Paul B's thread

I got back form the surgeon just now and it seems he wants to tear out my new titanium knee and try it again.
There is a problem with the plastic part that the titanium rubs against and it is not making the tendons happy so they go into spasm.

I am scheduled for the surgery in February but I am not sure I am going to go ahead with it. It will be another year recuperation and I don't want to put my wife through that as she needs me to be able to walk so I can help her walk.

If the both of us can't walk, we will have to buy a drum, fife and flag and walk down the street like that. :cool:

It won't get any better but it may not get much worse so I am thinking of trying to see if I can hold out for a year, like a real Man would do. :p

I just gave it a freshwater dip and now I am soaking it in Prizapro .

The Dr. said to isolate it for 72 days and keep it far away from my other knee. o_O


On another note, the doctor is near an LFS so I bought 3 fish which I just threw in my tank. Another possum wrasse, a bananafish and some other kind of wrasse that looks really cool.

The possum doesn't look to good but he didn't look to good in the store either. I think he will snap out of it and be fine as soon as he realizes where he is. :)
 
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I just cleaned my pumps and venturi valve in my skimmer. It's amazing the amount of stuff that grows on things in a salt tank. Everything is clogged with those hard tube worms, brittle stars and bristleworms, especially the intakes for the powerheads and I really hate those Korilia type pumps with the exposed grills, they are the worst and the hardest to clean. \

If I get ambitious I need to cut back the blue sponge because it wants to take over not only my tank, but my Man Cave.

I think the possum wrasse I added last week is fine but I am not sure because I have two of them and I rarely see one of them so I doubt I would ever see the both of them at the same time. There are a lot of hiding places in my tank so a lot of my fish I almost never see but those tend to be the fish I like the best.

I also have a huge decorator crab but I see him before the lights come on.

Those acropora "sticks" I added a few weeks ago which I thought croaked colored up nicely and are covering the epoxy that I stuck them on with.

I still haven't seen the last Queen Anthius I added a week ago, but as Queens, they do that and I am not concerned.

I took some video's
I wanted to get this purple guy. I think he is eating flatworms



 
These Fireclowns just won't give up. They just spawned again as they do every week, it looks like they only laid a dozen eggs this time. That large male is I think 28 years old.

I devised a thing to collect the eggs but I won't use it as I don't have the time to raise them anyway. Maybe after the Holidays I break it out if I can find the thing.
The eggs are the orange things to the left of his (or her) pectoral fin just below the coraline algae.
It's not exciting to spawn clownfish as they will spawn in last weeks damp newspaper.

 
I just spent almost an hour cutting sponge out of my tank with a friend of mine. We removed over a pound of the stuff which will now go in my dumpster along with all the associated bristle worms that live under the stuff. I just couldn't clean the front glass any longer and it had to be removed.

It will grow back in a few weeks and need to be done again.
This is last nights bristleworm haul

 
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Last night we came home from dinner and my Christmas lights were out. I didn't think much about it and figured the timer from Home Depot (China) croaked, melted, blew up, went on fire, was stolen etc.

I checked the timer and it seemed fine. Then I plugged the lights straight into the outlet and still nothing.

This is a newly built house that I didn't build but I noticed the outlet was a GFI (or as you people like to call them GFCIs. In the trade they are just GFIs)

Anyway, I pushed the button to re set it and it still didn't go on.
Now I have been a Master Electrician for fifty years so I know I can figure this out. But first I want something in the refrigerator.

I open the door and the refrigerator is dark. I assume it is dark when I shut the door but it isn't supposed to be dark now. It wasn't that cold either.

I went to High School and everything so I deduced that the outdoor outlet and refrigerator were on the same circuit. It's not really supposed to be, but it isn't illegal. Just stupid.

I go to the circuit breaker panel and see that one breaker is tripped. It is also a GFI breaker, which is also stupid. There is no reason to put a GFI breaker on a circuit with a GFI receptible.

I have been retired quite a while and it may be a new code. If it is, it is stupid and I will tell the guy who wrote that code as soon as I find him. A GFI receptible is very sensitive and if you put that on a circuit with a GFI breaker and then have it on the same circuit as your refrigerator "And" an outdoor outlet in the rain where you will plug in Christmas lights. You are at some time going to come home with no lights on and a dark, warm refrigerator.

Today I will remove that GFI receptible and GFI breaker. Carefully walk over to the dumpster, and throw them both in. Then I will replace both with normal devices.

I hate GFIs unless they are needed like for a fish tank, bathroom or near a sink.

