Thursday, December 22, 2016

Stepping forward and back.

Mostly out of frustration from the cold weather turning my hands into useless flippers, I took my Bronco in to the shop.  It turns out that the only mechanic within 20 miles of where I live only has open flames for heat in his garage.  Since he isn't too keen on catching on fire, this means he has to turn the heat off to work on fuel problems.  His current plan is to try and jury rig things so the choke is just wide open and see if it still starts.  One or the other of us will fix it properly when it's a bit warmer out.
Back when my uncle was still alive (seriously, watch your cholesterol folks) I'd go work on crap like this at his brake shop during the Winter.  Maybe I'll get a garage built some day.
Mrs. Z's Volvo also decided it doesn't want to go forward anymore today (reverse still works).  Hopefully the problem is relatively simple.  If it's more than say $1500 to fix I'm probably just going to buy her another car.
On a more positive note I found a place to park the BMW where it doesn't get stuck.  Having 400 ft/lb of torque at the wheels in a small car means that it likes to dig holes when there's no traction.  I'm getting studded tires on Monday, so getting stuck on ice won't be a thing for much longer.
I'm actually starting to get some of the workspaces set up here, finally.  I have several projects I'd like to work on, but I lack the proper facilities.  Once I have all this stuff set up I'll probably post something.

Monday, December 12, 2016

Chokin' the chicken

I did a test drive of the Bronco today and was getting single digit MPG.  Because of the whole snow and no garage thing I tried to take it to the mechanic.  Due to high demand he's only taking non-running cars right now.  Hew suggested that I see if the choke is stuck and come back in about five days if I can't get things figured out.

The choke isn't exactly stuck, but it sure isn't opening.  If I push it open manually it rebounds to where it was as soon as I remove pressure.  Since the choke is opened by a bimetal spring, to me at least this means that it just isn't getting hot enough.

Apparently converting to a manual choke is an option, but I haven't found the details on doing so just yet.  It may be easier.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Winter has arrived

Winter has arrived on the mountain.  We've probably had a foot of snow in the past week.  I have lots of firewood and pellet fuel.  There is plastic film over the crappy old single pane windows, and it's nice and toasty inside. Unfortunately I still wasn't as prepared for it as I should've been.

My wife and I both drive rear wheel drive cars, and they were parked in a way that had my truck blocked in.  Yesterday we spent probably three hours fucking around with snow shovels, pieces of cardboard, and ultimately a propane brush burning torch to get them moved around enough to get the truck out.
We ran some errands, and the truck was misfiring.  I picked up some spark plugs while we were out.

This morning I swapped out the plugs.  The existing ones were unsurprisingly carbon fouled.  I also leaned out the idle mixture a little bit (it's an old carbureted model) for good measure.  It still seems to be missing a little bit, but not nearly as badly as it was.  If a good jaunt on the highway doesn't get it to fly right it'll be off to the mechanic.  While it is true that I do need to learn more about carburetors,  I am currently without a good workspace.  When I changed the plugs it was about 33 degrees out and raining.  I was dressed appropriately, so it wasn't exactly miserable, but it wasn't pleasant either.

From here on out, I'm going to make sure that the truck is in a different spot the moment I see the word snow in a weather forecast.  Had there been some kind of situation that required leaving immediately, it wouldn't have happened.  Also, I'm going to drive the truck more frequently.  It currently is only driven when something needs to be hauled somewhere.  This won't quite do anymore.

I ordered some tire chains for Mrs. Z's Volvo.  I'm debating getting some for my car too.  The thing is that I have far less ground clearance than she does, so I'm not sure if they'd actually do me any good on the one hand.  On the other hand my car gets about double the mileage that the truck does and has nice things like fuel injection.

On the subject of lacking a work area, the house has a garage of sorts, and it is my intent to make it a workshop.  Unfortunately there is currently too much stuff in there to actually do any work.  I've gotten rid of most of the things that I don't need.  Mrs. Z and I put together a small storage shed this evening, and I'm going to move all the yard and garden type stuff into it.  I have a ladder showing up tomorrow that will let me get into the attic of the house.  A plethora of things that are currently in the garage are much better suited for the attic, and they'll be up there soon.  I picked up a workbench at Hazard Fraught yesterday, and I think I may be able to get it set up after I move all that stuff. 

