My Truck's door lock

Recently was mending my truck because the door lock wasn’t working properly. 

The problem was traced to a simple plastic part.

In order to have one of these:

Had to buy (two) of these:

[

Luckily was possible to remove the white plastic part from the new lock cylinder,

then place the white plastic part onto the old lock cylinder.

I can keep the same keys, at least for now.

 

I am sure that somebody, someplace, has a bin full of the white plastic part 21970.

The white plastic part is shown as number 21970 on a drawing which I found on

 ( web site ) (Can't find it again!  If I do, will update).

Thinking that perhaps the 1994 Mustang lock cylinder would fit, the Mustang one uses the plastic/metal clip shown in the picture, and the plastic/metal clip is available at the parts store.

Fin

Lightning

As you know, we are having a drought here in California.

Which means, any time that water falls from the sky

that makes the news.

 

Recently a big wind brought a big dust of off the construction site

and then large raindrops began falling from the sky.

 

Last time there was a  rain shower, I went outside and washed my car

in the rain

because that is all the water available for washing cars.

 

So on Tuesday, I was going outside to wash the car

in  the rain

when suddenly there was a flash and a boom.

 

They say that you can tell how far away the lightning is

by counting the seconds between the flash

and the boom.

 

This time, the boom seemed to have happened first,

because we humans can hear faster than we can see.

 

The lightning had struck a tree on the edge of the parking lot.

Very close to the building.

The lightning stripped the bark and some wood from a nearby tree.

 

Here is a close-up of the damage to the tree.

 

 

Lightning also

 

struck

 

 

 

a steel-reinforced cinder block wall.

 

 

Here is a close-up of the damage to the wall.

 

 

I did NOT go outside and wash my car that day!

 

fin

Cracked

A new building is going up next door.

 

The front building, which is facing south, appears to be cracked already.

 

After this happened, the erection crane was moved to the far away other side of the construction site.

 

Perhaps this was tilted up too early?  We can't really see the cracks by looking at this picture from a handy phone.

 

Not even after monkeying with the black and white color levels.

 

So I went home and got my good camera and got a good picture!  Big camera is better than small camera.

 

Fin.

My Window

          Looking out of the window, I have become accustomed to seeing some empty
                                                     train tracks.
  Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window today and saw a modern little train.

                             Folks have been building on this rail line for years and years.
                                  I had begun to wonder if it would ever be finished?
                            Then suddenly a train appeared on a beautiful spring day.
                                    This one was driving very, very slowly.
                           You can see the Styrofoam boards taped to the sides
               which would indicate if something was built too close to the tracks.

fin

My Yarn Indicator II

Way back during 2011 I told you a story about my 1984 Ford truck, the air conditioning system seemed to be unreliable as I told you about here.   The hot and cold control is a vacuum device which has finally stopped working today in 2015.

The original yarn indicator installation required a removal of the glove box. Here is an alternative repair technique.  Remove the vacuum hose from the vacuum motor.

You can do this without needing any tools.  In other words do not remove the glove box, only crawl down beneath the dashboard.

Add some plastic lubricant such as Tri-Flow which is guaranteed to not harm plastics.  Ordinary oil would wreck it so be sure to use the correct type of lubricant.

Start the engine then re-connect the vacuum hose from the vacuum motor.  Operate the hot-cold control a few times.  If you are lucky as I was, the control switch will have become un-stuck and the vacuum motor will obey the hot-cold control reliably once again.

fin

My Computer Runs Slow (Norton)

          Recently yours truly has seen his computer
                                  running slow

                        Most everybody says, "
                      Upgrade your computer.."

           As if a computer was a disposable item.

                  We see things differently.
       We see the computer as a durable white good
                              for legal reasons.

                    To make a long story short,
  you can fix your Windows XP computer like this:

          Un-Check the box for scanning other computers!
          Because this "Feature" makes your computer run
                                sooper-slow.
Fin

How To Install Dinex Drivers Into Windows 8 Enterprise Edition

              How To Install Dinex Drivers Into Windows 8 Enterprise Editition

                                               Prior to today in
                                                 the year 2015
             I told you how to install DINEX drivers into Windows 8 Here and Here.
     With Windows 8 Enterprise edition you don't have to do ANY of those things.
                                            Simply plug and play.

