A little cool this morning...
Woke up this AM, and it's 4°F (-15.5 °C) and my water pipe survived the night! Inside temp was 67.8°F, which is right about where I have the heat kick in, and looking at my home automation logs, it looks like it had just dropped below that threshold right before I got up. It looks like it may just be maintaining that temperature, though, and not bringing up to my cutoff temp, so it looks like I should probably add a second small heater to the space for the bitter nights.
What I was not expecting was that when I tried to take the dog out, the bottom edge of the door would be frozen shut. A swift kick to the bottom of the door resolved that easy enough. Turns out a piece of plastic trim under the door had frozen to it, so I'll either need to remove or fix that when it warms back up. Also, apparently there was ice in the latching mechanism, because the door latch got stuck to where it doesn't hold the door closed. Luckily, the locking mechanism is somewhat separate on RV doors, so I can use it to hold the door shut and it should be back to normal once it warms up.
There's a tiny bit of frost on the inside of the door frame along the inside edges of the door, so cold it definitely getting in through there. I may need to put the refectx back up if we're going to get a longer cold snap, but it should be warming up to closer to freezing tomorrow night, and into the 50s on Thursday, so I am not too concerned about it for this round. I'll likely hang a heavy blanket over the door for the next two days to handle that, because the reflectix needs taped to the door, at least to get it in place. It goes on in three pieces, and the tape holds it in place until I can get the outer door and screen door latched back together. Then it stays up from being in between the two parts of the door.
Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage
Just watching this week's episode of Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage and noticed the phone number of McAllister Auto and Tire on a bench. Because of ARGs, whenever there is a phone number on screen which doesn't have 555 as the exchange, I dial it. It was a perfect throwback to an earlier episode from just after Georgie and Ruben bought the shop and recorded a new greeting on their answering machine. FWIW, the on-screen number is 555-761-7652, but it's hard to say how long it'll be active. ;)
Tags: tv, georgie-and-mandys-first-marriage
RV Life
It is now winter camping season at the campground, and having an RV here means that the RV needs to remain occupied. So, nothing but day trips to the house to get it cleaned out. In the spring, I don't plan on renewing my lease unless the winter is just too rough. But I have Refectix to put in my windows if it drops too cold for a long time. I have electric everything so that I don't have to worry about running out of propane. I've really been preparing it for dealing with the cold.
Tags: rv
Compaq Portable Tube Swap
After watching a video of someone doing the same to their IBM portabe, I decided to swap the tube in my Compaq Portable, which had a green CRT, to a white one from a Mac Plus. You have to swap the yoke because the wiring is different, but the pinout for the neck board is the same, so it went pretty well and only required minor adjustments when I was done. A white screen on this machine is absolutely beautiful.
Tags: retro-computing, compaq, crt
Twofer
Last night I managed to get two rewatches in to celebrate my upcoming vacation week.
I started off with Hi Fidelity. That one is a bit of a slow burn before it starts getting good. Does kinda make me with I could just open a record store though. ;)
And the second rewatch was Fire Birds, which is basically Top Gun in Apache attack helicopters with quite possibly even more star power in the cast. It was quite a bit better than I remembered it being and I enjoyed it very much.
Tags: movies, fire-birds, hi-fidelity
Grosse Pointe Blank
Confession time: I never saw Grosse Pointe Blank when it first came out. I didn't see it until many years later. This rewatch was only the second time I've seen the movie. And what a quirky little movie it is. It's a romcom. It's a thriller. It's an action-adventure. It's a crime drama. It's a bit of all those things, but unlike many films which fail to be more than one or two things, this one works.
Somewhat ironically, had I watched it when it first made it to premium cable, it probably would have been somewhere around the time of my own 10 year reunion.
Tags: movies, comedy, grosse-pointe-blank
Dream a Little Dream
Yet another movie rewatch? Well, it's what I've been doing a lot lately, so sure. Why not? ;)
This time, it was Dream a Little Dream. I remember seeing this one a few times shortly after it came out, and while I enjoyed it I found it a bit on the weird side. It wasn't the type of movie I particularly liked back then, but something drew me to it.
This is the first time I've rewatched it in nearly 40 years, and it hits a lot differently when you're older instead of recently graduated from high school. I actually like it even more now that I can relate to Coleman as much as I related to Bobby back when it came out.
If you didn't like it when you were young, watch it again with an open mind. You may find you like it now.
Tags: movies, rewatch, dream-a-little-dream
Battlestar Galactica
Just finished my first rewatch of the original Battlestar Galactica series from 1978 for the first time in forever. Galactica 1980 was horrible aside from "The Return of Starbuck," so I skipped that series and just stuck to the single season of the original.
I'll address the uneven acting first to get it out of the way. If it seems like the actors were reading their lines for the very first time in some of the episodes, it's because they were. The scripts were sometimes completed just before shooting, so the actors had to read them for the first time off of cue cards while shooting the scene. As a kid, I never caught on to this. As an adult, it's glaringly obvious.
Some of the episodes were a bit silly, also for the aforementioned reason. This was meant to be a three-episode miniseries but suddenly became a weekly series, without an adequate budget or time to prepare the scripts. The episode which weren't just plain silly were allegories, many of them for the Mormon church. The "Ships of Light" episode were always my least favorite, even as a kid. The "Eastern Alliance" was a bit on-the-nose with fairly recent Earth history, too. I started laughing during my rewatch when one of the Easter Alliance members spoke with a poorly-faked German accent.
I realize after this most recent re-watch that my fondness for the series is mostly nostalgia, because it reminds me of my childhood. I'll always have a fondness for it, even though it was never great to begin with.
Tags: tv, rewatch, battlestar-galactica, nostalgia
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