February 27th

I looked at the wall wart for the new weather station, and it uses 5V at 1A, so I made up a USB lead for it, so I can connect it to the USB ports on my surge protector.  And it means one fewer wall wart :o)

February 25th

I've given up on the old weather station, so I installed the new one - it's an Ambient Weather one that looks the same as Dad's.  I had some problem with it updating to Weather Underground, but the problem was that the time was out (even though I told it to get the time via NTP).  Easy fix :o)

February 24th

The last parts arrived, so I changed the rotor, distributor cap, spark plug leads and spark plugs on the van.  It even started afterwards :o)

February 22nd

It was howling a damn gale here most of the day, so I just stayed in and played Warcraft, and with Tilly.

February 21st

After doing my daily stuff in Warcraft, I went out into the garage and installed the Truckfridge into the van.

Now I just need to make a shelf to fit in the space above it.

February 20th

After Warcraft, I went and started working on the van.  I figured out that I'd taken the fridge wiring back to stock, where you can only run the fridge on 12V when the engine's running, so I figured I'd take that relay out and hardwire the new fridge to the auxiliary battery bank (you can turn it off), which meant that the batteries had to come out, which meant the driver's seat had to come out.  I got all that working, and added some insulation behind the fridge.  I've put the fridge where I want it, and run it on van power, then I took it out again and drove to the airport and took the plane out for a while.  I ended up watching a couple of old biplane crop dusters (one of whom I'd thought was landing at Lincoln when I was taxying for the runway) at work, which was interesting.  Oh, to have far too much power :o)

February 19th

I played a little Warcraft, then I went out into the garage and moved the power socket in the van (it'll be in the way of the new fridge) and tidied up some wiring.  Then I discovered that the old fridge line didn't have 12V, so I gave up for the day and went inside and played more Warcraft.  I got my hunter up to level 100, so it wasn't a total waste.

February 18th

I started the day playing Warcraft, then went out and took the fridge out of the van.  That didn't take too long, but then I decided to strip out the gas line for it.  That took a bit longer than I'd anticipated, but eventually it's all done.  Vic gave me a hand getting the fridge and the old seats up in the rafters of the garage, so now I have a  bunch more space.

In the evening, we went to the EAA meeting, and watched the presentation about another flying car concept.

February 17th

I've taken the rest of the week off, as apparently I have too much holiday time saved up.  I started the day by doing my taxes... what fun, but at least it's over and done with.  I owe California, but the Federal government owes me more, which is probably the best I can get things balanced.  After that, I spent some time in Azeroth.  In the afternoon, I went out and replaced some old, rotting wood in the fences.  In the evening, I got my taxes posted out on the way to dinner.

February 16th

Today was President's Day, when Americans celebrate their dead presidents by going shopping.

After playing Warcraft for a while, I pulled the van out of the way, and we built up doors for Vic's guinea pig extravaganza.  We also cut wood to replace some rotted and cracked parts on the fence, but we won't get to that for a while.

I wired up an emergency jumper battery to the Truckfridge, just to see how well it does.  It does well, and doesn't seem to suck too much power.  Now I just have to install it into the van.  Well, after taking out the old Dometic, of course.

Gwen came over in the evening and picked up a lot of the stuff I have left over from the changes in the garage, so that Walter can use it to make things and stuff.

February 15th

After the morning's Warcraft, we went out and did a little shopping, then test drove the Fiat 500e.  I've driven one before, but Vic hasn't.  We have thoughts, you see...

I went out into the garage to do a few minor squawks on the van, then I did some tidying.  I then worked on the only remaining old shelves.  In a perfect world, they'd be replaced with a free-standing unit, but they're above the lawnmower - a bit of work and a new shelf gives me 7' of additional storage, and things aren't so cluttered any more.

