whatcha doing?

[guitargeek]

Shinkos

You're gonna like those, I bet.

[Bigshankhank]

Got to work at 0530 yesterday, left work at 2000, returned to work at 0430 this morning. Made a trip to the hardware store to get nuts and bolts for the exhaust hangers on my bike, and really wanted to hook up the pipes but no luck.

[Zim]

Shinkos

You're gonna like those, I bet.

Yes, and no.

I've run Shinko before. They are inexpensive as far as tires go, are soft which makes tire changes easy, and they're knobbly enough for mud dirt. But the rears square off fast and are pretty much used up at 3500 miles.

Now there's snow in the forecast.

Lesson learned: have tires on hand. And a spare motorcycle.

[Bigshankhank]

Back to work at 0430 for the third time this week, decided to spoil myself with some taquitos from What-a-Burger. I've just about had it with working for a living.

[guitargeek]

I'm sitting on my newly reinstalled toilet. I really appreciate how it doesn't list to port now, and no more worries about taking the express elevator to the crawl space. It was a bitch of a job, but entirely worth it.

[DerGolgo]

Almost three-and-a-half years ago, I rolled up in front of my sisters house and her kids had a look at that bike I briefly haunted the countryside with.
My nephew, adventurous and outdoorsy as he was (and is), 10 at the time, needed help climbing up, couldn't make the starter button work and, while it made him smile, he found blipping the throttle to be difficult. Not his cup of tea, the whole affair. He hadn't been eager to climb on it, at all.
The only reason he did eventually go on the bike was that he could hardly shrink back from what his 7 year old little sister had just done. She had required no further inducement than the suggestion she might climb up if she liked. She jumped up that bike like a cat goes up a tree. The starter button confounded her not at all, and blipping the throttle ... oh, did she grin. She liked that. A lot.

Not much later, she saw who I've been informed is her favorite uncle in a coma, in a hospital, and the entire family distraught beyond reason. She saw him again, in a wheelchair, speaking rather slowly, when her mother took her and her brother to visit that uncle in hospital every other week for three months.
She's a smart one, and she understood what had happened, the basics of it. Uncle G had a crash on that big motorbike of his. You can imagine what sort of opinion about motorcycles to expect her to develop.

Why am I relating all this, and here?

Because it was her birthday last week, and Sunday the family gathers to celebrate (also to celebrate her little sister's birthday on Saturday, and her father's, my brother-in-law's birthday this week, too. My other brother in law and my own father don't get to celebrate because their respective birthdays aren't till next week.). And, as a good uncle, I shall be bringing along a present. Of which I took delivery today and which I just took out of the shipping carton.
I asked my sister what to get her lovely daughter for her birthday.
Sis informed me that my lovely little niece has her mind set on this:



I think the sickness has been spread a bit, it has.

[Jaeger]

I think the sickness has been spread a bit, it has.

Well done.

--Jaeger

[guitargeek]

Most excellent! Show her Long Way Round!

[DerGolgo]

Fiddling with my new e-cigarette. I bit the bullet and upgraded to the big boys league. No more all-pre-fab atomizers and stuff, no. This thing is so big, I can drag on it as hard as I like, it just delivers, none of that wee and wussy puffing of the more pedestrian models. But it requires I wind my own heating coils, which is where stuff gets tricky. You have to stuff it with cotton, which soaks up the liquid and delivers it to the coil. You're supposed to change it out every couple of days, or when you switch flavors. Since I bought the damn thing today, I decided to try and, just switching out the cotton. Promptly ripped apart the coil, too, so I had to make a new one. First try, didn't draw, packed the cotton to tight I think. Also, the clever little display told me I only got 0.7 Ohms, while the coil the nice man at the store had made, just as many windings, had delivered 1.8 Ohms. Even with two more windings, second attempt, I only got to 0.9 Ohms, so I suspect they had a different wire gauge at the store than the one that came packed with the things.
But it's WAY more fun than any e-cigarette I had before. I had restarted tobacco during my US trip, I'm off that again now, and this should keep me off it. Though the amount of liquid that used to last close to a week only seems to last a few hours now ...

