Cleaning

Last week, I became obsessed with cleaning the garage and basement.  Now, I'm not saying that you would look at either place and go "Oh Wow"!  That's because you wouldn't have seen how bad they were before I cleaned.  Seriously, all cleaning is relative.  Your cleaning compared to your mom.  your mpm's cleaning compared to HER mom.  Your floors compared to a new developement model home compared to a hospital operating room compared to a science lab.  There is always something cleaner than you.

So my point is that I am WAY cleaner in the basement and garage than I was last week.  And in some cases, maybe for 25 years.  I used my shop vac BEHIND the water heater and I think that is the first time EVER!

Hey, I've been a bit clutterred since I moved in in 1986.

[Funny story:  The first thing I did when I moved in was nail the metal pan that held the fruit my sister sent me as a house-warming gift onto a basement frame board.  It's still there]

But anyway, I went into cleaning mode.  I spent 4 hours  moving stuff around so I could vacuum.  I brought stuff to the trash can, I brought stuff to the recycle bin, I brought stuff to a box of hazardess materials.  I folded up yards of that brown paper they use for shipping (great weed-reduction stuff between plants), I collected odds and ends of board scraps and piles of sawdust in buckets for future fires, I sorted out all the various odds and ends on the top of my workbench, etc, etc, etc.

My basement space in increased by a 1/3 and that's a lot if you think about it, and my next effort will make equal gains.  For example, 5 years ago, I bought an oval maple table at the Salvation Army store that needed "only" some sanding and refinishing.  If I don't actually do that work THIS YEAR, I'm giving it back to them.  And I have other projects too.  The attic needs plywood flooring so that I can fill it with sturdy boxes for when I more "someday".

I want to allow for fires in the fireplace too, finding space to move the fancy tablesaw out of the way of the fireplace heat.  And I need more space for woodworking tools and less for boxes of newspapers kept for years do be mulch in the compost pile I have yet to build.

I will solve one problem in the basement each week, and finish one good project in the upstairs twice a week!

First Seeds Of The New Gardening Season

I am glad to say the new gardening season is underway.  Well, I suppose you could say it started when I ordered new seeds, but it doesn't really count until a seed meets dirt!  I started on Sunday.

Does it seem a bit early?  Yes.  But many annual flowers can be planted indoors 10-12 weeks before the average last frost because they are slow to germinate (7-21 days) and grow slowly at first.  And in fact, Sunday was 9 weeks before average last frost, so I am late.  So I planted impatiens, salvia, dusty miller, butterfly weed, forget-me-not, and wave petunia.  I also planted a dozen leeks, so the veggies are started too.

I love the lighting stand I made from a storage shelf.  It originally had five 2'x4' thin plastic-coated wood shelves on a steel frame.  I added 1/2" plywood under the top 4 shelves and attached 4' fluorescent fixtures under each plywood shelf (4 tubes per shelf).  I can fit four 11"x22" planting trays on each shelf if I want, but I start the trays 2 to a shelf lengthwise to get the maximum light at the start.

It felt SO GOOD to get into the potting soil and fill the cell-packs, read the planting requirements for each seed, and PLANT THEM!  The earliest seeds to plant are usually the trickiest.  Those are the ones that are tiny, need light to germinate, and are fussy about moisture.  

Things will  be more traditional this next weekend.  -8 weeks before last average frost is the time to start the major veggies.  Tomatoes, bell peppers, broccoli, lettuces, will get planted.  The tomatoes are always my favorites.

I'm trying something new with the tomatoes this year.  In past years, I've grown mostly heirlooms (Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Prudens Purple, Aunt Gertie's Gold, and Tennessee Britches) with a couple hybrids like Big Beef for backup if the heirlooms do poorly.  Over the Winter, I read about tomato-grafting.  It's just like grafting grapevines; you put a good fruiting top on a healthier rootstock.

With the tomatoes, you put an heirloom top on a hybrid root. 


The plants are more productive because the hybrid rootstock is larger, and the plants avoid many soilborne diseases because the hybrid rootstocks are resistant to them.  I've seen comparison pictures of heirlooms alone grown along side of grafted heirlooms and the apparent production differences are impressive.  And I mean pictures from agricultural sites, not scammy commercial advertisements.

You can buy the grafted plants from catalogs at high prices, but I am going to try doing the grafting myself.  I bought some small soft clips designed for attaching the heirloom tops to the hybrid roots.  I just hope I'm adept enough for the effort.  I don't have the steadiest of hands (DDT exposure in my youth), so my efforts may not work out.

