Minor Win thread - Life is good!

I found a car that I have been wanting to buy to make a challenge car. Mrs NYN set it up with the seller on FBM and I am going to (hopefully) drag it home this afternoon. It's a horrible idea but I am excited about it. Hopefully the start of a build thread coming later today. 🙂

Well after a little rant in that other thread about people not looking where the seller is, one of my parts sales followed through. 
 

We messaged on Monday and that's when he realized but he left it open of possibly coming up from NJ. 
 

Then Friday afternoon messaged and said I'm going to come up tomorrow and I'll ask for your address in the morning. 
 

Came through and there was an additional part he thought of and in all the mess of parts was able to find it and I just gave it to him. 
 

Thanked him for making the drive and following through. 

On Thursday night, I took the family out to a nice steakhouse to celebrate our recent employment wins.  It's owned by some Dutch immigrants, so they do some traditional dishes as well.  That included something called hutspot which is basically mashed potatoes with winter carrots.  I found a recipe and made some tonight and it was pretty darned good.  I need better carrots, because the ones I had weren't sweet enough, but this is something that I'll keep in my repertoire.

In reply to wae :

I used to juice carrots - 2-3# a day and I learned about the non sweet/sweet carrots.  Most times finding sweet carrots was a crap shoot.  

Can I go 3 for 3 in car parts sales? 
 

So two posts up from here one of my sales followed through. Then this morning the RI guy said I can come today. So got two. 
 

Tomorrow I'm supposed to meet someone after work to sell a hood from the New Beetle I tore apart. 
 

Also related to hopefully making tomorrow's sale, I drove myself to the hospital today but felt better by the time I got there. Hopefully I can make it through tomorrow. I went to emergency last month for the same thing. Had been overall better but it acted up the last two days and today really got rough for a bit. It's stomach related so hopefully I can make it through dinner and breakfast tomorrow. 

Today I putzed around with the frozen lock on my 240Z and got it to work so I can now lock my rear hatch.  

For some reason it made me really happy and encouraged me that sometimes I can be a mechanic.  Can't wait to tell the wife.  (Like she cares......)

Kenmore saw fit to stick a bilingual wiring diagram and process diagram in the Model 80 washing machine that came with my house.

Not knowing any technical French, I used the English language side, and found that the door switch wasn't switching.  That's why it wouldn't spin the drum and drain the water.

Win #2: By being slightly unsafe, I was able to jumper the two wires with my DVOM in amps mode, and get the washer to drain.

Win #3: A replacement switch was $15.11 with shipping and sales tax.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Fantastique!

I took a surf lesson the other day, got up on 4 of 6 attempts. This was my first try, and aside from forgetting "eyes up!", I did hit the other fundamentals. Photographer must have had something else to do, as he only shot the first attempt of each person in my group.

What I looked like:

What I thought I looked like:

Today I played chess for the first time in decades. 

With a five-year-old.

I'm still trying to process that.

I have two:

First, my cousin who I haven't seen in a couple years texted me and said that her 10 yo twin boys had a baseball tournament in our area so we met up with them and had a great day. I drove my C8 and she asked if I could take them each out for a ride. We had a great time and they both talked my ears off the whole time. 

Second, we bought some new furniture a few months ago and we've been trying to sell our old recliners and sofa on Craigslist. Yesterday a buyer finally materialized. He drove three hours each way, paid cash, brought his own helper and was out the door in about 15 minutes. 

Got the rear camera installed and wired in, completing the stereo installation in the truck.

Having just a radio was even more wretched than I'd expected. It's great to have tunes.

I'm a little cross with Crutchfield, though. Lots of documentation about the parts their custom harness does for you, and a couple of very vague descriptions of what you're looking for for the parking brake and reverse triggers which aren't in the adapter harness. "It's this color wire on the 32-pin plug in the right footwell" where you'll find about eleven plugs. They have phone support for questions about the process, whose answer was "looks like we don't have any photos or information about that." It's not like a 2011 Super Duty Ford is common or anything...

I have two also:

Cross posted from Tim's autocross thread, but I went to my first event in ~20years (found a trophy cup from 2006, so 19ish years). My son agreed to come with me. Going in cold and walking the course once he beat me by 0.9. Go figure...

