Life in America - I made the move.

[Mr Zog]

I suppose you put that on every window? Do the bolts stay in the frame and you then just slide the tin over them and tighten it?

Edit: ignore my questions. You explained it already. My reading and comprehension skills were not so good

brannewyn?   

[Mr Zog]

I set my alarm for 5 am.

When it went off I got out of bed immediately before I changed my mind. Made a coffee, and got dressed. Headed out to the lagoon.

It was still dark when I got there, but I started throwing lures. Surface poppers, Rapala's, swim baits, jerk baits, paddle tails, even a Sabiki rig. All I got was one tiny glass minnow on the Sabiki, and a small Ladyfish that ate the Sabiki. Released them both. Not a good morning for catching fish.

But it was a beautiful sunrise. I was in a good place.

I had been pretty down for some time now, but this morning I got some head space going, sorted out some kak inside the pip, and felt good.

So good in fact that you guys get something that I never do.

I took a selfie 

[Mr Zog]

I left the lagoon around 8, home by 8:30.

Got started installing more of the hurricane shutters.

As immigrant mentioned, I am drilling a hole right through the aluminium frame for the windows, and installing a 3 1/2 inch bolt through the hole. When the washers and nyloc nut is in place and tight, there is still about 1 inch of threads left. Enough to get a good purchase for the steel shutters. I guess that the steel is around the same thickness as the IBR sheeting we get in SA for roofing, not very thin, pretty strong. And the shape that it is moulded into makes it very resistant to damage from flying objects.

Once the bolt is in place I slide the sheets over them and secure them in place with a wingnut.

I also had to cut 12 of the sheets that I had bought shorter by about a foot. I clamped and bolted them all together and got the electric Sawzall out. It was still a big job, but not too bad with good tools 

I got all the shutters done today, with the exception of the two sheets that I want to secure to the porch door. I want to be able to open the door in a storm (during a lull, or when the eye moves over, so the dogs can have a pee, or we can survey damage. It will also be a second way out of the house should there be an emergency (like a fire, tree falls on the roof, walls start blowing away, etc.). The primary escape route will be through the garage door. Even though it is electrically operated, it has a pull-tab that disengages the motor and you can just push it up by hand. Direct route to the vehicles for escape.


I'm pretty chuffed with the progress.

After the work was done I went off to Walmart and bought a pair of readers at 1.75 strength (as per my eye doctor) and a new pair of tekkies for work. My old tekkies have started losing their soles... I also picked up some supplies for home, like bread and cheese and mince.

Back home I fired up the grill and cooked a pork rib that I had in the freezer for some time. I just rubbed it with braai spice, none of the  BBQ sauce and kak that the yanks use, I like to taste the meat not the sauce.

I also opened up the bottle of Klipdrif Premium that DarkMan sent to me.    I had been saving for a special occasion, and a braai IS a special occasion.

O. M. G.   

Moedersmelk 

[Oubones]

Sometimes it is good to get some headspace, even if the fishing is not good!
Lovely sunrise but hell did you really have to spoil it with your mug?
Joking, glad to see you happy!
I thought of you yesterday!
I got stuck with frozen diesel in the cold and thought of how I used to follow your thread on the life on the mine!
I have not heard from Stoffie in a while, do you still have contact with him?

[CraigRK]

Back home I offloaded the panels, then measured and calculated how many bolts, washers, and nuts I would need to mount them. Then I headed off to Home Depot to get the hardware I needed. I wanted to use Stainless Steel bolts and nuts and washers, but that would have worked out at over $300 

Even galvanised would have been over $200

So I managed to get nickle plated bolts and nuts and washers. Even so, the hardware came to $140 

Morning Mr Zog!  I very seldom post, but read this thread religiously since being introduced to it by Grizz.

Family Zog's exploits are an inspiration to me as well, even though I made the move many years early, and to Mud Island like Grizz.

