Synonym for Anti-Hero: Idiot

I am turning into a House junkie, which is fitting, considering the nature of the show’s protagonist.

Last night I was exhausted from cleaning up the garage and installing wiring, and I plopped on the couch and watched two episodes. They were connected, although not consecutive. DVRs can’t work miracles; the episodes linking them were not in the box.

It works like this. House has to put in time at the free clinic, and he hates it. A big guy (David Morse) comes in and demands a VD test, commenting on House’s unpleasant, bullying nature in the process. House gets even by inserting a rectal thermometer unnecessarily. Morse figures it out, and he demands an apology. House refuses. Morse turns out to be a cop. He pulls House over for speeding, and he finds a bottle of painkillers in House’s jacket. House is arrested, and prosecution begins. He faces ten years in jail for drug crimes. Morse gives him chances to apologize and make it right, but House refuses until Morse runs out of patience. Too late, House goes into rehab, just to impress Morse and the judge. Morse doesn’t buy it, because he knows what addicts are like, and the prosecution proceeds.

That’s the bare bones of the plot.

I’ve decided House is a rotten human being. I used to think that sooner or later, something good would be found beneath the layers of slime and rot, but that’s not in the cards. He’s just bad. Last night, he whined and whined about how awful Morse and the judge and his friends were. But he never admitted responsibility or remorse, and he made no effort to change. He drove a friend to perjure herself–a felony–to get him off the hook. This, after stealing prescriptions, abusing his misguided friends, and raping a man. Sticking something in a person’s rear end after obtaining consent by fraud is rape; that’s how the law sees it. House never even brought the issue up. He didn’t just deserve to be jailed for his drug escapades. He deserved a fat lip and a prosecution for sexual battery. I was rooting for him to lose his medical license and go to the penitentiary.

House is a very good representation of a drug addict or alcoholic. They are unbearable whiners who blame the world for their problems. I don’t know why whining is connected to drug dependency. Maybe it’s because addicts can’t stand discomfort of any kind, and they are used to getting it fixed by crying and mewling. By using their misery to manipulate others. Other people accept pain and wait for it to pass. An addict deflects it onto other people, making it their problem and motivating them to get rid of it. Now that I think about it, I suppose an addict is helpless without other people around. They are so used to making other people do their bidding and support their habits, they don’t know how to do things for themselves. Is this where the concept of co-dependency comes from? I guess it is. When Walter Hudson got up over a thousand pounds, it was clear he wasn’t the only one with a problem. Somebody was bringing him the buckets of doughnuts, and that person was also sick.

Have you ever known an alcoholic who didn’t revel in self-pity? I haven’t. They don’t always do it openly, but if you spend time with a problem drinker, it will come out eventually. For me, one of the most disgusting, ugliest parts of dealing with addicts is listening to their infantile whimpering. It’s worse than driving one to rehab or changing locks or searching inside couch cushions and bric a brac for hidden pills. Those things are relatively pleasant compared to being subjected to moaning and excuses. I’m sorry to say it, but this was the dark side of reading Acidman’s blog. He wasn’t always the ruthless self-examiner he held himself out to be.

Virtually every addict is one hundred percent responsible for his addiction, but almost all of them blame other people or circumstances they can’t control. What a load. No addict who sees himself as a victim can hope to recover. If you’re hooked on something, you’re not a victim. You’re just foolish, and you need to grow up. There are only two persons who have the power to end an addiction. The addict, and God. Everyone else should be left out of it. At least, they should not be held to account for it.

I have never made another person an addict. Nothing I have ever done, no matter how bad it may have been, has caused another person to take a pill or a drink. I am completely blameless. Addicts are self-made, and they have no right to drag the rest of us into their self-inflicted misery.

Sometimes when we watch TV and movies we see heroes who are abrasive and demanding, yet who turn out to be justified, because they mean well, and they’re harder on themselves than on other people. John Wayne played this type better than any other actor. I kept telling myself House would turn out to fit the model. But he doesn’t. He’s a complete coward. He doesn’t have the guts to ask a woman out; he rents hookers instead. He never criticizes himself. When he apologizes, the show stops dead, because it’s such a rare event. He abuses people verbally, for no constructive purpose. He steals, purely to satisfy his base urges. He browbeats patients for no reason. He sabotages relationships that he finds threatening. He even refused to go to his father’s funeral, knowing it would punish his innocent mother and not the dead father who was beyond his pathetic vengeance.

He’s funny and smart and creative. But those are gifts, not virtues. In the big scheme of things, they have no lasting or deep value.

