12/4/12

Oh, I forgot to tell the end of the War Room story because it didn’t fit the timeline of the travelogue.  So yesterday I came in at 0730 h to make sure they were able to log into the computer, right?  Well, they still hadn’t fingered out the password.  I had the same dude from Saturday log in again and I used the cheat sheet to get them into their monitoring software.  In so doing, I noticed that there was a new mouse in the computer.  I remember it being a new moue on Saturday as well but didn’t think anything of it at the time… or at this time either.  While they were having their meeting, I went back to desktop support to talk to Dennis about the login problem.  While walking to his office, I realized the importance of the new mouse.  “Hey!” thought I, “I’ll bet whoever installed that new mouse ‘cleaned up’ the computer area and threw away the piece of paper with the log in information!”  Dennis wanted the “Little Donkey” tag number from the computer… although he might have said “asset” now that I think about it.  I said I'd wait for the meeting to end and e-mail that info to him.  I also stopped in at the desk of the dude to whom I'd passed the “new mouse request” last week.  I asked him if he’d been involved in the installation thereof.  He had.  I asked if he threw away a little slip of paper which was sitting on top of the tower.  He had.  I told him what he’d done.  I now involved him in the search for the missing login information.  He began by e-mailing the dude who usually logs in to that computer while I went back to the room.  When the meeting ended, I e-mailed the “Little Donkey” tag number to Dennis and waited to hear from him.  Pretty soon I saw that the cursor was beginning to move on its own.  I called Dennis to see if it was him.  It was.  He found out the username assigned to that room and to whom it belonged.  When he told me, I took off to that guy’s office.  He looked on his computer and said, “Try ‘the password he gave me but I'm not going to type here for the entire world to see’.”  As I was walking back to the War Room, I got an e-mail from “Mouse Installer/Paper Away Thrower” suggesting I go talk to the very dude I'd just left.  I replied that I had just come from his office and have a possible password.  It worked.  I then e-mailed everyone involved that “the password he gave me but I'm not going to type here for the entire world to see” worked so that we’d all have it for the future.  I then broke all kinds of cyber-security rules by writing it down on the door to the cabinet so someone would have to REALLY try hard to throw it away again.  I fingered the username only works on that computer and it is almost always logged on anyway, how bad a risk is it, really?  I mean, I could even go ahead and put the password up here in the rant, for all the harm y'all could do with it… but I'm still not going to.  And that finishes up the War Room story, back to the narrative of the weekend.  Sunday morning I head to the shop to play with Lil' Wiggly some more.  I had decided that a) since the fuel level gauge read backwards [empty=full, full=empty], and 2) we want to put that two-in/two-out muffler where the gas tank is, I'd remove the gas tank.  I changed into a jumpsuit and crawled under the ass-end of the car.  I removed the drain plug thinking, “There can't be much fuel in here.”  There was.  I filled the bucket once and replaced the drain plug.  I poured all the gasoline, trying to leave as much of the brake fluid and dirt which had been in the bucket before I began behind, into a five-gallon kerosene/diesel can.  I filled the bucket a second time, after dumping the brake fluid and cleaning out the dirt, and finished filling the five-gallon can.  I got another gallon out of the tank and poured it into a regular one-gallon gas can.  I labeled the kerosene can “Questionable gasoline drained from Lil' Wiggly onto brake fluid and dirt” so we’d know from whence it came, and whether we want to use it, in the future.  I then got cracking on removing the tank.  I cut the lines and unbolted the tank.  I had to go inside the hatch to remove the filler neck and then the thing fell to the floor.  I took it out to the 510 Wagon out back and set it there to finish evaporating.  Next I grabbed the muffler.  It looks like it might just work where we want to put it, but I won't be sure until I have another person to help position it and see where it sits.  Having the axle in place wouldn’t hurt either.  Next I took the 3” U-bend I'd bought with the muffler and started making the turn-downs.  I decided against zooking them to the muffler until we are sure it is going to work.  I had a look at the radiator and decided it was time to start re-taping the wiring harness.  To make a short story long, I've taped one whole section of the under-hood wiring harness all the way to the firewall.  The starter, coil, oil, and water wiring still needs to be done but I'll run them in another harness… probably.  Inside the car, I sorted out some more of the cockpit wiring and decided to go ahead and remove the fuel level gauge from the dash.  I also made the decision that the hot lead powering the gauges could also power the high beam switch and made the requisite jumpers for that.  Now I was in need of a volt meter to fill the hole left behind by the fuel gauge.  Juan might remember a few weeks ago when we needed a volt meter to test something and tried to use the one I'd bought for Nadine as a tester.  If Juan remembers that story, while I was removing the gauge from the packaging I dropped it.  When we wired it up, it pegged 18 volts on a 12 volt battery so we fingered it was damaged in the fall.  Yeah, if you wire the gauge correctly, it works fine.  Tell me please, why the hell are there three wire connections on a volt meter?  You need positive voltage and a ground, two connections.  Apparently if you connect the one marked “S” and the one marked “G” you peg the thing.  If you connect the one marked “I” and the one marked “G” it reads properly.  I never tried connecting “S” and “I” but it works the way I want it to so I'm going to let that be an experiment for another time.  Anyhoo, we had the thing wired wrong that time and assumed it was broken.  Since I now knew the gauge worked, I went ahead and installed it in the dash.  By this time it was getting late so I cleaned up and went home.  Just as I was turning onto my street, mom called to ask if I was going to the JNC car show at Freebird’s.  I'd totally forgotten about it.  I came home and checked the website but no one had said whether or not they were coming.  I shot Jeff a text and he said he was.  I rolled The Seven out and headed east.  I was about half an hour early so I went in Freebird’s for a cookie and soda then sat outside to wait for folks.  Eventually more arrived and we chatted for a while before going in to eat.  After that, we chatted some more by the cars and I bowed out to go home.  And that gets y'all caught up on my life.