119 Year Old Home In Prince William County, VA Should Be Rescued!

December 23, 2019

#345

Gentle reader,

Below are photographs I made of a home built in 1901, almost 119 years ago.

From Prince William County, Virginia property records, according to Realtor.com:

Property Overview - XXXXXXX Manassas, VA 20112 is a single family home built in 1901. This property was last sold for $1,250,000 in 2008 and currently has an estimated value of $711,500. The median sales price for the Independent Hill area is $567,500. The $711,500 estimated value is 48.54% greater than the median listing price of $479,000 for the Independent Hill area.

According to the Manassas public records, the property at XXXXXXX Manassas, VA 20112 has approximately 2,012 square feet, 4 beds and 1 bath with a lot size of 9.24 acres. Nearby schools include Coles Elementary School, Louise A. Benton Middle School and Charles J. Colgan Sr. High School. 

The property was once a small farm on XXXXXXX. Now, Rt. XXX is a major divided highway.  

There was a proposal in 2011 to convert the land to business use. 

Every time we see the place, I think, "I want to save that place. I want us to live in it!"

The story goes that the owners of the property do not want to, or may be forbidden from, destroying the house.

I have been told the house is available for the tidy sum of $1.00. But, the house MUST be moved from the property.

An old, inexpensive, stereo console adorns the front porch. You can see the weather has destroyed even the cones of the speakers.

It is unlikely these electronics will ever produce sound again. Morse, the maker, was never known for high quality, so it is not much of a loss to the world.

There is a bay window on the front and both sides. These two images show the right side (from the street).

The good news is the siding has been replaced, or at least covered over. 

The potential bad news is there may be asbestos shingles beneath this siding. 

The style, decorations and general quality of construction bodes well for the possibility of the house being able to be MOVED.

The metal roof, likely steel since I don't think tin actually rusts, is probably original. It can be cleaned and repainted.

Every doorway has it's own roof over it. Sadly, some windows have been broken so rain/snow has entered the house for years.

Someone has removed the plywood that once sealed the back door. 

You can see the diagonal wood used over the studs. Plywood was not invented yet when the house was built. 

I would not enter the house. It is private property and marked no trespassing.

Plus, no doubt some wild things may be enjoying living inside. 

Each of the peaks of the roof is adorned with decorative shingles. Almost Victorian in look.

I had to use a wide angle lens to capture this side. As I wrote, all doorways are covered by their own roof.

Having a metal roof on our house, we have found snow stops have earned their name. With the individual roofs, so cascading (more like an avalanche) snow from the main roof would not land on the unsuspecting below.

Speaking of roofs, this Black Vulture landed on the chimney as I was making my way back to the car.

Some consider them a bad omen. Someone pointed out to me that they and others of their kind, perform an important role in nature. 

So perhaps he is rooting for this house to be saved. I certainly hope so.

I have been told that buying land, preparing the land building a new foundation AND moving the house will cost over $100,000.

Of course, were it me, and I pray it could be, the house will need to be completely restored once in place.

So there is that extra cost. One bathroom? Think, new: plumbing, wiring, central heat/air conditioning, drywall, flooring, windows and doors, trim, paint, kitchen and so much more.

I have written this to send word out with hope that someone that has the ability to SAVE this historical home will see it.

It cries out to have a family live, grow and love within it's walls and under it's roof.

Please share a link of this article. We pray someone out there will see it and act to save this place.

Thanks!

Scott and Nancy

December 23, 2019

#345

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

General Motor's Quad-4 Engine First Modern GM Engine

December 21, 2019

#344

Gentle reader,

My wife and I refer to our first marriages as, "In a former life..."

That said, in a former life, my wife seemed content to pop out a new baby every two years and stay home while I had to work two jobs. But I digress.

I have been a car guy since I was tiny, Mom said that I could identify any car by age three. Me thinks she exaggerates.

Since my commute from Stafford County, VA to Washington, D.C. was fifty miles, I needed a car that got good fuel mileage. 

Prior to my career working on D.C.'s subway cars, I was a new car dealership mechanic. Since a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer was my last job doing that and I was familiar with cars, I chose a used 1982 Plymouth Reliant K-Car. It was a four-door sedan, same color as the two-door above.

It had the very good 2.2 liter single overhead cam four cylinder engine, shown above. That image is of the one in the 1985 Dodge Aries wagon. I found a chrome plated cam cover and put it on the engine. That adds like five horsepower, for sure. ;-)

That Reliant was a plain-Jane sedan with bench seats, column shifter and automatic transmission. Which failed one afternoon as I was about to leave work (it would go into reverse, but not drive) in D.C. Thank goodness I had (and still do have) AAA because that tow was free.

Obviously, I needed another car and since we had four kids, it needed to be a four-door.

