[Previously – Part 1]
After changing the bathroom light from fluorescent to LED it was decided (by Mrs F) that it would be nice if I changed the pantry, the water room, and laundry room lights to LED.
Then it was suggested that the downstairs living room lights could use an upgrade as well.
“OK, OK, I’ll do that and then that will be everything downstairs.”
These were just a little tougher as the ceiling was higher and I’d have to reach the lights, hold onto the ladder and use two hands to work. Seems I was short one hand. After a lot of words were added to my already full vocabulary, the living room was done, every fixture had been upgraded. I couldn’t do the stairwell. I was trying to remember how I had installed that fixture thirty years earlier and recalled that I had used a ladder and some 2 x 10s or something. I wasn’t going to do that again.
“You know, it’s getting to be winter and getting dark earlier. I’d bet if you changed the lights over the cabinets and the fixtures over the sink and counter it would be a lot brighter in the kitchen. You already have the ladder and tools in the house.”
In the back of my mind I knew this was coming, and had already ordered more light tubes. The vocabulary was extended but with the learning curve flattening it was slightly easier. Finally, all the fixtures in the house I could upgrade were done.
Then I started thinking… the lights in the south garage never worked when it was cold, in other words, about six months of the year. I took a survey, I saw that even as there were six fixtures there, they were all two-tube models, which meant there was only one transformer and a lot fewer wires to contend with. It would be a lot easier than those I’d fought in the house. One problem though was it was going to be a little darker to work in the garage with the limited light.
Ah, then I remembered, I’d wired the two banks of lights on different circuits. I could switch one bank off to work on, leave the other bank on for lights. I did that and started to work. I took the tubes out of the first fixture and then worked on the cover, only two screws and after I took the last screw out, WHAM! The cover fell down to the floor. Hummm, I hadn’t thought about that but at least the cover was off. Next was the transformer, a smaller one than in the house, after cutting the wires, one Phillips screw and that was out.
I had a lot of excess wiring to contend with but I got it reassembled. Now to put the cover on. Let’s see, hold the cover up, put a little tiny screw in one end and tighten it. Wait, I’ve run out of hands. After a lot of trials, a lot of errors, I got one end of the cover on but it sagged on the other end, plus I had to get all that excess wiring under the cover first. I got the cover on but still had wiring hanging out. Take one end of the cover off, push all the wiring inside and start again. Finally, after dropping the screw, searching on the floor for ten minutes, just give up and find another screw that will fit.
OK, now to install the LED tubes. Done. The moment has arrived. Circuit breaker on, flip the light switch. Eureka! That’s enough for the day. It had taken me close to three hours to modify one fixture and there are five more to go. It’ll wait ’til tomorrow.
Repeat the process but this time I use Gorilla tape to tape the wiring inside the fixture. That worked well, now maybe a strip of tape on the middle of the cover would hold it in place while I put the teensy screws in. Hey, that made my life easier. Everything is back together and I’m ready to flip the switch. Here goes. WTF, no lights! Has to be a connection under the cover. Remove the cover screws but with the cover taped on, it doesn’t fall on the floor. Check the connections, oops, the incoming power has a loose connection. Tighten that back up, replace the cover using the Gorilla tape and try again. Ahh, this time it works, two down and it took about an hour and a half. I’m onto something with four to go. I’ll be back earlier tomorrow.
Back on the ladder about 10 AM. Everything goes easy by using the tape. Forty-five minutes later #3 is done and it’s close to lunchtime. At 2 PM I’m out again in the garage. Another 45 minutes and I make the test, all is well. The following day is another repeat and I’m finished.
Once I got the routine down the process was much simplified. I have lots more light and they work in the cold weather, no blinking and instant on. I’m a happy guy.
I take a look at the north garage. Oh man, 8 foot fixtures and a 9 ½ foot ceiling. I don’t really want to work off a ladder. I talk to my buddy, he has scaffolding I can borrow. I’ll wait ’til spring…
Nice! I’ve become quite the fix-it guy around here, but I’ll admit that I know zero about wiring. I haven’t put in the time to learn it yet; maybe someday.
I’m going to date myself. In junior high, 8th grade, we had to have a semester of electric stuff. Junior high was 5 semesters of different shops, the 6th semester one could take an advanced course. Mine was printing.
In any event, the electrical stuff help in Tech School as well in later life.
Indeed. In 7th grade shop class when we built miniature house mock-ups, I was told to do something with the wiring, didn’t do it right because I never paid attention, and when the teacher flipped our light switch on to test it, it killed the power to the whole school for a few minutes.
I’m going to date myself
<cheapshot>Who else would?</cheapshot>
I made it through Jr. High shop classes mostly because the teacher was a friend of my dad. They played in the same ping-pong league at a bar.
