Welcome, Loving Father

I truly believe God is helping me get it together in the natural, now that my dad and the spirits that swarmed around him are gone. I keep finding new ways to improve things around me.

I have always hated waxing cars. Because I hated waxing, which involved sweating in the Miami sun, I also neglected washing. I would run vehicles through a gas station car wash once in a while, but that was it.

This week, I got my dad’s old pressure washer running. A fantastic Youtube video showed me how to get the ethanol crud out of the carb’s main jet in a hurry, and I bought a new hose and an extended wand for cleaning my house. I even have some new metal parts on the way, to make the pressure washer look better. I may remove the frame and paint it.

The first thing I cleaned with the pressure washer was the pressure washer. I knocked some decals off, but I can live without them.

Once the machine was running, I thought about the SUV I inherited. It’s not very old, and I would like to keep it in good shape. I’ve learned a lot of things about pressure washers and cars.

First, a gas-powered pressure washer is not too strong for car washing. Some people say otherwise. Yes, it will damage your car if you hold the nozzle too close. There is a way to avoid that. Hold it farther away.

Second, you can use ordinary car wash soaps in pressure washers. I found that people liked Turtle Wax products. They wash and wax at the same time, and they’re not expensive.

My machine dilutes soap at a ratio of 20:1. The soap should be applied at 128:1. That means I have to dilute the soap at around 7:1 before I put it in the pressure washer’s tank. It will work. Other people do it, and the people who make car wash soap endorse it.

Do you just load the machine and blast away? NO! You need a foam cannon. This is an attachment that turns soap into heavy foam. You cover your car with the foam, wait a while, and blow it off. Job done. I suppose you can work on details after that, but the foam will get the basic mission accomplished.

I can handle that!

I needed a foam cannon that could handle 3100 psi, and Amazon had one, for around $20. I’m all set. Now I don’t have to wash by hand. I don’t have to wax by hand. I don’t have to drive to a car wash and pay to use their pressure machine. I don’t have to drive to a hand car wash and sit for 90 minutes.

Simple.

The wax probably can’t compare to hand-applied wax, but who cares? I can wash the car twice a month with very little effort. Even bad wax will look good if you apply it twice a month.

The pressure washer surges a little. Oh, no! What will I do?

1. Chinese carbs sell for under $20 on the Internet, and replacing a carb takes less than 10 minutes.

2. The same guy who did the video about cleaning main jets did a video about cleaning idle jets. Ethanol crud in the idle jet causes surging.

His channel is wonderful. He introduced me to a new tool called a wire gauge drill bit. These are tiny bits that bend. You buy a 0.013″ bit, put it in a pin vise, and ream out your idle jet. Just takes a minute.

It’s not easy to get information about wire gauge drill bits. I’ll save you time. There are two main types: carbon steel and high-speed steel. HSS (as we tool nerds call it) is a superior material because it stays sharp longer, but carbon steel is what you want for a carb, because it bends without snapping.

I already have a bunch of carbide bits in small gauges, but they’re very brittle. I don’t want to have to retrieve a broken bit from my carb.

My bits will arrive today or tomorrow, and then I’ll be ready to fix the carb. If I fail, $15 or so will get me a new one.

I’ll link to the set I bought. It comes with bits and a pin vise. Here it is.

A pin vise is a pen-shaped tool that clamps onto pin-like objects such as drill bits. It’s sort of like the body of an X-Acto knife.

While I was fooling around with the bits, I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I bought some special tools for working on electronic devices. I already have a lot of electronics tools, but they’re for old-fashioned products. Newer things like smartphones and tablets require weird new tools like spudgers and suction cups.

There is a great website called Ifixit. They have a forum. They are “right to repair” fanatics. Manufacturers (*cough* Apple) like to make products hard to work on so we give up and buy new ones instead of fixing them. Right-to-repairers are fighting them. They’re even getting lawmakers to protect the right to repair without voiding warranties.

Ifixit has a neat set of electronics tools. Unfortunately, it’s worth about $25, and they charge $60. I found several items which were better and cheaper. When combined, they will do what the Ifixit kit will do, much cheaper.