In short, I have problems, but I also have solutions.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Election Thoughts

The election has been over and done with for some time, but I only just now have the spare time to pontificate upon the subject.
The single axis, left/right political graph doesn't represent my world view well.  On some issues I track pretty far to the left, and on others I'm pretty far to the right.  I also absolutely loathe authoritarians, and look toward their supporters with a mixture of pity and contempt (the ratio varying from person to person).
Both candidates are authoritarians who oppose people's basic rights, they just happen to oppose different sets of rights.  Ultimately the election simply altered which set of contingencies I need to plan for.

I have some slightly different messages for people who voted for either of these two people.  If your candidate lost, bear in mind that this is exactly why some people have very strong feelings of discomfort about growing the size and scope of government.  If state power can be abused, it will.  Now that the shoe is on the other foot, hopefully you'll remember that the next time your candidate wins.

For the people who supported the winning candidate and are excited that their guy won I cannot stress enough that you don't have a guy, he has you.  Anyone who has that much power is not looking out for the average man or woman on the street.

For people in either camp I suggest that you get your house in order.  Pay down your debt and acquire skills and tools that make you less dependent upon others.  Perform the maintenance you've been putting off on the things that let you live in the way that you're used to.  Pay attention to your health and make changes if necessary.

If enough people become the captains of their own ships, the idea of a great idealogical savior of one kind or another will become much less interesting.  The best thing you can do is trade in that Make America Great Again hat or I'm With Her sticker in for a garden hoe or a wrench set.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

New York and the Terrorism Tax

Some douchebag with an overly manicured beard and shit between his ears managed to badly injure about 30 people he'd never met.  He tried to hurt far more people, but his incompetence prevented him from doing that.  He was also captured alive, so he'll probably be spending the rest of his life in prison wishing he was dead.

Another asshole went to a shopping mall in Minnesota and started stabbing strangers for no good reason.  An off duty cop who happened to be carrying a pistol shot him before he could kill anyone.

If you look past the fact that these guys are/were repulsive sociopaths, one thing that is worth thinking about is that the bomber probably spent a few hundred bucks on his attack.  Knives are so abundant that they might as well be considered to be free.

A few years back John Robb (he wrote Brave New War, you should read it) described what he called a terrorism tax.  Essentially, Joe and Jane average begin to scale back on various economic activities because they're worried that people will kill them.  An article on CNN states that one billion dollars are spent yearly to keep New York safe.  Granted, in a city that big the per taxpayer cost probably isn't exactly huge in and of itself.

This begins to be a bigger problem if people stop going places because because they're afraid that someone will try to murder them because it just happens to be their unlucky day.  Revenues go down.  People lose their jobs.  People don't go out because in addition to being afraid, they're broke.  This creates a feedback loop where the weakened economy creates an even weaker economy.

We also have to consider that with a problem like this, the cure may be worse than the disease.  My wife is a food nerd, so we have a couple dozen different kinds of knives in the kitchen.  I have a variety of knives for general use, fishing, camping, etc.  Where I live both black and smokeless gunpowder are sold at a many stores.  Even if it was to be banned, black powder is eighth century technology.  People are going to make it if they want it.

The only sensible response to these little pissant terrorist attacks is to treat them as just another risk.  If I die of unnatural causes it'll most likely be on my commute to work and back.  This doesn't stop me from jumping in my car every morning, and it doesn't keep me from going ninety miles an hour every now and again.  It does cause me to wear my seat belt and to not drive if I've had too much to drink.  The equivalent response to these little Junior Terrorist Club asshats would be to do something like get first aid or self defense (armed or unarmed) training, along with the requisite equipment.

Using your head is increasingly important in our modern world.  Your instincts developed in a world that no longer exists and often provide bad information.  Going with your gut leaves you vulnerable to people who are actively working against you.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Poulan Wild Thing

As I mentioned earlier, my property is badly overgrown.  I had a working electric chainsaw among things my dad left me when he passed away, and there is also a gas one that needed a little bit of help.