Not only am I mechanically declined, but in Jr. High I was way too much of a spaz to succeed in any shop project. Spend hours sanding? No Thanks!
I hate wiring on automotive.
Do t mind it at all on house stuff.
Bought a couple do it yourself books for reference and haven’t burned anything down yet.
Once I got the routine down the process was much simplified. I have lots more light and they work in the cold weather, no blinking and instant on. I’m a happy guy.
Excellent!
So like a month back I talked about how one of the hacks at Reason went into to the mat to defend Somalis claiming that it was just a few bad eggs. The numbers he used have been proven to be bullshit as the amount of suspected fraud has ballooned.
Well, fear not! Those bastions of free minds and free markets are back to once again tell you that the problem isn’t Somalis who took advantage of the system, but the system itself and that it’s wrong to try and score partisan points off this and racist to focus on the perpetrators in anyway.
Funny that they didn’t do the math on ~$9-10 billion in fraud going to a population of anywhere from 75-100k people in one state (with more fraud suspected in other states where they’ve barely even looked yet). It was like 1/20 Somalis who actively had to participate in the fraud to make it work at that scale (the article didn’t control for things like how many Somali’s are actually adults, which is only like half the population) that they admitted were involved at that point. They also used the highest possible population of Somalis rather than the lower end estimates. So you multiple the expected fraud by 3-4 times and even by the generous and stupid math they used and suddenly they aren’t interested in showing those numbers.
And today’s culprit or happy stooge was predictably Eric Boehm.
To be honest the early comments are pretty sharp.
Great catch.
Its why Glibs was born.
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2006076479252340757
It’s really hard to watch this video. The irrational stupidity put forth by this Somali attacking Shirley. The appeals to the batshit insane rhetoric of the left and attempts to claim victimhood status and the final demands that he leave “our neighborhood.”
Doesn’t really deny that there are 2-3k fraudulent daycare providers in a community of 80k (hey, that’s 20k less than Reason’s estimates!). Just tries to pretend as if that’s a ridiculously high number for a community of just 80k.
I’ll circle back to another store. The woman in Wisconsin working at Cinnabon who was accosted by some Somalis who antagonized her over a disagreement over the amount of caramel on their order and knew enough about American culture to know that they could weaponize accusations of racism to ruin her life. Sort of like how cries of racism have kept people from investigating the fraud the Somalis were committing. All enabled by the Dem-prog establishment which actively profits from this shit in terms of dollars and votes.
Brochettaward:
The Somalis have learned how to play the system like a virtuoso. They know all the right buzzwords to get what they want and to avoid any criticisms. Racism, Islamophobia.
I’d love to see someone smart do an investigation into how many Somali led/owned NGO’s there are in Minnesoda and how much govt $$$ they have received. For years, I have laughed at the number of Somali NGO’s that were always being quoted in any story about our new vibrant neighbors. It seems like each Somali had their own NGO. I’m sure if some DOGE-like investigator dug into it, they’d find a ton of money that was shoveled to these NGO’s.
The other investigation I’d like to see is from way back. In the ’90s, there was a ruling that no Somali could be deported because there was no functioning govt in Somali that the deportees could be given to. So there was a period of time where there was a lot of Somali theft/burglaries/etc. They knew that as long as they were non-violent, nothing really would happen. It would be interesting to see how many of the Somalis who got probation back then were actually deported when Somalia finally got a “govt”. Or how many became citizens even with a criminal background.
Palmer was right.
and that it’s wrong to try and score partisan points off this and racist to focus on the perpetrators in anyway.
JHTFC. Deport the Reasonistas. To Antarctica. They can blather at the penguins.
Their Jacket will keep them plenty warm.
They are nothing if not predictable.
I just hopped over there. Read part of some prove on “Christian nationalism.”
The founders should hav scared the shit out of that author.
I admit it. I went and looked at it too. I’m so thankful for Glibs now. That place has really gotten bad.
My favorite argument is that “this has been covered for months, years even!”. Yeah, covered by citizen journos and completely ignored by the MSM for all that time.
What I’ve yet to understand is why Reason and Cato planted their anti-Trump flag firmly on the issue of immigration. I’m willing to accept that many of them are sincere in their support of immigration but I don’t understand why that was THE issue. Certainly they’ve branched out and many of them have demonstrated their TDS (for example, KMW’s bizzare editorial in the December mag that NOW centralizing power in the White House was the central issue).
But going back to 2016, it was immigration. And I still don’t know why (and spare me the cocktail party idea),
I just assumed they like the cheaper labor.
I responded to this below and part of the answer was somewhat “cocktail parties.” But there was more to it than that. Nothing earth shattering in my explanation, though I do think what I’ve noticed is…
Libertarianism has become an ugly word on the right these days. Younger conservatives mock libertarians where there used to be some level of respect there. The Reasonites are lolbertarians or lolcows to the growing populist right.
