So, what the heck have I been up to?

Wow! Over a year of no updates!

I’m still working at the same place – although that’s getting old and the subject of another post.

The kids are busy with school and now with sports. I don’t think we’ll have free time until then end of June.

I had the 262C running fine but something happened to the engine, it just wouldn’t start and stay running. I tried everything short of re-flashing the firmware on the MegaSquirt but it looks like I lost one or two cylinders. The wife and I started doing some thinking and after doing a cost-benefit we decided that the best solution at this time is to let the Bertone go. It helped that I got a bonus for some work I had done back in Deceber 2014 – it paid for the car.

I’m moving forward with metal work – welding/fabricating/casting – I think its fascinating. I’m also getting the reloading hobby off the ground as well.

More coming soon. I need a place to put eveything I’m up to, forgot that I had a web page! LOL.

So, I’ve been building stuff…

So, the VirtualBox server is still up and running. The RAID did fail again a couple of days later but this time, instead of just rebooting and rebuilding the RAID, I shut it down completely and let it sit for an entire day or two. This time I yanked the drives and re-seated them, then rebuilt the RAID. It’s been running since then but I’m not holding out hope. I’ve been copying files over to a couple of emergency NAS boxes I built out of FreeNAS and some 1TB drives. So far so good. I still want to build a proper NAS with a couple of good drives in a custom box with a mini-atx board.

Finished the mini work table for the sander – came out pretty nice, details and pictures to follow.

I’m working on a roll-away cart for my shop equipment, i.e., for my band saws, grinder, and sander. I want to be able to move my tools around as necessary and to free up some space in the corner of the garage/shop. I hope to have adjustable shelves and an external shelf I can use to mount the big band saw for work. Hope it comes out the way I envision it. 🙂

Sadly, the work on the wife’s old Kindle Fire was not successful – couldn’t get it to charge. Plan B is a replacement board.

Lastly – Arizona is the #1 seed in the West Region of the NCAA tournament this year! Game #1 is Friday, 11:10AM. Go Cats!

Woohoo!

Cats stomped on the trees and win the PAC-12 Regular Season Championship! Their 12th outright Regular Season Championship! Now we need to carry the momentum to Oregon and OSU and into the tournament.

I’ve been busy in the shop this past week – I made a cart for my MIG welder. Finally, after about a decade!

I’ve started work on a mini ‘table’ for my old Duracraft belt/disc sander I got off Craigslist a couple of years ago. I didn’t think to ask the old guy I bought it off of if it had the table and now when I need it when I work on my molds there’s nothing there. Stay tuned!

I thought I’d fixed the pedal on the bike of my youngest but yeah, no. JB Weld doesn’t have the strength to keep a pedal from pulling out of the crank. I tried something I’ve never seen done – I pinned it. I put some more JB Kwik on the pedal shaft and let it set then I drilled down the crank from the end and then drifted a pin down through the pedal into the crank. So far, so good – it lasted the day today. Fingers crossed!

I’ve picked up some 10-32 allen head screws and some angle aluminum so I can start mounting the DRO on the X2 mini-mill. Details forthcoming.

Got the Kindle Fire repair kit from eBay, need to work on it so my youngest will get off my back. 😉