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What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?


Ultimate Steve

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On 1/26/2021 at 9:59 AM, Geonovast said:

bought a car!

Jelly. :mad:

My old truck just crapped out for the umpteenth time (with a load of dump crap in the back, of course), bleeding coolant like a stuck pig. So now I’m stuck in a rental Dodge Journey, quite possibly the most underwhelming and uninspired vehicle I’ve ever driven, and that includes my buddy’s 90-something Taurus. This is a brand new, <4000mi 2020, and it’s got a four-speed transmission. I didn’t even know they still made four speed transmissions, at least in the domestic market. It’s got one single, solitary, very lonely USB port, and guess where they put it?

Spoiler

B3U0kxl.jpg
 

Hidden down there at the very front and bottom of the console cubby, where it’s completely out of reach and also invisible. And y’all know how fun it is figuring out which way to plug a USB cord when it’s not a feat of backwards blind contortionism to get to... :P

 

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44 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

it’s got a four-speed transmission.

Like, a 4 speed manual?  Does seem a bit odd.

That Corolla's got a 6 speed manual, which was really hard to find.  Well, manuals are hard to find to begin with, but I didn't even know they made 6 speed until I saw that one.

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18 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

That Corolla's got a 6 speed manual, which was really hard to find.  Well, manuals are hard to find to begin with, but I didn't even know they made 6 speed until I saw that one.

Millennial anti-theft device. ;)

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49 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Like, a 4 speed manual?  Does seem a bit odd.

That Corolla's got a 6 speed manual, which was really hard to find.  Well, manuals are hard to find to begin with, but I didn't even know they made 6 speed until I saw that one.

Slush box. A stick would at least be entertaining to drive. :P Everything else in this bracket I’ve driven has either had a CVT or a truly silly number of gears. Which I suppose is what a CVT is, too. 
 

31 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Millennial anti-theft device. ;)

Give it a few years and pretty soon a steering wheel will be, too. :lol:

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15 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

A stick would at least be entertaining to drive. :P

One of my long-term dreams is to transplant a manual transmission into my Tacoma. They made first-generation Tacomas with manual transmissions, but they only ever made the double-cabs with automatics. But the drivetrain is, for the most part, identical. So if you can get a hold of the transmission, the transfer case, the driveshaft (because the transmission is a different length), the engine computer, and a couple other minor parts, from a manual transmission first-gen Tacoma, then you can swap it out fairly easily. Buying the parts individually is prohibitively expensive, but if you can find a donor truck, like one that got rolled and totaled and is being parted out, you can probably pick it all up for somewhere around a grand. It'd be a sweet project, but I think I'd like to wait until I have another daily driver first.

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They should install an "assisted manual transmission".

I.e. a ball with a hole for a manual stick.

When the automatics switches transmission, the ball turns into corresponding position.

If the driver is a n00b, he is happy with that. Chicken.

But if stick a stick, the experienced professional driver can calmly put his hand on the transmission handle and feel the transmission following every motion of the hand.

So, any servicing station can replace the transmission between "auto"/"manual" in three seconds, and everyone is happy.

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Anywho, seeing as of late my posts have been talking about Rebekah and I.....

I finally got a picture of us! This was taken right outside of the school library, before school started. Seeing as I'm in my ROTC cammies, I feel obliged to say I got promoted to Cadet Corporal today! 

image0.png

Spoiler

No, I am not grabbing her butt! I only noticed how it looked after it was taken. She leaned into me a bit, so I guess that's how it happened. 

Cheers!

-Lewie

Edited by Lewie
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On 1/25/2021 at 10:34 AM, TheSaint said:

Spent the weekend visiting old friends, some of whom I haven't seen in years. Very good time, refreshing.

This is always the definition of a good weekend, regardless of what language is used to describe it. :) I'm both sincerely happy for you and a little envious, too.

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2 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

This is always the definition of a good weekend, regardless of what language is used to describe it. :) I'm both sincerely happy for you and a little envious, too.

Well, they're two guys, one I've known since high school, but I only really became good friends with him about twenty years ago, and the other is literally my oldest friend in the world, I've been friends with him since 7th grade, over forty years now. And when we get together, well, let's just say we're a bad influence on each other. :D

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My buddy at mission control lives very close to the NASA airport, and an E-6B has been doing touch and goes. We're enjoying whiskey while he sends me videos of it flying low over the house, rattling the windows. Guess his wife is less amused than we are.

