  The
Southern Strategery
Now I can at last end the endless whining and technical
obsessions and
ostentatiously turn instead to Florida, Land
of Warmth — ’n’ Alligators. ... To
leave behind the bitter Northeast, home of mysterious
destructive hurricanes and achingly-cold global warming, and submerge
my
tired tattered soul into a paradise of palm trees and sublime idleness.
... And more hurricanes of course.
... And warmth.
... Like I told the temporary condo board, I’ve been trying
to goof-off — but it’s too much work! ... And like I told the
Long Island neighbor what some guy said on the web,
I can’t wait for global
warming; I want it now....
So
on to the South, and here I chronicle
the
delights and simple joys of moving 10,000 technical tchotchkes in a
giant
truck and then,
finally, at last, the glorious denouement of
unending sloth. ... In living color....
 Friday,
May 3, 2013. I will
throw nothing away before its time. So a lot
of stuff gets thrown away but I am still awash in technical debris,
approximately reflected in the endless chronicles on the rest of this
web site. We will pay skilled operatives to pack the humdrum like
antique data books; I am concerned only with the gadgetry / toys /
priceless
junk, its endless
pitiful panoply and uselessness and obsolescence. ... Does Florida need
a burglar alarm from our Bridge Street loft 40 years ago, with a
picture of a roaring mouse? ... Of course
it does....
 Tuesday,
May 14, 2013. I
packed the photographs
from our last
move. 4x6’’
pieces of paper,
with images of all the things in our hallways and rooms so I could find
them again in the distant dangerous land a few miles west. A primitive
forerunner of my super-electron autostitched iphone photos which I
prepared this time. ... As far as I can remember, the photographs, and
intricate
box-numbering indexing schemes printed on an LX800 weren’t much
help. I
do
remember vast menacing piles
of boxes; I retain a lovely
diagram of where the numbered boxes wound-up,
the production of which involved a manual survey. Which I will
doubtless
re-enact any month now again (and which indeed came to pass @ 8/15/13).
 Wednesday,
May 22,
2013. About that goof-off/work thing: up to box
146 and counting....
Sunday, May 26, 2013. The eschatological situation
is grim. The old is falling apart — I’m taking
it apart, precious gadget by gadget — and the global warming has
risen
to bitter intensity for Memorial Day. ... Will my precious rooms of
junk be recreated in a better, warmer, place? ... Faith is weak in a
50º spring....
Monday, May 27, 2013. In a while, we will
attempt a rented van to the South — cherry-picking a few
treasures, to make a pitiful dent in the looming horde. ... And I
remembered in the anxious night it was my beloved
who drove a larger truck to  the
frozen North so many years ago. I had
no driver’s license then, Manhattan born and bred, and wouldn’t
until
years later when she finally
beat me into it. ... So, still, at least one
of us knows how
to drive....
Saturday,
June 1, 2013. Oh the ominous tragedy! — the light sabers, forged
in the
dark corridors of Walmart — failed. Cheap plastic junk fell to pieces
as I was thrusting ’em into a picture box. The econuts keep assuring
us this stuff is immortal but so far like most such claims it doesn’t
seem to pan out. ... That’s the light sabers on the right in
this
poignant rendition of the weapons horde as it was
and will never be again. ... But I’m sure they will be
made
anew, at least as long as the Star Wars movies keep coming out and
Walmart’s in business, and the other weapons horde population was
OK.
... Not to mention at least two other plastic light sabers
which I’m sure will step into the breach if needful.
Monday,
June 3, 2013. My last move involved around 280 or so boxes. This looks
likely to go to over 600. At last, firm scientific numbers on
decades of junk accretion....
 Thursday,
June 13, 2013. I have driven many boxes through hurricane and
torrential
rains and
established a beachhead at the  temporary
forward camp. The alligators dance....
Monday, June 17, 2013. The tchotchkes
are swarming; I have entered the intensity zone; they are everywhere,
memories follies things I cannot remember or understand. ... On the
walls, mostly, like the weapons horder above.
It’s part of our college-dorm-forever decorating scheme....
