fri june 7
I try not to be a pest, but …
You’ll recall that a scrapped out lineman’s boom ‘followed me home’ last week and it seems there’s nothing wrong with it but a pinhole leak in one of the hydraulic cylinders and a bad paint job. I took out the cylinder (a ten foot stroke beauty), located the leak, and decided that it would be a lot easier to ‘get it fixed’ than to ‘fix it.’ Good move.
I dropped it off with Dave, at CMF fabricators on Monday. Dave told me: “Probably tomorrow. Wednesday for sure.” So on Wednesday afternoon, I showed up to get it.
Not ready. Haven’t gotten to it. No problem. It’ll be ready on Friday.
So on Friday, I called ahead this time, and they said it’s about done, so come and get it.
I went to get it, but it turned out that the fix leaked too, and they were re-doing it, and I could come back in an hour or so. So I came back 10 minutes before quitting time, and they were just finishing it up.
I gotta hand it to them for doing a fine job.
But I hated being a pest.
Putting the cylinder back was like inserting a 12 foot rectal thermometer.
The patient is resting comfortably, and a full recovery is expected.
Willoughby, Juliet’s big black dog, died.
We buried him next to Cyrus.
I painted the boom yellow, and got it everywhere. Even my urine is yellow.
fri june 14
Everything I touch lately, breaks. Take hydraulics, for example.
In my entire life, I’ve only done 2 projects with hydraulic cylinders, and they both (ahem) worked perfectly. The tractor’s hydraulics have worked fine for 30 years.
Then this week happened.
First, the boom failed. I was putting it through the motions, and it became erratic and stopped. I had no fucking clue what was wrong, so I slept on it.
The very next day, the backhoe got sluggish and eventually stopped. This is especially problematic, because I’m signed up to plant a big lilac bush ASAP, and I’m scheduled to bury a(nother) big dog in 2 weeks. I decided I’m not going to mess with it: They’re going to haul it away on Monday, busted, and bring it back in 2 weeks, fixed.
KISS, for once.
Dad used to have a bumper sticker that said “Real aviators fly tail-draggers”
Without rear hydraulics, the backhoe was dead weight, and a bitch to remove.
That big lilac bush was not going to survive until the tractor gets fixed, so I dug the hole by hand.
A shovel: the original piece of workout equipment.
I power-washed the tractor and some chairs, and the back-pressure turned a little leak into a small geyser, and flooded the shop.
I gotta look into that.
mon june 17
Have you heard of Occam’s Razor? “The simplest explanation is usually the right one.”
Keeping in mind that the boom has been sitting in a salvage yard for 10 years, I wondered what could be wrong with it. I bypassed the pump with a portable hydraulic power source (easier said than done!) and the boom worked fine.
Therefore, I deduced, the pump has to be the problem.
I picked up another pump for free from the scrap yard as part of their ‘2 week guarantee’, hooked it up, and – wait for it – it didn’t work. So if the pump is part of the problem, then what are the odds that two scrap-yard pumps in a row are broken? Pretty low.
Therefore, I deduced, the sump must be the problem. So I drained the oil tank, one slippery quart at a time, tilted it, and examined the sump. No doubt about it. The sump is good.
Therefore, I deduced, the pumps must be failing to prime. So I filled the tank back up, swapped back the 1st pump, and took great pains to properly prime the pump.
It still didn’t work, and I’m sitting there pounding on the buttons in frustration, and the motor kept going
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztzzzzztzzzztzzztzztztztztz
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztzzzzztzzzztzzztzztztztztz
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztzzzzztzzzztzzztzztztztztz when I leaned on the button.
And then a light bulb went on ‘upstairs.’
Dead battery.
Occam.
Duh.
tue june 18
Last night, we went to Sophia’s middle school graduation, complete with all the pomp and gravity that befits such an occasion.
When I first got wind of this event, I gotta admit that my first thought was how could I get out of going? And then I got to thinking about how memorable MY middle school graduation had been:
In the summer of 1970, they herded all of us 8th graders a mile down the road from Inland Valley Intermediate school to Miramonte High, for a graduation rehearsal. We all went thru the motions, and at the end, the principal asked us: “Any questions?”
Now I’d been a boy scout, and I’d noticed that they’d placed the American flag on the wrong side of the podium. So I raised my hand and said, in front of 200 students and staff, “The American flag is on the wrong side!” And the principal said “Huh. Okay, well, why don’t you go ahead and fix that for us, Reid. Thanks.” And I sat down, feeling smug.
We all got herded back up the hill to finish off our last day of class and … I forgot all about moving the flag.
So that night, when all the parents and all the students and all the teachers had gathered for the graduation ceremony, they started off the program with the Pledge of Allegiance, and the whole crowd rose and turned to face where the flag should have been, followed by a confused shuffling as 800 people figured out where the flag actually was and turned to face it. And when the Pledge was done and 800 people had sat back down, 200 students and staff were looking right at me, whispering to their neighbors.
They let me graduate anyway.
A thousand student-teacher handshakes, but just a single hug in the whole affair.
Sophia hugged her math teacher.
So after the graduation, we all went out to eat. And after we’d eaten, we all went out on the street, and the kids were making secret signs to one another, and I asked them “Hey, what the heck does this mean?” and I gave them the thumb-and-pinkie longhorn gesture, and they told me it’s something like “Hey hey!”
That was news to me, so I followed up with “And what’s this one?” and I gave them the index-and-pinkie sign, and they told me it’s something like “Whoa ho!”
And we tried out a few more, and suddenly they’re both laughing at me, and I’m looking at my hands, confused, and finally my 14 year old granddaughter took me aside and explained that I’d made the sign for “two in the v***** and one up the b***”
You learn something new every day.
On the one hand we have an obscene gesture.
On the other hand we have a woodworking accident.
tue june 25
When I brought home my scrapyard boom, I more-than-half expected that it would be a lot more trouble than it was. I think I dodged a bullet there, and I probably need to stop firing them. Here is the boom in action:
thu june 27
Celia is visiting this week because her dog Tara needs to be put down, and we’re going to bury her under an apple tree. For the dog, just being in the countryside instead of a NYC apartment probably feels like she’s already died and gone to heaven.
When Celia visits, my job is to make meatloaf.
This time around, I made a dog-bone shaped meatloaf in honor of Tara.
Then Celia and I dug a hole.
With the tractor out of commission, grave-digging becomes a much more personal task.
I’m going to guess that 4 of these fine people met Mr Shovel for the first time today.
They did a fine job, and if you didn’t already know, you’d never know there was a hole there.
sat june 29
c3pr.
Man, oh man….
I upgraded my RT OS kernel and my bitflow SDK. X 1.19 and a new gpu, with Mint 18.1 and the amdgpuPro driver and more. I finally – Finally! – got everything compiled. Whew!
(Meanwhile, my new gearboxes have been ready to go for a long time.)
Eventually, I had everything ready to go and I hit the button and … Whoosh
really quiet.
really smooth.
really fast.
really stable.
really responsive.
really, really good.
Here is a terrible video proving it.
sun june 30
Red Alert!
I’ve been talking about taking a long motorcycle ride ever since I first got the Suzuki running, but it’s been a bad idea, because there’s always been something wrong with it.
Well this time I’m serious. The bike is running great, and I’ve been making preparations for a trip West in the August time frame. Details are sketchy at this point, but if you’re reading this, there is a good chance that I will be rolling up your driveway (and sleeping on your couch) in a month or two. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.