He's been texting me for links to results and motorsportreg all day. So great success there!

Second, this milestone occurred on my way home today. 2/3 of the way to 100k:

I started back at the gym through the winter but got really sick and didn't go for almost two months.  I've been back now for about two months and already starting to feel and look like I did at my peak. 
At the same time I started, for some reason, to eat like a normal person and my weight's been steadily dropping. I was 143lbs this morning and might hit 140 soon. I haven't been there in years

3 for 3 parts sale. Plus selling him the rear hatch too. He had bought a hail damaged car. Plus maybe a couple more parts. 

We hit a hunnerd fun-lovin' degrees today - eighty-five is my "never exceed" temperature - and managed to keep the house livable despite the lack of central air. Temps start coming back down tomorrow and should be down the 70s over the weekend, so I should have an opportunity to split an overloaded branch circuit into two and get these thrown breakers under control.

I found a good deal on a Borla cat back system for my C8 Corvette today. Wound up saving about $1200 off the best price I could get from a dealer. 

got given a big sheet of kaizen foam and some scraps for free from work today

Zero productivity but kitten is happy. 
 

Good news from my Auto Mechanics substitute teaching gig at the local VoTech HS, re the ASE certificate testing:

For this round of testing, 5 students passed at least one test that did not pass anything last time.

There were 15 total tests passed this time.

For the overall total 11 students passed at least one test and there were 39 total certification tests passed

Students have to pass General Maintenance and Repair before they are allowed to take additional tests.

In Round 1, before my time, 6 kids out of 16 passed a total of 24 cert tests. When the other subs and I started in April, we were told "if we get a couple more kids to pass a couple more cert tests, that would be great."

In Round 2, 5 out of the 10 "no-pass" kids passed a total of 15 certs. So, 11 out of the 16 kids in the program are now ASE certified for general maintenance and repair, and could in theory go out and get jobs in the field. Some of these kids will begin or continue in the "work based learning" opportunities available through our three major sponsors: two dealerships and one automotive engineering company.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

That's great!!

Sold more parts I had left from the New Beetle part out (circa late 2023)

Drove to Milford CT to drop off the rear hatch to the guy that bought the hood. I didn't have a part out post, just had the hood listed by itself. He paid extra for me to deliver it. 
 

Also found these signs on Marketplace and the person was available at the right time so scored these for $20. 
 

On the speed limit sign I'm either spraying a big red X over top or black over the three to make an 8.  Can't decide which. 
 

Started new job on Monday.  It really didn't matter to me one way or another, but I assumed that it would take a giant company like this a couple minutes to get me into payroll, set up direct deposit, and everything.  I just figured that my first payday would be the end of the month.

Nope.  These berkeleyers are fast - I got paid today already!  I'm not used to working for a company that has their poop grouped.

Splurging $400 to join a private neighborhood pool was the right choice. Our local city pool is run terribly and closes before I can even get there most days. Last night we headed to the pool at 5pm (which is when the city pool closes), brought dinner and hung out with friends while the kids swam. Headed home at 7:30. I'm already stuffing cash in an envelope to cover next year's dues. 

I got a jump start on the weekend by doing some yard work after work today. Trimmer, blower, trimmer, blower, mower, blower. I bagged this time. Apparently I've been lax in my watering, as the bags contained as much dirt as grass when emptied. The mower produced an embarrassing (and I ain't proud) cloud of dust everywhere it went. Which, naturally, I walked through everywhere I went. By the end, I was filthy, head to toe. Bull dust in my socks, clippings in my hair. My boogers were black and my eyes were sticky. Made it through a shower and found dinner, and my arms were so tired from vibration I had to use two hands to hold the fork a couple of times.

But we have hot and cold running water. I got a shower. Then I got a very nearly hot dinner. We have machines in the garage whose sole purpose is to wash and dry my filthy clothes for me. I have cold beer in the fridge and no further obligations tonight except allowing those machines to wash and dry my clothes and getting outside more of those beers. And I don't have to touch that stupid yard for the rest of the weekend.

It wasn't even hot out.