That's why I will have 2 full sets of tomato seedlings!  One set will be let to develop naturally, as if there was no grafting intended.  The other set will be for the grafting experiment.  I usually plant 2-3 of each type of tomato outside but start 6 seedlings inside of each type anyway, so I don't even have to plant more than usual.

If this works I may be the happiest gardener in the county (just guessing I'm the only person trying to graft tomato seedlings in the county the first time this year). 

All That Trash

Re-reading the Wednesday post about the tubs of used kitty litter and bags of trash, I thought I should explain a bit.

I don't pay for weekly trash pickup service because I have so little.  I used to pay $40/month for weekly trash pickup, but since I only accumulated enough to bother putting it out once a month, they tended to forget I was on their pickup route.  THEY said to just put out my little one bag each week and the driver would remember I was a customer.  Still, that was only a 5 gallon bucket per week, and seemed not worth it.

I have so little "regular" trash other than the used kitty litter.  50% of my "trash" is recyclable.  Another 20% is "film plastic" (shopping bags and shrink wrap) which my grocery store recycles to make new bags.  Most of the rest is compostable (almost nothing goes down my garage "dispose-all").  The remainder is styrofoam that nobody will accept, and that gets collected in bags in the garage for months.

That leaves the used kitty litter.  I keep a half-gallon lidded plastic container lined with a plastic shopping bag near the litter boxes and scoop everything in there.  When filled, I tie the bag up tight and set it into one of the tubs the litter comes in.  So I have a tied bag, in a tub with a tight lid, in the garage.  You can't tell its there even after several months.  And just to be a "little" more environmentally friendly, I'm looking for small biodegradable bags to use for the litter.

The landfill charges a flat rate of $5 for all "household trash" you can fit in your car.  You can pay by weight, too (they weigh the whole car going in and then leaving and charge you by the loss in weight), but I found that after 143 pounds, flat rate is cheaper.  I usually accumulate about 300-400 pounds in used kitty litter every 4-5 months, plus about 4 large bags of styrofoam and other odd stuff I can't recycle.

So basically, I got rid of 500 pounds of trash for $5 (plus gas) by driving 10 miles to the landfill, instead of paying $160-200 for weekly trash pickup I seldom used and got skipped over most of the time.

Snow Removal

A neighbor removed the snow from my driveway while I was still in bed Thursday, and I'm annoyed!  I think I know who did it, and he did my next-door neighbor's too.  He is across the street and he's the only person nearby I've seen using a snowblower (and this obviously wasn't shoveled).

Why am I annoyed?  Well, I don't mind a kind neighborly deed.  I wasn't feeling my property rights were violated.  It was even nice to have a nice clean driveway even though I wasn't planning to drive anywhere.  I didn't even hear him doing it.  Well, I might have heard and ignored the snowblower noise, assuming it was his own driveway.  I tend to ignore extraneous neighbor noises.

But I have my own snowblower.  I bought it in Spring 2011 after the three 12"+ storms of the previous Winter.  And I hadn't gotten a chance to use it yet.  We just didn't get any snow until Thursday worth using it.  It sat clutterring up my garage for 2 years until I finally moved it to the toolshed last Spring.

Wednesday, the forecast was for 4-8" of snow, so I wrestled the snowblower around to the garage, gassed it up, made sure it started, and waited with some anticipation of finally using it.  I watched the snow fall and accumulate Wednesday night.  So when I got up the next day and saw the cleared driveway, I was a bit taken aback!  We had gotten about 6" of snow.

Then it snowed more after lunch, then rained most of the midafternoon before changing to freezing rain.  Then, in early evening, it changed back to snow.  By the time I went to bed Thursday night, we had another 4" of snow.  Hurray!  Enough to snowblow!!!

I got up early today to make sure my neighbor hadn't cleared my driveway again.  I got dressed quickly and went out to use my own snowblower.  It started right up, and I had a blast using it.  It worked pretty well.  With all the rain and freezing rain that had fallen on the lunchtime snow and more snow in the evening hours, it was heavy wet snow!  Nearly slush!

Toward the end, the slushy snow froze in the discharge chute a couple of times and I had to clear the chute with a plastic plunger that came with the snowblower.  And at the street where a plow had pushed up a wall of slush 2' tall, the wheels slipped a bit.

