Monday, August 3, 2009 - Pittsfield MA

Lazy Daze overcab paint electrolysis bubbles, August 3, 2009

See those four bubbled areas in the paint?

They are right outside the corner where you see the water in this picture.

If you see a bubble in the paint there is moisture behind the skin.

Believe it.

I still can't believe it but so far it has proven 100 percent reliably true. There is moisture behind the skin causing the corrosive electrolytic action that's pushing the paint off. It was true below the refrigerator access panel where I found the major water damage to the framing. The converse is not necessarily true however: no bubbles - no leak. There are no bubbles outside the desk area.

Believe it and go find the source.

There is no obvious source of the moisture causing this electrolysis but today I started my sealing operations by around the window and after I test for leaks at the window I'll caulk the seam in the aluminum skin. I want to determine the source of the leak, not just caulk everything and never know what was actually leaking so I'm taking this one step at a time. It was a leak in the seam that caused me so much grief with the leak back under my desk. If caulking the seam doesn't do it there must be a leak around a loose screw or two. We'll see.

I wonder where the water is getting into the door...

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pittsfield MA

Wal-Mart Store #2228, 555 Hubbard Ave./Suite 12, Pittsfield, MA 01201 - (413) 442-1971

Good level parking lot
Verizon cell phone service is good
Verizon EVDO Broadband service is good
Find other Wal-Marts in the area
Check the weather here

Writing From the Inside Out

A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.

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