Tuesday, June 18, 2013. I will have “2 in
one day” stitched on my belt! I managed to complete packing two
entire rooms of tchotchkes without serious injury in a single day. ...
Actually I just finished one in two days, and then another in
the afternoon of the 2nd day, but it’s still a moving triumph!
Friday,
June 21, 2013. I have reached a resting place. I have packed almost
enough
to be ahead and I breathe quietly, admiring the view of empty rooms
filled with boxes. ... Then again, check out this
suicidal ditty with its
empty rooms, which I realized was probably composed on the occasion of
a previous move. ... But nevermind;  soon
the alligators will dance....
Sunday, June 23, 2013. A cruel moment: I must
deconstruct
my beloved Nord Imperium.
But with a more-or-less
certain hope for reconstruction in a better or at least warmer world....
 Saturday,
June 29, 2013. I have found joyful
compensation in renewed attention to my beloved Hammond
chord organ which the skilled operatives must move because I
can’t.
However I’ve packed all the music
for it already, except a tattered “fake book” with numerous
old
tunes, and I have found a new interest in chord rune interpretation.
The Hammond books only have chords that are on the organ; but when the
fake book suggests “F7b9”, I pause and ponder: what’s
that
in real
money? ... In the context,
probably Cdim. I actually have a hard time translating even the Hammond
chords to the buttons; I can play
them with my hands easily enough, but
that would be cheating and in any case sub-optimal with the chord
organ....
 Tuesday,
July
2, 2013. Pitifully I comb the pages of Sound
on Sound, prizing the technology titillation I am
otherwise
deprived-of,
surrounded by featureless boxes. ... When oh when will I return to my
tech cave?
... And where? ... But, as I tell myself, at least it’s warm
in my northern cave of boxes. ...
Perhaps a
little too
warm, but can that be bad?
Sunday, July 7, 2013. So in today’s
heat
wave, it’s cooler
in Florida!
... 80°in Delray, 90° on Long Island! ... So we migrate to the land of
alligators
for the cool....
 Tuesday,
July 16, 2013. A roomba lurks
in a Florida corner. ... No alligator attacks yet....
Friday, July
19, 2013. However we do seem to have come to a waterworld. It’s really
quite lovely in a cinematic sort-of blade-runneresque
way, the giant condo towers on the coast piercing the ever swirling
mists and torrential downpour, the great swamp out there to the
West providing its own poetic backdrop. ... Although apparently “Great
Swamp”
is
the official designation of a lovely New Jersey tract in the central
North. ... But then Google conceded there were
several great swamps, and even several Everglades for that
matter. ... But how many look so much like a nicer-but-wetter Philip K.
Dick sci-fi movie?
Monday,
July 22, 2013. The last great box convulsion approaches, with the giant
truck. ... And then I get to unpack. ... I have lived with
the
cardboard of my last move for twenty years or more, converting boxes
into handy trays and other ad-hoc materials through the wandering years
— a serrated bread knife slices ’em up nice! —
and now, apparently, on into the future....
Friday,
July 26, 2013. The balloon is up! Even as I type, skilled operatives
are at work, transforming wandering herds of antique tube testers and
voltmeters into giant boxes....
Sunday,
July 28, 2013. I will tell you about the “packing service”
since
no one
else on the web will, including the mover. ... A crew of 3 or four
came,
they saw, they
packed; as I foresaw, there were hundreds of boxes. They
cooperated
in my TLA
scheme; I put up signs in every room designating the room’s TLA —
“AFW”
for “Attic Front Workroom” etc. — and these wound-up
on
the boxes.
Partly because they have an admirable audit
scheme to keep track of them anyway. ... The biggest problem we had was
preventing
them from packing things
we wanted to keep out.
... And they needed no stinkin’ “staging area”. They
just
packed the
boxes throughout the house, and now we slither between them in the
short period Before the Truck. ... It was a well-executed, harrowing
experience.
THE
SADNESS OF MOVING: NO REASSEMBLY W/LIBERTY
UNITED MOVERS
Monday,
August 5, 2013. We have moved. ... And now, the long slow road to
recovery. ... Handy
hint: if you have inexpensive
furniture that will require reassembly because the
mover disassembled
it —
don’t.
