That dammed ice

Last week we had a quick ice storm come through, followed by about a foot of snow. In the area there have been a few roofs collapsing under the heavy snow and some businesses temporarily closed for fear of the same. On the north side of our roof we have two separate rooflines, and a large drift formed on the lower one against the upper one. I wasn’t too terribly worried about the weight of the snow, but I was worried about the many times the temperature has flucuated about the freezing point.

The problem when you have snow on the roof is that it can melt even when the outside temperatures are below freezing, since the air in the attic can be warmer due to heat leaking from the house. The water then runs down the roof until it gets over the eaves. In some cases, the roof is colder there than near the top and the water can freeze. If this happens enough, a dam of ice can build up near the edge of the roof. When this dam forms, melt water backs up and can get into your roof by going up under the shingles (shingles basically only work for water heading downwards).

Well, it appeared that this was happening on our roof, so for the past several days I’ve been trying an array of crazy ideas trying to knock the snow off, from ropes strung over the roof to a rake on a 35ft pole (it’s a two-story roof). I’d searched online for ideas, and the basic advice was 1. use a roof rake, 2. call a professional and 3. don’t get on the roof.

So anyway, today I got up on the roof. I stayed on the south side of the roof, which due to the sun was completely clear of snow and ice. I carefully used my 35ft duct tape-assembled rake to push most of the snow down off of the roof and discovered there was quite a bit of ice underneath, and it was starting to form a dam. Since we’re expecting higher temperatures next week, I figured the dam had to go before it let all the melt water into the house. I drug a hose up onto the roof and cut a small channel through the ice with hot water, giving the melt water a way to get past the ice and to the ground. After quite some time on the roof with temperatures in the teens, lots of wind, and getting wet from my inability to properly hold a hose, a cup of hot tea and a blanket were a welcome site!

From what I read, the icicles are often a sign that you’re getting an ice dam. They also say that the best remedy is to add some insulation to your attic, basically keeping all the heat inside the house, so that the attic is no warmer than the outside air.

Snow day, and rationalization of 4WD!

For those of you outside the midwest, last night a winter storm came through and dumped ice then snow on us. Though the conditioned varied depending on where you were, we have about 12-16 inches of snow here.

When I got up this morning, it was still snowing and blowing pretty hard. I got phone calls from a few coworkers suggesting I not come in, and my brother called and said he’d made about 4 miles of progress in an hour in his jeep. That’s good enough for me! By the way, if any coworkers read this and don’t approve, just charge me a vacation day- I still have plenty 🙂

Around 9:30 the snow let up so I decided to venture out to see what the roads were like. I hadn’t really had the new truck out in the snow, so I figured this was a pretty good chance. First off, they hadn’t (and still haven’t) plowed the roads in our subdivision, so I had to plow through some pretty deep snow. Since I wasn’t having too much trouble I decided to head to the Walmart to pick up a few things we needed.

When I left Walmart, I decided to head home a different way. None of the roads anywhere had been plowed, but this way hadn’t had many vehicles come through. Right away I came across a young couple in a Cavalier with hopelessly bald tires stuck in the drift on the right side of the road. Ah, the first challenge of the day! I tried to push them and dig them out by hand, but we weren’t getting anywhere. I turned my truck around and hooked up a tow strap (it’s hard to find a spot of today’s unibody cars) and without too much trouble get them back onto the road. After unhooking, they started forward again, and even though the driver did everything right, the car slide right back where they were. After some failed attempts at pushing and some deliberation, I offered them the choice of a ride home or something a little more adventurous. They chose adventure. I hooked the strap back up, instructed the driver and proceeded to slowly tow the car backwards in neutral about a half mile to a point where the roads were passable. We pulled that off without incident and parted ways.

As I was looping back around I saw a guy in a Grand Am stuck right in the middle of the intersection of the highway in front of Walmart. He was cussing loudly into his phone, so I pulled up and asked if he needed help. Turns out this guy not only got stuck but locked his keys in the car as well. Nothing I could do for him, but he wasn’t very gracious anyway.

About a half mile past where I encountered the stranded Cavalier, I came across an older guy who had run his Trailblazer off the side of the off ramp. He was busily calling every tow company in the phone book but no one was promising anything. I asked him if he wanted to try pulling it out and he jumped at the chance. So, drove up the road a ways and turned around so I was facing the other way (note to self: get front tow hooks). We hooked up but we just couldn’t budge the thing. Way too heavy and way to stuck for my little truck. Admitting defeat, he accepted a ride and I took him to the McDonald’s up the road where he wanted to wait for the tow truck.

In the parking lot of the McDonald’s I had my first easy encounter of the day. Three guys were trying to get an Accord unstuck. Thankfully I had a shovel in the back, so after a little digging and a bit of pushing he was on his way.

When I got back into my neighborhood and about a block from my house, I had to stop for a couple of guys desparately trying to obey the parking ban by moving their car out of the road. They were stuck about half in an half out of the road and had been trying to shovel a spot for quite some time. A few of the neighbors pitched in and were were able to get the car back fully onto the road and shoveled for a little bit. Realizing how long it was going to take us to move that much snow, we decided the better plan was just to flatten the snow by running it over with my truck. That worked like a charm and saved a couple of hernias.

When I got home, I started shoveling the driveway. Before too long I noticed that snow was drifted up against the doors of the neighbors across the street so I went over and did a quick job of clearing the snow from immediately in front of the doors. About that time a car pulled into my driveway. They were there to help dig out one of the guys in the apartments. Together we dug and pushed his little 2WD S10 out to the road. Unfortunately, he thought it’d be a good idea to head down the road and look for a place to turn around. He got stuck in the middle of the intersection a block away so we took my truck and some shovels down to him. I pulled him back out of the deep stuff he’d gotten into and we got him turned around. Without too much trouble he got back to the entrance of his parking lot.

Meanwhile, his helper, driving another Cavalier, had backed out of my driveway and gotten pretty well stuck in the road. We all dug and pushed for quite a while, but she was pretty well high centered in the deep stuff. Now having experience in extracting Cavaliers, we hooked her up with a strap and got her pulled back into the shallows. A couple of pushings later, both of them were on their way to plowed roads.

Not having made a lot of progress on the driveway, I headed inside to have lunch, since Evan had woken up from his nap. Afterwards I headed outside to finish the driveway. When I’d about finished, my neighbor and her son had the good fortune of a guy on a small tractor plowing their driveway for them. They’d been shoveling quite some time to get their Camry out of the road and into the driveway. I went over and helped finish digging out from underneath the car, which was so grounded out that one of the wheels wasn’t touching the ground 🙂 With the help of a couple of neighbors we got the car pushed into the clear of the driveway. With that I headed inside to warm up and put on my third pair of pants of the day.

Around dinner time, Dusty was feeling a bit of cabin fever and the plows had cleared most of the main roads, so we decided to head out to see what things were like an find a bite to eat. Only two places were open. When we returned home, I pulled into the deep snow so Dusty could reach out the window to get the mail. The mail hadn’t come. I’d always heard “the mail most go through!” Guess that’s a myth, not that I blame them.

I had to go around the block to get turned around, so I headed up this loop road. It was deep and hadn’t been plowed, but I’d been through stuff like that earlier in the day and knew it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Well, not for US anyway. Near the top of the hill we came across a family in a Trailblazer who were having trouble making it the last half block to their house. I hopped out and helped dig a little bit and before too long they were able to make some progress. Unfortunately, the wife turned a little too sharp making the left turn before their house and got into the deep uncharted territory. We got out again and helped dig and push, but they had a lot of snow packed underneath of them – those Trailblazers apparently don’t have very good ground clearance, especially that spare tire hanging down under the back of the vehicle. Fortunately they had some front tow hooks and suggested I try pulling them. I pulled off into the deep snow and went around the front of them. Once again, however, Cavaliers posed little challenge while Trailblazers proved too heavy. We did manage to get them dug out and into their driveway, though it took a while longer.

Today was fun. It was fun to mess around in the snow and it felt good to be able to help a few people in need. I’m also very proud of how my truck handles the snow. Even snow up the to bumper didn’t cause any real trouble, despite the very non-aggressive OEM all-season tires. I’m also thinking this might be my longest post ever, but then again, it was a pretty long day.

A new Wiggle

Today in a press conference, Greg Page, known to parents and toddlers around the world as the yellow-shirt-wearing Wiggle, announced that he is quitting the group due to a recently diagnosed chronic health problem. Evan is a HUGE fan of the Wiggles. For those of you without Cheerios ground into your carpet, the Wiggles are a hugely popular musical group from Australia known for their kids’ show. “Greg Wiggle” is the lead vocalist of the group.

The Wiggles plan to continue touring with a new yellow Wiggle, Sam Moran, who has actually been with the group for ten years as a backup singer and “Professor Singalottasonga”. Sam has been filling in for Greg over the past several months and now has officially been handed the yellow shirt.

The Atterberry household would like to offer our best wishes for good health to Greg, who has taught Evan such phrases as “Dig Dig Dig!”, “Quack Quack Quack Quack”, “Bow wow!”, “Dough Dough Dough, Dough-D-Dough”, and “Wake up Jeff!”