On a used car lot was this 1989 Pontiac Grand-Am. Nice looking car. "Turbo-Power" was written on the windshield. I opened the hood, no turbo, but it did have GM's Quad-4 engine. The intake manifold had four equal-length tubes, similar to a racing exhaust header:

I painted the cam cover red, normally it was unadorned aluminum.

Here is another view of the Grand-Am, I was trying to sell it at that point. These photos were made with a JCPenney 110 film camera. 110's used 16mm film, so the negatives are quite small.

Below, are a series of images from other people I found doing a search for Quad-4 engines.

Here are two that are better quality images of the lower output (160 horsepower) Quad-4 engine with it's equal-length long-runner intake manifold.

The image above is of the engine with the cam cover/ignition removed.

These two images must have been from GM when it introduced the Quad-4 engine.

The Quad-4 was GM's first modern engine: Twin camshafts with four-valves-per-cylinder. The first with individual coil packs instead of a distributor and (I think) with individual fuel injectors. 

An excellent cutaway drawing above and the bottom of the cylinder head below.

While powerful and with strong torque, the engines were prone to head gasket failure. Mine blew on the way to work in D.C. one winter morning. Fortunately, even though it was well out of warranty, GM replaced the head gasket for free.

These are photos of the High Output Quad-4. They put out 180 horsepower and used short runner intake manifolds. Above is a partial cutaway display engine.

I was not the only one to paint the cam cover red.

Can you imagine how many more Pontiac Fieros would have been sold had it a Quad-4 engine instead of the 1950's "Iron Duke" four cylinder?

I like Fieros and always thought a Quad-4 would be ideal for swapping into one. More than twice the power and less weight. What's not to like?

Quad 4 swap (lot of pics) - Pennock's Fiero Forum 

The link above is for a Fiero that has a Quad-4 in it. If you would like to learn more about the Quad-4, here is a link to the Wikipedia page:

Quad 4 engine - Wikipedia 

So, what became of that Grand-Am? Well, since I had to work two jobs, one of them was delivering pizzas. Between that, and the 100-mile commute, it began to develop problems. The first was that it would die when in drive. I had to put it in neutral at stop lights and rev it a bit and drop it into drive hoping it would not die. 

That eventually led to the automatic transmission to fail. That was IT for me and autos. 

Since then, every car I owned has a manual transmission, including my current car, which I will keep forever, a 2005 Volvo V50 T5 M66 wagon which has a turbo FIVE cylinder engine and the super-rare six-speed manual transmission.

I hope you have enjoyed my little article about the once great GM Quad-4 engine. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my humble blog. It is our kind words here on via Facebook that keep me writing.

Scott

December 21, 2019

#344

 

Military Rated Flip-Phone? Yes, There Is Such A Thing.

December 7, 2019

#342

Gentle reader,

Normally, I am scrupulous about checking pockets before putting things in the laundry.

I am old school, and while I acknowledge the usefulness of "smart" phones, I do not want one.

I have seen too many people who spend way too much time head bent over their phones.

All I want is to be able to talk and text. So, from the beginning, I have insisted upon having a flip-phone.

Years ago, we started with Nextel and one of the phones we upgraded to were these yellow and black models, above. (Photo found on the Internet.) The push-to-talk feature was amazing. I could talk to my wife from Pennsylvania to Virginia clear as a bell with that feature. We did hear someone in the Nextel store refer to it as "the construction model". We smiled when the store employee gently corrected the young man, "It's not special, just colored that way, or you can get an all-black one."

I have always done the laundry in our marriage. Since I've retired, I have gladly taken on the role of house-husband.

I exclusively wear 5.11 Tactical pants. I have two pair of their Taclite, one in khaki and the other in black. They have a little pocket that is called the cell phone pocket. I wear them around the house. I have four pairs (khaki, Navy, black and olive) of their more combat oriented pants which have magazine pockets which will hold 30-round AR mags inside the cargo pockets. Not that I have an AR-type rifle. But cargo pants are very handy for holding all the things I carry when we go out.

One night, I was doing the switchover since I was doing the laundry the next day. I moved all my "pocket pieces" from one pair to the other but neglected to get the blue phone (top photo and below) out of it's special pocket.

Now, I am not a person who freaks out if they can't find their phone. However, since it's always in my pocket, I did wonder where it was. I even called it, hoping to hear it's ring.

You can guess the rest. When I pulled the pants out of the washer, I saw the bulge and you can guess what I said.

You may be thinking that I am joking when calling this phone, "Military Rated". But I am not. Here is a link to sonim web page about it:

Sonim XP3 – Sonim Technologies  

"In mission critical situations, getting the basics right is everything. And for fast, easy and reliable communication, the Sonim XP3 is as dependable as they come. FirstNet and B14 ready, Military rated and with Noise Cancellation, this ultra-rugged flip outperforms – in the most extreme conditions on earth."