Reading about your hardware issues, yes, they are much more expensive than one first expects.  I note that Home Depot seems to be your goto store.  Here in the UK we have Screwfix and Toolstation which are catalogue stores (with local outlets) who undercut the DIY Warehouses significantly.  (Lately Screwfix pricing isn't as good as they were bought by one of the big Warehouse chains, but as they sell in bulk they still tend to be cheaper).

Well, the point of the message was that I was wondering if something similar was available in the USA.

I find that I can probably buy a pack of say 100 bolts of a particular size from Toolstation for the same price as maybe 8 or 10 at the big DIY Warehouse which is a block further down the road.

Glad you got your bike there and a pity about the damage, but I did think that maybe you would spend some of the downtime while sorting paperwork checking it over.  The many years of non-use won't have done it many favours.

All the best,
Craig

[grizz]

Excellent selfie.

That really should be a screensaver for you, or somehow a way to remind you to smell the roses from time to time.

Well done on the home protection.

[Maverick]

THE BIKE IS HERE 

I wish I could just take it for a quick spin around the block... but if the cops bust me I'll be in seriously deep shit. So for now it will just reside in the garage or the workshop, until I get it registered here, and until I get my bike license done. I will probably get some small things sorted out on it in the meantime...

Some pics of the bike, and the inspection team. I wonder if they can still smell the same smells it had back in SA all those years ago?

Mr Zog out of interest is there no gravel or bushland close by where you could load the bike on the trailer and have a spin or something? I know most gravel roads etc is falls under normal road regulations and stuff but hopefully there is a place where you can just check everything out again 

[Mr Zog]

Armco for houses...?   

It's really gratifying that you were able to buy your panels just when they had them on special...!   
Maximising a windfall...

BTW, I saw a brilliant way to beautify and organise files in the office of a lecturer at Uni.
He took an art poster and cut it into sections and pasted the sections to the visible side of the files on the shelf.
So, when the files were correctly ordered, they formed a picture to admire, instead of a boring row of files.
Perhaps a little dash of paint as a mural would assist in decorating your panels while putting them in the correct order too?

I used this same system many many years ago...

I had a big box of cassette tapes in my old Ford Escort. About 50% of them were taped from LP's. I cut out some girly pics from the Scope, and sliced them into strips, sticking a strip onto the spine of each tape's fold-in label, and then re-inserted them into the plastic covers. When the tapes were in order they showed off the sexy girls 

I have numbered the steel panels in a way that will ensure that they can be installed the correct way when the hurricanes come. 

[Skeltonsc]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

[mox]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

The later ones had silver scratch offs 

[Wayne]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

Yeah confused me too

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[Welsh]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

Yeah confused me too

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Not half as confused as I was arriving here in 1981and finding titties had Stars!!! So our driver used to go to the corner café for us on a Friday, so I told him (with my apparent accent) I wanted a packet of chips and a Scope, I got a packet of chips and a Skaap.

[1190]

Things are getting beyond crazy for guys in your previous profession...

'Barbaric': Two KZN paramedics shot, robbed after fake emergency call

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/barbaric-two-kzn-paramedics-shot-robbed-after-fake-emergency-call-20190619?

shared via @News24

[Tom van Brits]

Things are getting beyond crazy for guys in your previous profession...

'Barbaric': Two KZN paramedics shot, robbed after fake emergency call

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/barbaric-two-kzn-paramedics-shot-robbed-after-fake-emergency-call-20190619?

shared via @News24

Yes, the first 2 paramedics that got murdered was working with us at Akasia EMS in 2001: Phillip van der merwe and Du Plessis (we called him Doeppie, I can't recall his real name)
Their ambulance was full and they transferred a patient from one ambulance to another when they were both shot dead. The other ambulance guys were told to leave, luckily nothing happened to them. Then the Greyling paramedic that got shot in crossfire - his Jacket was framed and still hang at ER24 HQ. His brother Cornel Greyling then immigrated to Australia and I think he was the first SA paramedic to leave the country for good.
After that there were sporadic incidents of robberies on paramedics, assault and killing. Not all made the news, and does it even help since the news is just sort of sensation to many? I got in trouble while working for the private ambulance service (voluntry shifts) when I switched the ambulance off on a call and locked it.....I forgot the lights on which almost killed the battery. Fact is; you cannot leave an ambulance unattended because people steal the equipment and a normal 3 lead ECG is priced at R100K and that is a cheapy.

