Minor Win thread - Life is good!

In reply to classicJackets (FS) :

Congratulations!  I'm glad all is going well for you folks.

It appears that all of my legal BS has come to an end and soon there will be no lawyers in my life.

My Mom's estate is finally wrapping up.

The nonsense from the most unreasonable person I've ever met (bordering the north side of my property) is over and it looks like I helped make that happen. The new young couple moving in seem really nice

I had three massive piles of trees and brush to clean up before planting. Since the tractor deal fell through (and I panicked) I rented a machine for the week and got it all done in one 12hr day.

In reply to Peabody :

None of the are minor wins.

Plus you got to play with that skid steer for a day.

We've been getting a lot of rain over the last few weeks and the canopy that I have up in the driveway that the E46 convertible sits under most of the time had been having issues with the weight of the water pushing the canopy top down such that it would create a pocket for water to pool in (I noted a similar issue over the winter with snow). It's likely an issue because of the whole thing sagging a bit with age and the fact that there are 10-foot span where there was no support under the canopy 'fabric'. So over the weekend I did a bit measuring, fired up my CAD program and designed a bracket to allow me to add additional 'ribs' under the canopy (using 1" PVC pipe), and printed some out. Got them installed yesterday before the next round of storms rolled in and when I got up this morning after it had clearly rained a good bit- and no pooling of water on the canopy! 

(It's probably worth noting that I could likely have done something similar with just a larger diameter PVC pipe and drilled/cut notches in it that would have done a similar job as the fittings I printed, but the fittings are definitely more secure- and if I've got the printer, why not use it?)

I *finally* got into my shop space on the weekend.

Progress is minimal, and I can barely see my one work bench and I have a pile the size of a lawn tractor of garbage to go and its only going to get bigger, but I am excited to get back out there to work on cleaning this coming weekend and maybe by the last week of the month I can get a car in there AND be able to work on it. 

Why it has taken me this long, I don't know, but I just got paid for my first guitar lesson. Not a ton, but for my time it paid better than my job, and the kid seems genuinely interested in learning. Maybe he has friends he can refer...

Granted, this is no brand-new baby or day on a skid steer, but Mrs Monohue cooked spaghetti all'assasina for the first time tonight.  It's captivating in a way for which I was not prepared.

In reply to DarkMonohue :

We had that for the first time a few weeks ago. The flavor is nice but the texture is the real interesting part

In reply to Duke :

And you know what's funny? I had attributed my sleeping problems, waking in the middle of the night, not being able to get back to sleep, then sleeping 10hrs, to getting old. I've always slept exceptionally well, and in the last couple years had nothing but problems. In the last week I've slept through each night.

The fact that I had limited myself to only checking email first thing in the morning so I wasn't upset later, and throughout the day, should have been a clue.

The skid steer was a  recommendation from a friend, and it was brilliant. If I'd used a tractor that would have taken me the better part of a week.

In reply to Peabody :

I need to do more of this. I think getting older is a factor, but more just in not being able to power through doing stupid things that wear me thin. In the same way I can't just power through staying up to late playing video games, or drinking a bit too much during the day - I can't really power through giving myself excess mental/emotional stress.

Staying logged off of social media has helped a lot. I need to limit my electronic connections and disconnect more often.

I just wish I could convince my wife to put HER phone down and to stop doom scrolling social media before bed.

The Saab has had some water sloshing around in the back for a while.  I was pretty sure it needed to have its drain tubes cleaned out, but since my daughter's Civic is parked on the lift right now and I'm lazy, I haven't wanted to crawl on the ground to try to look at it.  This morning, my daughter did a little Internet research then went out, climbed under the car, and cleared the drains.  And she then took her sister outside to show her how to clear the drains since "she'll be driving that car soon, so she should know how to do it, too".

A relatively new friend of mine knows I work on cars, so asked me to help fix his parent's boat which was crank/no start. Having never worked on a boat before, I loaded up most hand tools I could think of and didn't know what to expect...

After about 30 seconds of basic questions to learn background info, i found that some kind of safety switch under the throttle had been pushed and needed to be pulled back out and it fired right up. The dad insisted on paying me for my "trouble". Easiest $100 i've ever made!

A few weeks ago I made an impulse purchase and SWMBO and I flew east, bought a project car, and drove it back to the midwest over the course of the weekend.

Had a blast on the trip, and while the car was very well sorted, there were several little things that needed to be sorted once we got it home.

Once home, I bought an OEM Service manual for it, and have been working thru my to-do list on a relaxed basis.  Oil change here, fix the headlight switch there, etc.

One of the issues that was present was the E-Fan wasn't working.  My buddy and I checked everything out per the EXCELLENT repair manual, and the relay and power side of the wiring all checked out.

He and I started doing diag on the control side of the circuitry, and while we found no smoking gun, now everything works.  Coolant temp sensor was in spec, all wiring checks out good, etc.

I say all this, because I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this little thing, and finding new challenges (like the electrical diag) and just hanging out with no deadline, real or self imposed.  

It's been very therapeutic, and a nice change in cadence. 

The 16oz prime rib I ordered was not only cooked perfectly, but was so thick, when I cut a piece off, I had to cut it in half to eat it. 

While I'm gone all week the wife is out poking around the garage and thought it was super funny how little the Datsun 240Z WW bottle is.  She mentioned to me in a call today.

Good to hear she's looking the car over. 

The personalized plate for the 03 Civic Si I recently bought from this forum came today!

I finally bought a nice trailer after wanting one for YEARS. Probably should have done it a long time ago but I did it now and it feels really nice to have it. 

AK2 joining the three pedal club

I ran my first motocross event of the season today, round two in the club's schedule. If the numbers dictate they run +60 class in with novices, and stagger the starts. Today for some reason they did one start, and about two laps in I catch one of the +60 guys, a pretty fast rider, pass, and pull away from him. I saw him after in the pits, he was ranting about some of the novice guys being way too fast for that class and how they should get bumped up. He saw me on a 125, short and skinny, and thought I was a teenager in novice. I let him go on for a bit then told him it was me who passed him. He was a little embarrassed.

The win?  It was a good day. I'm still in one piece, and I'm not in any pain

Did the final walk through and closed on the house! But that's not the win, the win is that the large shed I couldn't get into during the initial tour was empty now and  I found out it's wired for power and has lots of built in shelving. A perfect secondary workshop for composites projects I don't want to do in the attached garage. 

Tonight I elected - forced myself, really - to get on the roof and try to clean it off. It's a job I resent, so it gets deferred over and over and over until there's just no choice. The roof gets mossy and the gutters get packed up and the whole affair brings me down. But tonight it had to happen. Despite a couple of setbacks, I got up there and made progress, and in the process found a new and much more efficient way of cleaning out the always troublesome gutters. And I managed to not break my fool neck in the process.

I have a guy out sick today. So I took one of the helpers, put him in a truck by himself and sent him to do service calls. 

So far he's killing it. 

Finally got off my hinder and bought the lovely old General Electric 1-1/2 horse, 240V, TEFC motor at the local junk shop. This will do a splendid job repowering my Hazard Fraught 6x48 belt grinder, which is an okay piece, but the supplied motor is pretty feeble. It's only 120V and is labeled as a 1-hp unit but you can bog it down with a popsicle stick.

I hate to part with $72 slightly less than I hate struggling with underpowered tools.

Dude. That's a smoking deal.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

As long as it's the deal that is smoking and not the motor, I'm calling it a win. Tested okay on the bench (not whisper quiet, but there is no real vibrations so I might look at the bearings) and is even turning the correct direction.