You know, people seriously ask young men why they don’t want to get married while young women pretend that it’s their independence and choice to play what’s left of the field (in reality getting played by the same smaller group of men).
I’ve seen lots of marriages. Yea, I’ve seen some shitty husbands, but I’ve seen a lot more wives who made their husband’s lives hell.
I’m sure Fourscore loves his wife or at least has done the math and knows its cheaper to keep her especially at this point, but that was just my takeaway from all this.
I don’t know. A good wife can be a big help even is she is driving you nuts.
Mrs. Holiness is a spaz and wants to get things done as soon as she thinks of it. I’m a procrastinator. We tend to average each other out.
On the surface she drives me crazy with her “nagging” (not really, she’s just reminding me of wild promises I made to do some task). At a deeper level though, I know she is doing good because I’d never start these tasks if she wasn’t on my case.
I can’t speak for her, but I’m sure that my procrastination has taught her the joys of patience.
In Reason’s case, the Koch foundations have been a major source of funding for decades now and they are rabidly pro-open borders. It may be as simple as it keeps the lights on for them and for the individual twits doing the writing themselves, it may be the clearest way they can signal that hey, we aren’t Trumpian MAGA-ists guys! I admit that latter position is pretty close to the cocktail party thing, but I believe that criticism exists for a reason.
It’s an organization that mainly operates out of LA and Washington DC. These people fly in progressive social circles. They write to appeal to the sensibilities of those around them as well as their donors. They write to be influential with the right sort of people. So it’s not just cocktail parties, but the sorts of people a think-tank actually cares about persuading. Politicians, lobbiests, aids, business “leaders”/corporations.
Christ, they got nearly a million from the Gates foundation. It’s not just the Koch’s, but they are the most notable example of rabidly pro-open border proponents who fund them.
It’s cute when they do the whole schtick asking for donations and somehow even when they’re just getting trashed by seemingly all of the readers who choose to be vocal on the subject they still claim to hit their goals. It’s not coming from you and me.
I think the whole immigration argument was best summed up from what happened with Bernie. He correctly pointed out that the open borders shit was put forward by wealthy corporations and the wealthy who wanted worker bees (who were lower paid and more complaint in general). He flipped because the proggies he needed to support him to fund his lifestyle and nominally his campaign had been co-opted into supporting it through propaganda that pushed anti-immigrant sentiment as inherently racist (in reality, it was about white replacement or “demographic destiny” for the left – import more brown people and they’d never lose another election).
The libertarian thinktank crowd is largely funded and writing to appeal to those interests Bernie talked about. They, too, like to paint all anti-immigration sentiment as inherently racist.
The Republicans were dragged kicking and screaming by their base into the current immigration policy we currently have. Trump was the tool to pull the wagon.
Last time I was at TOS I noticed they closed the comments section to non subscribers.
They know what’s being said and want to limit it.
Probably the closest they’ve gotten to relevance was when Robby questioned the Rolling Stone rape story openly.
He only did that after being berated by the idiot peanut gallery.
They most definitely pay attention to the comments and they’re very bitter about the backlash they receive under nearly every article. I mean, how could you not be? But at the end of the day, those commenters don’t pay the bills, right?
They’re cut off from the larger conservative movement with MAGA. They are losing the already small segment of young men that would have become libertarian in the past to more populist rightwing belief systems for a lack of better term. I mention Groypers below.
They’re stuck trying to keep their paymasters happy and being the dancing monkeys for the progs at this point. They probably tell themselves they have to make more inroads with the left with the right turning their backs on libertarianism in general, but it’s really about the idea of what “cocktail party” criticisms represent (their social circles) and who pays them to write shit in the first place.
Just like that fuck stain Poole in love with higher
feestaxes and an ever increasing surveillance state to enable his transportation “innovations” wank-a-thon.If I ever get to the lights in my shop I’m going to buy a scissor lift and sell it when I’m done with the project.
From the ded thred:
Losing? They’d already lost their minds. Deportations sent them even further off the rails.
I think the midterms will go as follows….
The only places that will see any sort of blue wave will be the usual bastions of stupidity. The problem is that they’re also bound to do what they’ve already done in places like NY and Seattle, and vote as if they simply didn’t prog hard enough by electing open socialists.
Still way too early to know what will happen in November of next year.
The Minnesoda Fraud stuff will have completely disappeared. I don’t even think it will be a factor in any of the Minnesoda races. Everyone will have grown tired of it.
The only way it stays relevant is if some DFL-er decides to primary Walz for the gubernatorial nomination. Any GOP-er who tries to bring it up will be completely ignored. Walz will run against Trump (and it will probably work).
