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I guess I know even less about wiring than I thought.

I found a loose piece of Romex hanging down in my air handler closet. It was live. Tonight I traced it to the circuit panel and tested the voltage. I got 163 volts. I checked another breaker and got 327 volts.

Am I going crazy? I have heard of 110, 220, and 480. I have never heard of these odd new voltages. The weird thing is, it’s on the same panel as a bunch of 110 circuits.

More

Turns out I don’t know how to operate a Fluke meter. My meter does not autorange, so you have to have the correct range selected, or it tells you garbage. The actual voltages are 440 and 220.

Some doofus used #12 Romex to run a 220 circuit on a 20-amp breaker, and he left the ground wire dangling inside the panel. So you hook a three-prong receptacle up to this thing, and you think it’s grounded, and then you die, I guess.

Anyway, now I have a nice piece of Romex I can easily use to create a 220 socket in the garage. My question: is 220 with a 20-amp breaker and #12 wire useful for anything? I would think anything that runs on 220 would suck enough juice to pop that breaker.

My Amazon Adventures

I am taking a break from reading the book of Acts, whereby I hope to give myself strength to continue being saintly and superior. Not everyone can be as great a Christian as I am, but thank goodness, I have the humility to refrain from putting down those who fail.

I checked Amazon. So far, I have done nearly nothing to promote the cookbook; things are in the works, but very little has happened so far. Nonetheless, it keeps bobbing in the popularity rankings. Ordinarily, book sales work like this: you do some PR, and the book’s sales improve briefly. Then they sag pretty badly. So you do more PR. This time, the sales don’t appear to be closely related to the PR.

That seems like a good sign. Optimally, you want a book to sell by word of mouth, because no promotion can compare to an army of individuals hyping the book to friends and relatives. If that were to happen, I would expect the sales peaks to follow the arrival of the book in people’s hands. In other words, I would expect a bounce from initial PR, then a drop, and then another bounce as the people who bought books in the first bounce recommended the book to other people. And eventually, you expect the peaks to sort of merge into a gradual upward trend, as buying and shipping dates become more numerous and less rhythmic.

I hope that’s what’s starting to happen.

If Amazon’s site is correct, they’ve run out of copies twice. So someone must be buying.

I seriously believe this book has more appeal than the others. It kills me that I wasn’t able to publish it a year ago, because even then, I thought it was my best shot at success, and at establishing a series of books based on the same theme. When you publish a book, you are relying on other people’s money; the publisher has to make an investment in order to get the book onto shelves. So you have to rely on their marketing judgment, and you can’t blame them for going with projects that seem safe to them, based on the success of other books. You can either let them make choices for you, or you can start your own publishing company.

I almost lost the opportunity to publish the cookbook. My agent sold it, but we didn’t execute a contract, because we were fooling with other things. Then the offer disappeared, and I had to get him to sell it to them again. I was mortified. I had assumed that my agent and editor wouldn’t let anything fall through the cracks, but here is a fact of life: nobody will ever be as interested in looking after you as you are. People have their own problems to worry about, so worry about yours, and you’ll be okay.

This book was accepted almost as a favor to me. My editor liked it, but it didn’t thrill the marketing people the way…don’t laugh…the caveman book did. My advance was about as low as advances get. But I took it, because, unlike a lot of sharp operators masquerading as writers, I think more about royalties than advances. Now, in comparison to the other books, it appears to be a much easier product to sell. Life is funny.

I dread the idea of running an Internet forum, because it will be work, and I know from moderating comments that whatever I do will make people mad. But I think I’m going to set up a forum anyway, because it’s good business. If I do, it should be up and running this week. I’ll tell you right up front that only four of George Carlin’s ten deadly words will be permitted. If you can’t say it at 9 p.m. on CBS, don’t write it in the forum. And if you’re just generally obnoxious and a pain in the ass, your stuff will get deleted over and over.

Maybe I’ll con someone into helping me moderate.

I’ll need a new hosting account in order to have a forum, so Manly Grub will probably go offline for a day or two this week. Best to do the switch now, while the site is attracting so few readers.

