Some Blog Site

We have an extension cord that is meant for Christmas lights. It’s a foot-pedal switch, intended to save you the hassle of crawling behind or underneath a Christmas tree to plug or unplug the lights. It looks pretty close to this:

This year, we put Christmas lights around the railings of Beta’s bunk bed. It was a pain turning them on and off, however, because the best plug was behind Alpha’s dresser. I figured we could go buy another switchable extension cord and make life easier. But once we found out it was $7.49, we decided otherwise.

Then I went to a hardware-type store on the way home from work one day. I found this

and this

for a total of this

which is a savings of 33% off the pre-made switch. For $4.96, you too can make your own light switch extension cord. There was another switch that was almost a dollar cheaper, but it was the rotary kind that comes with lamps and is not as easy for little fingers to work. And for less than a dollar (that’s $3 less than the switch I used), you can just use a normal light switch. But then you really should have an enclosure (non-conducting and fire-resistant) and I didn’t want to get into that.

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Some of you may be wondering what I did with that extra hour last week when we moved our clocks back.

Wonder no longer.

Remember how I went through all the baby names from 2009 and combined the various spellings together to get the real counts?

No? Well, your loss…

Anyway, last week I went through the names for the last 109 years (1900-2008) and re-counted each year’s names. Now you can see that alternate spelling are not new. Sure, there are a bunch of ways to spell names now, but that’s no different from how names were 60 years ago. The names have changed, but the variety is still there.

Go check out 1950. But in case you don’t, here is a snippet:
2009: 10 ways to spell Jayden and Aiden.
1950: 7 ways to spell Gerald and Darrell.
2009: 9 ways to spell Carly and 8 ways to spell Hailey.
1950: 9 ways to spell Catherine and 7 ways to spell Karen.

Go visit Some Fun Site for baby names since 1900.

For a while now I have been interested in how the Social Security Administration’s list of popular baby names would look if they consolidated the names that sound the same.

• Some people like a name but there are already alternates, so they must choose a side (Catherine vs. Katherine).
• Some people try to give their children unique names by altering the spelling of a name (She’s the only Haylee in her class! Yes, but there’s a Haleigh and a Hailey).
• And some people just don’t know how to spell the name (not going there).

Let me be the first to introduce, for the very first time, the 2009 SFS Baby Name List. (It’s the SFS Baby Name List instead of the SSA Baby Name List because it’s over on Some Fun Site).

I know it’s currently 2010. But the government, being on its own timetable, released the numbers for 2009 just a few months ago. So that list is for the births in 2009.

Well, mostly 2009. The government, being how it is, decided that the SSA would tally things from February to February, rather than use January like everyone else does.

Some Stats

• Girl names have more spelling variations than boy names (320/1000 vs. 211/1000 alternates)
• The boys have the name with the highest number of alternate spellings (Jayden with 10 vs. Carly with 9)
• Popular boy names end in ‘n’ (the first 8 variants); popular girl names end in ‘y’ (the first 2 variants).
• ‘Skylar’ is more likely a girl’s name; ‘Skyler’ is more likely a boy’s name. (‘a’ vs. ‘e’, in case you didn’t catch it)

2009 Improved Baby Name List

Enjoy!

This post is where I expand on step 3 from my earlier post on how to fix a water heater.

The water heater heating elements are tightened very well by the factory. I could not get that thing to budge.

I had read that there are special wrenches/sockets made for loosening water heater elements, so I bought one ($5).

It has a hole drilled in the non-business end so that you can get some leverage. It is not a very big hole, so all I could find to fit in it was a large allen wrench or a screwdriver.

I tried for an evening to take out the element. No luck.

Someone suggested Liquid Wrench to help loosen it. Maybe it had rusted or corroded in place.

One evening of that. No progress.

Another evening of that. Still no progress.

Then I decided that I needed more leverage. So I strapped a crowbar to the wrench. I used about a two-foot length of 10-gauge steel wire. The allen wrench was still through the element wrench, so I wrapped the wire around the allen wrench and crowbar.

The element came free on the first try.

Leverage is your friend.

I think I didn’t need Liquid Wrench at all, because the threads were fine. If you are trying to loosen water heater elements, your first step should be more leverage, not special solvents.

Especially because you don’t want those solvents in your supply of drinking or cooking water.

This post is where I expand on step 1 from my earlier post on how to fix a water heater.

You need a multimeter. You must be able to measure resistance somehow. I know, it’s futile. Just ignore the bellowing guard.

Here goes:

Check for a failed element

• Disconnect both wires from the heating element. Measure the resistance across the element (from one screw to the other). It should be a dozen ohms or so.

  

• Repeat for the other element.
• If either one is zero or a large number, that element is bad.

  

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You may recall from an old blog post that I had some water heater trouble. I paid a plumber $90 to press the reset button on the water heater.

