More bricks! By popular demand!! .

A mostly finished project.

But wait! Before you wonder what I've been doing to take so long ... Literal tons of stuff are NOW AT THE AUCTION LOCATION. Three guys and myself worked like bulls this morning and afternoon. They brought a big trailer, which we filled from staged items. Including a huge coal furnace, a huge propane ceiling mount furnace, tools, metal items, yard machines ... And Then ... We got to follow them to the auction yard and unload everything. The motorcycle and metal lathe from last night and the trailer full from today. Yes you do gather many things in 33 years.

But, I promised you a nice screen saver. . And here ya go!

Be nice now. I'm old.

Gary

Even moorhhah bettar!!!





Gary

PURDY!!! That's some fine work there Gary. Nice angled masonry wall capped with a door frame, sweet.

I hope your auction goes well. It should be a liberating event toward your total escape from Maryland. It seems you were ahead of the curve for gunmakers leaving the "liberal" states for friendlier states. Maybe we can get you on Fox and Friends. That should get you audited for the next 4 years!

Kent

Like the "before and after". Looks like the entrance to the Barnes Pneumatic (north) root cellar / bomb shelter.

Gary,

I was trying to find a good example of a construction professional wearing a bill cap properly for low threshold work, we have thousands of them down here. It's OK to wear one on the job, it seems the bill of the cap just needs to be turned to the side. One caveat if you chance on a photo of said professional, their pants are usually worn even lower than the popular "plumber sheik" due to the fact that there are no basement stairs in southern Florida. This hypo-low style could be dangerous when traversing stairs so a Maryland hybrid style will be required.

Nice work.

Lon

We saw them go by while we attempted to have a Sunday afternoon meal out. Group of young people dragged by on the streets. All had about 6" of boxers showing and then the pants waist down below that. Juuuuuust at the tipping point of dropping off. And for a new twist, one was a girl. We have fast food workers dressing like this up here.
Personally, regarding our stroll; I think we left the pier some time back.

We attempted to relax a bit today. Big mistake. What a mess.

Next topic: hey, when you have a car sound system with a USB/iPod jack beside a AUX phone jack input ... And you plug in the iPod, and have it on playing ... What would prevent the system from recognizing the iPod and playing it? It will say something which indicates its not receiving input, but the iPod is hooked up and the numbers are rolling.

Gary

Gary,

Short answer to the iPod into car stereo, I don't know. You'll have to read the car stereo manual to see how to toggle between inputs.

Lon

Thks Lon,
Manual only acts like its initiative. Acts as if radio controls should cycle all iPod functions. With the iPod hooked up with a cable with the Apple end and a USB end ... The radio acts as if nothing is connected to AUX. We bought an AUX 1/8" phone jack input cable. When I simply plug the one 1/8" phone jack end into the dash ... The radio says "connected" ... That's with nothing on the other end of the cord. When I plug the other end of the phone jack into the iPod output (ear phone jack) then I can hear a faint, faint version of the iPod playing. But with all vol. up, it's miles away and garbled.
Now - all my cables are I Florida (Country song) ... So I bought this new simple one. USB gives nothing and phone jack gives tinny miles away sound. Manual is no help. iPod has been good. Is it an input jack fault? Trip to audio sound shop where tech touches the big red button and iPod blares out the Barnes Pneumatic theme music? Dies ANYTHING simply work anymore?
Gary

very nice work Gary... You are perfect...

The truth is that all our electronics are either too smart or just not quite smart enough, cables included. My wife's old flip phone charger uses a mini-USB connector. It's a very common format, probably about the default cell phone charger jack style these days excluding Apple products (and MY old flip phone, of course ). When she plugs her phone into its proper cable all is good, but if she plugs it into one of the OTHER half-dozen mini-USB chargers we've got stuffed into the kitchen drawer it beeps and scrolls the message "unauthorized charger" for several seconds.

How the heck does it know one mini-USB charger from another, and more importantly...WHY DOES IT MATTER?!? The whole POINT of having a standard format is for them all to be interchangeable, isn't it? The damned things too smart by half.

Gary,

A cursory search of iPod output to car stereo returned a 3.5mm male to male stereo cable, simple old school.

Copy:

Question: Can I connect iPod to my car stereo?

