what did you do today? (2008-2015) (closed)

[Walt34]

The first of the picture-framing stuff I ordered from Amazon came today. Remounted DW's diploma in the school frame. Properly this time.

 

[Tailgate]

Upshot - my landline is now transferred to magic jack and I'm saving money. I have bragging rights with DH over actually getting it done. And ladders are not my friend. LOL

congrats on getting the job done without killing yourself!

Today, walked 2 miles, session at gym with personal trainer, cut up large branches that fell during storm, dentist appointment (saying goodbye to back tooth next week..just can't hang in there any longer)..

all of this before noon

Bob

 

[NW-Bound]

My wife would not know how to do all that phone wiring.

My brother does not do much home maintenance work. So, his wife who's a stay-at-home mom has learned to do things that normally fall to the man of the house. I was surprised to learn that SIL could change door locks, and even install new faucets, something that my wife would not know where to begin.

 

[TimSF]

Took my dog to the beach on the Sonoma Coast. Couple hours kayaking the Russian River. Watched "Lost" on Netflix. Ain't it grand. (100 posts woohoo!)

 

[aja8888]

Worked on the Jetta diesel @ 158,000 miles: (unscheduled maintenance)

1. Pulled passenger side front axle shaft and replaced worn outer CV joint. Installed new boot, grease, and clamps. Crazy torque on the axle bolt (which preloads the wheel bearing) - 144 Ft Lbs, then 180 degree turn further. Needed a big cheater pipe on my socket extension.

2. Replaced two sway bar strut links that were pretty worn.

3. Replaced the alarm system siren (started sounding like a frog had taken over the voice coil). Pain in the butt to get at it as it was behind the inner passenger fender well. I suppose there is a reason for that.

4, Rotated tires while I had the car in the air. Looks like new tires are on the horizon as I am nearing the wear bars.

End of June will be 10K since the last oil/filter change so that is scheduled next. Hot and humid in the garage today. Probably lost some body fluid.

 

[W2R]

Had a routine doctor appointment yesterday, and my doctor said that all of my lab work was terrific and much improved, as was my blood pressure. I was surprised but welcome that good news. He said I am in very good health. He did not say "for your age" but I assume that is what he meant..

 

[davemartin88]

Did some mowing with the tractor beside the gravel road to our house- about 1.2 miles. When I finished, I realized I had lost 4 wheel drive, a universal joint that connects the transmission to the front axle had fallen off. After a long hunt for the part that fell off, I was ready to give up and then found it next to the alpaca manure pile. Turns out it must have fallen off the day before but since I didn't need 4 wheel drive for the mowing, never noticed it was gone.

Good news was the joint slipped back on without a problem and I just need to get a new tension pin to hold it on, looks like the original pin rusted through and no longer did the job. An easy fix for a change!

 

[MichaelB]

Cleaned the baffles on the range hood. It was installed 4 years ago and is used often, we check regularly to see if there is grease accumulating but hadn't seen any. It was always nice and white (the finish is stainless steel). The other day DW saw what looked like a piece breaking off, tugged at it, and off came a stip of white tape. I pulled out the baffles and confirmed the tape used to protect the finish had never been removed.

The surface was full of grease and stained by the tape glue. I washed them thoroughly with hot soapy water, which got the grease off but not the stain. Ran through the dishwasher, which helped a bit. Tried a few other things, nothing worked, so DW washed them with goo gone, which worked perfectly, but left them smelling like kerosene, probably not good for something involved with cooking. I washed them again with hot soapy water, and now they are fine.

We haven't figured out yet why neither of us noticed that the white color on a stainless steel finish meant further investigation was required. When the kids find out they'll never let us hear the end of it.

 

[braumeister]

Had my first full ophthalmologist eye exam since my cataract surgery (16 and 15 months ago).

Great report: lenses are perfectly placed in the capsules, pressure is good, no problems at all. No sign of secondary cataract development. Although that's always possible, it can be quickly and simply resolved by zapping it with a special laser.

