What Cheered You Up Today?

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Thank you very much for the kind words and sympathy in the "What annoyed you today?"-thread, guys - here's an update.

I called mom this afternoon to check up on news on dad, and she told me that he had gotten "released" from the hospital, and that she was waiting for him to call for her to go pick him up when I called her.
She had just told me that it had turned out that dad's medication was wrong and that it had caused his heart to freak out, when the doorbell rang - dad had gotten hold of a taxi, and so he went home by himself.
So dad's home now, he's gotten some new heart medicine, and he's going to see his usual physician tomorrow to sort out the dosage and all.
Phew!!!
 
Finished with Xmas music as I finished that most dreaded of all my tasks Xmas Shopping . So help me if I hear another Xmas tune I'm going to track and rip out the speakers
 
Spent all day working on someone's personal computer....DVD player would only eject using the manual eject (there's a teeny tiny hole in the front bezel/faceplate of every CD/DVD drive in a PC, you can straighten one turn out of a paperclip, poke it in there, and get the drive to pop out about 1/2 inch, then pull it open the rest of the way), pushing the button or right-clicking on the drive and selecting "eject" would not work, it would try to open, but kept getting stuck on something. So I took the cover off the drive, checked the gearing, blew out about 40 years' worth of dust buildup, checked the grease, etc, everything looked fine, no stripped gears or foreign objects lodged inside. Plugged it in to PC power with all of the casing and faceplates off, powered it up, it ejected as smooth as can be. Put the top/side cover on, wouldn't open. Now, this whole time, I'm holding the dang thing because the bottom plate is not on, so the internal PCboard is exposed, with all the nifty solder joints poking out the bottom. Don't want that to come in contact with the metal internals of the PC. So, after trying to find some rubber O-rings roughly the same size/thickness as the belt that drives the eject motor/pulley (maintenance dept didnt' have any), I mentioned to my boss that I was going to try cannibalizing one of the ancient drives in one of the company's ancient PC's. He immediately launched into reasons why not, and did I try this, and that, and what else I didn't do...I mentioned another option, which he looked skeptical about, and asked if I'd hooked it up without the cover (which I had), but I guess he didn't believe me, because he took it over and plugged it in without the casing on. Then powered on the computer. Then opened/closed the drive (which worked fine, still). Then set the drive down on the computer case. With the power still on. Which promptly started to smoke really badly. LOL

belt for eject motor: $2
day of troubleshooting: $15/hr
watching your boss fry a customer's hardware because he thinks you're an idiot: priceless.
 
That's good news Maria, glad to hear your dad's finally home.

RA, that is priceless. Sounds like the drive to the ejector was either overloading or the there was a short to the drive motor.

What made my day was getting ahold of a rumor that a company called Wing XL may be releasing a .......drum roll please......



1:32 scale P-61 Black Widow in the A, B, and possibly C variant.
 
Well, its an older computer (6, 7 years old, something like that), so with all the dust and heat buildup, it doesn't surprise me that over time the belt (basically a rubber band) would stretch a little and not get as good a grip on the pulley. That, or the motor isn't putting out as much power. The other alternative is that on the underside of the top housing, there's a round white plastic piece. Inside is a magnet. When the CD is put in the drive, the drive spindle raises up, lifting the CD off the tray (so it doesn't come out scratched to hell). The magnet in the upper portion latches on to the spindle, and "locks" the CD in place. This is either a rare-earth or niobium magnet, depending on which website you read, so it'll pretty much hold Crispy Creme's Miss July on a wall without slipping. When the eject button is pushed, the spindle drops down a fraction of an inch so that the tray can slide by above it. If the drive motor isn't powerful enough to overcome the magnetic attraction, the tray will just bump into the spindle and not move at all. There's a "fix" for that involving putting a small circle of two layers of duct tape between the magnet and the plastic holder (between the magnet and the spindle, basically) to help cut down some of the magnetic field, weakening it enough to let the spindle move. This is the point at which my boss took over and fried the thing. So does the duct-tape trick work? No idea. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world will never know.
 
Did a little calligraphy and handwriting lesson with my wifes second grade class the end of the day today. Second lesson with them and it has been great. I may do a regular weekly thing with her next class. They seem to eat it up. Just trying to make handwriting interesting for them.
 
Found a nearly new alternator for my car in a local junkyard for $35!. When new alternators start at $150.00, I am willingto take the chance on the junkyard unit. I will be happy if it would only last until next year sometime, but got a good feeling, as the new (or old as it was) alternator is a recently reman'd Bosch unit. Keeping my fingers crossed my gamble pays off!
 
Go for it.
My MINI Cooper S needed the power steering assembly renewing. I could not find a used part that was warranted in working order so I got well stung at the ever smiling local BMW dealer...I go home and f*** me gentle whats on ebay? just what I needed at a fraction of the new part price.
Hey ho.
John
 
Swapped out the alternators over my lunch hour, took it up to the local parts store and it tested out fine! If it lasts a long time, I'll be a hero! But for right now, the cars is running great, and charging properly and 1/6th the cost of new!
 
Messy1 said:
Swapped out the alternators over my lunch hour, took it up to the local parts store and it tested out fine! If it lasts a long time, I'll be a hero! But for right now, the cars is running great, and charging properly and 1/6th the cost of new!
Click to expand...

Job done. More beer money for Christmas too !
John
 
First and foremost:
Dad is home with mom, and the moving went great today - they've found a good moving company, with good young strong moving people, who treat my folks really great. That's a relief.
The moving is going fine, and Jørn and I will help out on sunday - my folks will be at their new apartment tomorrow, where the rest of their furniture will be moved in.

And I've had a good christmas party at the museum today, together with all the other at the museum.
We've had wonderful food, plenty of good stuff to drink - and the "honningsyp" (honey snaps) I made for everyone was a success.
It's a specialty from the danish island of Bornholm, where the Bornholmers in the old days used honey in their moonshine "fusel alchohol" to soften the taste and make the stuff drinkable. Heh.



Image courtesy of Frulund.dk

Nowadays you use a whole bottle (3/4 liter) of Brøndum snaps or Rød Aalborg, and a whole jar (450 grams) of danish or even better: Christiansø-honey. You heat the honey in a watherbath, and when it's liquid, you pour it into the snaps in a bowl little by little while stirring the snaps. The fumes themselves is almost enough to make you light-headed, heh.
Add a little cognac if you want a sharper taste, then pour the stuff on some bottles and refrigerate for about a week, and shake the bottles now and then to make sure it gets mixed properly.

We also played bingo after the dinner, and I won an electric screwdriver, so now I really want a big toolbox for christmas!
 
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Talk about a dying art form!
 
What cheered me up today ?.... finding a gunsight I'd sold on ebay recently re-advertised by the 'new' owner at a price nearly five time what I sold it for..... and the dude selling reckons its A. Rare B. worth five times what I sold it for C.the dude know sweet FA about airplanes and D...its radically overpriced and any fool with one iota of intelligence would have done some research on the web to back up his over inflated ideas !!!.

Yes, I'm watching said item and when it doesn't sell, I'm gonna have soo much fun telling the guy about his item....and I might even wish him a Happy Christmas and 'prosperous' new year atv the same time!
 
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