Last week I contacted a colleague from my school who was an electrician about installing an outlet at my house to charge an electric vehicle. They were unable to do the job, but gave me a name of a former student who works in the electrical field that would be able to do a side job. When I first texted with that person they were under quarantine and needed a week before they would be able to come out and do the job. Unfortunately, today I found out they no longer have the availability to help me out, so I’m back looking for an electrician. I will most likely look into contacting the person who installed our new electrical panel when we first purchased our house. Will follow up on that in a later post.
Walking On Ice
A quick recap of today. The weather was extremely cold yesterday, but was slightly warmer today. So, we decided to talk a walk around the city. There was no wind, so while it was cold outside, once we were bundled up it was not too bad. We took the T to Bowdoin and then walked through Beacon Hill. We came out on Beacon Street and walked past Cheers. We noticed the pond at the Boston Garden was iced over and lots of people were walking and skating on it, so we decided to head over and walk around on the ice.
I don’t remember ever walking on an iced over pond before, so we took our time and walked all the way across the pond to the other side of the garden and exited on Boylston Street. We made our way down Boylston to Hynes Convention Center and then walked over to Comm Ave and back to the Massachusetts State House. We ended up having a snack and a pint of Guinness at Emmets Pub before heading home.
AFCON: Mali v Tunisia
I don’t normally write much about soccer, but safe to say I do watch a lot. Mostly it is the Premier League, but right now the AFCON tournament is underway, and so I am catching the highlights each day. Of note was the Mali v Tunisia game today, in which the referee inexplicably ended the game roughly 5 minutes early, in the 85th minute. He quickly realized his mistake and restarted the game, but then blew his whistle around 89:40 to end the game, 20 seconds before the 90, and well before and stoppage time.
Obviously, the teams were very concerned about the apparent breach of rules. Both sides left the field as the game was over, only to be told much later in the dressing rooms that the game would continue. Tunisia refused to come out and play, citing the fact that many of its players were already taking ice baths.
Not a good look for AFCON, but hopefully there will be some explanations for a real deviation from protocol. Here is a good article explaining what happened in detail.
Sunday Cleaning
With the Premier League being on a hiatus due to the FA Cup this weekend, I took the time normally spent watching soccer to clean up my office. I worked out in the morning and then got to work organizing and cleaning. It’s been a while since I last cleaned the office, so there were a lot of things that needed to get done. Mainly a lot of airplane study material that I no longer needed could be trashed. Additionally, I realized there is the need to get some organizational storage strategies for all the different types of items I’ve accrued, hardware for electrical, screws, nuts, bolts, wire, velcro, tools, etc.
Spent several hours in my room downstairs, and the mini split unit did a good job of keeping the room cozy, since it isn’t attached to our baseboard heating system. Did not finish my cleaning, but it was a good start. Will continue next weekend as well. Ordered dinner from Istanbul Diner Cafe and was in bed reading by 9pm.
Toothbrush Update
A few days ago I wrote about how my wife’s Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush failed. The brush still turned on, so the battery was not an issue. After taking it apart I was able to discover it was a mechanical fault, a metal piece had sheared off making it so the head would no longer vibrate.
I was able to locate a new piece on Ebay to replace the broken hardware and it was an easy install to replace the part. The toothbrush is now functioning properly again, and a $10 part has saved us $100+ dollars on replacing the electric toothbrush.
A few pics of the replacement part and the broken part below. In the first picture on the right you can see the old part with the sheared off piece. The middle image shows the sheared off part with a metal attachment. A screw (not shown) goes through the attachment piece and through a part connected to the brush mechanism, and then screws into the captive nut on the sheared off part (you can see the bottom of the captive nut sticking out of this piece. The photo on the left shows the not tip assembly purchased from Ebay. You simply need to unscrew and then attach to the vibrating mechanism on the toothbrush.
We may not be able to fix everything, but we should endeavor to fix what we can rather than throwing something away.