So far I removed about 6 GFI breakers from my panel as I hate stupidity, even if it is a code.
So I guess I could call myself a "Code Breaker" :cool:
 
Why on earth would any idiot choose the fridge of all things to share a circuit with an outdoor outlet?
 
I had an addition put on my house couple years ago and they installed a bunch of GFCI/AFCI breakers. So annoying... they consistently trip on me when I use power tools.
 
That lamp is so cool looking! And, the bristleworm trap seems to be working well. I have a trap that I made, and it generally works, but I think yours might be better. Any chance you could post the design? Thanks!
 
That's just a spare acrylic tube about an 1 1'4" and on both ends I pushed in a film container.
Film is what we used to put in camera's. It's like Scotch tape but pictures stick to it. :rolleyes:

In one film container I drilled a hole and pushed in a thing you can get from a florist. It looks like a long skinny funnel that they use to put carnations in.
I throw a piece of clam in the thing and the worms are not to smart so they crawl through the green funnel thing and don't know how to get out.
There is a string on it so I can get it out.

This is a mandarin worm feeder but the green thing is the thing I am using for the bristleworms.

 
Last night we went to the Moose Lodge for the first time. It is right near my marina and they also have a large marina. We have never been there before and I was relieved to know that I didn't have to wear Moose antlers or bow to the Grand Exalted Poobah.

It was a Christmas party with about 150 or 200 people there.
They had a DJ, open bar and great food. Even the Grand Marnier was free which is very surprising.

Our group was about 40 people as all our neighbors were there.
We are going to join, and I never join anything as I am not generally a joiner and prefer to do things spur of the moment. I also don't do meetings, thats just not me. I don't even belong to any Fish Clubs.

But they have great boat excursions where a bunch of boats sail out someplace and barbecue lobsters and bring loads of clams, steaks etc and we eat on the boats. Thats my kind of
"meeting" and what I miss from most of my boating days at our last marine west of here.
Last night my wife won the fifty fifty, over $300.00

They also have great dinners every Friday. All you can eat for 13 bucks. You can't eat at Burger Dirt for that and the drinks are always $4.00. A lot of times Veterans drink and eat free.

If I knew that, I would have stayed another year in the Jungle.

Quite a few people knew me because at our condo we have a huge pool and many of these people go there as I do. But I have a memory like an arrow crab so I don't recognize a lot of people. I danced with a lot of the Supermodels. OK, Older Supermodels as I am kind of a good dancer. Just like "Fred Upstairs." If you start dancing and they can see that you can dance, they all want to dance. Of course I can also do the "Electric Slide" because as an electrician, it was required.

I realize today people don't dance because you can't dance and text at the same time, but I spent my younger days going out a lot and much of that included dancing. Our Daughter didn't even want to dance at her own wedding and if young people today dance, they just jump up and down to some noise then go and text someone in Tibet or go on facebook to show their selfie to 14,000 strangers who don't know you from a piece of cyano.

Yes, I know, I'm old but my generation used to do so much more than text, which we couldn't do (I still have a hard time doing that)

But we used to go to Disco's (Think John Travolta) to meet girls. Then if she liked you, you got her number. She had to answer the phone because we didn't have the thing where your name came up on the phone and you couldn't leave a message or send an emoji. Everyone also had the same ring and the phone was attached to the wall.

Then you had to meet her and actually make intelligible words come out of your mouth. LOL was not an option.
Then maybe you took her out "after" you opened the door for her. The girl would never say to you that you were a sexist for doing that because they knew it was the Manly thing to do and no one was a snowflake.

At dinner you "always" paid for her meal and didn't dress with your pants falling off. In those days, if you had a Mohawk and weren't an Indian, they would put you in jail, or maybe just shoot you where you were.

Anyway, it was a great party..:p
 
That's just a spare acrylic tube about an 1 1'4" and on both ends I pushed in a film container.
Film is what we used to put in camera's. It's like Scotch tape but pictures stick to it. :rolleyes:

In one film container I drilled a hole and pushed in a thing you can get from a florist. It looks like a long skinny funnel that they use to put carnations in.
I throw a piece of clam in the thing and the worms are not to smart so they crawl through the green funnel thing and don't know how to get out.
There is a string on it so I can get it out.

This is a mandarin worm feeder but the green thing is the thing I am using for the bristleworms.

Thanks for this photo! I think I will have to go buy some carnations...
 
I only have a couple more weeks to donate the profits from my book to the MS Society because I want to do it before the end of the year.
My wife is on the phone now trying to figure out how we go about doing that because we want all of it to go to research and not the office staff, rent etc.

