Monday, June 29, 2009

Domestic Bliss, Chateau Stevie-Style

It finally stopped raining long enough for me to get the cover off the swimming pool

I normally aim to have the pool up and wasting my time by late May or Early June, but it is a practical impossibility to remove the pool cover without draining the water out of it first, and this year each time I had siphoned off the wet more had fallen from the sky to replace it. I was beginning to believe that I wouldn't ever get a chance to open the bloody thing to be honest, because once we get into mid July the heavens will open on a semi-regular basis in a series of tropical downpours. This is generally followed by an even wetter August through to September, at which point the weather veers into the brass-monkey version of Fall we've been getting of late.

First job was to remove the lock that secures the little windlass on which is wound the ends of the cable that is stitched through the eyelets on the cover to pull it tightly around the walls of the pool in the manner of a drumskin, albeit a particularly loose and floppy drumskin. None of the keys on the ring would fit the lock and turn (though one jammed inside it nicely for several jiggling, swearing minutes) but it turned out that once I had gone through every key on the (large) ring, the lock turned out to be unlocked anyway. I dimly remembered that I couldn't find the key at the end of the previous swimming season and had to rush the normally precise pool shut-down procedures on account of the gale force winds that had sprung up the moment I had wrestled the cover into place, and had elected to leave the lock unfastened until I could instigate a search for it.

The cable then could be unwound from the windlass by a process of walking away from the pool to keep the wire taught1 until I hit the big hook used to hang the vacuum on with the small of my back, at which point an alternate method was employed in which I stood on the twirgly mass of cable with both feet and stretched upward so that lengths of cable were pulled off the spool, and then I gathered up the slack, stood on the coils of cable and did it all again. After that it was a matter of only an hour or so to pull the twirgly cable through the eyelets until I had a tangled mass of knotted steel-reinforced cable wound round the fence, my feet and my ankles. It was all very trying.

I pulled off the pool cover, wetting myself down with the last remnants of the stinking goo that forms from rainwater, old leaves, twigs, algae and mosquito larvae, and made my first direct observation of the pool water, which this year was clear, I think. I say "think" because it was hard to tell the colour of the water when the bottom of the pool was a thick mat of verdant growth. A mat of algae of truly staggering proportions had taken root on the floor of the pool, and was busy working on its first flint axe-head.

How? How had this stuff grown when there was no light? It was green, which meant it was photosynthetic. It needed light the way I need bacon sandwiches, but the pool cover is several microns of jet black material through which no light passes. I fearfully peered again into the water as the ugly thought presented itself that some higher, bioluminescent life-form had evolved in the pool and was even then plotting to take over the unsuspecting world. This was terrible! What if I had loosed some pool-incubated alien horror on the pacifistic Americans? They were so child-like they would be killed for food or used as hosts in some sickening parasitic way before they realised their danger. Clearly, Action was called for.

I long ago2 figured out that it is cheaper, quicker and less mentally debilitating to drain the pool of such polluted water and to clean it, then refill it with fresh, clear water than to attempt to mitigate the problem with filters, vacuums chemicals and imprecations. Not only that, draining it means I actually get to swim in the thing rather than just look at it as the temperatures soar past 95 degrees Fahrenheit, so I grabbed my trusty submersible pump and one of the hosepipes and began the process of getting the water, algae and PBLTAs3 out of the pool and onto the driveway, where this liquid challenge to Mom and Apple Pie would end up in the drains where it belonged. I was so overcome with emotion at the thought of how I had just saved democracy that I went for a lie down.

When I awoke, about an hour later, it was to find that the threat to democracy was now forming a pool in the middle of the sidewalk, which it seems has sunk owing to all the bad weather of late. Cursing liberally, I relocated the hose so that Mrs Stevie would walk in the stream when she got back from whatever she and the Stevieling were off doing while I was busy saving the Free World. This proved to be the key to removing the threat for good.

Powerful as my submersible pump was, it couldn't shift a full pool of water in the eight hours it had before I went to bed. Not wanting to burn out the pump by running it dry, I turned it off until the next day, leaving the pool to siphon by gravity overnight. The next day I resumed pumping operations, and began breaking up the algal mat with a scrubbing brush on a very long stick (a standard piece of pool maintenance gear rather than a Stevie-improvisation, in case you were wondering). I saw no evidence of PBLTAs, which meant that my quick thinking had probably saved the day. Of course, I would remain an unsung hero in this action, since no reporters for major news outlets read this blog (nor any reporters for the minor news outlets, even those UFO-ridden free papers you get at supermarkets come to that) but that was okay. I knew whose heroic measures saved the country, never once thinking of the danger to his own life while doing so, and that was enough. I'm not one to bang my own trumpet.

