Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

Actually that is an old picture. It's 85 degrees here now.

I want to change some water before my shoulder surgery when I won't be able to do much of anything.

 

[Nano_Man]

Paul get all your big jobs done before you get that shoulder done good luck with it . That’s warm weather we in the uk would be hiding out of it . Rain and Gales is a good day for us

 

[atoll]

Paul get all your big jobs done before you get that shoulder done good luck with it . That’s warm weather we in the uk would be hiding out of it . Rain and Gales is a good day for us

Is what we had all Saturday and from 2-15pm Sunday here in North Wales.

 

[atoll]

Actually that is an old picture. It's 85 degrees here now.

I want to change some water before my shoulder surgery when I won't be able to do much of anything.

Good luck with the shoulder surgery Paul.

 

[Paul B]

It won't be easy now before the new shoulder because everything is torn off the bone. The surgeon said to me, He doesn't know what is holding my arm on.
It doesn't hurt much now but I can't really lift anything with that arm.

We got 2" of rain here last night.

 

[Kmst80]

I love getting water in Queensland Australia

 

[Paul B]

This morning I collected and changed 40 gallons of water. I had to filter it because it was choppy and it rained hard last night about 2" so it was full of chopped up seaweed, bikini tops, truck tires and sand.

 

[Paul B]

Since this is where I collect my water, maybe seagull poop is the secret.

 

[Paul B]

A couple of days ago I went to my pain manager Doctor. She is a very good Doctor and looks a Greek Goddess but of course that had nothing to do with me going to her. She is one of my wife's doctors and I just went to her through osmosis.

I am very prone to trigger finger and had 9 of my fingers operated on for that. (It's common in electicians that worked hard and didn't sit around all day drinking coffee) If you don't know what that is, it's when you bend your finger while for instance brushing your teeth, putting on your socks or trying to coax one of your hermit crabs out from behind a shoe that you inadvertently dropped in your tank and you want to take a picture of it. The crab not the shoe which you feel looks kind of cool.



Anyway, you can't straighten out your finger unless you put it in a vise and pull very hard as you are screaming like you just sat on fire coral while wearing a Speedo.

So I went to her for some Cortisone shots which is a miracle drug and I wish I had enough of it to take a bath in.

In her office there was the Doctor, a very young female "Nurse, Assistant, or interior decorator" and a young man in his 20s who looked like he was always in pain or scared even though I was on the table.

The Doctor took the needle and said this is a very painful shot. I said I know as I probably had 10 of them before but I am not a Sissy.

She gave me 3 shots in 2 fingers and I kind of made a face as it was a little painful but it's not me to scream or lay on the floor screaming for Beyonce while kicking my feet against the walls.

After it she said, I'm sorry I know that was painful and she told the guy to get me a glass of water. I stopped him and said, "I don't need water for some silly shot, thats for wimps". It's just pain. The Doctor said, they don't make Men like me any more as most of them would faint. I'm sure they would as "men" today are not like Men used to be years ago, especially in my Fathers day when Men were Men and not little scared babies. I wish we would bring back the draft.

 

[Paul B]

My Kids and Grand Kids are now in Columbia. I can't believe they went there on purpose but they normally live in Manhattan so they just traded one dump for another. I am very worried about them now because that is not a very safe place but maybe better than Manhattan.

My Daughter has a friend there who she went to high school with so they stayed with him a few days. But now they are in a Jungle resort. They find frogs in their toilet and that is outside in the jungle. They have to deal with swarms of bats, bugs and very sketchy electricity, no internet and sporadic and dubious running water. It also rains most of the time.

My Daughter texted me to complain and I told her, remember your Father (me) spent an entire year in a jungle with no roof, walls, running water, electricity and the internet wasn't even invented. She said the food is pretty good but I ate C Rations every day and there were people shooting at me most days. She stopped complaining to me.

 

[atoll]

That's the younger generation Paul. We had 5 children inc 2 sets of twins less than 3.1/2 years between them. We never had half the stuff they have today. At one time we had 4 of the 5 in nappies no disposable but cotton Terry nappies. Our washing machine was hardly ever off and of course I had to replace motors etc regular.
My grown up children have 3 or 2 children of their own now, my grandchildren, lots of things seem so hard for them now but they forget how difficult it was for us a lot more difficult but we just got on with it. They don't complain to me anymore after I reminded them what we had to do just to go out for the day.

 

[Paul B]

My Grand Daughters biggest problem is that her tablet won't work there so God Forbid she has to actually have a real conversation with a Human.

 

[Kmst80]

My Grand Daughters biggest problem is that her tablet won't work there so God Forbid she has to actually have a real conversation with a Human.

Zombie Generation. If there is no screen to stare on they get panicattacks. One morning Facebook was off-line and on the radio( yes that is an apparatus you only can listen to) they were saying " Please stop calling 000, it is not an emergency that Facebook doesn't work."

 

[Paul B]

I don't think I spent more than 2 minutes on Facebook since they invented the thing.

 

[Paul B]

So the parking light burnt out on my Jeep Renegade. Not a big deal and when I used to be a mechanic for General Motors I could change this in 30 seconds. Of course I was in my 20s then and much more limber. Now to stick my head under the car is much more of a challenge.



To get to this thing you have to turn the wheels all the way one direction and remove a silly plastic plate in the wheel well.; Thank God for that or else you would have to remove the engine.

I jacked up the front end just so I didn't have to squeeze my almost 75 year old body under the car to much and I can just about see the bulb socket through the little access hole. I stick my arm in there to touch the back of the socket but in my 20s I must have had another elbow in between my existing elbow and wrist as it is not the easiest thing to reach.

