The soob is leaking oil into the top of the spark plug. I have convinced myself that it's a blown valve cover gasket. Coworker suggested just reefing on the cover bolts: it did nothing. New gasket ordered, driving borrowed Ford Focus in meantime. But: am I right? Doesn't the valve cover gasket just go around the outside? The spark plug's a hole in the middle, like unto an old flathead engine. What if there's something totally different, like some weird flaw in the head itself?
Sigh.
The rototiller is tilling. After rebuilding the starter, I was running it and it started lugging down. I opened the ... I guess it's simultaneously a choke and a throttle, even though it's not intended for either: the tiller's supposed to just run at a single setting, but it has a valve at the venturi to limit airflow. Anyway, I opened it, let more air in, and it ran better. I kept doing that and it kept doing better. Weird. Then I was poking at it and realized that the whole carb was sort of rattly and stuff. The two bolts that hold it to the engine were loose, and it was in the process of falling off -- which process meant that it was sucking air in and blowing fuel/air out the gap that had opened between the carb and the intake. That could've been FUN had enough fuel/air gotten over to the exhaust. I tightened it as best I could, given the constraints of the design. Poor old thing. It needs loctite.
Rototilling is done. Crop circle is implemented. It'll be poppies, apparently: the veggies will go in the garden area and maybe along the fence where the schnauzers play.
Meanwhile I'm tired to the point of incoherence.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Rototiller madness!
I went to work and taught myself PADS, a new circuit-board layout program. It sucks. The first time I learned one of these, they sent me to a $4000 class for a week. At this point I can pretty much just learn it in two days of screwing around.
Work sucked.
I came home and started wrestling with the rototiller. It's older than I am. It might be older than my mother. It's a Craftsman, all welded together out of rusty angle-iron. Every year something different isn't working. Last year I couldn't get it to start and the pull-starter was misbehaving: it wasn't retracting correctly. So, given that there's no way I'll remember what I did, I'm going to write it down. Here.
Pull-starters are sort of sprague clutches: they turn one way and lock the other. That's controlled by a friction-driven dog that sticks out when the cord is pulled and retracts otherwise. The retract mechanism for the cord uses a big coil spring inside two nested cylinders. They *have* to be closed and flush against the housing face, so the cord tracks through the hole. The reason they don't is because the coil spring butt end goes through a slit in one of the cylinders, and the other cylinder hangs up on the butt end, so that needs to be bent flat. Otherwise the cylinder pack jams against the crankshaft and it won't ever retract right. You'll know it's put together correctly when the shoulder nut that holds the entire starter system together can be fully tightened without screwing up how everything works.
The coil spring gets really nasty. It needs to be cleaned and oiled every now and then. If it comes out of the casing it's going to basically explode all over everywhere. WATCH for this. When you go to rewind it do NOT try to coil it up in your hands and jam it back into the cylinder. It won't work. It will escape and damn near cut off your finger and you'll bleed everywhere. Wrap it back into the cylinder starting from the outside and winding towards the inside. Wear gloves next time, yo.
Work sucked.
I came home and started wrestling with the rototiller. It's older than I am. It might be older than my mother. It's a Craftsman, all welded together out of rusty angle-iron. Every year something different isn't working. Last year I couldn't get it to start and the pull-starter was misbehaving: it wasn't retracting correctly. So, given that there's no way I'll remember what I did, I'm going to write it down. Here.
Pull-starters are sort of sprague clutches: they turn one way and lock the other. That's controlled by a friction-driven dog that sticks out when the cord is pulled and retracts otherwise. The retract mechanism for the cord uses a big coil spring inside two nested cylinders. They *have* to be closed and flush against the housing face, so the cord tracks through the hole. The reason they don't is because the coil spring butt end goes through a slit in one of the cylinders, and the other cylinder hangs up on the butt end, so that needs to be bent flat. Otherwise the cylinder pack jams against the crankshaft and it won't ever retract right. You'll know it's put together correctly when the shoulder nut that holds the entire starter system together can be fully tightened without screwing up how everything works.
The coil spring gets really nasty. It needs to be cleaned and oiled every now and then. If it comes out of the casing it's going to basically explode all over everywhere. WATCH for this. When you go to rewind it do NOT try to coil it up in your hands and jam it back into the cylinder. It won't work. It will escape and damn near cut off your finger and you'll bleed everywhere. Wrap it back into the cylinder starting from the outside and winding towards the inside. Wear gloves next time, yo.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
We slept in.
At noon we went over to my brother's and had Easter Food. They gave us an enormous bag of jellybeans: vanilla, jalapeno, kiwi, and mango flavor. L's dad and brother talked extensively about horrible houses they've cleaned -- houses waist-deep in beer cans, houses where the people left their pets when they left, houses partially collapsed without bathrooms where the people living there used buckets instead of toilets. I'm glad I wrangle electrons instead.
From there over to Nikki's parents' house, where we played Boggle (which meant much less arguing than usual.) It was fun. We gave them half the jellybeans and they gave us satanic chocolate sheep.
Now we're sitting in front of the fireplace reading comic books and falling asleep. A frustrating weekend insofar as getting stuff that needs to be done finished, but that's okay: next weekend will be better.