Answer: Yes. iPod will also sound great on your car stereo. Use an extension cable with 3.5 mm stereo connectors on each end to connect iPod to your car stereo system's auxiliary input, or use a cassette adapter if your car stereo doesn't have a sound input port. These items can be purchased at stores that sell car stereo accessories, or at the Apple Store.



I don't think Apple output is USB, I thought it was Firewire but I don't own an Apple anything and can't spend an hour researching it now.

Lon



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2013 04:50PM by Bigbore.

Gary,

I checked with the "genius" downstairs and he and the crew use the same iPod to USB cable for their iPhones and iPods to hook to cars audio systems. One thing you want to check is the selection on the car stereo. In my car, USB and Aux are separate inputs, your car may not automatically switch to the active input. If you have not already, I would use the iPod to USB cable and then see if you can manually select USB as the source for listening.

Ill check. Thanks.

The "select" command seems vague. IIRC the button which is used as a select command such as when selecting a category from SAT radio ... When I try to use that to select an input, it goes into a base/treble/balance/etc. mode.

Lon - yes, I've tried the male/male 3.5mm phone jack cable. That's how I get the very faint play of the iPod. With the regular iPhone/USB cable, I get nothing. I'm sure there's a simple command - once you know it. You'd think it would be in the manual's section entitled "connecting an iPod" or something close. But that basically said "hook it up and play it".

Gary,

Did you get it going yet?

Lon

Thks Lon.
No. Not yet. Figured I need a ten year old to do it. I'll go another round with it when I'm back in Kelly's car. Doesn't improve my general fuzzy feeling though, to spar with trivial tasks which have been easy until they were improved beyond my ability to use them.
Thks
Gary

"new and improved"...yeah...right... Lot of baggage loaded into that phrase, isn't there?

If the marketing 'geniuses" hadn't been loading us down with their rushed-onto-market-half-finished garbage using that catchphrase for decades it might even mean something these days.

If you can't get it to work with the jack and there's no cassette slot, they also make little gizmos that are actually tiny FM transmitters that you can plug an Ipod into and listen through the FM radio. You have to pick a station that's not in use, which means occasionally changing it as you drive on longer road trips. I've got one I keep in the glovebox that works off AAA batteries, it's OK, but the sound quality is only so-so.

If the alternative is listening to the back-seat crew sing "ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall" AGAIN, you'd be surprised what you can live with.

I know I'm always griping about tecky stuff. My take would be that you have individual geeks coming up with their own formats. Nothing is the same as the last. Makes perfect sence to them. But it puts you in the continuing spiral of chasing THEIR latest whim. Whick I suspect they are happy with. If they were designing automobiles, last year would have a steering wheel. This years model has a Tiller. Next year a joystick. Then a pull rope. Followed by a bunch of switches. Then a mind meld. They can't leave Anything alone. Look at the nightmare called Windows 8. It's Apple Lite. And, before you cheer Apple, I always thought half of their stuff was nonsense gimmick. You have to bounce off the sidewall to get a toolbar to open. Unless its switched itself to top or bottom instead. I've hunted for some silly little mystery verification command icon for hours on both formats. You've cropped a picture. It left you go thru the process. Then it extra double pollywog super duper requires one last command to activate the change. And I can't find it. Every movie maker program is different. Everybody on earth could use a computer if they'd let ANYTHING alone.
Just one mans humble opinion.
But when you can't plug in an AUX jack and play a device. It's nuts.
Ill bet you a dollar it's some secret handshake command to quadrupole verify that I REALLY want to listen to the iPod.

Gary

Either that, or it's the dark side of the computer world...their so-called "digital rights management" nanny-ware. Sometimes things that SHOULD work just don't because they take the most conservative approach possible about who owns what. As in "we know you already bought this a decade ago on CD because you didn't download it from us, but we're going to try to charge you for it again anyway". Perhaps you cruised through I-tunes to get the cover art for a track that you already downloaded from your personally owned CD collection. I-pod files are, after all, arranged visually so the cover art essentially becomes the icon. Now they're got all those tracks from that particular album on their "maybe he stole it somewhere" list because you got the cover art from them but not the MP-3 files.

Could be that your truck and your ipod haven't gotten their act together yet because your car stereo really, really likes static-filled AM country-music broadcasts and wants to listen to ancient Hank Williams Sr. tunes all the way back to Florida...whether you want to or not. Who knows?

This reply may be too late, but make sure you have the iPod volume turned all the way up if you're using the 3.5 mm jack.
I hope you get it figured out.
Scott