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Zeke’s Market Blend (second bag)
This is my second bag of these. I previously bought them last October, and I settled on kind of a convoluted V60 method where I used hotter water to bloom the grounds and then diluted the water to cool it before brewing. I didn’t want to go to that much trouble, so this time, I…
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Farewell Brood X
I’m trying to remember to write down my observances of this year’s Brood X cicada emergence, so that I have some data points to refer back to when the next wave shows up in another 17 years. I don’t have a single photo or note from 2004, which is somewhat unfortunate, but my priorities were…
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Top 10 Geocache Finds, 2018 Edition
Once again, I had to make some tough eliminations to trim this list down to just 10. I’ll list the “honorable mentions” at the end of this post. Without further ado, in no particular order: Hyndman’s Mail Path Cache (GCNXM9) A classic traditional hide on a mountaintop outside Hyndman, PA, which is due north of…
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Greetings Earthlings
I took a look at my long-neglected blog this afternoon, and realized that it has been about 2.5 years since I posted anything here. That’s right around the time I picked up geocaching as a hobby, and ever since then, I’ve been using my geocaching logs to get my writing fix. Still, it sometimes feels…
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Fenders on a Road Bike, Part 2
This is part 2 of my story about how I put fenders on my road bike. Read about my motivation for doing this in the first installment. There are a couple types of fenders made for road bikes. “Full” fenders cover the back wheel all the way down to the bottom bracket, and the…
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Wiring: Plan B
As is often the case with these things, I hit a snag trying to fish wire from the attic to the basement for my bedroom rewiring project. I encountered some horizontal blocking in the stud cavity which prevented me from running the wire all the way through. That basically left me with three choices: Press…
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Drilling top plates
I drilled through another top plate yesterday. Every time I drill through framing, there’s always this nagging worry that I’m drilling through the last bit of wood that’s keeping the house standing, and this hole is going to be the one that makes the whole house come crashing down into a big pile of rubble.…
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Michael’s room finished (except for carpet)
Finally put a wrap on painting Michael’s room last night. Based on prior blog entries, this project droned on for almost a year. Kind of par for the course for projects these days, it seems. The room has actually been habitable for a month now (Michael slept there for the first time on 9/22… a…
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Master bedroom wiring – know what I need
Replaced the outlet at the foot of Andrew’s bed this morning, and it confirms the wiring layout: Master bedroom ceiling fixture Master bedroom switch box Andrew’s room, outlet at foot of bed Master bedroom, outlet behind bed Back basement, ceiling fixture This is everything I need to know to come up with a plan…
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Demystifying master bedroom fan wiring
This evening I did a little preliminary detective work to try to figure out the ceiling fan wiring in the master bedroom, in preparation for redoing it. The goal is to reroute the hot and neutral wiring around the switch box, leaving only a single 14/3 switch loop going to the box. That way the…