New House Blog: Episode XXXXII - Artifacts, The Universe, And Everything

As foretold in this Episode, we are devoting this entire Episode to an examination and exploration of artifacts discovered during our Back Yard Archaeology excavations.  On with the show.

Artifact Extravaganza

Here we go.  We start with this innocuous-looking string.  It was found near the famous sand pit in the back yard.

Next we move on to this innocuous-looking length of electrical tape.  I do not remember precisely where it was found.  It's possible that it was found attached to some of the romex in the buried conduit in the back yard.

Onward we go with this collection of miscellaneous materials.

I'm not sure what some of this stuff is, so I just lumped it all together.











I found several pieces of this yellowish foam.  Aliens and pirates would not likely have a use for it, and I don't know where it would go on a hot tub.

Also unknown to me is where these plastic sheeting fragments fit in.  Could they be the skin of some alien spacecraft, or some alien?

Here's some more plastic, this time in the form of miscellaneous hard pieces.

I think I recognize a couple of pieces in this pile.











This pile shows us that the pre-Bishopians had knowledge of metal and metal use.

Also made of metal are these nails, bolts, and screws.  Again I am forced to wonder why the pre-Bishopians used so much rusty metal.  Did they know something about rusty metal that we don't know?

Not made of metal are these small colored beads.

We have found a lot more beads than these, but they are hard to keep around.  The seem to roll away quite easily, and because of their small size they are often lost.  We have found blue beads in addition to the greenish and white, and they have been found all over the back yard, and a few have been found inside the house.  Were they used for trade by the pre-Bishopians?  Were they part of some kind of pirate cache?


This artifact combines metal and plastic.  It appears to be related to modern swimming pool apparatus, which might tend to support the hot tub theory.  Or it could be part of an alien spacecraft; because of its fragmented state there's no way to know for sure.

One of the more surprising finds was this old CD-R.

 From this we can tell that the pre-Bishopians had access to inferior technology - it's only a 650Mb CD.

It appears that this disk has data written to it, but it is too far gone for us to probe its secrets.  Perhaps it contains a treasure map.  Perhaps it contains a map to the aliens' home planet.  We'll never know.


These ancient timbers are either from support posts for a hot tub or they are from an ancient pirate ship.

Lending credence to the whole pirate theory are these shell fragments.  Shells are typically found near the sea, and pirates typically sailed on the seas.

What kinds of animals are these bones from?  Our leading theory is that they were from food animals, such as chicken and pork, but there are a couple of mystery bones we know nothing about.

What kind of animals are these bones from?

Any information about these two bones would be greatly appreciated.  It's possible that they were left behind by the aliens.







Our only monetary find, to date, is this coin.

 It appears to be made of red plastic, and my research shows that it is likely from an ancient cash register toy set.  I have not yet determined its actual cash value.

The most numerous artifacts are, without question, these blue tiles.  I will let you all know when I have re-created the mosaic that was composed of these tiles.

Finally we have this chunk of asphalt.  Or is it really a meteorite?

So many artifacts, so little
   bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXXI - Into The Fire

Fire.  Scourge of Prometheus! Toaster of marshmallows!  Eradicator of deadwood... - Sideshow Bob

I love a good fire.  I can sit and watch a good fire the way some people can sit and watch The Simpsons on TV.  After the flames all die down I can sit and watch the hot coals glowing the way that hot coals are wont to do.  I love the heat that fires provide.  A good fire can warm a room or an entire house.  I love the warm, comforting atmosphere that a good fire provides.  Why does fire fascinate me so?  I don't know, but I'm glad we have a house with a fireplace - a wood-burning fireplace.  I love the crackle of burning wood, the sparks, the smells, the combusting of the wood that makes the fire.  I love the hot, glowing coals that are the after-effect of a good fire.  I love a good fire.

We'll talk more about fire later, but first let's meet some new team members.

New Team Members

Our first new team member today is Reggie, our lawn edger.  Reggie is a standard manual lawn edger, with an edging head that can be adjusted to one of three different edging angles.

