As I was hauling more of these it occurred to me that they are going to have to be moved again, alas but only one more time. And I’ll have a skid steer to load and move them then. But I’m down to two pallets left so we’ve past half way mark. I’ll eventually get the stuff over to the city for the permit shortly, hopefully. In any case we made progress on the new patch.
Blog
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3D – Print – AAA Battery Holder
So from yesterday, we were discussing how to rotate your AAA batteries when you’re changing them out. While I love the idea of this item, it really doesn’t work as cool as it looks, if the battery slide is empty and one has to slide all the way down it tends to get sideways and you have to open/shake it around to get it where it needs to be. The cover doesn’t fit right either, just not tight enough. But despite the lack of a wow factor, it does the job we need it to in that if you put your dead batteries in the top, they will properly rotate assuming you take from the bottom to full the charger.
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Rechargeable Batteries
So for better or worse we’re kind of stuck with batteries. Wireless mice, flashlights, remotes galore. I personally feel it’s pretty wasteful to buy batteries and throw them out, just in my life alone I could have filled up a pretty good section of a land fill. So that leads me to rechargeable batteries. Now I’ve always loved the idea of rechargeable but in reality they just aren’t very good. But we’re starting to see progress.
Science Lesson
mAh means milliamp hour and is a unit that measures (electric) power over time. It is commonly used to measure the energy capacity of a battery. In general, the more mAh and the longer the battery capacity or battery life.
So with our knowledge of how these are measured we shop. Before science I went with Amazon Basic, I was wrong, they are a paltry 800 mAh and although they work, why not go for the max. To this end I’ve landed on EBL batteries that have 1100 mAh. Along with this is the smart charger, the smart portion of this is so you can leave batteries on the charger without ill effect. So I have 8 batteries that are fully charged and ready for duty. You take the old batteries out and put the fresh batteries in, then you need to rotate your batteries. This is so you spread out the charging cycles over the range of the batteries. How to do this? Tune in tomorrow where we use the 3D printer to help us with this.
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Monday Progress
I got a helper with the pavers today, knocked out another 100 today and have the build/stage area at 300 sq/ft. Tomorrow I’ll put everything together to get the permit for building the shed. Slowly but surely we’re getting there.
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Lazy Sunday
Well the weather was somewhat atrocious today. Rainy and cold and just a do nothing kind of day. So I studied, napped, watched football and installed The Last of Us 2 and Madden 21 on the PS4. Tomorrow it’s back to the grind but there will be paver relocation going on. We’re going to make it a productive week!
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Pavers Are Heavy…
The biggest problem with actually having the materials for the home improvement project is that you have to start the project. So the pavers are going to be placed in the back yard and used as staging area for the building of the new shed. Yeah the grass is going to be dead but after the projects are done the last thing will be to aerate and seed so there’s a plan for that. Here’s the progress as we move forward:
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750 sq ft of Pavers
So there’s home improvement afoot, there are three projects that are slated for the next 3 to 4 months.
- New shed in the back yard, this will be a 12 x 16 gambrel roof shed on a skid but will be perfect for inactive storage. This is what the miter saw is for.
- Expand driveway with pavers to accommodate the RV thus giving us back a two car garage.
- Screened in back porch. For sitting in the breeze with no bugs drinking your morning coffee and watching the spring rains fall on the tin roof.
The first thing is to have pavers to create a build area for the shed. That being said we dropped about $1k on 750 pavers that will provide the base for all this. I’m sore just looking at them and tomorrow starts the migration to the back yard.
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Ode to Pets
Just wanted to introduce my furry roommates, this is Sammy and Rocky. A brother and sister from the same litter so family. Endless hours of fun and purrs from these two, super happy they’re part of my life.
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Garage Door Spring Replacement
So I had to replace the garage door spring on one of the bays of the garage. Fortunately it’s a single door so just one torsion spring to deal with, and lucky for me both doors are wound the same way so I have one to replicate.
The first problem was finding a spring, I’m looking for a 0.207 in. Wire x 2 in. D x 25 in. L Torsion Spring in Yellow Left Wound for Sectional Garage Doors by Dura-lift. Evidently these are hard to find or very expensive. I went to home depot because they had it on their site but (sigh) it was an internet only order. So I thought screw HD, Amazon here I come. Bottom line it was $55 at Amazon (everywhere pretty much) and $35.93 at HD. They won. It was ship to the store, they didn’t let me know it arrived and couldn’t find it at first but I finally got it.
Installation was super simple, the one thing I wasn’t sure of is how many times to pre-wind the torsion spring to be able to properly list the door. It turns out it’s one full revolution for every foot of door. My door was 7 feet so it was 28 quarter turns of pre-wind. I’ve always been told to stay away from torsion springs, call a pro because they’re dangerous, I’m happy to say it’s completely doable if you take your time and look at what you’re doing.
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3D – Print – Spaghetti Portioner
I’m a lover of science and being able to control portions is key to culinary success. I probably have an issue, I’ve been known to weigh out my pasta to make sure that I have the correct amount. Oh well, there are worst vices to have. In any case I saw this and decided to print it, the holes are the amount of dry spaghetti pasta you would use for 1, 2 or 4 servings. Yeah it’s a unitasker but it’s 25 cents worth of plastic and 2 hours of print time so I’ve got one:)
