Gear Shift Knob

Last year sometime the gear shift knob came off in my hand. It was just pushed on the gear shift lever and the plastic inside the knob had broken.

The pieces should be inside the knob all in one piece.

I looked for a replacement knob at a couple auto parts stores and couldn't find one that was right. Most of them were screw on ones. So I just used electrical tape to put the pieces back together and some on the shift lever and put the knob back on.

Today I made a quick shift from first to second and the knob came off in my hand again. I stopped at NAPA and the only knob they had was a screw on one. On the way home the knob came off a few times as the pieces had fallen out. I noticed there was a hole in the end of the shift lever, so I thought maybe I could tap some threads into the shift lever and drill hole in the knob to use a screw to hold it on.

If it comes off now I will have a real problem!

I would have preferred a new knob, but this is a good fix for an old truck (17 years old).

Addendum: I know I could have gotten a new knob from a Ford dealer, but I'm still kinda pissed at the local Ford dealers because if you buy a Motorcraft battery it has a longer warranty than the Motorcraft battery that comes in a new car. The battery died in The Old Lady's car after 3 and a half years, but it was only covered for 3 years under the car warranty.

I Gave Up On My Half-Assed Smart Phone

Last winter before heading South to Missouri I got a cheap smart phone. I was told that Johnson's Shut-In where we were going to be campground hosts had WIFI, but poor cell service so I got a cheap smart phone that had WIFI  with the thought that if I couldn't use the cell service, maybe I could connect thru the WIFI. Turned out that wasn't the case because the WIFI signal area was so small you had to be right next to the antenna to receive the signal. Turned out I had an occasional cell service so I was able to use the phone to talk and text when I had a signal.

The WIFI part of the phone works great, too bad it sucks as a phone!! I was learning how to operate the phone for various things and downloaded several apps to make it work better. (Didn't like that fact that I had to download an app that would tell me how many minutes I had left on the phone or another one that would tell me how long the calls I had made or received were!!) I was able to do Twitter and facebook using WIFI, didn't want to burn up the limited amount of data I had available on the phone. Using it as a phone is another story.

I had trouble making calls with it. If I went into my contact list and was looking for a number, it would sometimes start to call when all I wanted was to look for the number. I guess I just don't have the right touch with my fat fingers. The sound quality sucked, it would break up and I would miss words, etc..  Like I said it was hard to make calls, either thru my contact list or dialing the number using the keypad (fat fingers again, would hit the wrong numbers or same number twice).

One of the more annoying things about the phone was there was no way to do different alert ringtones for different things. Like I couldn't do a separate one for text messages. It would do the same ringtone for messages, new twitter messages, picked up a WIFI signal, etc... Every fucking thing was the same ringtone for everything other than a phone call!!

My problem was I went with such a cheap phone. It said it was 4G WIFI so I thought it would be good. The WIFI works great, but not the phone. I may try a smart phone sometime in the future, but I would like to be able to try it first, but when all you see is either a dummy one in the store or pictures and info online, that isn't possible. Or maybe I need to be smarter than the phone???

So yesterday I went back to a flip phone. It will be more of a hassle texting, but hopefully I'll be able to make and receive calls.

Why I Don't Throw Things Away

Yesterday after doing the dishes as I was cleaning the sink I noticed the drain was loose. No problem, I'll just loosen it up and put some plumbers putty under it and tighten it up again. WRONG. Discovered the big nut underneath wouldn't tighten up. For some reason the nut had expanded and would no longer engage the threads. Then I remembered I had a loose sink with drains still in it. Went and took one out of the sink and when I went to remove the drain pipe from the drain the nut fell apart. It was metal and had corroded to the point where when I turned it it fell apart. So I went looking for more plumbing parts. I found a nut for the drain pipe and also some gaskets. Then I was able to put the sink back together. Now it should drain better because the pipe was almost plugged and I cleaned it out.

The point of this post is that I saved myself a trip or two to town to get the parts to fix the sink. If I had gone to get a new drain basket and then discovered the nut after getting back, I would then have had to make another trip to town. It's not the price of the parts as they are relatively cheap, it's the time and hassle of driving the 10 miles to town and 10 miles back.

I have a lot of stuff I'll probably never use, but I figure it's better to hang on to stuff than to throw it away and later have to go to the store and buy another one!!

This is like the one I put in the sink.

Prepping for Winter

Last Saturday I cleaned the stove pipes to get ready for the wood-burning seasons. I had already cleaned the chimney and the stove and pipe were the last things that needed to be cleaned. Last winter I made the mistake of burning some spruce (maybe two or three pieces while getting the fire going in the morning) and it left a ton of creosote-like deposits (more like clinkers they were so big) in the pipes and chimney. Last spring I noticed I was having a problem with smoke coming in the house whenever I opened the door on the stove. Took the plate off the bottom of the metal chimney outside and found it almost totally blocked at the transition point from horizontal to vertical. Pulled what I could out by hand and that improved the situation for the time being. Later I bought a brush for cleaning the chimney. At the time I bought the brush they didn't have the extension rods that screw onto the brush, but after looking at it and the 1/4 pipe threads on the brush, I figured if I got a 1/4 pipe tap I could cut some threads in a 1/2" CPVC pipe and use that. Which is what I did ('cause I'm a cheap old fart, if you don't believe me, ask The Old Lady) and for about the price of one extension rod I got a tap and a couple of fittings to screw the two CPVC pipes together which allows me to reach up in the chimney all the way to the top while standing on the ground. I would have had to buy 4 or 5 extension rods to do the same.