Tested nearly 20/20 for distance vision (missed by one letter in one eye, two letters in the other).

Now at last I can completely stop worrying about it and just enjoy driving without glasses!

 

[MichaelB]

Had my first full ophthalmologist eye exam since my cataract surgery (16 and 15 months ago).

Great report: lenses are perfectly placed in the capsules, pressure is good, no problems at all. No sign of secondary cataract development. Although that's always possible, it can be quickly and simply resolved by zapping it with a special laser.

Tested nearly 20/20 for distance vision (missed by one letter in one eye, two letters in the other).

Now at last I can completely stop worrying about it and just enjoy driving without glasses!

Good! You chose mono lenses, right? Any second thoughts?

 

[braumeister]

None. The slight annoyance of finding the right pair of readers (reading distance, computer distance, etc.) is so trivial compared to the joy of mostly doing without glasses that I'm a totally happy camper.

 

[MichaelB]

None. The slight annoyance of finding the right pair of readers (reading distance, computer distance, etc.) is so trivial compared to the joy of mostly doing without glasses that I'm a totally happy camper.

That's a pretty solid endorsement.

 

[rodi]

My wife would not know how to do all that phone wiring.

My brother does not do much home maintenance work. So, his wife who's a stay-at-home mom has learned to do things that normally fall to the man of the house. I was surprised to learn that SIL could change door locks, and even install new faucets, something that my wife would not know where to begin.

I was a single homeowner till I got married when I was 38. I had to learn to do stuff. Plus I'm an engineer. I'm too cheap to hire people if it's something I can figure out.

I'll admit - there are some jobs I won't tackle. I'm not confident soldering plumbing joints with the torch. DH can do that. But I can take a trap apart and clean it out, I can change out a faucet, I can do basic wiring - but my drywall skills suck - so I let DH do most of the fishing of wire, etc. Yesterday was an exception because most of the run was in crawl spaces (soffit, to an existing hole to the garage crawl space.)

DH is much better at carpentry, framing, woodwork in general. Not to mention drywall. He's even mastered exterior stucco matching. But he worked construction in summers while studying to be an architect... so he has real life professional experience.

 

[NW-Bound]

I just came back from an errand to Costco to stimulate the economy. They offer a $70 rebate for a set of Michelin tires, so I got them for the car. Now, both the motorhome and the toad got new tires. I am all set for that long cross-country trip.

 

[NW-Bound]

I was a single homeowner till I got married when I was 38. I had to learn to do stuff. Plus I'm an engineer...

I have to say that an engineering degree does not mean much when it comes to practical matters. There are plenty of EE graduates, male and female, whose last time they held a soldering iron was in an electronic lab in school. Oh wait, some might never have held an iron, as they often use these breadboards in school labs. And then, many now just work with computer software, so they do not deal with "nuts and bolts" at all.

 

[Walt34]

Gym day with DW, played with the new mat cutter that was delivered just as we were leaving for the gym. Tomorrow go to Michael's craft store for some mat board and start framing and hanging photos. I did order some mat board but it won't be here until next week and being a kid with a new toy I'm not gonna wait that long.

 

[rodi]

I have to say that an engineering degree does not mean much when it comes to practical matters. There are plenty of EE graduates, male and female, whose last time they held a soldering iron was in an electronic lab in school. Oh wait, some might never have held an iron, as they often use these breadboards in school labs. And then, many now just work with computer software, so they do not deal with "nuts and bolts" at all.

Hey - I resemble that remark. Not sure I had to solder at all when getting my BSEE. I started out getting an associates in electronics tech - and my soldering skills convinced me I'd rather be the one telling the tech what to solder, rather than soldering myself.

I have never had to solder on parts at work -though I have had to use the iron to remove part... much easier since you aren't worried about cold solder joints.

 

[ls99]

I'm tackling all the deferred projects. This morning's project (after a 3 mile walk with the dog) was to install the magic jack. I've had it for 4 months. Tried to get DH to install it but he never got around to it... so I decided to do it today.

