Little Things . . .

We have lived in the same place now for  17 years.  Our home is paid for and we have not outstanding debts.  But little things keep arising.  Such is life.

The other day, Judie was in the guest bathroom, and had bit of a tussle with a shower door.  All I know is that she came in to the den and said, "I have a problem."  The issue was one of the two shower doors shattered in to a jillion pieces.  She needed help cleaning up.  She had a broom and shovel scoop.

I went into the garage and got my industrial vacuum cleaner.  And I spent maybe 20 minutes sucking up the glass pieces.  Some of the glass even got into the toilet bowl.  I fished that out very easily.  I left the glass in the shower/tub for the repairman to clean up.

We called the folks that did our main bathroom remodeling for us and they sent out a tradesman.  He measured the door and said, "No problem."   We wait now for the new door.  He will also lubricate the old door that is remaining and get all of it back in good working order.

Then the exit door to the garage acted up.  The latch stuck.  The bolt stuck fully retracted so that one can not close the door and expect it to stay closed.  So I disassembled the door knob and I figured the spring internal to the mechanism had broken and thus did not push the bolt out to engage the door jamb.  I had fixed this once before so it was not a new job to me.

We went to Lowe's and found the part.  There are two companies that make this kind of product and they are slightly but uniquely different.  I was able to find an exact match, purchased it and went home.  I had to fix the door face to adapt to the face plate.  The old latch had rounded corners and this was squared off.  I had to do a little chisel work to remove a little of the wood material so that the face plate fit in place.  Not a big job.

We reassembled the door knob.  Its an easy job to do but one that requires three or four hands for a while.  I did the hard part and Judie started the screws and we got it all back together again.

This is like fixing toilet flapper valves, install toilet flush units, etc.  I am the handy man that does this.  I have acquired some rather special tools.  I have the "T" handle to turn off the main water valve.  I had to also get the tool to open the main shut off valve.  The city had replaced all the meters with electronic reporting meters and thus did not want the normal house owner tinkering around with their meters.  So they made it had to get into.  Well there is a tool for that too, I call it a key latch device that allows one to open the meter cover.  I have had to assist a neighbor in turning off their water at the meter. so have become the go to guy.

Any way the stuff in the house is wearing out and has had repair calls here and there.  The wine cooler broke down, the washing machine door seal gave up the ghost, the control panel for the upper electric oven has had to be replaced.  I do not do those jobs but we know who to call when we need help.

LSU Verses BAMA . . .

LSU caught up with University of Alabama football team on Alabama's turf.  Saragin, the statistical predictor, had Bama up about four points plus and 3 or points for home field advantage in his analysis.  They got beat by a score of 46 to 41.  Bama was favored by the Las Vegas crowd by a touch down, they basically lost the game by a touch down.

Bama played really sloppy football in the first half.  That is to say LSU played near perfect ball in the first half.  The score at the end of the first half was 33 to 13.

Bama came back very strong in the second half but LSU kept up with two touchdowns in the forth quarter.  LSU was never behind the Tide of the whole game.  You might say the Tide got rolled by the Tiger.  Bama will say their vaunted quarterback, Tua, was playing hurt.  Maybe so, but he should have been replaced by Coach Saban and he was not replaced.  So he must have been capable of playing his game at a high level.  This time he did not have a Jalen Hurts to come into the game and save the day.  He, Jalen, is playing for Oklahoma now

LSU has faced four football teams ranked in the top ten and beat them.  Bama faced only one top team this year and that was LSU.

My thoughts are they had better get prepared for Auburn in the Iron Bowl.  That is a big rivalry game in Alabama.  Auburn is a tough team albeit it has lost to LSU and Florida.  But there is no predicting the outcome of the Iron Bowl.  Auburn will be licking its wounds and wanting a victory very bad.  Should Auburn win, Bama will be totally out of the competition for a National Championship.

If Auburn takes down the Tide I believe heads will roll.  They will say Coach Saban is slipping.  I think SEC Western Division has become more balanced and the dominance of Alabama is on the decline.

I close with "Geaux Tigers."

Virtual Private Network . . .

I signed up for the Virtual Private Network (VPN) as a security software package to protect my accounts from Internet scams, etc.  VPN does two things, the first is it encrypts your correspondence so others can read your message traffic.   The second thing it moves your Internet address is relocated to some odd location.  In essence it is my private network and it constantly changes.

This means when you use the computer your signal bounces from your computer to the false address located somewhere else and then the message goes into the system.  It slows down your connection but that's okay for the level of protection you get.  And you get some interesting things show up in the side bar ads.

For instance, I used the United States of America as  a source location and next thing I notice is an advertisement for a casino in California.  The odd thing is that I used to live about a half mile from that indian reservation and used camp on the reservation with the Boy Scouts.  Today, that area is off limits and closely guarded because of the casino.  I am told by old friends that each and every member of the tribe gets $140,000 a year.  How times have changed.  That was forty years ago.  Then they were poor as dirt and friendly.  Now they are very standoffish.

Later I switched to Canada and sure enough the side bar ads were definitely Canadian.  The intro web page now had stories for Canada not the US.  Ye, the big US stories were headlines but the lesser stories were all Canadian in nature.

I switched to New Zealand and got similar things from that part of the world.

It means that when the service is turned on, and it is own most of the time, people think I am in those countries and not the USA.  And when I use the USA, it relocates my location to somewhere other than where I live in Texas.

So I know the system is working.  This keeps people from locating you and hacking into your computer.  This is ideal if you have a laptop computer and you want to use it at the book store or coffee shop somewhere that is very public.  Some one can see you and then try to hack your laptop and can not find you, so they are stymied.    VPN is a great security tool and does not cost very much for what it does for you.

Yes, your emails to me will reach me.  They will not be blocked.  But all the scaming activity will be screwed up.  There are nine or ten companies that can provide you the service.