Some Blog Site

Some of you may recall the adjusted (by combining alternate spellings) baby name lists that I put together not too long ago.

I have added another section to that site – Top Names of the Decade, for each decade from 1900 until now.

Go there and click on a decade (e.g. The 1930s) for the top 25 most popular names, as well as which names gained or lost the most ground over the decade.

I recently finished a project and tried a new (to me) product: combination stain and polyurethane in a single can.

It worked as advertised, but I’m not a fan. This happened to be PolyShades by Minwax, but I’m guessing that I wouldn’t like any stain-and-poly-together-in-one product by anybody.

The problem is that the simplicity takes away your ability to manage the shade of the stain.

In other words, you can’t keep sanding and applying poly to get a smoother, deeper finish, because each application results in more (i.e. darker) stain.

Here is what it looked like with zero, one, and two coats:

It turned out okay, but there were some spots that were rougher than I wanted, but I didn’t want to add more stain. And there were some spots where the stain had pooled and made the finish obviously darker than the surrounding areas, but I didn’t want to wipe off the poly.

I suppose it’s a fine product if you don’t care much about the finish. I didn’t think I would care as much as I did, but not having the ability to adjust little things frustrated me.

Go with separate stain and clear coat.

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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