Reţetă chec - expert

După aproximativ 10 ani de când fac chec, pâine şi cozonac, am ajuns la un nivel la care mă auto-numesc expert. Nu ştiu, poate de aceea de câte ori dau drumul la cuptor, vecina mea, de oriunde ar fi, apare şi ea acasă. (Glumesc, nu vorbesc cu vecina, dar aşa se întâmplă, a venit şi acum). Deci am pus checul în cuptor, cu aceleaşi cantităţi, (nu, greşesc, am adăugat faţă de ultima dată 50 gr de lapte) şi tăviţele erau deja pline şi acu mă tem că or să curgă în cuptor. Mai am 15 minute până la 30 deci voi simţi îndată mirosul de ars dacă vor curge. Nu am ce să fac. Reţeta e prea bună. Data viitoare voi folosi alte tăviţe sau ceva mai mare.

Un alt motiv pentru care scriu aici este ca să nu uit nici eu, căci câteodată fac pauze de o lună două până data viitoare.

(Cozonac nu mai fac că are mult prea multe calorii şi trebuie să faci o cantitate destul de mare ca să-ţi scoţi munca cât de cât şi devine o povară să-l consumi dacă nu ai cu cine).

Deci după atâţia ani de experimente, am ajuns practic la reţeta clasică. LOL se putea altfel? Dar întotdeauna am încercat să abordez fenomenul inginereşete şi să-l înţeleg, şi pot să spun acum cu precizie de ce trebuie fiecare ingredient, mai ales în ce ordine se pun ingredientele şi de ce şi care din ele sunt opţionale.

Am uitat să spun că nu folosesc praf de copt, cel puţin ăsta american are aluminiu în el. Deci numai bicarbonat, şi m-am chinuit mult până am ajuns aici. Foarte puţin ulei sau deloc (opţional).

Deci cantităţile sunt acestea (am cântar digital de bucătărie, sorry, nu ştiu în căni şi chestii din alea decât pe ici pe colo).
6 ouă
200 gr zahăr
8 gr (o linguriţă rasă şi un pic mai mult) de bicarbonat (o linguriţă cu vârf are 10 gr)
400 gr făină
50 gr ulei - opţional
150 gr lapte sau lapte de alune
o lămâie (toată coaja şi numai jumătate din zeamă)
alte arome (opţional), zahăr pudră la sfârșit, etc.
(Am încercat cu stafide întregi dar se lasă la fund, am încercat cu prune uscate tăiate mărunt şi iese mai bine. Deci ar trebui să încerc cu orice dar tăiat mai mărunt, inclusiv stafide).

Mai trebuiesc două castroane medii, de preferat de plastic fiindcă cele de ceramică sunt mico-abrazive şi desprind metal de pe rotoarele mixerului, (am văzut eu urme).

(Am fost şi m-am uitat la cuptor, nu au curs, a crescut iniţial şi s-a format o crustă, cuptorul e la 400 gr F sau 205 Celsius. Cu o folie de aluminiu sub tăvi (nu chiar imediat dedesubt, pe un grătar cu un nivel mai jos (şi deci sub termostat) ca să nu se ardă.)

Deci.

Mai uşor cred că e să începi cu chestiile mărunte. Dai drumul la cuptor. Razi 1-2 mm din coaja de lămâie ca să poţi să o mai şi storci. Tai lămâia în jumătate, storci jumătate iar restul o înveleşti în folie de bucătărie şi o pui în frigider. Separi ouăle. Cântăreşti uleiul şi laptele. (O lingură rasă de ulei are cam 10 gr). O cană americană mică de lapte are cam 250 ml.

Cântăreşti zahărul şi bicarbonatul. Baţi albuşurile (atenţie, nici o urmă de gălbenuş în albuş, că nu mai cresc niciodată la bătut!) (am impresia că nu contează dacă baţi albuşurile întâi fără zahăr, azi am pus din greşeală tot zahărul amestecat cu bicarbonat şi s-au bătut la fel dacă nu mai repede, până au crescut de vreo 10 ori în volum). Deci învăţăm din greşeli că de aia avem memorie.

Cântăreşti făina. Amesteci zeama şi coaja de lămâie, laptele, uleiul şi gălbenuşurile în al doilea castron. Adaugi din făină până ce acest al doilea component capătă aceeaşi consitență cu albuşurile bătute spumă - şi acesta este marele secret!

Ungi tăvile cu ulei şi apoi presari făină (din pungă, nu din cantitatea măsurată, e vorba de vreo 50gr).

Acum vine momentul decisiv. Amesteci cele două componente de mai sus (deci unul format din albuşul bătut cu zahăr şi celălalt cu gălbenuşurile, făina şi restul) cu o lingură uriaşă de plastic, deci albuşurile bătute cu zahăr şi gălbenuşurile cu făină şi restul. Se va lăsa dar bicarbonatul din albuşuri va reacţiona cu zeama de lămâie din gălbenuşuri şi va creşte imediat la loc dacă nu şi mai mult, văzând cu ochii. Se adaugă şi restul făinii şi se amestecă cu aceeaşi lingură (nu cu mixerul că se lasă instant). Se va lăsa din  nou, aici trebuie să faci un compromis (of!) între omogenitate şi volum. Se pune în tăvi şi la cuptor, la 30 minute se verifică cu o spaghetti dacă este umed înăuntru.

Chiar acum am verificat. La 30 minute aluatul era umed şi am mai adăugat 3 minute. A ieşti ok dar s-a lăsat mai mult decât mă aşteptam. Am redus în reţetă cantitatea de lapte care în ceea ce vedeţi a fost 200 ml la 150, acesta a fost şi ultimul experiment. Cred că aşa va ieşi cel mai bine data viitoare! Oricum, checul din poză are în volum la final de 3 ori mai mult decât ingredientele dacă ar fi simplu amestecate, adică fără să baţi albuşul. Chec, nu cake. Bon Apetit!