When I later shoveled a path clear on the deck (for both myself and the cats), I found it nearly impossible to lift a whole shovelful of the stuff up and over the deck rails.  I think this was about the heaviest snow (by weight) I have ever encountered!  No wonder the snowblower struggled a bit on the driveway.

But it did handle the heavy snow well enough to assure me that regular snow will never be a problem for it.

Next time I talk to my neighbor, I'll ask if he cleared the driveway the first time.  If so, I will thank him very much for the kind act.  But I'll also tell him the story of waiting 3 years to use my own and we'll have a good laugh.  He's a genial person.

My snowblower is a good one.  I did a lot of research before I bought it.  It's a Troy-Bilt Storm 2620.  The number seems to mean 26" width and 20" high intake.  It it gas-powered (there are electrics), has powered wheels (because my driveway slopes up toward the house and there's no way I'm going to push a heavy non-powered piece of equipment up a slippery slope), separate controls for the blades and the wheels.  It even has a headlight.  But best of all, it has electric starting!  Not a battery, you plug a cord into an outlet, press a button, and then disconnect it.  I'm not 25 anymore; I appreciate all the powered help I can get, LOL!

I admire well-designed and user-friendly equipment...

So while I don't exactly hope for more snowstorms, it is sure nice to have something that will clear my 60' driveway in just 20 minutes.  If I had had to shovel that heavy snow manually, it would have taken a couple hours and I would have had to stop for a few minutes many many times and been utterly exhausted by the end.

You Always Have To Do Something Else First!

I had to drive to the landfill today because the snowblower was in the toolshed.

That actually makes sense.  Allow me to explain...

I have a narrow but deep yard.  The toolshed is in the back about 200' from the garage and the snowblower is kept in there most of the year.  While we have had a couple of light snowfalls here this Winter, they weren't worth the effort of pushing the snowblower all the way around the yard and into the garage, so I just shoveled.  But we are forecast to get between 4-8" of heavy wet snow and freezing rain tonite and tomorrow, so I wanted the snowblower available.

But the only spot in the garage large enough for the snowblower was occupied by tubs of used cat litter and big honking recycling bin (bigger than any trashcan I've even owned).  The only place I could move the recycle bin to was where the golf clubs, a snow shovel, and a hand truck were stored.  The only place I could move the golf clubs and handtruck to was where there were bags of dry but uncompostable trash.

So, I filled the SUV with tubs of kitty litter and bags of trash (and accumulated junk stashed out under the deck) and drove to the landfill and returned home.  Where the trash bags had been, I moved the golf clubs and handtruck.  Where the golf clubs and handtruck had been, I moved the big honking recycling bin.  Where the tubs of used kitty litter and the recycling bin had been, I moved the snowblower.

And that's why I had to go to the landfill in order to move the snowblower into the garage.  LOL!

Humidifier Wiring

Frustrated with the poor/confusing installation instructions that came with my new humidifier, I emailed the company.  First, I have to admit that one of my questions had an error.  I asked about the wires coming out of the transformer when I meant the drum motor.

But the rest of the reply I received was of little help  and one part I think is factually inaccurate.  But, ONE thing that was mentioned (and not an answer to any of my questions) solved my whole problem!

The wires coming out of the heat pump blower unit were (I assumed) 120v and I was distressed to see 120v going through such thin wires.  The included transformer is supposed to reduce the regular household current from 120v to 24v.  The technician mentioned looking for a connection on the blower labelled "HUM" (which I assume stands for "humidifier"). I didn't find "HUM", but I did find a spot where regular household wired went IN and the thin wires came OUT.

EUREKA!  The current was ALREADY reduced to 24v; no need for the included transformer.  And staring at the instructions one last time, I realized that while the existing wiring through the humidifier control LOOKED different from the diagram, it was functionally the same. 

I used some doorbell wire I had (which is standard for 24v circuits) and attached the drum motor wires to the existing wires.

It works!

Darn good thing, too, because I called an electrician and was told it would be $90 for a service visit and $120 per hour after that (minimum 1 hour fee).  I sure hope the new humidifier works well, because the humidity in the house today is only 19% and I am very tired of all the static electricity!

Wiring and Cabling, Part 2

Last time I mentioned the (eventually) successful connection of the new HDTV and video components to the old stereo system (with the fancy new tuner).  It's working great, even though it means I have 4 remote controls to deal with (5, if you count the "grampa remote" with the big buttons and few features).