      Windows 8 Enterprise edition has net(dot)framework four dot something
                                         BUILT IN ALREADY.
Dot net framework is a way for a bunch of different programs to share information.
                                         On your computer.
                                            In real time.

  Your Windows 8 Enterprise Edition has net framework four dot something
                                      already installed.
           Even so, we need to have net.dot.framework 2.5 installed
                                         BEFORE
               we install DINEX drivers into your computer
          so the advice is, "install net.dot.framework 2.5" first!
          or wait a long time until the software does it for you

  Then install your Dinex drivers into Windows 8 Enterprise edition.

 If you click on the INSTALL icon then you will go round and round.
                        Instead of doing that, follow this procedure:
                        1.  Install net.dot.framework 2.5  BY HAND.
                        2.  Then install your DINEX software.
                                       Plug and play!
fin

My Road Trip

February 2015

 

                               During a recent road trip to Orlando

                 I decided to visit a nice restaurant each evening

                                      and eat all the things.

                                   I gained five pounds!

                          So no more pigging out for awhile.

 Even though I was at Walt Disney World, I wasn't having fun all the time.

                I spent most of my time in or around one of these:

 

                This transit bus is the first ride for most of the guests.

              Many of the guests have never ridden on a bus before.

           These vehicles are ten years old and very dusty and dirty

                     in the dark and hidden areas where I work,

                          even though the outside is snazzy.

 After opening two doors, we can see the innards where the magic happens.

These black boxes that light up are PLC, Programmable Logic Controllers.

       I told you about the programming language in a previous post. 

            You wouldn't Normally see these electronic brain units

                 unless you could possibly know where to look.

                                     Enough about work.

   I stayed in an area on International Drive which is wall-to-wall

         with tourist things, some of which didn't look like they

        would be safe enough to exist in the state of California

   such as a raised go-cart track which resembled a roller coaster.

                                 Which I didn't ride.

        The most impressive item that I saw was the Orlando Eye.

 

   The individual cars on the Ferris wheel are bigger than my first apartment.

                             Big enough for a flying dinner party.

 

                      The structure of the Ferris wheel hub is most impressive.

 

                  This picture is a good one for the handy phone splash screen.

                            It is very unusual and people ask me about it

                                when they see my phone light up.

 

 

 

fin

My Washing Machine

My appliances are twelve years old.

Sooner or later I will have to replace them.

I told you about my clothes dryer over

here.

Before starting work, I unplugged the washing machine's power.

Here is a look at the Clothes Washing Machine's Innards:

 

The Large Gray item is connected to the knob on the

front of it's control panel, which no longer worked.

The Large Gray item is the Controller.

 

As you can see, the Controller has a motor to make the knob spin

(green arrow) while the washing machine is washing my clothes.

Two plastic tabs are holding this side of the controller

Onto the front panel (red arrows).

No problem here!

I added some plastic friendly lubricant "Tri-Flow"

to the part that spins with the knob (blue arrow).

This lubrication helped a lot.
 

But then

on the other side of the Controller

there was only one plastic tab, which had broken off.

The Controller would sag back and then the knob

wouldn't be pushed in and the wash cycle wouldn't start.

Rather than run out to the hardware store,

I found these hard rubber items which are actually

shower door bumpers.

I cut down the hook on one of these bumpers

Very carefully.

 

I held the item with pliers as shown, while trimming the part.

Not with my fingers.

The trimmed piece grabs on to the Controller.

After rummaging through my supplies I found a bolt and, ahem, washer

that would hold the rubber bumper down securely

Then I put some strong, hold-it-to-everything glue

in-between the rubber bumper and the controller..

 

 

After being heated with an incandescent light bulb for about twenty minutes,

the glue foams up a little bit to fill the space (not shown).

Now the Controller is secured to the front panel,

the knob can be pushed in or pulled out

and I am back in the laundry business.

fin

My Start Screen 2

   My computer seems to take a long time when starting up the Internet Explorer. I have 
              been trying to find a way to speed things up as I told you about over here.

       For some reason I came to wonder if the start screen could be a dot htm file that
   exists on my computer. If so, this html file will load super fast. Today, while I was using
        a help screen, I beheld a dot htm file that exists on my computer. Yowza. Here is a
                               screen shot of how I set up my Start Screen 2.

 We can learn from this example that percent twenty represents a space bar character.

fin