Rebuild Day

Today was a fairly productive day for me.  For starters I fixed my bicycle.  The derailleur had shifted, so it was a pretty easy fix to shift it back.  I had been without transportation for a few days, though, until I figured I had enough time to take it apart.




I rebuilt an animatronic crow.  I guess 'animatronic' is a bit of a stretch... Still, I had to rebuild an electric motor and gearbox.  It had seized up due to years of moving parts and failed grease.  And most of the lights had burned out.  Unfortunately it's hard to come by Christmas lights in August.  I replaced the old ones with those from a used string that I found - testing each and every bulb like a persistent, thick-headed moron.  In a couple weeks I should be able to get some good LED strings that I can use to replicate the creator's original design.

I fixed the air-conditioning in the Volvo.  After Jeff told me recharging worked out great for his Jeep, I decided to inquire at the parts store.  Jose down at the Scaleybark store showed me how to do it.  Friggin amazing because last time I was in the store I had to walk out after some dude implied I was stealing since I had a backpack full of groceries.

And speaking of commuting by bike:  This week the Creative Loafing published a response from CABA's Zimmerman, et. al. to Servatius's idiotic anti-bicycling piece I commented on earlier.  Um, and I didn't see her column in there... ;)  Excellent!

I also fixed the Volvos headlight and taillight by jiggling the wires.  I guess that doesn't really count as fixing them.  Still, now I know I really need a new wiring harness from my headlights.  I noticed the insulation flaking off about four years ago.  I wrapped them with electrical tape the best I could, but I think that's starting to fail.  The rear running light bulb just wasn't seated properly, so it's fine.

My plants are fine now that I have them controlled by the computer.  I have an opensource X10 controller called fireck32 that is called by a batch file to run the pump for five minutes.  Windows scheduler runs it daily to keep them from dying.  I can VPN on in and click the shortcut if I want to add some.  I would still like to set up a little web server and cam, though, to be on the safe side.