The once proud civilisation of green goo broke into pieces and was sucked up the pump and flushed away with the last of the water. Or almost the last of it. I could see that the water was deeper on the other side of the pool, where the tangle of cable had been abandoned, than on the side I had deployed the pump. In order to finish the job, I would have to move the pump. Then I could wash the little pools of algae in towards the still-submerged pump and get the liner clean.

I should explain that when we4 put in the pool, we were persuaded that we should use this rubber cat-litter-like product as a cushioning layer between the pool liner and the pounded earth it rested on. We were supplied with four bags of same as part of the installation package. We were then informed it would take about sixteen bags to do the job on a pool our size, and we, like mugs, bought it. The instructions showed how to rake the rubber granules into a flat, cushioning surface on which the liner would lay. What the instructions carefully avoided saying was how every step taken on this stuff would leave a deep hole in it, or that dragging the liner into place would inevitable scoop the stuff up and redeploy it all on one side of the pool, meaning it would all have to be re-raked. It was all extremely tiresome. Once the liner was attached and the water added, the stuff gradually crept around forming small pot-holes in the liner in which dirt collected. I recommend that no-one use this product. There must be a mat-style rubber padding one can use instead of this granulated rubber rage-inducer. if not, improvise one or just put the damned thing down on dirt like everyone used to do. Anyway, it was into these pot-holes that the algae was collecting, and why I came up with the submerged pump/hose-pipe method of cleaning the pool liner.

I relocated the pump, and it promptly quit on me.

I field-stripped it to see if something was jamming the impeller, but I couldn't see anything jamming it. I eventually discovered by a lengthy process of elimination that the pump was now tripping the GFCI. Somehow, it had developed a spontaneous Ground Fault.

This is, of course, the very bane of any job: the breakdown of an essential piece of equipment, adding hours to the original job while whatever it is gets fixed or replaced. In this case, replaced, because I've spent enough hours of my life on piddling side-quests fate has shoved onto my plate. I was mad because I have come to rely on that pump for all sorts of water shifting jobs and now it wasn't there when I needed it. It was particularly galling that it had gone nails-up at the very end of the job. I was within thirty minutes of refilling the pool when the pump failed, and I had no alternate way of doing the job.

So it was off to Home Despot where I went through the usual displays of stuff in beaten up boxes in the hope of finding a unit that a) did not look like someone had used it and then returned it5 and 2) had all the pieces it was supposed to have. In this I was unsuccessful.

Some day someone will explain to me why the managers of Home Despot franchises think anyone wants to buy stuff that comes in a beaten-up box or that has been given a damned good thrashing by the forklift's tines while being "stocked". Someone will also explain why people treat other people's stuff so cavalierly. I have no doubt that many of the boxes were ripped apart by "customers" investigating the contents. Idiots catering to animals. Man, I'm growing to hate New York.

I zoomed over to a nearby Blowes where I discovered a nice little unit (not as nice as my original, but that sort of goes without saying in these days of "just so good an no better" thinking) that only cost %150 of what I wanted to pay, so it was grab one, and a big bottle of bleach and head off for The Steviemanse.

The new pump proved up to the task and in no time at all I had the pool bottom clear of water and was ready to scrub the bottom with a short-handled scrubbing brush (better control and more oomph than the longer handled one). It was at this point that my sandal strap tore out of its mounting and almost pitched me onto my face. I discarded both beach shoes and walked round the pool so I could pull out the pump. The twirgly cable caused me to have a slight delay as I freed my toes and ankles from its vampyric embrace, then I was able to skin the sole of my right foot on an obliging raised paver, forcing dirt and grit into the wound and some class four swear words out of my mouth. I hopped around the garden on my left foot while attempting to suck out the poison until the almost unbearable agony subsided to a sharp, stabbing pain, then got the old pool ladder (which is a step-ladder design) and climbed into the now almost clean pool.

