What did you do today?

[zannej]

Yes, the steps were hollow.
Ahh, gypcrete. My neighbor/flooring installer poured some of that in some pits in my floor as a rough patching job when installing the carpet and sheet vinyl. The room that got carpet had been plywood that was stained and painted with a leaf pattern as a border. We actually liked it. But the tenants burned a hole in it somehow. Pretty deep too. So it had to get filled and we put carpet over it. That's something we regret. It's a pain to clean & doors drag on it.

The gypcrete in the laundry room that filled holes from water damage did not last. As soon as the machines were moved the gypcrete shattered and the sheet vinyl tore.

Got most of the PEX run under the house yesterday. Turned off power to the AC so the zappy 220v line didn't get anyone this time. Noticed that one of the support blocks for under the house dropped through the ground-- mini sinkhole. Another one looks like it is going to sink. No sure how to address it, but it dropped more than a foot. Ugh.

Mom got this little handheld mini chainsaw you can operate with one hand. I kept getting caught up on those f***ing blackberry thorns so I put on some gardening gloves to grab them and cut them to shreds. Sadly, gloves didn't stop all of the thorns so my hands got a bit torn up. But I also took out some pine saplings growing too close to the house and some sassafrass trees growing UNDER the house and poking out. Still have more to cut but the thing ran out of battery & I went back under to mess with plumbing-- but it was easier to get back out without all those damn vines & thorns.

My friend's hands/arms gave out on him before he could get one last run of PEX run so for now it is capped. It's the cold water to the sink & outside faucet. He couldn't quite get over to it with all the blackberry vines and other stuff. So, I'm going to charge the battery on my little cutter, get some better gardening gloves, and get medieval on those vines.

My mom said the water in the bathroom on the hot side didn't heat up so I'm going to have to figure out why (might just have too much cold in the line right now). I also need to get insulation on the new pex.

Today I had to take my friend to the store super early to try to get a tv that was supposed to be in stock but apparently employees bought them out while the store was closed. That was disappointing. But we found another even better tv at bestbuy. Ordered it and it was ready for pickup in a couple hours so we grabbed it. I helped him mount it and then went home.

Got e-mail that mom's laptop is in production. Need to find her a good case-- and convince her to ditch her old cooling fan that is literally larger than the laptop. It's 15.75"x12.5"x2.5" while the laptop is 15.5"x10"x7/8".

Also took mom to get her bloodwork done and grabbed mail.

My desk extender arrived so I put it together and put it on the back of my desk so my subwoofer won't fall off. My cats are enjoying the box it came in. I had to use wd40 on one of the bolts to get it to move though. It's a type that clips on.

My whole body hurts. Hands are all sore and I need to get some sleep so I can take mom to her doctor appointment tomorrow.

 

[Jon]

zannej sounds like you have been a busy busy little person

 

[Floorist]

Well our natural gas rates double today, Lets go Brandon.

PSC SPIRE MISSOURI GAS RATES TO CHANGE

PSC SPIRE MISSOURI GAS RATES TO CHANGE​ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:27:06 CST Natural gas rates are to change for Spire Missouri customers. The company's Actual Cost Adjustment factor will see natural gas rates change under a filing that takes effect Tuesday, November 30. The ACA factor is a mechanism which tracks any over-collection or under-collection of actual natural gas costs over a 12 month period. Spire West residential customers currently pay approximately $0.40 per hundred cubic feet of natural gas. Under this filing the rate will increase to approximately $0.79 per hundred cubic feet of natural gas. Spire West provides natural gas service to approximately 522,000 customers in Southwest Missouri. Copyright 2021 Harbit Communications Inc. KNEM/KNMO-FM Radio

 

[Floorist]

Chrysler would only catch occasionally. Got lucky. Turned out to be the starter relay. Saved a couple hundred. Changed it myself. Took a couple minutes. No way I would have changed the starter myself.

 

[Mark Brown]

No way I would have changed the starter myself.

I scrapped a 2007 ford focus wagon because I got so pissed off at trying to change the starter. I swear to God they want you to pull the engine they put them in such mental places. Then a bolt got stripped and then the wreckers came and got it.
Bought another junk car for about the same as a shop would charge to put that starter in.

 

[Floorist]

I scrapped a 2007 ford focus wagon because I got so pissed off at trying to change the starter. I swear to God they want you to pull the engine they put them in such mental places. Then a bolt got stripped and then the wreckers came and got it.
Bought another junk car for about the same as a shop would charge to put that starter in.

