New deck in all it’s glory!

 After a few weeks the old deck is finially gone and has been replaced by the shiny new deck. 

As mentioned earlier, we chose not to go with the composite, but rather to upgrade to the full PVC, as it has a much better history of being a really maintenance free material.  The cost was about another 3 to 4% added onto the cost of the project, but considering the cost savings of not having to buy deck-wash, we will recoup the cost pretty quickly.  Overall, we are very happy with the TimberTec product for now.  Check back in another 10-20 years and we will let you know if we have changed our minds…..

 

 

22 x 16 feet of outdoor living space!

“London Bridge is Falling Down”, or “Year of the Deck”

    Some of you may remember last year I had a few days entries regarding the replacement of the back yard fence.  Ok, it was really over a couple weeks.  Oh, you actually read it?  Well is was under two months I think?

   Anyway, with the fun of removing a full back yard worth of wooden fence, this is the year of the “Deck”!  Let me begin with a little regressing back to about 1976 when we bought our very first house up in the rural backwoods of Wisconsin.  At that time we were able to buy a two bedroom ranch with a third room addition and a full basement for the outrageous price of $21,000.   Now keep in mind this was a real house with plumbing, running water (both hot and cold), a full bathroom with tub,  kitchen and a single car attached garage.  And “yes”, it did have a real roof and both a front and back yard.

   So what does this have to do with a deck you may ask?  Well, as you may have guessed, that with just a few extra options, our deck would have cost about the same as our 1970’s house did.  Bottom line, we have just invested an addtional 10% of total value into our 30 something home.  And for this investment we get no new running water, no new plumbing, and no new bathroom or kitchen’s. 

   So why replace the old deck you may ask?  Well, the main reason was safety.  Though we had a few boards here and there that had broken loose on the ends, I have come to realize the there was a little tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down”, playing in the background.  Luckily we decided to replace the deck before the last line of the song was played.  Having four different contractors express, “Your deck is in REALLY BAD condition”, was somewhat of a suprise, as I thought is was just “really poor” in condition!

   Another couple days and the new deck should be in place.  In the next entry, I will take a little time to explain what type of deck we chose and why.  There are many questions you really needed to ask.  Such as, type (wood, composite, PVC), style, colors, and the all important issue of Size.  After all, you don’t just want to have the same thing do you?

Things so large. It’s all relative in a Quantum Sense.

   After trying to grasp ones mind around the immensity of the size of the universe, perhaps looking the other direction would be easier? 

    Instead of a telescope, perhaps using a microscope is the answer.  It should be easier grasping the very small, right?

   That’s what I started thinking until I was reading an article regarding particle physics and and the realm of subatomic particle physics, otherwise known as Quantum Physics.

   Did you know that if you were to take a building, lets say the size of a football stadium which can hold something like  20,000 fans for comparison.  If the nucleus of an atom were the size of a gum ball, the electrons orbiting the atom would be up in the nose-bleed seats, with nothing but empty space in-between.

    So if every atom has this much empty space within itself, this means everything is made mostly of nothingness.  With so much of nothing making up everything, it’s amazing there is anything?

   And then we go even smaller in the the absolute realm of quantum particle physics were even the parts of an atom are made up of many more things, with space inbetween each of these parts.

   So if we look to the large, things just keep getting larger.  If we look inward to the smallest of the small, things keep getting smaller.

   I have to go lay down now.  My head is hurting again.

Time and Space?

  As lay in bed the other night, after a day long consumption of at least one full pot of coffee, I found sleep totally evading me.  Not being one to try something as arcane as counting sheep, I instead entered into other forms of mind exercises in an attempt to find the Zzzzzz’s which were eluding me.

   Having spend a few evenings browsing Hubble images on the Web, things started to make less sense then normal.  If Hubble is able to capture an image from which the light originated over 13 Billion years ago, which is closing in on the time of the big bang, a thought occurred to me. 

   First some assumptions:

    1.  The universe is expanding outward away from the source of the big bang.

    2.  Our Milky Way is at least half to three quarters of the way, away from the big bang source.

     3.  We are in the Milky Way, so we are also around 3/4 of the way toward the edge of the universe.

    So, if we are this far away from the source of the big bang, the Big Bang has to be in one direction away from us.  But, as the Hubble images have shown, no matter which way we point Hubble, the images look the same.  In other words, we can see over 13 Billion light years in every direction we look.  Shouldn’t the universe be shorter in one direction over the other?

    So this would mean that space is not uniform, and thus must have curvature to it.  But what form or shape this curvature is in the shape of, has yet to be explained.  Perhaps space is compressed in one direction and stretched in another, but to us, due to light speed limitations appears to more uniform than it is.  Perhaps also, the effects of the the first moments of the Big Bang, which having an expansion speed faster than the speed of light has impact?   After all, if a Black Hole can pull light into it with effects we do not fully understand, then perhaps expansion exceeding the speed of light would also have impacts beyond what we would normally be expected.

   So I managed to arrive at absolutely zero answers, but I did fall to sleep with something interesting on my mind.