I say "almost clean" because the first thing I did was to step into a shallow pond of something that looked like water but felt like concentrated sulphuric acid in the slash on the sole of my right foot, eliciting more howls of manly anguish, swearing, pleas for death and so forth. Once the moment had passed, about ten minutes later, I was able to finish the task, climb out, remove the steps from the pool, rig a hose and begin the task of filling the wretched tub all over again. Only then was I free to seek medical attention for my poor foot.

I limped into the bathroom, past the sniggering Mrs Stevie, and applied a field dressing, then returned to the scene of action and threw in half a bottle of bleach. It was getting late, what with slashing of feet, twirgling of cables and malfunctioning of pumps, and I realised that the task of filling the thing was going to take more than a day. Since I wasn't going to risk the pool overflowing by running the hose overnight, there would be more time for the insidious green goo to regain a foothold. This I offset by making the water highly chlorinated from the get-go. A few hours later, when the pool was about half-full, I added a sachet of shock powder with algaecide to seal the deal.

When I left home this morning there was still about three hours worth of water filling to go. I left this in the capable hands of the Stevieling, with vivid descriptions of the vengeance I would wreak on her tiny self should she disappear into Stevieling Land for a few hours and allow the ruddy pool to overflow.

So I expect I shall find an inch of water in the basement when I get home tonight.

  1. It goes very twirgly after six months being wound on the spool and will tangle at the drop of a hat if it is let go slack, adding hours to the job while you disengage it from itself, the scenery, your tools and appendages
  2. Last year
  3. Postulated Bioluminescent Threat to America
  4. i.e. I
  5. A common Home Despot problem despite their introduction of a rental program to alleviate that very practice

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Up Scope!

Two weekends since Christmas in which it didn't rain.

I know this because I used both of them for tree-felling. I badly need to replace two fenceposts snapped around Christmastime in high winds1 but for the next eight weeks the ground was frozen solid (I possess no heavy plant or dynamite to deploy in such situations) and after that the ground rapidly became and remains to this day the consistency of overly-runny chocolate pudding. Fence-posts installed in such ground will simply fall over again at the first moderate gust of wind.

Every day the heavens open. Last week the temperature rose to a balmy 70 degrees or so for about three hours, with the net result that the pool cover, drained the night before but bearing a foot of water in the little pocket that forms to catch the rain every bloody day by the time I got back from work the next evening, in a trice became an incubator for an estimated four gazillion mosquito larvae (the sort with a breathing tube sticking diagonally out of their rear end. Do these things have left/right buttock tube ratios? Mutations from the stage-right affair normally seen? I digress). I was eaten alive as I attempted to reposition the syphon so I could drain another 15 gallons into the lawn (some of which has actually drowned).

I think I know the reason the weather has been so abominable of late. There can only be one explanation for all this wet.

My 401K administrator must have heavily invested my money2 in New York Drought Futures.

  1. An event that had me leaping about in the early hours of the morning in inadequate amounts of clothing applying emergency two-by-fours to hold up the fence and prevent further post snappage. A fence in post failure mode behaves much like a school assembly full of children in which one of them throws up; urgent action must be taken to avoid a cascade of unpleasantness as a runaway chain reaction develops
  2. What little is left after the Dotcom Debacle, the Enron Fiasco and the Sub-Prime Mortgage Cock-up

Friday, June 05, 2009

A Question Of Etiquette

The young have it easy

I was brought up to hold doors for ladies (and brought up to assume all women were ladies come to that) and to let them go first.

So.

How does one proceed when arriving at the same time as a woman at a revolving door? What is the proper protocol?

Do I allow her to enter the carousel first, giving her the job of heaving the thing into motion? Do I leap in front of her so that I get the first place in the door and also the manly job of overcoming the door's inertia?

Or do I push in front of her, give the door a good spin, then throw her into the thresher-like embrace of the portal?

Sumac? Um, Lordy!

It was inevitable that the Great Triumph over the Intolerable Berry Menace1 would provoke a manly desire to put the other trees on the property in their place, and this is the story of what happened on Mother's Day

For years I had been wanting to Do Something About the Sumac tree in our back yard. If you read about them on the internet you'll find that everyone is of the opinion that they are "bushes" or grow to "perhaps 20 or 30 feet". My Sumac tree towered to about 50-60 feet, so that shows you just how useless the bleeping internet is.

