Minor Win thread - Life is good!

Helen, age 14, making Dad a little less Angry

Little side job today after work.  In just over an hour I cut down a small tree, cut it up for firewood, and ground out the stump.  The customer was happy with the result and felt she got a very fair deal on the work.

And I made $250.  Not terrible at all.

Geared up and headed out for a motorcycle ride.   Had a good time u til the clutch started acting kinda flakey when I was about 10 miles from home.  Project!

The duster runs. And is getting better looking!

But the real win? Smithfield ham. Im a happy fat man. 

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

1. Really Really cool.

2. Weld arc has a lot of mondo-bad UV.  Please cover up that skin with something that blocks it.

ill let the pictures talk. 

I organized a family bingo night (virtual edition) for the families at my kids' elementary school.  Bingo is the big fundraiser for the school normally but we're shut down right now, of course.  So I found a Bingo Machine Windows application, generated a few hundred bingo cards, and used OBS Studio to create a virtual webcam that would include my image, the bingo board, the winning bingo card, and combinations of the three.  A free WebEx account lets me have up to 100 people in a meeting of unlimited length and I made the grand prize a delivery of two pizzas from the place that usually supplies the Bingo pizza, delivered personally by me, while maintaining six feet of distance!  And when I deliver the pizza, I will be wearing one of my signature idiotic hats.  I also had four winners that would each get a $5 Amazon gift card emailed to them.  It was just an idea to try to help everybody feel a little more connected since we haven't seen each other as a school family in about a month.

When I sent it out, I was expecting that there might be 15 people that would want to join in and figured it would mostly just be the normal group that works bingo with me every week.  Instead, I had almost fifty families sign up!  WebEx didn't buckle under the strain and everybody had a good time and got to talk to each other and see their friends.  Being able to hang out with everybody like that was something that I didn't realize I was missing quite so badly.  I realize that I'm a grown-ass man, but damn if someone isn't hiding under my desk chopping onions or something.

The vinegar is eating the rust out of the Murdercycle's tank. 

In reply to wae (Forum Supporter) :

I LOVE that story! Great work!

I am currently accessing the forum via a brand new router, through a wireless bridge, amd then into my modem in the house.  This is significant because the previously existing network is still in place and the wireless bridge is more than capable of spanning the 100' to my shop, where the new router is going to live. 

Eventually this hardware will hop from the shop to my new building once the ground dries out and I get the fiber run to the shop, but for now I am going to have real internet access inside the shop for the first time and I am excited!

Edit, and now from inside the shop proper, with it's double layer of tin to act as a faraday cage, I am completely connected!

Took way more snaking than I expected and had to pull the trap and go in right at the wall, but got the main floor bathroom's sink draining properly again!

According to the local PD I can drive on expired plates during this because the dmv is closed. Took the zephyr off storage insurance today! This could become a minor rant shortly

We currently live in a 3 bedroom apartment with basically no garage storage so finally got up the motivation to build a shed to go along the side of the building to store car stuff and my tools and misc stuff. 

Only got around to getting the base started today after leveling the ground up

Braunschweiger omelette.

This is a triple combo rant confession and win. I'm gonna focus on the win and put it here though. 

I snapped an intake bolt on intake bolt on my LS trying to trust an harbor freight torque wrench to do 7 lbs-ft. 

Got the broken bolt out in 20 minutes by drilling a small pilot hole in the bolt and then tapping a phillips screwdriver into it. 

Basically I feel like the biggest idiot on earth and a berking genius all at the same time. Levels off to slightly below average.

The large Gardina bush outside the garage is starting to bloom and it smells great.

KyAllroad (Jeremy) (Forum Supporter) said:

Little side job today after work.  In just over an hour I cut down a small tree, cut it up for firewood, and ground out the stump.  The customer was happy with the result and felt she got a very fair deal on the work.

And I made $250.  Not terrible at all.

Maybe I should buy that used stump grinder that Home Depot rentals has for sale!

In reply to wae (Forum Supporter) :

That is awesome!!

my win: the kitchen sink drain in the house has never drained very well, and lately it's stopped up twice. The first time I snaked and snaked and couldn't get it clear and ended up using chemical drain cleaner (evil!) and looked in the ceiling joist space (above a finished ceiling but visible from the crawl space) and thought the plumbing was wrong so I was snaking the vent instead of the drain. Well, it stopped up again just a couple months later and I decided to cut out the ceiling and fix the plumbing configuration. Well, thankfully before doing so I peeked at it again and don't know what I was thinking last time (probably just mad) because it is plumbed correctly. Turns out I have 39' of pipe before it goes from 2" to 4" then into the main stack, so my 25' snake just isn't long enough. I rented a power snake at Home Depot and 20 minutes or so later the drain works better than it ever has! Well, in the 5 years we've lived here at least. It was smelly and kinda gross but very satisfying work. Renting the snake took longer than doing the work, but it was a nicer snake than I could get for a reasonable price. Plus now we have a fully functioning kitchen sink drain which is very important in a house with 7 people in it.

In reply to dculberson :

We had a constant problem drain with slow to no drainage. Our manual snake would not go more than about 12 feet down. Gallons of Drano have gone down that pipe for years.

I finally tried this stuff: I was alarmed that it came in a bag, but it's actually pretty benign. Drained in a few minutes and has been running clean for several years.

I bought one of these a few years after I bought my 1962 house with elm trees in the front yard.  It is too small to do a proper job on the four inch line, but it has saved my ass from floating in turds way more often than I would like to remember.

Also, as a home owner, I have found that these types of problems are seldom noticed during regular office hours... so it's nice to have an option.

After a few years of ignoring the problem, I finally got the bird nest/ lint blockage out of the dryer vent. 
The outlet is 25+' above the ground, and I don't have a ladder that can handle that, mostly because I'm really uncomfortable on a ladder that high up. I've been planning on renting a man lift, but I learned a coworker has one I could borrow. Picked it up this morning, and it's rally nice to use the right tool for the job. Now I'm looking for any other high up chores that need to be done before I return it. 

I might have left it out when my kitchen drain plugged a few weeks ago.  The spot that plugs up is riiiight at the end of its length, but it works.

budget committee approved TIG and new toolbox without suggesting lower-cost alternatives.

Finally watched Baby Driver. Now I need the soundtrack. 

The work that has me 3000 miles from home is currently very much ahead of schedule.