Next up is our transfer shovel, Squarehead.  Squarehead is a standard square-headed transfer shovel.  You may have noticed that our shovels have names based primarily on their physical attributes - Longstaff, Shortspade, Scoop, Squarehead.  Becky does not understand the need for multiple shovels, but I have tried to explain that each shovel fulfills a different function.  I have been transferring a lot of dirt during my Back Yard Archaeology excavating.

New Recycled Workbench

We have a new workbench in the garage.  It is completely composed of recycled materials.  What this means is that each part of the workbench was previously in use somewhere else in the house, or else was found lying around somewhere inside or outside the house.  The base and support structure of the workbench used to be the vanity from the downstairs bathroom.  Here's a picture of it before removal from its former position, as seen in this Episode.

We deemed that this structure was sound enough and sturdy enough to work as the base of a small workbench.

The top piece, the actual work surface, is made from plywood that used to be part of the subfloor in the kitchen.  Some of the subfloor in the kitchen had to be replaced because of water damage, and a couple of the removed pieces were in good enough shape to be reused for non-flooring purposes.

Here is a picture of the old subfloor of the kitchen before it was repaired, as seen in this Episode.

The 2x4 used as the back board of the workbench was cut from a random 2x4 we found lying around outside the house.  It's a good piece of wood, so we kept it for future use.








Here are pictures of the completed workbench.  It is small, and the plan is to use it only until such time as we have built a larger, even more useful workbench in the garage.  In the short term, however, this will suffice.

No nails were used in the construction of this workbench.  We used wood screws that were reclaimed from other parts of the house.  We have recovered a lot of good, useful wood screws while fixing things up around our house.

Into The Fire

You may recall that in this Episode we had our fireplace and chimney inspected and fixed up a bit.  We decided that the time had come to have our first fire in our fireplace, since it finally stopped being summer here.  Before we could fire up the fireplace we had to get a new self-feeding grate, new fireplace tools, and a new fireplace screen.  We also had to check the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's website to see if it was okay to have a fire on the day we wanted to have a fire.  So far there have been no Spare the Air days declared, and we hope to be able to have many fires in the coming months.

Here is what the fireplace used to look like, as seen in this Episode.

Here is what it looks like now, with a good fire burning inside.

How many figurines can you identify?

The self-feeding grate helps to keep the heat level high and the smoke level low.  So far our fireplace has not been smokey at all.

Does anyone know how to clean old soot off of brick?

       bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXX - The Sand Pit

In The House at Pooh Corner, in chapter 7,  Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, and Piglet get lost in the mist and keep wandering back to the same sand pit when they try to find their way home.  We recently found that very sand pit buried in our back yard.

The Sand Pit

Yes folks, the very sand pit that stymied the brave trio of Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, and Piglet was buried right under our noses in our back yard.  Preposterous, you say?  Not at all.  Consider that, if I recall correctly, A. A. Milne never actually said in which country Pooh lived, or where the 100-acre Wood was.  Consider also that back in Milne's day the area where our house now stands was wild and untamed wilderness, possibly even containing a 100-Acre Wood.  Why else would there be a sand pit buried in our back yard?  And what do we mean when we say it was buried?  In our back yard there is a mysterious mound of dirt that we suspected was hiding things - unknown things.  We were correct.  As part of my ongoing Back Yard Archaeology I have been excavating the mound and it has been giving up its secrets.  While excavating one day I struck sand - pure sand.  I had discovered a sand pit in amid the hard clay dirt of our back yard.  The sand is good, and I may have a use for it in a future landscaping project.  I kept digging up the sand and removing it from the pit.  It was not a big pit, but it could seem like a big pit to a small bear with stuffing for brains.  The bottom of the pit was unnaturally flat and smooth, as though it had been mechanically excavated at some time in the distant past.  Here you can see the sand pit post-excavation.

Who would bury this famous sand pit?  Who made the bottom of the pit so unnaturally flat?

