First day off in a while

" Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit.  To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying or thinking, or scheming - in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you - means a loss of opportunity for some other task." - Marcus Aurelius

 Pic of the day:

Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, England.  4000 Megawatts of power.  Four Gigawatts!  Six 660 Megawatt furnaces and turbines.

Fun fact:  This can burn through 36,000 tons of coal per day, although it's partially fired with biomass.

To the post:

I got the weekend off, starting Friday morning at 6AM, following 17 straight 12 hour night shifts.  That's 204 hours of work in a bit over two week's time.  The paycheck that posted this morning was jaw-dropping, as there were zero days on it when I wasn't working.  Other than the Navy, I've never experienced that.  On Monday I'll be back to work and hopefully we will have a successful cold start.

The first day off started off with scraping the ice off the windshield so I could see well enough to drive home.  This time of year, I'm normally clearing weeds from around the daffodils, but this year it's clearing ice off the windshield :)  Took a half day nap and got busy with the stuff I'd had to ignore for a couple of weeks.

First order of the day:  We picked up the wife's Dodge Journey from the mechanic.  He's pretty sure that he finally resolved an electrical issue that we've been having with it.  The dash would randomly go dark and reboot.  The engine would run just fine the entire time, but anything else electrical would glitch, including the headlights.  

I spent several weeks attempting to resolve the issue on my own.  I got thrown off-track by the only code my code reader could see : P0571 - High Brake A Voltage.  I figured somewhere a hot wire had shorted to the brake light circuit.  So after watching a couple of videos, I replaced the pigtail going to the rear deck hatch, and replaced the brake pedal switch.  No luck solving the issue.  

I finally cried uncle, and took it to the dealership - who kept the car for a week in order to perform a 30 second diagnosis.  They said there was a high voltage condition which was causing brief safety shut-downs of most of the car's electronic systems.  Turns out on these cars, there is a charge sensor and controller that works along with the voltage regulator and alternator to charge the battery.  They also wanted $1500 to replace all of those items.

So I took it to my mechanic before outage, and he got it fixed a couple of days ago.  He replaced the alternator and the battery for $450, and resolved the issue.  He got a much-deserved bonus of 12 Sierra Pale Ale for his trouble, and saving me a thousand dollars.  He also got my butt out of a sling with the wife's car.  She was getting annoyed about not having a reliable vehicle.  Understandable.

Once we got home, I repaired a deadbolt that had started giving trouble while I was working relentless 12 hour shifts.

 We have no trash service out here in the hinterlands, so next up, I had to load up the truck and haul *a lot* of garbage to the transfer station.  

I got a bit distracted before hauling the trash.  The wet/dry vacuum had drywall dust in it, and rinse water from prepping the floor of the air compressor room for paint.  The vacuum has been sitting there with a fouled filter and standing water in it for a couple of months now.  The nasty vacuum bothered me on those rare occasions I was out in the shop, but I never really had time to clean it.  I finally got it dumped, cleaned out the gunk, and washed the drywall cake from the filter.  It was pretty gross.

While I was on the trash run, I picked up ingredients for spaghetti and some Lottery tickets, because I'd really like to stop working these kind of hours, but still be able to afford to heat the house and putter around in the shop.

My birthday and Easter came and went while I worked the outage.  One birthday present arrived partway through the outage, which the delivery man was kind enough to drag inside the house.  However, the large box was taking up a big chunk of the entryway for a couple of weeks.  The wife didn't complain, but I'm sure she wanted it removed from her domain.

I was happy to oblige getting rid of that box.  I assembled my new treasure on the carpet, because carpet's a lot softer, cleaner and warmer than the floor of the shop.  Afterwards I had to make a second run to the transfer station, because the box and styrofoam still made a big pile of trash.

Ready for a couple of gallons of citric based solvent (Simple Green) and some greasy parts to clean!

Afterwards I rolled the new parts washer out to the shop and its new home.  I'm a pretty happy dude after receiving this great gift.  It was not even very expensive!  Side note:  The arm that holds open the door is fusible, in the event you use hydrocarbon-based solvents.  If they catch fire, it will melt a latch and the lid will fall shut to smother the fire.  Clever stuff.

 I'm getting fired up about getting that old truck going now.  But first I'll have to tie up some other loose ends:  Tractor, Voigt pipe speakers, Kawasaki triple, and a couple of other small electronic projects I'd shoved off to one side. 

Anyway, it was pretty busy for a partial day off.  It was mostly just playing catch-up.  I'm never ahead, LOL.

I still need to get the studded snow tires off the Subaru before the end of this month, or it will result in a traffic citation.  Also, the Subie has been making nasty cracking and popping noises coming from the driver's side rear wheel well.  I suspect there's an issue with the strut, because the Subie is leaking oil on the garage floor from that area.  I need a haircut, too.  The engine oil needs changed on my car and the kid's car.  Later today, we will move an elderly relative's possessions from assisted living over to a full-on nursing home.  Shift work is easier than days off!  There's so much to do, and so little time...

Sunday will either be church (unlikely) or a legit rest day before going back to work Monday and facing a 5 hour cold-start.  I'll do a post about cold start-up before too long - it's an interesting process.