achievement

[dragonlady7]

Today was a busy day with the parents.
We got up and went to Dave's mom's house, where he had slept to keep the beagle company, and had breakfast there.
Then Dad and Dave and I went to the hardware store and I spent a fortune, while Mom sat at home correcting her papers.

Then we went to the Buffalo Naval and Military Park. They have three decommissioned WWII ships there. The Sullivans is a destroyer named for the five Sullivan brothers all killed at once (well, George lingered a few hours) when the Juneau went down in '42 (what a horrible, horrible story). That one was my favorite, as it had been little changed since the war and you could tour all over it, and a destroyer is just a manageable size for a tour.
I have some neat photos from there, including one of Dad sitting in the antiaircraft gun looking through the sights, and I would post one of them as my photo of the day, but they're all on my computer, in the room where my parents are sleeping, and I'm using Dave's laptop. So... Not today. Tomorrow.

There are two other ships there: the Little Rock, a light cruiser (HUGE, with a crew of over 1000: Sullivans had 250ish) that was used for missile launching during the Cold War. And the third was the Croaker, a submarine.
The Little Rock was just cavernous, and so much of it had been modified that they'd taken it out and had just made museum space out of it. It was kind of a rust bucket, poor thing.
The Croker was terrifyingly, horrifyingly claustrophobic. There just wasn't much to it. The hallways were less than two feet wide; I never realized I swayed so much when I walked, but I couldn't walk along (in my bulky sweater with my big shoulder bag) without hitting! the! wall! with! both! my! shoulders! And the doorways-- tiny portals, that you had to climb through doubled over. And EIGHTY men were expected to live on this thing for three months at a time. Yo. It was distinguished, however, by on its maiden voyage sinking single-handedly a Japanese cruiser the size at least of the Little Rock. And filming the sinking. In color.

Also, it smelled really bad.

Mom and Dad both had a blast, because both had recently read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, the true tale of a desperate handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts who took on the last great Japanese fleet near the end of the war. It's apparently an incredible story. The Japanese, even after the battle, believed that the American ships had been cruisers and battleships-- and it all was made a lot more vivid, standing on the Little Rock and looking down, down, down at the Sullivans: a destroyer is not a cruiser. The armor-piercing shells the Japanese were using were going entirely through the ship and not exploding in it at all: Destroyers don't have armor. "There's nothing between you and the sea," it is said, "but a coat of paint."

Anyhow. They loved it.

Then we went to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (which is only about four miles from our house) and alternately were charmed by and scoffed at modern art. Our favorite was Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912.

(I'm being rude and hot-linking to this image; i don't have an FTP program on this computer either.)

Then we came home, and the fun began with all the things we got at the hardware store.
Dad and I put in two outlets in the basement, properly-grounded outlets, and it was fun, it was easy, it was electricity. Whee! Now I know how to put in an outlet and it seems awfully easy, but I know I'll forget it all... So maybe I'll write it all down so I remember it, but that would make far too much sense.

Anyway, Dad had me do the second one myself while he watched, and I finished the whole thing with an inordinate sense of pride and satisfaction. I mean, it's just one damn outlet. But still, I feel like it's my outlet. I didn't want to go eat dinner, I wanted to strip more wires!

Well, we decided that many of the outlets in the house are not grounded-- including many of the outlets that have three-prong face plates. They are LYING, and are NOT grounded, and thus really not safe for use with computers, which are fussy.
Ah well.

At least I feel a great deal more knowledgeable about household current. Also, I have a shiny new voltmeter with which i determined that I did not conduct electricity well, but my new outlets had current in them. (Plugging in a light bulb confirmed that.)

The ostensible purpose of putting in the outlets in the basement was to make it a more effective use of the space.
The secondary purpose was that Dave's band wants to get back together and practice there. Dave doesn't believe they really will, but is of course as supportive as is expected. So now, we have outlets down there, and there's nothing keeping them from doing their thing. So if nothing happens, at least it's not our fault. :)

I'm quite pleased because the outlets look really professional (they even face the same way) and they really weren't hard to do at all, and they're up to code which is more than can be said for the rest of the wiring down there (sadly).

If I am motivated and remain confident, I may embark on some minor projects to retrofit what I can-- at least to properly tack wires so that they're not in danger of damage, and clamp them where I can, and perhaps adding grounding wires where I can reach them. Unfortunately, in the part of the basement that's under my bedroom, some ambitious soul sheet-rocked the ceiling, so I can't fish around the outlets in my bedroom with impunity-- otherwise it would be no big deal to run a grounding wire from one of them so i could plug in my computer properly. I'd hate to pull the sheetrock out, but it really bothers me to have my bedroom be so... well, not suited for a computer. That's not right, and means that my precious iMac is in danger.
Sigh.

But anyway, there's nothing in the house that's going to cause it to burn down, AND we have all we need to hook up the second gas stove in the basement, so there'll be an auxiliary kitchen down there. I have so much room! and so much stuff! and I know how to wire an outlet! I am a goddamn genius! :)