I pulled the cover from the top and swapped out the fouled spark plug.  I also hosed out the carb with a healthy dose of carb cleaner.



The saw had thrown the chain off the bar.  In addition to this, the chain had rusted.



There was quite a bit of sawdust and oil mixed together.  I cleaned it out with carb cleaner and a rag.

It's back together and ready for action now.  It only takes a couple of pulls to get it going. This isn't exactly the Stihl Farm Boss that I have my eye on, but it'll get the job done in the meantime.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Montague Issues

As I mentioned previously, I bought a folding bicycle for a portion of my commute into the city.  I went with a Montague instead of something like a Brompton because they use 700c wheels and other standard parts.

On Thursday, the handlebars came off.  I was not in motion at the time so I was not hurt, but I could have been.

The Montague uses an Octagon handle bar mount.  To begin the process of finding out exactly what fucking happened, I watched the installation video:


The bike came with two of the spacers mentioned in the video installed:
I measured the space above the spacers with my cheap digital caliper (seriously, spend the $10 on one of these things) and found there was only 13 mm available.

With a single spacer we now have the requisite 18mm.  I used a clamp and a chunk of 2x4 to compress everything into place and torqued the bolt to spec.
I'll probably post something about this fix working (or not) down the road. I really like not having to pay to park and need the exercise to maintain my health.  It'll be a shame if this bike doesn't work for me.



Friday, August 26, 2016

In which we discuss why I left the city

A drive of a few miles and a walk of fewer miles bought me here.  Nary a trustafarian nor a man-bun in sight.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

An assortment of links

Insepctrum - an offline singal analyzer.  Once I finish cleaning up my property (or the weather gets too shitty for me to work on it any more) I'll play with this and post something.

The DOJ is trying to weaken the War Powers Act.

While getting a sunburned hide and sore muscles, I've been thinking of Aldous Huxley.  Could it be that soma, the orgy-porgy, and centrifugal bumble-puppy  (or their real world equivalents of beer/weed, porn, and xbox)  are a bigger worry than Miniluv and it's face stomping boot?  Maybe I should bump this further up in my reading list.  Either way here is an interesting web comic.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Firewood

I had three cords of wood delivered yesterday.  In the name of getting things squared away here as quickly as possible I put together four racks as described in this instructable.  The "no tools required" part of the title is a bit of bullshit, you need to have a saw.  I have several, so it doesn't exactly matter.
Another gripe is that the 8' 2x4s I purchased at America's favorite big box hardware store are in fact 7'8" long.
Pics below:








I still need to build a few more racks to hold the remainder of yesterday's delivery.  I also have another cord coming next weekend.

I'm planning to grab some blue tarps on my way home in the near future as well.  The guy next door told me that I should build a woodshed because he has had problems with his tarped wood molding.  I plan to do that, but it's a question of if it happens this year or the next.  I still need to cut back a lot of overgrown crap to even have room to build one, and the ground here will require considerable work to get level.

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Relocation

Over the past few years I became increasingly fed up with Portland for a variety of reasons.  Most of them could be summed up as the city council essentially just doing whatever Richard Florida thinks is best.
About two months ago I sold my house and bought a psychologist's vacation cabin up on Mt. Hood, along with a nice diesel BMW and a folding bicycle to commute with.  The locals up here are much more like the dope smoking firearms enthusiasts I grew up with.  I do still have to deal with the transplant influence in state politics, but at least I can cut down a tree on my own property without having to file a bunch of paperwork.
The property is a mess right now.  In addition to several previous owners odds and ends having been left behind, the property is badly overgrown.  Lots of the big trees have dead lower limbs, and there are saplings everywhere.  I've   lost track of how many times I've been to the dump and Goodwill, and once burning season starts again I'm going to have one hell of a bonfire.
Not everything that was left behind was useless.  The previous owner did leave behind a few hand tools and a bit of lumber, along with some oil lamps and oil.  I got a cord of wood delivered over the past weekend and got it stacked in racks I built from the lumber that was left here.  Three more cords are coming on Saturday, and then one more a week later.
I have a lot of caulking to do in order to seal this place up still, but it's going to happen.  At this point I'll say I plan to spend more time writing here, but who can honestly say.