my dad lectures me on swamp coolers

Today I was talking to my parents and my dad said he had checked out my blog yesterday regarding my fixed swamp cooler. He said he had a suggestion on why my swamp cooler was acting up. Since he's a world famous engineer I was all ears:

Me: So what do you think is the main problem?
Dad: Well, you called your swamp cooler an asshole.

That was unexpected.

Dad: Your swamp cooler is alone, up on the roof, in all the bad weather, and not only do you call it names but you also write blog posts making fun of it. Is that very nice?
Me: Um, no. But, uh, I lubricated the bearings.
Dad: Well, that's better than an apology.

This post may only be funny to people who know my dad. Apologies.

the intern, redux

In 2008, in the middle of dealing with an annoying dirt bag climber who was living in my house for free and a visit from my dad I got an email from my friend Gadget saying he offered my house to a woman in his church who was looking for a place for her son to stay. The son, Jonathan, had gotten a job as an intern with CNN to cover the democratic national convention.

So I did the best I could reorganizing my two bedroom house to support 3 guests. And I was a little worried when Jonathan showed up. He's super religious and I don't usually get along with those types of people. But in no time we were all on the back porch drinking, smoking, and eating buffalo burgers. I admit that during the time he stayed here I may have loosened his rule set a little.

I lent him my bike which he rode to the convention every day. At the end, to thank me, he took all the left over batteries for the cameras and shit and gave them to me. And his mom sent me a very generous gift certificate for REI.

As is typical, people show up in my life suddenly, disappear, and I figure I'll never hear from them again. And then I hear from them again...

This morning Jonathan called me. He and his wife are here in Denver celebrating their 2 year wedding anniversary (side note: I'm impressed by anyone who manages to keep a relationship going for that long). We texted back and forth on places to go and places to eat. I just got a text from him that they love the restaurant I suggested for their romantic anniversary dinner. Which is good because I'd never been there before (picture me in a "romantic" restaurant - even I can't do that and I'm fucking creative).

He said he wanted to come here for his anniversary because he had so much fun when he was here for the convention (besides drinking and talking late into the night we also had a farting contest and Jonathan accidentally knocked my work desk down a flight of stairs and one night all the interns, 21 year old guys, not sure how many of them there were, showed up at my house for dinner and didn't leave until 2 in the morning).

I figure some day Jonathan will be famous (he worked for Anderson Cooper at the DNC) and may be a potential source of free batteries for the rest of my life. Glad he made the trip...

I forget the legend of the croco-diamond

In February I started writing a prologue to a children's book I wrote called the colossal cringle crisp caper. I did that because I was advised by Jeff in my writer's group (of which I'm no longer a member) to do so.

I came up with an idea for a short croco-diamond story that would be the legend of why they are lucky (if the croco-diamond isn't lucky, so some "logical" people say, no one would put up with his shit...though I know a lot of people that put up with shit from other people so whatever). I then researched it to make sure the idea behind the legend I was writing would be scientifically accurate. I started writing the chapter and then, literally the next day, got side tracked.

Anyway, I just sat down minutes ago to finish writing the prologue and I can't fucking remember what my idea was. For fuck's sake. Maybe I should just start over...and yes, I did complete this book more than a year ago, and wrote a subsequent story about the croco-diamond for a friend's daughter, and still haven't done a fucking thing about getting it published. I did enter it into a contest but judging from the winners it was the wrong contest (a book about the "huggy momster" won - I almost fucking puked typing that).

Oh well. I'll think of something:

The Legend of the Croco-diamond

From The Legends of all the Creatures in all of The Worlds, by Baron Joseph von Noseworth-Socks and Dr. Mimsy A. Crumbles:

In the time of the time in question, which is much earlier than time is now, there existed a King Muckles-string who oversaw the kingdom of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea (though in truth it was just close to the sea). And the King had a terrible problem.

There was a building central to the town where all the raincoats, back up raincoats, raincoats for future use, and previous raincoats which could no longer be worn were stored. It rains quite frequently in New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea. The building was called The Raincoat Keeper and, as it stored all the raincoats of all the times, it was stuffed full of raincoats. The building was a rather old, and, truth be told, wobbly.

