New Tankless Hot Water Heater

Today we had a new tankless hot water heater installed. It took a little over 6 hours with two guys working. It was a lot of work and they had to rerun pipes in different patterns and also had to drill through the side of the house for the exhaust pipes. It as a very noisy job but they got it done.

He said it would take a day or so for everything to settle in. 

Bad Bunny Show & Puerto Rico

Watching the Super Bowl halftime show yesterday with Bad Bunny reminded me of how much I loved my time in Puerto Rico with the Navy. I made many trips to that island paradise in the early 70's. Here is a previous post I made about that experience. San Juan 1971.

It was shocking how racist trump and his ignorant disgusting maggats reacted to this show. How they complained about not being able to understand his singing and that the super bowl half time show should be performed by Americans. 

Like they don't know that the people of Puerto Rico are Americans. And how many half time shows over the years have been previously performed by non-Americans... like U2, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Shakira, etc. 

YouTube Music

I also recently signed up for a trial period for YouTube Music that is included along with my YouTube Premium.

I spent several days loading playlist from my iTunes program to YouTube Music using the Tune My Music app. I had started using that app awhile ago when I was moving playlist to the Spotify app. I tried the trial period and liked it but I had used up the free uploads so now I had to purchase a subscription. It was only about $20 a year so I went ahead and got it. I'll use it this first year and then unsubscribe. So I started moving playlist from iTunes to YouTube. I also found out it was easy to also move other playlists from Spotify to YouTube Music. I now have quite a few playlist on YouTube Music.

I also moved the playlist I made for Artists in my Focus series. I still have a lot of them to move. Then in my YouTube Library I also added a lot of albums that will be easily available. I can access my YouTube Music app from my laptops, phone and tablet and play them on a speaker with Blue Tooth. Right now I'm playing a mix from YouTube Music on my kitchen speakers through the laptop.

I'm going to investigate how to play it with the car stereo next.

I decided to give up on Spotify and move to YouTube Music after reading a book on the AI driven curated playlist... Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify.

Hot Water Heater Problem

Today we had a problem with out hot water heater. I was sitting in the kitchen when I heard an unusual noise coming from the basement. I went down to check it out.

I immediately saw water on the floor. Lots of it. There was also a strange sound coming from the hot water heater. I looked around and saw there was water coming out of the bottom of the water heater in fast drips. I started cleaning up the water and directing the flow to the closer floor drain by the sinks. Most of the water had been going across the basement and then along the wall to the floor drain at the front of the house.

We have a service contract with Reimer Heating and Plumbing. It was a Sunday morning at 11 am and I called them to report the problem. They promised a technician would come by today and inspect the water heater. In the meantime I closed the valve for the water entering the heater. A few minutes the water stopped coming out of the bottom of the heater. The problem was that the water throughout the house stopped coming out of pipes. I waited a little bit and then turned the valve back on. Over the next few hours we did have water but not hot water.

In the meantime I went online to do a little researching of the problem. Mostly it had to do with our hot water heater aging out. It was just about ten years old. I saw that hot water heaters generally last between 8 and 12 years which makes ours about average for failure. The problem looked like it was leaking from corrosion at the base of the heater which is a very common problem for old water heaters. 

I started researching new heaters including the newer tankless water heaters both gas and electric. It looked like we were probably going to spending some serious money to get a new hot water heater.

The technician came by around 4:30 and looked at our heater problem. I highly recommended a new one which we were expecting. He was very knowledgeable and spent some significant time going over our basement plumbing and gas line layout. He mapped out where the new appliance would go and where the pipes would run. It was a big job because of the basement pipe situation and the labor would be a large percentage of the cost.

He used his tablet to map out the pipe installation and the set up of the gasless heater on the back wall. There would also need to be exhaust pipes going outside but the back porch made it necessary to run the pipes out the side along the walkway to the backyard. I would have rather had on the other side of the house but that was just too much work redoing all of the pipes in the basement including both water and gas.

He came up with a total cost $8,656.08. He sent me the estimate to my email.

He said the work could be done on Tuesday morning which meant we had one more day of water issues.

- 6 Degrees

When we woke up this morning the temperature was -6 degrees. The past several days have been full of frigid temperatures but this is crazy. We haven't had a winter like this in many years. Lots of snow and seriously freezing temperatures.

Some Old Katie Pictures

Yesterday at Bob Szymanski's wake his ex-wife Linda gave me several pictures of Katie that she had found when going through a box of old photos that Bob had stored away. She recognized our little 2 year old Katie. Becky and I had never seen these photos before so it was nice of her to bring them to the wake knowing that I would be there. I don't remember where and when these photos were taken. I meant to ask her but there were a lot of conversations going at the time.

I recently wrote about Bob after his passing here.

Another Bitter Cold Day

Woke up this morning and the temperature was -2 degrees. By 8 o'clock it was -1 and now at 9 am it's 0 degrees and snowing.

Von Trapp Kolsch - Glass of Beer

I've been enjoying a nice six pack of Kolsch Style Ale from Von Trapp Brewing of Vermont. A very tasty ale. Becky had picked up the six pack recently from Dash's Market. She really knows what I like.

I'm getting ready to start reading that Robyn Hitchcock memoir she got me for Xmas.

Bob's Memorial

Earlier this evening I attended Bob Szymanski's memorial service at a funeral home on Amherst Street near Grant. I had an extensive talk with his ex-wife Linda who I never very well at the Pastime Lounge. I also spent some time with two of our Pastime bartenders Sam and Yvonne who have been married now for some 40 years and have 10 grandchildren. It was nice talking with them too and we had lots of memories together at the Pastime. I showed them and Linda some of the band flyers and posters from some of the shows. They liked the flyers but didn't remember most of the bands except for 10,000 Maniacs.  I met Bob's two sons there and talked with them too.

Linda and the family have been going through boxes of "stuff" that Bob had in his home including lots of photos. Linda found several photos of Katie that were taken when we visited Bob and Linda around Xmas 1986. She had the photos tonight and gave them too me. We have never seen them before and they were so cute. Katie was about 2 and a half. Linda and one of her sons said there were lots of photos from inside the Pastime including some with me in the sound booth. They are going to make some copies for me. 

YouTube Premium

Today I signed up for YouTube Premium. Right now it is a one month free trial but I will do the annual fee in March because it is a better deal than the monthly fee and I know we will like it.

We have been watching a lot of YouTube videos over the past few years. We often turn it on later in the evening before going to bed to watch the clips of late night comedy opening monologues. There are a bunch of them we watch including segments from Saturday Night Live along with Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and occasionally Bill Maher.

Often times during the day I put YouTube on to watch classical music concerts. Lots of classical or Spanish guitar too. I also love watching old clips of jazz and rock music concerts. Sometimes I put the music clips on the TV and then read or putter around the house doing some chores.

So now we have all of that video activity ad free. No more interruptions at odd times in a concert or monologue. With YouTube Premium there are also many more options of films and shows to watch. This is going to be great... we'll see.