Throw
it
away and buy new stuff at the destination. At least if you’re
using Liberty
United Van Lines; nothing requiring reassembly
was
reassembled until we whined loudly, and much remains as random piles of
disassembled debris. The Driver and several of his minions were better
reassemblers
than I would ever be in a million years — but I wouldn’t
need
that long, and The Driver could only take about an
hour-and-a-half when in fact to do it adequately would’ve required
at
least another day. Which was entirely predictable although not to me
in my pitiful stressed-out angst, inasmuch as it took his forces until
dark to pack
the stuff in the
North. ... I’m not terribly irritated because
the moving price, equivalent to several organs
at least, dwarfs the cost of the cheap furniture. However it does
not
create that warm good-references feeling when four little tables
appear in Florida as a pile of table tops, legs and other debris
mixed together, at least one key part of which was mislaid somewhere in
the chaos.
Faulty
Debris
 ...
And
then again, as I
wander through the
debris,
they failed to reassemble my beloved Yamaha electronic piano! Not
cheap furniture. ... So, basically, just don’t use a packing service
to disassemble anything,
at least
with Liberty
United.
... So
when I was so amused at The Driver disassembling my  beloved
metal-stick and burlap workbench with such ease, and told him he’d
be great
at Christmas — for assembling the children’s toys — he
didn’t explain
it was a disassembly-only
deal, and I would probably
throw the randomized assortment of useless
parts away at the end of the road, as indeed I did, even as bits and
pieces reappeared in boxes far far away, even the instructions, which
still did not tell how to reverse the dance of Shiva the destroyer aka
The Driver — but the usual term
for these kind of representations is fraud.
... And here I thought it was just good ol’ mediocrity, but the passing
months
are revealing almost a moral discipline; through the endless unpacking
I
repeatedly have come upon random (proprietary) AC power cords and
power supplies among other oddities brutally separated from their
gadgets with an apparently serene indifference to their eventual
rapprochement....
More faults:
-
Enormous
heavy “dish barrels”. Stacked 2
high. ... Actually almost
all
the Liberty
boxes were, on
average, twice as heavy as my
boxes. ... The idea I suppose is that
we should’ve paid for an unpacking
service, since normal human powers cannot move these things. And in
fact such services are
promoted at least by some movers, but not to us, either because Liberty
United doesn’t do that and/or it would’ve been
silly in my
case
with my
junk, i.e. there is no obvious household destination for a ’30s
set tester.
-
Badly-applied
packing tape. The guys actually turned boxes
upside-down
so the
totally-missing tape on the bottom wouldn’t impede the unloading
process. I always thought this was a fault of amateurs, but apparently
it’s carefully cultivated by the pros too!
-
The audit
system which I was so naively impressed-by
turned-out to be
totally-dependent
on the supernatural abilities of the client — us
— i.e., useless. It’s really a Liberty United
CYA
thing; when the client whines about missing boxes, the vendor can say
“you didn’t check the unloading right”. It isn’t
of
course likely or
even possible
for a human
being to do that. ... We were provided with “bingo” cards,
with
numbers from 1 to 500, and we were supposed to check each number off as
the boxes came in, the numbers supposedly shouted-out by the unloaders.
This worked-out as well as might be expected, with about a 10% error
rate. A serious system intended to accomplish the supposed goal would
require bar code equipment at least. ... I concede it’d probably
work
better if I were moving 80 rather than five or 600 boxes; too bad
we didn’t know that ahead of time....
 The
Moral: Movers Suck; DIY as much as you can
I guess
the
moral here is that, at least with Liberty United,
the packing service
is better than nothing, but probably any
level of DIY
would be preferable. After all, I probably couldn’t’ve moved
all those boxes to Florida; but I could’ve packed
them, given 2 to six additional months ... or years. ... But I didn’t
want
to; I wanted the shameful luxury
of getting someone else to do it — and really, I didn’t have
the time. ... Whatever,
I am punished by groveling in the
dark and heat of my  Florida
garage, re-arranging
boxes and trying
to get them organized somehow or other in my head; and on a computer;
and
then in my life. ... So if you want
to move
hundreds of boxes of
junk, start packing a year or two early. I started 2/13 or later for an
8/13 move, which was much too late — to throw
things away. ... The
process
of packing one’s treasures
could
be an ideal
time to decide which
of them should depart this vale of tears, but not
if you’re in a
hurry;
then it’s the worst
time because one makes too many unrecoverable mistakes, and I had
brains-enough
at
least to realize that and just move everything. Much of which I plan to
dispose-of here in the sunny land of alligators, essentially paying an
unusually high dumping fee....
