We're off the grid (sort-of)

Yesterday night I installed our Internet-based telephone system. Basically, there's a box (the ATA-186) that plugs into the router, and then the phone plugs into the box. The phone works the same as it did plugged into the phone jack. There are several providers of this service - we went with Vonage, as it offers area code 845 phone numbers. Here's a diagram (from Vonage) of how it works:

There several advantages:

Cost: $26 a month for a "phone line" with all the usual features, free local and regional calls, and 500 free long distance minutes a month.

Portability: The phone number is associated with the ATA-186 - if I take the box (and my phone) anywhere in the world and plug it into an internet connection, when someone calls my home phone, the phone will ring! If we move across town or to another state, we can keep our old phone number

The primary disadvantage is reliability: If the cable modem connection fails, bye-bye phone service. Fortunately, we can call the cable company using the cell phone. Power failure is also a problem, but we have a 450VA UPS which should power the cable modem, router, and ATA-186 for quite some time.

...So, I called verizon and cancelled our service with them. Its pretty amazing that phone calls can be thrown around on the internet in real-time - being attached to the phone company with thousands of feet of copper wire suddenly seems so passé. Of course, we're still attached to the cable company, but one utility is better than two.

Today's "weekly ride to work"

Update: I re-measured my wheel circumference, and discovered that the cycle computer thought my wheel's circumference was 3.7% less than it really is. I've updated all the statistics for the "go to work" rides.

AM Climate: 74 degrees, 79% RH
Distance: 14.39 Miles 14.92 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 48:35
Total Time: 54:00
Avg Speed: 17.77 MPH 18.42 MPH
Max Speed: 38.7 MPH 40.1 MPH

PM Climate: 78 degrees, 68% RH (Forecast)
Distance: 14.40 Miles 14.93 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 57:52
Total Time: 1:01:05
Avg Speed: 14.93 MPH 15.48 MPH
Max Speed: 35.8 MPH 37.1 MPH

Fortunately, the weather forecast below did not come true; I made it home dry (as far as rain is concerned, anyway):


Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service
...SEVERE WEATHER OUTLOOK NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE UPTON NY445 AM EDT TUE AUG 26 2003

THE STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS PLACED MOST OF THE TRI-STATE AREA IN A SLIGHT RISK FOR SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS FOR LATER TODAY. ONLY THE EASTERN PART OF SUFFOLK COUNTY ON LONG ISLAND AS WELL AS NEW HAVEN... MIDDLESEX AND NEW LONDON COUNTIES IN CONNECTICUT REMAIN OUTSIDE OF THIS INCREASED THREAT AREA.

THE COMBINATION OF A WARM AND MOIST AIRMASS ALREADY IN PLACE OVER THE REGION AND AN APPROACHING SURFACE TROUGH WILL PRODUCE ENOUGH INSTABILITY TO ALLOW STRONG AND POSSIBLY SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS TO DEVELOP THIS AFTERNOON INTO THIS EVENING. THESE STORMS COULD BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 58 MPH OR LARGE HAILOF PENNY SIZE OR GREATER. AREAS OF VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WILL ALSO BE POSSIBLE WITH THESE STORMS.

THOSE WITH OUTDOOR PLANS AND ACTIVITIES SHOULD STAY ALERT TO RAPIDLY CHANGING SKY CONDITIONS AND SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY IF THREATENING WEATHER IS OBSERVED. SKYWARN SPOTTER ACTIVATION MAY BE NEEDED FOR THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING....

Star Gazing at Wawayanda

As a member of the Rockland Astronomy Club, I have a permit to go observing at Wawayanda State Park all year 'round. This past Saturday night, the club had a scheduled viewing night there, so I packed up my stuff and headed out there for the first time. I took along Alan, one of the Brits from Yeshiva.

By the time we got the scope set up (I took my strutted 8" dob) it was about 11:30pm. We looked at Mars for some time. I tried out my new color filter set - the red filter did seem to bring out more detail as promised. In the past, when I've looked at Mars, I haven't been able to make out any detail, but this time I was able to see the Southern Polar Cap, as well as the large dark area Syrtis Major on the left equatorial area and the smaller dark area of Mare Erythraeum to the right (you can check this out using Sky and Telescope's Mars Profiler - enter "8/22/2003" for the date and "21:30" for the time to get a feel for what we saw (our view wasn't nearly that detailed, but the basic shapes were there)). The blue, green, and yellow filters didn't seem to do much.

After Mars, we looked at some deep sky objects - I showed Alan some objects I had seen before: M45, M57, M71, M27, M31, M32, and M110.

...I also sighted four new Messier Objects I had not seen before:

M26 - unimpressive - just a diamond of four stars.
M11 - was nice - largish, with one bright star and hundreds of dimmer members.
M72 - was dim fuzzy patch (at least at with my 32mm lens, which is 38x on my 1220mm focal length telescope).
M73 - quirky asterism.

We got home around 4am. The skies were surprisingly good - Its only a 40 minute drive, and we could see the Milky Way nearly from horizon to horizon.

Today's "weekly ride to work"

Update: I re-measured my wheel circumference, and discovered that the cycle computer thought my wheel's circumference was 3.7% less than it really is. I've updated all the statistics for the "go to work" rides.

AM Climate: 74 degrees, 80% RH
Distance: 14.37 Miles 14.90 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 49:51
Total Time: 54:48
Avg Speed: 17.29 MPH 17.93 MPH
Max Speed: 39.4 MPH 40.9 MPH

PM Climate: Hot and Wet
Distance: 14.39 Miles 14.92 Miles
Ride (moving) Time: 1:01:55
Total Time:
Avg Speed: 13.94 MPH 14.45 MPH
Max Speed: 34.1 MPH 35.4 MPH

The Hakimi / Bloom wedding

Trish and Mechel and I went to the wedding of Daniel Hakimi and Annie Bloom in Huntington Station, NY last night. Trish and I have known Annie since our Oregon days - she came back from Neve Yerushalayim a few weeks before Tricia went. It was wonderful to see two people come together to form a bayis ne'eman b'Yisroel.

