whatcha doing?

[Bo_9]

I hear ya, if I could have convinced all the parents that Colorado is the place to be my recent move would have been more significant. Instead we are entrenching here (see shop build thread below) and plan to stay until the kids are out of high school (8 years) then we'll play it by ear. The nice thing about Southeast Kansas is that the cost of living is relatively low so this move (once the other house sells) will end up costing us not much and makes everything more convenient.

[DerGolgo]

Rescued this from the paper-recycling dumpster.
Comics going back 45 years, a very nice hardback by a famous german caricaturist and a mint condition Stephen King Paperback. There was more, but those had water damage.
Seriously. There are "take a book, leave a book" sort of shelves around, or the welfare store that accepts book donations, or fucking ebay.
Throwing out books is just evil.

[motorpsycho67]

Just finished a popsicle and wondering why my piss smells like really good salami....

[jae]

Went house shopping with my wife yesterday and got an offer letter signed just a few minutes ago. Looks like I'll be moving soon if everything goes to plan.

The big upside is that even though the house doesn't have the garage I wanted, it looks like I've managed to talk my way into permission to build a shop of my own. The property is nearly 1.5 acres, so there's plenty of room, and the house next door already has a big steel garage like what I want to build, so I don't forsee any issues from the neighborhood conformance committee. I'm excited, but also dreading actually moving.

[Jaeger]

ATHENA LIVES!

Fuckin' FINALLY finished the clutch. She's been sitting in parts in the garage since early October.

Took for a quick test ride and everything seems perfect! Much more grabby on the clutch, and I can actually really use that goddamn big-bore kit!

Now I just need to find some time to go ride!

--Jaeger

[wheezy e]

Tomorrow might be the day. I've had my bike out of winter storage for a week, rebuilt forks & new tires, it's been raining (and hailing) all week. forcast says only 20% chance tomorrow & 45 degree low which is the cut-off for my 5am 45 minute freeway commute. I need my motorcycle more than my psych meds, goddamn i hate winter. I hate winters less than i hate vegas though so i deal.

[xtian]

"James May the reassembler" is my new favorite TV show / mental health therapy.

[Bigshankhank]

Fuming over a fucked up prank call that a coworker pulled on me and which got my blood boiling before they admitted to it. Fuck people.

[motorpsycho67]

Oh, just sitting here wallowing in depression...

[Jaeger]

Oh, just sitting here wallowing in depression...

I mean, so long as you're enjoying it...

--Jaeger

[wheezy e]

sorry to hear that motorpsycho, you're a cool cat. i suffer from depression/anxiety so i can sympathize.

me i just bought aan 03 vw golf with the 2 liter. 110k miles for 2 thou. it's from illinois & has a couple rust spots, paint on the bumper is messed up. cracked windshield. not great full throttle acceleration, might need ignition or injectors, has misfire codes. i like it though and i could afford it sort of.

[DerGolgo]

Depression here, too, with a generous helping of PTSD on top of it.
Stay strong, man.
If you need to talk, holler.

[DerGolgo]

Went to the Dusseldorf University Hospital today.
I'm surprised they can save lives there - that any patient manages to find the ER. The campus is just a piece of land where, for about a century, somebody would just drop new buildings wherever. Any roads in between were an afterthought.
The guideposts, meanwhile, are the confusing part. And, based on people we asked to find our way, only about 20% of medical staff know where the single biggest and fanciest building on campus is located.

Saw the professor for neuro-surgery. I'm going under the knife on June 9th.
Literally getting a little computer implanted in my arse.
No, you read that right.
It's a "pain-pacemaker", there'll be a bunch of wires all the way up to my head. Hopefully, this will reduce the crippling head-pain to a mild tingling. Ideally, make it all go away entirely.
But, unlike when they use this for any kind of bone and joint pains, you can't do a test-run with a needle-electrode for head-pain. All or nothing, it'll either work - or it won't. May take up to 12 weeks for any improvements to show.

If it does, barring those new super glass-batteries coming into medical devices, I'll get to go every five years and have a man stick a knife in my arse to change out my batteries.
Feel free to crack a few jokes, I think it's a bit laughable myself.

[Bigshankhank]

Went to the Dusseldorf University Hospital today.
I'm surprised they can save lives there - that any patient manages to find the ER. The campus is just a piece of land where, for about a century, somebody would just drop new buildings wherever. Any roads in between were an afterthought.
The guideposts, meanwhile, are the confusing part. And, based on people we asked to find our way, only about 20% of medical staff know where the single biggest and fanciest building on campus is located.

Saw the professor for neuro-surgery. I'm going under the knife on June 9th.
Literally getting a little computer implanted in my arse.
No, you read that right.
It's a "pain-pacemaker", there'll be a bunch of wires all the way up to my head. Hopefully, this will reduce the crippling head-pain to a mild tingling. Ideally, make it all go away entirely.
But, unlike when they use this for any kind of bone and joint pains, you can't do a test-run with a needle-electrode for head-pain. All or nothing, it'll either work - or it won't. May take up to 12 weeks for any improvements to show.

If it does, barring those new super glass-batteries coming into medical devices, I'll get to go every five years and have a man stick a knife in my arse to change out my batteries.
Feel free to crack a few jokes, I think it's a bit laughable myself.

Would this happen to be your doctor?

[DerGolgo]

No, that was the last one.
Not really joking (much).
I have one or two broken screws in my pelvis. Look like they were pulled apart.
In engineering school, we had been told that 9 out of 10 screws and bolts that break do so because they were overtorqued.
So I asked the surgeon. "You guys got a torque wrench, right?"
Nope.
"Oh, no. We have a cordless drill! Screws are self-tapping!"
... and there's why my x-rays look like I caught shrapnel from an exploding hardware store.

