Yesterday was every bit as bad as had been forecast. We went to Costco, Home Depot and Target, and by the time we got home I felt very beaten up by the wind. It was a cold front moving through, today it's much cooler. Temperatures will start going up again, 90's are just around the corner.
This morning I was awakened by Mike who was coming to flush the hot water heater. He arrived at 7:40. We were sleeping! Anyway, that was money well spent. The thing was full of crud, calcium and who knows what. He spent quite some time with a shop vac pulling crud off the bottom. This is not at all like flushing a 40 gallon water heater, we know how to do that. This was way worse. Behold the heating element. After taking a shower tonight, I believe that water is hotter, and the tank certainly recovered faster than before.
Since the sinking of Key Bridge in Maryland, there has been much written about US salvage capabilities. Apparently we are way behind the curve in crane capacity. Our maritime capability in general is not so good. Actually, Croatia is building more ships than the US is. I read that the bulk of the defense budget goes to the Army, which in thinking about it is not so good if we're called upon to defend Taiwan from China. Anyway, someone put up this picture of a real crane. It's lifting a submarine. It looks like a Permit class boat, weighing in at 4,300 tons. We don't have anything with that ability to lift. The crane working on the Key Bridge has the ability to lift 1,000 tons.
I found a bunch of you all in spam comments. What the heck Blogger? Steve and Ellen and other regular commenters were embargoed. Steve, to answer your question, Scary Larry is an anonymous blogger who lives somewhere in Arizona. He's a liberal guy with no use for republicans.
That's it! That's all I've got.
I can't get my head round the idea of lifting a sub marine - astonishing. Great photo though - it looks a little like a great whale.
ReplyDeleteThat was seriously crudded up!
ReplyDeleteI have been finding a few regular commenters in spam....blogger seems to have a session of doing that then we are back to normal.
Yikes, that element is done for. We have gross water here too, that corrodes the water heater rod very quickly. It's gotten better in the last few years, but I used to replace the rod every year when I first moved here.
ReplyDeleteScarey Larry is absolutely correct.
I check my spam folder regularly since Steve posted about how many he found in his whenever that was. the US has neglected our infrastructure and manufacturing ability for far too long. internally we aren't much better than a third world nation. no mag lev, no bullet trains, no energy producing roadways. and don't get me started on how we treat our citizens, no universal healthcare.
ReplyDeleteand I hate being pushed around by the wind. I don't see how the settlers endured it on the Great Plains.