The damn thing shades the swimming pool until late afternoon so that the water never gets warm, and every Fall it drops small branches and leaves that sit on the pool cover and rot into a liquid with a truly indescribable stench. The sticks wll either take root and become more Sumac trees in a surprisingly short time, or sit on the ground forever in a layer of ugly indestructible non-mulch that is a pain in the rear end to get rid of.

When the pool is open the damned tree drops leaves, sticks and dirt into it constantly. This jams the filter, the skimmer and the Pool Robot of Extreme Uselessness.

These trees grow like weeds in my part of Long Island and I hate them above all planty things.

A couple of years back, Crazy Joe had a guy come and lop off all the limbs that poked over his side of he fence, a job that had two men climbing up an down it with spiked boots and small chainsaws for hours. I was happy to let them at it, but couldn't afford the cost of having the whole tree take down. In the summer, the cost of cutting down a sizeable tree (the trunk on this one is a good foot and a half in diameter) is around $450 and I just didn't have that kind of money floating around doing nothing. Still don't. Not only that, taking it down would be problematical as there was nowhere to drop the trunk. The swimming pool lay to one side. Opposite that was the gazzebo. At 90 degrees to that was Crazy Joe's yard, and opposite that was the deck for the pool. But it didn't stop me looking at it every night and wondering how the trick might be done.

The lack of a gazebo (it is a temporary frame tent-like affair that comes down each year and I haven't put it back up yet) had opened a window of opportunity, which I had used to get rid of the whatever-it-is tree that drops berries of various hues everywhere3. The success of this venture had me working feverishly4 on a plan to prune back the more troublesome limbs of the Sumac. I knew I was unable to bring the whole thing down with the tools at hand, but would settle for opening up the sky above the pool.

The tree rose about nine feet, then bifurcated and continued skyward as two trunks, each about eight inches thick. These trunks gradually tapered down over another fifty feet or so. The plan would be to tie my manly 24 ft ladder5 to the tree, then use it as a platform from which to deploy the even-more manly 12 ft long polesaw6 which would enable me to cut the offending limbs off in easy stages. This was essential since each one was around 15-20 feet long and up to three inches thick, and the previous excursion into Lumberjackland had demonstrated that the sheer mass involved would turn that length into a powerful momentum when the branch swung in towards the trunk. It would be entirely too easy to end up swatted from my perch and thrown a few yards into Crazy Joe's driveway, where my fall would be broken by a fleet of Chryslers, a jet-ski or the skidoo sitting to one side under a tarp. This was to be avoided at all cost, as was dropping wood on said fleet of Chryslers, jet-skis and so on.

I planned to do this on the Saturday before Mother's Day, but the weathergoons were predicting rain so I declared a Work-Free Day and went to see Jim at Men at Arms instead. It didn't, of course, rain so much as a single drop. Not being able to come up with a decent excuse for a second day's ease, I undertook the task on Sunday while Mrs Stevie and the Stevieling were out of theater.

There is nothing so exciting as standing in the crotch of an annoying tree, polesaw in hand, contemplating that first cut. Actually, it turns out there might be because I heard a strangled curse and Mrs Joe came running out of the house and, pausing only to shoot me an admiring look, leapt into her new-last-year car and drove it across the street in a cloud of burning rubber, only to park it again. I assume the pride of ownership and admiration for that car's performance hasn't worn off yet and the need to drive it, even for no reason at all, can be overpowering. I often felt like that when I had the TR6 some years ago, but I have to admit I couldn't get that worked up over a luxury sedan like the Chrysler LeBehemoth.

Anyway

The challenge was to drop the pieces of tree without them landing on the pool cover, Crazy Joe's driveway or me. This gave me about four square inches of ground on the pool side, much more on the other where I could use the area normally taken up by the gazebo. Additional challenges were the obfuscation of my view of the target branches by a) The young Maple that overhangs the pool (pruned back two months ago to let more sky through) and gives it a rural "swimming hole" character beloved bythe Stevieling and therefore sacrosanct, 2) The Sun, which was being difficult by actually being visible for the first time that year and was shining in my eyes and ♥) The main trunks of the Sumac itself. It was all very vexing.