ET 18

Just finished fixing the 25 years old refrigerator. Milk was bad this morning again (5-21-2013) and i looked and saw half of the radiator in the freezing compartment was frozen and half not. Was sick all they because of drinking bad milk. I was about to faint while driving and almost got into several accidents.

Had to go to see the judge for the traffic ticket. Could not concentrate, could not form phrases.

The defrost cycle was overlapping the functioning cycle due to a short in the defrost timer. Where i've been 3 years ago. Until a few months ago i had a thermometer inside and at times was even freezing liquids in there so i had to raise temperature a bit. But took apart the thermometer once for some reason and i was too lazy to put it back thinking i was safe. I bet this time the devil stuck its tail into it.

I'll put here the pictures i've taken back then, 2010:02:19 @15 PM. Too bad i cannot put the stench too. The foam separator between the freezer and the fridge compartiment was contaminated with deeply rotten food especially pizza sauce through all its volume. It put it in a huge new black garbage bag together with a gallon of chlorine and soaked in clhorine for hours and i took the picture after. Still stinking. Since i couldn't find a replacement part all i could do was coat it with a transparent paint and seal the stench inside. The sheet metal separator that covers the radiator in the back of the freezer was rusted on the back on almost all its surface and it was stinking so bad that after i cleaned it one day with CLR in the balcony it was still stinking. In the end replaced it with one i made out of plexiglas (carbonite). Some other plastic parts were partially melted because one of the defrost switches was out of calibration. The evaporation pan in top of the compressor was full with a brownish stinking unidentified organic matter that i had to remove with a cheasel only to find out that it had a hole in it.

But in the end i made it work, after a month or so. Was still stinking for the first year or so.

When i moved in about 3 years ago i tried and offered the manager of the firm that leased us the apartment to buy a new fridge with my own money but he refused so the only other choice was to try and fix it.

When The Smell Hits The Fan

Wallpaper from kitchen and bathroom lit from behind 4x30 fairly new fluorescent lamps. Pictures are clickable to enlarge. I think a good enough software could give you the composition of the "wallpaper" by its absorbtion spectrum given the fact that we have in the pictures behind the wallpaper a known source of light and pictures are unprocessed. It's not really wallpaper but some fabric reinforced with animal glue. I bet the material in there is collagen and/or blood from slaughterhouses they used to make glue in the past from. When you have something like this in your bathroom and take a shower it's going to start stinking, and in years even enter the drywall made of sheet rock (gypsum, calcium sulphate which is porous). In my case it migrated from bathroom to bedroom through two layers of sheetrock. There's no insulation in the interior of this apartment.
Cause i got this stuff in the rented apartment both in the kitchen and bathroom. When  they dug the holes outside seen in the pictures below everything inside started to stink to the point it became unbearable then i started to look for the source. Although i spent the last three years cleaning the place in never realized what was going on. The smell was coming and going and sometimes was stronger and sometimes weaker. Somehow we got used to it.

But there's more. The drywall on one of the walls in the bathroom turned brown at places because of so much cigarette smoke coming from one of the apartments beneath inside the wall. That was somehow covering the smell. But that's how i realized the drywall is actually porous because i saw it was brown in all its half inch thickness. When the wall vibrating like from cars and planes it spreads the stuff even more and the smell becomes stronger.

I think whoever wanted to make a point had done it really well.

The stuff, like any toxin, it is probably addictive, hence the title.

1.WB=5500

2.WB, fluorescent
 


Here is a link to a jpeg full resolution together with ARW uncompressed file (Sony ARW). The preview showed by Google for the ARW file in the linked folder is Google's interpetation of that file. The ARW file can be accurately seen only with specialized software that has the Sony codec included. https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B-ShIhkErMIPUDMxcG9YeVc4U0k/edit?usp=sharing

And here is the missing link. Holes have been dug around buildings for some wiring work for lamps for more than a month now. It looks like they are trying to replace the wires or look for a shortcut. This particular hole has been dug for weeks. Strains of mold and bacteria that usually live deep under ground travels through the air, gets inside and attacks the wallpaper which seems to be made of fabric with some sort of organic, maybe animal (i heard in the past they used bovine skin, hoofs and blood from slaughterhouses to make glue) material and makes it stink really bad especially in the bathroom where there is humidity after showers. It was raining for days, i don't know what effect that had on those but i assume it's not like freshly dug anymore. But it's not the stable ecosystem usually encountered in this place at the surface of the ground either.

I'm already starting not to feel anymore the pain from formatting a whole partition that included pictures from the last three months. But i recovered some half of those using photorec and testdisk (with this occasion i discovered a good method of recovering a freshly formatted and deleted partition, you can use a Linux Live CD like the ones for installing Linux and an internet connection, after booting from the CD, you download testdisk then use the command photorec) and here are a three of those included here.

2/14/2012

2/24/2012

Friend With You or Fuck With You...

And another song that i couldn't ever figure the lyrics...

Breaking Ice on The Roof

My place, 1/11 2013

Apparently 10 days ago i myself cleaned the leaves from the gutter above the bedroom, using a stick and a hose cause they started to stink. Weather was fine, but it took me several hours, to get them from the balcony with a long stick with a hook at the end.

Here in Oregon the weather is under freezing several nights, mabye a couple of weeks in total in a year. Mostly during night time.

Today it was frosty and holiday but they came to clean the leaves from the other gutters in the building.  Leaves, of course frozen in the gutters that were full if they were like mine. I don't know how they had the guts to walk on the frosty roof like that. And the energy. Those two Mexicans were all day on the roofs until night and they didn't seem tired to me. It's their business, after all.

But they hammered the gutters for a couple of hours and everything inside was shaking like hell. People who don't live in wooden houses don't understand. Then they climbed with a power blower and blew whatever it was left on the roof. After a couple of hours they moved to the next building. When it though everything was over, a big diesel truck from a towing company came and shook everything for 15 minutes with a different frequency.

