Last year I bought a utility trailer. Mostly because I was tired of putting Yurt bits on the roof of the Excursion. But also because I knew I was going to need to haul things I didn’t want inside my baby.
Today, I needed to hail a cubic yard of gravel, but the open sided utility trailer was just the wrong tool for the job.
In which I attempt to correct the poor decisions made 50 years ago by the lowest bidding electrician; five years ago by a corner cutting house flipper; and ease the unease of a 9-year-old boy; all with an overly complicated hardware and software solution.
Continue reading “Re-lamping the upstairs hallway.”Or, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I’m an over planner. There’s no arguing it.
My very first boss drilled into my head “We never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it again.”
Continue reading “The Power of Iterative Engineering”
Finally, six months behind schedule, my living room wall is finished.
Continue reading “It is Finished”It’s been bugging me for a while that there is rust visible around my tow hooks, so I decided to try to make my first (of many {Never buy an East Coast truck}) efforts at rust repair.
This summer, as I invoked Siri to light up the dinner table on the patio, my father-in-law’s girlfriend said, “You have a smart house?”
I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve got lights that are tied to sunset & sunrise. I’ve got lights that turn on if the wife or I come home after dark. I can control the HVAC system from anywhere in the world.
It’s not something that I consciously set out to do, it just slowly happened over a course of several years. In this post I’ll describe some of the lessons about “smart homes” that I’ve learned the hard way over the years.
Continue reading “Adding smarts to an old house”*hat tip to Dennis Leary for the title.
With an eight-year -old and a six-year-old, I can’t believe how long it took me to figure this out. Anyone with children knows the pain of loud toys, especially early in the morning.
Continue reading “The toys that make noise*”The Excursion didn’t have a grab handle on the drivers side. Pulling oneself up bu the steering wheel or door is a sure way to damage the truck over time. I’m usually good about grabbing the pillar, but when it’s rainy, that metal is slippery, and now I’m at risk for hurting myself.
A bit of eBay shopping and I found a pair of pillar covers and handles in the right color, with bolts & bolt covers.
I replaced the factory paddle mirrors with some eBay special towing mirrors this weekend.
The stock mirrors had power and heat when Fessick left the factory. By the time he came into my life, the heat was completely non-operational. The left mirror moved correctly, but the right only moved left to right. It wouldn’t move up and down.
The replacement mirrors have marker lights and turn signals behind a smoked lens as well as turn signals mounted in the glass. Additionally, I can pull the mirror further away from the truck to increase the view when I’m pulling a trailer
Last oil change I installed this oil drain valve instead of the plug on the oil pan.
Modern Anachronist 