At least it fixed the water heater.

For a few days.

Then the water got cold again. But I knew what to do – go press the reset button.

Ahh, hot water again.

Then the water got cold again. Reset button… still cold water.

Hmm… circuit breaker?

Ahh, hot water again.

After a few days of pressing the reset button and resetting the circuit breaker EVERY SINGLE DAY, I decided something must be wrong. The water heater should not trip the circuit breaker (or blow the fuse). But I already spent $90 on this problem and I was not going to make it $180.

I looked up instructions on the internet for how to fix an electric water heater. They looked simple enough. And they worked!

All I spent was about $30, and now I will share the wealth of knowledge with you.

Before I fixed the water heater, I was intimidated by water heaters. All I had heard before was horror stories about how so-and-so’s water heater exploded and blew the room to smithereens. So I had avoided them and feared them.

But they’re not that bad – nothing to fear. It is just a big bucket of water with two resistors and two switches. (for non-engineers, replace resistors with heaters)

Note: These steps are for electric water heaters. I still fear gas-fired water heaters.

All I had to do to fix it was find which resistor or switch was bad and replace it.

The resistor is a heating element and the switch is a thermostat. I looked up the model # and stuff for the heater and found it had two heating elements of 4500 watts each. Lo and behold, the local big-box store had a set of two elements and two thermostats, and it was only slightly more expensive than a single heating element.

I bought the set because then, no matter what was wrong, I would have what I needed.

The symptom I was experiencing was that the water would be hot but not for very long. All the how-to sites said that meant the upper element was bad. If the lower element had been bad, I should have had not-so-hot water but more of it.

The amount of heat remains the same:
upper element = concentrated,
lower element = diluted.

If you’re a non-engineer and still reading this – don’t worry, it gets easier.

Now on to the steps. If you want pictures, come back for the next installment of writing about this water heater project.

Step 1: Find the bad element. WAIT! Turn off power to the heater. Then find the bad element. This is the trickiest step, so come back for more details in Part 2.

Step 2: Drain the water out of the tank. Believe me, it is a lot harder if you skip this step. Note that the water supply should be turned off before you start this step.

Step 3: Replace the bad element.

Step 4: Fill the tank back up and turn power back on.

Step 5: Run the water for a while because you will have stirred up sediment and your water may be gray or cloudy for several minutes.

And that’s all there is! How to fix your water heater in five easy steps!

It took me about 15 minutes for step 1, 3 hours for step 2, 1 hour for step 3, and 45 minutes for steps 4 and 5. That’s a total of 5 hours, not including time at the store buying parts.

Step 2 took a long time because I had to do it twice. Learn from my experience – if only the upper element is bad then you don’t need to drain the tank all the way. Do it in half the time by draining only half the tank.

Step 3 took a long time because the element was very stubborn. So stubborn, in fact, that it gets its own blog post (Part 3).

To be continued . . .

Continued from my earlier post…

Chapter 5: Back into Danger

I had successfully brought home all the cabinets necessary for the bathroom. But I had neglected to inspect them before purchasing them. My wife, however, quickly noticed what looked like a scratch on one of the cabinet doors. It wasn’t a scratch – it was a line of extra paint. If it had been a scratch, then we couldn’t say that the cabinets came that way. But since it wasn’t a scratch, my wife thought it would be best to exchange the cabinet for an unblemished one.

I put off returning the cabinet to the store, mainly because we were busy with other activities the next few evenings, but also because I dislike returning things. That and I couldn’t find the receipt. Saturday morning, I loaded the cabinet back into the minivan and headed back to the store. I put the cabinet on a flat-bed cart and wheeled it to the customer service desk. They took it back and told me to go pick out a new cabinet. So my 5-year-old helper and I did just that.

Chapter 6: A Happy Ending

I found the cabinet we needed. There was only one left, and I knew it wasn’t the upside-down one I had rejected earlier in the week, because this one had the plastic straps around it and that one didn’t. As I was grabbing the cabinet to load it onto the cart, an employee approached.

This employee was a male, somewhere around 50 or 60. As he was walking up to me, he asked “Are you alright with that?” To which I replied “Yep, thanks.” And this employee did things right: he believed me and left me alone. He just kept right on walking and let me do my shopping, for which I was glad.

We took the cabinet back up to the customer service desk. The lady there had already processed everything and didn’t even need to look at my receipt (God answered my desperate prayer of “Please let me find this receipt!” that morning just before I left). In order to avoid another return, she convinced me to let her open the box and inspect the cabinet for damage or blemishes before we left the store. Aside from some scuff marks, which we agreed would probably wash off, the cabinet was in fine shape.

We installed both cabinets later that morning. “We” being me and my 73-year-old helper, not me and my 5-year-old helper. And the bathroom looks much better. And my wife is pleased with the cabinets.