Sep 25 - one month

Yes, one month from now we'll be in Florida.  In the meantime, there's a puppy visitation, Thanksgiving, cottage close-up, trip to Reading, 200k in Grimsby, a new puppy ... wow.   I should really do some close-up things, since that's looming.  The biggest chore is wrapping the gazebo and moving the docks, but I'm not sure what's going to happen with the docks, since we've got almost as much beach as we've ever seen.

I spent a chunk of time yesterday fussing with the d-link router, making it into a wireless access point.  I had a devil of a time, as there's no obvious way of doing that using the menus.  Finally I found someone's post online who actually knew what they were doing.  The obvious things, which I'd already done, were disabling dhcp etc.; the not-so-obvious was that you have to connect the d-link to the router on one of the lan ports, not the wan uplink port.  In fact, I don't even need the d-link; it was just something that I wanted to do ... :).

What else ... it was an entire day ... oh yes, when we were in Europe Jason found the heater cable in the workroom leaking.   He'd called HeatLine and talked to someone who said that they wanted happy customers, that they'd send a new one, charge his credit card and then when we were back, I could return the old.  If it wasn't a lightening strike, they'd credit his card. That sounded pretty good to me since the cable is over nine years old, clearly out of any warranty period.

I'd returned the cable at the beginning of last week and followed up on Wednesday.  They'd received it a couple of days earlier but hadn't finished testing and would call me back.  Well, on Friday a lady called me back to say that there was corrosion in the cable and they had no idea how water had gotten inside.  Furthermore, since it was so long out of warranty, there was no warranty.

But wait, says I.  My neighbour was told that if it wasn't a lightening strike, you'd warranty the unit.  We talked a bit more and I said -- look, I wouldn't even be arguing the point, knowing how old this is, but since my neighbour had been told this ... etc.  Well, she said that she needed to talk to someone else and would call me back.

She did call back and said that she'd talked to another lady but they needed to confer with Matthew, who would call back in a half-hour.  Good follow-up on her part.  I said ok, I'll be here.

I puttered a bit more and then thought that I should probably get Jason over, in case he needed to talk to whoever he'd talked to before.  The more the merrier.  He came over and we chatted a bit until the phone rang.

It was Matthew ... I don't know the chain of command there but that's three people anyway.  We talked and I told him that according to Jason, Lorne had committed to this.  It must have been my pronunciation, because he thought that I'd said Lauren.  They do have a Lauren as well.  Where'd the serial number come from etc. etc., they must have looked it up, said I, because Jason wouldn't have that info.  Some more conversation, talked about what was wrong with the line; they'd tested it and the insulation was still intact; corrosion hadn't actually damaged the line yet; the leak at the exit point for the power cord was coincidental.  More conversation (all pleasant). 

Then he said -- there's only one person who could make that kind of commitment and that's the owner (I didn't know where he was heading with this ...).  Then he said that Lorne is the owner and he'd take my word for it that the commitment was made.  Jason would have to call back with his credit card number.  

Wow.   What luck.  Had Jason simply talked to anyone else at HeatLine when he called in the issue, they'd have sent the new unit and it would have cost me.  As it happened, Lorne was in the office and picked up the phone.  Jason explained the issue.  Lorne made the commitment, amazed that a neighbour would do something like this, including paying with their credit card and hooking water systems together.

I've got the bill in front of me -- $869.54, which includes 24.50 shipping and 100.04 HST.  They'll credit everything but the shipping.  By the way, Canada Post, to mail the cable back, was $20 ... Purolater wasn't much more expensive !  More by-the-way -- that price, $745 for the unit, was a reduced price from something like $1,200 current retail.

This reminds me very much of David returning brake calipers core charge without the box ... the store told him no, too bad.  He contacted the owner of that Canadian Tire who said nonsense, we'll refund the core charge.  If you get the right person, with the right authority, with the right sense of customer service, all's well.  Often you cannot get that person.