Not complicated - except where our router is is not where our home phones all connect in to. Our old set up had the phone line coming from the phone company block on the side of the house - to a phone wire block on the garage wall - from there 3 hard wired extensions split off. I wanted to keep those extensions. So I needed to run the wire from the router, to this phone block in the garage. That involved fishing the wire through a soffet, then through attic crawl space in the garage.

No biggie - except I had to lean way into the attic space to fish the wire... and when I was backing back out - the ladder tilted out from under me... No broken bones but a few nice bruises where I scraped myself as I fell out of the attic (till I could catch myself on the edge and lower myself down. I'm sure I looked completely ridiculous.

It was fear I'd do something stupid that had me open the garage door before starting - so if I cracked my head open a neighbor might see me bleeding out and call 911. LOL. I always plan for the worst.

Upshot - my landline is now transferred to magic jack and I'm saving money. I have bragging rights with DH over actually getting it done. And ladders are not my friend. LOL

What, no pictures?

At least you are around to post about it.

 

[ls99]

Mounted a ditch light on my winter beater.

What is a ditch light? It is a light mounted on the front bumper angled at about 45 degrees off the direction of travel, slightly angled down to see the ditch when foggy or in a snow storm..

Why? Last winter several times coming home at night in a blinding snow storm had a hard time figuring out which side of the road I was driving on. The fog lights were marginal help.

 

[NW-Bound]

Not sure I had to solder at all when getting my BSEE. I started out getting an associates in electronics tech - and my soldering skills convinced me I'd rather be the one telling the tech what to solder, rather than soldering myself.

I have never had to solder on parts at work -though I have had to use the iron to remove part... much easier since you aren't worried about cold solder joints.

Of course an electronics tech has to know to solder, even if poorly.

The truth is that all my soldering skills were self-taught, back from the age of 12 playing with vacuum tubes. In school through graduate program and work, I dealt more with areas in GN&C than hardware. I have done design work in analog, digital, and RF circuits for pay, but GN&C was where people paid me the most money. I still need to build something once in a while to satisfy an itch, if only just for myself.

Is there any engineer left who can read resistor color code anymore? It has stuck with me since early teenage years.

 

[HFWR]

Most of the equipment techs at megaconglomocorp just swapped boards when things went wrong.

 

[NW-Bound]

It is getting harder and harder to fix anything, and most chips now have a gazillion leads and require expensive machines to rework. And then, only the factory has the schematic and the design info to troubleshoot and locate the broken parts. And then the parts are impossible to get.

I have tried to repair a PC power supply, which is a lot simpler than a PC board. Without schematic, it is tough. In my teenage years, I would spend time to trace through the board and create my own circuit diagram, then studied it to see how it would work, then probed for broken components. Now that I am much older, and been there and done that, I ask myself why I want to spend more time on this kind of task.

 

[HFWR]

It is getting harder and harder to fix anything, and most chips now have a gazillion leads and require expensive machines to rework. And then, only the factory has the schematic and the design info to troubleshoot and locate the broken parts. And then the parts are impossible to get.

Yep, many of the ICs are proprietary chips that aren't available OTC. And when schematics are available, they're often wrong...

 

[MRG]

On big iron the boards are simply recycled anymore. I'm sure there are diagnostics run for reoccurring issues. Sad, I guess they figure it is more cost effective then paying for skills to repair, test, warranty.

 

[NW-Bound]

Speaking of part availability, at one of the startups that I joined, we used a superVGA chip in our application, which was an industrial/commercial product and not a product for end users. By the time we had the product in production, that chip was obsolete and discontinued by the chip maker. Yikes!

They ended up spending beaucoup money to stock up on that chip for future production runs for the next few years, while trying to redesign. I had the same problem with another startup. It was tough being a little guy in the hardware business. Software business has practically no inventory, production, distribution costs. Warranty "repair" is not as costly, etc... We were in the wrong business.

PS. By the way, I was talking about something that happened 20 years ago. Gosh, time flies!