Rants

Math Smath

Every Wednesday Firehouse Subs comes to ASCO and sells fresh made sandwiches. There is a three woman crew that makes about 70-80 sandwiches between 11:30am and 1:00pm. For the ease of it (and the shapes sort of fit), lets call them Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Papa Bear is the one in charge, the order taker and money handler. She recognizes the regulars, remembers their names and their usual sandwich of choice.

Donna and I sporadically take advantage of this service every couple weeks or so. Today was our monthly engineering department communications meeting/lunch where everyone buys a sub to eat while we watch a PowerPoint presentation and discuss current events, work related and otherwise. Usually Donna and I split a sub and she eats at her desk while I eat mine at the meeting, but today I was on my own as Donna didn’t want a sub.

I’m guessing to either eliminate boredom or perhaps give some cross-training, Papa Bear has started making the subs and Momma Bear has been handling the ordering part of the business. Now I’m sure Momma Bear is a nice kid and all, but I think when they were passing out brains she didn’t get in line because she thought they said trains and wasn’t interested.

I ordered a small steak sub, $4.50, added an iced tea, $1.25 and you could hear the gears turning, after a slight pause she said $5.75. I handed her a ten dollar bill and I think she stopped breathing for a second as she harnessed all her brain functions to do the math. It just wasn’t happening so she punted, “Papa..what’s.” I said, “$4.25.”

I think if I had said $7.25, she would have given it to me.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 218

Brian The Plumber

Friday afternoon was replace the garbage disposal day. On the way home from work we stopped in at Home Depot and bought a Badger 5 and a 12″ long 1-1/2 diameter metal flanged pipe to replace the eroded original.

Right up front I caught a break, Insinkerator has not changed their sink flange/mount in the intervening decades since the old disposal was produced. I got to skip the first dozen steps because I didn’t have to remove the old sink drain/flange and install a new one. Little did I know this was the last break I’d get until the next day.

Unhooking the electricals and rewiring the new disposal went smoothly and in flash the unit was mounted to the sink. I took the old pipe and the new one into the garage, dug out my $1.98 hack saw, measured the old pipe, transferred that number to the new pipe and cut it off. Crawled under the sink and mounted the new discharge pipe to the disposal. Uh, oh. It was too short, it didn’t reach the drain pipe on the other sink. The new disposal was a couple inches smaller in diameter than the old.

At this point I have to interject an observation, both my wife and I agree that it took 3 trips to HD to complete the job, but neither of us can remember what the second two entailed exactly.

Not only was the pipe too short, but it was misaligned vertically as well. Back to the store for more pipe. I could get another 12″ metal pipe, but there were no metal T sections for under the second sink to be found, so we ended up with three pieces of plastic 1-1/2 pipe. I also spent $6.50 on a new hack saw.

At home I measured twice and cut once and got everything back together. Now for the test. We ran the tap and hit the switch. No leakage at the disposal to sink and disposal to outlet pipe, but that pesky u-trap was dripping pretty good. I tried two different types washers (a hard plastic wedge and a square rubber gasket) with no help. I put a wrench on the normally hand tighten joint and even that didn’t do any good. After about three hours of monkeying around it was decided to just clean up and leave a plastic bin under the u-trap and revisit it another day.

When we looked in on the bin on Saturday it was dry. Huh? Ran some more water, spun the disposal and there was no leak anymore. Cool.

The only problem with these spontaneous cures is wondering when they might spontaneously fail.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 191

How To Buy A Miata Battery In 10 Easy Steps

1. First thing Monday morning call a Miata.net vendor to purchase new battery. I chose MMMiata because they are 200 miles away, not Moss Motors which is 2000+ miles away, so I could get it before Thursday when I would return Rudy his battery at the MMC meeting.
2. Confirm with CSR that the battery is in stock.
3. Await emailed shipping confirmation.
4. Tuesday mid-morning call MMMiata to find out why no email. Turns out when they said it was in stock, it was in stock at the manufacturer and it would ship from Pennsylvania. My order was taken Monday morning and faxed to Westco on Tuesday, so it would probably ship Wednesday, with a 2 to 3 day delivery. Meaning if I’m lucky, I might get the battery Friday.
5. Hang Up in Disgust.
6. Get butt chewed by wife for not ensuring prompt delivery.
7. Call local dealer to see if they a Miata battery in stock. Augusta sold their last one yesterday and might get some more on Wednesday or Thursday. In Columbia they have two on the shelf.
8. Call MMMiata to see if they can expedite delivery. They have to call Westco and get back to me. Receive phone message that they could do it and it is not too late, just call and let them know if I want that. Call MMMiata back and be told it would be approximately $50 more (over the $18 already paid for delivery) to get it to me by Thursday.
9. Cancel order with MMMiata. Be told it will be at least Friday before my charge card is refunded because that is the day they do that.
10. Drive to Mazda dealer in Columbia and hand them my charge card.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 182

I Hate Plumbing

Sunday I got the screened porch cleaned off of pollen and we moved into our “summer” bedroom. Tonight I finished editing down the vacation pictures to 124. For most, the title will be enough, but I still will need blurbs for quite a few of them so they make some sense. I ordered the new Miata battery this morning. Tonight I fixed garbage disposal, it grinds up stuff just fine

But in the process I created two leaks under the sink. There is now a plastic bin under there to catch the water. I knew I was in trouble when I disconnected the disposal drain outlet, the rubber gasket was all gunked up, along with the seating surface of the unit. I was not going to be able to make a watertight connection no matter how hard I tried cleaning up, but I tried anyway. As a bonus the thin wall tubing’s flange was eroded away in a small area. The other leak is over near the trap section of the Rube Goldberg maze of piping required for a double sink with a disposal.

