Minor Win thread - Life is good!

The NIMBYs in my city have cried wolf too many times and nobody cares about their current hissy fit.

I made it to the gym for the first time today. I walked/jogged 2 miles in 34 minutes. Not bad considering that I could barely get out of bed 3 months ago.

Not really a win, sort of I guess? I took the Triumph out for a ride a few minutes ago. We're out in the sticks with some neat roads right out of my driveway. I came around a curve and in the middle of the road was a skunk with a big fat snake trying to drag it across the road. I slammed on my brakes and backed up. He was hunchin' and pulling just like our dog does when she plays tug-o-war. He finally got it across and I went on. I haven't seen a live skunk in years- smelled plenty though. Pretty neat. 

I was in the van with the 4 y/o when we passed NAPA and I heard the sweetest little giggle from behind me, "I love it when they put hats on cars!"

P3PPY said:

I was in the van with the 4 y/o when we passed NAPA and I heard the sweetest little giggle from behind me, "I love it when they put hats on cars!"

Reminds me of the time I brought a leaf blower, and 3yo LM declared, "Oh! A turbo!"

Those are truly the best moments.

When I got started with my swim on Tuesday, I was thrown off a good bit because something weird was going on with my waterproof MP3 player- it sounded like for some reason it was doing some weird processing that wasn't playing back the majority of the audio- it sounded like it had been put through a processor to try and make a normal song a karaoke version of it, and given most of the music on the swim MP3 player is fairly up-tempo and bass-heavy, it just sounded very weird. I was pretty annoyed since this MP3 player is less than a year old, having been bought to replace the previous one that had lasted a few years before the small rechargeable battery died. 

So I brought it back home and let it dry out before testing it to see if I could figure out the issue, and the first thing I did was plug another (non-waterproof) set of headphones into it- and it sounded fine. Plugged the waterproof ones back in- weird sound issue. So, no real clue what the problem with the headphones is- but given I transferred over and have been using the headphones from the previous MP3 player (because I liked them better than the ones that came with the new one- which at the moment I unfortunately can't find), I'll take it. A new set of waterproof earbuds is definitely cheaper than a new swim MP3 player, and they'll be here tomorrow .

Very minor win that happened as I was typing this up: there's been a mosquito buzzing around in the house for a while now that I've not been able to find and kill- as I was typing this up it flew between my face and the monitor and I was able to squash it. 

Peabody said:

From the Rant thread

We have a hare scramble scheduled for this weekend but the land owner has pulled out citing liability. In all likelihood, it's politics, but if it's not resolved the idea will be to host it on our property rather than cancel. I'm onside with that but it will probably give me 2-3 days to prep the entire trail section for competition, come up with an interesting layout, then arrow it. Good thing I still have a working stapler.

This is a huge win for me, and I'm really excited about it.

Holy carp, I found out on the way to the track Tuesday that we would host if thought I could put something together in a few days. The club has not had a good year and the last thing we needed was another canceled event. 

No pressure, no pressure at all.

I could have just mailed it in and set up a simple, straightforward, standard set of trails, but I think that's the reason our numbers are falling, and I've made it my personal goal to grow this series. So I went out on the tractor and started cutting small sections of new trail, reusing old stuff,  and re-purposing day to day sections by running them backward, or diagonally. Friday morning I tied it all together, and realized I'd really thrown a wrench in the works, they're not going to expect this.

Friday evening the guy who looks after volunteer flaggers ran the new course with me and said, wow, I wasn't expecting that. That's really good. Club prez did a run with Relive and started hyping it on social media.

As expected, a number of members looking forward to the original event didn't sign up, but we still got a slightly better than normal turnout, some new, and guest members, attended, even a former Australian off road champion showed up and loved it. The aftermath was a lot of praise on social media for a wicked layout, and I've since spoken to members who didn't come but now regret it based on the buzz. It doesn't get any better.

I got into my garage / shop space for a couple hours on Sunday.

I can fit a car in there now!

Still a lot more cleaning / organizing to be done still and I want to have work benches be clean and organized, but I should be able to actually fit a car in there by mid October and be able to walk / work around it. 

Had a fantastic get away to Florida this weekend with the Misses.  Celebrating an almost 40th b-day and our upcoming 15 year anniversary.  Life is pretty good right now. 

I've been wanting another pit bike since I sold my last one during Covid for stupid money.

