Too much stuff going on, and not enough time to write about it. We had the Morrisses in from the Shore this weekend so Finn had a playmate. They did their best to tire each other out. Then Mr. Scout came to visit last night, and brought some delicious Belgian Dark Ale which put a little bit of a hurt on me this morning. More pictures to follow, but this will have to do.
I carved out a few hours this weekend to look at the wiper motor assembly, and made a little progress. I was able to unmount the motor from the windshield, link the arm up with the motor housing, attach the clip, and rotate the motor enough to get it close to the mount points. That was where things got difficult. The torque on the motor is enough that I couldn’t rotate it on all three axis to get each of the three bolts to go in cleanly. No amount of cajoling, pushing or pulling would give me the leverage I needed to get it in properly. I figure what they did at the factory was put the motor and arm in as one assembly and then link the arm up to the passenger’s wiper arm. I tried disconnecting the linkage there, but couldn’t disconnect the two arms from each other for love or money. Out of time and patience, I bolted the motor up tightly at one point, put the cowl on, and left it until spring.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I’ve put about 1,000 miles behind the wheel of the Accord since I’ve had it, and it’s been a dream so far. The ride is smooth and supple, the steering is tight, and it’s a quiet cabin to commute in. I’ve averaged about 27 MPG in mixed 25/75 city/highway driving so far, which is good for a car of its size. I’ve outfitted the cavernous trunk with a cheap toolkit, jumper cables, blanket, knife, and assorted emergency equipment. Overall, I’m very pleased.
One thing I’ve noticed as the weather has turned cold is a loud grinding noise on startup after it’s been sitting overnight. Doing some internet sleuthing has turned up the cause: it’s a faulty VTC Actuator, and it was covered in a technical service bulletin by Honda. My car is still covered under the initial warranty as well as the drivetrain warranty, so I made an appointment to have it repaired by our local Honda dealer this afternoon. Hopefully it will be smooth sailing and the Grey Ghost will be back on the road soon.
We said goodbye to Teller this evening. Monday’s X-rays showed a blockage narrowing his trachea to the size of a stirring straw. He spent much of yesterday in the basement, in a back corner away from the light, trying to get comfortable while fighting to breathe. At midnight, I carried him upstairs and placed him gently on the end of our bed, but after a while he hopped down and laid next to the bed until morning, wheezing softly.
He would compress himself into the smallest ball possible on my lap and pass out for hours, and I would stroke his soft fur and feel my blood pressure sink to the single digits. I got home from work this afternoon, found him, and gently sat him on my lap, careful not to compress his windpipe. We stayed like that for about five minutes, and he purred involuntarily when he could draw a full breath, but it got to be too much and he hopped down to recover in the other room.
I will miss his odd meow, his soft, downy fur, his comforting heat and bulk on drafty winter afternoons, and his atrocious breath. Most of all, I will miss his beautiful green eyes, imploring me to pick him up, rub behind his ears, and curl him up in the crook of my arm for a long nap.
Update: We won. Thank God.
Update: Todd Akin got spanked by Claire McCaskill. Bye bye, douchebag! And the other rape-apology senator got whupped too.
I was proud to see one of the questions on my ballot this morning was for recognizing same-sex marriage here in Maryland, and it made me glad to live here. While I’m nervous to see the results of the overall election (right now it’s 157 – 153 in electoral college votes) I’m more nervous to see the local ballot measure results. We don’t need any more casino gambling, and as much as I worry about how things will get paid for, I believe everyone has the right to a quality education in this country.
From GQ: the first balanced reporting on what happened in Benghazi I’ve seen to date, and a very moving tribute to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
This Illustrator script does just what it says: Export Illustrator Layers and/or Artboards as PNGs and PDFs. Tested and working in CS5.5.