I hope/pray/ believe this is an a bridge too far for Tampon Tim. Might be wrong. But he HAD TO KNOW about it. And he and his attack dog, Brother Keith Ellison (attorney general of Minnesoda) didn’t do shit. Brother Keith is more interested in the price of eggs in
ChinaMinnesoda (https://www.minnpost.com/elections/2022/11/issue-scramble-why-ellison-schultz-are-talking-eggs-in-attorney-generals-race/) or Menards 11% discount (https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1pp9gxq/menards_iconic_11_rebate_program_reined_in_by/). You know the important things/never mind the fraud
We’ll just need to make due with fantasies about Scandinavian vigilantes meting out justice to those in power at the time.
*braids Scandinavian beard*
*sharpens Scandahouvian axe*-
Brother Keith could show up at my door and I would still call him a liar. He is a top tier piece of shit.
pistoffnick:
Of course they knew. The reality is that they allowed the Somalis to commit large scale welfare fraud in return for the Somalis committing large scale voter fraud for the DFL.
Both Walz and Ellison wouldn’t have won the last cycle if you just took out Minneapolis. The margin of victory in just Mpls put both of them over the top. I don’t mean the 7 county metro area, I am talking about just the city of Mpls (no suburbs).
As long as they control this bloc of votes (and chicanery that goes along with it) they can win any statewide vote.
And only $0.42 of each dollar stolen is from local voters. The rest is from the Feds. It is like a light rail line! Only not as wasteful?
Even Carl Benjamin is talking about Minnesota Somalis.
Stopped over at TOS for the first time in years to read that Eric Boehm’s take.
Reason has fallen very low.
We went from libertarianism having something of a resurgence that peaked in 2016 to becoming a laughing stock on the right because of people like the cunts at Reason.
Some people on here have been skeptical when I talk about Fuentes and his following, but I’m willing to bet money that there are far more Groypers out there than people who buy whatever the fuck it is Reason is selling as libertarianism.
Still, there are some folks here, and on TOS, that maintain Reason is powerful enough to have caused Biden to win because a couple of their writers “strategically and reluctantly” said they would vote for Biden. In reality, Reason and the Libertarian Party are too weak to have any influence on political outcomes in any meaningful way.
I think at best think tanks like Reason and to a larger extent Cato can influence policy along the edges and primarily only through the GOP. But that’s only possible as far as they are able to think rationally and appeal to larger sentiment on those issues.
I’ll go back to the above question as to why Reason hung their banner on open borders and I’d reiterate more succinctly it’s because it’s what their paymasters cared most about with regards to Trump and the fact that the MAGA movement as a whole completely isolated them from the larger conservative movement. They lost their influence and became a laughing stock on the right. It’s no longer cool for autistic teenage boys to claim they’re libertarian as a form of semi-rebellion against the larger beliefs of their peers. The next generation of would-be libertarians are becoming things like Groypers.
One of the things I find irritating, is that Reason and Cato can still make excellent points. The mag had good pieces, a lot of the Jacket’s interviews are interesting, Cato stuff on government spending is good, the Soho Forums are often provocative.
BUT, they can’t help themselves with Trump. As someone noted here in the last week or so, progressive blunders are subject to “analysis”; Trump is the anti-Christ
Immigration was always the issue where I felt they were most at odds with human nature and therefore taking ridiculous positions.
I think it needs to be pointed out that Fourscore isn’t complaining all that much. After all this project is better than his beekeeping/honey project.
* Fourscore, I did notice that you didn’t finish all the tasks yet. I’m going to take note so I don’t get roped into anything next spring when I visit.
lol Nope nope nope
Rhywun:
That is the easy part of the process. The work I do at the Honey Harvest is way more demanding.
Hey, that’s a good idea. You need your own hive, kind of a neighborhood science project. You’ll be the talk of neighborhood, convince the doubters that you are saving the planet with your own pollinators.
Secret to Fourscore’s success?
Inferior genes?
Yesterday I bought cocktail shrimp to eat for New Years eve. I forgot to put them in the fridge so when I got home from work just now decided to play it safe and threw them in the trash. Not a good sign for the new year I feel.
Bitching some more about Somalis. Trump has cut stopped all “child care” payments to Minnesota. Just reading the comments it’s a bunch of people claiming it’s over a bogus internet story. One guy was like not one person has been arrested let alone convicted. These people call the MAGA-ites indoctrinated and ill-informed.
But the part that’s most interesting to me is that you have all these attempts to discredit Nick Shirley’s video when the only thing that is required…literally the only thing…is some proof that children actually attend the “daycares” he visited. CNN or any of these other outlets could go down to one of them themselves and see what’s happening. You’d think the people running them would welcome the “legit” news media to show the truth.
But days later no one has done this very simple, very basic thing to debunk Shirley’s video.
They’re expecting accusations of “Republicans Pounce!” to do their work for them and they’re probably right.