 Faint
Praise?
But at least the ancestral suit of
armor showed-up OK. ...
And ignoring packing inadequacies and total reassembly failure, in just
moving
things and packing the
obvious,
Liberty
United
did OK with
a lot of boxes.
... Broken crockery
so far is what we knew
was likely, and as far as we can tell
no box was left behind. Although at the last moment The Driver detected
a hidden pile of junk in some culvert
of the truck which
included my
beloved cordless lawn mower — which I managed to reassemble a few
days
later.
...
But my Hammond
Chord organ went a thousand miles and still plays.
... And I eventually reassembled the Yamaha;
although
I did find a remnant of my revered pre-abused Wurlitzer
strewn randomly in the debris. ... But I protected my most
precious
junk from the Liberty
United
Shiva-like hordes by packing and moving
it myself; I shudder
to think
how the disassembly/nonassembly would’ve gone with my Nord
et al.
The Weary Eons
... And then as the weary eons pass
and decay, I was
doing some
test borings out in the garage and discovered that even rudimentary
packing practices were missed, and some boxes didn’t get enough packing
paper — the ones on the bottom of the enormous pile caving
in
from the massive weight of the heavier ones cunningly stacked on top.
... But the best surprise, so far, was after it seemed the dust had
cleared but for a few
loose ends, which included an odd 5’ shelf that looked
like somebody else’s furniture,  with
crude injuries on
its unfinished
side; perhaps something I had rescued
from some-assembly-required junk
in the streets — but how, then, did it get moved? (I managed,
intentionally, to leave my substantial horde of such found junk
behind.) ... The lonely shelf was packed
with some odd little black pieces of wood
— and then I realized! That was
my shelf — disassembled! Ripped-apart with gay abandon! I laughed
and
laughed at the playful destruction of Liberty United!
What jolly
jests they played!
... But
the hits keep
coming. ... I was at last trying to open a little drawer
on a
faux antique wooden table thing we have — conceivably pre-war
faux antique! — and the amazing skilled operatives had screwed
the
drawer in! ... For some reason one of them felt obliged to
try and
put the
top back on, which they had torn apart in the destructive disassembly
process, and so he screwed some 3’’ wallboard screws —
presumably
mine —
from the bottom into the thing. If he’d just left them sticking out
a
little more so they’d clear the drawer a little additional bit, I
might’ve never noticed....
... But
they didn’t steal anything! ... In my anguish and rage I had dark
suspicions but after months of careful tests and random chaos, not a
thing. They wrecked
stuff, but
nothing missing. ... Then again I suppose we hardly had anything worth stealing,
unless you’re
an
antique electronics addict....
The 2nd Car & the Last Boxes
But
there is always an epilog. And we returned again to the
North for the fall, and the last boxes, and the second car in which
they
waited. ... Then we got
there, and we just
fedexed the boxes so there’d be space in the car to buy more junk
on
the way back! ... But I had to turn on the heat at the motel; it was
53° out there. Time to go home to my 500 boxes, and the warmth....
 The
Middle of the Journey
...
Sun
9/29/2013. My music room, future site of further Nordesque
frolics, is clear, sort-of. A few still-unpacked boxes are intentional
remnants, gadgets for which I haven’t, and may never have,
tables/shelves. ... Checking my meticulous records, I get an early date
of Wed 2/27/2013, which’d make it 214 days in the Great Move today.
... And only 300 or so boxes to go — the half-life of the 600 or
so I started with!