I spotted the very bike I wanted on MP about 6 months ago, looked at it and offered the guy $1750. It was a low offer, but despite what his ad said, I searched his name on FB, found out what he really paid, and thought it was reasonable. He declined, we shook, and I left on very good terms.  He got back to me in April asking if I'd do $1900. No thank you, I like my price better. He kept marking it up and down from his original $2800 asking price until it hit $1600 last week. I messaged him yesterday, hey if you can do $1500 I'll pick it up tonight. Done deal, see you tonight. I arrived, got out of the car and we both laughed. I thought it might be you, he said, I guess you won this one.

Survived today's corporate layoffs. Had known there were going to be cuts post merger and got the meeting invite yesterday afternoon for 10 am organizational update today. 15 out of 80 let go. Will find out new structure tomorrow. 

I rebuilt a carburetor (Edelbrock 500 cfm) last night, for the first time in about 25 years. I had a moment of panic when i dumped out a bunch of parts on the floor accidentally, but managed to get it all back in the right places. Probably won't fix the problem, but eliminates a variable at least.

Edit: it did fix 80% of the problems. Actually started easy and drove 10 miles for the first time in a long time. Still have an intermittent stumble.

Tomorrow (Saturday, 28th of September) is my FINAL wedding.

I am relieved and excited to be able to have a life over the summer next year after missing out on *everything* for the past 3 years, just need to get caught up on the 3 years of yard work and get the rest of the 'moving in' since the house fire finished

Also I have 2 payments left on a dumb pay here loan I took out stupidly so thats pretty nice as well.

Made $200 last night letting people stuck in traffic going to the Luke Bryan show use our bathroom.

all the posts are in. 

After flying the KALO (Waterloo, IA) ILS 12 approach in our avionics test rig thousands of times during the past 20 years of my career, I actually flew it toady for real as a systems function check in my own airplane! 

Well actually, the autopilot flew it-- procedure turn and everything.

The airplane is a little noisier (all those cooling fans aren't silent) and burns a lot more gas than the test rig.

Pretty sure I own one of my old 1932 Fords again. For less then I sold it for, with a fully built 347 in it and a full currie rear end. Somehow it got painted as well. Lets see if we can figure out how to get them paid as fast as they need tomorrow and drive up to LA from San Diego at midnight and get it. 

I wasn't anywhere near a Luke Bryan concert last night.

Finally got the tins backnon the Murdercycle. Not perfect paint, but the hologram rainbow clear hides a lot of imperfections.

Now to polish the rest of that turd.

In reply to Appleseed :

That's beautiful!

This is a 'minor win' in that it was a narrow escape from what could have been at the least a minor rant if not a trip to the emergency room.

This week is the local school system's Fall Break, which means that The Dancer doesn't have any classes to teach either for her non-profit or the dance studio she teaches at part time. As such she's at home most evenings, and since she doesn't get to much normally wants to help out in making dinner. This is generally a good thing, except that most of the time when we cook at home we're making dinner boxes where they send all the ingredients and there isn't a huge amount of required prep work so 2 people cooking is a bit overkill. 

So last night we were working on preparing dinner and we've decided to split up the things that need to be chopped up, and instead of the usual 'half size' chef's knife that I typically use I'm using the full-sized chef's knife because she's not at all comfortable with the bigger one (she has rather small hands). Before we got the smaller one (as a wedding present- so it's been a while) I did all of my chopping with the full-size knife, but the smaller one is what I've gotten used to.

So when I got started chopping the mini-peppers I was not quite as aware as I should have been that I was out of practice and not slowing down to get used to it again- and before even finishing the first one felt the knife catch and pull on my thumb. I looked down at my thumb as it didn't hurt at all- and saw that somehow I'd managed to just shear a half-circle-shaped piece of my thumbnail off with the cut barely managing to not cut into my actual thumb at all. I was able to grab a set of nail clippers and trim the nail so it wasn't jagged and going to catch on anything, wash my hands, and go back to chopping things (MUCH more carefully now...) within a few minutes. Thankfully as well, The Dancer didn't see just how close I'd come to chopping off the tip of my thumb...

Registration ended today on the Cayman. California reg in NH. Renew showed up today before I had to drive it. Perfect.

Our governor signed a law stating that manufacturers have to match the warranty labor rate to the third-party customer pay labor rate guidelines.

I think we had a breakthrough this morning. Showing my boys how to change the rear brake pads on our family truckster they actually paid attention and understood that brute force is not the only option. In the past this best described letting my boys work in the shop with me:



At the ages of 15 and 12 things seem to have finally settled down. I admit I've been jealous of my friends posting up pictures of their 7-year olds helping splice a wiring harness or TIG welding a bracket, but progress is progress. I'll take it.