The other wiring issue is only electric wiring, and not successful, and I am VERY frustrated.  Some background...  When I retired 8 years ago, I got tired of static electricity in Winter (I could half-turn-on fluorescent lamps just by touching them and stroking the cats caused sparks.  Taking clothes out of the dryer was actually painful) and bought a whole house humidifier.  The brand was Skuttle, and it had a cabinet attached to an opening cut in the main heater output duct.  In the cabinet was a tray of water and a sponge cylinder rotated through the tray of water whenever the heater blower was on.

I bought it locally and had it installed.  It worked great!  No static.  But a problem with the cylinder/drum humidifiers is that they get "gunky" (mold or something).  So when the sponge on the drum couldn't be cleaned anymore (yes I was too stupid/cheap/witless to just buy a new sponge drum), I did some research and found a different kind of humidifier. 

The new one had a honeycomb where water dribbled over the top and air blew through it to add humidity.  It had good ratings.  I installed it myself, but I needed an electrician to come by for a wiring problem I couldn't figure out (an outside humidity detector that adjusted the inside settings to the outside humidity - turned out it was a feature my model didn't have), but he did finish the basic wiring for me since I had paid for a visit).  But it has NEVER worked well in 3 Winters.  I couldn't get the inside humidity above 23%.  The drum type got it up to 35%.  At least there wasn't any static shock...

I should mention that I have a heat pump.  There are good and bad things about heat pumps, but one bad thing is that they dehumidify the inside air as part of the way they work.  Great in Summer, but not so great in Winter.  In Winter, I am fighting the design of the heat pump to dehumidify with a humidifier to improve that.  The condensation-collection container that pumps the collected water into the laundry tub works overtime in Winter.

So I decided to go back to the drum type.  I couldn't find a local retailer/installer, but I found a decent Skuttle brand of the same drum type on Amazon at a great price.

It arrived.  The required duct cutout was smaller than the current Honeywell honeycomb humidifier cutout, so I had to buy some sheet metal, cut a new smaller opening, and attach the sheet metal to cover the older larger hole.  Awkward tin-snip work and getting sheet metal screws holes drilled (never really easy work), but it only took 45 minutes (professional: 10 minutes; me, 45), and I covered all the edges with duct tapes.

I got the water tray and drum installed, attached the water supply, and adjusted the float that controls the water level in the tray (much like a toilet float that keeps the upper reservoir from overflowing).

The last thing was to attach the wiring that makes the drum turn when the heater is on. 

BUSTED!  I can't make any sense of the (undetailed and simple) diagrams in the installation manual.  I've stared at the unit and the instructions 4 separate times over the past 3 days.  As far as I can tell (and admittedly, electricity is NOT my favorite stuff to deal with), the diagram instructions are not only incomplete, but also completely wrong.

For example, electric wires are usually color-coded.  Red for positive, black for neutral.  Not these, they are both black!  Sometimes, electrical wires that are joined (like on a lamp cord) have one side that is smooth and the other ribbed for identification.  Not these.  The system uses a transformer that reduces standard 120 volt A/C current to 24 volt current to power the tiny motor that turn the sponge drum in the water tray. 

And they refer to "enclosing the transformer in the metal box" (for safety I assume).  No metal box, or any place to attach the transformer on the humidifier cabinet.  But there IS a 1" threaded pipe with a nut on it for attaching to SOMETHING. 

It is all quite maddening.  The Skuttle website provides absolutely NO information about installations.  There is a email address for "customer service".  I'll try that in a few minutes, but I don't expect it will be useful.  I'll probably have to hire an electrician to come by and try to figure it out.  Which probably means I could have just bought some other brand (of the same drum type) locally and had it installed at the same total price without any work on my part.

I am so completely annoyed I can't figure this out.  It possible the wiring choices don't really matter.  Immean, if I hook it up one way, the drum rotates clockwise and the other way it rotates counterclockwise and makes no difference.  But it could mean I burn out the whole motor unit.  I don't know enough to tell. 

If anyone who reads this has any guidance about the wiring, PLEASE leave a comment.  I hate to say it, but in my 60s, I'm starting to lose my willingness/ability to "just try it and see what happens"...

Wiring And Cabling

Darn I hate wiring and cable connections.  Give me a shovel and a pile of dirt to move anytime!  There's nothing complicated about shovelling dirt.