My place, post date

Everething Bell €

Although i have a degree in Mechanics, i am (was) specializing in Machine Tools. Never studied a thing about motors or compressors. All i know is from fixing my cars and negotiating with mechanics (diagnosing the cars for them so i can tell them exactly what's wrong and save money.)

So i never knew what a fridge compressor look like. Until today. But i don't want to talk about the compressor itself. In a way it's just a reversed engine. It's got a motor and a cylinder with a crankshaft and a piston or more.

What i want to talk about it's the encassing. It looks exactly like two bells put together. The lower bell covers a biger piece of metal with some sort of maze that is not vibrating and actually dampens the vibration of the compresor. But the upper bell, shorter, covers the noisy part.

Problem is the bells themselves are kinda thin and vibrate like ... bells! Alhough it covers most of the noise from the compressor, they vibrate in turn to their own resonance frequencies. So you have to dampen that as well.

The designer's solution is the evaporating pan in top of the upper bell. It is tightened to the bell with a bolt and nut and glued as well.

When i moved into the appartment, the evaporating pan was full of some stuff that i still don't know what was made of, probably mineral insulation from the attic or from under the bathroom that somehow made its way in the appartment and ended  in the water in the evaporating pan and in time got glued with the formaldehyde resin that was evaporating from the fiberboard floor and re-polymerized in there.

It was stinking really bad so i had to remove it using a screwdriver, it took me and my wife a couple of hours to do so.

I diverted the water from the freeze-thaw cycle in a one gallon water container that i had to empty monthly. I did that because it was collecting water from the air, acting like a dehumidifier. But the pan was leaking as well and i didn't know until recently, again. And i took it off and i saw it was glued to the upper bell. But the glue was probably very cheap stuff and the pan separated from the bell and the bell was vibrating producing ultrasound. But when i took it out, the level of ultrasound increased suddenly. And actually started to have back pain, hands pain, all kind of pains.

The lower bell was installed on four rubber mounts that shrank and allowed it to rattle at low frequencies.

These days i rebuilt the mounts, retighten the bushings, glued back the pan with sillikon seal, and fill the pan wiht gypsum.

I don't know if i cut all the vibrations, but it is definetelly a low quiter now. But my ears are still ringing. My wife can't hear a thing. Tomorrow i'm going to try to see if i can dampen the high frequencies a little bit more.

I even tried to wrap the bells in rags and it works pretty well but it heats up too much and had to remove them.

Antz

Remember the movie? We had ants back then too. At the other apartment. But those were bigger, more normal ants. These are tiny, 3-4 mm long. To take this picture in 12/29/2010 i used a 55 mm fixed length lens held by hand at about one inch in front of the 27-105 equivalent focal length from my Sony DSLR 300 camera with the zoom at maximum. It focuses on auto-focus. Can't remember the light source.

They are everywhere on the counter-tops. Especially on the one next to the window. Yesterday i had left about 2 ounces of pomegranate liquor in the bottle. After i drank that i went to sleep normally but woke up kinda wiped out, sort of lethargic. Cannot be the ants that possibly crawled on the bottle and touched the cap now can they? Back then when i took the picture i had traps with honey and borax but they still came. From where? The apartment underneath is vacated.

I looked again while writing this post. The ants disappeared, i can swear i saw them earlier this morning, i'm too used to them anyways. And i also heard a loud door noise and a Jeep noise under the window. The neighbor at Nr.5 left in a hurry.

Antz, eating honey&borax. Click on the picture for better view.

Endless Hole With Smoke

For a week now i'm re-caulking a ~5-10 mm 1/2" thick 6-12" long space between the bathroom wall and floor next to the bedroom using GE Silicone II of about $6.50 a tube. One day a redo a portion the next day it hardens just fine and 2 days later becomes soft like the 1.25 dollar cheap one made of milled limestone and an adhesive. Two days ago i completely removed all the material and put a new one. Yesterday it was hard and completed today now is just disintegrating. But every time i touch the stuff that's already in the wall the rest of the day my hands become stingy and skin slightly paralyzed all over after taking a shower. I just went to Lowes and gave the tall blond guy who says he's one of the managers a tiny sample in a plastic bag and asked him to send it to the manufacturer. But he didn't even ask what brand i bought, he showed total lack of interest. Last time i bought two tubes i discovered at the check-stand that one of the tubes was cracked and took it back. Then another manager of the store, an older guy to whom i gave the cracked tube told me the expiration month on the tube was September 2012. (There was this Lowes bearded guy standing behind me so close i felt uncomfortable and couldn't talk more with the manager. I remember that the bearded guy one recent time i went there he was standing there band with his  but right in front next to the paint department. That made uncomfortable as well.) Then they opened a new box with the expiration date 04/13.

Before caulking i discovered the corner with the missing wallpaper was cracked to pieces, i had to pour gypsum and redo the corner, using some transparent plastic molds, but you cannot pour gypsum all over you have to keep the edges clear of touching anything because if it touches the floor or a beam it's gone crack later due to vibration.

I did the whole thing because of the unidentified smoke coming out of it, i remember the first day i did the gypsum my face was stingy because of the smoke. The cracked parts of drywall i took out of there were brown inside because of the years of smoke. The rest if it probably still is. The apartment below is vacant for more than one year, i don't know exactly where the smoke is coming from. After i re-caulk there is no smoke for one day or so then it becomes soft in different areas not all of it and tiny holes appear together with the smoke.

