Progress

The other day (Wednesday, July 22, 2009) a guy from Isaac Heating & Cooling came out to service our standby generator.
Isaac (“eye-ZICK”) may be the largest heating and cooling contractor in the Rochester area; at least the largest HVAC contractor that caters to individual homeowners.
I should fly a picture of our standby generator so readers will know what I’m talking about.


Our Generac standby generator. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100 camera.)

Our standby generator is a fairly large (one liter = 61.0237441 cubic inches) industrial V-twin internal-combustion engine powering an electric generator.
It kicks on automatically if the electricity fails.
It burns natural-gas, and a car-battery self-starts it.
It doesn’t push everything in our house, just everything but our bedroom and the air-conditioning.
It pushes our freezer and refrigerator. Also our garage-door opener.
And our furnace and water-heater. Both need electricity despite being natural-gas.
Unfortunately if the nearby Time-Warner substation also got zapped, I have no Internet; even though my ‘pyooter is running.
For which reason I’ll probably switch to Internet over a satellite-dish.
If the electricity fails — and it has fairly often out here in the country (West Bloomfield) — I don’t have to drag out a generator.
And that thing is burning natural-gas, not gasoline. Armageddon will be failure of the natural-gas supply.
A while ago we had no water from our public water supply.
Unfortunately I missed the service-man; a guy I really like.
He happily lets me pick his brain without telling me I’m stupid and inferior, like my siblings do.
My siblings are all tub-thumping born-again Christians, and love to pass judgment.
The service was to change the motor-oil, and a couple filters.
And then test operation.
This meant cutting our electricity to see if the standby takes over.
—1) Cut electricity;
—2) Wait 30 seconds or so;
—3) Standby kicks on and takes over.
That’s about 30-seconds without power — enough for -a) all our digital electric clocks to fail; and -b) our VCR to go kablooey.
“Don’t know if the news will tape,” my wife says; “the serviceman had to cut the electricity.”
I look at our VCR, it’s after 6 p.m. “News isn’t taping,” I say.
I initiate manual taping.
“Our previous VCR never did that,” my wife says.
“What’s this?” I say. “8:37 p.m. The VCR clock has reset itself. Looks like I gotta reset the VCR clock.”
So here I am manually taping the news, and I observe we’re already over an hour into the tape. “Looks like it auto-taped according the goofy clock. It taped Oprah!”
Our previous VCR held its clock-setting even if the electricity failed. It had battery backup inside.
I think our new VCR has battery backup too, because sometimes it will hold the clock-setting, but sometimes it doesn’t.
“Progress!” my wife says.

• “HVAC” equals heating-ventilation-air conditioning.
• RE: “‘Old guy’ with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). I also am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of a point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.
• “Time-Warner” is our Internet-Service-Provider (“ISP”), via cable. RoadRunner.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western N.Y.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• My wife of 41+ years is “Linda.” Like me she’s retired, but she works part-time at the West Bloomfield post-office.