Thinking about his inability to criticize himself, I started to consider the modern cult of self-esteem. It’s a very sad religion, to which I was once a deluded adherent. Today I realized that when we tell people their salvation lies in self-esteem, we are telling them to take on the fundamental and fatal flaw of the addict. We are telling them to stop acknowledging their flaws. You can’t grow unless you can admit fault and apologize and work sincerely to change.

A personality is like a garden. And what do you do in a garden when you want the good plants to grow? You go in every day with a hoe, and you kill the bad plants. Imagine what raising tomatoes would be like, if we applied the principles of the self-esteem religion. We wouldn’t see weeds. We would see “botanical diversity.” We would see “nature manifesting its power and determination.” It would seem a thing of beauty. We would withhold the hoe. And we would get very damn few tomatoes.

Self-esteem feels good, and it gives you energy and helps you do the things you want to do. But when it goes beyond a healthy level, it causes you to ignore your own faults and overestimate your abilities. You start to think every good thing that happens to you is deserved, and that you caused it through your own strength. People who have that belief tend to wander away from God. They forget they need him. They may start to think morality is silly. They may commit crimes and mistreat other people. They sever the connection to God’s power. Then when the illusion of self-sufficiency is shattered, they don’t have the habits of faith and prayer and contrition and obedience, so they have a tough time recovering.

Self-esteem is not the answer to your problems. Psychologists tell us that self-esteem is highest in segments of society where achievement is lowest and immorality is rampant. Prison inmates, for example, tend to think very highly of themselves. You need to be confident that you can achieve. But if that confidence is to be healthy and productive, it can’t be purely self-directed. You have to have confidence that you can do what you need to do, with God’s help. That’s how man was designed to work. The self-esteem cult is idolatry, and it leads to stunted development and a dead end. A spiritual stillbirth.

Moses was extremely humble. He was too shy to talk to Pharaoh without Aaron beside him. But he parted the Red Sea and led hundreds of thousands of people across, dry-shod. He esteemed God, not himself. Moses exalted God, and God exalted Moses. That’s the healthy way to live.

I don’t know if I’ll keep watching House. It’s hard to enjoy a show when you keep hoping the “hero” gets punched in the mouth and convicted of a pile of felonies. And I’m also tired of hearing about MS and sarcoidosis. I don’t know if the medical consultants who help write the show are out of ideas or what, but it seems like every patient, sooner or later, is suspected of having MS, sarcoidosis, or both. I don’t even know what sarcoidosis is, but I know how to treat it, thanks to House.

I have enjoyed movies and shows in which moral ambiguity played a part, but we have gotten to the point where we are expected to support characters who are not merely confused, but vile. All year I’ve been watching Breaking Bad, a show in which a chemistry teacher with cancer starts making meth in order to be able to leave his family money. In the beginning, you could feel sorry for him, because of his desperation, and because he wasn’t doing the very worst things drug dealers do. Lately he’s been a real idiot, though. It was bad when he was selling poison. Now he’s urging his sidekick to commit murder, and he’s threatening rival dealers. I used to wish him well. Now I want to see him in an orange jumpsuit. Or I’d like to see him take a good, bloody pounding from a parent whose kid used his product.

Guess it’s a good thing that I watch so little TV these days.

77°

I am so glad I got a bigger air conditioner than I thought was required. The garage is comfortable now, but that’s about all I can say. The humidity goes below 50%, and the temperature gets down to 77 in the hottest part of the day. Livable, at least.

I stuck the new Baldor motor in the lathe, and it ran like a top. What a difference. I was absolutely right about the bad shaft making the lathe thump. I had to pry the pulleys off the old motor, but they slid onto the new one with ease, and they ran true when the power was applied.

I still have to figure the VFD out. It doesn’t like it when you plug the cord in and the drum switch is in forward or reverse. It gives an E13 error. That’s a new one, but it’s apparently harmless.

I lengthened the braking time to 5 seconds, and I also lengthened the deceleration time. I’m not sure how they can be different, since you would expect controlled deceleration to require some sort of braking. But I’ll figure it out. The VFD quit saying “E7,” so I guess I did good.

I’m not sure I can mount the backing plate on the lathe without moving the VFD. I should have mounted the VFD farther to the left, but I never dreamed it could interfere with a plate or a chuck, so it’s pretty far to the right. Today some kind of oil came from the chuck and/or spindle and flew up onto the VFD. I don’t know what the source was, but if it continues, I’ll have to move things around. I was not able to salvage the old Anaconda conduit stuff from the old motor, so I still have wires all over. Project for the weekend, I guess.