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

The Fall of Adapters

This morning the phone was off. The adapter fell from the plug. Again. Although it was held by a rubber band i put around the plug cover for that purpose. The adapter was hanging in the rubber band with the two contacts slightly off the plug. Then i went to Fry's to buy stronger rubber bands. And in the Office Supplies department here they were. In a bag about 8x6 inches for $1.65 they were about 500 rubber bands of all sizes. And then i told myself. What to do with 500 rubber bands? And i gave up. And said to myself again. The plug-in AC adapters are not supposed to fall from the plug. I'm gone figure out something. The plugs where i live are probably @30 years old but in fair condition. Everything else stays in there. The adapter for the modem never fell. And then i realized, for the first time in my life. The heavy adapters with a transformer inside are not supposed to be the plug in type. They should have a cord and sit somewhere not in the plug. They made a big mistake when they approved for sale something like that. The plugs were not designed to hold such heavy weight. I weighed the phone adapter. It's 100 grams. Almost 1/4 pound. And it only has 2 contacts. One regular plug with two contacts is about 10 grams. When they first designed the plugs for homes i'm sure they didn't have in mind something like that. And the two active contacts are not round like the ground one but flat with the flat side in the vertical rotation plan and they turn around under weight and fall when you use an adapter with only two contacts. If those adapters would use a third contact not necessarily for ground but just for mechanical stability, it would be better. But where were the regulators in this case?

The Hole in the Wall

OK here's the deal. Behind one of bedroom's storage board when i moved there was a hole about as big as i could stuck my hand in it. About 5 feet from the floor level. I fixed it pouring gypsum 3 or 4 times so far.  First time when i painted again the bedroom i think. Last week i introduced the camera through it and took a picture around the corner to see how i put the foam (by touch only with a tiny 1/4 inch one foot long transparent flexible vinyl tube hooked to a foam can (Great Stuff brand). I couldn't have bend the exhaust with it, it's a bit stronger). Exactly where the two pieces of flexible exhaust coming from the ground level apartment are held together by a piece of duct tape that is too small, with too few turns and it probably leaks. It was also strangulated by the tape after it was bent. At the time i thought the smell was coming from the 1 inch space between the panels that i filled with foam. Today i took a better look at the pictures and saw the tape. Normally one would tape the joint for more than two width of tape.

(At times ever since i moved here the bedroom was filled with smoke. I remembered when i was falling asleep in the living room at the TV in the morning when i went in there were my wife was sleeping you could barely breath in there.)

I fixed the hole again a week ago. Monday there where these two guys with a big diesel powered truck that got lost around here and where asking probably directions on the phone for about 15 minutes. The sound was so annoying it prompted me to grab the camera and film them, twice. Actually they took off when i started filming them the second time.  I think it might have cracked again when they did that. Or afterwards from other vibrations from other cars and planes that pass and fly too frequently around here. I think i saw them one more time during the week after that. Lost again or maybe this time delivering. Only this time the crack was on the side with the plywood, near the exhaust housing. And was still wet.

But it is not possible for the gypsum to be wet after a week. Even if it is near a board that could have gotten wet (the housing board) The board from the storage does not touch it, it's about 5 mm apart. Enough for air to circulate and let it dry in a week. Last few days i've been very sick and there was smoke in the bedroom. I was waking up in the morning very tired and with my nose congested after few hours of sleep. I slept alone in the bedroom. I felt like i was drunk. Friday @noon i was almost fainting after hyperventilating for hours and then i took a look and felt the smell and opened the windows. Exactly when another neighbor (with the Jeep) parked under the window and opened two doors looking for something in the car for a minute or two.

It took me hours after if fixed it while hyperventilating until i got better.

When i fixed it again yesterday it was smelling like some weird animal urine. By the way, i didn't put the storage board back and it's completely dried after i repainted today. 24 hours but with a fan.

 

Here below is barely visible in this before picture taken from the attic (i wouldn't see if i didn't know it's there) the taped joint and i think you can see how it is strangulated. On the left you can see one of the thin pieces of plywood i used keeping it in place by pulling two nails while pouring gypsum then extracting them and letting it fall. Last time when i fixed i saw the pouring was very well formed, almost like continuing the drywall without noticing, except it cracked again exactly in the corner.

By the way even right now as i am editing this there is a little bit of smoke inside, my nose is congested and i feel like it' very hard to concentrate.

9-5 05 PM. OK, there's one more exhaust... The one coming from the apartment below that is vacant for a year and i don't know why... Some might... It goes under the bathtub then into the housing that is part of the apartment next to mine... Nothing to do there... Except open the kitchen window when the wind blows from West or the bedroom when the wind blows from the East so i equalize the pressure so the un/idendified smells from the wall don't come inside... Like it happened today when i forgot... Got to fill this one with foam as well...Cause the smell goes under the kitchen hardwood-floor and into the bathroom... I discovered this one because of a leak coming from the tub somewhere...

They always have to do it in pairs... For back-up...

But for that i'd have to go to Home Depot or Lowe's to buy more foam... And raise more eyebrows... Just finished removing the foam and the hairs from my hands...

Mysteries of the Attic II

@11 PM Monday 8-20. All "weekend" i've been very tired. The apartment was slowly filling with some sort of smoke, kinda like cigarettes but not only. Sunday around midnight i tried to start my Holmes True Hepa filter with three 20 dollars each sub-micronic fiberglass filters (two of them are 2 month old and i vacuum them weekly) and multiple carbon prefilters. It was smelling like burnt oil.

So i went into the attic to see what's going on. Two of the one way valves where stuck open, the one at my bathroom exhaust and the one for the attic. (I installed four 4 inch valves under one of the 6 inch vents, those designed for laundry driers, one for each exhaust and one for the attic). In top of those just under the vent there is a computer fan. The fan was stopped since the last few days i saw the attic valve open and i thought because of the heat there is too much thermal flow already. But the valve was stuck open. So the bad smell from the attic and the smoke from my neighbor was back flowing in the bathroom. (The valve at the other end of the pipe above the bathroom shown above was bent as well.) But i noticed there was a lot of dust inside the pipe near the valve. I quickly fixed those and suddenly the air in the apartment was much clearer and i started feeling better too.

So i came back inside and i opened the filter fan and i saw one of the bearings overheated and all the oil burned out and spread inside the housing. I oiled those 1 cm inner diameter bearings with motor oil and cleaned the housing. Like i did last year. They got some rings with cotton inside where you put the oil. The bronze bearings were tight, no sign of wearing. I started the filter, at 2 AM i went to bed.