If you cook my recipes and take photos, feel free to send them. I’ll put them in the site’s gallery. In fact, any impressive and original food photos will be welcome. No salad; let’s be clear about that from the get-go.

That’s all.

I Continue Taking Money Out of the Pockets of Fine Contractors

My love for contractors grows every day.

Yesterday I did an obvious repair to an air conditioner condensate drain line. Something that should have been done when it was installed. Today I got up and looked into the air handler closet, and I saw that things were drying up, and I decided to mop the floor with bleach, because it was mildewed.

I vacuumed it out and mopped it. Then I got a flashlight and looked around to see how things stood. And I heard a popping sound and saw a flash.

Guess what? The genius electrical contractors who have worked in that closet left a 220-volt wire hanging down with the end bare! It was touching the floor, which was wet with bleach, and it sparked.

God bless the brilliant contractors. They have outdone themselves this time. I don’t even know which fuse that line goes to. I’m going to have to trace it back and remove it.

This was an electrical Perfect Storm. The wire was bare. It was a 220 line, not 110. It was just the right length to allow the end to touch the floor. And it was in a room where the floor is often wet. I have to congratulate the guy who left it there. He is a marvelous example of his type.

How dare anyone come here and tell me I’m wrong to criticize the practices of the morons who have screwed up this house? How can anyone have the gall to come here and say I’m foolish to do my own work? The pinhead who left that wire exposed could have killed me, and he could have burned the damn house down. If this were not the Sabbath, I’d give a vivid description of what I’d like to do with him and that wire.

I guess I’m cheap and pigheaded for working on my own house, but at least I haven’t left anything behind that could electrocute someone. What if a family with kids bought this house, and one of the kids went in that closet and died? It’s a very real possibility. Forty amps and 220 volts? That could drop you like a bag of wet sand. If that wire landed on a kid and the breaker didn’t trip, his parents would probably learn about the problem by trying to trace the source of the smell of roasting meat.

The up side? The Romex is more than long enough to run through the garage wall. I think I may drill a hole and install a third 220 socket. It would actually be no harder than removing the Romex.

Oh, yeah. I’m the working man’s problem. Don’t blame their irresponsibility, greed, and incompetence. Those things are normal, and we should all tolerate them. I apologize once again for contributing to the downfall of western civilization by taking work away from the inept.

They Fish While I Fix Their Mistakes

I’m having more fun with tools. Today I saw that the air conditioning system had a problem. The air handler was dripping. Every so often, the drain tube fills up with bacterial goo, and you have to blow it out. Naturally, the imbeciles who installed it made no provision for this.

I dragged my butt to Home Depot and got an inline valve, two female fittings, a T, and a hose bibb. I put the hose bibb in the drain tube, using the T to splice it in. I left the spigot facing up, so it would be convenient for attaching a hose. I put two female fittings on the inline valve and stuck it between the hose bibb and the air handler. I bought a cheap hose and spliced a second female end on it.

I connected one end of the hose to the laundry sink, I connected the other to the hose bibb, I opened the bibb valve, and I turned on the water. Then I closed the inline valve, to force the water out through the drain tube. Problem solved. Why the monkeys who installed it couldn’t have done this, I could not tell you.

I still need to put an inline valve on the other side of the bibb, so I can force water back into the air handler, because that end gets clogged, too.

The final solution is going to be a sump pump that shoots this crap out to the location of my choice. I don’t know where to send it, though. I’d like to pump it onto the roof, since there’s access to it from that room. But that would be a little weird, and I’m not sure it would be great for the roof.

There’s a hot water pipe in the little room with the air handler. If I were any kind of man, I’d splice a hose bibb onto that and leave a short hose in place at all times.

I still have other stuff to do in there, to fix the stupid mistakes the monkeys left behind.

But homeowners who do their own repairs are jerks who hate the working man. Remember that.

Magical Drawers Required

I am considering changing hosting companies. It’s really hard to find objective reviews. The jerks who run the companies spam the web with bogus “review” sites that appear to be poorly disguised advertisements.

