Frivolous At Heart

I was trimming my hedges and I have a hedger attachment to make my life a little easier. If you haven’t noticed, the trimmers are pretty lengthy. To say its cumbersome is to say the least. If you live in gated communities with houses that are five feet apart from each other, you’ll know what I mean by mobility when it comes to mowing or working on the sides of your house.

Anywho, the trimmer is 65 inches long or around there. Its a little long when you add the hedger attachment to it. So I got to thinking, “Now wouldn’t it be nice if it were a little shorter”. So I did just that. I had to cut it down to the length I desired. It took some welding and grinding to get things to fit nicely. Two hours later and I am done! It looks good so far! A total of 39 inches with the hedger attachment attached. No handle for grip but its fairly light and easily maneuverable. I think my six yr old nephew can start using it from now on=) Who knows, I might shrink the lawn mower, edger and the likes so that he can start doing my chores!

I have to mention though that the shaft is hollow and inside it, is a flexible steel wire that spins the tool(s). The wire is covered by a heavy nylon shell and its separated from ever touching the shaft by rubber bushings that slide over the nylon shell. The only way I could cut that is with my trusty bolt cutter. I cut it as close as I could to the head and welded the rest on very carefully as not to interrupt the engineering of the components.

I did not include all the photos step-by-step but you’ll understand the concept of what it took to complete such a wonderful feat. It only took a little of ingenuity and lots of patience. I’m going to rebuild this motor later on. Its very old I admit, about 6 yrs old 31CC Ryobi weed eater. I will take apart this motor and probably make a scooter for my nephew to play with. I’ll cap the speed to 3 mph for safety.

short Ryobi trimmer : Ryobi weed eater : 31CC Ryobi motor

What a list. I am doing a little upgrade to my current system: AMD 2.4ghz socket 754. The OEM CPU fan is a little noisy and raises my room temperature by 7-8 degrees F. I was a little annoyed by its loud fan noise. It was like a wind tunnel but except in my room! I wanted a new silent fan so went with the Thermaltake CL-P0220 100mm. I didn’t need a GPU fan but I wanted one anyways because it looked so snazzy so I went with the ZALMAN VF900.

The install went quite well. It took me about 4 hours to install and configure everything. The GPU did not clear a transistor so I had to use a dremel to remedy that quickly! The SATA drive was a breeze to install but a little loud. Louder than my IDE drives. Its okay though because I purchased it for speed and performance.

To install the SATA drive, I had to remove my primary IDE drive and set my second IDE drive that I had as [slave] to [master]. Once I had that hooked up, I had to boot from a Nortons Ghost cd and restore my backup to the new drive. The backup file was 10gigs. With IDE, to restore was 11minutes. With SATA, the restore was only 5.5minutes. I could only imagine if I was restoring from SATA to SATA. It would be blazing fast mind you!!!

Anyhow, temperatures dropped from the CPU about 10degrees Celsius. Plus, its much, much quieter- fans running at 1700rpm vs. the stock 5500rpm. I don’t know about the GPU improvements but I know its working! The ATI 1600 video cards don’t come with temperature sensing. Sucks but O well.

I’m so exhausted… I broke ground on Sunday afternoon past drift noon, far beyond lunch. I dug a trench stretching more than eighty feet in length. It was a shallow grave for CPVC piping; not to code but I really did not care. The trench stretched and meandered from thickets to underground concrete, O my! It was very hard work! I was so tired after 4 hours of picking and [bitching]. The reason it took so long was because of the bushes being so thick. Squeezing through from what I can tell, a mismatched ally way made by the house wall and bush giving a meager 8 inches wide walk way- did I say that I was torn up too? Yeah…, I was definitely receiving a [hurt’n] by the thickets. It made trenching so difficult I had to take a few breaks or else I would scream!

I water the plants by hand and for the past three years or so, I’ve been miserable with a bucket of water. No more I say! I laid the pipes and various fittings down neatly. Cut, brazed and glued- I did it all! I had 3 water bibs strategically placed for efficiency. The first one: placed by the two French doors in front of my home; second: placed right by the pool pump and filter which is also located near the back door; third: placed in the back of my home. The logic is that I need water access to water my plants upfront (the ones elevated and that can not be reached by the sprinklers), clean my pool and filter, and water plants in the back.

Needless to say, I’m tired and beat. I have glue all over, nicks and bruises here and there, and a swear jar full of quarters! I would like to get some help but that will be many years down the road until the little ones grow old enough to render any use. Right now, all they do is eat and sleep, poop, and drive me crazy! I bet I would be done sooner too. It took three days to complete. I’m very happy with the results. I had to poor concrete around the bibs for a more solid footing. The pipes I ran were CPVC but at every bib, there was copper for added dexterity. Twisting and bending with CPVC is fine but when you have them under the ground for quite a few years, they become brittle and will eventually snap cleanly in two if tension is applied in a vertical movement or occasional shakings.

I was going over a friend’s house to do some PC upgrades. It was a new motherboard + processor, 530watt psu, and a 512mb pciE_x16 video card. During the long drive, I had the urge to call my friend. We have not spoken to each other for awhile. I didn’t give up on her. So I contemplated for a wee bit to see if I should give her a call. I did. Every tone was a heart ache for I assumed she wouldn’t pick up and that I would have to leave a message. Finally on the third tone, she picked up. I was relieved for I had no clue what to say if I had left a message.

She hadn’t picked up for two whole weeks- mind you, I was a nuisance but I didn’t mind. Her friendship meant a lot more than my embarrassment. I guess I was ready to make a fool of myself to admit all wrongs whether I was right or she was wrong- it didn’t matter. When we talked, it was like something new; I didn’t know what to say nor how to put things. I was in the rough and I knew it. I hadn’t the slightest idea of how I would react when she said “Hey” but its the norm.

Two weeks of calling. There were many moments passed that I would flip the phone and speed dial 10 but find myself closing it right afterwards. I wrote many e-mails- all replying to the same letter, drafts, all of them drafts. Each letter I would hover the mice over [send] but stop myself and saved it as [draft]. I’m a fool, embarrassing myself in front of a mirror- all alone. Pity. She is my friend. A friend I have not lost hope in. A month has passed.

There is tension that is between us. From her to I but not from I to her. I’m resolute. I honestly don’t know where our friendship shall sail because I’m onboard but she might be hesitant. I’m happy that she picked up and it was soothing to hear her voice. I missed her quirky jokes and funny giggle. That too, comforts me. Now that I know (an assumption) we can still talk, I don’t think its up to me anymore whether we continue or fall behind. She has me if she but to ask. I’m foolish and misunderstood. One of many flaws I bare. I hate to lose a friend like her since I have so very few to begin with.