I'm trying to organize social stuff for the week ahead.
Boring, but I'm going to try and write down something each day, as an actual diary.
At noon we went over to my brother's and had Easter Food. They gave us an enormous bag of jellybeans: vanilla, jalapeno, kiwi, and mango flavor. L's dad and brother talked extensively about horrible houses they've cleaned -- houses waist-deep in beer cans, houses where the people left their pets when they left, houses partially collapsed without bathrooms where the people living there used buckets instead of toilets. I'm glad I wrangle electrons instead.
From there over to Nikki's parents' house, where we played Boggle (which meant much less arguing than usual.) It was fun. We gave them half the jellybeans and they gave us satanic chocolate sheep.
Now we're sitting in front of the fireplace reading comic books and falling asleep. A frustrating weekend insofar as getting stuff that needs to be done finished, but that's okay: next weekend will be better.
I'm trying to organize social stuff for the week ahead.
Boring, but I'm going to try and write down something each day, as an actual diary.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
I got up too early and went up to Maggie's. She lived across from Boulder High, in a weird little enclave right beside Boulder Creek, -- weird, because you can't get there directly as it's all one-way streets pointing the wrong way. You have to sneak in a couple blocks in advance. We loaded like crazy, got everything into the trailer or the two Subarus, save two boxes. Maggie felt like she was incredibly fuzzy and confused, and needed coffee, and we thought we needed hex keys to take apart the futon so we went over to McGuckin's, where we had a huge intense discussion with the four hippies who ran the key-duplication machine (four, seriously) about 'rock papers scissors dynamite' vs. 'rock paper scissors bomb'. The key they gave Maggie was leopard-print and sticky, so they washed it in Goof-Off, and then it was stinky instead. We bought a big ol' Bondhus metric hex set and started off home. There was a charming, very pale young lady on the sidewalk, wearing an electric blue blouse/skirt thing that stopped about a foot above her knees: if she stood very still, her butt didn't show. Well, she was running, as it happened, and wasn't wearing panties, as it happened. Maggie began yelling, something like "dammit, dammit, there should be a law! It's not fair that there are hot chicks wearing short skirts running down the street when someone replaced my brain with a cupcake and I can't think and today I NEED TO BE ABLE TO THINK and it's NOT FAIR! ARRRRRGH..." and we drove home and finished loading. The cats fit in the cat boxes.
We drove down to the new place and loaded everything into the house. Cassandra kitty got stashed in the bathroom, a small room with two doors and one closed window and nothing else of note, and we went out for another load and Dyson kitty. When we came back there was no sign of Cassandra. Doors closed, window closed, toilet lid closed. Nothing. So we stashed Dyson in there and went looking for Cass, poked hither, poked yon, nothing, and in confusion we went back to see if maybe possibly there was a spot to hide.
Dyson was gone.
It was the bathroom of vanishing cats.
Turns out they were hiding under the sink, in a space that couldn't've been more than 3" high, with a slit thinner than that for egress. I had no idea a cat could fit through a hole that thin. Desperation is an amazing thing.
Finished moving. I pulled out of her driveway and reverse-jackknifed the trailer, leaving another ding in the side of my beat-up car.
As I was driving along Thirteenth, I saw a dozen guys playing foot-down on a basketball court just before Washington. They all had chopped-bar fixies, mostly with matching anodized rims.
Nikki rebuilt the whole back yard this AM. I came home, we admired each other's work, and went to the Lakewood library, loaded up.
I read all of Megatokyo #1 and am working through a book on tile technique.
Out for a quick snack at some frightening diner in Broomfield.
It was hot yesterday, but snowing now. Fie.
We drove down to the new place and loaded everything into the house. Cassandra kitty got stashed in the bathroom, a small room with two doors and one closed window and nothing else of note, and we went out for another load and Dyson kitty. When we came back there was no sign of Cassandra. Doors closed, window closed, toilet lid closed. Nothing. So we stashed Dyson in there and went looking for Cass, poked hither, poked yon, nothing, and in confusion we went back to see if maybe possibly there was a spot to hide.
Dyson was gone.
It was the bathroom of vanishing cats.
Turns out they were hiding under the sink, in a space that couldn't've been more than 3" high, with a slit thinner than that for egress. I had no idea a cat could fit through a hole that thin. Desperation is an amazing thing.
Finished moving. I pulled out of her driveway and reverse-jackknifed the trailer, leaving another ding in the side of my beat-up car.
As I was driving along Thirteenth, I saw a dozen guys playing foot-down on a basketball court just before Washington. They all had chopped-bar fixies, mostly with matching anodized rims.
Nikki rebuilt the whole back yard this AM. I came home, we admired each other's work, and went to the Lakewood library, loaded up.
I read all of Megatokyo #1 and am working through a book on tile technique.
Out for a quick snack at some frightening diner in Broomfield.
It was hot yesterday, but snowing now. Fie.
Friday, March 21, 2008
I made a stand for the sink. It was about 3 cm too wide to fit through the bathroom door. Tears were shed, bitter bitter tears. HOWEVER, help arrived in the form of a Horrible Freight abrasive cutoff saw: I cut what I'd welded all to pieces and rewelded it. It no longer sits quite flat, but hey, I can always cut more off.
