huge party!

Chag sameach all! I was just at a huge (about 2000 people) party in Savion. It was very loud and very drunk. I brought earplugs and used them all night. I also drank lots of vodka. So much vodka that I'm not even hungover. I become quite pleasant when I'm drunk. Not too rowdy at all, just a little bit of singing and talking to strangers, but all-in-all quite pleasant. Everyone else also drank and taxies were in big demand. Our taxi driver Ronen was very nice, even offered to be my permanent taxi driver. I liked ronen more than his older brother who drove us to the party, Ronen was a bit more normal. During the party I was with Gayle, Aliza, Jeff, Oren, and Rachel. Once you get lost you have a very small chance of finding the group again. They brought in port-a-potties and plenty of bushes for peeing. There was the free alcohol table to make the 120sh ticket price worthwhile. There was also the paid alcohol table which is where the tequilla was (I stuck to the free vodka). There were dogs in buns being sold somewhere and a large cauldron with something hot in it. The music was too loud, but otherwise was decent. Only 1 field of dance so options (music-wise) were limited.

I'm off to a BBQ now, gnite all!

My nused couches

I have couches! What a feeling! I also have a pretty difficult living room so placing the couches has been a challenge. This is the current design:


Here's a picture of the 3 seater:


And a picture of the 2 seater:


I don't want my IKEA chair to be forgotten - so here it is:



And my old couch is now helping to make my office a little more welcoming:

workings of a שעון שבת (water heating timer)

PLEASE DON'T DO THIS BY YOURSELF; IT IS VERY DANGEROUS. This isn't a guide or tutorial, but rather a journal of discovery. I am not outlining the steps on how to do this, I am just describing the stuff I learned about it.

So I decided to buy a שעון שבת which is a timer for the electric water heater. This timer is meant to replace the on/off switch that I had previously. I don't recommend that anyone do this on their own. Always call up an electrician to do it. I will now share some interesting things that I learned about how one would hook up a timer.

The timer requires 3 wires to be connected to it. A ground wire, a phase (voltage) wire, and a wire that brings the phase to the water heater. From my wall I had 2 brown wires (the phase wire with live voltage, and the phase wire that goes to the water heater), and 1 black wire (the ground). The idea behind the timer is that there is a switch in the timer which connects the 2 brown wires together allowing the live voltage to be routed to the water heater to heat the water up.

There is no ground wire coming back from the water heater in order to complete the circuit. Apparently the water heater already has this connection either through a general building ground or the apartment's ground, but it doesn't come out of the wall.

The timer needs to have live voltage in order to move the clock forward when the water heater is not on, this means that it's important to hook the live voltage up where it is always feeding the timer's motor circuit.

Here's a rough drawing:
1 and 2 are for the brown wires (phase). 1 should get the brown wire that goes to the water heater, this wire when tested with ground should have no voltage. 2 should get the brown wire with voltage, this wire when tested with ground should have 220 volts (wall voltage where I live). 3 is for ground. The basic idea is that when the timer turns on then the switch between 1 and 2 connects, and the voltage flows from 2 to 1 and powers the water heater. Regardless of whether the switch is on the motor (M in the circle with tilde) gets power in order to power the clock on the timer.

This was an interesting bit of learning, and I hope it is enlightening for any who are interested.

the sheet drying hook up

I washed my sheets and I don't have a dryer. So where do I find enough space to hang sheets, It's a fitted sheet and a flat sheet and a pillowcase. Hmm. OK so normally I use 2 chairs for the fitted sheet and with the chairs pushed far enough away from each other and the sheet pulled around the chairs properly the fitted sheet dries and doesn't hit the floor. This worked fine. But the flat sheet usually goes on my laundry rack which, due to bad planning, was filled with other drying laundry. I will now outline the steps I took to find a solution.

I spent many minutes walking around my house looking for where to hang a double bed flat sheet. I couldn't find anything. Some might have given up by this time, but not me. I continued to analyze the situation. I decided that what was needed was a long string and place to hang the string. I don't own string, but I do have a 50 foot ethernet cable. That seemed like a great start. Now where do you hang ethernet cable from?

My computer room has 2 large closets with doors that open, and doors that open naturally have hinges. Voila! I have the first place for my cable to hang from - a hinge on a closet. The hinge idea got me looking around for other hinges and with ease I spotted the door to my computer room, another hinged item! This made for a perfect solution for where to hang the cable from.

So I wired the cable across the two hinges. But now I have to keep the cable from falling. On the side of the closet the tight space between the closet door and the closet itself hold the cable tight. On the side of the door it wasn't so tight, and the cable kept falling. In order to prevent this I tied the extra cable around the doorknow relying on it's staying power. This had a knot-like effect in keeping the cable high and steady.




So I hung the sheet on the cable - first time I hung it with those little pincher type things but it wasn't high enough for that. Hmm... But then I suddenly knew what I could do; I could fold the sheet over the cable and still get a great drying effect without the dirtying and no pincher thingies. This was brilliant.

All in all this was a very satisfying conclusion to a most difficult situation. The 24 hour laundromat down the street would have been a lot less satisfying.

Wishing everyone great solutions to everyday problems.