I gave a Chevy Lumina away that ran and looked good. There was a small heater hose leaking that you had to loosen the motor mounts and raise the engine to change. The guy I gave it to, was taking care of his elderly parents and needed an around-town car. You only had to add antifreeze every couple weeks. The idiot put water in it instead of antifreeze and it froze and broke the block.

 

[Mark Brown]

Those damn heater core lines are in the stupidest of places, without fail, every time.

 

[Floorist]

Up until the last year I did almost all my mechanic work myself. Starters, alternators, brakes, water pumps. Now I can't physically do much of it.

 

[Mark Brown]

Up until the last year I did almost all my mechanic work myself. Starters, alternators, brakes, water pumps. Now I can't physically do much of it.

I do all my own. I have a head gasket to do on a 2006 pacifica I'm not looking forward to.
I do not look forward to the day when my body won't let me anymore.... and at the rate I am going it could be as early as tomorrow

 

[Floorist]

Back in a previous life I was a certified Toyota mechanic. I started working on my own cars before I was old enough to drive.

 

[Floorist]

Next up, changing the door handle cable on the driver's side of my Ford van. And changing a marker light bulb on the Nissan. Both are a PITA.

 

[Tile Tom]

I gave that **** up a couple years ago. I used to do all my own and some close friends too.
Here in northern NY it's significantly more difficult than say Iowa to wrench on vehicles. Thanks to the enormous amounts of salt they use on the roads, **** gets rusty....fast!!

2-3 year old brand new vehicles start to show signs of rust....

So between sheering off bolt heads, seized bolts, rust falling in my eyes & every damned part that needs changed being some place only a contortionist can reach.... EFFF that!!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the only time **** breaks on me is when there's 5 ft of snow! So there's that too....

AAA to my buddies auto shop & call me when it's good. I'll be using the time I was going to spend wrenching to make money.

 

[Tile Tom]

Just remembered about a time when my old lady asked me to stop by her work to help out one of her friends change the headlight bulb on her jeep.

Her friend was a single gal and I thought no problem, happy to help......wrong answer!!

You damn near have to take the whole top end apart along with the shroud and all the trim pieces..
about an hour and a half to change the damn bulb.... And I was told that was the easy side!!

 

[DarisMulkin]

I gave up the auto repair work when I got out of the Navy. I was a aircraft mechanic in there and had enough grease and oil when I got out basically. I did do some work on my sons car, spent a whole weekend on it, changing wiring, oil change, plugs, what have you. Got done and he drove it around the block and came back and told me it still was a piece of ****. Last time I worked on any car or engine, got a nrighbor who does it for me.

 

[Floorist]

Just remembered about a time when my old lady asked me to stop by her work to help out one of her friends change the headlight bulb on her jeep.

Her friend was a single gal and I thought no problem, happy to help......wrong answer!!

You damn near have to take the whole top end apart along with the shroud and all the trim pieces..
about an hour and a half to change the damn bulb.... And I was told that was the easy side!!

Try changing a taillight bulb on a Nissan Versa. You have to remove the tail light assembly. Two of the nuts are three inches deep in a hole. If you drop one, it goes where it is not accessable.

 

[C.J.]

I ordered a new saw stand for my old DW708 and built some wings for it yesterday and today cus that’s my thing.

Here’s my DW780 and the setup I made for it some months ago. It’s my go to saw but I keep tryin to make the other saws like this one.

And last but not least I made this for my 20 volt 7.25 slider. This one works great for 1/4 round and short base.

No more saws! I’m running out of room!

 

[zannej]

I wish I'd learned how to fix cars. My dad learned how to fix them before he could legally drive (he drove while underage without a license for a few years-- even bought his first car when he wasn't legally old enough). He didn't get his license until he got out of the Army. I don't remember him ever working on our vehicles. I do remember him building model cars, ships, etc & working on "meatball carpentry" woodworking projects in the workshop. I think my late elderly friend, Cordell, also inspired some of my interest in woodworking. I just wish I had the strength and dexterity to be good at it. LOL.

Mom was mentioning that back in the 80s we bought 1,000 board feet of oak (from a local lumber mill) for $200. A few years later we bought more for $250. Sadly, the neighbors stole all that we didn't use. They even cut the fence behind our barn to sneak in through the barn's back door to steal some after we moved back (most of it was stolen while we were overseas).