More Fun With Post Foundations

Also buried under the mound were three concrete post foundations.  These three were all excavated and broken up on the same day.  That's a new record for me.  I expect that continued excavation of the mound will reveal the existence, and positions, of more concrete post foundations.  Foundation number two still had some actual ancient wood in the post hole.  Pictures.

Yes folks, this is really it for Episode XXXX.  More things are afoot, but we cannot yet speak of them.  One thing I can mention is that I am planning to devote an entire upcoming Episode to the various archaeological artifacts that I have found.  You have only seen a small fraction, and some of them are quite interesting.  Also, don't forget that there are still more battles with stumps to come (we just don't know when).

Keep looking up.
      bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXVIIII - Not Quite Dry

In this Episode we're going to talk about more water and electrical repairs - all of which were unplanned and unexpected.  That is, the repairs were planned, but the need to do the repairs was unplanned.  We also made another trip to Ye Olde Sanitare Landefille, also known as the dump, with a load of concrete.  Thank you, awesome brother Mike, for the use of your pickup truck again.

In the previous Episode I discussed the merits of the Metric Foot, or mfoot, or m'.  No one has provided any opposing comments, so I must assume that everyone who read my treatise agreed wholeheartedly and you will all start using the mfoot measurement in your daily lives.

Speaking of comments, DR in the RV has proposed yet another theory about our back yard during the pre-Bishopian era - pirates.  We have seen evidence of a beach, and an ancient ocean.  We've found some ancient timbers that could have been part of a ship.  Based on this evidence, I don't see why we shouldn't give this theory as much credence as some of the other pre-Bishopian theories, such as extra-terrestrials, an ancient Roman legion, and a hot tub.

Not Quite Dry

Our brand new Kenmore dryer had been acting up.  Several times over the past two months it had shut itself off mid-cycle, leaving our clothes not quite dry, and on at least one occasion it would not turn back on for quite a while.  Most of the time it was working fine, so we just kind of ignored the issue.  The machine eventually became too unreliable to rely on and we had to air-dry our laundry a couple of times, like they used to do back in ye olde dayes (we even strung a couple of clothes lines in ye backe yarde).  We noticed that air-dried clothes are a lot less soft and fluffy than machine-dried clothes, so we called the Sears repair service and they sent us two technicians (not at the same time, of course).  The first technician thought this behavior was caused by mixing fabric types when drying, thus confusing the sensor that senses clothes dryness (he mentioned that this is a common dryer issue).  At the time it seemed to make sense, so we followed his recommendation to use only timed drying, but the result was the same - our dryer was still shutting off mid-cycle.  The second technician quickly provided the correct diagnosis - the 220v outlet for the dryer was loose - the consequence being that the slightest vibration would jostle the plug and cause it to lose electrical contact and the dryer would shut off.  D'oh!  Yet another unplanned outlet swap - a 220v outlet at that.  I quickly consulted electrician brother Mike to ask if there was anything different or special about replacing 220v outlets.  He assured me that it was the same as a 110v outlet except for the use of aluminum wires instead of copper wires.  Off to Home Depot and then back home.  The repair was mostly straightforward, but the working space behind the dryer was quite cramped.  I decided to also replace the 110v outlet that shares the j-box with the 220v outlet.  Pictures of the proceedings.

I think I see the problem.

Upon removing the faceplate and pulling out the outlet we noticed that one of the prong-holes was cracked and crumbly, and it looked quite charred.  The other two prong-holes looked normal.  After closer inspection we believe that the burning may have been caused by some foreign matter getting into the prong-hole.  Is there a better/more official term than prong-hole?

Two new outlets, one j-box

All buttoned up

Since swapping in the new outlet we have had no problems with our dryer.