The Last Box
Sunday,
November 24,
2013. Well
I guess it was a short half-life;
yesterday my beloved helpmate
unpacked the last Liberty
Destructive Service box, marked
“books” but filled as usual with a cornucopia of beloved junk,
and now
the only remaining unpacked boxes are ones I
packed and described in excruciating detail, and won’t unpack until
we
get that fourth dimensional extra space or I take them to the curb. And
we
are done. ... Now back to resurrecting
the
organ....
—
the cranky but warm-enough-at-last-I-hope programmer
P.S. Thursday, November 28, 2013 6:19 am. Global warming
has
followed me! It’s below 50º out there in my sunny paradise! According
to my regiments of indoor/outdoor thermometers, acquired to ward-off
Northern climate change. ... And according to the actual outdoors, for
which I had to seek out my foresightedly-retained box of sweat
shirts....
Saturday,
November 30, 2013. We finally moved the last few dawdling boxes from
the intermediate base camp, and
it is truly done at
last ... 276 days of the Great Move. ... And to my considerable
surprise,
they have seasons
in Florida!
Who knew, with all the scurrilous Northeastern mockery? ... I must
admit, without much thought I had been counting on hot-all-the-time,
and our arrival in August was gratifying that way — but in the fall
we’ve had 50º nights! Yikes! ... No ice storms however, so far. ...
But
we have
had ...
 The
Duck
Wed
12/4/13 6:20? am. Googling
for “Florida Stupid Ducks” got me the image of our new mascot,
supposedly a “muscovy” duck, but currently, even as I scriven,
residing
in our immense entirely useless fireplace. Which, I hasten to add, is
the
normally chic adornment of the splendiferous owenlabs studio
... & duck reserve. ... And Lo! at this very
moment,
the duck has fallen, just about 6:30 am, with the usual  vast
enormous cranking noises which it has been regaling me since the night
before last, from the flue into the fireplace proper, where a bowl of
water and bits of bialy await, to tempt it into this very action.
Now I can see and hear the poor shadowy
creature in its prison of cardboard erected by our intrepid duck
hunters, sipping its bits of water. When I
approached with a flashlight, it made a vast frightening battering
convulsion as it defended its stupid
territory from the
incursions of
strange evil lights. ... And then a short while later, it shot its head
out of the top of the cardboard, I shouted at it and it went back
inside
where it cowers silently hoping the predators will depart — but in
that
brief instant I thought it didn’t look like the muscovy duck, it
looked like
some
green migratory creature. ... We await the duck hunters with their
pillow cases and expertise....
Freedom
In the event, it was
a muscovy duck, when the duck hunters let it loose from its dish barrel
on our front yard into the
free suburban skies, into
which it flew with a frantic haste, startling an early morning
pedestrian or two. ...
But the creature that stuck its head out of the fireplace before was a
fierce combative thing, no suburban wanderer, nor the freeloaders I
shouted off my lawn a few weeks ago. Showing that sufficient fear
engenders heroism. ... The muscovy were introduced to beautiful Florida
as pets, presumably because their advanced stupidity made them so
easy-going. And when the fireplace duck wasn’t preparing to fight
for
its stupid life, it was
quiet
in its dark cardboard prison, awaiting
a chance of escape when the
giant mammals chattering around it shut-up and it could sneak away. ...
And it occurred to me that even a duck in the fireplace craves society;
giant mammals or no, it made less frenzied noise after the duck
hunters opened the flue, so it was no longer obviously imprisoned in a
metal tube. ... That was the day before it fell into the fireplace
proper....
So alligator attacks are out; The
Duck is in. ... If I could just get them together! Hard on the duck of
course....
The
Girl
...
Wed 12/11/13 8:40 am. So the duck in the fireplace
was a girl
duck, who don’t
have the facial wattles of the glorious males. Of course; as my beloved
opined, she was just trying out the chimney as a typical tree-like
nesting place. I realized this as I chased one of these creatures off
my lawn this morning, finally so energetically it burst into flight —
which takes a lot of chasing with the local muscovy idlerati — and
noticed she had not the male uglification. ... I live in trembling fear
that she was
the chimney
duck, so enamored of her experience she wants to come and live with us
and help us understand Florida better. ... And that
was why the fireplace duck looked so fierce, poking its head out that
morning;
she was a girl.
... And, I finally
realized, probably a pregnant
girl....
