Early February

More like mid February, the time does fly. We spent last weekend in the White Mountains and did some modest snowshoeing and hiking. I actually needed my crampons to make the last 300 yards to the top of Black Cap Mountain ( more like a hill). The trip provided a much needed reminder of how impressive the White Mountains are, especially when the upper reaches are snow capped. We are planning a return trip in about three weeks.


Last Thursday we went to a concert of the Hartford Symphony and heard what I think was the best performance of the oft played Beethoven's Fifth I have ever heard, live or recorded. Tempi, phrasing ,volumes, etc. were well nigh perfect. The conductor was the relatively young and little known Alexander Mickelthwate. I'll look for his name in the future.


Been doing a bit of walking, snowshoeing around here, but not enough to lose an weight.  




I have fallen behind in my physics reading but will reform soon. I did help, I hope, one student now taking an electricity and magnetism course.

My computers have been dodgy lately. Two weeks ago the monitor on my desktop died. I called Samsung. They took a week to send me the shipping labels so I could return it for repair. On the other hand I sent it to Carlstadt,NJ on Friday evening and it came back repaired yesterday. That is remarkably fast service. In the meantime I relied on my old Mac laptop for email etc. While I was out, our upstairs cat decided to sleep on the keyboard and ended up hitting keys which accepted an upgrade of my old Firefox to a version that does not work on the G4 laptop. Thus for a couple of days I had to rely on my wife's Window infested laptop for communication, the horror of it still haunts me. Now I'll try to load Linux on my laptop and be done with Apple who no longer support their older products. [It seems that Steve Job was just as ruthless as Gates.]

Things have been a little slow on the home front, partly because I now suffer from trigger finger a condition where too much pressure on tendon sheaths on the fingers of my right hand make it difficult to hold and apply large forces to tools. I sketched out plans for a pair of night stands. The legs are to be round so I started practicing wood turning on a great old lathe I bought a few years ago but did not use. After a few minutes I noticed the motor was overheating, and when I shut it  down it would not restart. The obvious cause on not starting was a dead capacitor, but I am old enough to know that replacing the capacitor would only set things up for another failure. A little investigation showed the, centripetal switch, which takes the capacitor out of the winding circuit was not working. Keeping the capacitor in the circuit will overheat the motor and then burn out the capacitor. After a lot of lubrication and changing to weaker springs in the  switch and replacing the start capacitor it will new start and run coolly most, but not all the time. Why the switch needed attention at all is beyond me. It is very simple and nothing important seemed to different from what it must have looked like when new. Now its time to make the same repair on the motor of my shaper.

Last week also saw me replace the passenger side ball joint on Ingemar ( the red Volvo wagon). Ingemar passed the 300,000 mile mark on Friday and we are planning a party to celebrate soon.

I hope to give an update in less than 3 weeks next time.