Not Quite Dry Two

At this time we will switch over to an unexpected water issue.  While surveying other aspects of the back yard we noticed a wet (also known as not quite dry) patch of ground in a spot we had never watered or poured water on.  This spot looked like it lined up with where our garden spigot's water line would be, so we dug into the ground expecting to find a leaky PVC pipe.  Bingo!  We found our leak where the water line made a 90-degree bend.  We shut off that water line, waited for the ground to dry out, killed some ants, repaired the pipe, and killed some more ants. The leak was right where the 90-degree elbow joined to one of the straight lengths of PVC, so we decided to shorten the pipes a bit and use two 45-degree elbows, as seen below.

So far we have not noticed any leaks or any water flow issues arising from the use of 45-degree elbows.








Back To Ye Olde Landefille

Believe it or not, we have not had any takers for our mined concrete offer.  Not one person has taken advantage of this amazing offer.  Could it be that we misjudged the market for mined concrete?  I don't have the answer to that question, and it may remain forever unknown, but I do know that all of the mined and excavated concrete in our yard wasn't going away.  In fact, it seemed to be increasing in volume for quite a while.  We didn't like all of that concrete just sitting in our yard, gathering dust, so we decided to make a dump run the next time we had the use of a pickup truck.  That time came, and we loaded up as much concrete as we could and drove it to the dump.  We got most of it loaded, but not quite all, due to a time constraint.  As mentioned in this Episode, there are two olde landefilles - one apparently for the privileged of society and one apparently for us commoners - and on this visit they let us into the privileged landefille.  I know there are some who would point out that the two landefilles are for different materials and not for different societal classes, but I think I know what's really going on.  Anyway, see for yourself some of the exciting sights that we saw.

 Have I mentioned that some of the machinery at the landefille reminds me of dinosaurs?  This particular scene kind of reminds me of a dinosaur feeding its young.

To those of you who might argue that dinosaurs didn't feed their young I say that there's a lot that's still unknown about dinosaurs, and there's a lot that's still open to speculation and theorizing.


As we were leaving the landefille we watched a purple Toyota Prius not drive over the tire-cleaning device that everyone is supposed to drive over when leaving the landfille.  If you are in the San Jose bay area you may want to stay far away from purple Priuses until such time has passed as will allow for the tires to be cleaned by other means.

Dinosaur - the other
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XXXVIII - The Excavations Continue

One of the weaknesses of the Metric System, when it deals with length, is the lack of a measurement between the centimeter and the meter.  Yes, I have heard of the so-called "decimeter," but I do not really acknowledge its existence any more than I would acknowledge its non-metric analogue, the deciyard.  Therefore, I have come up with a measurement that slots nicely between the centimeter and the meter.  I present to you the metric foot, or mfoot, or m'.  The mfoot = 25cm, or 1/4 meter.  It's a nice, easy way to divide up the meter, and it works out to about 9.84 inches.  Additionally, it's really easy to convert from meters to mfeet - just multiply by four.  For instance, someone who currently claims to be 1.6m tall would be able to claim to be 6.4m' tall.  Think about it, and if you agree, start using it in your daily life and spread the word to others.

The Excavations

This Episode will focus mainly on our continuing feature, Back Yard Archaeology.  We have at least one update on an older excavation, and we have some new excavations.  We also have a mysterious discovery.  

Mysterious Discover

While breaking up The Monolith, which you first saw in this Episode, I discovered a mysterious piece of metal embedded inside the concrete.  Why was I breaking up so valuable an artifact?  Well, so far we have not received a single offer for it from any museums or collectors, and breaking it up made it a lot easier to move and handle.  This mysterious piece of metal is silvery-white in color and is not rusty at all.  It's relatively light, too.  Here are some pictures.

The top

 Why was this metal embedded in The Monolith?  Was it some primitive form of reinforcing the concrete?

 We have not had this metal chemically analyzed, but we can say for sure that it is not iron or steel.  And that straw-colored stuff the metal is lying on?  It's what's left of the lawn in our back yard.