The backing plate is here, and it’s beautiful. I finally have enough junk to get started.

I don’t want to keep harping on the dubious deal I got on the lathe, but I have to say, that new motor makes a world of difference. The other two ran, but that’s the nicest thing you can say about them. One made a buzzing noise, and the other had a mangled shaft and made a funny sound when it turned. This one runs slick as wet ice. I feel justified in saying the other motors are crap. Good enough to keep for unimportant projects, but not what you want on a lathe that would cost twenty grand new. I don’t know how much a motor affects the way a mill runs, but with this lathe, every vibration goes right to the chuck. A clapped-out motor can’t be good for the work.

I finally got the garage more or less beaten back into shape. Once I get the conduit on the lathe, I can back it up another six inches and reclaim some floor.

Maybe soon I’ll be able to go a whole day without lying on the garage floor to turn a wrench in a greasy confined space.

I’m in Love

I have air conditioning. This is too sweet. I made a new conduit, crammed the wires in, screwed everything to the wall, rigged up a temporary receptacle, and turned it on. Right now I’m waiting for the air to cool down a little so I can install the new motor for the lathe.

Finally I have a workspace that is bearable between May and October. I’m beside myself. I feel like adding a dorm fridge and a chaise lounge.

It takes a fair amount of time to cool the space. I guess 18000 BTUs were not overdoing it. The machine has a “dehumidify” setting. I may give that a shot. I don’t really care if it’s warm, as long as I don’t drip sweat on everything I touch.

The correct receptacle is on the way. I am not going to drive all over Miami, or spend days trying to find it over the phone, talking to “bilingual” employees who speak four words of English. For nine bucks and change, I can have what I want. Sold. I can’t believe Home Depot didn’t have it.

I dread getting grease all over myself, but I console myself with the knowledge that I won’t have to do it again for a while. I can’t wait to hear the Baldor run. I’m hoping the lathe will run smoother. This motor has new bearings, and I assume the pulleys will sit correctly on the shaft.

I can’t stand it. I have to go out there and get to work. Man, this is wonderful.

Plus Convulsions

News from Israel, RE Mish Weiss:

Doc R said when I spoke with him last, “Mish is still with us through sheer willpower and the power of prayer” thank you, you all have a lot to do with it.

Shabbat Shalom

Marc

If you remember Mish in prayer today, do me a favor and remember my cousin Debbie, too.

More

Leah says the fever is fluctuating, and the lows are getting lower. What a testimony this makes for.

I Got More Power

I’m all excited. Today I get to turn the new air conditioner on. And I need it! I worked in the garage for four or five hours yesterday, and by the end of it, I was really dehydrated. I kept drinking, figuring I would catch up. Before I went to bed, I drank even more, and I assumed I would overdo it and then have to get up in the middle of the night. Yet, to put it delicately, the results defied expectations. I slept all night.

The people at Home Depot probably know my face by now. I have to go over there soon and get a plug so I can fake up a receptacle until the proper stuff can be obtained.

I’m going to get a milling machine next. I don’t care how much aggravation it causes me. I am not going to go to my grave wondering what it would have been like to fulfill my decades-old desire to learn machining. Law school cost me $22,000 per year, and that’s just tuition. I have less than that invested in my tools, and they bring me a thousand times the satisfaction.

I went out to the garage last night and looked over my work. I felt a sense of gratitude I can’t even describe. I know it’s silly. What I have out there isn’t much. A few nice tools, a TV, and an air conditioner. But I feel like I got my own private resort.

Lately I’ve been watching House reruns. For some reason, I DVR’d a bunch of shows for my sister, and they were piling up on the machine, and I started watching them. Wonderful show. Hugh Laurie was already one of my favorite actors because of his work in the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves series and The Blackadder. If you haven’t seen his Prince George, your television has not justified its existence.

Once in a while, Laurie plays music on the show. He’s a pianist and a guitarist. He’s really good, too. He played a version of Georgia on my Mind which made me wish I could buy it on CD.

On House, he plays a rude doctor who solves patient’s problems through pure creativity. He fumbles around for half an hour or more, and then in the last few minutes of the show, he experiences a revelation, and the patient gets well.

I am not a jealous person by nature. I don’t really care what other people have, unless they’re obnoxious about it, or they got something important which really should have gone to someone else. But I started to feel jealous, watching House. I’ve had a lot of problems with my own musical efforts, because my memory and concentration let me down. And here was Hugh Laurie, a man who excelled in his chosen field, playing music beautifully as a hobby. And I know it’s irrational, but because he played a character who solved problems through creativity, he reminded me of myself. A better version of me. Back when I was studying to be a physicist, I used to solve problems by lying down and thinking about other things until the answers came to me.

