Using my tools!
It has been a while, my old friends!
It was really fun to re-engage the problem solver within me.
Biography of a nobody day 40. February 9th.
I woke up feeling like cold DEATH this morning. Ugh. Not only was the house absolutely FREEZING but I had absolutely no deep sleep last night on account of coughy mc-cougherson jittering and spluttering next to me all night. Obviously, I do not remotely blame Bee- I mean she got less sleep than me as it was her that was ill and she got up at 7am. It was 9am before I braved the cold outside of the bed. I am more reflecting on how I feel in the morning in general. I dislike pretty much everything until about midday.
Getting back to being productive.
I did, however, have an actual reason to be up and about on this fine and freezing morning- I had somewhere to be! I got dressed, brushed my teeth and rushed out a coffee then got on the road. I was actually supposed to be there at 9 but I knew there wasn't much I could do until the owner arrived at 10. By there I mean a company my friend works at whom have requested I look at repairing the base to one of their pieces of equipment. I quoted for it a couple of weeks ago but that was quite an early guesstimation.
It is always more complicated than it seems. I was a little concerned at first that my friend had oversold me as an engineer- that was just the internal pessimism- I have got this! I had another glance at the machine and went to the car to fetch some tools. Great. the 6mm socket is missing, which b*llend has nabbed that I wonder? I got back to the machine and started dismantling it so I could detach the base... Using a 7mm socket instead of a 6mm. Super professional. I made it work. What I had failed to be able to see on my initial inspection was that the base is extremely integrated into the machine design. Since it is cast aluminium I assumed it would remain a pretty separate piece to the rest of the machine's structure- which was mostly stainless steel sheeting and plastic. I was wrong. There were mounted circuit boards and heat exchanges. All sorts of complicated expensive crap. I... Loved it! It was absolutely wicked. Like some sort of complicated puzzle of pieces. This machine is worth over 20k- so there are plenty of pieces involved- I had to sort, take apart and put back together all sorts of bits.
The casting base that I ended up with is actually quite a bit more complicated than it was possible to tell before I dismantled the machine. At first, I was quoting for an easy replacement, but now I am thinking I may need to repair what there is or the budget will need to increase. Increase by quite a chunk. Well, I will see if there is possibly further work after this repair/replacement and give a hefty discount if so. I am off work anyway and it is for a friend. The removal of the base, what I imagined would take me an hour, ended up lasting until just past midday.
I put the base in my car to look at fixing tomorrow, brain capacity permitting, and gave Bee a call to see how she was. She was not well. She had been doing some work from home but was feeling more ill rather than better regardless of the anti-biotics. I stopped at Subway on the way home to get us both something tasty and easy for lunch.
Reddit.
I spent the afternoon catching up my blog posts on here and helping some people on the r/blogging Reddit. I never really got Reddit until recently. It is just a fantastic community of pretty much everything. You want to fix your car, get help with blogs, Roast some people, research stocks, Toast some people, find Harry Potter memes then find out how to stop your puppy dry humping your leg... well there are Reddit groups for each of those things and more. So much more. All with helpful people waiting to join in with your happiness or problems. To make them better or worse depending on what you want.
Massages...
By evening bee was starting to really feel bad again, after feeling a little better from eating, and then she wandered back into the living room where I was chilling with a coupon. A full body massage coupon. I got her a set of 'Love coupons' for our anniversary- they are actually quite funny. They aren't new couple coupons where you try out random sex positions and got to fancy places- they are 'you do the chores for the day' or 'immediate end to this argument' coupons. Plus, of course, the odd pleasure coupon such as a free massage. We went upstairs, she lit some relaxing candles and I set about trying to gently massage her back. We started talking about where our favourite massages had been then I remembered how often my massages seemed to end in agony. The massagers I have met all seem to get a bit carried away at finding knots in my shoulders and engage all the pointy bits of their body to get rid of them. Elbows, knees... It wouldn't surprise me if there had been some chins and heels involved at some point. All I bloody know is I won't be getting another massage in Scotland any time soon.
Bee stayed upstairs after the massage because she was knackered and feeling really ill. I ended up playing some Rocket League with the guys... We lost every game for about an hour... Then we decided to get productive and zoom chat and work on our side hustles. I just wrote this. They have signed off now and I think it is probably a healthy time to get some shut-eye. Night all, catch up tomorrow.