Teller is at the vet today, and the news isn’t good. He has a growth of some kind in the back of his throat, which accounts for all the wheezing he’s been doing lately. That’s the good news (that we know what it is). The bad news is that the vet is doubtful we’ll be able to do much for him other than pain management, although she’s going to try a steroid shot to bring the swelling down. We’ll have to do some kind of a consult with a veterinary surgeon to know if there are any options, but she’s not getting my hopes up. It’s hard to imagine life without his warm fur, constant purr, or sharp claws when he gets into his happy place (he kneads with his claws involuntarily, which is sweet but painful). We’ve always joked about life without cats, but I didn’t think it would be this soon–and the house will be much quieter with only the stupid one skulking around.
Update: Bad, bad news. We’re throwing a hail mary pass with steroids, but the prognosis is bleak.
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There’s nothing more satisfying than using a 10-year-old computer to do an important job. I’ve got our old Powerbook G4 here at work crunching fonts from a handful of file formats into OpenType files that we can use anywhere. I’d converted a pile of them a few years go but stopped when the machine I was working on (a twitchy G5 tower) started bombing during processing. The G4 has been chugging along happily for a few hours now, and even though it’s running very hot it hasn’t complained yet. Perhaps I can get all of these legacy files finished and put to bed once and for all.
This evening after the sun went down, I cracked the cowl on Peer Pressure to start troubleshooting the wiper issue. I ran the engine up for about ten minutes in the afternoon when I got back from Harbor Freight; in the bag was a battery charger and a test light (along with an oil catchpan and an air fitting for my compressor).
Looking over the connector to the motor, I put the test light on it with the key at ACC and the wiper knob on low. After I found a consistent ground, the hot wires tested good. Puzzling.
I put my tester on it and got power in an acceptable range. More puzzling; it was looking like the motor was bad. I peeked under the cowl to size up the bolt positions, and…
…realized the wiper arm was sitting on the bottom of the inner cowl. Which meant it wasn’t connected at all. I reached in and verified it was completely loose. I cleaned the contacts in the connector with some sandpaper, hooked it back up, got back in the truck and turned the wipers on low. Immediately I heard the whirring of the motor. I’d never checked it with the engine off, so I celebrated with a smack to my own forehead.
Now the problem is getting the motor off the mount so that I can access the arm linkage enough to slide a spare clip on the housing. As I was coaxing the first of three bolts off the ladies called me in to dinner, so I tightened everything back up (the forecast is for 0% rain for the next couple of days), hauled all the tools inside, and called it a night.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Hmmm. In light of Hurricane Sandy, I’ve been doing some more research on preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. I’ve been working on this project slowly over the course of several months, but it’s taken a back burner while other things have come up. The other day, I found this list of emergency tools and gadgets for when the water starts rising. Some of these are pricey, but there are some good suggestions there.
Here’s a partial list of the stuff I’ve got already, and the stuff we still need (noted in bold).
- Waterproof container for supplies – I’m using a standard Rubbermaid tote bin
- Collapsible water jug (3 gallons)
- Camp shower–solar
- 8 gallon hard water container
- Purification tablets – Bleach will also do in a pinch
- Propane stove (4-burner, Coleman) – I found through camping experience this bungees neatly to the top of a standard Rubbermaid tote bin
- Propane campstove (1-burner) – mine is AWOL, but they are relatively inexpensive.
- Propane camp cylinders – I need about 4 of these
- Freeze-dried meals – I have 4 Mountain Home meals right now, but $40 for 10 is a much better deal compared to individual pricing at Wal-Mart.
- Matches and magnesium fire starter
- Headlamp – I have 1 right now, but I’d like to get three for all of us
- Dust Masks – great idea.
- Flashlights – currently these are in all of our cars and there are two in the house.
- First aid kit – ours is hopelessly out of date
- Backup documents – I started doing all of this, but there’s a lot of stuff to compile here
- Radio – the one listed in the article is beautiful and versatile. I think that’s the one we’ll go with.
- Wet Wipes
- Hand/Body Warmers
- Multitool – I’m asking for a Skeletool for Christmas, so I’ll drop my old Leatherman in the bin
- Solar charger – I like the one recommended in the article
- 2-way radios – Point taken. When the cellphones go down, these are the thing to have.
I know there’s more stuff in there that I’m forgetting, but it’ll have to wait until I’m in the basement and looking in the bin to complete the list.