Example: the Nanch precision screwdriver set. I already have precision screwdrivers, but this set has a bunch of tiny weird bits to help you remove fasteners Apple and Samsung and the others use to keep you out of their products. The Ifixit set has screwdrivers and bits, but people complain that the bits fall apart. This set has better steel.

I also ordered a couple of suction cups. My 2016 Samsung phone came apart easily. The new phone I had to get is different. It’s full of goo. In order to waterproof it, Samsung glued the shells together. To get them apart, you have to put a suction cup on each side and pull. Many phones and tablets work this way. If you want to replace the battery, you have to open the phone, scrape off the old goo, and put in new goo. You can buy new goo online. A goo-based gaskety sort of thing for my phone is readily available.

My phone used to run for 24 hours with no problem, but it seems to be losing its stamina. Replacing the battery costs $70 locally, and the tech would keep the phone for a while. Now if I get tired of the battery, I can fix it myself for about $20.

The pressure washer carb gave me an excuse to get more tools, so color me happy.

I’m also planning to have my pickup painted. It’s in great mechanical shape, but Dodge paint is not very tough. Two-part paint is garbage, if you ask me. The stuff they used in the 70’s lasted forever, and you could repaint your car yourself if you wanted. The new stuff lasts exactly 7 years in the Florida sun, even if you wax, and once the clearcoat cracks, the whole car has to be sanded and painted.

I figure the SUV will need paint by 2023, but I will probably be ready to buy something else by then.

Let’s see. What else has changed? My arms were starting to hurt from holding my cell phone. I get a lot of long calls these days. Friends want to talk about God. There is something about the shape or size of a smartphone that makes it unpleasant to hold for long periods; it puts strain on the muscles around the elbow. I finally ordered a Bluetooth rig. I was going to get a Plantronics for somewhere in the area of $100, but I found a Chinese job everyone raves about for $20, so I’m giving it a whirl.

I never thought I would talk on the phone so much it would be a problem. Historically, my cell phones have gotten very little use apart from texting.

I’m spending a lot of money this month, but with a few exceptions, it’s all stuff I should have bought long ago. I may even upgrade to fixed wireless Internet, since my current service is about what the Flintstones had. You tell the mammoth whose head sticks through a hole in your wall that you want to see cat memes, and he tells a pterodactyl, and the pterodactyl flies off and tells a guy who chisels memes on slabs of rock.

I’m also getting rid of some things. I’m canceling my dad’s newspaper subscriptions. I can tell God doesn’t want me reading or watching the news right now, and the unread papers keep piling up. I’ve been looking into ways to get newsprint for my birds, and it looks like rolls are cheaper than newspapers.

UPDATE

I started writing this blog post on the 26th, but I forgot about it. I am here to continue.

My Amazon foam cannon was a failure. It’s Chinese, so no surprise. Sometimes Chinese products just don’t work. I’m returning it. I found a new one at Lowe’s. The packaging says it’s good for 3700 psi, and my machine is 3100, so the high pressure of the machine should not be a problem.

The Lowe’s cannon cost $35, and I’m not happy about it, but I don’t want to spend the next month sending foam cannons back to Amazon.

I keep learning new things about 2-cycle tools.

I thought ethanol, all by itself, was the thing that ruined engines. Now I’m wondering. Ethanol is unquestionably poison, and it cuts fuel storage life in half, but the Youtube guy I watch claims that even ethanol-free gas is bad. He says it contains olefins, which create varnish, and benzene, which ruins diaphragms.

Saw makers sell ethanol-free premixed fuel for $20 and up per gallon. The Youtube dude claims this fuel doesn’t contain olefins or benzene in significant amounts. He says you should fill your saw with Gucci gas before you store it, run it for 5 minutes to get the bad gas out, and then put it away with the tank full.

Question: why put it away with the tank full? The gas in the tank won’t get into your carb, so it can’t help your engine. A cynical person would say the manufacturers just want to make sure you spend a hundred bucks a year on their products instead of 6 dollars.

Where I live, there is no such thing as “winterizing.” I am equally likely to use a saw in any season. I might put a saw away three times a year. I’m not spending $10 on Gucci gas every time I do that. In my case, it adds up to $30 per incident, because I have three saws.

