What did YOU do today?

[Rick W]

I’m not 6’2”, but there was a time that I could carry four 10” block at once, two in each hand. Then I got older and more beat up. Also was able to take two bundles of shingles up a ladder at once back then.

Those old timers that used to carry 500# cast iron tubs up steps by themselves though… yikes… my grandfather was able to bend an 8” steel spike until the ends touched with his bare hands…

I did a little side work for a plumber in college when I was working at the home center, to pick up some extra cash. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, and I’d say you were fibbing. The old fart plumber I was working for, I helped him wiggle a beat up old cast-iron tub on his shoulders, thinking I was going to be holding the other end. Then he kind of stood up bent over like a fat armadillo and slowly walked out the house with it. No stairs though, maybe you exaggerated on that part…

Seeing stuff like that in person is better than all the superhero movies combined!

 

[Blmpkn]

Yep, that’s exactly what the politicians will do every time…

How else are "we" supposed to fund other people's wars? Jeeze Rick, have a lil compassion woulda?

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I did a little side work for a plumber in college when I was working at the home center, to pick up some extra cash. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, and I’d say you were fibbing. The old fart plumber I was working for, I helped him wiggle a beat up old cast-iron tub on his shoulders, thinking I was going to be holding the other end. Then he kind of stood up bent over like a fat armadillo and slowly walked out the house with it. No stairs though, maybe you’re exaggerated on that part…

Seeing stuff like that in person is better than all the superhero movies combined!

There’s a lot of houses around here where the tub is on the second floor… lol

My preferred method when I’ve had to remove an old cast iron tub is to smash it to pieces, remove the nearest window and chuck the pieces out into the yard. It’s a lot easier that way, lol

 

[Rick W]

Well, I’m disappointed in all of you and the moderators in particular, tsk tsk. I never thought I’d be saying this at 71 years old, but today is my birthday. Yeah, I know, everyone will chime in now….

So far, I washed all the mud out of the Missing Linc from hauling the blocks, I blew out the interior with the leaf blower, and then wiped down the seats and the dash with a damp sponge. Pressure washed the outside, but didn’t feel up to putting soap on it.

I also made a little bracket to hang my little mileage plate. I’ve had it for about six months. I figured if I waited any longer, it would be obsolete.

And ever since I put those six-dollar-on-close-out Harbor Freight halogen floods on the top of the made-from-a-toolbox-lid light rack, they’ve been pointing cockeyed. I loosened them up and finally pointed them in the right direction. Well, I think so anyway, I’ll know tonight.

My knee is killing me, but I otherwise feel amazingly good. Moving those block was the most exercise I’ve probably had in 15 years. I think, coupled with the weight loss, I might actually rejoin the functioning human race again.

Heading up to the cute little brunette later today. She’s going to take me out for some Chinese food.

Lincoln is Lincoln. If you’ve got a dog, you know what I mean.

And, as always, I try to walk in His shadow. If we do it correctly, however, all we get is His light. Still partly shady in my existence.

And, seriously, as regards TRS and you guys, I’m honored to be in your company. That’s a pretty good birthday gift.

 

[Things2do]

Yep, that’s exactly what the politicians will do every time…

At least I was willing to give it the little bit that I did, pretty much everything I gave it would have been thrown away anyway, and in return I got to watch a happy little furry tree rat sitting calmly next to me for a few minutes.

As a band called Rebel Son once sang,
"Politician, legislative man
He smiles, while he shakes your hand
He promises you the world if you vote for him on election day
Well I can smell [@%!^&$%@] from a mile away"

 

[Curious Hound]

Well, I’m disappointed in all of you and the moderators in particular, tsk tsk. I never thought I’d be saying this at 71 years old, but today is my birthday. Yeah, I know, everyone will chime in now….

So far, I washed all the mud out of the Missing Linc from hauling the blocks, I blew out the interior with the leaf blower, and then wiped down the seats and the dash with a damp sponge. Pressure washed the outside, but didn’t feel up to putting soap on it.

I also made a little bracket to hang my little mileage plate. I’ve had it for about six months. I figured if I waited any longer, it would be obsolete.

View attachment 142684

And ever since I put those six-dollar-on-close-out Harbor Freight halogen floods on the top of the made-from-a-toolbox-lid light rack, they’ve been pointing cockeyed. I loosened them up and finally pointed them in the right direction. Well, I think so anyway, I’ll know tonight.

My knee is killing me, but I otherwise feel amazingly good. Moving those block was the most exercise I’ve probably had in 15 years. I think, coupled with the weight loss, I might actually rejoin the functioning human race again.

Heading up to the cute little brunette later today. She’s going to take me out for some Chinese food.

Lincoln is Lincoln. If you’ve got a dog, you know what I mean.

And, as always, I try to walk in His shadow. If we do it correctly, however, all we get is His light. Still partly shady in my existence.

And, seriously, as regards TRS and you guys, I’m honored to be in your company. That’s a pretty good birthday gift.

I'll admit that I don't look at the birthday list every day. So, Happy Birthday! Rest, relax and recover from moving all those blocks.