Last night I read about him on the Internet. Seems like he’s not a particularly happy person. I may be wrong, but that’s the impression I get from the information I found.

I thought about that while I looked at my silly garage. I enjoy it so much, and my life is so pleasant. I could not believe I deserved the garage! You would be amazed at the intensity of the emotions I felt as I looked at it.

On the one hand, I was right, because as a Christian, I know people don’t really deserve the blessings they get. On the other hand, from a human perspective, it’s just a garage. Donald Trump had a 300-foot yacht with gold-plated faucets, and it didn’t make him happy.

I don’t feel jealous now. I got my perspective back. Also, House is a fictional character. And even if he were not, he’s so miserable, no one in his right mind would envy him.

You can’t look at what other people have and assume it would please you. You don’t know how they got it or what it cost them, and you don’t know what problems may prevent them from enjoying it. I see Bentleys and Ferraris and Porsches almost every day. Even though I don’t care much about cars, I used to think the people who drove them were very lucky. Then one day I realized that only a small percentage of them were paid for. And I saw a neighbor’s Porsche on a repo truck a few months back; that made me think. The grass is always greener. It’s good to realize that it’s an illusion. If more people knew that, the world would be a more peaceful place.

The little things I have bring me tremendous pleasure, and even though that is true, I am fortunate enough not to be bound up in them. If they burned in a fire tomorrow, I wouldn’t like it, but I would sleep well tomorrow night. That attitude is a gigantic blessing, and it must come from God, because it’s contrary to human nature.

I don’t think we’re supposed to get everything we want, or that our lives are supposed to be free from problems. But I do believe we’re supposed to be happy, and that overall, we are supposed to succeed. I don’t buy into the idea that all Christians should have piles of wealth, or that we should never get sick, or that everything we try should work right from the start. The TBN nuts used to preach that stuff because it got people to fill their coffers, and it’s wrong. But I think life is supposed to be good, and that we should feel blessed and content. And very often, we do get very good things.

Home Depot is calling. Who am I to resist?

Used Romex for Sale Cheap

I am wiped out.

I pulled out the old 8-3 Romex from my air compressor circuit. I replaced it with about 27 feet of 6-3. I guess that took three hours. Working with 6-3 Romex is a lot like wrestling an alligator, except an alligator can’t give you electric shocks. I probably went up and down the ladder 40 times.

After that, I stripped maybe seven feet of the outer insulation off, made a new 3/4″ conduit, and shoved the Romex through it. I installed the conduit and attached everything to the existing disconnect. That took maybe an hour and a half.

I can’t believe how long it took. This stuff is very hard to work with. And when it was all over, I found I had the wrong kind of circuit breaker. So I stuffed the 40-amp job back in the box. Hey, if it doesn’t blow, I know I don’t need to replace it.

I still don’t have a socket. But the wire and conduit already exist, so it will be a quick job. I’m irritated that Home Depot doesn’t have the right receptacle. I’ve decided to jury-rig it with a receptacle intended for a cord (those, they have), and I’ll order the right part off the Internet. I can’t wait a week for a stupid receptacle.

The whole time I was doing this, I was thinking how wonderful it would be to have air conditioning. I guess that means it was worth it. Next time, I WILL have air conditioning.

Hope I can get by with that 40-amp breaker. Smaller breakers are always better, when you can get away with them.

My Money is in Copper

I have returned from Home Depot. Guess what 6-3 Romex costs? A whopping $2.56 per foot. And I bought 30 feet. Plus some 3/4″ conduit and a 50-amp breaker. All this, just to beef up my compressor circuit by ten amps, so I can add the air conditioner.

At least I didn’t have to buy a 15-amp breaker for the unit itself. When I went out to look at the plug, to find out what kind of receptacle I needed, I saw that it had a breaker built into it. That saved me half an hour and maybe twenty bucks.

My plan is to yank the old 8-3 Romex, put the 6-3 in, upgrade the breaker to 50 amps, run conduit to the disconnect, run conduit from the disconnect to a location near the air conditioner, and install a socket. The 8-3 runs through a foot-long hole in solid concrete. I hope it’s big enough for 6-3. Otherwise…wait, this is no problem…otherwise, I’ll have to get out my mighty rotary hammer and spend TEN SECONDS reaming out the hole. Man, having the right tools is wonderful.