Fortunately for me, it is too big for the special pocket, so this will never happen again.

I was in the process of charging it when I quickly shot these photos.

Also, fortunately for me, I had made a list, on paper, with a pen(!) of all my phone contacts. And since the camera in the old phone is crap, I did not lose any photos.

While this phone is no doubt NOT waterproof and I am not in the military, I will not have use for some of the things it can do. 

However, I am sure it will perform much better than the tiny and easily scratched Sanyo phone that it replaces.

Thanks for taking the time to read my humble blog. It is your kind words and comments, below, or on Facebook that keep me writing.

Scott

December 7,2019

#342

 

3rd Times A Charm Finally a Working Yamaha CDX-510 CD Player

November 29, 2019

#341

Gentle reader,

Longtime readers are well aware of the music systems around our house.

NOTE: If you are new to Blogger, you may click on any image and a second window will open OVER this one. The photos will be larger. You can use your arrow keys to browse through them or click on each photo.

This article focuses on the Yamaha stack  of components sitting mere inches from me right now. 

For those who are new, Thank you for being here! 

I have had countless components here in our home "office". I will not bore you with the many iterations and locations and of said components in the room.

I spend far more time sitting here or doing other things in this room than I do in the listening room. So, it is important to me to have the best sound I can afford on my fixed income.

This photo is from January. As you can see, the only Yamaha component is a RX-496 stereo receiver. 

A Fisher cassette deck, one of the few black ones I have seen with VU meters and an OPPO universal player. Atop the stack is an Insignia HD Radio which I was using for a tuner.

I wanted a better tuner than the RX-496 possessed and while the HD Radio was fine, it was kind of hinky, the way I used it as a tuner via the headphones output.

I am not sure why I chose this AX-500U integrated amplifier, but I did. It has odd stains from some liquid on it, but it works great and sounds wonderful. And the price was right.

The next thing I sought was the matching tuner. They were priced very high, but as often happens to me, I finally found one at a great price and it is bar none, the BEST tuner I've ever had. Model number is TX-500U.

Naturally, I also sought the matching Cassette deck and again, found one at a great price. It has three motors and thus no belts to worry about. For a two-head deck, it has superb sound. Model number is KX-500U.

To quote Rango, "This is where it gets...complicated." Lest you have never seen the film of the same name, I highly recommend it.

Since I already had three 500U components, next on the want list was the CD player.

I bought one, a CDX-500U for $14.99. What was once a number of cardboard boxes, which were now an odd, UN-box-like shape all taped together arrived on out front porch.

I did not photograph it. Inside were more pieces of cardboard, but no form of padding whatsoever. The player rattled, so I took the cover off and found a CD loose inside it. Oh, and no power cord. Fortunately, my thrift-store test kit has one.

The player turned on, it read the disc, but would not play. So, I returned it, complaining about her poor packing of it, leaving a CD in it and lack of power cord.

There was another one on eBay for $99.99. I contacted the seller, told him what happened. He promised to "pad" it. 

It arrived, in a box EXACTLY the same size as the player. When the FedEx man handed it to me, it rattled!

Once I opened the box, the "padding" was one tissue thin piece of soft Styrofoam on top of the player.  

Above, you can see the CD drawer is cockeyed. 

Once I got the cover off, this is what I found, above and below. The transport drawer is not where it is supposed to be and broken.

Once again, I requested a return, writing a strongly worded complaint and included these three photos.

He has accepted my return and I await the refund. TWO 1987 Yamaha CDX-500U players had not survived transit and so I looked at other ones. 

I have an ORION BLUE BOOK of AUDIO which has been invaluable in my hobby.

There was a CDX-810U which was one year newer on eBay, but the seller was concerned that the drawer would not always open. So I passed. Too bad, that one retailed for $550 back in 1988 and must have been a good one.

Then I saw a CDX-510U which is also from 1988 and has more features. It was $40 and only $14 and change for shipping.

I once again contacted the seller, and he assured me that he always packs well.

Jerry, our SUPER mail carrier arrived today and since I knew he had the package on his truck, I went out to meet him.

Nice big box, a very good sign. Inside this is what I found. Excellent! 

This blue cocoon of big bubble wrap which was also covered in that stretch plastic wrap.

I rolled it all back onto itself and found the player was also plastic wrapped. The correct (polarized) cord was taped to the back of the unit.

Freed from bondage at last! And sure enough, it plays!

This is the Yama-stack. I do not like to stack too high as I worry about the sturdiness of sheet steel cases. 

Since the CD player is much deeper than the rest, it had to go on the bottom.

I put special isolation feet on the Tuner to raise it up some so the amplifier could breathe. 