[wyckedsin]

next thing we know, your going to be complaining about purity of copper in your wire and shite...

My wife has one of the big boys, but hers uses standard coils. I very strongly informed her when she upgraded that I was NOT going to wind coils for her and if she got something that required them to be wound, it was up to her to wind them.

I have one, I have a couple of nice cigar flavored oils that I like, but in the 2 years of ownership, I have only needed to recharge it 3 times, and it is just now finishing off its first coil...

oh and as for what am I doing?

I just finished up pouring 700 degree Fahrenheit molten alloy into a tiny aluminum mold, and dropping the cooled metal from the mold into a bucket of water repeatedly...after culling the poor quality ones from the stack, I have enough to lube, and then wrap with fine paper before stuffing into the mouth of a brass cylinder filled with a nitrocellulose blend and dacron...

[DerGolgo]

Copper wire???
This is a heating element!
I must admit, I got a bit confused when, at the store, they explained to me that less resistance wire heats better. When I took intro to electrical engineering, I learned that higher resistance things get hotter, that resistor turns electricity into heat based on how restit .... what's the damn adjective here ... how many Ohms it's got.
But still, this is steel wire. I'd complain if there were impurities like copper in there!

[DerGolgo]

The other day, I actually read one of the myriad of take-out-menus that get stuffed into anybody's mailbox on a regular basis. I always keep a stack around, but I only ever order something every couple of months or so, so I don't read them.
But this menu, it mentioned two enticing items.
"American style pizza" with "extra thick crust" and "Burrito!".
I tried the American style pizza the other day, hoping it might resemble the pizza that is made in the deep dish in Chicago. It did not. It was nice, but it was not that.

Today, I tried the Burrito, which I just finished eating. They delivered quicker than expected, the meal was tasty and filling.
Except that it wasn't a Burrito.
It had been a Burrito, once. Or at least something resembling a Burrito.
But by the time it reached me, it had been put in a dish, had cheese and tomato sauce piled on top of it and it had been gratinated.
Seriously.
This is where I live. Where a Burrito is treated like a pile of potatoes?!

Ah, whatever. There are any number of Turkish diners around here, where they do Lahmacun or Durum Doner, which is meat wrapped up cylindrically in a thin bread-thing, with salad and sauce and whatnot added in there, so it's a decent enough stand-in. Though the hot-sauce they use is a bit more severe than anything I tasted on my handful of encounters with Mexican cuisine.

[Rench]

That would be a Burrito Suizo on this side. More of a fork and knife affair than a two hander on the run.

I like Au Gratin as a verb. Can't imagine where I'll ever use it, but I hope I remember it.

Lou's does deliver frozen, I'm not sure if they go that far. I'll look into it.

-Rench

[thack]

@dergolgo - did no one take you to get a denver burrito while you were here? they are smothered in green chile. we smother everything in green chile. there's an entire sub-genre of mexican food that's kind of unique to here. different? sure. heretical? absolutely. tasty as a pretty redheaded girl's tasty bits? yep. here's a pretty good article. http://www.westword.com/2012-04-05/rest ... ed-states/

what am i doing? resting. wife and i went to a hell's belles (all-girl AC/DC tribute band) concert Friday (they're totally awesome, btw, if you like ac/dc) and then last night went to a drag karaoke bar for /6's wife's birthday.

[Bigshankhank]

Only thing better than Drag Queen karaoke is Drag Queen bingo!
You fucking wierdos in Denver with your green chili smother though. Gawd, get over it. Wrap a burrito in foil, everything goes inside!
As for me, I am sitting at the grocery store having a beer, waiting for the wife's shift to end in the bakery. There is a German (or possibly somewhere else Skandinavian) family sitting across from me in the bar, they sound unlike what I am used to hearing in a grocery store bar.

[DerGolgo]

Defrosting my freezer.