We ran a few MS Bike tours and did the same thing.
I don't get much profits from the book because it is a limited audience and will never sell like the Bible.

( most people also don't want to hear about the advantages of undergravel filters)

But I will kick in a few hundred so it is worthwhile. I am giving them 100% of the profits which isn't much but it is what it is and before the year is over, I would like to thank the people who bought one.
 
Today I went to Lowes and Home Depot to buy a 5' flag pole for my American Flag. The old pole broke.
Then I spent a good amount of time on Amazon looking for one but all I can find are poles made in China.

I would rather not have a flag than hang my American made, American Flag on a pole made in China.
The bracket also broke so I built my own. Now I have to build my own pole which is disappointing because a country such as the USA which I fought for can't even make a flag pole any more no matter how much you would spend.
I am not a happy camper. :(
 
Surprised that American made flag poles aren't more readily available. I'd think there is a decent market.
 
CAPSLOCK, unfortunately the vast majority of Americans shop by price alone and couldn't care less where items are made. As an American and a Combat Veteran, it is very important to me.

Also the vast majority of Americans are to young to know about or care about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in battle for the right to live in this great country. A country where Americans invented most of the stuff that we now buy from China.

If we didn't buy that stuff, much of which was made by children or people making next to nothing, we wouldn't have it here.

Americans work for a fair wage and can't compete with those countries. We can't live on five bucks a week.
 
I found this on Facebook which I never go on but accidentally fell on there. I wrote this 2 or 3 years ago and don't even remember it.


This morning my wife and I were discussing how we lived when we were much younger and how the world has changed. My Dad and her Dad had retail stores. My dad had a fish market and just like her dad and everyone with a food market there was piles of saw dust on the floor. The cutting boards were wood, the knife handles were wood and the fish, and meat came in wooden crates as plastic was not available then. I am talking about the fifties.
I used to play in the back yard of our fish market and shoot flies with a rubber band. We also had live carp and eels in old bath tubs.

At the end of the week my Dad would sweep the floor and throw out all the old, fish scale infested sawdust and put down clean sawdust. Every night he would clean, using soap and bleach the knives and cutting boards.

Today, you are not allowed to use saw dust, wooden handled knives or cutting boards probably because of lawyers. I am sure someone, some where got sick and saw dust was blamed just like coffee can't be hot any more.
But it was the saw dust, cutting boards and wooden knife handles as well as numerous other things that enhanced our immune systems.

I was always an out doors kid and cut myself many times. I would rinse it off in a puddle or pond and go about my business never thinking about it.

I had an uncle that worked at the docks in NYC, one of the roughest places on Earth at that time. He got stabbed in the belly twice when 3 guys tried to mug him. (the muggers didn't fare very well) My Uncle wrapped the wounds in the same rag he cleaned eels with and lived to be about 90 never seeing a doctor or dentist in his life.

When my Mom would get a cold as a kid, her Mother would make her sleep in the horse stables thinking the smell of horse poop would cure her. (my Mom was born in lower Manhattan in 1910) My Mother lived to be 99 years old, she died of old age and was never sick and never even took an aspirin. How many people today could say that?

The point of this is that today how many kids do you know with allergies? How many kids are allergic to peanuts? How many kids are home from school with colds?
How many people in their 60s or 70s can you name with allergies?

Probably very few. As a kid no one in my school had any allergies and we all ate peanuts. I always got an attendance award because I was never out sick. I think in the 40 years I worked as a construction worker in Manhattan I was out maybe 3 or 4 times from being sick and never for having a cold, allergy or anything else except maybe a broken bone or disk problem.

That is IMO because I was brought up in a natural environment surrounded by bacteria and never having access to that silly sterilizing hand spray that people today feel they have to take baths in.
I still almost never get a cold, flu or any silly infection.

The little kids in My Grand Daughter's school almost all have some sort of allergy. My Grand Daughter is allergic to everything and half the kids in her school are allergic to something. Peanuts are outlawed in many restaurants and schools.

Kids today, (Like fish) get all sorts of things and in some homes it is an adventure waking up to see if the kids have some sort of infection.
I feel this is a big problem in our fish tanks and the biggest cause of all the posts on disease threads.
This is also why I go to a muddy bay and collect mud to throw in my tank. If I didn't live by the sea, I would throw regular dirt in there as I did when I started my tank.

I also feel we have to start thinking of bacteria as a good thing instead of a bad thing.
Just my thoughts of course and not meant to be taken as fact. Just an observation that is obvious to anyone who is a lot older than most fish people.
 
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