I am sure Gary don't miss this, our medics frame of reference is a tad different to most other guys out there doing something different for a living. I respect every EMS worker today having to work in all the challenging conditions in South Africa.

[Sardine]

I set my alarm for 5 am.

When it went off I got out of bed immediately before I changed my mind. Made a coffee, and got dressed. Headed out to the lagoon.

It was still dark when I got there, but I started throwing lures. Surface poppers, Rapala's, swim baits, jerk baits, paddle tails, even a Sabiki rig. All I got was one tiny glass minnow on the Sabiki, and a small Ladyfish that ate the Sabiki. Released them both. Not a good morning for catching fish.

But it was a beautiful sunrise. I was in a good place.

I had been pretty down for some time now, but this morning I got some head space going, sorted out some kak inside the pip, and felt good.

So good in fact that you guys get something that I never do.

I took a selfie 

That sunrise just screams good vibes! Thank you, Gary

[Fudmucker]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

I didn't - my girlfriend showed me hers when I was 13.

[jaybiker]

I remember Scope 

First time I saw a real pair of  Titties I was expecting the stars on the nipples 

I didn't - my girlfriend showed me hers when I was 13.

When I was a small kid tits were in those days a form of race discrimination. We weren't supposed to even know that they existed, presumably we were assumed to have forgotten being fed!

But in our local 'cinema' held once weekly in the village hall they used to show documentaries about native African tribal life with lots of black boobies which I guess didn't count the same as white ones. That's the way the adults' thinking seemed to work back then.

Wasn't too long though before I found out that white boobies weren't all that different. 

[Mr Zog]

So our geyser decided to call it a day 

I checked it out, I have learned a whole lot about them the last few years. I tried to drain it but it was so silted up that no water would come out the drain. I tested the heating elements, they were fine on the resistance, and the thermostats (the geysers here have two elements and two thermostats) were good too. I think that the sediment in the bottom was just so deep that the lower element was inside the sediment and could not effectively heat the water.

So I bit the bullet and got a "new" one. New in inverted commas, because it is actually a used one, but new to me. It was installed (by another tech) but didn't make the water hot. So it was removed and replaced with another one under warranty. I saw it at the shop and had a look at it, and found that a simple wiring mistake had caused the fault. I fixed the fault and since then it has been standing at the shop, for sale at a reduced price.

So this evening when I got home I removed the old water heater, and installed the new one. I also fitted a new shut-off valve (the old one wasn't working properly) and a new expansion tank. I also fitted a new plastic drip pan under the water heater. All piping was copper pipe, and all joints were soldered.

So since we are now on "City Water", the quality of the water coming into the house is a lot better than it was when the house was supplied with well water, and I now have a water softener / carbon filter as well to further "clean" the city water. So I am hoping that the really good water that the geyser gets will help it to survive for many years.

I'm not sure what the boss will charge me for the stuff that I used to install the geyser (I sent him a list of all the bits and pieces that I used), but I'm guessing that it will be around 30% of what I would have paid if I had to get a company in to do it for me. A new geyser installed usually goes for around $1000 (that is the average invoice I write for a geyser supply and install). I'm hoping to get away with around $300. A fraction of what it normally costs, but still a whole lot of money that I really don't have lying around.

Eish.

But at least I can have a hot shower again 

[Fudmucker]

The joys of having a home...!
Like children, maintaining them in good condition is a drain on the pocket.
Fortunately my kids are now earning themselves, but one still seems to continue to contribute.
Grandkids are one's dividend for investing in children...

[steveindar]

Grandkids are one's dividend for investing in children...

More like for not murdering your own kids....

Sent from my TECNO CF8 using Tapatalk