Novembernados

We had an eXciting evening last night as tornados ripped through our area. The Haliburton oil field services facility in nearby Pampa was wiped out by a twister that I heard was a mile wide. I have added a snapshot of the weather radar that has the rather skinny appearing but rather long storm. It stretched from southern Texas to northern Nebraska at this point around 8 PM.

I almost forgot about the hail.

A local dog got lost and wound up in our back yard. Luckily it had a tag with an address and phone number. So its owner got it shortly after the worst part of the storm. It was a pretty & young Huskie named Kola. So now Cooper has been wanting to go outside practically once an hour or more, sniffing the ground, wondering where he went. This behavior, through the night, irritated my wife, who kept getting woke up by Cooper to go outside. How come "our" dog suddenly becomes "my" dog when he gets in trouble?

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So, Donald Trump made an anouncement that he wanted to shut down mosques. I wonder if he has ever heard of the concept of separation of church and state? Maybe someone advised him about it because he softened his line to inspecting mosques. If the government never managed to shut down the horrible Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas, then they have no business shutting down anyone else. I will be glad when his cam-pain is over.

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I have had a great time making, eating and giving away bierox to my friends. This batch has been much better than the previous one. I put too much garlic and not enough cabbage in the previous batch. This has been my fourth time to make bierox since late September.

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The ISIS attack in France seems veRy bizarre. ISIS seems like they are total idiots, useless beings. They seem to be about as worthwhile as scorpions.

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I think I may start reading Samuel Beckett.

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I found out about a product and company called Martin Jetpack from New Zealand. They seem to have a very interesting device.

http://martinjetpack.com

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EVER TRIED. EVER FAILED. 

NO MATTER. TRY AGAIN. 

FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.

- Samuel Beckett

"We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." - W.H. Auden

Texas Gas Non-Service, A Division of nONE Gas

We have properties that use natural gas supplied by Texas Gas Service. One is residential and the other is commercial. My wife handles the residential payment and I pay the commercial because I collect rent from the cosmetologists and barber who work at my building and so I want to be sure they always have heating and hot water.

I dislike paying the gas bill on a monthly basis because they charge $1.50 for each transaction, so I pay them an excess of 3 to 6 months worth at a time. This can mean that I have a credit on the business property account sometimes of several hundred dollars. But my wife prefers to only pay one month at a time, which results in sometimes the gas being shut off for non-payment (today). A rather cool November day, so I have been keeping my nose warm with coffee and a cup of chicken noodle soup. Thank you electrically powered microwave oven.

So I am sitting here at home instead of working, waiting for the gas man to come by to turn it back on.

Ironically if you pull up the website for making payments you can see both accounts under the same log-in AND at this moment and yesterday when they turned it off, the amount of money we owed for back payment for the residential service is LESS than the credit amount that I still have for the business property. And also consider that the vast majority of time the credit value exceeds anything owed by at least a hundred dollars.

Deeply Ironic: When I tried to make a payment at their website last night it failed miserably, multiple times.

Plus they have a reconnection fee, I think it is $50.

We have been buying gas from this company for over 35 years. Its not like we are going to suddenly leave town and disappear without paying.

Solar power is looking more possible with a backup generator, along with electrical appliances to replace the gas kitchen stove and hot water heater.

UPDATE: I watched the serviceman from the gas company reconnect my gas service. I discovered something(s) interesting.

Not only had they gone to the simple trouble of turning the supply valve before the meter to the OFF position and locking it, they had also temporarily loosened up the gas meter and had put a PLUG in the exit side of the meter! THEN after he had put everything back together and checked it for leaks, he painted the entire piping from where it exits and enters the ground on each side of the meter all the way back to the meter. I asked him why they did that (to a line the looked freshly painted already) and he said it was for corrosion prevention. But I think it is also a measure to check for tampering with the piping connections (!) in the future.

In high school we made a methane gas generator that collected gas from decomposing organic matter. We collected the gas in an inverted plastic trash can that was inverted in a slightly larger container of water. Our reaction vessel was an old hot water heater tank that had the top cut off, then had a rubber gasket to seal in the gaseous products. I think we used an old inner tube from a truck tire for the gasket source. We also built a solar collector to create hot air. We had it right outside our science classroom. During my last year of high school I had three separate classes of chemistry, physic and an alternative energy. My teacher was Mr. George Sturtz.