What did you do today?

[dbhost]

Changed out the struts on the car, checked the new left front tire that has been shaking,thought it was a balance issue, there appears to be a broken belt / suck / bulge going on. Very minimal driving anyway, but need to get it to the tire shop and get it swapped out soonest possible. I swapped out the struts, and am planning on doing the shocks in back tonight. I miss the old RWD cars with actual upper control ams and captive coil springs, with shock absorbers instead of McPhearson struts... But I digress. Got the struts stabbed in just in time to wash my hands, wash my face and throw a clean shirt on in time to log in and catch my morning staff meeting. Yay. Been busy with work all day. REALLY want a nice cold shower tonight and to curl up in bed and not have to get up early for hard physical labor...

I've been 3D printing up wall mounts for my various Echo Dots as I HATE having them on a flat surface like the nightstand, desk etc... Especially in the office / music room. I tilertally hung that one just below the bottom of my wall hung bass guitars...

[capncarl]

Not what I did today, but in a few hours.
I have been prepping the house garage and glassed in patio for an epoxy floor to be installed in a couple of weeks. WE” decided to paint the 2 ft tall block foundation wall around the garage. It was finished by the builder with a smear on stucco finish, unpainted. It needs to be painted the same color as the sheet rock walls. Since the daytime temperatures are in the 100’s I must start at 4 am to catch a coupe or hours of 75 degrees temps. before the garage hits 90s, lest I will melt!

[capncarl]

Just finished at 5:30 am. I had the clock set to wake am to start but as always when I set an alarm I can’t sleep so I got up at 2:20 am and got started. The outside temp must have been 90f, inside garage was near 90 so I set up a fan in the personnel door and left the car doors down to keep from drawing in bugs and noisy neighbors. Minimum attire was in order because of the heat and with a lot of scooting around on my butt on a large piece of black rubber mat I had it completed before my wife even missed me. I’ll clean up the mess later.

[twistsol]

Got up this morning and started my Saturday morning house cleaning ... then the grandkids woke up, and I realized that there was no way I was going to get it done with them here, but that mopping the floors was pointless until they go home tomorrow. Did a quick cleaning and now we're headed outside to launch rockets.

[leehljp]

I have had a 9 day long summer cold. Went to the doctor twice and they gave me two different covid tests - negative on both and negative on one I took at home at SWMBO's "recommendation". Mild fever the whole week, congestion, cough, sore throat, (but not strep) finally clearing up today (Sat).

It has been hot, hot, hot with humidity the past 10 days. Finally yesterday, most of the humidity had evaporated away and even though it was 98° outside this afternoon, it didn't take seem nearly as bad as 98 last week. I even grilled a couple of hamburgers outside. There sure is a huge difference between 80+% humidity and 30% at the same temp.

[LCHIEN]

Yesterday the wife said the strip of grass on the side of the house was dying... The strip is on a single sprinkler and a single station.
I turned it on one manual cycle with the controller and it did not run.
I turned it on with the manual valve on the sprinkler valve and it sprayed which meant it was getting water pressure the electrical signal must not be working
I checked the voltmeter and it was outputting 26 volts (nominal 24) on the terminal pair for the zone.
I went out and was going to measure the voltage at the wire end.
I looked at the sprinkler carefully and one wire to the solenoid was broken at the ground... lawn service must have cut them with the weedeater.
Repaired the wire and the sprinkler ran for 20 seconds on manual cycle from the controller before popping error messages and stopping.
Found the ribbon cable connecting the front panel to the base was loose and moving the panel to access the terminals made it loose/intermittent.
Plugged it in well and all is good!
Hopefully the grass will recover... a week without watering can be fatal!
It only 9:30 and there's a whole day left to relax.

[capncarl]

I’m going to see just how long grass can go without water. I turned on my lawn sprinkler system on and the sprinkles water reduced to a dribble. It seems that our water table has dropped below our well pick up. I suppose a call to a well driller is in order tomorrow.

[capncarl]

A friend gave me the heads up on a small amount of cherry one of his turning club members was offering for sale. We went to look at it and loaded up about 35 BF for a decent price. I’ll add it to my collection of Tiny Table building materials.

[leehljp]

Watched Ole Miss win the college World Series today. Watched the game yesterday too.
Last year it was Mississippi State winning the CWS, with Dak Prescott on hand to watch.

