Spring in NS

April is finally over and its into May. I thought for sure that the cold weather would never leave. Then, it got warm for a couple weeks, and it only took about a couple days for the flowers to start growing.

I had some peppers growing on the window sill too. They look pretty dangerous.

We finally got Nathan's garage floor poured too. I wasnt much help due work, but that floor is damn nice.

So, then Melissa comes over and wants to use the computer. No problem. Turns it on and nothing... monitor turns on for a split second and then disappears.

I know some people would make fun of me for this, but I am "curious" I guess. I dont really want to spend $200 on another monitor. I'd rather spend $800 on a flatscreen TV that I can route the computer through, and since I can't afford that yet, I decide to either fix the monitor or disconnect the internet and put the computer away.

So, I tear the monitor apart (it snaps together, not many screws) and pull out its guts. There is the control board for the screen and a power supply board.

Looking closely at the board, there is a discoloured part with a nice toasty black capacitor on it. Hmm... Its supposed to be yellow, I thought.

Looked for a couple days and finally found another capacitor to replace it. (its the blue one sticking out from under the board).

Plugged it in and crossed my fingers... Jackpot!

So, similar to what I have said before... If you or anyone you know needs a monitor repaired... for god sakes, take it to a professional!

Touring around...

I was trying to think how I could post this and make it the most interesting post ever, when I realized that as always, everyone would just plain be excited to read it. Yes, both of my readers.

I got the chance to finally hang the shelf on the wall at Melissa's parents house. It was a little tricky to get the shelf level without a... uhh... level. Turns out a round tube of lipstick and some eyeballing work just fine. I was originally worried about the load on the shelf, so I wanted to use some heavy duty hangers. I dont think there's gonna be more than 150lb of coats on this shelf, so I think it should be ok.

Looks pretty good if I don't mind saying so. The trouble is that I know all the imperfections in it, however, I dare anyone to find any of them.

Before hanging the shelf, we walked out on the ice and found some rocks on the shore in Toney River. Despite how nice it looks in the picture, it was FREEZING here.

The next week, we wanted to find some waterfalls in the area. I used to take my days off in Alberta and hike out to waterfalls and take pictures of them. So, I was looking forward to this. The waterfalls in Alberta, in the mountains and foothills around 300+ feet tall. The largest waterfall in NS is only 100ft. The ones near here are around 40 ft. I was skeptical.

Every day at lunch, I see these two windmills on Fitzpatrick Mtn. in Scotsburn through the cafeteria windows. I've been dying to see them in person. So, I tried to find out how to get to them. I had no success, but it turns out there's one in Tatamagouche about 100m off the road. Sweet. We got to the windmill, but there was signs everywhere that said no trespassing. A little farther up the road was a path through the woods that lead to a clearing right beside the windmill. Nanuk, Melissa and myself walked up there and had a little photoshoot.

The hub of the windmill (the part the blades attach to) is literally the size of a house. I was amazed at the size of the thing. And, you hear all the time about the noise these things make and how they're so disruptive. I will just say that I had to concentrate for a long time just to be able to hear the thing. I think the people who say this probably have supersonic hearing or something.

From there, we went through Tatamagouche (right past Sara Bonnyman's) out to Wentworth. On the way, we took some pictures of an old lobster boat (check melissa's blog, i'm trying not to post the same pictures). Also we stopped at a bakery and got some bread and date squares. Luckily we ate at least a couple, as Nanuk found his way into them later on.

Just past Wentworth, not too far into the woods is a waterfall. It was nowhere near as tall as the ones in Alberta, but I'll admit I was impressed. Nanuk didnt like being drug through the water for all the pictures though.

Leaving there, we went back through Truro, stopping at the cave right by the train tracks. Again, I think Nanuk was getting tired of having to pose.

Ended up back in Toney River for Easter supper. It was great. It snowed a bunch that night, and went tobogganing the next day. Dogs running through deep snow are quite hilarious.

Not a whole lot exciting has happened since then. I've been working a lot of hours and spending quite a bit of time out on the "other side of the harbour". My new plans are to build some more furniture and finish off the backhoe that we've been working on for almost a year now.

Oh, and Bret, don't get jealous... you're still my buddy!

