View 480 August 20 - 26, 2007 (original) (raw)

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Sunday, August 26, 2007

Woke up with what appears to be a summer cold. Sore throat, feeling awful. Got the mail column forChaos Manor Reviews done. Niven goes off to Japan next week, and it's my job to get INFERNO II finished. I still have two scenes in mind that I know have to be done, but every time I start on the book I find other improvements I can make. The book is much better now than when we turned it in, and it was darned good even then.

Thanks to all who have recommended various zero-residue solvents. The consensus is that absolute alcohol (99% isopropyl) is both available and effective. I found 95% at my local drug store, and it seems to be good enough. That's in bottles. I will still have to find something in pressure bottle: I have a Vortex electric fan that has got gunked up -- I find that fans do that often -- and spraying WD-40 improved things but not a lot. It needs a spray to get it into the bearings, but it also needs to be zero residue since there's electrical wiring in there. After the WD-40 I poured a bit of the isopropyl on the shaft and let it run into the bearings, and the fan now turns well enough that it will start up easily, but I'd like to finish that job.

Usually I tend to throw stuff out and replace with new since I'm pretty short of time, and there's not a big return on time invested in fixing household stuff. Still, it's a good fan, probably 10 years old so the annualized cost is quite low, but it works, and it's a bit of a bother to go find another as good.

If I seem to be rambling blame it on the cold.

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