I got this new fridge/freezer combo pretty much exactly two years ago. Well, two years and two weeks, actually. I know, you're supposed to defrost it every couple of months. But I got it in the winter, when the air was dry to begin with, so not much ice accumulated at first. Next winter, it still was next to nothing, and it was a warm winter, so moving stuff onto the window-sill for the night wasn't much of an option.
Now, it was overdue, and I'm defrosting it.
To prepare, I put duct-tape over the lower edge of the interior, so that no water runs out, and a big towel in front of that and whatnot. It's mostly defrosted already, actually (I found years ago that aiming a fan in there helps a lot). And, to my surprise, the designers of this fridge/freezer combo are a lot smarter than the designers of any fridge or freezer I had to defrost previously.
They designed it so that the lowest drawer in the freezer collects any water coming from above. The higher shelves are solid around their edges and keep any water away from the walls, which have a hint of a funnel shape, also.
There's not a drop in the bottom of the thing, it's all conveniently collected in that big drawer. That's a pleasant surprise.
Started about two hours ago, should be done in less than another hour. And thus far, no muss, no fuss. Neat!

While I wait, I'm enjoying the Netflix I was finally able to get a few weeks ago. They are the first such service in Germany to employ such revolutionary, mind-boggling technology as ... letting you watch stuff with the original, non-dubbed audio. Seriously, none of the other VOD services here do that. Though, apart from their original programming, they are as far behind US release dates as other services, at least they do the English.
In which I'm now enjoying Eddie Murphy's Delirious standup program. And wow. Is it me or is it, in the beginning at least ... startlingly homophobic?

[guitargeek]

Hunting gremlins.

[guitargeek]

I got the starter circuit working, only to discover that the starter clutch is roached...

[Rench]

At work, accidentally cheered out loud for the protesters that are lobbing tear gas canisters back at the police. They might be on to me...

-Rench

[Bigshankhank]

You must be great cannon fodder at your union meetings. How dare you support the protestors against your fellow civil servants!

I am at work at 0430 for the sixth day in a row. I should be doing more work, but the motivation is just not there.

[Zim]

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, I go to the lavatory...



(A tree crew came by and cleared around the powerlines. Bastards cut down more than they had to, in my opinion. Now I'm playing skidder operator.)

[Bigshankhank]

W00t! Free firewood!

[guitargeek]

I've been, for the last month or so, playing lumberjack. It's good exercise for me, here lately I walk around with a reciprocal saw, eradicating juniper trees. The saw has two batteries, and when they're done, so is my arm.

[Jaeger]

Looking out the window at the snow that's starting to stick to the roads. Hoping folks can get here for T-Day tomorrow.

This does not bode well for the rest of the winter.

--Jaeger

[guitargeek]

I fixed Ponch's starter clutch for $0.00, using guitar parts I had on hand.

[DerGolgo]

So, it's now a Fendersaki?

Also. That, sir. Fixing an old custom-motorbike with guitar parts. In a shack out in Redneck central. That, sir, that is DAMN Metal, sir!

[guitargeek]

No. Don't ever use that word again.

The rollers were fine, as were the spring cups, but I had a couple broken springs. I used three springs that used to hold pickups the proper distance from the strings.

The bike is one step closer to starting...

[Bigshankhank]

You and me both brother.

[DerGolgo]

Sitting in yet another waiting room, waiting yet again to get on with yet another eye exam. On my day off, obviously.

EDIT:
I'm familiar with pain, I am. Physical and emotional, both to great extent.
Even disregarding all that had come before, the past three years had me experience some delights. A fractured sacrum among them, supposedly one of the most painful sorts of fractures you can get. Or working through the pain when doing physio and weightlifting with a misdiagnosed fracture in my arm. Pain doesn't scare me anymore.
Today, though, they took my intraocular pressure.
It wasn't particularly worse than some of what had come before.
But still, I must rephrase.
Pain didn't scare me anymore.

[guitargeek]

Ever had a bone marrow biopsy?