So, I ran the hose over and topped it up. A little later I'll go put some chlorine tablets into the dispenser just to make sure everything's okay. But it's probably not going to be hot enough for using the pool; Sunday's temps are expected to be in the 70s.
Tried using the spigot by the garage door instead of going around to the front and using that one.
You see, in 1982, it was reported that the spigot by the back door of the garage was leaking into the crawl space whenever it was on. It didn't get fixed; instead we ran a hose around to the front of the house and started using that one. I never questioned it, though I did wonder how the thing could leak so badly only when turned on.
Today, as soon as I turned it on, I could hear water hitting the ground in the crawl space, through the vent that's right there, so I grabbed a flashlight and looked in the crawl space. Sure enough, it was leaking like crazy. So, shut it off, used the hose that's supplied by the front, and refilled the pool.
These are "frost-proof" faucets. Probably what happened is that there's a crack or something in the body of the thing, between the seat and the handle.
So at some point I'm going to have to cram my ass into that crawl space and get a gander at that valve before I go to the hardware store for a new one. Argh etc. But I am tired of having to go all the way around to the front yard to run the hose, damn it!
* * *
Of course NASCAR is doomed.
If you are running a billion-dollar sport and you can only draw a million fans when no other sports are permitted to operate, you have serious problems. That's the world of facts and reason. In the world of wokeness, a slight bump after a series of embarrassing public relations blunders is a triumph of the will. It is all the proof the great and good need to convince them that turning NASCAR into an endless lecture on the horrors of white people was a great idea.The sport's not that interesting. 400-mile races that go in circles ("Go that way and turn left. Keep turning left for 400 miles.") are only interesting near the end.
Now, stadium trucks, and rally racing, those are interesting. Stadium trucks run short races and they make left and right turns, and go over jumps. Rallying, you're driving a really fast four-wheel-drive car down a narrow country lane at top speed and relying on your navigator to tell you when and where to turn. And again, you're making left and right turns.
Oh well. I don't know why I'm bothering to comment on NASCAR; it's not my thing.
* * *
Today I received the copy of Miracles out of Nowhere, the 40th anniversary documentary about Kansas. Ought to be quite interesting. It's a box set, a DVD with the film and a CD with the soundtrack.
* * *
Incidentally, in my explorations of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction equations I learned something else that's interesting.
You see, when something has relativistic mass, it acts like it has that mass.
So let's say we have a piece of neutronium that weighs as much as Earth does. If you accelerate that mass of neutronium to a high enough speed it's relativistic mass would be twice of Earth's mass. And so where it has a one gravity field around it at rest, moving that fast it has a two gravity field around it.
This explains why applying relativity to the motion of stars around the galactic center fixes the "missing mass" problem. We're not talking about a great deal of relativistic mass (not on the order of my example above) but the aggregate value of the relativistic mass of the stars in the galaxy, in their orbits around its center, is enough to keep the galaxy together without any need for dark matter.
I'll bet the same thing goes for the rest of it, too--we don't need dark matter to explain things as long as we apply relativity to everything.
* * *
Damn tired today.
I woke up several times in the night, my throat dry enough to make me cough. Only remedy there is to get a cough drop; having a drink of something does not help at all. So I get up, hit the can, have a cough drop, then sit up for fifteen or twenty minutes while it dissolves, because otherwise I'll fall asleep and then, in the morning, discover the partially-dissolved cough drop stuck to my pillow.
Starting to think that I've developed a bit of a problem with asthma. My wife suggested the notion and it fits the symptoms. I don't know.
What I do know is that I need to get more exercise, damn it.
* * *
Plus side, it's the weekend.
