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Charles' hillbilly handkerchief
Thursday, October 25 2018
Before leaving for work this morning, I wanted to lower the capacitance on my oxygen sensor hack, so I snipped one of the legs of a 100 microfarad capacitor between one of the pins of the current-limiting resistor and ground. I did this to prevent P0139 OBD2 errors.
Despite last night's excesses, I didn't initially feel anything like a hangover. But at about 11:30 am I felt an unusual pressure in my head behind my eyes. It eventually passed without really affecting me that much. By noon I was feeling good enough to walk to the burrito place for my weekly burrito. I arrived there a little after noon and I was the only person there. I'd beat the lunch rush! On the walk back to the office, a beautiful grey cat sized me up from across the street and then came to the street's edge to check me out (though hiding slightly behind a trashcan). I walked up to the other side of the can and waited for the cat to come up to me. When he/she did, I extended a hand. Initially he/she freaked out at this gesture but quickly he/she decided I was okay and allowed me to pet him/her. Once I'd done that and proved I wasn't a menace, he/she started rolling around in the leaf-strewn grass (as cats always do after making new friends). Here's a photo:
On the drive home, just west of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, I felt a wave of unpleasantness tinged with anxiety pass through me, probably a late-breaking manifestation of IPA hangover. That, coupled with the setting sun burning into my eyes made me wonder if I was good to drive. At about that time, I couple tailgaiting assholes passed me at high speed in the left lane. It's never smart to drive like that when the sun is in your eyes.
The check engine light came on as I approached Hurley, and when I read it I saw it was a P0420 error, meaning the removal of the 100 microfarad capacitor was too aggressive. Later tonight I would replace it with a 47 microfarad capacitor. You can see the pattern here: successive approximation.
When I came in the door, I saw Gretchen had managed to stoke up a blazing hot fire in the woodstove. It was so hot that scraps of wood debris on the stove's top surface were spontaneously igniting. What with all the lingering moisture in all the wood, it's been hard lately to build such fires. But Gretchen had used a lot of cardboard to get things started.
When Gretchen mentioned that perhaps our just-in-time electric hot water heater might be on the fritz, I thought of an easy fix: to turn on the boiler and make all the hot water heating the boiler's responsibility. Gretchen had been wanting me to turn on the boiler for over a week anyway, since the frosty weather arrived. The boiler's being on meant that the bath I took tonight was the first of the season heated by burning oil.
[REDACTED]
In the murky post-sunset light, I gathered some white ash from beneath the powerline just west of the Farm Road near the house. Unfortunately, the wood was slimy and semi-rotten, not the kind of wood good for immediate use that I need to be gathering. I did, however, managed to gather a lot of it using the handtruck.
Of some concern to me this evening was the fact that Clarence didn't seem to be eating the lumps of wet food we've been offering him. He still has the inertia to beg for such lumps, but when given to him, the most he would do would be to sniff them. Later tonight, though, he must've gotten hungry, because I managed to get him to eat a little wet food. As long as he's eating, there's hope he's not going to completely skeletonize (something he's well on his way towards).
In other cat news, the condition that has made Charles the Cat a chronic cougher the whole time he's lived here seems to have moved up into his head. Now he does more sneezing than coughing, often producing disgusting ropes of greenish snot that dangle from his nose or end up on our things. I've referred to this as Charles' "hillbilly handkerchief." It's kind of cute, in a completely revolting way.
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