Those are manuals for each unit beneath the CD player. 

Now, the stack is complete and everything is lit up. At first, I plugged the CD player's cord into a switched outlet on the amp. Then realized that since it has a headphone jack with volume control, I moved it to an unswitched outlet. That way I can listen to it with the amp off if my wife is home. Which is what I am doing right now.

There is also a 500U equalizer, but I stopped using them years ago. Here is an image I found just now of one, model number is EQ-500U. 

I do not know who's photo it is, it just stated Youtube.

The few of them that do show up on eBay, along with other 500U components are very pricey.

There is also a 500U turntable, but there is no place to put one in here. So that is out. 

I am just tickled to finally get a working CD player. I used the OPPO for all discs, but it will now be reserved for HDCD, SACD and DVD-Audio discs.

Man this thing sounds terrific! 

Thank you SO much for taking the time to read my humble blog. It is your kind words and comments here or via Facebook that keep me writing.

Scott
November 29, 2019
#341

Alpha Viril AlphaViril™ An Honest Review

November 21, 2019

#340

Gentle reader,

I can't believe I'm writing about this, but I feel it is good to share my honest results from using a product that is touted to solve the problems older men often have. I'm 63 and that means I'm qualified.

First of all, I am writing this of my own accord. The company that makes and sells AlphaViril™ has NO idea I am reviewing their product. I am receiving NO compensation from any individual or company.

I saved the image above from a search for the product. To prove that I actually have and use it, a photo I just made of my bottle is below:

Any reader of my blog can recognize the stack of speakers in the background on the left and the shelf of books  to the right.

I do not remember when or where I heard of the product, but I did visit their website:

›› AlphaViril™ [OFFICIAL WEBSITE] - Naturally Increase Testosterone, Libido & Muscle Size [Clinically Validated]  

I declined to purchase it from their website, however. I purchase it through a subscription from Amazon.com. It saves a couple bucks and you can decide how often it arrives.

RESULTS: 

First off, DOES it increase Testosterone levels? I have no idea. I would have had to request a blood level test from my doctor before and after using the product. Since I never planned to try any product, and have read the negative effects of Testosterone injections, it never occurred to me to confirm what medical science already knows: As men age, their Testosterone levels decrease. Do I feel more virile? I suppose so.

Secondly, DOES it improve blood flow to the penis? Yes, absolutely! And that is a very good thing, indeed.

Thirdly, how LONG does the improvement last? I do not know. But at the least, several hours. Again, since it never occurred to me to write about my experience, I never tried to figure that out.

Forth, DOES it increase Libido and Muscle Size? Not that I have seen or felt. I'm male, that means I'm horny most of the time. Are my muscles bigger as a result of using the product? No. The only way to increase muscle size is exercising using weights or resistance.

NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS:

DOSAGE: The product, once you have followed the directions for new users, tells the user to take two capsules first thing in the morning, waiting at least 15 minutes before eating. 

Then take a second two capsules in the afternoon. They warn, "If needed, take one or two capsules in the afternoon.....Do not take close to bedtime, it may keep you awake."

SIDE EFFECT #1

It, in my case, causes decreased urine flow, as if it is causing my prostate to enlarge. What is the exact cause of this decreased flow, I do not know.

On my "off" days (they strongly urge users to NOT take the product two days out of every seven), Wednesdays and Sundays, I do not have trouble urinating.

SIDE EFFECT #2

Sleeplessness, or insomnia. I have proven to my satisfaction that if I take a second pair of capsules in the afternoon, even AT noon, I will always have a very hard time getting to sleep.

I mean HOURS where my mind will not let me sleep. The ONLY factor that changes is it does NOT happen on Wednesdays and Sundays, my off days.

Secondly, as an experiment to determine if the product was the CAUSE of my insomnia, I stopped taking the second (afternoon) dose altogether. 

Results: No insomnia. What a relief! 

Those are the two side effects that I have experienced. YOUR results and/or any side effects may differ. 

COST: Directly from the company, it is $49.95. Via Amazon, $47.95 with free shipping.

Is it worth it? As far as improving intimacy with my wife? Absolutely. 

Are there long term negative effects? None that I have felt. But I am not a scientist or doctor.

Do I recommend that you try the product? Yes. Do I GET any money from anyone in saying "Yes"? NO.

It has worked for me. My caveat to you is, once you have followed their directions in getting your body used to taking it, that you try taking only the two capsules in the morning. If it has worn off by the time you and your lover are ready for intimacy, then try a second dose. But beware of insomnia! 

Remember, I am writing from my own experience! I am not a doctor and highly recommend meeting with your doctor and discussing the product and it's VERY long list of "natural" proprietary ingredients. Some MAY interact with prescription drugs you are taking!

Scott

November 21, 2019

#340