My new 4-jaw chuck arrived. It’s really nice. The grease in it is probably forty years old; it hasn’t been used. Or it has been used so little, you can’t tell. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make myself use the 3-jaw chuck. Precision is addictive. The 3-jaw chuck says it was made in England, but I haven’t spotted a manufacturer’s name on it. I’m wondering if it’s a Cushman.

Before I got the new chuck, I was concerned about the hollowed-out backside. I had read complaints about this being a light-duty chuck. But now I can see that if it hadn’t been hollowed out, it would weigh seventy pounds. It probably weighs fifty as it is. It’s huge. Much bigger than the 3-jaw chuck. Eight inches, as contrasted with six.

The stuff from Enco arrived. Guess where my new aluminum oxide wheel was made. Israel. I love it.

The remote for the AC will be here soon. Once that arrives, I will be totally worthless. One remote for the AC, one for the stereo and TV and DVD player, and a VFD for the lathe. I’ll barely have to move. That is my life’s goal.

Eventually, I want to be like the baron, in Dune. I want to be carried around by an electronic hovercraft rig, with little anti-gravity things holding up my fat so it doesn’t drag on the floor and collect swarf. That’s for indoor locomotion. Outdoors, I’ll rely on my souped-up fat cart.

Tomorrow the new motor arrives and I can officially close and suture up the lathe. I can get rid of the rat’s nest of wires and put the missing panels back on. Then it will be very hard to come up with excuses for not making anything.

But I’ll bet I manage.

Am I spoiling myself like a hopeless degenerate, or is this what the Bible means when it says, “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart?”

I know what I prefer to believe!

It gets even worse. I finally decided to spring for health insurance, so I may start riding my motorcycles again. A big part of the reason I let them rot was that I kept putting off getting insurance, and I was afraid I would mangle myself and have to pay all the expenses. Now I can subject myself to all sorts of hideous physical risks with less trepidation.

I saved all sorts of money by being too cheap to insure myself, but at a certain age, you have to hand the dice off and get a policy before you crap out. Some diseases pretty much disqualify you from insurance, so you have to get hooked up before one of them hits you. Insurance companies hate people like me, because they need healthy young worrywarts to pay the cost of treating old insureds on their last legs. They need insureds who never take money out of the system. But if you can afford most medical problems, you don’t really have a lot of motivation to get insurance when you’re young.

I hope I stay ambulatory until the policy issues. That is the key to making my strategy pay off.

Fever

Mish Weiss has been doing okay since her second bone marrow transplant, but right now she has a fever of 105, and her friends are putting out an emergency prayer request.

Our Creditors Will Now Sell us Cars

Being a conservative is usually a great blessing, because we’re right about nearly everything. But it’s frustrating when we’re right about things the rest of the country did not see coming. Case in point: the Chinese are about to invade our automobile market. Who has been warning about this for ages? Me. Backward little Bible-clinging, meat-eating, non-recycling pistol-carrier that I am. I’m sure other conservatives have said the same thing. You can’t walk down the aisles in Home Depot every week and see row after row of inexpensive, quality Chinese-made tools and not realize Chinese cars are inevitable. You’d have to be remarkably stupid.

Drudgebart links to a story about it today. I figured the Chinese would attack directly and independently. But it’s even worse than that. GM is going to give the market to them! I thought future competition was what we had to worry about, but GM is capitulating before that has a chance to happen. They’re going to import Chinese cars!

The union is angry. Who cares? They were dying anyway. They had no chance whatsoever of remaining viable. Unions are parasitic, and one of the essential properties of a successful parasite is that it can’t kill the host while the host still serves a need. The UAW has never understood this. You can maintain a union like the one at UPS, because they don’t get five times what they’re worth. They permit UPS to make a profit, so UPS stays in business. You can’t maintain a union that causes a company to run at a deficit.

If a tick sucked a quart of blood a day, ticks would be extinct. Isn’t that obvious?

Autoworkers and workers in related industries are going to earn less money from now on, because of a troublesome little thing called supply and demand. They’ve managed to fight it successfully for over 50 years, but it always wins in the end. Ten years from now, you won’t see typical American autoworkers in nice houses with five vehicles. That was an unsustainable aberration.

Here’s a quotation:

“GM should not be taking taxpayers’ money simply to finance the outsourcing of jobs to other countries,” Alan Reuther, the union’s Washington lobbyist, wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers.