[Jaeger]

...Literally getting a little computer implanted in my arse.
No, you read that right.
It's a "pain-pacemaker", there'll be a bunch of wires all the way up to my head. Hopefully, this will reduce the crippling head-pain to a mild tingling. Ideally, make it all go away entirely.
.....

Holy fuck. That's... weird. Cool? I hope?

Fuggit, I just hope it works.

You know, you didn't need to go to all these lengths to be the most bionically altered of the lot of us. Sheesh.

--Jaeger

[wheezy e]

dealing with gremlins in my new $2k 02 vw golf and nursing a few little fractures in my foot. was pushing the rex in the parking lot & dropped it. had a few beverages (wasn't riding) so my thinking was quick and i threw myself under it. rex is fine, so no worries. did it 12 days ago & i've been walking without crutches or the boot the last 4 days. aleve & ibuprophen by the handfull.

the golf - first thing i did was fix a major exhaust leak by wrapping the shittiest weld i've ever seen with some of that tape stuff. cat had been replaced (with a used one) without pulling the pipe, i couldn't have gotten a good weld on it either. ran great until i did that, first day to work it started gagging up a hill at 4k rpm, blew huge clouds of white smoke and flashed the engine light which i'm told means a misfire. i limped the frontage roads & got to work & back home. exhaust leak was back after that so i peeled the tape off since it stunk all the time anyhow. gentle experimenting with rpm & load had it running fine again. leak was pre-cat so the car diagnosed itself, cat plugged.


luck was with me and three of the 4 flange nuts had to come off with vise-grips & the fourth - the only one that i couldn't get grips to came off with a wrench. it ran great after that, took it to work monday, no problems. got on it up the hills & she didn't complain so i started telling her how much i really dug her, that she was easy on the eyes, handled very nice and wasn't too quick but that's a good thing... was starting to think of names as is my habit with vehicles i fall for. got home from work & she won't let me take the key out of the ignition nor will she let me turn the key off. i'm not sure which way to take this. is she now needy? angry? overly talkative? crazy? -my hypothesis based on experience.

i'm taking the rex tomorrow and every day until she learns her place or i neatly pass her on to the next unsuspecting guy. honestly, i probably shouldn't have been talking to her in that way anyway. it's not like she'd ever compare my main gal nor were my intentions like that that when i met her. best she could hope for would be an occasional rainy day diversion. probabaly she deserves a better guy than me anyhow. someone who only needs one modest significant partner/other'

i'm not a bad guy, right? you folks understand. i'm gonna go tell the bike how much i love her tomorrow morning.

edit: and i'm going to spank her.

[Bo_9]

[Bigshankhank]

What's that, a recalcitrant VW? Never heard of such a thing, you must have the only one.

[Pintgudge]

My truck did that key thing to me.

After how many thousands of times inserting and removing the key, all of the metal filings worn off of the key stay right there in the lock cylinder.

Not wanting to spend money, I now pull a fuse to stop the engine, and disconnect the battery.

Opposite to start and go.

There, now you all know how to steal my truck. Please do, I don't like it that much.

[wheezy e]

What's that, a recalcitrant VW? Never heard of such a thing, you must have the only one.

i had to look up "recalcitrant" you show-off with your big words. i've owned many an air cooled v dub and you're right, this one seems to me a total obstinate anomaly. friend at work was a vw mechanic for many years & said he never saw either problem. it's doing other weird things too, really weird. every time i get on the freeway i get up to 3500rpm & 75mph. speedo slowly drops until 3500rpm=55mph. car doesn't slow, just the speedo. also i can't operate any of the windows unless the driver's door is closed. this girl is bat shit. i do have a thing for the crazy ones though, so i think i'll be keeping her and dealing for a while.

gotta think the key problem is the shift lock (auto).

[Bigshankhank]

I dunno man, my daughters's 99 Cabrio was an electrical nachtmare. Horn would intermittently go off, lights would flicker, and the fucking thing needed to be taken down to its bones just to get to simple parts. Fuck that hecho en Mexico piece of shit.

[Bigshankhank]

As for what I am doing, this evening I met with an advisor at a local university considering getting a new bachelors degree, and this morning I put a bid on a house without enough garage space. What the fuck is eating my brain?

[jae]

At the moment, waiting to get in to see the dentist. Somewhere near the end of my junior year of high school (early 2000) I managed to pass out on a tile floor and fall face-first, breaking my two front teeth. This led to having porcelain veneers. My dentist at the time told me they would be good for about 10 years or so.

Two days ago sitting at my desk, one chipped. Not a huge deal, but they don't chip like normal teeth, they chip like porcelain (go figure). Really hoping they can just repair this tiny dagger in my mouth without having to completely remove it and do a new one.

[MoraleHazard]

Golgo, good luck with the surgery tomorrow.

[red]

Good luck w/the new implant and hope your recovery is smooth.

[DerGolgo]

Thanks for the well wishes, guys.
Surgery was postponed one week. No reason given. I just had to trek there today, do all the "talking to doctors on the day before surgery" stuff, the admissions bureaucracy.
Four hours running and sitting around hospital. About one hour of actual talking to doctors and bureaucracy, of which 20 minutes was one intern doctor trying and failing to take a few blood samples. He had to use an unusually large needle, in the end. Even my blood is fat.

[jae]

still moving into the new house, but there's no built-in shelving in the pantry. looks like that's my big project for the weekend





I suppose at the same time, I'm also learning to use SketchUp...

[motorpsycho67]

Trying to figure out what time to go to sleep so that I can be at work on time at 3am tomorrow.


Oh, and trying to figure out how to avoid another back injury while lifting heavy objects tomorrow.

[jae]

shelving project nearly done, still need to touch up the walls that I beat up while putting the shelves in...