I got the steel from Altitude Steel, under Colfax and I-70. The pieces were rusting in with a bunch of other stuff, bundled to be dragged off to a minimill and melted down into new steel, but we rescued them and dragged them home in the Soob. Cutting the cross-pieces was really tricky, where they attached to the twisted legs: they were all cut to the same length, then counter-ground to have helical ends. The front-side welding isn't bad. The back-side welding doesn't bear looking at. However, this is going to be a New Art bathroom, so that's okay, in its own way.
Rough draft:
I got the steel from Altitude Steel, under Colfax and I-70. The pieces were rusting in with a bunch of other stuff, bundled to be dragged off to a minimill and melted down into new steel, but we rescued them and dragged them home in the Soob. Cutting the cross-pieces was really tricky, where they attached to the twisted legs: they were all cut to the same length, then counter-ground to have helical ends. The front-side welding isn't bad. The back-side welding doesn't bear looking at. However, this is going to be a New Art bathroom, so that's okay, in its own way.
Rough draft:
Close-up:
The faucet is eccentric.
I intend to weld up a fancy bit of architectural sculpture that'll span the crossbars at the foot of the sink. They'll support a sheet of glass (with some carefully drilled holes) for a shelf for towels. Just beneath the sink/tabletop, there will be a sliding drawer, probably made of poplar, because I love working with poplar, and something exotic for the face.
The drawer will be traditional, with side-runners, rather than ball-bearing slides, I think. I just realized that if I yaw the drawer runners slightly trapezoidal, opening towards the back, I think it will be impossible for the drawer to ever jam in the opening, as so many do when the slides are parallel and just a bit wider than the drawer. I've never heard of anyone doing this, though, so I'll do a mockup first.
The bathroom window is horrible. I'm paying someone to put in a nice vinyl double-insulated window. That's a job I don't think I can do myself.
Lily has been coiled like a spring for the last week. She suspects the squirrels of a cabal, a dog-overthrowing conspiracy, so she dashes from window to window and stands, staring intently, looking for signs of their operation, their acorn-fueled putsch. She attempts to sleep, poised like the lions in front of a NYC library, hips jutting out and head down but ready to leap at a moment's notice. This is a very tiring way to sleep, apparently: she quivers constantly.
Giraffes only have to sleep 2 hours a night. Bullfrogs do not sleep at all. Dolphins -- and many other aquatic mammals -- sleep, such as it is, one hemisphere at a time, maintaining CONSTANT VIGILANCE, as Mad Eye would put it, while still resting. People taking Modafinil can go sleepless for several days, without suffering large performance reductions in analytic thought. Pigeons can be kept awake for a month at a time without any noticeable side-effects (although maybe that's just because they're too stupid to get dumber when they lack sleep.)
With all that said, it's 7:15 on a Friday and I want to go to sleep so much right now I'm having trouble typing this in.
I shall go weld. UV exposure will surely cure my somnambulism, or at least refresh my Vitamin D levels.
Giraffes only have to sleep 2 hours a night. Bullfrogs do not sleep at all. Dolphins -- and many other aquatic mammals -- sleep, such as it is, one hemisphere at a time, maintaining CONSTANT VIGILANCE, as Mad Eye would put it, while still resting. People taking Modafinil can go sleepless for several days, without suffering large performance reductions in analytic thought. Pigeons can be kept awake for a month at a time without any noticeable side-effects (although maybe that's just because they're too stupid to get dumber when they lack sleep.)
With all that said, it's 7:15 on a Friday and I want to go to sleep so much right now I'm having trouble typing this in.
I shall go weld. UV exposure will surely cure my somnambulism, or at least refresh my Vitamin D levels.
Frist psot.
TIG welding:
My ex-boss told me to make the joints between pieces I was welding as tight as possible -- until I couldn't fit a piece of paper between them.
That's what I've been doing.
It's not the best way.
When you weld eg. a pipe to another pipe, you tack-weld a single point on one side, then do it again on the other, so things hold together, and then you run a bead around the joint. When the two pieces of metal have, essentially, zero gap, that first tack-weld cools quickly and contracts, pulling the two pieces of metal apart where the next tack-weld should be.
You actually want a gap, maybe half a millimeter or so, and then things work much better.
It is possible to fill arbitrarily large gaps with a TIG and a bunch of filler, but it's very unpleasant.
My ex-boss told me to make the joints between pieces I was welding as tight as possible -- until I couldn't fit a piece of paper between them.
That's what I've been doing.
It's not the best way.
When you weld eg. a pipe to another pipe, you tack-weld a single point on one side, then do it again on the other, so things hold together, and then you run a bead around the joint. When the two pieces of metal have, essentially, zero gap, that first tack-weld cools quickly and contracts, pulling the two pieces of metal apart where the next tack-weld should be.
You actually want a gap, maybe half a millimeter or so, and then things work much better.
It is possible to fill arbitrarily large gaps with a TIG and a bunch of filler, but it's very unpleasant.
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