But I've had 2 run-ins with wiring stuff lately.  Both annoying, but at least one finally solved.  I'll mention the successful one today.

I've struggled to connect my TV to the stereo system a few times the past decade.  It has never worked. Mostly, the audio and video haven't matched up.  Watching people talk and having the sound even a half second off is disturbing.

Even with the new HDTV, I couldn't get it to work.  The wiring diagrams in the manuals showed wires from the cable box to the stereo.  I pulled the TV stand and the stereo cabinet out many times to look at all the possible connections.  And I don't mean to say that I understand what all those color-coded plugs mean.  But they ARE all labeled better than 20 years ago.  Or 10 years ago.

My Pioneer VSX-42 tuner is a wonder.  It allows more possibilities than I can even comprehend.  I don't even know what "pandora" IS, but I could access it if I wanted to.  Maybe I will soon.  But the problem was that "audio out" from the cable box did not match the timing on the TV picture.

So, I sat back there and stared at the back of the HDTV and stereo system for a while.  There JUST wasn't an "audio out" from the TV that I recognized.  Not even an modern HDMI  audio outlet   I stared, I fumed, I yelled.

But eventually, I saw a weird looking plug on the HDTV labeled "Digital Optical Audio Out".  No idea what that meant.  But I searched the back of the stereo tuner.  The print was so small even my reading glasses weren't enough, I had to crawl out to get a magnifying glass! 

Whoever thinks that it is easy to read orange print on white, or blue on green should be summarily executed.

But I did eventually find a similar plug on the tuner.  It was labelled "Digital Optical Audio In".  I immediately searched the manuals for the HDTV and the tuner.  66 pages of the Pioneer tuner and 35 pages of the Samsung HDTV (estimates) didn't explain WHAT "digital optical" was. 

But I figured, if there is a delay in the audio from the cable box through the stereo (and I wasn' getting any sound from the DVD player), if I could get sound direct from the HDTV to the stereo speakers, that would work for all components AND stop the audio delay.

Keep in mind that I had already spent $40 on various cables I THOUGHT would connect the HDTV to the stereo properly...

So I drove to Best Buy.  Explained the problem.  Asked about "digital optical audio"  He said "you need this" and showed me a cable.  I said "that doesn't look like the plug, and I even pushed the gateway open with a toothpick".  He said that if it has that gateway, this cable WAS the right one cuz that's the only one with a gate.  I bought it and went home.

The TV and the stereo cabinet were still pulled out for access.  I unplugged the red/white "component cables".  I attached the new digital optical cable and turned on the HDTV and the stereo.

And got NOTHING!  But the Pioneer tuner has many choices.  I rotated the knob (and remembering that the first time I got ANY sound from it took 15 seconds ).  When I turned the tuner knob to "TV", I GOT SOUND!  From the TV.  In perfect synch!

But only one speaker was giving sound.  GLOOOOM!

I dragged out the soundless speaker, and it immediately gave sound.  Oh man, just a loose wire connection!  I fixed that right off.

You want to know something odd about modern tuners?  They don't seem to have a speaker balance dial.  Matbe it exists and I haven't found it yet, but I've read and re-read all the "speaker" parts of the manuals.  OK, I pushed the chair, TV, and speakers around a bit, and NOW it is balanced.  It's almost funny, I adjusted myself an the TV to balance the speakers.

Oh and I mentioned previously that I couldn't find the remote control for the Pioneer tuner?  I found it.  Sitting right on top of the old tuner that died. Buried under other stuff in the computer room. 

But now, I am watching great TV AND listening to audio that matches the picture.  And since it comes directly off the TV, it works with all components I have.

Food

Just some food thoughts that work for me...

Brussels sprouts cut in half or quarters, mixed with 4:1 ratio mushsrooms, steamed fer 4 minutes.  With simple butter, melted shredded cheese and milk, or cheese and a little lemon juice.

Or asparagus the same ways...  Or broccoli.

Or pork stew.  Boston butt cut into 1" cubes, simmered with cubed Yukon Gold potatoes, celery, carrots, and leeks for 20 minutes with a flour slurry or cornstarch added the last few minutes.  With crushed garlic and a lot of oregano.  Boston butt doesn't get tough.

Or hot italian sausage smothered in onion and green bell peppers.

Or chicken thighs sauteed in little olive oil covered so they sort of bake, but brown nicely.  Its hard to overcook chicken thighs.