More finished projects

So, a long time ago, Melissa decided to build a shelf. Then with a variety of circumstances, including a VERY cold winter, the shelf sat dormant on the... shelf in the shop.

I finally decided that Sandi's tray and Melissa's shelf, along with Brandon's garbage bins needed to be finished... literally. Spent the week of St Paddy's day with about 2-3 hrs every night at the wood shop. I would spend about 30 mins spraying the stuff, then have to clean the sprayer and do it all over again the other night.

Here's the play by play:

Originally, I had 1 coat of varathane on the back side of all the parts for the shelf. So, I sanded and put on another coat.

Then flip the parts and spray them. (keep in mind, its about an hours work to clean the spray gun). Then sand out the rough spots and spray again.

Then the shelf got assembled into the "upper" half and the "lower" half. One more coat of varathane.



Then the assembly. All went well here once I figured out the fasteners to use. The back of the shelf got 5 pocket holes in it, and 4 counter sunk screws. In all, you should be able to sit on this shelf with no fear of it breaking. So, the shelf is in two halves, should be easy to assemble... only about 12 more nails. WRONG.


I took out the finishing nailer and drove in the first nail. BANG! Nothing. Tried again. CLICK. Nothing. So I thought it was jammed. Took the gun apart and realized the pin that drives the nail was slightly rusted and stuck forward. Weird, it should return on its own. I pushed it back and lubed it with some oil. Went to drive the next nail. BANG. It worked on a test piece. Better try it twice though, I thought. CLICK. Nothing. Hmm... the pin must be stuck again. I'd better check it. Opened it up again. Yup, its siezed. Pushed it back. BANG. One nail. BANG. Two nails. BANG. Three nails. I'm on a roll. CLICK. Nothing. Opened it up again. Pin is stuck again. But this time its not moving.


After a phone call, I decided to tear the gun apart and fix the siezed part. Took the back off of the gun and little pieces of plastic fell everywhere. Turns out the front part of the cylinder that the piston rides in had completely shattered. 8 more nails to go... no air gun. I was definately not pounding them in by hand. So I put all the tools away and just as I was about to give up. I found slightly shorter nails that fit the smaller gun.

So, I was able to finish the shelf.


I tried ordering the part for the gun. Turns out you have to be a certified 'repair' person to order parts for the nailer. I guess most people just pay to have people fix things. Not this guy. Its only gonna cost me $30 or so to get the part. Finding the part is a whole story in itself.

You came up with one pretty nice shelf, Melissa. I had to put up with a lot of heckling because of the heart in it though.

Safety first :)

Just Chillin Out

This week was OK. It started off with me trying to watch a movie from Blockbuster. I rented Crank and Little Miss Sunshine. Little Miss Sunshine would not play in my DVD player, so I got the idea to fix my old DVD player that I havent used in a year. I did some research on the internet and finally decided what was wrong with it. The spindle motor had gone out of it. Apparently 9 times out of 10, you can oil the motor and get it working again. Time to tear it apart.

The good news is that it now turns, but the bad news is it doesnt turn fast enough. Not quite good enough to read the DVDs. Oh well, wasted a couple days anyways.

Went up to the shop and helped Nathan and Billy do some wiring for a couple nights. We ran the piping to the lights and to the plugs, etc.

Friday night just took it easy. Saturday went to Truro and bought myself a new jacket. Saturday night we went to the shop and had a "pub night". Brandon brought his portable oven and deep fryer and we cooked chicken wings, mozza sticks, etc. It was good. As usual, didnt make it to sleep until about 3am after a few games of darts. Got a good action shot of mike throwing darts.

The coolest guy you'll ever meet.