That’s true, I guess. On the other hand, the government shouldn’t be forcing taxpayers to invest in a company that union labor will eventually kill (or any company, for that matter). Okay, union labor isn’t the only problem. Let’s be fair and admit that GM also has problems because of bad management. That’s especially true now that Barack Obama is the CEO. It’s interesting, if you think about it. This is his first real job. GM is Barack Obama’s lemonade stand!

The story implies GM is SHOCKED that anyone would think they would move manufacturing to China, and they love the unions, and the percentage of cars sold here that will be made in China will be limited…blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard this kind of BS before. “Social Security numbers will only be used in the management of government benefits.” “The income tax will only be in place long enough to pay our war debts.” “None of the money from the state lottery will go to anything but education.”

“You’re the third man I’ve ever slept with.” “Don’t worry, I had a vasectomy.” “My breasts are real.” “I’ll limit myself to public campaign funds.” “My administration will be totally transparent.”

Some lies are so pathetic, on their faces, that no one should ever believe them unless somebody posts a bond.

It’s possible that cars will be made here. IF the wage drops to maybe fifteen bucks an hour. Otherwise, forget it.

Proponents of the pitiable, obnoxious, ludicrous, conceited America-as-master-race theory think the Chinese are hopelessly incompetent. I guess these folks have no idea which nationalities do best in engineering and science. Here’s a clue. When I applied for graduate study in physics, I was told I had an advantage because I was not Chinese. Universities were tired of cluttering their departments with Chinese students. Americans are not better, smarter, more talented, or more industrious. There is nothing special about us, and it is remarkable that Asians have done so poorly up to this point. Like the union thing, it’s an aberration. It’s unnatural. It is a situation that will eventually right itself.

American produced Henry Ford. It also produced the Ayn-Rand-vindicating degenerates who succeeded him. Now China has its own Henry Ford; a battery manufacturer who crushed Sony and who has now set his sights on the Big Three and Toyota. People like that are raised up by God. They don’t occur naturally, and they don’t lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, no matter what their egos tell them. We have had our share of giants, but now they’re popping up abroad, and our supply seems to be running dry. I’d trade twenty sets of Google kids for one Wang Chuan-Fu. In fact, I’d trade the actual Google kids for a good cigar.

We used to have Presidents who built and nurtured and encouraged. Now we have a spoiled, tyrannical boy who cannibalizes and reallocates and salvages and jettisons. A downsizer masquerading as a builder. Like an engineer on a battleship that has been torpedoed, he moves assets around in a vain effort to keep us (and himself) afloat.

Perry Stone thinks the US may have come to the end of its God-given run as the dominant nation in the world. The more time passes, the more I think he’s right. I think from now on, the country will wane, but individual Americans who align themselves with God’s will are going to be blessed.

Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear “USA! USA!” while they chant along and crush Budweiser cans against their foreheads. But everything we have came from God, not from ourselves. We worked and planned and planted, but human effort is pointless unless it is also blessed.

I think the only way for an American to rise above the developing chaos is to turn back to God. I think God pounded that into my thick skull over the last few years, and I hope I can help other people reach the same conclusion.

You Wimps

Everyone is whining about how I’m going to burn the house down with my new air conditioner, so I guess I’ll give in, to placate them. Pansies.

Actually, I realized that converting my 40-amp circuit to a 60-amp circuit would be fairly easy. I’d have to replace the Romex from the box to the garage, and I’d have to replace six feet of conduit, and I’d have to run a few more feet of conduit, and then I could finish the job with a 20-amp breaker and a socket. This would be very safe, and I wouldn’t have to drill any holes through the foot-thick, solid concrete wall. And there would be no issues with power. This circuit would have my 24-amp compressor and a 9-amp air conditioner on it, so even with starting loads taken into account, it would never trip. And I won’t have to use wire nuts, because the line will fork into two #8 branches. I can screw the #6 directly to the poles or whatever they’re called in the disconnect box. I hate wire nuts.

As Og pointed out, a 60-amp breaker for a 9-amp air conditioner may not be the best possible answer. So the additional breaker will be a nice addition. I should get one for my lathe while I’m at it. Can’t hurt.

I wonder what 30 feet of 6-3 Romex costs. Probably seven thousand dollars, since copper seems to be taking forever to respond to the huge drop in metal prices. I wonder what I’ll do with the 8-3 I’m taking out. I already have twenty feet or so that I don’t know what to do with.

I like big wire. I’d rather pay more now that watch the house burn later.

I got a fun Ebay package today. My solid carbide half-inch center-cutting four-flute cutter arrived. I fondled it for quite a while. It’s used, but I could not see any wear on it. I thought these things were supposed to be insanely expensive, but I think I spent fifteen bucks including shipping. I ought to be able to amass a good starter set for under a hundred bucks. And it’s carbide! American-made carbide! Cool!

