7/2/13

Well that didn't go as planned.  As I was walking down the hall to go to the AT&T store, I realized I didn’t have the box and all the accoutrements to return the Dingleberry.  I turned around and came back to my desk.  I wound up spending the last two hours of the day watching John Carpenter’s “They Live.”  John, our John not Mr. Carpenter, texted me a few weeks ago asking if I'd ever seen the film.  I said I had and gassed on about it for a bit… I think.  Anyhoo, he wound up buying a copy of it and giving it to me after he watched it.  His review of it was better than I remembered so I fingered I otter watch it again.  It really IS better than I remembered.  Sure, it is a tad slowly paced, yet somehow the resolution comes a bit too quickly, but all in all, it isn’t a bad film.  And Meg Foster is easy on the eyes… however, ironically, her eyes creep me right the hell out!  I'm sure hers are natural, but they look so UN-natural that, as a contact lens wearer, they make my eyes itch.  Nothing wigs me out worse than a creepy pair of contact lenses… okay, maybe the “S” word.  But I digress.  “They Live” is better than I remembered and I haven’t traded in the Dingleberry for a dumb phone, that’s what I'm getting at… sort of thing.  I did finally manage to answer two phone calls, not initiated by myself, so the thing might get a reprieve.  We’ll see.  I think the plan for Saturday is to finally go to the new shop and see about how we’re going to make it “livable.”  As I may have said before, there are some issues with the place which need immediate attention.  There is the door on the “tiny” shop which has been replaced with wood and is rotting away at the bottom, the windows in the “office” are all broken, the outside personnel door to the “office” needs to be secured, and finally there is the electricity issue.  I'm sure there is plenty of 110v power in and around the place, but I need at an absolute minimum one 220v outlet for the welder and air compressor.  We could, if we have to, continue to share the plug for those two items, but I'd rather have two dedicated circuits.  Also, it might be nice to have the compressor somewhere away from where we are working for noise sake.  I'm thinking tucked away in the back of the “office” perhaps.  Yes, that will mean running long air lines, but I can live with that.  What I don’t want is the compressor firing up right next to me while I'm trying to weld something.  That is the recipe for jerky welds and/or zooking myself.  I'm not confident enough in my heart’s condition to want to risk the one-two punch of being startled by a big noise AND an electric shock.  While the thought of “dying doing something I love” is romantic and all, it sure would be a pisser for John to have to deal with that situation.  I just thought of another potential 220v need: I'm going to look into a lift… or as Edd China on “Wheeler Dealers” calls it, a “ramp.”  I'm getting too old and crotchety to keep crawling under cars.  I want them up high when I work under them.  The new shop is a perfect time to see about that.  I've been on them intergooglewebs and I'm seeing that the price difference between two-post and four-post units is negligible.  New ones can be had for under $2,000.00 it seems.  I'm of two minds about what type to get though.  Two-posts scare the crap out of me.  I don’t know that I trust all that torque action to those tiny little concrete anchors into the floor.  You know there has to be a bunch of twisting going on where the posts meet the floor because there is no way the cars are going to be perfectly centered over them.  However, the drive-on ramp based four-post units limit the accessibility to the suspension components.  Yes, there are ways to make it possible to work on the suspension with a four post… oh right, there ARE ways to work on suspensions with a four-post.  I think I'd vote for a four.  I've sent John a text asking his opinion… as if I'm going to put one on my credit card today!  Psh, yeah right!  Of course we need to make sure we have enough ceiling height before jumping head-first into “ramp” ownership.  I think we probably do, but I won't do anything rash before we know for sure… and maybe not even then.  We’ll see.  Okay, I'm beginning to get excited about the new shop!  Huzzah!  It’s about time.  I think if we can get the place more weather-tight, I'll be happy with the place.  Okay, getting the place more critter-tight is a better assessment of my concern, actually.  Hmm, I wonder if a couple of those little “Snake Charmer” .410 shotguns secreted about the place might not be such a bad idea.  Of course I'm always packing either the 9mm Smith & Wesson, or the .380 Diamondback, or the .45 Colt/.410 Judge, or some combination thereof, but some more firepower around the place might be in order.  The neighborhood isn’t terrible, but it isn’t the greatest either.  And there are the aforementioned critters, of course.  Ooh, this gives me an excuse to buy more guns!  I think I'll be shopping for potential “shop guns” at the next show.  Of course I am also considering buying that folding Kel Tec the Russian had at the last show.  I think I can fit it in the safe and it would make a good shop gun… probably.  Well, John has replied to my question about “ramps.”  He votes two-post and suggests one of those portable units.  I'm not so sure about that.  They still require anchors to the floor and that is the part that scares me the most about two-post lifts… especially one which is not permanently attached to the floor!  I would feel much better about the portable unit if it had outriggers to stabilize it fore and aft… of course it would also need side to side outriggers as well, now that I think about it.  Hmm, no, I'm not sold on the idea of a two-post.  Not sold at all.  I'm going to call it a rant and do some more cipherin’ and figgerin’ on the situation.  Have a day.