Better use

I decided last night to put my time to more productive use.  Instead of sitting down and playing WoW for a couple hours after tending to the pets I decided to steam clean the carpet.  I figured it would be one less thing for me to do on a weekend.  I really need to vacuum conventionally once every week or two.  It seems that letting the Roomba’s exclusively sweep the carpet results in a lot of dirt remaining deep inside it.  The Roombas do a good job of pulling hair and dust off the carpet but they don’t have the suction power of an upright.  As a result when I run the steam cleaner I see incredibly cruddy water getting dumped down the sink.  The steam cleaner also pulls out tons of dog hair, even more than the upright vacuum does. Tonight I plan to continue using my time more wisely by performing the water equipment maintenance.

I decided to start doing some chores I normally regulate to the weekend during the week just to be more efficient.  It feels like there are lots of projects that could use my attention right now, so knocking out some of the smaller ones during the week will help relax me a bit mentally.  Today hopefully another long term problem will be addressed.  I finally got around to scheduling Pinch a Penny to come out to fix the constant spritzing leak at the pool heater connections.  The fitting has been cracked for months if not a year and has been spitting water. 

Speaking of the pool, last week I got the new pool cleaner as well as the covers for the pool drains that are supposed to keep the cleaner from getting stuck on them.  Originally I thought these covers were replacements for the original drain covers.  I was wrong, instead these things sit on top of the existing drains.   The center of the cover is plastic, the outer edge is 3 sections of rubber that get screwed to the center plastic piece.  I drop the covers into the pool and position them over the drains with the pool skimmer.  I set up the pool cleaner and drag it down to the deep end to see how the covers work.  I watched the cleaner traverse cleanly over one of the covers and declared “mission accomplished”, no more baby sitting the pool cleaner.

I let the new cleaner run overnight just to give it a good trial run.  When I came out the next morning I saw it appeared to be in the far corner, not moving.  As I got closer I realized that it had drug the drain cover off the drain and was in the process of trying to eat it.  Son of a bitch!  So I pull it up and try to ascertain what the deal was.  It looked like somehow the cleaner managed to suck in the rubber at one of the edges where it connects to the other rubber piece.  I snapped the rubber back together, put it back in the pool and then watched in anger as the cleaner ran over the cover and immediately performed the same maneuver!  I was pissed.  So I drug the drain cover to the surface and thought about how to address the issue.  The pool cleaner seemed to clear the other drain cover just fine.  From the surface it looked like the issue might be the surface around the problem drain is not all that smooth, allowing some gaps between the rubber of the drain cover and the pool floor.  I think these gaps are what is causing this to happen.  I wasn’t quite sure how to address it so as a band-aid I decided to drive a staple in between the rubber pieces to hopefully prevent them from getting sucked  into the cleaner.  This weekend I will need to do some additional testing.  To fix the issue it may require me to get into the less than ideal temperature pool and snoop around the drain to see if I can do something to prevent the problem from reoccurring.

I am looking forward to getting the front door replaced.  We looked at doors at Lowe’s over the weekend.  The installation will cost at least double what the door itself costs.  I still am leaning towards having someone do that job.  I am sick and tired of being able to see sunlight through the edge of the door.

My home email address appears to be in use by some f’ing spammer.  I have been getting non-stop bounce messages over the past few days as a result from messages that I never sent but that had my email address in the From: field.  There isn’t a whole lot I can do about it at this point but I am going to look into setting up a DNS SPF record to prevent it from happening in the future.  Spammers are such dog shit. 

I rented a 15 foot truck to assist with mom’s move this weekend.  I am excited for the move.  I can’t wait to see mom’s new place.

I am slowly recovering from Saturday’s vball tournament.  The stinging from the sunburn on my back has subsided. Although I can hardly wait to start peeling like a snake.  Both of my knees are a little swollen and a bit too tender to think about running yet.  My left shoulder is a bit painful yet too.  However compared to my physical condition after playing vball after long lay offs in years past, I came out of this tourney in better shape than usual.