I’m thinking I may spend 6 dollars on a small can of super gas and run one ounce through each saw when I think I’m not going to use it for a while. If one ounce won’t work, neither will half a gallon.

Alternatively, I could use an ounce of Sea Foam. It can’t turn into gum, so it’s probably better than Gucci gas. You can run a saw on 100% Sea Foam without problems.

I have reached another conclusion: when you buy a new chainsaw, you should remove the carb, sell it, and buy a Chinese carb. You can make a $60 profit, and Chinese carbs are better, because they can be adjusted and they are easier to repair. The original carb will probably be Chinese, too, so the quality is the same. You should keep the old carb long enough to get past early warranty issues, and then you should pull it.

There is no point in playing along with the hippie nanny-state ethanol/emissions drama any longer than you absolutely have to. Some day, we may have practical saws that run fine on bad gas and don’t pollute unnecessarily (or we might wake up and get rid of ethanol), and that would be great, but until then, you may have to break the rules unless you want saws that sit unused or require repairs that effectively boost their prices by 30%.

While I’m bloviating, I found what may be the most amazing Harbor Freight tool ever: the circular saw sharpening machine. For the pre-coupon price of $55, this thing will sharpen any blade up to 16″ in diameter, whether steel or carbide. Reviewers love it, although it takes some effort to make it work right.

I have a ton of blades, and I’ve always felt that paying a big percentage of a blade’s price to have it sharpened was a bad deal. I have a 14″ dry cut blade, and when I lived in Miami, I would have had to mail it to someone. Imagine the hassle and expense. I’ve been putting up with a moderately dull blade. Sharpening was a pain, and a new blade was $140. If I buy the tool, I can fix the blade myself, right here.

So there will be some redemption in this blog post, I will relate a couple of words God gave me this morning.

1. Thank you for freeing me from the world.

I feel that very bad supernatural events must be coming, because I am disconnecting from the world more and more. Fiction movies and TV shows seem juvenile to me; people who run around in spandex pretending to be superheroes look especially undignified. I no longer have newspapers coming to the house. I’m extremely grateful because I don’t have a regular job, in which I would be coerced to go along with the system. I’m very glad I am less dependent on the Satanic world we live in, but I am concerned for everyone else.

I used to wonder if it was right for God’s people to flee areas and let Satan’s people have them. This week, I thought about that, and I realized it’s a very Biblical thing. Noah and his family fled, and they were saved. Lot and his daughters fled. Abraham fled. Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt. God has a history of pulling his people out of places, and sometimes it precedes disaster and judgment. If God is moving people like me to the country, to areas where Christians predominate, it seems likely that some kind of supernatural catastrophe is coming to areas the ungodly control. My guess is that demonic activity, including persecution, will explode soon. We’re already seeing signs.

2. Thank you for humiliating the losers.

Satan is a loser. He is the “god” of all losers. He is the father of all losers. He is the biggest loser there is. He is an outsider and outlaw. His crowd is like the family at the end of the street with the lawn that never gets mowed, with a living room full of stolen goods and a backyard full of marijuana plants. We all know what losers are like.

These days, we think it’s cute to call yourself an outlaw. In the old days, it was like being called a maggot. It was a huge insult. It should be, still.

The spirits that serve Satan are losers. They threw their futures away. Now they come after us, just as human losers do, selling their tired, stinking wares, hoping we’ll become losers, too, so God will suffer.

I’m very grateful that God is humiliating the losers in my life. I want these spirits to be degraded and abased all the time, and I want the Holy Spirit to be honored and empowered.

God showed me something today. All Christians know that demons want to enter and live in bodies. While I was watching Derek Prince this morning, he taught about God’s desire to make us his temples, and I realized the Holy Spirit wants bodies, too. He doesn’t want to control or ruin us, but he wants to live inside us, just as demons do.

I already knew this, but somehow God has given it new emphasis in my heart.

The symmetry of the supernatural is amazing. Satan copies everything from God. He is the China of spirits.

Over the years, I invited losers to live in me and turn me into a house gone to seed. Now God lives in me, and the losers are being humiliated and evicted. This is what God wants for us.

The losers have no future but pain and humiliation. I’m very glad to see God break them. I wish I had gotten on board sooner.

That’s all for today. I may go foam my car.