I love thinking about food even when I'm not hungry, LOL!

Sometimes, Doing Nothing Is Good

And by that title, I mean that good things sometimes come to those who just sit in frustration.

Warning, long post ahead!

Background:

Six years ago, I desired to connect my stereo system to my 1st HDTV because flat screens are too thin to have good built-in speakers.  I couldn't get it to work.  Oh, I got TV sound through the stereo system, but in one arrangement, I got off-synch sound from both the stereo and the TV which was too annoying to listen to.  In the other, I got only stereo system sound but with a 1/2 second delay which was too annoying to watch.  So I gave up and separated the 2 systems.

Two years ago, my stereo tuner died and I ended up with a Pioneer VSX-42.  It did everything!  Way more than I had any use for, as a matter of fact.  Not just controlling stereo components, but the TV, the DVD, internet radio, gameboxes, Pandora, bluetooth, and some things I don't even know what they are!  All I wanted was a new tuner.

Turns out it made my old "dedicated buttons radio station controller" obsolete.  I miss having dedicated buttons to 20 radio stations.  With the Pioneer, you just have a single preset button and if you want station #12, you have to press it 12 times.  Not exactly the end of the world, but annoying.  And instead of dedicated buttons for each function (like radio, CD, tape deck, phono, and all those others I don't understand), there is a dial you turn to see each function choice displayed on a LED screen.

As you might guess, I am not intuitively good at modern electronic components.  I have to really work at it.  But as a "success through persistence" kind of person person who can (eventually) sift through instruction manuals, I get by.  Seriously, sometimes I actually draw flowcharts to figure out what the technical manual is trying (badly) to tell me.

So with the new Samsung HDTV in place, I dragged the old stereo system back into the TV room (I wanted to rearrange the rooms anyway).  First thing was to add a surge protector to the new HDTV.  A tech guy (not the floor salesman) at the store told me that power surges cause the cycling on/off problem I had with the previous HDTV.  So I bought one that had 2 more outlets than I thought I needed.

At home, I discovered I needed a 2nd coaxial cable, so I started a list of more stuff I needed.  That's when I decided to try again to connect the old stereo system to the HDTV.  I figured that "Hey, this Pioneer control unit seems designed to be the central control point for seriously integrated home theater system, I have to at least be able to listen to the TV through the stereo speakers".

So there I was, with the HDTV stand pulled away from the wall in one direction and the stereo cabinet angled in the opposite direction so I could see all the ports and cables.  I had a flashlight and all the manuals by my side.  Well, "almost all".  I couldn't find the Pioneer manual.  But I looked stuff up on the internet and I had some basic diagrams of various cable connections.

First instruction was to find the "audio out" ports on the TV or cable box.  Naturally, nothing was labled "audio out" on either.  The TV had "audio in" ports and an "optical audio out" with a plug shape I have never seen anywhere.  The cable box had some ports just labeled "AV"  The Pioneer tuner had every type of plug imaginable.  It was daunting!  I was very worried that connecting cables to the wrong ports might blow out some piece of equipment.

But I was willing to try.  Actually, just re-attaching the stereo speakers to the Pioneer tuner was an exercise in frustration.  Whoever designed the connectors was either an idiot or a sadist.  There are little knobs to loosen to expose a tiny hole to stick bare wire into.  The knobs are so close together that you need tweezers to hold the speaker wires to get them at the connection holes.  Anyway, it took me 15 minutes to guide the speaker wire into the required spots.  My previous tuner had connections where the wire went into a hole in the facing side just like sticking an electrical plug into a wall socket.  Who designs these things?  But I got that done.

Then came the cable connection fun.  The internet helped.  At one site, I found a reference to "unlabeled audio ports" being "out", and the cable box was unlabeled.  So I plugged in the red/white/yellow cable there.  Looking at the Pioneer tuner ports was like looking at a final exam for The Geek Squad hiring test.  The entire back of the thing is nothing but ports of all shapes and labels!

There are 6 different HDMI ports, several pairs of regular round red/white/yellow ports, several "optical", some "component" ports, and "some other stuff".

I finally chose to connect the cables from the cable TV box labeled "AV" to the Pioneer ports labelled "sat/cable" (satellite or cable TV I assume)  I crawled out, set the Pioneer to "sat/cable" and counted to 5 (set to "radio", the sound comes on instantaneously).  No sound.  Discouraged, I crawled back behind the equipment and tried some other connections.  When I had the cable box audio cables connected to DVD and nothing happened I just sat there discouraged.