AT 6:30 my wife went to work and i woke up and started thinking of what i saw last night in the attic. I went back in there with a dust mask and looked inside that pipe. It had a huge amount of dust with oil in it. And it was smelling like burnt oil. Probably because i oiled the tiny motor of the fan in the bathroom because it was too noisy. Those bearings have a inner diameter of about 5 mm and i never saw them wearing out. So i took the whole thing apart, whased the 3 meter 3 inch flexible pipes with laundry detergent in the ... bathtub eliminated an extra piece of 2 meters of pipe (it was way too long), inside, with a brush tied to a stick, and put it back together in about 3 hours. I was completely exhausted with no power left to breath. I couldn't read on the computer monitor. I was thinking about going to the hospital but in the end i fell asleep for a little bit.

I've been thinking, when planes go around at 70 mph with the flaps down and the engine revved up as they are so much doing these days they can vibrate those pipes and valves and make all that dust to back-flow in the bathroom. But the fan under the vent sucks everything out of the pipes and creates a negative pressure in them. But the fan was stopped in the last few days.

I just remembered those Harleys @midnight last night at the appartment complex across the street thundering for minutes, it seemed like they would never stopped their engines after they arrived.

(Or the dust blowers in the parking lot going for hours on Tuesday and blowing asphalt dust in the attic too.)

When i moved here that flexible pipe from the bathroom exhaust was laying on the attic floor where is the intake for the attic, opening above the kitchen window and i moved it near the others near the 6 inch vent in the top of the roof. (There is a 3 inch chimney too for it going through the roof but ... only outside! Nothing inside, just the plywood.)

The @20 year old dishwasher just stoped. And it smells like burnt oil too. I think i should oil those pump motor bearings but i'm gonna look for some bearing oil with pressure additives and no detergent or maybe i should try white mineral oil, from what i just read on the internet, motor oil is not good for electric motor hydro-static bearings.

There is no way metal came out of those axles inside those fan motors. It is possible from the dishwasher or the microwave/exhaust in the kitchen, but from what i remember when i washed that turbine from the microwave there was no play at the axle when i re-installed it. At the Holmes filter most of the load from the turbine is axial and there is a tiny teflon washer that takes that load and it's still there.

But there is a huge number of planes flying above usually under legal altitude limits. There was one that passed in just a few seconds at 1 PDT today, at low speed and probably just above the roof. The cars at @5 PM are in the hundreds per hour although it is not justified by the number of houses or size of the street.

The skin on my face, hands, legs, seems very tight. I noticed that every time i come in contact all day with these bad smells.

By the way my wife just tried to open the balcony door and there is still a barbecue going on (it was before i started writing this). And every time when i go in the balcony a car comes on the alley from nowhere and a small plane flies above!

Talking about vacuum, one day the flexible hose was too dirty inside and washed it in the tub. (I cover one end and extend it in the tub filled with a few inches with water until no dirty water comes out of it.) Then i didn't want to wait until it completely dried and used it like that. And then i saw the dust was sticking inside. Two of the filters and the collector are washable anyways and then i started vacuuming the apartment with the "wet method", cleaning the hose in the tub every few minutes or so. There is no dust coming out of it and all the dirt gathers in the tub and i just flush it! Then i removed all filters but one and still no dust is coming out of it, but the cleaning power is about three times bigger! It really sucks the s... out of the carpets.

High Windows

Today i cleaned the vaulted ceiling windows above the couch where i watch TV and sometimes i sleep. (The other day i went to bed in bedroom and woke up on the couch). Haven't done it yet, in a couple of years. (I painted that area with an extension for the brush, the ladder was too short. The only time when the handyman came, when i moved, he sealed the windows with the silicon i bought. But i was too sick to the stomach to get up there on his ladder.) Full of dead bugs, spiders and ceiling pop corn. It stank like the primordial stink in the apartment, when  i worked a month before i moved and continued until today. So now it all still stinks inside from disturbing that shit. First i tried with a duster, then the vacuum cleaner. They are at least 4 meters above the floor so i had to improvise an extension for the vacuum. After that i took pictures with a camera tied at the end of a pole because i don't have a ladder that long and i cannot see in there. This is the left one, the one above the couch where i watch TV and sleep, with the cracked window, after vacuuming. But there are a lot of people around making noises and trying to suggest i was doing something else in here. Never heard a single kid yelling at the neighbors' pool after 8 PM. Today it was until after 9 or more. Especially when i was taking pictures of the vaulted ceiling windows.

The Microwave as a Stove Top

Never use a microwave as a stove top. Why? because it gets full of shit and in a couple a years at most depending on how much you cook or heat up both on the stove and in the microwave. When i moved in here @March 2010 it was in the same position, i took it apart as i did today and put all the smaller parts in the dishwasher which by the way was in a similar state, and i cleaned the rest of it and put it back together. Didn't pay attention to the fact that by design the air from underneath doesn't go directly through a fan to the exhaust but through a labyrinth of ducts impossible to clean. And there is back flow from design with not enough sealing of the joints, besides the back flow at the joint with the exhaust. Never thought it was so important.

After washing just to show lack of sealing. There was no seal or gaskets on the high pressure side just the box itself in top of the fan housing sitting at an average of 1 mm distance after carefully tightnening all screw. By the way, the top of the box warps under weight near the two bolts that it hangs from under the the cabinet.

The last piece of duct of the high pressure part slides too easily in place with a play of mm. In the left side there was a big back flow both in front and rear. In rear you can see the stain on the wall. In front it was coming through the middle area of the upper grill (not shown in any picture) where was a large area of dead space  and in the room just above the stove where we were cooking. All cooked food was spiced up with up to 2 years old stuff. That combined with ohter factors were contributing to making me sick. You couldn't feel the smell because every time you start the stove there is a few seconds of smell from the spiral heaters until they heat up because they get sprinkled with tiny droplets of oil that cannot be washed and you mostly don't see.