Honestly, I've always been terrible with birthdays. I usually get it when Facebook reminds me.

 

[Rick W]

I'll admit that I don't look at the birthday list every day. So, Happy Birthday! Rest, relax and recover from moving all those blocks.

Honestly, I've always been terrible with birthdays. I usually get it when Facebook reminds me.

Hey, that gives me an idea. I know @Jim Oaks is always trying to increase the reach and benefits of TRS. Maybe we should start a birthday club banner!

 

[Curious Hound]

Hey, that gives me an idea. I know @Jim Oaks is always trying to increase the reach and benefits of TRS. Maybe we should start a birthday club banner!

I don't know about all that. But, if you didn't know, scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see a section listing todays birthdays. So, technically, the forum remembered.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I did a large load of laundry today, and it was warm and sunny enough to hang it outside to dry. During our last snowstorm I rolled a friend of mine's car with a half a roll of really thin single ply that he left down in my apartment as penance for coming down and using our good toilet paper. He responded by putting the same toilet paper, after it had dried, along with some dirt and gravel from the parking lot underneath my sheets and inside my pillowcase. Luckily he failed to put any in my wool blanket. When my mom was little it belonged to my grandparents, it wasn't new then, they all say it could be over a hundred years old, and I would most certainly be handing him that $40+ dry cleaning bill. As it is it just cost me the $1.25 for the washing machine.

Then I went to enquire at a mechanic shop that a guy from my church introduced me to last year. The owner said that he could keep me busy if I had some time last summer, but that was a year ago now. He went home early with a cold before I got there today.

And then I went gold panning. I just picked a random spot and took the surface sediment from under a rock so I wasn't expecting much. I had a real pan that my dad bought in the '80's and a thrift store serving spoon to shovel with. After about 45 minutes I had one or two tablespoons of black sand with maybe a flake or two of flour gold in it. But it was a nice day to be squatting next to a sunny section of a creek in a canyon.


Someone was just telling me about the Katy Freeway section of I-10 in Texas the other day. Including frontage roads one part of that one is 26 lanes wide.

One is a baseball team and the other is a band. Damn Yankees aren't just the ones that stay, they're also the ones that Come Again.

Unless it's the middle of the night we usually bypass Atlanta to the west. I think it's about 45 minutes slower in ideal conditions, but 45 minutes is easy to lose in Atlanta. I don't think I've seen that city in the daylight while just passing through since they started building the elevated lanes alone I-75.

They can also somehow convey information to other crows and to their offspring. I read somewhere that if you walk out to a murder and swing a dead crow over your head their yet unhatched kids will still attack you years later.


That's wild to think about. I grew up outside of Chattanooga, TN. The whole Chattanooga MSA is about a half a million people in 2,000 square miles and it meets my definition of "too big." So, naturally, I went from there to the Front Range of Colorado.

View attachment 142654
This one used to take food out of my hand.


I'd rather mess with gasoline than onions. It takes over twice as long for my hands to quit smelling like onion as it does for them to stop smelling like gas.

I like the office chair bicycle. At first I thought it was rear steer... Wiggle your butt to turn.

 

[Roert42]

I unloaded the third load this morning and went back for the fourth. The fourth was only a partial load, something like 1500 pounds. In hindsight, I wish I had put every block in the truck myself just so I could say I did that, but the concrete crew working on the house showed up when I had about a half dozen to go. It was a crew of some pretty solid and stocky Hispanics, one of which was probably 6 foot 2. He looked like a giant. They threw those blocks in the back of the truck like they were Styrofoam. And the giant picked up the last two of the solid ones like it was a 12 pack.

Another trip home at 25 miles an hour, and then I did unload them when I got here.

View attachment 142652View attachment 142653

Then I had a guy come by and buy the donut spare tire from the cute little brunette’s Subaru Forester, which she sold a couple years ago. She got a full-size tire right after she bought it, and the spare sat her garage the whole time, like new. I got $30 for it. The only reason I’m mentioning that spare tire is because the guy who bought it is going to use it on a Pontiac Fiero. Yes, I did say that correctly. He put a big GM V6 in it with fuel injection, etc., and he has Corvette brakes on the four corners. Those 5 x 100 donuts fit around the brakes, and he’s using them as rollers until he gets the mechanical done and then buy some custom wheels. What a hoot!

The poor little Missing Linc is dirtier than the day I grabbed it up in South Carolina and dragged it home.

You trying to make the F250 feel bad because you used the ranger for heavy lifting?

 

[Things2do]

I like the office chair bicycle. At first I thought it was rear steer... Wiggle your butt to turn.

Steering is an adventure with that little rear wheel. It's impossible to pedal unless you're going straight ahead and when turning you have to raise the inside pedal all the way to the top or it will drag on the ground. And the only working brake is the pedal brake in that little rear tire. Speaking from experience on a downhill, it just makes a grinding noise without slowing down if you're running faster than 15 or 20 MPH. And you have to backpedal through the slack in the old shifting mechanism before it engages so braking while turning is impossible. It doesn't go anywhere fast without a good hill, but even geared like it is I've never gotten the rear tire to slip on snow.