I checked into Bluehost. Sounded pretty good. Then I noted the location: Orem, Utah. I did a little Googling. Guess what? They police the content of the websites they host. Are they Mormons? They won’t say. But they will tell you to remove “vulgar” content from your website.

If I start a forum, I plan to keep it PG. No F word, no S word, no C word. And so on. So I could probably get past the vulgarity thing. But the Mormon church is a hoax, and I have said so on this blog. So I think there is no point in dealing with Bluehost. I would be asking for trouble.

I applaud Bluehost’s efforts to keep the web clean, but I think they’re in the wrong business.

Considering Opening my Own Zoo

I’m thinking I should put up a food forum at Manly Grub. I have considered running a forum in the past, but I always decided against it. Now I think it’s a good idea.

Give me your opinions. Would any of you be interested?

I may as well say in advance that the forum would be moderated. Comments would appear immediately, but I wouldn’t put up with obscenity or endless flame wars.

People are More Important Than Dirt

From a comment I posted on a news story:

Mother Earth can kiss my ass. The earth only has value because I can exploit it to make my life easier. Humans are important. The earth is not, and it has no rights. My toilets empty into the earth, and the earth should be grateful to receive and process my waste, because it’s helping a human being live a clean and healthy life. Open wide, Gaia. I got another little snack for you.

I guess I got a little cranky. I am just a tiny bit sick of people claiming the earth is a person. The purpose of the earth is to support humanity. Other than that, it might as well be a ball of dog crap as far as I’m concerned.

Get the Drawn Butter

The other day I kicked one of these things to make it get off a plant. And it just looked at me.

Clog Your Arteries Correctly

I put up an error page over at Manly Grub. There is at least one error in Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook, and someone suggested publishing corrections, so here you go.

Not much there, as of today. Just the cornbread error.

Put Some Gravy on That Tofu

I wrote the world’s unhealthiest cookbook. To compensate for the evil things I was eating, I started having vegetables, pita, hummus, and eggs for breakfast. Then today I was too lazy to boil eggs, so I substituted a leftover fried, breaded pork chop.

Am I deluding myself, or just being smart and frugal?

Same Basic Idea

Peg, AKA Mr. Mollo’s Mom, says her budgie Shelley is not doing well. It may be hard to believe, but those little eight-dollar birds that weigh an ounce are actually very smart, and people become attached to them.

So put Shelley on your prayer list. Look, do it. How long can it take to heal a bird that size?

Also, her friend’s pug has leukemia and is receiving chemo.

Further assignments will be released as it becomes necessary.

Orphan Gun?

There is no way, no how, that I would ever buy another pistol. Because that would just be wasteful and frivolous, and I think every one of you knows that I am not like that.

BUT

Do any of you know anything about the early Colt Special Combat models, with the carry sights? They don’t seem all that highly prized, but they should be sweet shooters. And what a hilarious carry piece. All that target crap and special Custom Shop assembly, but it has 3-dot sights so you can put it under a suit.

I am Big in Jerusalem

Poor little recovering Leah Friedman put an ad up for my book! Look.

There is probably nothing in there she can eat, so that was nice of her. Thanks, Leah.

Leah’s friend Mish Weiss also plugged the book! Thanks, Mish.

Makes me wish there were some kosher recipes in there.

Come the Revolution, These People Will be Spared

Can’t recall whether I mentioned Kenny from Gorners, so here is a link.

Chris Byrne graciously linked, and a reader emailed to ask if I knew of a place other than Amazon where the book could be had. I searched a zip code in his city (Phoenix), and I came up with 15 Barnes & Noble stores that stock it. You don’t have to order it online; you can just buy it. I like Amazon buys because they pump my Amazon rating, but do what’s best for you.

I think Jeffro linked, but I can’t find it. Whatever. For some reason, I could not find him on my blogroll, so I added him. Maybe he’s in there twice now.

Did I already mention Elisson? Could be.

Baldi gave me a free Blogad, after all the mean things I said about Pajamas Media. Do I feel guilty? Not really.

I don’t remember whether I thanked Helo for mentioning me at Drumwaster’s Rants, but here is a link.

Okay. THANKS.

Bet I forgot someone.