I can touch it with two fingers but two old fingers aren't going to be able to turn the thing so it can be removed. I twist and turn while doing a lot of loud grunting and finally get the thing out.

I look at it and it is yellow. The turn signal light bulb is yellow and this is supposed to be white....So it is the wrong bulb. It's the next one in the same housing but a little farther away. I looked around to see if I could find someone with a longer arm, maybe Spiderman but he wasn't around. Of course not!

I took off my shirt thinking that 1/16th of an inch material in my New Jersey Reefers T shirt may give me a tiny bit more reach. I know, it is silly. But it worked. I also had to grease up my arm with some Coppertone to get it all the way up in there and scream a little as my two fingers snapped the thing out.

I look at it and this is the same old fashion regular light bulb that we used on cars in the 60s. You would think that in this day they would have at least upgraded the bulb to LEDs. The replacement bulbs are LEDs.

I stick the new bulb in the socket and again look around for Spiderman to put it back in but he still isn't around. More grunting, screaming and Coppertone and I get it in and turn it on. It works....... It is a nice bright white but the one on the other side is much more yellow so I have to change that also. I wasn't happy and I am not speaking to Spiderman.

 

[snorklr]

know how you feel...the daytime running lights on my sons car are the same bulbs that would have been used for directionals on older cars...so of course they were never designed to be on all the time so they have a limited lifespan and they are in a place where a human can almost change them...and if you wanted to pull the headlight assembly to make the job a little easier you have to remove the bumper cover and grille

 

[Timfish]

I still have the first car I bought in HS, 1964 MGB. 2 screws and the lens comes off and I can use an index finger and thumb. No 2nd elbow required. MY '84 diesel van is a little more complicated, 4 screws for the plastic molding and then 2 screws for the light. Looks like I may need that extra elbow though for my hybrid ford SUV if I ever have to change out a bulb on it. :/

 

[Paul B]

Timfish I was a mechanic in 1968 and 69 for oldsmobile and I know what you mean
(Thats the year Toronado came out and the Oldsmobile 442 was my favorite car)

Everything came out with a regular phillip screwdriver. I think with a screwdriver and pliers I could take the engine out without even getting dirty.

There are no screws on a car any more and if there are, there is a "special" tool to remove them because God Forbid they use a phillip screw. What really drives me crazy is that many of the screws are not SAE American threads or Metric. They are somewhere in the middle what I like to call "The Fusion Zone" so you need that exact screw or you have to drill it out , tap it and put in a normal screw.

I am trying to find something with the same thread as the lug bolts on the wheels on my Jeep. It doesn't exist as it is a "proprietary" thread. Like Really!!!. Whats wrong with a normal thread? Would the wheel fall off if it had a normal lug nut? I don't see wheels flying off older cars with normal threads, do you?

To change a tire on my Jeep, first of all I can't lift it any more but I am old and I remember carrying two of them at a time years ago. But the hub of the wheel doesn't have studs sticking out like cars used to have. Now there are just holes so you have to lift the 100lb tire with one hand (like thats going to happen), then line up the 5 holes with the wheel while you try to screw in the lug bolt.

I want a threaded rod about 3" long so I can screw that in to line it up and hang the tire on it so I can screw in the rest of the bolts. It would be to easy for them to supply one of them to you when you buy the car because that would cost about two bucks,

I use a wooden dowel but a threaded stud would be easier. There is no such threaded rod because of the Proprietary thread. Like really! Drives me crazy.
I have to go to a junkyard and buy 5 lug studs, cut the head off and file a screw slot in it which is ridiculous and I hate stupidity.

 

[Paul B]

I feel a rant coming so don't read this. I just go nuts when I see bad engineering. I love when I see something designed correctly. That is beauty to me. I can sit for an hour and just stare at a set of rear differential gears in the rear axle of a car. That design has remained almost exactly the same as when Henry Ford sat with Firestone and were building cars. It's the same because it was simple and it worked. It worked perfectly and I can count on one hand how many times I have seen one of those fail in the 60 or so years I have been working on cars.

I love it when I go to a "good" hardware store (Not Home Depot) and just smell the hardware. A gearhead can smell good metal hardware.

The "screws" you find in a cheap box store are built almost 100% in some foreign country with dubious metals that are not good enough for any serious project. You can tell by the heads of screws which are a combination of phillips and slot so neither screwdriver works really well. A good piece of hardware will always be either slotted, philip, Torx or allen. A real gearhead can also tell by the color of the metal if it is really steel or a combination of iron, "white metal", aluminum or chewing gum. Even the "Hardened" bolts in a box store are very sub standard as are the drill bits.

My Daughter recently bought me a very large box of about 200 drill bits. They were listed as American, Titanium drill bits. They are actually regular, bits from China and really good for drilling into butter or cottage cheese. They will work in steel, "once".

Using a real titanium bit from America, which is as rare as finding a duck billed platypus in the Central Park Lake will drill through anything but that 1/4" bit may cost eight or ten bucks. A quarter inch bit from Home Depot is probably a dollar forty nine for a reason.

If you want a really good bit, you have to find an American made Cobalt bit. But you may find that Platypus first.

 

[Timfish]

. . . To change a tire on my Jeep, . .

Don't get me started! Few years ago I had a ball joint on my van break, was actually a fairly easy fix. But one consequence was I had to replace some studs and lug nuts and thinking it was smart to have spares I bought complete sets and not just what I needed. They were a little harder to install than the old ones but didn't think much about it being glad to get my van drivable again. Next time I had to replace the tire they were locked on and I broke the studs trying to get them off!!! Looking at one of the spares the threads were tapped from both end and didn't line up in the center and once they were screwed on they would never come off. Why make a lug nut like that!!!!