Does anyone have thoughts on a 5 year old Dell Precision 3551? It has an i5-10400H, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB Micron PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, an NVIDIA Quadro P620 graphics card (factory, it's supposed to be good enough for SolidWorks and whatnot), and a 15.6" 1920x1080 screen. It has a clean install of Windows 11 Pro and the battery is in good shape. The guy on Marketplace is asking $220.

I am an engineering student, but I've made it this far on the 10 year old Dell Latitude 3470 that I'm looking to replace with 8 GB of RAM, a 128 GB SSD, and an i5-6300U.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Steering is an adventure with that little rear wheel. It's impossible to pedal unless you're going straight ahead and when turning you have to raise the inside pedal all the way to the top or it will drag on the ground. And the only working brake is the pedal brake in that little rear tire. Speaking from experience on a downhill, it just makes a grinding noise without slowing down if you're running faster than 15 or 20 MPH. And you have to backpedal through the slack in the old shifting mechanism before it engages so braking while turning is impossible. It doesn't go anywhere fast without a good hill, but even geared like it is I've never gotten the rear tire to slip on snow.


Does anyone have thoughts on a 5 year old Dell Precision 3551? It has an i5-10400H, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a 256GB Micron PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, an NVIDIA Quadro P620 graphics card (factory, it's supposed to be good enough for SolidWorks and whatnot), and a 15.6" 1920x1080 screen. It has a clean install of Windows 11 Pro and the battery is in good shape. The guy on Marketplace is asking $220.

I am an engineering student, but I've made it this far on the 10 year old Dell Latitude 3470 that I'm looking to replace with 8 GB of RAM, a 128 GB SSD, and an i5-6300U.

Thanks for the info on the bike..

Why are you looking to upgrade? I haven't kept up much on computer hardware but I've read that RAM is hard to find. Is there still an upgrade path for this motherboard?

 

[scotts90ranger]

32 gig of ram isn't bad, I don't think much has improved in computers in the last few years, as long as it will support Win 11 you should be fine. More of everything is always better but those sound like reasonable numbers to me...

 

[scotts90ranger]

As for me apparently I slept wrong last night and pinched my sciatic nerve so I have that going for me . Haven't done much this week yet, Monday night I mostly took off from projects since the mosquitoes were being dumb, last night I helped my brother rearrange some tractors and cleaned a carburetor on one of his older ones (Farmall A), I think it was just loose so we added some lock washers.

 

[Things2do]

Thanks for the info on the bike..

Why are you looking to upgrade? I haven't kept up much on computer hardware but I've read that RAM is hard to find. Is there still an upgrade path for this motherboard?

Mine is getting older and slower, it won't run most newer programs, it crashes at least once a week, the battery is down to only lasting about an hour, the charging port has enough wiggle that it's probably going to start giving me trouble relatively soon, the hard drive is tiny, the RAM is over half in use even before I open any programs after restarting it, it regularly freezes up when doing such "difficult" tasks as opening Chrome or loading Facebook Marketplace listings, it doesn't have a number pad on the keyboard... I'm no stranger to using old computer hardware well beyond when most people would replace it, but there comes a time. I replaced my bottom of the barrel 2018 LG phone with a midrange 2021 Motorola a couple of years ago, my first computers were a Windows 98-era Dell running Windows XP and a Windows 3.1/MS-DOS IBM, and I still have a fleet of old computers.

Mine takes DDR3 RAM, which didn't go up as much because it's so old, but I'm not sure about spending that much on this one. It would probably be $40 to bump this one's RAM up to 16 GB. A bigger hard drive would probably run me another $20 or $30 because it's SATA, those aren't as desirable now, and I don't care about the extra speed of an SSD compared to an HDD. A new battery would probably be another $20, for an unbranded one that probably starts at 70% or 80% of its rated capacity. And then $80+ later I'm still stuck with a low end processor that was released in September of 2015 in a fairly low end laptop screen and body from 2016. According to the all-knowing AI that tried to convince me that memory prices have been declining the processor in that Marketplace laptop should be functionally four times faster than mine. Parts of mine's body plastics are also starting to fall apart. Half of the grille over the fan output has broken out and the plastic thing in the keyboard under the keys is coming apart. And that Marketplace one is supposed to have a backlit keyboard. I'm a night owl, so that would definitely be handy.

32 gig of ram isn't bad, I don't think much has improved in computers in the last few years, as long as it will support Win 11 you should be fine. More of everything is always better but those sound like reasonable numbers to me...

It should run it since he claims it has it installed, but other than for program compatibility I don't care about Windows 11. I'm still running a 2021 update version of Windows 10 Pro on my laptop and a 2021 or 2022 version of Android that apps are about to stop supporting on my phone.
The hard drive is a little small, but that's easy to rectify once the prices come down and other than that it seems like I wouldn't have much trouble getting another 5 or 10 years out of it given what I've gotten out of mine.