Even if the microwave was new it was the same. I washed this one up two years ago as i said in the beginning. It was clean like new. Like right now. But it has a bad design and the whole concept of putting it in top of a stove is idiotic.

Ok  8/5 1:50 PM. While trying to install an extra fan in the duct i discovered the one way valve in top of the black square box in the picture above was only opening about 1/4 because it was hitting the adapter, visible above the oven in the cabinet in the first picture. Because of the misalignment with the duct they used an asymmetrical adapter. The curve at the corner is preventing the rectangular piece of aluminum that makes the valve to open all the way. Probably depending on how much you push the adapter in. When i removed that valve the flow grew a lot bigger. It probably wouldn't have back flowed that much.

DE CE

I know some people would do anything to make me stop writing on this blog. But i wouldn't write about Romanian politics anyway anymore, i already decided that. At least for a while. Maybe i should start writing this like a log.

I really hoped things would somehow get fixed, maybe get a job, maybe some money from people who owe me and never had to write this here. But that might very well never happen.

I barely got out from a "road rage" incident when a 70-80s black Chevy with modified suspension and exhaust and huge tires was trying to back-up from the alley where i live, ocuppying both lanes and making big noise and smoke almost climbed on my little S10. There was a "witness", a guy with a dog in a black T shirt with some white drawing on it nearby. I can imagine what would have happen if i was tried to confront the guy. I just passed him and went to the other alley.

But this is just the last incident. I was thinking maybe i should start to say how i got here in the first place. But the story is too long and now i would try to write it backwards. Earlier i tried to drive to the only open liquor store after 8 about 6 miles from where here where i live. Every intersection, an opportunity for accident. On the freeway, there was like 10 cars trying to aggress me, it's too long to remember and write it here but it was worse than usually. Every time is. Subtle enough not to raise suspicions to unaware people though. If there's anyone left. At the store, in the line, in front of me, a white guy with shaved hair was talking way too much with the cashier, buying and unbuying things, packing and unpacking until behind me grew a line. Earlier i saw a woman with a wet, cold, just pulled from the fridge gallon of milk in her hand buying liquor. I salivated instantly because i drink lots of milk. Etc. Then he synchronized and drove on the alley in the parking lot in front of me with a 30 year old car. All the turns until i got on the boulevard. I didn't even start the ventilation in the car. On the way back the same show. It's good though today not every time when i turned my head i saw someone drinking or sucking from a jug. Cause this was the last trend of the last  year. If i passed someone with a smoking car and look at him/her he would pull a jug with drink and start drinking with big thirst.

Before that. This whole apartment where i live sometimes i think it was build from recycled stuff and designed especially to get people sick. Especially the exhaust from the cooking stove that instead of going vertically and through the roof and then a few more feet upwards like a chimney, it goes almost horizontally about 7 meters to the other side of the roof and opens inside the attic where there is a flat vent. Even if it pushes the odor from the kitchen outside, the flow sticks to the building and comes back through the windows. Many times i said i wouldn't use it but sometimes i forget. And when it's hot the temperature in the attic goes to 110 F and more and everything there is in that 6 inch x 7 meter exhaust rots and smells really bad. It happens only in the afternoon when it gets hot and if i forget to start the fan and push some air in it i get sick before i realize it because the smell grows gradually. And if a plane passes by it vibrates and some of the stuff gets pushed inside the room. And i only realized this today. Or maybe i did before but i wasn't sure or i forgot. Don't get me wrong, i have a good memory but there's too many things going on. Then i leave the place because i'm so sick but just by driving around i get some fresher air and then come back later when it's cooler. But because of what happens on the streets i usually forget why and how seek i was when i left. About a year ago i closed the joint between the exhaust and the vent under the roof so the stuff cannot get back into the attic and goes all through the vent and put a one way valve on the end near the stove but on hot days like today it doesn't really help. But the vent is still flat and doesn't have a chimney. It only helps if i cycle some fresh air for about an hour through it. Today i put some enzyme from the pet store that decomposes stuff and has some deodorant in it.

In short, i spend hours every day just to clean or fix the place. Most of the time i'm sick because i'm sensitive to smell and also sick to the stomach. But it always happens in the afternoon when my next door neighbor and my wife are at work and i'm alone. Sometimes i feel like fainting or paralyzed to my spine. My wife lost some of her sensitivity to smell because of the chemo back in the fall of 2004, but she wasn't so sensitive in the first place. It's between a half time and full time job every day in a very bad environment. Not counting the trips at home improvement stores and the thousands of dollars i spent and hundreds of receipts i try to keep. I just finish fixing one stinking obnoxious thing then another one starts. I will try and continue to write this backwards but right now one of my neighbors maybe the one that's a real estate agent, the one who dug a whole withe her Mercedes power steered wheels in the asphalt, by turning the wheels to the right after the car is stopped make some really weird noises that seem synchronized with my keyboard or something. Sounds like moving stuff around but i'm not sure. She does that frequently when she's at home. Monday she "forgot" the TV on all morning after she or somebody else made a big noise and woke me up at 6 am after 5 hours of sleep. That day and the following i was really like a zombie.

Yesterday no Tuesday was gardening day at my neighbors. By the pool. Almost 5 hours two power tools of over 100 dB each in the same time where trimming and blowing the fences and bushes. My ears where hurting, literally. And my brain was scrambled inside.

And then there's my down stairs neighbor. The Italian looking guy. The apartment underneath is vacated since last September. One more level down. The guy smokes some slow burning natural untreated cigarettes that smell really really bad. When he leaves for work i think, before noon, he opens the bedroom window and then i have to close mine. Depending on the wind, sometimes it comes from the other way, from the kitchen. I have to be very careful opening the windows cause it can get worse.

A few days ago i looked at a small ball of mineral insulation from the attic with a strong magnifying glass. Actually with a camera lens pulled out of the camera. Among fibers i say tiny maybe a few hundredth of a mm tar or rubber particles, or both. That explains the hellish smell of the attic, combined with cigarette smoke. Especially when it gets hot like today at 110F. The tiles of the roof are made of bitumen and sand. There's washed out bitumen and sand from the tiles in the gutters.