And then, after about 30 seconds, I suddenly heard the TV through the stereo speakers!  HAL-aluhiah!!!  30 seconds in FOREVER in electronics time.  But I was never going to remember that the TV was controlled on the Pioneer tuner set to"DVD".  So I cautiously switched the cables back to the sat/cable ports and waited.  Damn, the TV sound came on after only 15 seconds.

And that's why I'm saying that sometimes doing nothing is good!  If I hadn't just sat there behind the electronics and glared balefully at the ports for a while, I never would never have known that I had the right connections!  Doing nothing for 30 seconds (a really long time to sit sometimes) worked.  Just sitting there solved my problem.

After that success, I sat down in my TV chair to listen to the speakers.  It was sightly fuzzy and minutely out of synch.  So I studied the Samsung manual.  I had already set it to "external speakers" so that I would know if the cable connection were working.  But I found that I had both the TV internal speakers AND the external stereo speakers on.  I shut off the TV speakers.  Much better.

But the speakers weren't balanced, so I went to the Pioneer tuner to adjust the balance between the 2 speakers.  The left speaker is a little further away from my chair than the right speaker.  Guess what?  There is no speaker balance on the Pioneer tuner.  WHAT?  Well, apparently you can download an app to do that.  Great, I don't have a smartphone...

There ARE ways though to adjust balance.  I moved the left speaker forward a couple feet and angled the right speaker away slightly.  I tested it by closing my eyes and aiming my head at the balanced sound point (try it, it works).  When I was off the center of the TV, I adjusted them again and again.  I have it balanced pretty good now, but it looks a little odd.  I'd rather have a speaker balancer.

The Pioneer manual says I could balance the speakers and have other controls I would like using the remote control.  I wish I had it.  I searched the house for 2 hours looking for it.  I know where I would normally keep it.  It wasn't there.  Nor in any other spot I could thing of.  I may have to buy a replacement.  Mainly because I change the volume a lot as I move from the TV room to the kitchen (where I can still see the TV as I prepare food), and back.  Adjusting the volume manually on the stereo is a bit annoying.

Want to bet that the day I receive a replacement remote control for the Pioneer tumner, I find the ols one within a week?  LOL!

BUT, the point is that I figured out all the connections, they work, and I understand the system right now. 

This is a MAJOR SUCCESS in a lifelong battle with electronics.

Reality TV

All the "reality" shows on TV are utterly fake in my opinion.

But I have a particular dislike for Survivorman (a TV series).   *I* personally consider it all fake.  The first episode (years ago), Survivorman made a big deal out of how he was completely alone.  Then, in that episode, he walked down a path through the woods AND THE CAMERA FOLLOWED HIM!  Think about that... 

I was in a human prehistory discussion group at the time.   Another early episode had him "desperate" to make a hole in 6" ice (to catch a fish for food) but unsuccessful.  We immediately came up with 6 different ways to do that.  And then suddenly a new person joined the discussion, defending Survivorman against every example of apparent falseness.  After a couple days, the site administrator posted that he had tracked the new member's IP address and (wait for it), it was Survivorman's address!!!  

I only mention that to say this...  After some (14?) years of Survivorman, the reality there is no greater.  I saw the teaser ad for the new season and I laughed my ass off.  I actually had to pay attention to it several times to be sure.

The teaser ad shows Survivorman cutting a sapling trunk into a sharp spear point.  Then you see him standing in the water (with a VERY FIERCE expression) waiting to stab a fish for his dinner.  That's OK so far as it goes.  If you spear a fish with a good upwards movement, the fish will stay on the spear.

Except...  The point of his wooden spear looks bent over!  Seriously, it looks like he pounded the point on the ground a few times OR it was deliberately bent to look like a barb.  But it won't work either way.  Essentially, Survivorman is standing in the water threatening to jab a fish with the eraser end of a pencil, LOL!  The fishes scales will block THAT everytime.  

If you want to see actual sensible survivor skills without hyped drama, try http://aloneinthewilderness.com/.  It's about a guy who simply lived in remote Alaska for some time and succeded in the daily tasks required to get by.

THAT guy was real.

Its available in several versions at Amazon.  Just don't accidentally order the Survivorman title of a similar name.  Its not the one I'm recommending.