It's Not Junk If You Eventually Can Use It

The Old Lady is always giving me shit about hanging on to junk. Several years ago when a coffeepot died, I pulled some of the parts out before pitching the coffeepot. I kept the heating element and the cord and switch. This morning the current coffeepot didn't work. When the power button was pushed a little light came on, but nothing happened. The Old Lady dug out her French press and made coffee with it. Before supper I took the coffeepot into my shop and took a look at it. I ran a continuity check on the heating element and it checked out. Then I dug out the coffeepot parts that I had saved.

 Not sure what this is, but it was attached to a metal plate attached to the heating element. When I ohmed it, I got nothing. When I checked the one in the parts bag, it had continuity. So I pulled this one out and with some modification because the other one was slightly different in size, I got it working. I plugged it in and checked to see if it would heat up. When it did, I unplugged it and brought it back to the house, put water in it and turned it on. It worked like it usually does, not very fast, but all the water ran thru and was hot in the pot.

Another view of the part.

Tomorrow morning will be the real test to see if it works. I am confident it will, the only question is how long will it last.

Too Fucking Many Mondays

Since I retired I've been saying that every day is Saturday. Lately there have been too fucking many Mondays including yesterday which was a Saturday!! The Old Lady volunteered me to work on the siding project at the museum. When it was first mentioned it would just be me and another guy taking turns "supervising" a couple of young guys that would do the work. Well it didn't go according to that plan. I've been the one being there everyday that we work (the other guy was there one day and hasn't felt well enough to be there more. He has a bad back and can't be on his feet for any length of time.) I've been doing way more than supervising and because I've been doing some of the actual work, I've missed a lot of the mistakes that were made. Some I have caught and corrected, but there were just too many. (I've reached the point where I just say "Fuck It", let's get this shit done!!) Now we are nailing the fake log siding on and having to do whatever to try and make that "sow's ear look like a silk purse"??

Every day that I have to be there to work on this project is like a Fucking Monday. I've been used to a certain routine which did not include getting dressed in the morning and leaving the house. Most days I don't leave the house till after lunch, but the days we work we have started at the crack of 9am!!

Because this project has been eating so much of my time I haven't got a lot of my projects done, like getting The Guppy ready to hit the road later this month. I haven't even got half of my winter's firewood made yet. My plowtruck needs some work, but as it has been sitting yellow jackets built a nest in the passenger side door. I've gone thru several cans of hornet spray and they are still alive and buzzing around. It's hard to get the spray in the right place to kill the nest when all there is is a couple of small holes in the door that they go into the door thru.

To top it off my truck has been giving me trouble. The Old Lady says it doesn't like me anymore. At times it won't start. I can hear the fuel pump running, but it won't fire. Last week I used it to take my mitersaw on a stand down to cut the siding. Then we put brush in the back of the truck to bring home to put on a brushpile. It sat there for half a week because it wouldn't start, then on Friday it half-ass started and died several times. Finally it started and ran so I decided to drive it home even tho there was the possibility that it would die and leave me stranded on the side of the road. It did get me home and now it won't leave again until I figure out what the problem is.