How Much Headroom is Enough?

Let’s say you have a plasma cutter which goes as high as 40 amps. And you have a beefy 60-amp circuit. And you have an air conditioner that draws 9 amps.

Would you put a socket for the AC on the plasma circuit and see what happens?

How Jeff Foxworthy Would Run a Lathe

I have an idea for making a base for my quick change tool post. The existing base is too wide. It’s a rectangular piece of metal about 3/8″ thick, maybe 2 1/2″ long, and 2″ wide. There is a rabbet (don’t know what else to call it) about 3/16″ deep down each long side. There is a 5/8″ bolt hole in the center.

I can replace this with a round base; rectangular is better, but round can be made to work. I’m thinking I might make one out of aluminum, since I have 2″ bars on hand.

Here’s the plan.

First–this is the part that will make everyone shriek–I’ll make a 5/8″ hole using a wood spade bit held in the tailstock.

Wait! It will work! I’m sure of it. I have no 5/8″ metal bits, and I’ve used spade bits in aluminum. If I go slow and use lots of WD40, it will work.

Okay, then I turn the bar down until it’s the same width as the tool post slot. Then I put a groove in it about 3/16″ wide, to simulate the rabbety thing in the existing base. Then I part the result off. I end up with a giant washer with a step in the side.

Crap, it has to be threaded on the inside. I’ll never be able to do that. Even if I could thread, the existing bolt is metric.

I guess I better go look at the parts again.

Saying That Makes Any Experience Seem More Meaningful

I posted something about needing a tachometer for my lathe, and I also mentioned it on the Chaski forum, and I got a lot of responses. It looks like many people have had this same idea, so there are all sorts of products. Most of them (maybe all; I haven’t checked carefully) require you to put some kind of marking on a spinning part. An optical sensor observes it and gives you the RPM figure.

This should make life considerably easier. Right now, using the middle setting on my pulleys, I get 900 RPM at 60 Hz. That means 1350 RPM at 90 Hz and 450 RPM at 30 Hz. I can figure that out by myself. But I’d rather know the exact number so I can calculate SFM without so much grief.

There’s a guy who sells a tachometer that automatically turns RPM into SFM. I don’t know how it works. I assume you have to tell it the diameter of the work and so on.

I’ll try to make an intelligent choice. My lathe has a handle sort of thing on the back end of the spindle, and it turns, so it might be a good place to mount whatever the sensor looks at.

Yesterday I chucked a 2″ by 8″ piece of T6 aluminum in the lathe and fiddled with it. I faced and chamfered the end, and I made a little shoulder. The runout was horrendous. I didn’t make much of an effort to chuck it accurately. I just wanted to see how the lathe ran with a big piece of metal in it. Seems fine. I can tell I’m too retentive to be a fan of 3-jaw chucks. The idea of putting something in a chuck crooked and turning it round will never sit well with me.

One VFD problem: I got an “E7” display twice. That means “voltage overload.” Don’t ask me to explain it. I’m working on it. Something about the motor producing back voltage, I think. Maybe the weight of the aluminum and the chuck makes it harder for the lathe to brake, and somehow it’s giving me an error message.

The garage AC project is going well. It turned out I didn’t have to cut the hole myself, so I’ll just handle the wiring. I can’t even explain how great this is. In Miami, in any month between May 31 and October 31, a garage turns into a steam bath. Work is unbearable. In fact, just sitting around is unpleasant. Sweat runs off of you and gets on things you’re working on. With an air conditioner, life will be very, very sweet.

I can’t believe I found an 18000-BTU air conditioner that fits in a two-foot-wide hole and accepts a remote, for $127. That is a dream come true. I wonder if I can make my new universal remote handle the AC. I guess it should work. After that, all I’ll need will be a recliner.

Even if this AC craps out early, this model is so cheap, I could replace it and still end up paying about what an expensive unit would have cost. This baby usually sells for under 300. God bless the Chinese.

These trivial and relatively inexpensive things make me so happy. It’s almost sick. I’m so glad I don’t need a yacht and a Bentley to enjoy life. I’m glad I happened on pleasures that are productive as well as enjoyable. I could have ended up with an expensive golf habit! Can you imagine anything more worthless? Walking around hitting a ball with an ill-designed stick, perpetually failing to live up to your own expectations. It’s like a vision of Hades.

Here is what Winston Churchill supposedly said about golf: “Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” Playing golf is such a waste of time, it could reasonably be construed as a gesture of contempt for the value of your own existence.