In any case, one day the King had arranged a parade for all of the heavy things in the town. He was trying to promote fitness. So the townsfolk dutifully gathered up all of the heavy things and loaded them onto carts for the parade. There was a statue of a camelsaurus (the King was quite fond of dinosaurs) and Mr. Elmsberry’s fish tank which contained, among other rare species, a leafy dragon eel. Also in the parade was a giant sack of pennies that the elder Mrs. Fungalstinn had spent her life collecting, a model of a volcano used at birthday parties, a giant egg whisk made of solid metal that commemorated the mention of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea in book nine of the poggly woggly adventure series, the local cat that ate all of the rats, and finally the De Confetti family’s collection of bricks.

The Parade of Heavy Things was meant to start at the edge of town, circle The Raincoat Keeper, and then proceed to the other edge of town. But as the Parade of Heavy Things began circling The Raincoat Keeper a terrible thing happened.

The building shuddered, sighed, and then all of the walls and the roof collapsed into a pile of dust as if the Raincoat Keeper had never existed. Raincoats began to blow around New Dunsley Clackyshire. People were seen walking down the street with red children’s raincoats stuck in their hair, yellow crossing guard’s raincoats plastered to briefcases, and blue fishermen’s raincoats caught on the bottom of shoes.

As New Dunsley Clackyshire is in a valley, the raincoats blew in a circle around the town. Pretty soon everything was covered with raincoats – the sidewalks, the houses, even the camelsaurus. If one saw it one would imagine it was just a giant coat rack and not an esteemed dinosaur. The people of the village picked up the rain coats but had no where to put them and, in any case, more blew in to take the place of the ones people picked up.

Around this time a Croco-diamond came to the village. He seemed out of breath as he arrived. One might have thought he had been running though Croco-diamonds aren’t normally known to hurry. He was dragging behind him what appeared to be a large corked bottle. Something grey and cloudlike was swirling around inside it.

“Greetings good people of the town of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea! What a fine town you seem to have! I am amused by your decorations. Perhaps it is Raincoat Day? I do love holidays. Especially ones that last a week. Why just the other day I was telling King Ramsley of North Cuffsley…”

Just then a breeze picked up and blew a pink polka dot raincoat onto the Croco-diamond’s head.

“Well, I see I have now joined in your raincoat celebration. I thank you, the good people of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the…”

More raincoats landed on the Croco-diamond, sticking to the jewels on his spine and tangling around his finely manicured nails.

it worked!

Tightened this screw and the pulley stabilized. What's weird is it was completely loose. Not sure how it loosened itself up. Maybe I should put some loctite on it...

I was told by someone who knows a fuck lot about machines and shit not to touch this screw for any reason. Well, I did. And used a tree branch under the motor as leverage (it's hard to adjust the tension on the belt alone because you have to hold the motor with one arm and bend around and turn the screw with the other).

Every once in a while I can hear a chirp from the belt but otherwise it's working. Think the belt may be slightly damaged from when the wheel loosened up. Fuck it. I'll replace it in the fall. In the mean time if anyone wants to come over to my house and turn the swamp cooler on and off for me so I don't have to keep climbing up and down from the roof feel free. I'd like to make a few more tweaks to the belt tension.

youtube swamp cooler porn

This morning in a VERY boring meeting I think I figured out how to fix my swamp cooler by watching some youtube vids on swamp coolers.

I think what happened is over the years the upper pulley was adjusted because the belt was stretching out over time and there was too much tension on the belt. So I fixed that. But I realized fixing that that the lower pulley was sliding randomly around. So I did some further research and found something about a set screw. I think I've found the set screw.

Hoping that's a set screw...

So after this boring meeting is over I'm going to go back up on the roof and see if I can somehow tighten that screw and get my swamp cooler working again. If not no one can come out until 11 July. Thankfully it hasn't been very hot but that could change at any minute. And I'm having guests...