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13 hours ago, tater said:

an E-6B has been doing touch and goes.

So that's what that was last night.  

During the afternoon, there was what looked like a 737 going around, but I caught sight of something with four engines after dark.

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16 minutes ago, razark said:

So that's what that was last night.  

During the afternoon, there was what looked like a 737 going around, but I caught sight of something with four engines after dark.

There was a Cessna 182 also doing touch and goes at the same time, trying to stay far enough back to avoid jetwash, presumably.

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I finished the envelope for my latest hot air balloon a day or two ago but made myself finish something else before unfolding it and hanging it up for the first time.

The Ascender Mk8 is a very big balloon with envelope walls made of wax paper.

Today I hung it up for the first time and built the (removable) frame, fire gondola, payload gondola, and tether, although quite a bit of it is placeholder and I'm probably gonna redo the lines (especially the joints) to be stronger.

The fire holder is paper at the moment because I didn't have aluminum foil with me, that will be replaced before testing, and there will probably be aluminum foil heat shielding covering the paper frame and the first inch or three of envelope to prevent fire spread.

I knew it would be big, but it feels so much bigger than I thought it would feel. 40 by 40 by 50ish inches for the envelope, and the gondola assemblies reach pretty much to the ground. The full stack is taller than I am and I can stand up in it!

Worst thing that could happen is it catching fire immediately. Second worst thing is if it doesn't hold air, maybe tissue paper is more air permeable than I think it is.

I won't get to test it for a few weeks, though, that will probably require going home.

I did order a digital scale, though, so I'll be able to run some numbers on it before I fly it.

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I found a bug inside a bug. :D

Essentially, two different codes were causing the very same misbehaviour - but both codes were cleared in the past because "fixing" one of them didn't solved the misbehaviour - it was needed a twist of fate (i.e., testing on my slower machine so I could see the misbehaviour in slow motion) to realize that I needed to change two different (and somewhat unrelated) codes in order to get rid of the misbehaviour.

I made a lot of mistakes on coding in my live, but this one is a new.

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I have managed to desolder an SMD capacitor!

But there's no way that, if I cared about the board, it wasn't damaged. For one, I broke the cap off its leads more than I desoldered them (I had to remove those separately), and secondly the cap didn't look so good afterwards. Kinda looked like I melted some of the material, so I'm sure there are a lot of things I'm not exactly doing right.

Not touching my N64 if that's the result.

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I wouldn't have clued into this if I hadn't followed the introduction of Tesla's new 4680 cells. The ones that measure 46x80....

Flash forward a few weeks. My dog has an LED light on her collar for 'night ops' (as I call it) that takes two 2016 coin batteries. I had bought some Energizer replacement batteries for it from the grocery store; well within their expiry date but they didn't seem to last long. But at Costco, I found a card of 16 2032 Duracell coinbatts for a fraction of the usual per-batt cost (usually $10/pr, vs $17 for the costco card). I couldn't remember the battery number at the time, so I bought them because they looked the right size. Got home to find that nope, different number. But I tried to jam them in anyways, and oh hey, just one fits perfectly. That's when the light finally dawned on me, that coin battery numbers reflected the size, that the 2032 was twice as thick as the 2016 (20x1.6mm) The light might have been getting only half the voltage but appeared only slightly dimmer; still plenty bright enough for my purposes. And that first single 2032 battery I put in has lasted longer than any other pair of 2016s I've put in it, except maybe for the original pair it came with. 

So now it seems I won't have to buy batteries for that light for a few years....

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

And that first single 2032 battery I put in has lasted longer than any other pair of 2016s I've put in it, except maybe for the original pair it came with. 

Hmm. Makes a certain amount of sense, especially with batteries that thin, twice the size means MORE than twice the amount of electrolyte, since there’s no terminal metal/structure between two cells. LEDs can usually handle lower voltage, up to a point, without dimming too. 

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So, when I did the brakes on the truck, I noticed that the control arm bushings were shot. As in, I could wiggle the control arms back and forth with my bare hands. This probably explains the random clunking I hear from the front end when I go around turns, and why the shop can never get my alignment right. (Okay, so I'm a little slow on the uptake....)

So, I'm in the process of replacing the control arm bushings. Almost done with the driver's side, just taking a break for dinner. Not nearly as frustrating as the drum brakes, although I am still learning as I go. And this involves FIRE!!! :o  :D

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