 Duck
Redux
It is just
as I feared; the creature has returned with reinforcements, to a
ridiculously vulnerable place on the front lawn within striking
distance of the fireplace. My beloved
assures me they won’t proliferate in swarms and batter
against our chimney, but I am hoping for the lizards — or that gila
monster
I saw crossing the road the other day. Or perhaps an alligator will
make a special visit in the night. ... But
maybe the duck’s stupidity is smart. Perhaps she takes advantage
of her craven
welfare-seeking tolerance of human beings and nests at the street side
of the garage, where people and cars scare away many of the predators
who would eat her eggs. ... Nothing inhibits the lizards, but I doubt
they’ll get far with her....
Well
sadly
it turned-out the strategy was just stupid: duck 0, racoon (?) 6
or seven eggs scattered in pieces across the lawn. I am torn in my
loyalties;
on
the one hand I’m glad she’s been discouraged in an emphatic
way,
and
perhaps she is less likely to seek our chimney or garage for future
muscovy frolics, and we don’t get to see her shepherding her flock
around the swimming pool. On the other hand,  I
was kinda looking
forward to the latter, no matter how annoying. ... But such is the
decree of nature with its “unseasonal” global warming, which
brought
temperatures down to 50° (!!!) and our space heaters in from the
garage, and may have spurred a wily predator to unusual efforts.
...
And then, in my increasing familiarity with the muscovy welfare class —
I caught one of them furiously shaking itself off after it got caught
in the rain in a Publix parking lot, so devoted to idleness are they —
I realized the wastrels I’ve been abusing are the male
muscovy, all with the astonishingly-ugly red wattle!
... The females, I assume, do the hard work out in the swamp to the
West.
... Except of course for our delusional welcoming
committee....
 Not
Muscovy
And
in the turning seasons a year later, slightly more respectable ducks
showed-up, and did not stay to settle-down, and begged no welfare.
However they seemed to amuse themselves for a while in the morning.
|
 ...
Florida Tips ’n’ Tricks ...
The
Flowers: The
state is shockingly deficient in lurid flowering vegetation (probably
because of the cold), but
Michael’s Crafts has an excellent
selection, artisanally fabricated
of the finest plastics
and immortal chemicals, which I deployed with gratifying effect in some
derelict pots in the front. ... As the glorious days passed, it became
apparent the pots weren’t all that derelict, and invasive living
plants are attacking my beautiful plastics! ... Actually
some of the plants aren’t too shabby and really are almost
as good as the fakes, except no living lurid flowers, just sort-of
subtropical
house plants. The weeds
I’m
driving out with ferocity....
And
then I found a lizard frozen onto one of the plastic leaves! The
pitiful little thing must’ve had some strange attraction and obscure
chemical action glued him to the treacherous imitation plant, and he
died. The lizards, like the millipedes, are careless of life, and are
regularly dying in and out of the house. Of course the lizards are
cute, and the millipedes loathsome. ... It took a bolt cutter to remove
the errant leaf+lizard — those Michaels Crafts flowers are tough....
The
Cold: People
who move here will sometimes whine about all that closet space wasted
with those warm coats they foolishly brought down ha ha, in relentless
promotion of the ideal
of always-warm Florida. ... I haven’t quite gotten the down coats
out, but I am very glad
I have warm things for the winter morning’s 60°-or-worse weather
—
42° one morning! 46° @ 7:30 am 12/12/17. ... Actually I didn’t even
realize the house had
heat
— which  apparently
most
Florida houses do, and for which I am deeply grateful. ... Still, it’s
marvelous fun to go on about how we hardly ever
turn-on the heat, which is certainly true enough — but it’s
only fun if you have
heat, which
we didn’t when it was 50° one tragic morning (11/2/14) and I found
out my newly-installed central ac/heat didn’t
heat.
... Once more, like my pitiful ethernet failure
in executive oversight, I didn’t make
the guy test
the heat, demonstrating
once again the cosmic validity of Owen’s Second
Rule. ... Even in paradise....
