It's Done

 Got the truck put back together today. Temp in the low teens with a Northwest wind blowing snow around.

Ran into several problems while working on the truck. Got everything put back together and put the wheel on and discovered the new lugs were coarse threads and the old lug nuts were fine threads. Luckily I have a wrecked 2001 F150 and it had coarse thread lug nuts so I was able to get 8 lug nuts to put the wheel on. Just have to remember that 1 wheel has different lug nuts. Then when I lowered the jack I couldn't get it out. The ground must have started to heave with the cold weather.

Everything is fine now, maybe tomorrow I'll take it for a test drive.

Working on Old Vehicles is Fun

Old Bearing Assembly Removed 

Broken Stud Removal Tool 

The truck has had noise at highway speeds that led me to think it had a bad wheel bearing. Recently I checked the front brakes because I'd had to replace the rear brakes and thought I'd better check the front ones. While the wheel was off I tried moving the hub. I could move it up and down and side to side. Yesterday the weather was barely above freezing so I started working on the truck. Got the assembly removed and 1 of the studs that attach it to the front end. Today I tried removing the rest of the studs. Had trouble holding the assembly while trying to remove the studs. When I was able to hold it and using my longest breaker bar I broke the stud removal tool. Tomorrow I'll see if I can buy new studs. 
 

Naming Stuff

Our RVs have names and how they get names is different for each one. The motorhome was The Guppy, the travel trailer was The Bobber, and now the 5th wheel is Magee. 

My older brother had a class A motorhome and The Old Lady said it was a leviathan, so when we got a class C she said it's smaller so it's The Guppy.

When we brought the travel trailer home it was bob, bobbing along so it became The Bobber.

When we got the 5th wheel it was the new one (new to us) or the newbie as in Tim Magee on NCIS ( he was the newbie for 5-6 or more seasons). The Old Lady started calling it Tim, finally I said if we going to name it according to a character on NCIS, we should call it Magee as that is what he is called most of the time.

Magee 

The Bobber

This post was done entirely on my phone. Trying to learn how to do the things I've been using my confuser for.

Twitter-Bots are Fucking Ignorant

 Last month I did a tweet that got me locked out. After almost a month without being able to contact a human, I gave in and deleted the tweet to unlock my account.

The tweet that got me locked out was:

@thegoodgodabove It's not that politicians love guns, they love the money they get from the NRA and ammosexuals. They are just whores who do it for the money, cheap whores at that!

I immediately did another tweet with a couple of minor changes.

Ray Männikkö

@YooperKulkuri

·

Aug 3

It's not that politicians love guns, they love the money they get from the NRA and Ammo-sexuals. They are whores that do it for the money, cheap whores at that!

Can you boys and girls see what is different?

No Humans At Twitter

 

Post I did on Facebook after my Twitter account got locked out.

Been trying for over a week to get Twitter to tell me what about this tweet is against their rules. I guess there are no humans at Twitter, just bots. As near as I can tell the bot can't tell the difference between Ammosexual and Homosexual. I have appealed and been denied. I have responded to the email denying my appeal to no avail. Have yet to receive any response to my question of what exactly is against their rules about my tweet. 

Was about to add my phone number to get a code to get back into my account, but this morning saw a post about Twitter being down, something about maybe Elon Musk and Jewish Space Lasers knocking it out?

Hopefully This Experiment Will Work Out Better

Two years ago I tried an AT&T plan with unlimited data, talk, and text. That didn't work out like I would have hoped. When AT&T didn't work out (couldn't figure out how to connect the phone to my confuser and/or TV without doing a hotspot) I went back to TracFone. For me TracFone works OK, but The Old Lady kept running out of minutes.

http://mannikko.blogspot.com/2020/11/well-that-experiment-didnt-go-as.html 

 Kept seeing ads for T-Mobile's geezer plan (2 lines, unlimited data, talk, and text for $70 a month), but there isn't a store within 200 miles. Did my research and figured out T-Mobile has coverage where we live, so when we were in Hot Springs in April I signed us up. It is actually about $80 a month as my phone is $4 something a month for 24 months and T-Mobile pays half the Netflix bill and I pay the other half. We've been home for a couple months and the phones have been working fine. Had a couple of outages, but so did Verizon last week.

The reason I gave up on AT&T was not being able to connect the phone to my confuser and/or TV. I spent the last couple months trying to figure out how to connect my new phone to the confuser and/or TV and all the apps required WiFi and an internet connection. I'm trying to get rid of the DSL for internet because it sucks. We experience "rain fade", whenever there is rain or melting snow or a kid walks by the phone box with a juicebox, we have problems with the internet. Then a week or so ago we had a thunderstorm so we unplugged the phone line so the modem wouldn't get fried. She used her old TracFone phone to mirror to the Firestick a show that was downloaded to the phone. The phone had a built-in app for mirroring. Decided to check my phone and discovered it had the same app built-in.

The phone already had apps for Prime and Netflix. I installed Kodi and an add-on just like on the Firestick to watch the shows we like that aren't on Prime or Netflix. Now all I have to do is figure out how to livestream NASCAR and football in the fall.

The phone I have, a Samsung A53 5G.

Nice Day To Work On The Plowtruck

 The temp got above freezing if you call 32.9F above freezing. Sun was shining and I was able to work bare handed. 

A step I built several years ago to overcome
an eye problem, they are too close to the ground.