Tomorrow it is off to the Big Box Home Improvement Store to buy a new unit, some piping and a gasket or two.

The FRS are playing the MFY tonight on ESPN and the game that was supposed to start at 7:00 PM just started (2-1/2 hours late) because of a rain delay. Every time these two teams get together it is a marathon heavyweight fight lasting around 4 hours, so I will be reading about how this one comes out tomorrow morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 181

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

Disappointing

We rode the tandem in to work today, and with Wednesday’s trip on it as well, this is the first time we have commuted by bike twice in one week in a looong time.

That bike ride was the highlight of my day. I managed to only finish half of the front brake job I had planned for the Emperor this afternoon. The left front went fairly easy. I say fairly because after 6-1/2 years and nearly 90,000 miles the brake rotor and wheel hub become very fast friends. The folks who make cars know this and they put a nice threaded hole through the disc so you can separate them by cranking down on a bolt screwed in there. But, it takes a scary lot of torque on that bolt before you hear that satisfying pop when the two pieces of metal finally separate. Also one of the caliper slider pins took a bit of coaxing to go back in because with the lube spread on it, the little noise abating rubber sleeve tended to slide out of it’s groove, preventing the pin from fitting in the hole.

On the driver’s side I got the pads off, pulled the caliper and then the bracket off, the second rotor came off easier than first, but then I hit a snag. The top caliper pin was frozen solid in the bracket with corrosion. I sprayed some penetrating fluid on it. Cleaned and lubed the other pin while I waited for the magic. I hammered on the pin and tried backing it out with a 17mm wrench with as much force as I felt comfortable with to no avail. I might have upped the force level by 50% or more, but I didn’t want to break the pin or bracket because we are a one car family and I needed to at least be able to put the car back together and have it operational.

Calls to the Augusta Mazda place, a Miata.net sponsor dealer and Advanced Auto asking about a replacement caliper netted me quotes of from “Can’t Get It” to $185 and we can order it. I then tried the Mazda dealer in Columbia where they still have to order it, but they will sell me just the bracket and pin for less than half the other guys wanted for a re-manufactured caliper and bracket.

I reinstalled the old parts back on the right side and took a drive around the neighborhood to set in the new stuff on the left. The car stops fine, but there is about 4″ more pedal travel. I’m attributing this to the increased travel the left caliper needs to make up for the nearly worn out pads on that side. Still I’ll be taking it easy though until I can get the new bracket and pin on Tuesday.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the motion sensing light quit working again. 🙁

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 147

Motion Sensing Light Fixture

Our laundry room is in the garage and every time you go in or out during the night time you have to reach up and away to pull down on a chain to get the light on. After almost 20 years, my patience has worn thin and felt it was time to get a light that would turn on by itself.

We went to Lowe’s over the weekend and searched and searched and they had all manner of “on at dusk, off at dawn” devices and plenty of outdoor spotlight motion sensing lights, but no indoor types. I was just looking for something I know I’ve seen somewhere, one side screws into a socket and the bulb screws into the other side, but no dice.

When I was complaining about my inability to find this motion sensing light socket thingie to my cubical neighbor Jim on Monday he said he was in Home Depot on Sunday and had seen just what I was describing. On Tuesday Donna and I made the short trip to HD and looked all up and down their lighting section…twice…and couldn’t find anything.

Beginning to doubt the existence of such a fixture, when we got home I searched the interweb and found several places that sold them for around twenty bucks. I saved a link to place and contemplated whether or not I wanted to pay $7 to ship it.

This morning my cube neighbor said he was in Home Depot again yesterday buying some rabbit fencing to keep the hungry from his garden, saw the motion sensor fixture again and thought of me. I told him I had searched high and low and couldn’t find it. He offered to buy one for me, but I said if it was in the store, I’d find it myself. He told me it was not where I first looked, but over by the junction boxes and light switches.

Tonight Donna and I made a return trip to get one of these elusive objects. We looked up and down the aisle Jim described and didn’t see anything. We expanded our search parameters buy going slowly up and down the aisles on either side…twice…and still so no such thing.

I broke down and asked. The customer service rep behind the counter said they were at the end of aisle 4 on the right. Shazam! There they were.

First thing I did when we got home was unscrew the bulb, screw it into the motion sensor base and screw the whole thing into the wall socket. Pulled the chain to turn on the electricity, waved my hand wildly in front of the sensor and was rewarded by nothing. Crap. Unscrewed the bulb from the base, the base from the wall and put the bulb back in and it lit up pretty as could be.

All that effort and the thing doesn’t work. Now, it means a return trip to the store. Should I chance it on another cheap unit or just get my money back and just keep yanking the chain? I tried it a second time with little hope of any change and for whatever reason, it worked.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 147