February 14th

I was playing Warcraft when Vic called to say that the van refused to start when she got back to it from getting a coffee.  Joy.  I got in the Jeep and drove over there, only for it to start quite happily.  I think what had happened was the starter battery was unhappy, but she'd parked it in the sun, meaning the auxiliary battery was getting charged.  When that got to ~13v, it would have caused the charge relay to link the batteries, and the main battery would have been getting a charge.  We decided to not push our luck, so I took the van home and she continued in the Jeep.

I'd noticed that one of the rear speakers was dropping out of the van when we were at bURNINGvAN last month with the tailgate open, so I took that panel out and removed the speakers.  I then covered it with one of the leftover pieces of tie-dye tent, and installed the speakers again with those little nut clip thingies, so they're in there good and proper.  Vic arrived about the time I needed a hand, and we got it all installed back in the van.

We then built up a storage stand for the guinea pig room, and Gwen arrived shortly before that was finished.

I've been having problems with the rain gauge not reading (it's reading "--" instead of "0", so I'm not missing anything), so I took that down and replaced the batteries in the sender unit.  Sadly that hasn't fixed the problem, so I took down the "extra" temperature sender from the side of the house.  I'm going to try that sender on the rain gauge, and if that doesn't work, I'll probably just replace the weather station, as it's had ~10 years' service, and the outdoor parts are starting to fail.

February 13th

Gwen's new computer arrived, so I got that set up and working, and absolutely nothing went wrong.  Yay :o)

February 8th

It was throwing it down with rain, so I played Warcraft, then looked at Gwen's PC.  The screen shuts off, and can't be re-awakened.  I thought it was the graphics card overheating, and boy is it ever overheating.  The spare I have has a heat sink that's too big to go back in, and we're thinking it's not really worth ordering a new card (this thing has an IDE drive that I installed a few years ago).

Later on we went to Chipotle to get a free burrito.  As we were supposed to get a sofritas (their vegetarian fake meat stuff) burrito to get this free burrito (they were sold out), we got those this time.  It's not bad, really.

February 7th

It was supposed to rain, so after playing Warcraft for a while, I went out into the garage and started working on the van.  I replaced the hose between the powered steering pump and the ATF reservoir, which has been weeping somewhere, and pulled the rear wheels off to look at the brake shoes - which are fine.  Vic helped me install the new plastic fender flares, which'll stop me worrying about paint chips on them.

I was going to replace the spark plugs, but the ones the computer at Auto-zone gave me weren't even close the ones that were in the van already.  And I even gave them the old plug part number.  Oh well.









In the evening, we went out to dinner with Gwen, and picked up her computer which isn't working properly.

February 4th

I went over to Lincoln for the EAA board member's meeting.  We talked about the Tri-motor visit in June, but we didn't have enough people to have the board meeting proper :o(

February 2nd

I put together a new shelf unit for the garage, and used it to replace a couple of shelves bolted to the wall.  I'm trying to decide what to do about the 2 remaining shelves - they're above the lawnmower, so it's not like I can just replace them :o(

February 1st

It's a new month, so here are the solar statistics:

Power billed

Power generated

After dinking about in Warcraft for a while, I cleared a couple of the squawks from the Vanagon's last oil change and inspection, and went out to get the parts to clear the rest.  Then I went to the airfield and raised the needles in the carbs on the plane - the last time I flew, the EGTs were a bit high (probably due to the colder weather).  I then took it for a flight, punctuated with stopping to help clear crap off the runway - I'd ignored it, but somebody at some point in time touched down a ways early and took out a landing light, so there was glass and parts all over the place.  We were trying to figure out how fast he must have been going to hit stuff that far :o)

January 31st

I've not been sleeping well, and I've managed to hurt my back, so I took the gusty wind as a sign to just stay in and play Warcraft.  At least I got my warrior to level 100 and my hunter to level 93.

January 30th

We went over to Gwen's in the evening to eat pizza and reconfigure their router (I think the drop-outs they're getting are more due to Comcast's DNS than Gwen's modem).