I should send a letter to HeatLine.  This is way above and beyond.

Another by-the-way -- I had asked Matthew if the cable would have failed to heat at some point (an even worse circumstance) and I'm not sure that I completely understood the answer.  I'm thinking that I should really drain that line when we leave for the winter, i.e. after Christmas.  I'd have to put a faucet inline where it enters the house, which is fairly easily done, and put a snifter valve at the well, like we did with Jason's. 

The only issue might be that with the line pressured, the air space in the pipe coming to the top of the well would be compressed, perhaps having water up above the frost line even while it's in use.  I'd have to put that "T" further down so that there's a larger volume of air in the line up to the snifter valve, reducing the likelihood of the water in that up-line getting up to the frost line.  This is getting way too complicated ! 

I wish that I knew exactly how far the heat line runs inside the pipe to the well.  I don't even know for sure that it gets right to the well.  I sure am tempted to dig up part, if not all, of the pipe and replace part of it with 1.25" or 1.5".  That way the end of the heatline, the terminator, would be in the wider pipe.  I think that would be a project for next year. 

It was cool, cloudy, with rain threatening most of the day, so I didn't go for a bike ride.  I did, however, work on the True North, setting up the brakes.

What a pain !  I fussed and fiddled with the new brake pads from MEC for a couple of hours, got them setup on the front but had to replace the brake cable, since the brakes themselves were thicker.  At the back, they just wouldn't work.  Too thick and no matter how I diddled with them, even filing down the washers a bit, they wouldn't setup without hitting the tires.  I had to go back to the fairly worn Paul brakes.  I'll have to buy a new set of pads.  I guess that gives me a spare pair that I can use on the front, since they are now setup for the MEC brakes and only need to purchase pads for the rear.

This would have been easier if the brake mounts on the frame were just a smidgeon lower on the rear fork.

Around 6pm we headed next door with our glasses of wine, chatted about everything in the world, lost track of time somewhat and didn't get back to our place until almost 8pm.  No matter, we had Costco Pickerel for dinner, which was excellent, along with sauteed zucchini (both of us) and rice (Sandy) and grilled portabello (me).  I tried something different, as I usually simply put olive oil, salt and pepper on the mushroom -- tried cream cheese.  Well, it shrinks but doesn't melt, on the barbie.  It tastes ok but wasn't exactly what I expected.  Hey, you never know.

When at Costco the other day, I picked up a bottle of Avocado cooking oil.  Naturally that's good for you.  I don't know its smoke point vs olive oil; will have to check.  I haven't tried it yet. I've been using a variety of different oils -- MCT (medium chain triglyceride) in my salad dressing, coconut oil when I'm sauteing veggies for lunch and now I'll try avocado oil. 

Costco has an amazing array of organic food these days, from grains to crackers to oils, for example.  They have the buying power to get the prices for these down to affordable for the masses, not something that a Whole Foods or other specialty stores can muster.  The package sizes on these are not large either; you don't have to buy a case !  A bottle of oil is a bottle of oil; a box of Mary's Gone Crackers Organic Gluten Free Crackers is simply a box of crackers -- the same size that you'd find in any grocery store. 

Some people have the impression that if you shop at Costco, you bring home stuff that doesn't fit in your house -- well, that's true for some things.  You cannot buy, for instance, a roll of paper towels.  You have to buy one of those large packages with, I don't know, a dozen rolls.  The food, however, is all in normal sizes.  What they do to save money is only stock one size of anything and only one type of anything.  They'll have one brand of raisin bran and one size, not several brands and different sizes.  Come to think of it though, they do have several varieties of olive oil and different sizes, including their own Kirkland brand.  I guess that there's enough volume in that arena to warrant it.

Have I written enough for today ?  If you've gotten this far reading, congrats !!

Onward ... perhaps today I'll go for a ride.  The weather was supposed to be an improvement over yesterday but I haven't checked this morning.