"micky" wrote in message
wrote:
"micky" wrote in message

stuff snipped

I guess you found out the same way that I did. I would love to see how
an
experienced cable jockey uses those long flex bits because I never did
get
the hang of them. That tool you described that applies downward pressure
sounds interesting but it doesn't sound like it was very helpful.

No, it wasn't. It's shaped like an L, each part about 14" long, made
from shiny steel about 1/2" wide and 1/4" or less thick. I think it
has a twist where the bend of the L is. One end is bent back to make
the handle, and the other end I think is also bent back.

Maybe if I did this for months I'd have gotten better able to use the
tool, though maybe not. I think it was just their best effort to make
some sort of tool that might work.

Yes, long flex bits were a major disappointment for me, but it could be that
there's a technique to using them that eludes me. More than one time I've
watched Hometime or TOH and watched them do something *correctly* that I had
been doing wrong for years. One thing that especially comes to mind is
drywall work. While my technique was not as bad as my first business
partner who would lather on a mountain of mud and then spend hours sanding
it down with a belt sander, it was still not good. The most important thing
I learned from TOH was to have a good selection of trowels, especially very
wide ones.

When I rewired this house, I just stuck with 18" twist drills and those
speed auger bits whose name escapes me at the moment - damn - this
senility
problem just keeps getting worse! Forstner! At least I didn't have to
Google it to remember. I just read an article that said that older
people's
memory retrievals are slower because they have so much data stored in
their
head that access time slows down.


http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2...may-just-be-a-
fuller-mind/

Sherlock Holmes said that eventually our brains got full and then
everytie we learned something new, we had to throw away something old.
But I'm not saying he's right.

He may have been correct, at least according to these studies. When you
think about how much of your life you can remember in great detail, it's
amazing it all fits.

It doesnt' matter if, judging by phyical brain wrinkles, actual wrinkles
seen during an autopsy, humans only use 20% of their brains, or whatever
they say. Perhaps that is our maximum. Maybe we don't have enough of
some enzyme or other chemical to use the rest. Percent of wrinkling
isn't the only factor to consider.

I think that 20% number has been debunked. We may be using only 20% of our
total brain capacity when executing any one task, but that's sort of like
driving a car at 20 MPH that can do 100 MPH when it's required.

Another study I heard on NPR says that scientists used to think that
children under 3? were not capable of forming memories, but some study
implied they made many memories but forgot them sooner, that the rate of
forgetting was high until age 6 when it slowed a lot and didn't get high
again until old age.

Infant and animal studies are notorious for dubious conclusions because the
study participants are unable to talk so a lot of information has to be
inferred - often quite incorrectly.

OTOH, without the ability to forget, we might have trouble finding our
car because we'd remember where we parked it 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 days ago
as well. And we would perhaps be tormented by every bad thing that had
happened, as well as uplifted by every good thing that had ever happened
to us.

Hey, I have a recurring nightmare, possibly from nearly getting heat stroke
looking for a white rental car in a Phoenix parking lot at noon, of not
being able to find my car. Part of it stems from the accursed alternate
side of the street parking I grew up with in NYC. You'd awaken at 5AM in a
sweat wondering if your car was on the correct side of the street.

I ended up using my "fox and hound" tester to make sure I wasn't drilling
into a floor joist from above. It mostly worked. (-: The biggest
problem
I had drilling from floor to floor was hitting nails. The Forstner bit
can
be resharpened pretty easily with a Dremel tool, at least for the first
half
dozen nails or so. Then there's not enough left of the cutting twist to
sharpen anymore.

Hmm.

The bottom line for me when it came to heavying up the wiring in this house
was to bite the bullet and admit I would have to replaster and repaint.
Once you make that choice, re-wiring gets a lot easier because you can just
chisel out channels for the new wires.

--
Bobby G.