Mechel at the wedding

Annie receives Tricia and Mechel

Annie receives other guests

It was also great to see a number of folks from Portland:

(left to right) Rabbi Oppenheimer, Yosef Rosenberg, Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein (former Kesser Israel youth director)

Yosef Rosenberg, Mechel and I

Rabbi Oppenheimer speaks with Mrs. Bloom

In addition to Rabbi Oppenheimer and the Goldstein and Rosenberg families, we also saw Janice Cohen, Ariza Fax, and Annie's roommate, Laliev Ben-Avraham. Trish and I miss the Kesser gang, so its great when Kesserites pop up in our neck of the woods!

The New Dishwasher

This past Sunday I picked up and installed our new Kenmore dishwasher. I took the power leading to the old dishwasher and wired it to an outlet, then ran a direct power line from the back of the outlet to the dishwasher. I wired the outlet in the middle there so that I could plug the garbage disposal into an X10 appliance module. This allows us to turn it on and off using a wireless switch.

Unfortunately, the disposal wasn't working consistently - I think its because the X10 wireless receiver is plugged into a circuit that's not on the same leg as the X10 appliance module. When the A/C is on, which uses 220v (and thus bridges the legs), the disposal works (look at this page for an explanation of the problem). For some reason, Trish doesn't like the idea of having to turn on the A/C to run the disposal. One more thing to fix...

We also continued our battle against a mildewy basement by buying two dehumidifiers - after 48 hours of operation, the humidity in the basement is down from 70% to 46%. It feels warmer and dry, but there is still a faint "basement-ish" smell.

A biking we will go....

I rode my bike to work for the first time today. From Monsey to Rockleigh (at least the way I went) was 14.74 miles. Here are the stats:

Update: I re-measured my wheel circumference, and discovered that the cycle computer thought my wheel's circumference was 3.7% less than it really is. I've updated all the statistics for the "go to work" rides.

Elevation change: 450 foot drop (0.58% average grade)
Time: 55:28
Average Speed: 16.72 MPH 17.34 MPH
Max Speed: 40.8 MPH 42.3 MPH

I used my linear recumbent (mine was originally an underseat steering model like the one on the left, but I converted it to overseat steering so it looks more like the one on the right) with my Zzip fairing (shown on my tandem, "rolling thunder"). The ride went well, despite it being 80 degrees with 95% humidity. Blech. The ride home will be even nastier, I suspect.

Update: Here are the stats for the return trip:

Distance: 14.64 15.18 (I went back a slightly different way)
Time: 1:10:00
Avg Speed: 12.81MPH 13.28 MPH
Max Speed: 35.8 MPH 37.1 MPH

It was really hot and wet going back, and I definitely noticed the elevation gain! For a 15 mile ride, I think eating something, or at least drinking a Gatoraide-type drink instead of water, would make a big difference.

More Sunday stuff

Nothing really major this Sunday.

To try and combat the mildew smell that comes up form the basement through the A/C ducts, I put up a sheet of plastic to isolate the well area in the basement from the rest of the basement. The well is in a small cubby which is actually not under the house (unlike the rest of the basement, which is immediately under the house). Since there's no house to keep the basement's ceiling dry there, water seems to seep between the concrete slabs which make up the roof for the well cubby. My humidifier was reading 70% when it was down in the basement. If this doesn't solve the problem, I'll try using a dehumidifier.

I did many, many loads of laundry, and we did a bit of weeding and shrub trimming. The former owner of our house, a landscaper, said that the shrubs leading up to our house are Taxus sp., a type of Yew tree. He said they can't be trimmed past the needle line (leaving just the branches) as it would take years for the shrub to regenerate. The folks at OSU seem to disagree - clearly more research is needed.

Answer: A lot!

I have a largish berry bearing bush (try saying that five times fast) outside my den window. Its not uncommon for me to look up and see a squirrel or cardinal munching on the berries. Today, I looked up, and for the first time, I saw a woodchuck.

He was chucking wood!

Never mind the berries, he was eating leaves and branches. A member of the Marmot family (Marmota monax, to be precise), the woodchuck, or groundhog (also known as the "Whistlepig", apparently) is a largish rodent, about the size of a cat:

It was raining quite a bit - they don't always look so soggy.

So many tasks, so little time!

Well, I managed to get two major "Sundayish" things done - one was putting together a three piece furniture set I had purchased at Home Depot:

They were being closed out at $80 - not too shabby!

After that, I set out to install a new faucet in our kitchen sink - the old faucet was not compatible with our portable dishwasher. I ended up having to pull the sink out just to get the old faucet off:

Trish said "Well, as long as you had to take the sink out, you might as well install the garbage disposal". Its this sort of logic that has folks go in for an oil change and come home with a new transmission. Despite that, I acquiesced, and the two of us spent a good bit of time getting the thing installed. Its pretty amazing how nasty the stuff in and around old plumbing can be. Blech! Mechel also got in on the project:

Finally, we got the new faucet and disposal installed. I still have to hook up the water lines to the faucet (I need longer connectors). I also need to pull out the dishwasher to hook up the power for the disposal. Rather than install a new wall switch, I'll probably use an inline X10 module to turn the disposal on and off.

Of course, the minute I pull out the dishwasher, I'll hear "As long as you've got it out, you might as well install the new dishwasher".

...Which is what I'll do.