By the time my wife got home a quarter to midnight i almost fainted. I opened the balcony door to get some air and the neighbor was having a glass of some alcoholic drink visible on the side of the balcony. I opened the bottle, poured myself a shot of rum and tried not to faint until my wife gets home. Then when she entered the door a few minutes later i got better as i always do. Drink or not. Then she got mad and threw my 12 dollar bottle of rum i risked my life for in the sink. She never done that before. I didn't want to argue too much especially because the voice of the neighbor in the balcony speaking on the phone "got scared". I went to the supermarket and bought some beer, again avoiding a cohort of mostly small and old and smelly cars that were showing out of nowhere at this hour in every intersection. All liquor stores are closed after ten. I was actually tempted of stopping and enter in a bar, i saw the Lure was opened. Never been in a bar before since 1995 when i came here. Only once in a restaurant where they serve alcoholic beverages. No, i once had a beer at Spaghetti Old Factory.

But now i don't feel like drinking anymore. Maybe watch some TV and go to sleep. Ok, i opened a bottle of beer and reread and corrected typos and mistakes of what i wrote before. Now i think i begin to feel like a philosopher again.

Ciudăţenii cotidiene, Daily Weird

Azi am descoperit că vibraţia de la frigiderul uriaş de 25 ani se transmite prin podea alături în baie unde face să vibreze uşile de sticlă culisante de la cadă. Uşa de la baie este formată din două placaje care dacă le apeşi uşor cu un deget se deformează cam un cm. Pereţii din jurul uşii de la baie panourile adică nu sunt strânse bine în perete am impresia că le lipsesc nişte şuruburi şi vibrează şi alea pe mai multe frecvenţe, toate joase în jur de 10 Hz. Chiar la Bacău ţin minte podeaua de la bucătărie când călcam se mişca puţin.

Am impresia că orice casă vibrează, mai ales astea de aici care sunt din schelet de lemn cu panouri de ghips dar dacă nici nu sunt strânse şuruburile alea de panouri sau lipsesc şuruburi... La balcon este o uşă culisantă de sticlă uriaşă cu o pereche statică total de 2 pe 2 metri care şi alea dacă le apeşi cu degetul se deformează. În dormitor este o debara cu uşi culisante din PFL de 5 mm cât peretele de lângă baie, care vibrează şi aia.

Ştiam de câteva zile că pereţii vibrează şi am făcut legătura cu apăsarea din ureche şi ameţeala şi dorinţa de a pleca din casă dar nu am făcut legătura cu uşile culisante de sticlă de la cada de la baie şi frigiderul decât ieri seara, când a pornit frigiderul şi am simţit apăsarea aia în ureche şi dorinţa de a ieşi afară.

Plus că frigiderul vibrează şi pe ultrasunete, tot timpul îmi ţiuie urechile. Deşi am izolat zona în care se face detenta freonului şi în genereal toată suspensia circuitului freonului cu cauciuc siliconic din ăla scump pentru izolat marginea la cada de baie. Scăzuse mult atunci, dar acum mi se pare că a revenit iar la un nivel maxim. Tot spatele frigiderului este închis acum cu PAL fonoabsorbant cam la 20 cm distanţă şi eu aud acum armonici mai joase de la ultrasunete poate peste 10 kHz cam la 20 dB la vreo 4 metri de el. Acum când scriu rândul acesta au scăzut brusc cam la jumătate. Oare să aibă vreo legătură cu maşinile vecinelor de scară care parchează totdeauna strâmb, dar numai în 2 sau 3 poziţii, mereu aceleaşi, cu precizie?

Deci azi am tot mutat frigiderul prin casă, este lângă peretele de la vecini ca să pun nişte PAL fonoabsorbant sub el şi în spatele lui şi ghici pe cine cred că am văzut ieşind de la scara vecină, cu perucă blondă, şi s-a urcat într-un minivan după care s-a urcat în altă maşină, o Hondă mai mică şi mai veche şi a plecat deşi am impresia că venise cu o a 3-a maşină, un Dodge gri din ăla nou lăsat pe jos?

Aceeaşi persoană cu care cred că am vorbit azi pe la 11:30 la Allied Waste Services, când am sunat să-i întreb de ce a venit camionul la tomberon a doua oară în aceeaşi zi?

A şi am uitat să spun, la un timp după ce m-am mutat am vrut să cumpăr alt frigider din banii mei dar agenţia imobiliară de la care închiriez apartamentul nu a fost de acord. Acest frigider valorează 0 dolari adică e un junk.

English:

Today i discovered that the vibration of the 25  years old huge refrigerator is transmitted through the floor and across the wall in the bathroom where it makes vibrate the glass sliding doors from the tube. The bathroom door is made out of 5mm fiberboard that easily deforms about 1 cm if you press lightly on it. The panels on the walls around bathroom door are not close enough to the frame and i am under impression there are missing or loose screws under paint, and they all vibrate on several frequencies, all under 10 Hz. I remember at Bacău, last place where i lived in Romania the floor in the kitchen was moving a little too when i was walking on it.

I am under the impression that any house vibrates, especially here where are made of wood frame covered with gypsum (drywall) panels especially if the screws are not tighten all the way or missing... At the balcony there is a huge sliding door paired with a static window that deform easily if you press with the finger right in the middle. In the bedroom there is a storage with huge sliding doors covering all the batthrom wall made of 5mm fibreboard that vibrate as well.

I knew for a few days now that the walls are vibrating but i couldn’t make the link with the pressure in the ears and dizziness and the urge to live the place until last night when the fridge’s compressor started and i started feeling the pressure and the need to live.

Today i moved the fridge around so i can install some fonoabsorbant (loose fiberboard) panels underneath and around the back of it and than guess who i think i saw leaving from the other entrance of the building, where my neighbours on the other side of the wall next to where the fridge is are, with blonde wig and got into a minivan than switched into an older, smaller Honda and left although i think she came into one of those newer, low, grey Dodge?

