing touching the wall. So, I got directly under the airplane and pushed on one of the tires to move the wing away from the wall. As I did that, I started to lower the airplane with the wench. Now, the cable on the wench wraps over itself when it winding up, so to see and hear the airplane bang and bounce on the way down doesn't bother us anymore. It did it three times today as I was lowering it. As soon as the plane was low enough to stay away from the wall, I moved out from under it and lowered it to the ground. Easy enough a one person job.

Dad got there not long after I got the rag down and I showed what I had done on the radio last week. Once he was up to speed and we figured out the next step, we started getting everything together to solder some wires together. I didn't bring my reading glasses (getting old is a bitch) so Dad was going to do the soldering. While he was doing that, I started looking at the hanging frame and wondering why the airplane was closer to the wall than it had been originally. I decided the hanging frame had been turned around 180 degrees and it was just enough to move it a few inches closer to the wall. I proceeded to unhook the frame from the airplane and turn it around. Just as I started to spin the frame, I saw it...

The "eye" bolt was just barely a "J-hook." The complete circle that was the eye bolt had been stretched out and it was hanging on to the winch hook by less than a quarter of an inch. I told Dad, "When you get to a stopping point, you have GOT to see this." He came over and saw the eye bolt. I was just amazed at how far it had stretched. Then dad looked at me and it dawned on both of us. I was standing directly under that thing while it bounced and banged its way down just 15 minutes earlier and that quarter inch was all that was between me and a 250 lb airplane falling directly on my head. Holy shit. That's when Dad said, "God takes care of fools and drunks." That's when I said, "See. Like I've always said, when it's your time, it's your time. Whether you are standing under a 250 airplane that is hanging by a thread or sitting on your couch eating potato chips. When your time is up, your time is up." I guess my time wasn't up this afternoon. Even so, you can bet your bippy I'll be checking that stuff each time before I walk up under it again. Oh, and we changed out what was left of the eye bolt for two sections of chain that are both bolted to the hanging frame by aircraft grade bolts.

Stupid Kid

This morning, I have the day off and I take the girls to daycare so Heather doesn't have to hassle with it. As I'm leaving, I notice a few of the mailboxes in our neighborhood, including the "Tard's" mailbox have been "tagged." Meaning, they have been spray painted. All of the mailboxes in our neighborhood are brick, so there is a lot of area to paint. The three that I drive past have "13", "Will and Slocomb" and "Fuck Me" written on them. Great. Some little paint happy bastards drove through my neighborhood last night. As I'm driving out, I look in the rear view at my mailbox and there is nothing on it. After I took the girls to daycare, I came in the other entrance to the neighborhood to see the other side of my mailbox that I couldn't see earlier. Sure enough, there was white paint on it. I was the proud owner of a tag that said "19 1/2" on my mailbox. WTF??

When I got in, I called my cousin, who is a Sheriff's Deputy in my county. I told him what had happened and asked who I needed to call. I wasn't expecting anything to happen, I just wanted it to go on record, plus, if there was a rash of them going around town, it would just be another charge to throw on them if they ever got caught. Plus, I wanted to let them know that if I caught the little bastard in my yard again, I'd beat the ever-luvin' shit out of him and leave him for dead in the middle of the road. He told me that a lot of cars had been spray-painted over the last few weeks and I was probably lucky they only got my mailbox. He gave me the non-emergency number to call and I called them.

About 10 minutes later there was a knock on my door. It was actually my sister's brother-in-law (her husband's sister's husband; Greg) who is also a Sheriff's deputy, that got sent to the house. He got all my info and everything I knew about what had happened. Then, he walked down the street to write down each thing that was written on a mailbox. I went back in the house while this was happening. I glanced out one time and noticed a lady talking to him. Thinking nothing of it, I sat down to watch this week's episode of "Big Break: Prince Edward Island." About 10 minutes into it, my doorbell rang. It was Greg and a teen-aged boy. Greg said the boy had something he wanted to tell me. I figured he saw who did it and was going to tell me. "Mr. Hall, my name is (name withheld) and I'm the one that spray painted your mailbox." For the second time in less than an hour I'm going: "WTF???" I was dumbfounded. Come to find out, the lady I saw talking to Greg earlier was this kid's mother and she was telling him that her son had tagged the mailboxes and he was coming out to talk to him. Greg and I talked to him for awhile. He reasoning was that he got "super bored" last night and was walking around and just decided to do it. He thought it would wash off in the rain and didn't think he was doing any harm. First off, it's enamel spray paint on brick. It ain't gonna wash off. Second, you are writing on people's property and you think you aren't doing any harm?? He said he didn't think about his actions affecting my kids. I told him he wasn't effecting my kids in the least, but e was affecting the entire neighbor by doing this. Now, everyone thinks the neighborhood isn't safe and has thugs riding through it or worse, living in here now. There was about 10 minutes of talking. We asked what the things on te mailboxes meant. He said they didn't really mean anything. It was just wat come to mind when he sprayed. There was something about his story that never did settle right with me. I don't know if there were others with him and he was hiding that or what, but there was something "off" about it. I never did put my finger on it. He said he was trying to join the Air Force (his dad is in the Air Force) and he really didn't want a record. I told him I wouldn't do anything right now, but I wanted my mailbox fixed. He said he was getting with his parents and they were going to figure out a way to get the paint off all the mailboxes. It's night time now and my mailbox is still painted. I'll give him a week and then I'm going to his parents and tell them either my mailbox get fixed or I'll get with the other 4 homeowners to file charges. That will put his Air Force dreams in a bit of a bind.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not out screw the kid. We've all done stupid stuff when we were younger. Hopefully, you learn from them and become a better person in the long run. But, if he says he's going fix what he screwed up, then he better stick to his word. If he doesn't fix it and no one does anything about it, then he'll never learn. He'll just go about his merry way thinking he do whatever he wants without any recourse. I personally don't want someone like that in my Air Force.

We'll see what happens and, of course, I'll update here.

Stupid Kid.