Sunday, April 28, 2013

Dump Score!

Dump picking is taken as a God-given right in many a New England small town, and woo to the politician who should oppose it. The history books state that General Gage had set out to seize the powder stored at Concord, and if possible also arrest Hancock and Adams while he was at it. I think that's a cover story -- from the reaction of the citizenry, I'd say it was more likely he was trying to prevent the Yankees from picking in their dumps.

My town's dump even includes a couple sheds for books, household items, and whatever else folks think would be useful to someone else. And it's basic etiquette to leave useable or repairable items just outside of the metal dumpster -- the town worker will chuck them in at the end of the day or the next day if no one claims them.

Indeed yesterday I'm taking a five gallon pail of scrap metal to the metal dumpster, and neatly laying against the guard rail is some vinyl-coated chainlink fencing in good shape -- just add your own posts. But I didn't need that.

As I'm dumping my scrap my eyes widen up, "Why, what do we have here?!?!"

Go over to the scale house, consult if the town guys knew the story (they didn't), and ask to borrow their long hook, and I gaff out this:



Those puppies sell for about $1000 new.

Figure it would be worth the college try -- I'm betting it's just a gummed up carburetor.

As I didn't really need it, and have enough projects, I figured I'd give it to Eric as he likes projects to tinker with in the garage when his kids are being too rambunctious in the house, and they have a camper it would work well with.

I had to go into work at the data center that night, so I swing by to drop it off at his house.

While he has some brats grilling up, we throw the Honda on his workbench.

I note there's very little oil in it. Hmmmm....

We hook up the spark plug tester and pull -- no spark, but the low oil light is flashing too.

Fill with oil, put in some gas...second pull it starts up.

Voltage checks OK, we put a load on it, purrs like a kitten.

Sadly, I suspect someone simply ran it never checking the oil till the low oil shutoff kicked in, then threw it away.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

One of those days...

1) Why is it, of the three supermarkets I regularly go to, the one with the worst "baking supplies" (flour, sugar, etc.) selection is the one that has about eight different types of yeast.  But the two bigger markets with much more selection and better prices...have maybe one, if you can find it.

2) Discovering the container for your four pound bag of sugar holds three pounds.  *sigh*

3) That the yogurt, which I brew up 2-3 times a month, failed this week.  All setup to take it from the pot into jars for the fridge, and find it's still liquid.  I must've screwed up one of my times yesterday when warming and cooling the milk.  First time since last spring I lost a batch.

4) Dog sitting Cooper.  Cold, wet dog nose on bare foot.  Yeeeeouweeee!

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Signs

While trying to find a full-length version of Paperman (see a few posts below), I came across Signs: