The coldest winter I ever spent
For 2+ years, I have been the chair of the Madera Handy Helpers. We do all manner of odd jobs at my daughter’s elementary school. It’s a joy to help her and her school prosper and grow!
Over the next few months, I’ll be handing off the job to two newer, excited parents.
I put this plug into the Madera Monday Message. I’m happy with it.
Props to my neighbor Vinny Abeygunawardena who made the hats!
2 stars
My review should be findable on Yelp, I posted it 2026-05-21.
We had Faithco give estimates on preparing a house to sell.
There were some elements of their estimate that were reasonable here are the parts that were not.
A toilet seat wobbled a small amount. The Faithco plumber said it would be $275-$1000 to fix it. I took a look at it and it took me 15 seconds to tighten the nuts at the base of the toilet.
The drip tray of an air conditioner in the attic had been collecting water and draining through a pipe for years, which is not ideal! The drain took a path that zig-zagged up and down a bit. They proposed raising the unit to be suspended from the rafters and replacing the pan. I asked why not just replace the pipe, taking a straighter path and he said that the AC unit sitting on top of styrofoam supports was putting at risk of falling. His quote was $2800 to raise the unit. And he wouldn’t offer other options even after I questioned each part. I asked another company and they suggested changing the pan for $1500 and fixing the drain for $500. We went with just fixing the drain for $500.
We wanted a quote on replacing a 20+ year old AC system. Faithco couldn’t find the model number of the unit on the equipment outside but found a 3 ton furnace in the attic so they quoted us (summer of 2025) $13,800 for a SEER 15.2 3 ton unit and $16,800 for a SEER 16.2 unit. Another contractor found the nameplate and showed it to me (a little hard to find but not really, right on the compressor) and saw it was a 2 ton unit (you can tell it’s a 2 ton because the model number ends in “24”). The other contractor subsequently quoted us $10,500 for a 2 ton system and $12,800 for a 3 ton system. The other contractor also pointed out that since the house has a 2 ton unit for the bedrooms and a 4 ton unit for the main living space, high SEER is less important, the unit would mostly be used in the evenings, not all day. I had a follow-up conversation with the Faithco HVAC tech and he doubled-down on believing it was a 3 ton unit even though I told him I saw the model number ending in “24”. He said, and I recall it exactly because it was so odd, “In this area, we make sure our our compressors match our furnaces.” I bit my tongue but wanted to say, “I agree, but the nameplate I’m looking at still ends in “24””.
Faithco recommended replacing 3 AC float switches for $225 apiece. Maybe it was me but I couldn’t figure out why we needed them. I don’t think they tested the existing units but I’m not sure.
Soooo, we went with Evans Air instead.
We recently got a used Safari Condo Alto teardrop trailer. It has some electrical problems.
You know how Occam’s razor tells us that when something is broken, it is probably only one part that’s broken? Occam was an optimist. I’ve solved 2 of the 3 problems with the electrical system.
Problem 1: I did a few test runs and the fully charged battery system would only power the refrigerator for about six hours.
I spent several days running the fridge or hair dryer hooked up to an inverter and staring at the Victron controls. Finally, I figured out that the Victron battery monitoring system had been set to measure lead-acid batteries, causing it to display inappropriate warnings and power-down things inappropriately! I switched the settings on the Victron to measure lithium iron phosphate instead of lead acid and ta-da! Problem solved!
I ran a test yesterday and project 24 hours of run time instead of 6 hours.
I spent much of the weekend draining and charging the batteries, thinking they were the culprits but both of these 100 amp-hour batteries were good for at least 80 amp-hours.
Problem 2: When plugged in to a 110 volt outlet, the batteries took ~20 hours to charge. The Inteli-Power Power Converter had also been set to lead-acid batteries! I switched it to lithium iron phosphate and now I’m charging at 350 watts instead of 100 watts! (I fixed this about 10 minutes ago so I -assume- I’m good to go on that one.
Problem 3: unsolved so far. The solar panels charge the batteries at about 5 watts when they should be charging at about 150 watts. My current theory is that I need to move the RV to be in more direct sunlight. I’ll try that tomorrow.
I called a mobile RV repair person two weeks ago. He contacted me twice but he’s too busy to visit. So I banged my head against the beautiful shiny walls of the RV.
We just purchased a Honda Pilot and we’re planning on going camping this weekend, Memorial Day.
We listed our RV on RVTrader.com and a day later I got a message from someone saying they were interested. Then they said how they sold their RV on trailerviewer.com after not having any luck on RVTrader.com. Of course, it was a scam.
Red flag: their mobile site has no way to filter by location, which is an essential feature.
Yellow flag: the domain name has only been live since 2023
Yellow flag: In their messaging, they were too excited about trailerviewer.com
Red flag: the Better Business Bureau has several people complaining about the scam, mentioning almost the exact same text that I received.
My text messages:
Lee: Hi, this is Lee with the 2021 Keystone bullet. Yes, we are available this weekend to show it! I can call you after 2:30 today. Chat soon.
276-290-2568?: Yes, I remember, thank you for getting back to me! I was helping my sister and brother-in-law find one for their family. They reached back out this morning and told me they put a deposit down on one closer to home. My husband and I had a Bullet, but we recently sold it because we decided to go full-timing so we got a motorhome. You may want to look into www.TrailerViewer.com that’s where we sold ours after our friends referred us. We tried RV Trader for a few months with no luck.
Lee: Thanks very much and all the best on your trails
276-290-2568?: Of course, and thank you so much!! Let me know how it goes, we had a deposit 3 days after listing last week. It was a night and day difference. We were beginning to worry we’d have it another season. Hope you’re enjoying this nice weather!! :)
Lee: Here’s a crazy thought, is trailerviewer.com a scam?
276-290-2568?: [no response]
TLDR; Wispr Flow Dictation Software works great! Try it with this referral code for a free month
I have to say that I am really very impressed with the latest generation of voice-to-text programs! I have been using Wispr Flow for about a week, and wow, I can do voice-to-text seamlessly and effectively for the very first time! I was there when Dragon Naturally Speaking came out in the late 1990’s and I trained my voice on it like a mad person trying to get it to work. But no, it just was never accurate enough for it to decrease my frustration or increase my effective typing speed.
Looking back to a blog post in 2005, I thought for a while that voice-to-text had come of age, but I didn’t keep with it. We’ll see how long I keep with this. Honestly, I’ve got good hopes.
But darn it, I wrote this entire blog post without a single mistake from Wispr Flow! I edited a few words, but that wasn’t the dictation software at all. I’m still in the free trial of the program, but I’ll go ahead and give you a referral code. We each get a free month, which is worth about $12. Here is your Wispr Flow referral code.
We’re selling our (not so very) old RV and we’ve got a new one!
Great for a family! Light, easy-to-tow trailer with big dinette, large fridge and separate freezer, tons of storage, good counter space, wide bunkhouse, large automatic awning, and outdoor kitchen.
Spacious master bedroom with a door.
In excellent condition and well maintained! One scrape on outside where we ran into our wooden fence.
New tires summer 2024.
See the Craigslist listing or just call me!
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We had a really great spring break trip to Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii!
February 13th: We woke up at 4:30 am for our flight and we were at the pool by 1pm! Megan and Abigail spent time in the water, but I just laid out in the sun on a beach chair for a long while. I had a flurry of dizzying dreams that were so intense!
We had a light meal at Nui for dinner: Megan’s blackened brussel sprouts were really good (we said we wanted to try to make them like that at home (bacon fat helped!)) we shared eggplant parm that we all thought was “good” and chicken parm that mom didn’t like.
We spent much of the day at the Hilton lagoon. Abigail did perfectly with snorkeling! Lee saw a spotted eagle ray and followed it with Megan’s camera underwater!
Lee met Brian and Colt and threw a football for a while.
Abigail got a donut floatie and named it Frank Lee Donut. He became an in-joke for much of the rest of the trip! We found a beach ball with the name “Peterson” on it and we related it to the Castaway “Wilson”
I met a dad and kid, Brian and Colt. I had been just walking along at the pool and the two of them were throwing a nerf football back and forth. We got to throwing, which was nice! We met up a few more times during the vacation, which was also really sweet.
In the evening we went out to the Marriott Hawaii Calls restaurant for Valentine’s Day. There was the promise of king crab legs and prime rib buffet, but I’ll say right now it was remarkably mediocre in every way except for the sunset view. And, OMG it was like $280.
That evening, we made our own fun by walking out to A-Bay (Anaeho?omalu Bay) from the Marriott restaurant resort, admiring the gentle lapping of the water on the shore, and the nighttime view. Remarkably, as the three of us were lying on lounge chairs, we all saw a shooting star streak across the sky! It was large and orange for just a moment! We all shouted out and pointed in unison, “Shooting star!”
This was the sleeping day. Someone in our family got slept 10 hours…. and then another 7. We spent most of the day in the room, doing a whole lotta nothing.
In the morning, we went to a kukui nut necklace making workshop. It was very chill and pleasant art making. There was a high schooler at the workshop, Amber, who knew about the Dragon Boat club in Berkeley. She invited Abigail to join!
We went on a catamaran whale watching tour with Hawaii Nautical. We spent most of our time sitting right in front where the water would occasionally splash up!
Sitting right in front on the netting, we got splashed a few times. It was hilarious when I got splashed and yelped, and the crewmate sitting in front of me leaned back in laughter, and HE got splashed! The water was the most indescribably beautiful crystal blue! But oooeeeee it was windy!
Pizza from the resort at the Kona pool was terrible. But the swimming and hot tubbing was great. (Thank you, wet suit! Yes, I’m a temperature wimp, but that wet suit gives me powers!) Playing with Abigail in the pool with Abigail was lots of fun!
We spent the whole day in the room. Someone slept 13 hrs, but poorly, and then another 6 hours.. 9-3. But then at 4 we went out to Lava Lava. I had already eaten in the room so I went for a contemplative walk on the beach while Megan and Abigail ate. Back to the room and then we went on a Manta Ray trip! It was incredible!!
I was anxious at the boat landing, being in a strange place at night but I made it through.
The boat ride out to the site was intense: I was sitting with a view on the oceanside, but there was nothing to see, nothing! I mean, nothing! I couldn’t make out the horizon while bouncing around in the little skiff, it felt like a tiny glimpse into a vast nothingness. I commented to Megan about A TV show we had watched a while back about people, real, regular people that wanted to travel to Mars or be on interstellar spaceships despite the vast emptiness of space. I suggested that they should ride on this boat first just to make sure they could comprehend what they were getting into.
We took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the Queens Marketplace enough times that We started paying attention to the schedule that it runs on. Here is the schedule. Eventually, we figured out that taking an Uber was actually usually a bit cheaper and faster, but it’s still good to have the bus in your back pocket. We were also going to go to the lei making, hula lessons and drum lessons at the King’s Shops on Wednesday, but we never made it! That’s ok!
Brunch at the Hilton was amazing. Everything perfectly prepared. The chocolate pastries were perfect, moist where they should be and flaky where they wanted to be! The bread pudding was like a custard with great additions, the Korean chicken and waffles were spicy and peppered and flavorful! The POG juice was so Poggy! Lychee nuts, cut papaya, all kinds of beautiful muffins and danishes, oh my!
Then we were off to the Ocean pool. Ab and Megan played in the water for hours while Lee strolled to the giant Buddha on the peninsula, quite striking!
Both Abigail and Megan slipped at the pool, in separate instances. That was a bit scary, Abigail bumping her head, lightly thank everything. The next week, Megan’s foot X-Ray showed a broken toe that took two months to fully heal.
Here is our beloved Frank Lee Donut at various locations around the resort!
Last month we went to a smash room in Oakland. We smashed things good!
Me like smash room.
I did it! I found the last Easter egg!
The Easter Bunny left lots of eggs around the house and one was not accounted for until now! It was a blue egg sitting in almost plain sight underneath a blue, wire table. Hidden in plain sight.
Thank you Easter Bunny!
