Jan. 20th, 2018

randomdreams: riding up mini slickrock (Default)
I broke down and bought a new battery pack for my ten year old laptop. It's magical. I can go more than five minutes without having it die in the middle of trying to post. I should have done this two years ago.
And it fits my twelve year old laptop!

What else. I feel a little weird about something at work. I've learned that if something bike-related breaks, that's mechanical in nature, eventually I end up fixing it: I repaired a coworker's damaged derailleur the other day, rebuilt and retrued a rear wheel for another coworker, have scheduled a rebuild of a bent front wheel for some time in early Feb. I mean, people don't just leave things and expect me to fix them. It's just that they keep asking me for opinions, and eventually I just end up implementing.
But at the same time, when something expensive and new of mine fails, I email people and say "hey how do I fix this and are there any good deals on replacements?" one of my coworkers comes in and says "here's [$800 dollar electronic thing that's three generations newer than whatever it is I bought at a swap meet and had to fix] that I'm not using, if you'd like it." I had a computer that tracks my speed, talks to the rear hub of my bike and calculates and records how much power I'm producing, logs my heart rate, blah blah blah, and the interface connector had failed, and now I'm the proud owner of a super fancy new one that does all that AND pairs with my phone to upload stuff so I only have to plug it in once every two weeks rather than after every ride. It should last approximately 10 times as long.

I had intended to go out this afternoon and throw a couple of big irritating Ingress fields over our local area, and the Spitfire was in need of exercise, so I fired it up and headed towards the first portal I needed. I noticed that the car smelled hot, and looked at the (new) water temperature gauge, and it was above where it should be, by a little bit. I looked back at traffic, because in this car you want LOTS of warning before you have to start braking: you don't spend much time looking at the gauges. Then I looked back at the gauge... and it was down below the optimum temperature, well below what it had been a minute before.
I pulled off onto a small suburban road, where I could cruise along with much less chance of a crash, and watched the temp gauge. It was fluctuating back and forth by about 30-40 degrees every ten seconds as I drove, and the engine smelled hot. So, back home. I suspect it's run low on water in the coolant system: it may have a weeping leak that I haven't noticed, so when a big glug of water runs through the head the temperature sensor goes up and when it drains down there's just air in there. But I have to change into work clothes before investigating, since I'm wearing Nice Pants today.

Japanese class has gotten significantly more difficult this semester. I can no longer rely on doing my studying and homework at the last minute the night before.
randomdreams: riding up mini slickrock (Default)
The Spitfire has either a leaking water pump gasket or the water pump itself has failed and is leaking around the shaft seal. It doesn't matter much either way: they're dirt cheap, so a new one is on its way. Until then, it's operating as a full loss coolant system, like old race cars used to: you just time your trips so that you complete them before you run out of water.

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