I seemed to have the choice of several branches. There were two low-level ones within reach, one of which overhung the pool so I decided that that would be a good place to start. I hauled up the polesaw, pre-extended to 12 feet, and swung it out as far as it would reach. What a magnificent sight I must have provided the neighbours, who had formed a small crowd and been stunned into silent admiration when I dropped the whatever tree two weeks before, as I tottered seemingly on the point of falling from the ladder, yet miraculously recovering my balance each time by skillful use of the polesaw as a counterweight a-la Blondini, all the while screaming in a humourous high-pitched fashion.

I finally managed to get the saw positioned and activated the switch, immediately filling the air with shavings as the razor-sharp tool ripped through inches of wood as though it were wood. All the time I kept a eye on the cut to ensure that I cut only partway through. This way I would cause the severed limb to swing in toward the trunk instead of dropping vertically onto (and probably through) the pool cover.

Which is why it was so perplexing to me that the wretched thing did sever completely, and did fall vertically onto the pool cover. Well, half on the pool cover, half on the gunwale of the pool which took most of the weight and probably saved the pool cover from puncture. The limb rolled off the pool into the gap between the pool and the fence separating us from Crazy Joe, right at the base of the ladder, whereupon it released a collection of spring-loaded branches that locked it firmly in position.

I used up some class three Words of Power and descended the ladder with the intent of dismounting the saw from its pole and cutting the limb into more portable pieces prior to dragging it out of theater.

Before I could reach the ground I had to climb through the thickest portion of the severed limbery. This was a task not unlike climbing through a dropped coil of loose razorwire, and I had moved on to class four Words of Power before I had snapped off enough of the pokey sharp sticks to form a working area.

It took forever to saw up that bloody tree limb enough that it could be dragged to the lawn.

Then it was a case of reassembling the polesaw, reattaching it to the rope so I could pull it up after me, climbing the ladder and starting all over again.

This time I managed to drop the limb into the Arbor Vitae, where it hovered just out of reach then tangled in the fence, requiring a trip around the entire property7 to Crazy Joe's side so I could cut the snarled branches free with my trusty limb pruning shears8. The next limb fell onto the landscaped area next to the pool and mashed all the Hostas that Mrs Stevie had planted last year. Fortunately these things are more prolific and hardy than Sumac, and they all grew back in a couple of days. The skin Mrs Stevie removed from my hide when she saw the damage took a little longer, but that's another story.

There came a point, after I had removed five sizeable limbs from the tree, that I realised I wasn't going to be able to do any more without climbing the tree itself. There simply wasn't enough room to put up the ladder on another side of the tree so that I could continue the same way from a different direction.

I looked at the bifurcated trunks and thought about building a temporary platform nailed directly to the tree and working from that. I thought about putting U-bolts around the trunks with rope loops attached so I could climb that way. I thought about putting eye-bolts through the trunks to facilitate climbing "artificially". This is the way rock climbers do it when they use pitons, and I learned how to do it at school. I still have plenty of rock climbing gear even though I haven't done any since before I lost my virginity9 and it made possible some more adventurous solutions to the problem of the Sumac tree.

It was while I was doing all this thinking that I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the street outside Crazy Joe's house, and that the driver was looking at me intently.

I knew him from somewhere.

"Didn't I cut that tree down for you last year?" he shouted.

Got him! "No, you trimmed it for Joe two years ago!" I answered.

"You could kill yourself doing that" he opined

"I couldn't be that lucky" I answered dryly.

"I could take that down for you, you know" he offhandedly said as he examined his fingernails

"How much?" I asked skeptically.

"Hunnert Bux?" he replied with such conviction I almost fell off the ladder there and then.

"How far down would you take it for that?" I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

"As far as you want. You want it all down?" he confidently oozed.

"Down to here?" I indicated a point just above the bifurcation. I wanted the trunk to mount a light on.

"Sure! No problem!" he enthused.

"You know there's a pool back here, right?" I asked.

"I remember. It's not a problem. Really" he said.

"When could you do it?" I asked, waiting to hear the inevitable deal breaking problem.

"I could do it right now!" He said.

"You're on!" I shouted before he could reconsider.

Which is how I managed to surprise Mrs Stevie on Mother's Day by chopping down the hated Sumac tree. Joe (for t'was his name) grabbed a well-used 14-inch chainsaw, a bunch of ropes as thick as my thumb and some karabiners, donned a pair of spiky boots and swarmed up the tree and began destroying it in a truly impressive fashion. I dragged the fallen wood from the field of action when I could (some of it was too heavy to lift and required post-felling surgery with the Poulan 20 inch saw before I could relocate it), and acted as the all-important puller of ropes to bring dodgy segments of trunk down on my side of the fence rather than Crazy Joe's.