One
of the charming features of our paradisiacal land is weather reports
routinely lie. @ 11/17/19 for instance my iPad’s Accuweather claimed
it
was getting up to 70° & sunny, and there was no
sun and it never got above 65°. I suspect this is a combination of
traditional chamber-of-commerce puffery + the modern
global-whatever-it-this-week climate religion, both of which insist
that Florida is always
warm, and
probably getting warmer. ... If only it were so....
The
Power: Like
other power companies, at least away from the all-important urban
centers, Florida Flicker & Flash likes to pull the plug
randomly
when it feels like it at times nobody’ll notice like 6 am Sunday.
So
pay no attention to those outages; they’ll be back on within 15 minutes
or a few hours after they’ve rearranged the extension cords and
had a few cups of coffee, and denied everything....
 The
Air Conditioning: With my
extensive Florida
experience, I can offer this handy factoid: there are two
seasons in Florida, the inadequate
air conditioning season and of course the adequate.
The latter lasts from around October to March, often extending into
April as the global climate fraud gets chillier. ... And sadly, as I
grow older & feebler, I yearn more and more for the warmth of the
inadequate season — basically, I favor too-hot Florida tempered by
air
conditioning, the way the Deity intended.
... And I will
see if adding a
14,000 BTU (~1.1 ton) Whynter “portable” a/c to the bedroom
improves things; so far @ 9/16 it seems to do the job without
the morning super-cooling, although I do
super-cool the
bedroom. And then again, I may just be getting used to
80° afternoons. And it’s entirely possible some stuffy folks wouldn’t
appreciate having a floor a/c with giant tubes running to the window;
although it goes in/out pretty easy when we batten down the hatches for
snowbird travels — i.e. as opposed to giant heavy window air
conditioners. ... None of the
foregoing, of course, applies to opulent folk who actually bought
all-year adequate air conditioning.
 6/17:
The Whynter has definitely perked things up; it’s kept the bedroom
more
than cool-enough, although there can always come a new day of
astonishing incandescent heat in which it will cower. ... 3/18: it
seems
to work out good....
9/17:
But the identical Whynters in the garage, installed early ~2014, sprung
a leak, both at once, after I turned them off for hurricane Irma. When
I turned them on a day later, they halted for condensate in an hour or
so — and when I opened the condensate plugs, they poured forth a
stream
of condensate onto the garage floor and started running again.
Actually, it was easy-enough to “fix” with the application
of
cut-up
garden hose, but it appears the Whynters’ magic ability, until then,
to
make condensate disappear somehow, failed.
And I must maintain
the garden
hose, whenever the stupid Whynter shuts down, and blow it out.
WD40:
Later R&D revealed that spraying a spurt or two of WD40 into
the Whynter’s condensate pipe seemed to clear it up wonderful. ...
There’s
a magic condensate motor inside the Whynters
—
confirmation of which, and how to laboriously replace it,
Whynter eventually
shared with me. ... & I suspect
if I had spilled out the condensate before
turning them on again, they might’ve gone-on with magical condensate
removal for many seasons more, but that’s just a guess....
The
Condensate Wars: when any
central a/c doesn’t run, it’s the condensate.
It’s
supposed to flow free and clear, removing the air conditioner’s
inevitable humidity-draining H2O
surplus, but then it doesn’t, and the
air conditioner stops its life-giving thundering, and becomes mute
&
silent. ... And
it always fools me — again and again, time after time. In the beautiful
more-temperatre North, we were so poor we had window air conditioners
which, of course, drip their condensate out into the world without fear
and favor. Since my grand Florida
adventure began,
the only
reason the air conditioning
has ever
stopped
is condensate — in at least two
residences. ... To be sure, there were invisible “freon”
(or
whatever it is) leaks which caused bad cooling and/or freeze-up, but it
only stops,
in my limited experience,
for condensate.
...