CJ, looks great! The houses in that area look like the ones where my sister lives. Around here there are a bunch of trailers & houses with wood, aluminium, or vinyl siding. Tar shingles or tin on the roofs.

Took mom for her doctor's appointment, picked up mail, and went to Walmart (per mom's insistence). I love Mom but shopping with her sucks because she takes her sweet time & my back hurts. But she was faster than usual & even offered to back up her cart to grab things on low shelves because my back was not having it. Got home, brother helped unload groceries & put stuff away. Then he heated up a tv dinner for mom while I dissected a rotisserie chicken. My anti-vibration pads for the laundry appliances & my sandpaper pads for my matrix sander arrived.

I held the laundry bag open for my brother while he unloaded his clothes from the dryer. Surprisingly, he even cleaned the lint filter. Joked he was going to make a sweater from it. It's so nice that the washing machine works again (it wouldn't run with no hot water hooked up-- even on cold setting). You know how printers will sometimes refuse to print in black & white because you're low on colored ink? Similar deal with the washing machines.

I'll have to come back to CJ's post on Dec 12 to be able to load the videos. Internet will not load videos. bleh.

Tomorrow I plan to rest and then when I'm feeling better I'll do some laundry.

For now it's cooling off & kitties are piling on me.

Mom ordered herself a laptop backpack-- big old honking thing that will be a pita for me to lug around for her. I'm still trying to convince her to get a smaller cooling mat fan thingy for the laptop to lighten the overall weight.

I need to clear photos off my phone bc both the SD card and phone's space are full. Thus, no new pictures. LOL.

 

[Mark Brown]

You damn near have to take the whole top end apart along with the

A shroud that has come off has never gone back on to a vehicle I own

 

[C.J.]

CJ, looks great! The houses in that area look like the ones where my sister lives. Around here there are a bunch of trailers & houses with wood, aluminium, or vinyl siding. Tar shingles or tin on the roofs.

It’s interesting the different neighborhoods here. The one I currently live in is a cookie cutter neighborhood to a T. All the houses are the same style with the same color stucco and the exact same tile roofs and 27 sq ft of green grass that gets watered 3 times a day like clockwork. Boring if you ask me.

The neighborhoods I work in are on the other side of town in mostly gated golf course communities. The yards are zero scape, meaning they don’t need watered, but they’re all on lush green golf courses with lakes and fountains n ****. At least those houses have a little bit of variety and nobody gets past the guard shacks without clearance which means I don’t have to worry about lock-in my doors or gettin my tools ripped off.

Between where I live and where I work is quite the variety of houses, trailer parks and everything in between and I don’t even have to really go into or through Phoenix itself. I’m well North of all the garbage. There’s some real dumps there for sure. The homeless people move around all quick like like ants on a hot sidewalk, talkin all crazy to themselves while pushin their shopping carts or crawling out of a drainage culvert. Maybe they’re tweakers, maybe they’re crazy. Prolly both. It’s good people watchin for sure. This is about as nutty as I get to see when I stop at circle K for some Gatorades in the morning. Just some dude smokin cigarettes all by himself while talkin to somebody’s front tire.

 

[highup]

Well our natural gas rates double today, Lets go Brandon.

PSC SPIRE MISSOURI GAS RATES TO CHANGE

​

PSC SPIRE MISSOURI GAS RATES TO CHANGE​ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:27:06 CST Natural gas rates are to change for Spire Missouri customers. The company's Actual Cost Adjustment factor will see natural gas rates change under a filing that takes effect Tuesday, November 30. The ACA factor is a mechanism which tracks any over-collection or under-collection of actual natural gas costs over a 12 month period. Spire West residential customers currently pay approximately $0.40 per hundred cubic feet of natural gas. Under this filing the rate will increase to approximately $0.79 per hundred cubic feet of natural gas. Spire West provides natural gas service to approximately 522,000 customers in Southwest Missouri. Copyright 2021 Harbit Communications Inc. KNEM/KNMO-FM Radio

Don't those rates need to be approved by a governmental body?

I gave a Chevy Lumina away that ran and looked good. There was a small heater hose leaking that you had to loosen the motor mounts and raise the engine to change. The guy I gave it to, was taking care of his elderly parents and needed an around-town car. You only had to add antifreeze every couple weeks. The idiot put water in it instead of antifreeze and it froze and broke the block.

Sounds like a good candidate for an LS motor.
... your mileage might vary.