Siding lift for replacing siding on a 2nd story wall.

The bottom of one of the siding panels on the North side of my house was starting to rot from the bottom.  The old siding is made of what feels like cardboard.  A number of years ago I got involved in a class-action suit against the siding manufacturer and receive un-remembered thousands.

It’s actually lasting fairly well except certain parts so I’m just replacing what needs replacing with Hardie cement board siding.  This particular one has been on my mind for a long time marked as rather difficult because it is on a 2nd story and I have nobody to help me.

I spent the last few months looking at it and designing ways to do it in my head.  I was set on using a hand cranked winch and using a pulley on the eaves to hoist it up.  The other day, while sitting in the hot tub, I came up with a better plan.

Using two 15 foot 2x4s, cross members and a pulley I could just crank a 80 lb panel up there and slide it right into position all by myself.

Yesterday I built the mechanism and today I removed the old siding and hoisted the new one right into place.  My plan worked perfectly and cost me around $50 for the hoist and $30 for the siding.

Damn I’m good.  Natural born engineer here.  Congratulate me.

 

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OMG! Time is going incredibly fast now.

Holy Cow!  Time is really going fast now.  Common people might not notice the acceleration of time over the years but I can see it clearly.

A couple of years ago, I remodeled my garage building a nice workbench and cabinets including a built in TV.  I bought the TV off the display because it was the last one. It came with a label on it.  The date was printed clearly.   7/08/02!

It has already been TWELVE years since I remodeled my garage.  Holy Fucking Shit! Twelve years went by in the space of three.   That means time is running 400% faster than it should be.  That means our universe is spiraling very near to the event horizon of the space-time singularity.

I quit my job just last month in May.  Now the calendar says OCTOBER!

I just saw a picture on Facebook of an acquaintance’s nephew who was just recently a curly headed toddler.  Now he is graduating from college!

Soon time will be going so fast that babies will die of old age in two years.   I wonder if the universe can even handle such a rapid passage of time without the centrifugal force in the electrons in the atoms that make up our existence overcoming their nuclear bonds and flying off into space causing all physical matter to suddenly evaporate.

I don’t think we have much time left.

I should not be here

I can’t get over the feeling that I should not be here.  That I should not exist.

I feel like it is a constant struggle to maintain life where life is not expected.

I feel like I am living in an alternate universe as one of the timeline skews that has long since been forgotten.   Nothing is as it is supposed to be.  It is kind of a Bizarro world where everyone else thinks everything is normal yet only I can see that it is all backwards and frustrating.

This is not that way it is supposed to be.  Why can’t everyone else see it?  How do I get back to the right timeline?  I don’t want to be in this one.  It is wrong.  It is not supposed to be like this.

Every time a decision is made, the vector of time splits.  One line leads off in the direction of the first choice.  Another line leads off in the direction of the second and third choices.  This repeats over and over until the number of parallel universes becomes virtually infinite.

Somewhere, there is another me living in the Primary Timeline where everything is right and perfect. I have a family, friends and a wonderful life.   Every second that passes takes me further away from it.  Every decision makes the return path more complex.  It’s a good thing this timeline is reaching its terminal point.  Soon all our suffering will be over.  Doesn’t that sound great?

I wonder if when our timeline ends our existence will revert to the parent timeline or we just cease to exist.  I hope we cease to exist because we would have to revert an infinite number of times to reach the Primary line.  Seems unrealistic.

 

 

The Precipitational Uncertainty Principle

I’ve noticed that rain is much like a watched pot.  The more you watch it, the longer it takes to boil.

Rain is rare in San Antonio.  The weather here takes great joy in being hot and dry until everything bakes to a crisp including me.  Every once in a while the rain comes towards the city but evaporates as it reaches the magical barrier. 

When I was a kid, rain would come quite often but now that we have the technology to view the radar on our phones and tablets it comes less often. 

Similar to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the simple act of observing a system changes it’s function.  True in the world of quantum physics but apparently also true when it comes to rain.

Yesterday there was rain in the area.  I watched it closely on the radar willing it to come hither but it stayed yon.  I could hear the thunder and feel the rain cooled air but got nothing.   Another opportunity came late last night.  I completely avoided observing the radar and low and behold, it actually rained!    You may say that other people were watching the radar and it rained anyway but other people are not me and may not actually exist.  Therefore the only effective observer would be myself.

I guess I’ll have to stop watching the weather in hopes that it will be more likely to come my way. I only got a 1/2 inch but it was something!  Something is better than nothing in most cases.