[twistsol]

I spent the day yesterday helping the neighbor with framing for a 14x20 deck. He's way behind schedule and his wife has ordered the deck be completed before the baby arrives on July 15th. I'll probably be helping with deck work in all my free time until it is complete, or the deadline arrives.

[LCHIEN]

Babies are one of the few things that arrives ahead of schedule these days.

[dbhost]

Still working on the car. Double checked the control arm bushings. All good, checked the inner / outer tie rod ends, bad as bad gets, swapped em out, Still need to get the rear shocks done. This is what I get for driving such an old car I guess... Got an appointment this weekend to get the alignment done, good thing I have nowhere to go...

[dbhost]

While I was in the front end of the car, I realized the sway bar end links are utter and complete garbage as well. 16 year old car and all. Compared Moog to AC Delco and went with the Delco. I guess if the OE made it this far, I will just go back with OE parts.

Need to figure out what size the heater hose is as well and give that a good swap out.

Yes I am nursing along an old car. Have you guys seen new car prices?! My Toyota 4x4 5spd AC long bed cost me less than $10K new in 1989.... My 2004 F150 5.4L XLT Supercab 4x4 cost me $22,000.00 as a super low mileage lease return in 2006. I think it had $16K miles on it and came with a 100K warranty...

There is NO WAY I am paying $35K for a Hyundai or other "cheap car"... Let alone the $50K plus they want for the electric cars they want to shove us in...

[twistsol]

It's a holiday in India, Canada Day up north, and most of my team bailed out early for the July 4th holiday making me a manager with nothing to manage. I went out onto the deck and sat down with a glass of iced tea after lunch and woke up three hours later.

[dbhost]

Not sure if this should go here, or in my shop improvements thread, but been working, and putting stuff back where it belongs, to the point of still creating where stuff belongs. Does that part ever end?

[dbhost]

Took the car into NTB to get a 4 wheel alignment, they only seemed to have adjusted the toe. NOT happy with them. Need to have a discussion with the shop MGR about that. Fresh shocks, struts, tie rod ends and all they could adjust was the toe? No effort at all on Camber or Caster. WTF?

I digress...

At least I know the new tires won't be scrubbed to death and honestly Camber and Caster are off by around .1 deg each from spec... Just lazy mechanic. Probably needs camber / caster kits but they didn't want to go to the effort...

Loaded up a bunch of our surplus for my BIL, the old Rigid vac, some spare guitar string sets etc... He's kind of dead broke and I have extra so...

Heading into Houston to deliver the stuff and take BIL out to the Tacqueria for dinner. You notice I am here typing right? In no rush to get over there. Especially since storms are bubbling up over me...

[capncarl]

Went to a picnic sponsored by wife’s old friend on her old family farm. It’s a yearly event for friends, neighbors and family. Tables were set under the largest Pecan tree I’ve ever seen, it’s limbs droop to head height and covers about 1/4 acre! We got our fill of fried chicken, wild hog bbq, 2 batches of chicken and dumplings, butter beans, field peas, creamed peas and plenty of homemade biscuits. 10 layer caramel cake, blackberry cobbler and homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert! It don’t get any better than this.

[leehljp]

I went to a church missions conference about 30 years ago in SC. Missionaries from many different states and one from Massachusetts. Beans and peas of all kinds. When the guy from Mass. got to the vegetables, he stopped, looked and looked again. Then he moved along. I sat a few seats down from him and he raised a question: "What was all of those small beans of different colors. Someone across from him replied: Black-eyed peas, field peas, lady cream peas and maybe another. The guy replied, I never heard of any kind of peas other than sweet peas. We all laughed.

[dbhost]

The cat knocked the ONT (Fiber Internet version of a modem) off of the shelf the installers put it on. Spent WAY too much time on the phone with support, they are sending a tech, Thursday. :-(. Still had my cable modem, called up Comcast and got signed up for their lowest cost service. Ordered a dual WAN router that can be configured for failover. Not terribly expensive so there's that. Got the cable internet set up. I was planning on getting a failover configuration set up but this just rushed me into it...

Spent my morning in the video booth recording the morning services.

My new jigs came in, as did the ratcheting handles. Replaced the 5/16 nuts with 5/16 ratcheting handles on the router fence faces... Easy peasy...

More cleaning and stowing...

I need dig down some of my 5" insulated flex duct from the attic, I want to see if I can cover the hot line from the portable AC in the shop. The lowest I can get the shop any more is 75. Not bad, and it does keep it dry...