The bottom

New Team Member

Yes, it's another new team member, and we feel that every household should have one of these.  Meet Rocky, our new sledgehammer.  Rocky is a standard 34" (that's 86.36cm, or 3.45mfoot) wood-handled sledgehammer with an 8.5# head.  Rocky has been most helpful in breaking up some of the concrete that has been dug up in the back yard.

The Excavations Continue

There were two square-shaped pieces of concrete sticking up slightly out of the dirt, and I had been wanting to dig them up for several months - since before we moved in to our New House.  They are now dug up, and as suspected there is more to them than initially met the eye.  Here is what they looked like while buried.

Note the squareness of this artifact.  This alone sets it apart from the other artifacts that have been excavated. It is also smoother and more refined than the other concrete artifacts - as though it had either been cast in a mold or carved from a larger block of concrete.  Did the pre-Bishopians possess concrete casting technology?  The other square artifact looked pretty much like this one while it was buried.

Here you can see what the artifact looks like after being unearthed.  Note the fine craftsmanship, and contrast it with the roughness of the concrete artifacts in the pile in the background.  You can also see the top of the other square concrete artifact in this picture.  It is much like the first, so I felt no need to photograph it after excavating it.  

Short Interlude

And now we take a short interlude to show you some recent pictures of Satchmo in the fireplace.

Clearly, our fireplace screen is not an effective cat deterrent.  Not to worry, though - we have not yet had any fires in the fireplace and it is still relatively clean.

More Continuing Excavations

The excavating in the back yard has changed from passive finding to active finding.  That is to say, when I started this project I was content to excavate artifacts that I could see, or that I discovered by accident, and now I have begun to search them out on purpose.  In the back yard, near the house and patio, there is a raised area of dirt where I suspect there may be more artifacts.  I have begun to think that the pre-Bishopans' thinking went something like this: "Well, we've torn out this hot tub, but what do we do with all of the concrete post foundations and all the pipes and tiles and stuff?  I know!  Let's just break off the pipes at ground level and let's just bury the concrete!  It's perfect!  No one will ever know and we won't have to dispose of this stuff."  Fortunately for us, their burial skills were lacking.  While excavating this raised area of dirt I discovered a rather large concrete artifact that I am calling The Junior Monolith, because it is the 2nd largest piece of concrete I have found - The Monolith being the 1st largest.  This artifact has multiple post holes and it was abutting our patio when found.

Note the roughness of the concrete here.  It is a stark contrast to the smoothness and straight lines of the square concrete artifacts discussed previously in this Episode.  Also note that Rocky was very helpful in breaking up this artifact for easier removal from the ground.  Here is a picture of the excavation area after The Junior Monolith was removed and the hole filled back in.  

While digging this area of the yard I noticed that there was a lot of sand mixed in with the dirt, and I discovered pieces of clam shells buried in the sand and dirt.  Clams typically live in the ocean, and sand is typically found at the beach, which is also near the ocean.  Was our back yard part of an ancient ocean in pre-pre-Bishopian times?  

Excavation Update

Finally, we end this Episode with an update to the excavation that was first mentioned in this Episode, and updated in this Episode.  A quick recap - this excavation dealt with a PVC conduit, containing romex, that was buried in our yard and ran roughly parallel to the patio.  It was discovered that the conduit ran underneath the concrete walkway by the house and porch.  Here is a picture to aide in refreshing your memory.

At the top of this picture you can see some conduit coming out of the concrete and running along the ground next to the house.  

As suspected initially, this conduit was one and the same as the buried conduit, and the romex inside the conduit was connected to an old, rusty, defunct timing device of some sort.

 Note the lovely power cord coming out of the rusty box.  We believe that this cord used to plug into the outlet that is behind the metal flap below the rusty box, but we have not ever tried to plug it in or use it.

Inside the box

The electrical cables have all been removed, the above-ground conduit has been broken off where it enters the concrete, the conduit hole in the concrete has been plugged with silicone, all of the buried conduit has been removed, and the excavation trench has been filled in.  The box still sits on the wall.  We may remove it some day.

The metric foot - an idea whose time has

   bIsh