At least twice I’ve started my central AC up again by finding the
usually
accessible float switch, and mechanically poking it up, which makes the
AC go again and
spills water
all over the floor. So I’ve developed elaborate bucket and hose
strategies,
but the moral of the story is one MUST
have regular maintenance of the central AC. And if the condensate
backs-up before the next maintenance, get another maintenance company. The
Loop Point: my adequate/inadequate ravings
are not entirely demented geezerings, like on a Seinfeld episode; there
is actual science involved. The
average low-rent central air conditioner — that is, without any fancy
zones or anything — has a single
thermostat, which will have a thermometer reading. When one sets
the a/c thermostat to, say, 78°, the air conditioning should run until
the thermometer says 78° —
but that would be during adequate
air conditioning season. During the inadequate season, the thermometer
reading may wander off to sweltering higher values and never reach the
level you set. Because your air conditioning is inadequate. So
it’s not the season, but your crummy equipment. Which the fellows
we had to renovate it lied about,
because they know no-one wants to hear about how the stupid thing is inadequate — or maybe they were
just ignorant; I’m certain some
of them were. But it goes along with the giant fireplaces, inasmuch as
no one wants to spend the hot season in Florida with all that
mucky humidity oh my goodness, but instead just
the holiday season, where you’d want to light a fire
sometimes ’cause it’s so cute and it’s cold-enough. Which
it certainly
was this 2020 xmas, although of course the fireplace only makes the
place colder unless you have no
other source of heat.... Anyway, I came
here in August and thought it was going to stay wonderfully swelteringly
hot forever,
even with inadequate air conditioning. But it didn’t; but my assortment
of Whynter “portable” air conditioners seems to plug the gap....
 The Fans: There
is no excuse
really. Wikipedia
claims ceiling fans improve “climate control energy efficiency”
but only
when
it’s cold, obviously, so why does every condo in Florida got ’em?
—
they only decrease
a/c effectiveness,
by blowing hot air down. ... Obviously the Florida geezers remembered Casablanca,
Key Largo,
etc., and knew
there should be ceiling fans in paradise. Which of course there should
be — before
air conditioning.
But
the crazed cheap geezers’d pretend they didn’t need
a/c except
in
August maybe, and run the useless ceiling fans, and thusly inflict
endless
suffering
on innocent relatives and
themselves. ... But of course it turned-out the outside
fans (previous broken units pictured  ) actually do
provide a little amusing breeze, and so we paid exorbitant prices to
fix
’em....
The
“Sog”:
A peculiar-to-florida I think weather condition where it rains for
about 15 years (approximate). Not a sky-splitting deluge, but weeks
of drizzle unending with, to be sure, the regular sky-splitting deluge.
Presumably caused by Republican Climate
Change or the unsigned Kyoto Accords. Or Paris? ... But at least
it’s not cold....
 The Door
In the frozen North, I had a picture I called
“the door into summer”  ; an unremarkable image
of what it looked
like through my front door in the summer. I would pitifully worship
it through the ice storms of Republican climate change.
In my beloved Florida, I have walked
through that
door. Except for the occasional chilly winter
moments ... lest I
forget,
I suppose. ... But I have
no
regrets.
... A
kindly neighbor relayed an internet story: On groundhog
day, a palm tree sees its shadow — so there will be 12 more months
of
summer....
 The
Winter
Fri 2/28/20. But the neighbor’s
story lied:
sadly, after years of innocent amusement & pitiful denial, I’ve
finally come to terms with the regrettable certainy that, despite
endless global-whatever-it-is-this-week, Florida does
have an evil
cold Winter. ... Lots
of
it — entirely
too much as
far as I’m concerned. ... 48° last night. ... The Door
into Summer
certainly hasn’t closed;
but it does
swing alarmingly shut from day-to-day, in the bitter season.
... But all is not lost — even ’though it was 48°
last night, it is a balmy 60° right now in paradise,
versus 34° @ my beloved Long Island of yesteryear.
... And the occasional Long Island ice storms are still unlikely here.
...
I hope....
|
— the
sometimes
warm-enough-at-last programmer
|
—
at the top of the page, the very top of the header text is cut
off — I went to the LJ6 in settings / printers, right-clicked,
“properties”, “paper” tab, “Unprintable Area”
button, and changed the
“top” value from 83 to 250 like all the others, and all was
well.
That’s in Windows 98; in XP it seems to print OK — but different
—
and in any case there’s no comparable adjustment I could find.
See, my 
P.S.
In my very brief survey of these things on the web, I should mention
va.zip
“Visual Analyser 8” which I found at 
