Covid19 and other horrors
Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:50 pm
I see I haven't posted anything to my forum since the pandemic. What's there to say? Well, I'm in New York - just 50 miles from a major hot spot, NYC. This has not only changed my photography but my life as well. Where to start?
I grabbed a case of napkins and case of toilet tissue off Ebay for double what it was worth, followed by a single 5lb bag of flour for $20US. That's a 1000% mark-up. Locals wiped the grocery shelves clean of meat as I waited a month for a case of frozen chicken to be delivered. We still had plenty of food being delivered to the stores but hoarding was disrupting everyone's life and driving prices up.
Cuomo shut down the state. I found myself suddenly working off my kitchen table. I needed to purchase some telephone equipment because my "landlines" haven't been used in decades. I needed to run new phone cables and buy two conference phones to communicate with my day job. For weeks I balanced some equipment on the case of napkins - but, I had to replace the cardboard box with a folding table which I found in the closet.
I emptied the closet since my FIOS ONT was in the back and it had failed. Verizon sent a tech who passed me tools and instructions for repairing the equipment thru a crack in the door I repaired the unit but there are wires still strung across the livingroom floor. All the crap from the closet was now in a pile of shit waist deep. ugg. So, the cleaning began.
I installed a wireless dimmer switch by the front door to control the dining room light and added another wireless dimmer for my livingroom light, the livingroom doubles as my studio... rents being what they are on Long Island I cannot afford to rent studio space.
Here's one change I'm making. Back in my college days I made a dimmer box for the overhead lamp using whatever parts I could afford. On the right shows what it looks like now. I can dim the light as before, but also can be controlled with a small wireless remote control. I also replaced the ugly reel type retractable extension cord with a proper outlet strip and wireless on/off switch. Instead of crawling around on my hands and knees clicking on and off switches I can control everything a lot more easier - great for those times after an exhausting photo shoot I don't need to expend more energy to power everything off.
I also moved the battery chargers to their own outlet so I keep camera batteries charged and ready, rather than draping them over my coffee pot in the kitchen! I've been such an amateur. Oh... and the broiler door at the bottom of the oven made the most annoying sound in the world. Yes, in the movie "Dumb and Dumber," JimC explains what the most annoying sound in the world was... and it was the same sound my broiler door made whenever I made chicken! Uncanny, considering I never had Jim over for chicken.
How does one oil an oven door? You can't. Oil would just burn off in a puff of blue smoke and probably set off the smoke alarm. ah! But, I used high temperature anti-seize which is good to 1600 degrees F. Even under the raw flame of my gas stove it doesn't get nearly that hot. I smeared a few dabs of goo on the oven door hinge and... silence. I may use the broiler more often!
I swapped out my garbage can for the same model. Simplehuman made some design improvements! Like, drilling a hole into the side of the inside bin to let air escape (and let the trash bag full open inside of it), plus drain holes for an occasional hose-down. My failing coffee maker was replaced with an SCA certified coffeemaker. What a difference. I'm currently at 203 brew temp with a 30sec soak but sticking to supermarket whole bean coffee rather than roasting my own. That's... more effort than I'd like.
What else? Oh, I've upgraded the 2T drives on my NAS to 4T. I only had 1T of crap so I figured a 2T would last me a lifetime. It did not. I underestimated (sigh) so B&H had a flash sale, one day only to push the 4T RED drives. I'm so happy I went with RAID1. All I needed to do was install (1) drive at a time and let the system repair itself overnight twice. Done and done. It also expanded my volume to the full 4T space, leaving me with more than 50% available in the end. NOW that should last a while, even while I rip all my X-Files DVD's onto the NAS. I ran thru all 9 years of the best television ever and am considering watching them once more.
I grabbed a case of napkins and case of toilet tissue off Ebay for double what it was worth, followed by a single 5lb bag of flour for $20US. That's a 1000% mark-up. Locals wiped the grocery shelves clean of meat as I waited a month for a case of frozen chicken to be delivered. We still had plenty of food being delivered to the stores but hoarding was disrupting everyone's life and driving prices up.
Cuomo shut down the state. I found myself suddenly working off my kitchen table. I needed to purchase some telephone equipment because my "landlines" haven't been used in decades. I needed to run new phone cables and buy two conference phones to communicate with my day job. For weeks I balanced some equipment on the case of napkins - but, I had to replace the cardboard box with a folding table which I found in the closet.
I emptied the closet since my FIOS ONT was in the back and it had failed. Verizon sent a tech who passed me tools and instructions for repairing the equipment thru a crack in the door I repaired the unit but there are wires still strung across the livingroom floor. All the crap from the closet was now in a pile of shit waist deep. ugg. So, the cleaning began.
I installed a wireless dimmer switch by the front door to control the dining room light and added another wireless dimmer for my livingroom light, the livingroom doubles as my studio... rents being what they are on Long Island I cannot afford to rent studio space.
Here's one change I'm making. Back in my college days I made a dimmer box for the overhead lamp using whatever parts I could afford. On the right shows what it looks like now. I can dim the light as before, but also can be controlled with a small wireless remote control. I also replaced the ugly reel type retractable extension cord with a proper outlet strip and wireless on/off switch. Instead of crawling around on my hands and knees clicking on and off switches I can control everything a lot more easier - great for those times after an exhausting photo shoot I don't need to expend more energy to power everything off.
I also moved the battery chargers to their own outlet so I keep camera batteries charged and ready, rather than draping them over my coffee pot in the kitchen! I've been such an amateur. Oh... and the broiler door at the bottom of the oven made the most annoying sound in the world. Yes, in the movie "Dumb and Dumber," JimC explains what the most annoying sound in the world was... and it was the same sound my broiler door made whenever I made chicken! Uncanny, considering I never had Jim over for chicken.
How does one oil an oven door? You can't. Oil would just burn off in a puff of blue smoke and probably set off the smoke alarm. ah! But, I used high temperature anti-seize which is good to 1600 degrees F. Even under the raw flame of my gas stove it doesn't get nearly that hot. I smeared a few dabs of goo on the oven door hinge and... silence. I may use the broiler more often!
I swapped out my garbage can for the same model. Simplehuman made some design improvements! Like, drilling a hole into the side of the inside bin to let air escape (and let the trash bag full open inside of it), plus drain holes for an occasional hose-down. My failing coffee maker was replaced with an SCA certified coffeemaker. What a difference. I'm currently at 203 brew temp with a 30sec soak but sticking to supermarket whole bean coffee rather than roasting my own. That's... more effort than I'd like.
What else? Oh, I've upgraded the 2T drives on my NAS to 4T. I only had 1T of crap so I figured a 2T would last me a lifetime. It did not. I underestimated (sigh) so B&H had a flash sale, one day only to push the 4T RED drives. I'm so happy I went with RAID1. All I needed to do was install (1) drive at a time and let the system repair itself overnight twice. Done and done. It also expanded my volume to the full 4T space, leaving me with more than 50% available in the end. NOW that should last a while, even while I rip all my X-Files DVD's onto the NAS. I ran thru all 9 years of the best television ever and am considering watching them once more.