Maybe my view is jaundiced because I was a golf orphan. At least when you fish, you bring home food.

On my sister’s suggestion, I got some oregano oil for my congestion. Can’t hurt. It’s supposed to do all sorts of good things for you. I just took my first dose, and it’s not unlike swilling Lestoil. I wonder if it’s good for gallstones. It has terpenes in it, I think. Gallstones hate terpenes. Which sound like they should be small tortoises.

Some day when the garage is totally subdued, I’ll post photos.

Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away

Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen.

Here are a couple new ones, from my life.

Last week, I got an email from a guy who sells machine tools. I ignored it, because I figured I was being spammed. Also, he had a Millrite listed for over two thousand dollars, which suggested his prices were not too good. I didn’t realize a regular reader of this blog knew this guy, and he had told him about me.

Later on, I got on Ebay, looking for a 4-jaw lathe chuck. I needed an L00 mount, and I needed an 8″ chuck. This is the usual size for a 12″ lathe, which is what I have. A seller had an unused (new old stock) Skinner chuck from a 13″ South Bend, and he also had a back plate. We negotiated, and I bought the parts. I got a good deal, and I didn’t have to buy Asian or used. Guess who the seller is? The guy who emailed me. Out of the hundreds or thousands of people on Ebay selling machine tool parts and tooling, I found him.

What does it mean? I don’t know. It must mean something. It’s not a small coincidence. Many, many people sell lathe chucks on Ebay.

Second story. Last week, I received two self-defense DVDs from Gunvideo.com. Looks like good stuff. But I didn’t order it! Some guy named Ray did. His name was on the invoice. I figured someone who meant well had taken the kind but somewhat creepy step of finding out my real name and where I lived, and that he had sent me the DVDs as a present. Either that, or it was a gay stalker.

I decided to email the people at Gunvideo. They said there was a screwup. I had ordered something from them a year ago, and this Ray person owned the company that produced it. They had it drop-shipped to me from his company. Then recently he ordered something from them, and somehow my address ended up in the ship-to box. They said they’re still trying to figure it out. But they told me to keep the DVDs.

I keep feeling like I’m supposed to have guns and tools. I can’t figure it out. I wonder what’s on those DVDs.

When you’re a Christian and you live by faith, your life becomes like the Bible. Almost everything in it has meaning. It makes it harder to be disappointed or rattled or angry. When something goes wrong, instead of getting mad, you think, “There must be a reason for this. I wonder what it is.” And you look forward to finding out, which usually happens.

This is often extremely irritating to non-Christians, even though there is nothing aggressive or inherently provocative about it. It should elicit no negative response whatsoever. Why should it anger you that another person takes misfortune well? Marcus Aurelius found the complacency of Christian martyrs annoying, and he increased their suffering because of it. Why is it so aggravating to non-believers? I would say, but that would aggravate them even more. Most Christians know; I don’t have to tell them.

Christianity is funny. It looks better from inside than outside. Even backslidden Christians who should remember how rewarding it is tend to forget, and they dread returning. I was there; I know.

“Who’s That Working on That Lathe? It Looks Like Al Jolson!”

I stuck the old motor in the lathe and rigged it up so it would run. Man, I can’t believe how much caked-on grease is in that thing. I finally grabbed a can of brake part cleaner, hosed down the grease, and removed it with paper towels. Don’t worry; this wasn’t on moving parts. It was on the cabinet and so on. Places where it ended up because it flew there thirty years ago.

It stinks, too. When you hit the grease with the brake part cleaner, you get a disgusting compound that smells like fish.

I am really going through the hand cleaner.

I got the drum switch wired up and connected to the logic inputs. Now I have to program the VFD so it knows the switch exists. The braking works great. I won’t need a resistor. It stops in a second or two. I haven’t tried it with a chuck on it, but it’s my understanding that this is a pretty small braking load for this VFD.

The wires are all over the place, and if the lathe is grounded, it’s only through the bolts holding the VFD on. It’s all held together by those screw-on cap things that join wires. I made sure none of the wires could get near the gears or the chuck. When the new motor arrives, I’ll fix it up properly.

I’m trying to figure out how to measure the RPMs at the chuck. There is a belt setting that provides about 900 RPM. I guess I can use that setting, and then the lathe will run at 900 RPM at 60 Hz, so the RPM will always be about 15 times the frequency. That isn’t too hard to calculate. I’ll bet if I check around, I can find some kind of add-on doodad that will count RPMs electronically.

I think I’ll go work on the programming.