> On Mar 3, 2021, at 7:51 AM, Paul Sorenson <pentax1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Larry - > > Doing your own repairs can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, but...revel > in the fact that you can still do it.
The ideal is to be able to do it, but not be forced to do it. I’d happily settle for owning things that didn’t break down and need constant repair. > As you get older you'll find that the repairs you make still give you the > satisfaction of completing them, but they take longer to accomplish. Last night was a case in point. I glued the fan back together, let it set and before covering things back up decided to test it to make sure it actually worked. It turns out that a wire had come off a spade lug, had shorted out and pop! The weird thing was that I looked at all of the 220V breakers, in both panels, and didn’t see anything popped. I figured that I had blown a fuse in the washer. I then spent an hour or so trying to track it down, in the mean time I dropped various tools and screws where they fell into the dryer, and disappeared, and I had to spend more time looking for them. No matter what I did, the machine was dead. Last weekend on my ride I found a greenlee toner on the side of the road, a handy $60 tool that in addition to acting like a signal generator also checks continuity. Everything checked out, I finally grabbed my DMM and checked the outlet, which was dead. Long story short one of the breakers just didn’t look tripped. I reset it, turned the dryer on and the pop and smell of magic smoke let me know that I had forgotten to disconnect the toner from the switch I was testing. I just fried a couple of $1 ICs, but they’re surface mount. There is, I’m afraid, a difference between being able to do repairs and being competent at doing repairs. > But...even more difficult...is admitting to yourself "I have the skills; I > have the tools, but I can't do this anymore." It took me until about 75 to > begin to give up on some household repairs, and now, nearly 5 years later > it's still difficult. When you spend a lifetime working with "the tools" > maybe it never goes away. Marcia has finally convinced me to stay off the > roof. 😁 Falling off a roof can be even more inconvenient than needing to get someone else to go on it, not only for you but for the people stuck with taking care of what’s left of you. > > Back to photography...the turkey pix, I think, are better in this series than > the last. 39960 is a pretty classic tom turkey look and 39968 - the tom with > is harem of hens is fun. Thank you. This group is separated from the other by only a relatively small amount, and only has one tom. I wonder if they split off from the other group. > > -p > > On 3/2/2021 4:21 PM, Larry Colen wrote: >> Not unless you count taking photos of the busted fanblade in my clothes >> dryer. Sometimes I really envy people with no mechanical skills who are >> forced to buy reliable appliances rather than being consigned to kludging >> things back together long past their “good by”, or their “goodbye” date. >> I did waste a few megapixels on local fauna yesterday: turkeys, juncos, a >> robin and a couple of cows. If you’re already bored nearly into a coma this >> may be slightly less boring: >> >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/albums/72157718487879546 >> >> There are two flocks of turkeys on my ride around the block. This is the >> small flock on the near side of the hill. >> >> > -- > Paul Sorenson > Studio1941 > > Sooner or later "different" scares people. > -- > %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List > To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-le...@pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-le...@pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
