So

I ordered a cheapo phone charger off ebay for a tablet I picked up cheap. It has free shipping and says it should arrive no later than 4/12. Cool. I ordered it. Saturday came along and I checked. It was still in Florida. In three days time, it had traveled from one part of Florida to another part of Florida. Monday rolls around, I check, somehow, the post office figured that to get package from Florida to southern Indiana, it needed to go to Michigan. Some weird never before heard of town in Michigan. I checked again today, it is now in Detroit Michigan. I am not in a hurry as I have a charger that will somewhat work, but, I am just mystified at how they can sometimes get the shipping so utterly screwy on a package. Curious to see if it makes the west coast by tomorrow:)

Lazy day.......

Didn't go to the shoot. Didn't do any more yard work. Did go cruising all the local twisty country back roads in the Vette most of the day. It was an awesome day. Top off, sun shining, seventy degrees. Perfect. I forget how well she hugs the road. Have to keep eyes peeled for deer at all times though. I played in the garage the rest of the day. Bought some micrometers really cheap last year. They were a bit crusty. I sprayed them with PB blaster last year and just let them soak. I was able to salvage all of them. A couple of them were completely locked up. They cleaned up very well. Wouldn't do for work, but, good enough for home. I need to take them to work so I can use the standards to adjust them. One inch micrometer up to six inch for sixty bucks. Three of them are Starretts, the other three were Slocumb. Never heard of the later, but the price was good. Had a bonus two inch craftsman mic in the mix.

Weather is suppose to go back to soggier than usual, so the Vette goes back on the rack for about a week. Got the plates in the mail and they are now installed on all the vehicles. Not ready to go back to work. Time off was fun but short.

One more day of freedom

Almost time to go back to work. One week off and I still get two phone calls on work related matters. What part of on vacation do they not get? At least I know going in it is going to be a nastier than usual Monday. One machine has been down and I am fighting with the nimrods that supposedly serviced the control, which still doesn't work.  One of the other machines I run developed an ailment. Sounds like a bad rotary encoder. Just once I would love to go back to work and have all the equipment unmolested and working properly. I just hope nobody tried "fixing" anything as that usually creates more issues than it resolves.

Did get the last of the dead wood ripped out of the yard and cleaned up. I put some bird feeders up where the dead bush was by the living room window. Getting quite a variety out there, and a good view. Hoping on getting the hummingbirds back again this year. Lost a couple of the bushes they liked, but I placed some butterfly bushes close by along wit a feeder that should still help attract them.

Still waiting on a quote for the garage out back. May hit the club for the shoot tomorrow. Get some work hours in and see if I can get any leads on a concrete guy. Would like to get a foundation for the garage and a price on a small patio. Have pavers out there now, but would prefer a nice flat concrete pad. It was actually nice and sunny today and suppose to be more of the same tomorrow. Been an extremely wet nasty vacation weather wise. Suppose to be more of the same next week.

Rich's garage's?

Been doing some searching and measuring while on vacation. Garage in back yard looks very doable. Hit a couple places and viewed some models. Would be nice to be able to park the Vette out back and be able to work in the main garage anytime I want without moving vehicles around. Would be nice in the winter as well. Be able to put the truck in the garage. The one I am looking at would allow me to get rid of the shed out back and use the back portion of the garage for lawn equipment. Running power out to it will be a pain, but I will manage.

Been getting a lot of indoor chores done during vacation. Seems I picked monsoon season for vacation. It hasn't missed a day as far as rain goes. Throw in a few tornado warnings for fun, and all is complete. Still better than working though.

Going to skip the machine gun shoot. With all the rain, parking is going to be muddy to say the least. I have a truck with 4 wheel drive, so that would not be an issue. It turns into an issue when you get stuck behind some little subcompact buried to the axles in the mud and they have to somehow get a tractor in ahead of you to tow said vehicle out of the way. They already said one of the local bridges got washed out. Theirs is intact for now.

Finally cleaned up the closets and took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill and some old furniture to a consignment shop. Serviced all lawn equipment and got lawn mowed, fertilized, weed killer applied and some more dead bushes cut up and disposed of. One more dead bush to go, but that will happen tomorrow. Hard to believe vacation is almost over. Hopefully tomorrow will turn out nice and sunny as they are predicting. Like to hit the range at the club for a while.

