I Can Haz Beverage
October 8th, 2017Plus Other Major Achievements
Today has been pretty good. I have had no major crises, and I got a couple of things done.
First, I managed to burn more hurricane wood today. When the weekend started, my burn pile was enormous. I had stopped adding to it because it was so big I was concerned about attracting the law. Yesterday I had an opportunity to light it, and I reduced the pile to a much smaller size.
Today I went out to add more wood to it. Amanda visited this weekend, and she ordered her sons to pile up the branches in my back and side yard. Today I scooped it up with the tractor and dumped it on the pile. As luck would have it, the pile was still smoldering from yesterday, and up it went.
You’re supposed to extinguish debris fires at night, but it’s not that easy to do it reliably. The burn survived an intense cloudburst yesterday, and that should tell you what I’m up against. From trying to light fires, I’ve learned how unlikely it is that a debris fire could spread around here, so I’m not worried.
Second thing: I repaired my Rockstar fridge.
In 2015, a tenant abandoned one of my dad’s warehouses, and we got his stuff. Most of it was garbage, but he left a hilarious mini-fridge with Rockstar Energy Drink logos all over it. I decided to hold onto it. Perfect man cave addition. A couple of weeks ago, a friend ferried it up from Miami, and I installed it in my workshop.
The fridge worked, but it made a noise like a constipated bear, and the little fan that was supposed to move the cold air around didn’t work. I ordered a new 12V fan off Ebay and waited for it to arrive.
If you have a Rockstar mini-fridge, you need to know that your crappy fan runs on 12 volts, and in order to replace it, you just remove the panel in the rear of the fridge. It comes off with four or five screws. You also have to remove one shelf support to get clearance to pull the panel out.
I cut the wires to the old fan as close to the fan as possible so I would not have to run the wires all the way back to the transformer in the top of the fridge. That would have been hard, because the manufacturer didn’t make this fridge to be disassembled easily. I put shrink wrap on the wires, connected them, soldered them, and shrunk the tubing. I reassembled the fridge, and it worked. Now I’m very happy.
I don’t know how much time this fridge has left. Maybe 20 years. Maybe a month. I know it’s running at the moment. That’s a victory. It doesn’t seem to be moaning as much as it was. The evaporator was covered with ice before I repaired the fan. I don’t know if that’s because the fan was dead, or if it’s something else. Anyway, I’ll check the ice tomorrow, while reaching for a cold, delicious Gatorade or ginger ale.
Forgot one other accomplishment. The other day I saw a reality TV guy named John Klump, giving a tip for clearing up cloudy headlight covers. He sprayed Off! on a headlight and rubbed it off with a paper towel. It cleared right up. I was amazed. The headlights on my truck have been looking sad for a while, and the compressor-driven buffing kit I bought didn’t work too well on them. I tried the Klump trick today, and it really worked. Astounding.
Off! has a nasty chemical called DEET in it, and DEET is famous for melting tents when you spray it inside them. I guess it melts headlight covers, too. Just enough to let you buff them with a paper towel. I don’t really know, but it works like crazy.
My headlights don’t look perfect, but they look much, much better. I suppose they could be perfected with more Off!, but I didn’t want to stand there all day, wiping them over and over.
I recommend NOT buying a headlight kit. I’m glad I have a buffer, because it’s useful for lots of things, but it worked very poorly on my headlights.
I hate to post news of these enormous feats and make everyone feel small, but I felt the world needed to know.
It’s wonderful to work in a garage where I can swing a cat without hitting a wall. I love this place.
Time for a beverage.
October 9th, 2017 at 3:54 AM
You might try something like RejeX on the headlights — keeping oxygen off of the plastic will keep the car cataracts away.
Also, 90% acetone from the nail polish section works as well.
October 9th, 2017 at 10:47 AM
Very cool fridge. My parents cared for my grandmother and grandfather at the very ends of their lives- my grandmother died in our house- and the difference was indeed stark. My grandmother was a wonderful (if strict) old woman with longer than floor length hair which she washed and braided every single day, and who cooked and cleaned and helped around the house because she felt obligated to earn her place (She wasn’t). My grandfather was a bowel-obsessed drunk who would sit on the edge of the bathtub and try to use… things to dig feces out of himself if he felt it had been too long since he took a BM. He took laxatives like candy and could not be trusted to be anywhere without a diaper. I’m glad you have found ways to keep your food and your area of the house safe from contamination.
The Kubota is great, isn’t it? I have several friends who have several different sizes of them. Very well made and very well supported pieces of equipment. And of course you can go crazy with attachments. The Deere as well is a well made piece of equipment, especially that vintage. It’s so nice to have equipment that allows you to do that much work with so little effort.
October 9th, 2017 at 11:42 AM
The fridge is highly amusing. And unlike products from Coke or other companies, it’s not the property of the soda outfit.
RE your grandparents, there are some things you can blame on dementia and some things which remain your own responsibility.
I like the Kubota. It has a leaky hydraulic fitting I need to replace. It’s hard to figure out which one is leaking, and I don’t know how to replace it, but a mechanic told me it was like $17 at Tractor Supply.
I am not totally happy with the brush forks. They are very hard to remove, and I’m going to need the bucket to fill in holes left by stumps. I was worried they would bend the bucket, but one of them has a label that says it has a 1500-lb capacity, so hopefully the tractor is not capable of generating enough lift to bend the bucket.
The John Deere is great, but I need to figure out how to change the blades. The seller had a couple of ramps. They weren’t very high. I don’t look forward to lying on the ground under a tractor which is just barley high enough to permit me to work.
October 9th, 2017 at 11:59 AM
You clearly need one of the screw type lifts that some auto repair shops have.
October 9th, 2017 at 5:57 PM
They have a jack called a mower lift that is designed to lift the front end of smaller tractors. They’re about a hundred bucks at horror fright. That big of a tractor, should have a quick detach bucket, and you can get a set of brush forks that go right on the quick detach plate.
October 9th, 2017 at 9:06 PM
The Off trick is interesting. I can tell you a shower/tub trick not to use.
My youngest sister came to my house a couple of weeks ago and cleaned my bathrooms for me. I am elderly and she is 12 years younger, I had had a houseful here helping with Harvey cleanup and the lady who had been helping me with housekeeping is not able to come back to Rockport because she is poor and there is no place for the poor in this town. So I needed help, she saw the need and volunteered.
While wiping down the wall over the Vikrell tub/shower in the guest bathroom she told me one of her friends used RainX to spray on hers.
Okay, I thought, I’ll try it. So today was the day. I was expecting my daughter and husband in for a few days, so instead of using the neat formula you created, I spayed the Rainx on my shower door, (the rest is tile) and then into the guest bath with it.
And then I ran out the back door gasping for breath.
I opened all the doors, turned on vents, opened some windows, and even three hours later parts of the house smelled like acetone, or something else no one wants in their lungs.
Long story short, I might not try the Off trick either. My headlights are fine.