Playing a drinking game

Mike throwing darts (Had to take 1000 pictures to get this good one)

Brakes are Important

On Wednesday and Thursday past it was -20 and -30 out. On Wed. on the drive to work I noticed that my anti-lock brakes kicked on a bit. I just figured there was a lot of ice on the roads. Thursday as I was coming into Westville, I hit the brakes and went completely through the intersection. Oh well, I just figured it was icy. That night on the way home from work I thought the brake pedal felt weird so I picked a dry spot on the roads and stood on the brake pedal. I HAD NO BRAKES! So I start coming down this hill with stop sign at the bottom. There's a semi-truck turning in front of me really really slowly. I had to stop. I stood on the brake pedal and nothing... I was heading directly for the trailer of this truck. I started thinking about what I could do to get around him. I figured I could probably squeeze past the edge of his trailer if I drove half in the ditch half on the road and turned the opposite way I was going. I geared the truck down and put the front tire over the edge of the ditch. I might have made it past the truck by just a few inches. I had to pull over on the side of the road for a minute so I could collect my thoughts. That and my hands were shaking.
I drove up to Tims and got a coffee, then went to Highland Ford for some brake fluid (the reservoir was empty). Eventually I made it home after the most stressful drive of my life. Took the Escape to Nathans and inspected it all over. We couldnt find any leaks at all in any lines. Then I noticed that the parking brake light was out. It had been on for 8 months or so. As it turns out, the parking brake light is also the low brake fluid light. I had been driving around for almost 8 months with no brake fluid. We finally decided to leave the escape in the heated garage over night to let all the ice and snow melt off it. Nathan lent me his old car to drive to work the next day. After work, went to Nathan's and we started bleeding brake lines. Everything went fine until we got to the front of the escape. The passenger side bled no problem but the bleeder screw snapped out of the caliper on the driver's side. We couldnt do anything more that day. Saturday we went to town to get new bleeder screws. They do not list these parts anywhere. Back to Nathan's. We took the one good bleeder and went back to town. There are no parts listed anywhere (including Ford) to replace those screws. Chevy, however, uses the identical part. Haha. We tried welding a nut to the broken bleeder, but couldnt get it out. The only way to get it out was to remove the caliper, heat it up, drill out the bleeder and use an easy out on it. I ended up putting a used caliper on the escape anyways. We bled the line and I'm back in business. The brakes actually work better than before now.

The rest of the week was pretty dull compared to that.

After seeing pictures of Melissa in New Zealand, I am very jealous.

SNOWWW!!!

Finally, its winter!

No Tickets Left

I got quite excited today at work, cause they said it was going to be a storm. There was going to be a pile of snow come down and there was a heavy snowfall warning. I kept running to the window and looking. Nothing... run to the window and look again... nothing. When I left to come home, there might have been half a cm of snow on the ground. As of right now, theres a little over 10 cm or so. I don't think it qualifies as a heavy snowfall warning though.

I still am pretty excited to see the snow on the ground. It might just be winter here in NS for a couple days.

Mike and I got bored on Friday night so we decided to go somewhere to have a few drinks, but we didnt want to spend too much money. So we decided to go to the Glasgow Pub. That place sketches me out. I ran into the father of the daughter of the girl I dated for like 2 weeks. I thought he was in jail. I probably dont have to explain why I got away from that one.

Saturday, I had no energy at all, so I laid on the couch for a couple of hours after going to Truro. I tried to get tickets to the World's Largest Pub Crawl, but did not succeed. Although, I would like to go and am willing to pay for tickets, so if anyone has any...LET ME KNOW! Oh yah, went to Truro and I was looking at a new Jeep again. I seriously need one. Its not a question of wants, it's mostly needs. So after Breakfast, Jeep and no tickets, I came home and got bored. I called Tasha and Keith and Tasha wanted to do something. I pulled out an old card on this one and tried to convince them to go bowling. No one ever wants to go bowling except me. So, we went to the pool hall. Played pool for 5 hrs and listened to the karaoke. I was drinking Pepsi so I was the DD.

Sunday watched Talladega Nights at Keith's, had breakfast, came home. Nathan dropped in and we went and picked up some paint and brushes at Central. Stopped at Tims for the usual and went and painted the trim around the windows in the garage and around the beams. We're running out of things to do in the shop. I managed to get Sandi's tray finished in the wood shop, but I need a day with NO HUMIDITY so I can paint it. It will only take like 20-30 mins to paint, but since Nova Scotia is turning into the tropics lately, there's no way paint will dry without me staying at the shop for like 5 hrs running the furnace.

I don't think I have any pictures I can post right now.

But I'll leave you with this thought. Why do people always keep the window scraper INSIDE the car at night?