When I opened the hood on the plowtruck I discovered a problem that I hadn't noticed before. The vacuum line going to the power brake booster looked like it was dry rotted or cracked.

When I pushed the line back, this is what it looked like.

The first thing I had to do was replace the vacuum line. It had been running a little erratically lately and this may be the reason why. I happened to have a hose that would slip on the the fittings. It was labeled as transmission coolant line, but I figure it'll work as a vacuum hose, it shouldn't collapse.

New distributor cap and new sparkplug wires.

  

After getting the new cap on and the wires in place I fired it up. I could tell right away the I had some wires crossed. Dug out the repair manual, looked up the firing order and checked the wire locations. I did have some in the wrong place even tho I tried to be careful replacing one wire at a time. Would look at the old cap when I pulled a wire off and put the new one on the new cap in the same place. Anywho, it is running good now, which is a good thing because they are predicting snow for tomorrow.

A Funny Thing Happened While Perusing The Intratubes Last Night

 Last night after checking my emails I decided to look at old emails. When I found one from 8 years ago about a photo of mine being on a K.I.Sawyer site. Took a look at the site and in the photo section there was the photo that I was promised over 8 years ago would be removed. At the time I did a blog post about the photo.

http://mannikko.blogspot.com/2012/02/funny-thing-happened-while-perusing.html

The photo. It was taken the winter of '67-'68 at Dow Airplane Patch, Bangor, ME.

I went to their website this morning and sent them a message about the photo still being on their website over 8 years after I was assured it would be removed. I wouldn't have a problem with the photo being used, BUT IT WAS NOT TAKEN AT K.I.SAWYER!

I know for a fact this picture was not taken at K.I.Sawyer, The second car to the right of the guy walking is my '58 T-Bird and that car was never on K.I.Sawyer as it died on my way home and had to be towed the last 5-6 miles. It did make a trip to Alaska a few years later, but that's another story after I sold it to a friend.

I had done a post on my other blog about winters at the bases I was stationed at during my tour. Besides Dow Airplane Patch I mentioned K.I.Sawyer and Cape Cod as those were the places I was stationed. Someone must have done a google search for K.I.Sawyer and one of the hits was my blog. 

http://kulkurisjourneysandwanderings.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-dow-airplane-patch.html

It's clear that whoever sucked my photo off my blog didn't read the fucking post. The paragraph under the photo explained where it was taken.

It'll be interesting to see what happens about my photo. I didn't say what photo was the one in question, but I did copy and paste some of the emails back and forth from 8+ years ago. Let them figure out what photo I'm talking about!

Well, That Experiment Didn't Go As Expected

 Last April I decided to switch from TracFone to AT&T. AT&T had a prepaid plan where you get unlimited data, talk, and text for $50 a month with autopay. There was 5 something in taxes etc on top of that. I don't talk or text much so that wasn't the attraction, it was the data. I was looking for something better than the DSL we had at home. We were in AZ at the time and I had to buy the phone at Walmart as there wasn't an AT&T store where we were. If there had been a store it would have been closed because of Covid like the Verizon store was. Anywho, I looked online and decided on the phone and went to Walmart and bought one. 

This is the phone I bought a Samsung J2. When I went to activate it I put in the zip code where it would be used the most. The bastards gave me a new number before I could indicate I already had a phone number. Finally after 3 days of talking to Bangalore I got my number transferred. Then I couldn't get autopay set up and I was not going to pay $75+tax a month. Finally before the month was up I called the AT&T store close to where we live in Michigan and got help in setting up the autopay. 

While we were in AZ about all could do online was check emails, facebook, twitter, etc... Thought when we got home I'd be able to download TV shows to the phone and then watch on the TV, WRONG!!! The fucking phone would not mirror to either the laptop or the firestick. Googled it and the answer was download an app for mirroring.  All the apps said the phone and laptop or firestick have to be on the same wifi. I have 2 routers and tried using both. The message I got when I had both the phone and the firestick on the same wifi was no internet. Well, DUH! The internet was on the phone, but you have to turn off mobile data when you turn on wifi. If I had internet at the house I wouldn't need the fucking phone to watch TV shows! Tried connecting the phone to the laptop and all I accomplished was I could look at pictures and messages from the phone on the laptop. Also now I have to enter a pin number to access Windows 10. Pain in the ass!

There are 2 AT&T stores within easy driving distance of where we live (within an hour). I went to both and didn't get any help whatsofuckingever. First one told me to go the Walmart because that's where I bought the phone. Second one said they don't sell phones for the prepaid plan outright, go to Walmart. Went to Walmart and bought a different phone, not only didn't it do what I wanted it was less user friendly than the one I had. Returned it and got my money back. It's like they purposely restrict mirroring to LIMIT you unlimited data!

Anywho, we went back to the phone company for DSL and I went back to TracFone. Again I had trouble transferring my number. It asked for my AT&T account number and pin. The only account number I knew was the phone number and I had set up a pin so I used that. WRONG! On the day my service was about to expire I had to call AT&T and get the account number and a temporary pin. Finally got the number transferred to TracFone, but when I tried calling The Old Lady's phone got an error message and transferred to Straight Talk. After trying to fix it by calling, texting, online chatting with tech support I finally tried calling a different number and it worked. The problem was The Old Lady's phone was out of minutes. Funny part is I had been using her phone to talk to AT&T and TracFone to get my number transferred and then several hours later when my phone was supposed to work hers didn't.