Ho hum.
Had an electrician out yesterday to look at the problem we've been having in the shop. For those of you just tuning in, there's a "see saw" effect in the electrical service in the shop where I build amplifiers and work on stuff. There are two circuits, and if you introduce a load on one of them, that voltage goes way down while the voltage on the other circuit shoots sky high. You can't run the belt sander unless you turn on the shopvac on the other circuit. It's caused problems: burning up the motors in some expensive power tools and it even blew up my old Fender amp at one point, which meant that I had to order more parts to fix that.
A couple months ago we had the guy from the electric co-op come out and look at the problem. He poked around on a couple things and told us we'd have to hire an electrician.
So we had an electrician come out and look things over. I think the guy's head is in the right place, he's just young and inexperienced. It took probably an hour before he finally pronounced the problem to be on the electric company's side of things, after he told me I'd have to completely rewire a bunch of stuff. Now we have to get someone from Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative back out here to redo some stuff, namely a ground clamp or two up at the top of the telephone pole.
(sigh)
See, I'm trying to build this custom amplifier for a friend, but the cold weather has arrived (it's 35 degrees outside right now) and I can't stand to be in the shop for more than a few minutes at a time... and I can't run a space heater out there! Dad's got an old kerosene heater which I've used before, but it burns up all the oxygen in the shop! After a little while I notice that I can't seem to think straight, then I start to see spots, then I get a headache and dizziness. Not exactly conducive to working with the high voltages present inside a tube amplifier. If you've ever been hit with three or four hundred volts, you tend to shy away from that sort of thing...
This electrical problem is one reason I've been doing the lumberjack routine lately. The shop is too cold to do any work out there, but in the afternoons it's warm enough to go outside and run the chainsaw and log splitter. I've made quite a lot of progress on it lately, too! A side effect of this is that I'm getting into better shape, and I've lost some weight (which had been bothering me): I now weigh less than 240 lbs for the first time in a couple years, down from about 260 when I was on the prednisone. Hooray for not being obese!
For those of you who've read all this, here's your reward:
Had an electrician out yesterday to look at the problem we've been having in the shop. For those of you just tuning in, there's a "see saw" effect in the electrical service in the shop where I build amplifiers and work on stuff. There are two circuits, and if you introduce a load on one of them, that voltage goes way down while the voltage on the other circuit shoots sky high. You can't run the belt sander unless you turn on the shopvac on the other circuit. It's caused problems: burning up the motors in some expensive power tools and it even blew up my old Fender amp at one point, which meant that I had to order more parts to fix that.
A couple months ago we had the guy from the electric co-op come out and look at the problem. He poked around on a couple things and told us we'd have to hire an electrician.
So we had an electrician come out and look things over. I think the guy's head is in the right place, he's just young and inexperienced. It took probably an hour before he finally pronounced the problem to be on the electric company's side of things, after he told me I'd have to completely rewire a bunch of stuff. Now we have to get someone from Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative back out here to redo some stuff, namely a ground clamp or two up at the top of the telephone pole.
(sigh)
See, I'm trying to build this custom amplifier for a friend, but the cold weather has arrived (it's 35 degrees outside right now) and I can't stand to be in the shop for more than a few minutes at a time... and I can't run a space heater out there! Dad's got an old kerosene heater which I've used before, but it burns up all the oxygen in the shop! After a little while I notice that I can't seem to think straight, then I start to see spots, then I get a headache and dizziness. Not exactly conducive to working with the high voltages present inside a tube amplifier. If you've ever been hit with three or four hundred volts, you tend to shy away from that sort of thing...
This electrical problem is one reason I've been doing the lumberjack routine lately. The shop is too cold to do any work out there, but in the afternoons it's warm enough to go outside and run the chainsaw and log splitter. I've made quite a lot of progress on it lately, too! A side effect of this is that I'm getting into better shape, and I've lost some weight (which had been bothering me): I now weigh less than 240 lbs for the first time in a couple years, down from about 260 when I was on the prednisone. Hooray for not being obese!
For those of you who've read all this, here's your reward:
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
Could you put one of those elastic wrist straps on, that may help a little bit.
He/she same thing, it is still cute.
I was just thinking that it's been a long time since I heard from heterochromia, so I was gonna go say hi but she's gone