The two entrances and the corresponding apartments do not communicate, at least at the upper level, where i live, from what i know. The weirdest part is the apartment right beneath me is vacant since last September with the blinds tightly covering the windows so no light can go in our out and i didn't see anybody getting in or out either for so many month.

I forgot to say that shortly after i moved here i wanted to buy another fridge from my own money but the real estate agency that i rent from did not agree although this fridge is not worth any money, being a total piece of junk.

There is at least one distinguishable harmonic from the @4 Hz main frequency but i don't have the necessary instruments to investigate what that frequency is. Maybe if i had a video editing program installed, maybe i should try download one. Probably is a frequency most harmful when vibrating out of phase with Earth electric resonance frequency, the so called Schumann frequency, at 7.89 Hz, that would be the double of what i'm counting using the clock from the wall? The sliding door have a metal frame as well so...

Maybe that's why they're slamming the doors for... To kick start a vibration that is out or in phase with Earth electric standing waves?

Now i read in wikipedia that 60 Hz is the eighth harmonic of the Schumann. Why in Europe they use 50 Hz and in the United States 60? Which one is healthier?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances

Somebody please tell me what the hell is going on...

Keep Portland Weird

https://www.google.com/search?q=keep+portland+weird&source=lnms&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl

"Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, which retains its original meaning only dialectically."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd

Ethics in Germanic Neopaganism are guided by a concept of personal ørlög or wyrd, encompassing the notions of both fate and luck. The belief in Wyrd — a concept of fatalism or determinism,[12] similar to some Graeco-Roman concepts of destiny is a commonly held belief amongst most Germanic Neopagans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_neopaganism

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Amulet_Thor%27s_hammer_%28copy_of_find_from_Sk%C3%A5ne%29_2010-07-10.jpg

Into The Lime Light

Just painted! Click for better view.

Ever since i came to US i've been missing the comfort and coziness of the lime painted walls. I don't know it may be a cultural thing, back then we didn't have the option of synthetic paints, but it was a mistery to me and still is why people don't use it @ here. When i asked about it in the home improvement stores, after long explanations and descriptions, resembling small chemistry exams, people went into some strange, shocked, state and stared at me as if i was from another continent or something. NO, never heard about something like that!

But after browsing home improvements stores for years, and learning the second sense of word lime in English, in a corner, in the construction area, there it was, the bags with lime powder. Not for painting use, but of a much better quality then the one i used when i painted my apartment back in Bacău.

I bought if for a different reason since i was experimenting with ways of mitigating with formaldehyde but it was white enough for me to fall into temptation to try it on a corner in a closet. And surprise, it dried about as white as the old flat paint based on kaolin and titanium dioxide. And about as strong, according to the time taken to clean myself in the shower.

Then i read the MSDS and i was surprised it mentioned it had something between .1 and 1 % crystalline silica which is a known cancerigen and for causing silicosis, and the old kaolin based paint which had about the same amount of silica didn't have anything like this mentioned on the bucket.

Then i mixed it with water using the kitchen mixer and made it of about the same consistency the old paint had when i applied it to the walls.

After two coatings, it was still spotty at some viewing angles. It misses an emulsifier and segregates at the bottom of the bucket. Then i taped (old Apollo 13 technology :)) the mixer to the bucket and let it run at low speed while applying the third coating and voila! Spotless, white, warm and very nice smelling painted walls! No VOC, i mean zero (Volatile Organic Content). Actually, probably due to residual amounts of CaOH, it release oxygen and locks carbon dioxide while drying!

The lime i used was composed of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbontate (CaCO3 and MgCO3) wich are exactly the same ingredients that purified are used in supplements.

For a small bedroom i used about 19 pounds out of the 50 p bag.

Another nice surprise, it muffled the street noises by about 5-10 dB according to my ears!

Later, i learned it cleans very easily with Comet spay, which contains citric acid. So no need for blue tapes around margins.

The lime paint is very special. It breathes. With the normal moisture in the air, it accumulates or releases oxygen and locks carbon dioxide in excess. It locks other gases. It is like a chemical buffer, pretty similar to backing soda, but much stronger and on a huge surface. It promotes the growth of good bacteria into your place. It is very healthy and ecological!

And the best of all, the total cost of the 50 p bag was $8.50!

Formaldehyde, among us

For a better view please click on the pictures then on the little icons below.

For better understand of what's to follow, here a couple of links. No, better three:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea_formaldehyde_resin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiberboard

Formaldehide as a resin has been long used before today's plastics, to make everyday objects. One of its commercial names was bakelite. Even today you can find in old electrical boxes things made of bakelite like relays and stuff.

Fiberboard is a very convenient way to use wood. You mill the wood down to fiber then mix it with formaldehyde resin and voila... Very cheap and regular boards that you can make wonders with it.

The problem with these is that they are slowly decaying with the result of formaldehyde gas.

That is very easy to understand if you have a floor made of fiberboard. In time, it looses its hardness and becomes soft and molds over all the irregularities of what's underneath. It doesn't break anymore but it bends. And that's because the resin turns to gas and all it's left is the wood fiber. In time, you will walk on something like sand, like on the beach...

To make a long story short, i had some dolomite, a mixture of minerals to treat soil for gardening that i bought from the store a while ago for a different reason. I accidentally mixed it with water and saw that on top in a few hours it accumulates some brownish stuff that smells sweet, very similar with the cabinets and the floor. And i looked onto the label of that sac and it says it has besides lime as main ingredient (CaCO3) 11% and magnesium (MgCO3) in different forms. I did a google search and indeed, some people are researching the possibility of fixing formaldehyde with different magnesium formulas.

I put some pans on the fridge and i saw over the last few weeks that the amount of brown stuff on top is decreasing to maybe 1/4 of what if was in the first day. I add daily water and refresh it if it gets too brown.

I think i got myself a cheap, reusable, visible, quantifiable, formaldehyde trap!