Highest vocal note records

Here’s what I learned from Wikipedia tonight. The Guinness Record for highest note sung by a male is known as C#8, which is one note higher than the highest note on a piano. If you want to see the video of the record, see this clip on Youtube.

The highest note by a female is G10, which is three octaves higher than the highest G on a piano, and also well out of the range of human hearing, about 25000Hz. I’d post a video of that, but even if your computer speakers could produce that note it wouldn’t do you a lot of good. Just sit quietly for a couple of seconds and imagine.

For comparison, the highest note I’m able to produce in any ugly fashion is A#6, and the highest Dusty (who’s currently in a community theatre production covering the highest soprano parts) can screech is somewhere around D#6. Two more octaves and she’d best Adam Lopez…

For what it’s worth, the lowest note record is held by a singer named Tim Storm. The record is B-2 (two octaves below piano range), but that’s only 8Hz. 20Hz is the lowest note that a human ear interprets as a tone. We just hear that note as 8 clicks per second.

Black Friday Failure

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year, inviting all of our siblings, parents and grandparents. Everything went just fine with that, and Evan had a good time with all the people at his house!

We had been checking out the “Black Friday” ads online and saw a number of deals that couldn’t be passed up, so my in-laws planned to stay up in Peoria to try to hit the deals, especially at Best Buy. I went to Best Buy two years ago, and even though I got there at 3 am (for the 5am opening) there were already 40 people in line. We decided, if we’re going to take advantage of this sale, we have to commit. So, at about 8pm, my father-in-law, sister-in-law and I hopped in the truck, complete with sleeping bags, cots, rain gear, etc. ready for an adventure. When we got to the last stoplight before the store, we noticed there were far too many cars in the turn lane going to the store, since everything in that plaza was closed.

Rounding the corner, we saw the parking lot lit up, full of cars, with a line of people heading around the back of the store – over 150 by our estimates… We, along with the other cars in our line, turned around and left. We drove by Circuit City and there were only 25 people there, but the deals there weren’t quite as good, and Circuit City doesn’t have the courtesy to post “minimum 18 units” in their flyer. A $250 laptop would be worth camping out for, but camping out only to find out there’s only one available wouldn’t be as appealing.

Upon returning home we heard it reported that people had been lining up since 11am. Now, we were ready for an adventure, but people willing to skip Thanksgiving with their families in order to wait in line are just too hardcore for us. I kept an eye on the weather overnight. If a snowstorm or plague of frogs rolled through, I would head back out hoping to win a spot near the front through attrition (I’m equipped for such conditions but everyone else just had plastic deck chairs and blankets!), but as it was, the weather was just too nice. I never thought I’d see a downside to nice weather…

Peekaboom

In case you need yet another way to waste time, there’s an interesting game at http://www.peekaboom.org. You get partnered with a random player and you have to guess a word based on an image. Your partner reveals parts of the image to you and provides hints.

The game is actually part of an initiative to train a computer program how to recognize objects in images. I presume they take image labels provided by the Google Image Labeler. As part of the game, you’re telling them where those objects are in the image.

What’s funny is that my wife and I were both playing separately… and discovered we were partnered with each other!

Two-hand tapping

Two-hand tapping is a neat technique for playing guitar, bass, etc. Here are some videos I found on YouTube:

That stuff is amazing to me. I can tap a simple walking bass line with my left hand and two-note chords with my right, but this guys must have 5x as many fingers as I have!

There are lots more to watch if you like what you saw, but I already wasted the whole evening piecing together this collection, so beware!

Burnout, here we come!

It’s crunch time at work. Today was the 9th time out of the last 12 working days that I’ve been in the office from 8am until after 10pm. No one’s telling me I have to work those hours, but I’m behind in my work. For my efforts, I’m getting a lot of bugs fixed and I think we’ll have a decent product, but I’ve begun to notice the indirect effects of this schedule.

The biggest effect is my weight. Long hours sometimes require caffeine, the sweet nectar of the gods. That would be alright if I could get to the gym, but I can’t. On top of that, in order to see Evan at least briefly, Dusty comes downtown to meet me for dinner on the planned late nights. So extra calories + no exercise = record-setting weight.

Secondly, the wallet takes a hit. Paying for those meals out takes it toll, and the gym membership is going unused. To top it off, if I can’t attend the gym a certain number of times in a month, work will not reimburse me for my membership dues (they pay for about half of it).

So, the reward for going the extra mile is going broke, getting fat, not seeing your kid, and not having any time to relax or for hobbies. Thankfully Dusty’s been picking up my slack around the house and has been supportive. I’m not sure that I have a point to make, but hopefully I’ll remember this next time I’m asked to provide estimates for how much work a project will take. Double them!