Post Race!

[Niya]

[Niya]

[Niya]

[Niya]

[Niya]

[dday9]

I've been watching some slasher-comedy films like Thankskilling and Poultrygiest, and they're hilarious! I love em!

[dday9]

So I have a hilarious story to tell.

[dday9]

My brother and I just got finished breaking up some concrete yesterday(that story to come after this one).

[dday9]

We went out to the country house to dump the concrete on the river bank. Alligators and hurricanes have been tearing up that bank for years.

[dday9]

When we get finished, there are 3 guys shooting all sorts of guns(I'm sure some illegal ones) about 15 feet away from us.

[dday9]

My brother is driving, and just keeps staring at them shooting their guns.

[dday9]

All of a sudden he smacks right into a mailbox. Hit's it so hard the whole thing looks like a stick of TNT went off in it.

[dday9]

I guess it's one of those "you had to be there", but it was hilarious and we just took off!

[dday9]

As for the concrete story, this one is a bit manlier. Well more like I felt like a caveman.

[dday9]

I have a 30' X 3' strip of concrete that needed to go.

[dday9]

So my brother and I decided that we'll get it up. The only issue was that we didn't really have the right tools

[dday9]

We wound up breaking it all with just the back of an axe and a shovel!

[dday9]

We would take turns, one leveraging the concrete with the shovel while the other whacked it with the back of the axe.

[dday9]

It only took us 3 hours to take all of it up. Plus it saved me a bunch of money.

[dday9]

Now I'm just so friggin sore! I can barely walk :/

[dday9]

Wow, I'm in the top three 'last post by' in the Chit-Chat!

[Shaggy Hiker]

I used the back of a splitting maul, which means a bit more force than an axe, but is essentially the same idea.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend changing a couple switches in my house. I thought it would be a half hour job, but it ended up taking hours. The problem was that I thought the service came in through one of the wall boxes, but it actually came in through the ceiling light fixture. I didn't figure that out until I took the fixture down in frustration at not being able to figure out how the wires were connected.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I was getting rid of a couple X-10 switches that were doing me no good at all. The idea was kind of cool, but the switches only lasted a few years before becoming increasingly tempermental. It's bad enough when you hit a switch and the light doesn't come on. It really sucks when it comes on....and you can't get it to shut off.

Anyways, it's fixed now.

[dday9]

I would imagine that it would be quite shocking when it doesn't come on.

[dday9]

I'm so close to passing up the next guy.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I replaced all the switches in my house a couple years back. As I was on about the fourth or fifth room, I noticed that I wasn't shutting off the electricity anymore. That's often not a real issue with house wiring, which is so stiff that you can set a wire in any direction and it will stay there. Crossing wires is a bit hard to do by accident. I was still thinking about this as I pulled out one switch....and somebody called me on my phone, which was on vibrate and vibrated right about 60Hz. I jumped pretty high.

[dday9]

Holy guacamole! I bet so.

[dday9]

I'm pretty bad at electrical, but good enough to wing it.

[dday9]

When it comes to replacing fans and switches, I can do it, but any thing else... ehh.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's about all I've done, too. One or two outlets, some CAT-5 cabling (trivial in comparison), a bunch of switches, and a pair of bathroom fans. Those last two were a extractor fans, and I really like them, so I guess I'm an extractor fan fan. I haven't worked with anything fancy, either, and stay away from 220 lines whenever possible (though I guess I did wire in a few thermostats on 220 lines, now that I think about it).

[szlamany]

I've put an extra 60-amp box on my home service myself - moved oven and dryer 220's and what not. Crazy pool filter breakers with GFCI built into the breaker that goes into the panel...

Lots of cat-5 - heck we made RS232 cables and ran them for our customers 30 years ago!

Got my own punch down tools for phone system and network jack setup - have wired my last three offices myself for all desk services - all the way to the network jack boxes.

[dday9]

You're a braver man than I. My dad always told me never to fix two things by myself: electrical stuff and brakes

[szlamany]

I've got my own acetylene torch for doing real plumbing as well!

Brakes - no problem. Re-built an Oldsmobile engine 30 years ago. Down to stuff like mic'ing the crank shaft. You use this thin plastic thread - totally tube-like - and put it in place - and then squeeze it down - by torqueing down the bolts to whatever foot pounds and yadda yadda. Then you take off the bolts and see how "wide" the tube-like thread has become. Look it up on the chart and that width corresponds to the "tightness" in micrometers of that joint. I think they call this plastigauging or something like that...

Doesn't everyone here have a torque wrench?

[szlamany]

Drill press?

[szlamany]

Radial Arm saw - with digital readout?

[szlamany]

Table saw?

[szlamany]

Band saw?

[szlamany]

Metal vice for the drill press?

[szlamany]

Biscuit joiner?