House Fire

I got a phone call from mom last night. The house is on fire.

Mom and dad are fine.

They got all the pets but one cat out, and he may show up yet. They grabbed some stuff, like mom’s laptop, some of the family photos, etc. Mom didn’t get her track phone charger though, so I haven’t talked to her yet today.

It looks to be an electrical fire at this point. The fire department was fighting the fire in 5 degree weather. At one point, they ran out of water, and called for water trucks from 4 other towns.

A bunch of neighbors showed up, Lenny the family mechanic from a few miles away – he let mom use his cell phone in the towtruck to call Jennifer after mom’s track phone battery died and the phone in the barn quit working.

My sister said that Aunt Laurie stopped by the house this morning, and the top story of the house is gone. Jennifer is going up there today, bringing some hats and gloves and whatnot. I asked her to take some pictures when she gets up there.

If you are family/friends, and want to get a hold of mom or dad or to pass a message along, email me at thefamily (at) creuzer.com (no spaces, change (at) to @) and I can give you a good contact number for them when we get one figured out (like a charger for the track phone). I don’t know what mom has for phone numbers for family, I don’t know if she has her address book or not.

I will keep updating here as I find out more.

23000 miles on the truck.

Well, I rolled over 23000 on my Escape yesterday. And I had my first problem with the new truck, and of course, the one thing that goes wrong isn’t covered!

My new truck wouldn’t start yesterday. I had to call Katie to come give me a jump start so I could get to work. The lights where fairly bright, but there was no power for the starter. I grabbed my multi-meter, and the voltage was 11.5 volts. When I opened the doors, the voltage dropped down to 10.5 with the door lights on.

Last night I got one of them hydrometer battery testers that measures the specific gravity of the battery acid. Sure enough, 1 cell was completely dead.

1 new battery later, I have to turn the truck on, let it warm up, let it idle for a minute, turn on the AC, let it idle some more, and it’s going to drive funny for a while while the transmission re-calibrates itself. Gotta love technology!

Electronics hutch base plans

Nearly full electronics hutch A while back I bought a computer hutch that I am using as an electronics hutch. My plans for it involve raising the whole thing up about 25 inches or so, and using a high bar stool with it so I can stand and work if I wanted to.

I thought it would be best if I ‘put it together’ using Google Sketchup. The joints are a little more complex then they need to be, as I like to build things where the fasteners don’t bear the load, they just hold everything together. Idealy, the screws and such just keep it from wobbling around, and the project sits together by itself.

cutting wooden pieces for the electronics hutch base Here is my pile of cut wood. I realized after I had cut everything, I read a demension out of sketchup as 16 inches, when it really said 1.6 feet. Oohps. Now I have to go get a new 2×4 and recut those 4 peices. Bummer.

Mom, why did you email me your weather?

Cold… it was 45 in my kitchen this morning. I went and bought some fish tank heaters for my aquariums last night, but the water was so cold that I am afraid to use them. I am concerned that the heaters will warm the tanks up so fast that it may kill the fish. Fish don’t like drastic temperature changes and I am looking at 15-20 degrees or even more in how ever fast it takes the little heater to work.

It looks to be warming back up a bit for this weekend. So maybe if I am lucky I won’t end up with fishcicles.

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