It was during one of these "assisted" fellings that Joe the Treefeller had his chainsaw knocked out of his hand by a spinning log as big as he was (which shook the ground when it touched down and dug itself a six inch deep crater in the lawn to boot), and it crashlanded two feet from me, still running. After my usual manly tension-breaking falsetto shriek, I retrieved the Ariel Saw of Extreme Danger and returned it to its owner.

I was relieved to find out that the anti-handyman demons don't confine their perfidy to me alone, and that my idea to use rope to influence tree trunk fallage patterns was professionally approved. I was impressed with the demonstration of the proper deployment of airborn gas-powered tools, something I myself have yet to achieve10.

It took days to chop up the limbs, logs and branches and drag them off the lawn.

  1. I long ago found my life became less complex, or to be more precise, the explanations for the stupid things that happen as a result of stuff I do in my life became less complex, if I simply classified any result as either a "Fiasco" (something that would require an elaborate cover story or a patsy to take the blame2) or "A Great Triumph" (something that had either worked as planned, or a Fiasco in which all the evidence had been cleaned up so no one need ever find out. I arrived at this useful classification during my tenure as a communications software builder and installer for a large mainframe-based computer operation
  2. AKA A Colleague
  3. Stop Press! The tree has been identified as a sub-species of Mulberry Tree by a colleague
  4. It later transpired I had a gum infection and the fever was due to British Teeth rather than high-speed ratiocination
  5. Set to a manly 14 ft to avoid involuntary loss of bladder control
  6. A ten inch electric chainsaw mounted more or less securely on a telescopic 12 ft pole. The uninitiated often regard this tool as an accident looking for somewhere to happen. I laugh at this overly simplistic assessment, which badly underestimates the danger involved. The only safe way to prune a tree using a polesaw is to get someone else to do it
  7. The fence was originally built to keep the Friends of Crazy Joe away from The Stevieling, since they had endearing habits like urinating into the garden. I wanted to be able to feel completely secure that my two year old could play without any fear of her getting out or one of them getting in. There is no gate on that side of the property as a result of this policy
  8. one sharp jaw, one stocky, blunt anvil-type jaw, all operated by three foot long handles
  9. At which point life became more precious for some reason, and anyway I wanted to spend more of it doing activities that attracted more members of he opposite sex in them so I could try out my awesome new powers as often as possible without the usual agonising hand cramps
  10. I've launched the workpiece on numerous occasions, usually backwards which is why I maintain large reserves of manly impact-absorbing relaxed muscle around my midriff, and it's also why my "scream and leap" reflexes rival those of the Kizinti,11 and in one spectacular incident of mutinous brain perfidy I misused a table-mounted router12 so badly it not only launched the workpiece (an eight-foot long spear of maple) across the basement, the recoil13 almost had the router in my face when the table reared up in the air in a very entertaining manner. I've had the usual fun and games when rotary high-speed tools (grinders, cutters and the like) are pushed out of design spec and undergo catastrophic failure, embedding pieces of usually red-hot stuff in the scenery and your humble scribe14. I've been chased around the worksite by inadequately attached but fully spun-up rotary tool bits. But aside from the low-altitude attitude problems with Mr Weedwhacker during starting procedures, I've yet to witness the heart-stopping majesty of a warmed-up and cruising nicely gas powered tool hedge-hopping around the place at nap-of-earth when it should be in my hands doing its job. The chance to observe the phenomenon from a distance (albeit not a long enough distance as it turned out) was valuable and enlightening.
  11. A fictional race of warlike, spacefaring beings of felinoid genetic descent who feature in the Known Space stories of Larry Niven. I especially recommend "The Soft Weapon" as a good introduction. What was the question?
  12. AKA "Poor Man's Shaping Machine"
  13. Damn you Sir Isaac Newton!
  14. Which makes a fine demonstration of real-world mechanics but paradoxically offers no insight to the centrifugal/centripetal discussion owning to the need to concentrate fully on the Locating and Removing Embedded Bits of Carbide Wheel From the Torso Question