Crops?

I wasn’t feeling well yesterday.  I had a fairly notable headache and my shoulder was killing me.  That combined with the van not being loaded for the flea convinced me to sit out this weekend too.

It might have been less work to set up!

Thankfully the headache was mostly gone this morning though the other aches and pains are still hanging around to a lesser degree.  So having a day where I don’t have to go out anywhere I took the opportunity to do some work in the yard.  When I showed up at the breakfast table wearing my “Uncle Jessie’s” Mum greeted me with “Well. Good morning farmer [Herr].”

Little did we yet realize how close to the mark that might actually be!

So the first order of business was to get the string trimmer working.  The strait shaft head that was on the electric motor from last time was out of string.   I don’t really like the bent shaft trimmer head – but it has some string.  So I swapped the magazine from one to the other and I was back in business.  Even the weeds that were as tall as me were no match for my mechanized deweeder machine.  Can’t really call it a law mower given the shape of the weed-beds…

Speaking of the formally designated weed-beds, they will be going away.  What were flower beds have been completely overrun with grass from what’s supposed to be lawn and weeds.  I now consider them to be a trip hazard more than ornamental gardens.  So the edging will be getting yanked and the whole area mowed.

It turns out that there are two kinds of vines growing in the yard.  One had taken over the tree that makes the side yard useless and had I not got out there to get rid of them today would eventually have killed it.

The other:

Wine on the vine!

I’m no connoisseur so if you can help me out with a positive identification of just what kind of grapes those are I’d me much obliged.  Mum is leaning toward Concord.  But I have no clue.  Here’s the sample I brought in to show Mum:

Oh, and that tree,,,

I have no idea if they are crabby or if they have a pleasant attitude.

Farmer Herr, indeed!  And to think that the park rules contain a no food crops ordinance.  As if I care!

EDIT: Just removed another [expletive deleted] blank video.

I thunk I found an Easter Egg!

So there I was, looking around Hudson New Hamster with Google Maps.  I went to place the Street View guy to look at a plazmoid off of Rout 3A when he jumps over to the plazmoid itself and I find myself looking at this:



Never had that happen before...

Still here

12:30 AM Monday morning.  The Doomsday Virus deadline has passed.  If you are reading this I was able to post it and thus probably still have internet connectivity.  And so do you.  Yawn.  I'm going to bed.

UPDATE:  Written shortly after noon here at my Just Over Broke.  I checked the PC at home this AM and found it to be functioning normally and having no more problems than usual with internet connectivity.  Likewise things seem about the same as always here as well.  Perhaps I should have titled this post Welcome to Y2K all over again!

Banned in Boston

Calling their six page photo gallery a “Trend Alert” Boston.com points out what does seem to be a growing trend at least in Bloombergia and Marxistchusetts: Banning things.  I was going to ask ‘What next?  Dihydrogen monoxide?’ but the list already includes bottled water.

So much for American being the Land of the Free…

Redneck Bodywork

Here at the HerrBGone Homestead (V2.0) we make a point to use only the finest ACME* products for all our big projects.  (If they’re out of stock we’ll pop on down to Harbor Freight and substitute something from there…)  So when a big project comes along, like for instance, doing a redneck roof job on the flea van, we know just what to do.

After spending much of yesterday morning on removing the leaky vent and hammering the roof back into some kind of almost original shape (the hardware that held the vent on the roof had badly puckered the sheet metal around the holes) today was spent on actually patching the hole.

First up was figuring out how to form the 22ga. steel I bought for the job to match the roof with the tools I had on hand.  With a little practice on some scrap metal that proved to be no more difficult than I expected.  I’m actually very pleased with how closely my patch matches the shape of the roof.

Looking in through the hole in the roof you can see some of the utility shelving that came with the van.

For the two bends at the top of the stiffening rib I used my break in the conventional manor.  The two return bends were made using the break, um, more, um, creatively.  I clamped the work piece to the moveable part of the break with the breaks holder bar, only the bend was made manually over the near edge of the break.  There was simply no other way to clamp it up to make this kind of z-bend using the regular operation of the tool.  A box and pan break may have been able to do that but the one I have can’t.

Whatever works…

After taking that picture my next task was surface prep.  I laid the patch over the hole and traced around it with a ballpoint pen.  My air powered orbital sander made fairly short work of grinding off the paint and primer in the rectangle that was to be covered by the patch.  It also made short work of my arms!  I’m normally a cube dwelling computer pilot so I’m not used to all this Manuel labor!

The original plan was to seal the patch on with silicone and hold the plate on with pop rivets.  But I’ve been growing more concerned about the rivets leaking the more I’ve thought about it.  Then during one of my breaks I had a thunk: J-B Weld!  I’ve heard good things about this stuff.  Their website makes it sound like a miracle product.  We’ll see how it is in practice.  ACME wasn’t taking my calls and Harbor Freight was too far to drive and I don’t know if they have it anyway so I went to the auto parts store just down the road instead.  Looking at how small the tubes were I bought two sets.  I’m glad now that I did.  I ran a bead around the main hole and a second bead around the perimeter of the patch.  Mixed it right there on the roof and on the patch.  The bit that shows on the roof in the next photo gooshed out from under the patch when I pressed it into place.  I tried to sculpt it around the patch to blend it onto the roof a bit.  I’m not sure how well that went, actually.  They say you can grind J-B Weld once it hardens.  We’ll see.

So I wouldn’t have to stay there for the next couple of hours applying pressure to the wound I put some weights on the patch to hold it in good contact with the roof.  Yes, I did drink all that Moxie.  (Not all in one sitting…)  The ice tea jug was Mum’s.  That’s 9.7something liters of dihydrogen monoxide assisting me in my bodywork project.  I’m glad they haven’t banned the stuff yet!

I may reinstall the vent where it belongs on the flat that shows in this picture.  Or I may hold off in favor of a roof mounted air conditioner.  That depends on how long it takes me to find one for short money on Craigslist.

The other thing I finally got round to doing today was to reinstall the ZapMaster 5000 that can be seen hanging from the really big awning that’s not actually a carport since carports aren’t allowed in my neighborhood.  It’s out there zapping up a storm right at the moment.  Mwahaha!


* The first mention of ACME up there in the first paragraph was originally a link to a favorite cartoon.  Unfortunately the short-sighted Id10t that hosts the cartoons doesn't allow linking.  My link is was driving traffic to your site, dumbass.  It's called free advertising.  Too bad you are too stupid to recognize that.  Your loss.  No link for you.

So easy even a game show host can do it...

H/T to my buddy Roger for sending this my way.

A reminder to us all...

This day is not about burned hotdogs and hamburgers.  And it is not just about having a day off from work.  Today is the anniversary of a far more impotent event in Human affairs than even many of our fellow countrymen remember.

Today is the anniversary of a day that changed the world.