The neighborhood ducks are back. They walk through the streets visiting different houses along the way. They took a dip in the little fish pond in my front yard and then decided to nap under the tree. Neighbors are pretty careful not to hit them. They walk down the road and you can drive right past them. There is a little man made pond of pretty good size a block over that they usually end their day in. It's pretty cool the way the two travel the little subdivision during the day though.

Happy 20 years anniversary to me...

Twenty years ago today, I started work for a machine shop building plastic injection molds. Twenty years later, I am still making and maintaining molds. Now they are injection, blow mold and thermoform molds.  I now work in our main shop in southern Indiana. A huge improvement over the Chicago plant. Lucked out and took the choice to relocate down here eight years ago as they shut the Chicago facility down completely last year. Hated to see it shut down as I knew a lot of people who worked there. The high taxes and other Chicago fees make it much more expensive to operate than other locations. They doubled the size of the main plant down here and absorbed most of the Chicago plant. I came down here when the absorbed the small machine shop where I worked. The shop down here is much bigger. I also enjoy CNC machining a lot more than all the manual work I did up north. Won't live long enough to get twenty in anywhere else. If I can make it four more years, I will get a fifth week of vacation and I will hit what they call the rule of eighty. When your age and your years of service equal eighty, you get four additional weeks of vacation you can use anytime you want. They roll over through the years until you use them up. May be tempted to try and take a whole month off. Pretend I am a democrat for a month. Only problem, I probably wouldn't want to go back.

It is vacation time. Can't decide between the machine gun shoot or, the NRA meeting in Nashville. I forgot about the NRA meeting. I was planning on getting a hotel room within walking distance and taking in some of the sites while there. Hank Jr. and Ted Nugent are putting on concerts this year.

Got the Vette cleaned up and the oil changed. Blew the cobwebs out of it. Was going to drive it today, but the rain started a day early. Need to detail the inside of the car. It is very dusty. Need to check brakes on the truck for more fun and excitement. Want to do some work on the Mustang as well.

Did get the digital readout box built for the mill. Still need to make a case for it, but the circuit is complete and I tested it out and it works flawlessly. Still have a few project boxes I picked up from radio shack before it closed. Picked up a whole slew of electronic components for pennies on the dollar as well.  Going to make another one for the lathe. Figure I can get the scales mounted on the lathe and the digital readouts installed. Looks great and it's really easy to build. Have to post some pictures as I set it up. Using my old cell phone for the display. If I can find a cheap tablet that has Bluetooth, it will become my new display. Running on Bluetooth, I can easily move the display between the mill and lathe as need requires.  Found a circuit diagram for building a tach that I can attach to the lathe that would display through the readout as well. Lathe has a pulley set up for changing speeds. Found a plan for converting to variable speed drive. When I convert the drive, the tach will be useful.

It's going to be great to be away from work for a while. Need some down time.

That commercial, it is no longer funny....

The commercial with the giggling girls giving the muddy stray dog a bath, not funny anymore, not even a little. We finally got snow the other day. Eight inches, and all you heard was snowmagedon. Yeah, they don't get much snow down here very often at all. Usually blows by us, or we get a dusting. Well, the snow melted during the day, the neighbor kids are out enjoying the 50 degree weather, riding back and forth along Spike's fence line on their four wheelers. Dog likes playing border patrol There is a rut along the fence line where he ran back and forth. I had to wrap him in towels to get him to the bathroom for clean up. Hoses are still put away for winter and outside lines are shut off, or it would be the hose for him. Finally get him cleaned up, which he did not like at all, and he romps over to the door to go back outside (after drying off on my leather sofa, nothing dries a dog off faster than rolling on a leather couch). NO WAY. He is grounded. Got the leash tied to the back porch. He gets a tiny circle of patio block to romp on until the yard dries out a bit, probably about June. It is a flooded mess. The snow is melting at a radical rate.

 Suppose to hit 60's next week. Not bad. Two snow storms all year. A three inch on Presidents day, and an eight inch snow the other day. They shut the schools down for a week for the three inches we got on presidents day. They were talking sending people home on second shift. The college campuses closed. Eight inches up north when I was a kid was called, snow. Nothing to even be worthy of news. Be happy if it wasn't lake effect and measured in feet. The people over the Ohio river got it pretty good. A good portion of Kentucky got nailed. We lost a few workers for a few days. Farther than I would want to travel for work in good weather. Hopefully that is the last of the snow for the year.