Dio's WorkshopWelcome to my brain. It’s messy. It’s interesting. And it’s all connected if you stick around long enough. "Believe Nothing: no matter who said it, even if I have said it, except it agree with your own reason and common sense. Siddhartha Guatamo, the Buddha.
Snow day at the J.O.B. Spent the day at Da’s to get the yodatruck back on the road. New lines between the master and slave cylinder,,, NO LOVE. Fought with it for an hour trying to get the system to bleed and finally said “FUCKIT!” and put the new master cylinder we had bought but not installed (there was a new one on the truck so I figured, WRONGLY, ‘its new, its good’.)
New cylinder, bench bled, installed, hooked up the vacuum bleeder and 10 seconds later was tightening bleeder bolts. Adjusted the pedal height, and took it for a spin.
DIFFERENT TRUCK from the one I test drove with Da two weeks ago!!! Took it for a little torture test (needed to vent some frustration this thing had instilled in me.). Took it up a steep and muddy hill to an old cemetary in 4by,,, Mud flyin’ high and everywhere and all four tires spinning and spitting goop all over the place,,,,,
BUT! She climbed that hill like nothing flat and nothing broke or gave up and the pedal was PERFECT the whole time.
I’m confident in this repair job and every single stinking part of the clutch train is BRAND NEW. Not the optimal way, but its there and the system is solid again.
and in no small part, a lot of what has me angsty (not anxious,,,) is my complete lack of focus in my life. This is a new status for me, and not altogether a bad thing: there is a solid reason for it and even an honorable one, but,,,,
MY LIFE has zero focus right now. Such as back in the late ninties, early aughts, I was bound and determined that I was going to be a “A SOUND MAN” and to hell with what my peers thought about it. I worked gigs for literal dinner, no cash, just a bag of fast food. Why? Because I knew there was only ONE WAY to get that foot in the door and that was to get someone on the inside to crack it open. Once I had that foot in the door, things accelerated FAST and within 4 years, I was doing tours nationally. I was damned good at my job and LOVED IT. And that love carried a lot of weight towards getting me along.
What I do now,,,,
I enjoy my position: I’d friggin better, since I pretty much created it out of thin air, and am the only ‘monkey’ at the shop that can do those tricks,,,, (more specifically, WILLING to do those tricks,,, No one else wants to learn ‘my job’.) BUT, its a dead end position. I have never intended to stick around after Da has left this mortal coil. That’s a recipe for an existence in purgatory. And that is how I feel about things right now. I ain’t shifting my resolve about it, but I am feeling a little bit like a loose line swaying in the breeze with no particular function.
And I feel often like trying to push for a certain goal, is like asking my Da to drop dead,,,, That road leads to guilt complexes and such and dammit,,,, Yeah,,, so I try to keep my nose to the grindstone, build small habitual rituals to maintain sanity (KAYAKING!) and sway in the breeze of time, holding on,
I was playing passenger on the road out to (and back from) our jobsite today. My mind kept circling around “what do you really want to do? ” (admittedly, a constant thought when I am feeling such as above) and I kept coming back to three words
Desire
Service
Growth
The words themselves could have a myriad of meanings to whomever is reading them: I was trying to pull all three into something concrete that I could apply towards the future. One of the aspects of the Desire side was “Not working as an Emp”. Not the only part of that, but one strong aspect for certain.
And the damned thing, I keep coming back to “TEACH”.
That fills all the points, I desire to teach, its a service, and a PROPER teacher doesn’t rest on his laurels: he keeps educating himself (growth), perfecting/polishing his ART.
and The State doesn’t like people like me to teach,,, Might fill some kids heads with ideas like FREEDOM and PATRIOTISM or something equally “anti-social” as critical thinking,,,,,,
And I certainly can’t fake the Marxist ideals they want you to parrot to get ‘certified’,,,
Loose line, swaying in the breeze,,,,
sigh
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And even with some of the good things showing on the radar of the world stage, Like Marine-Penny getting acquited, or (even though caught) a guy offing a CEO, putting the fear in those that would make life more difficult,,,, I circle back around to this Meme
And remember its all kabuki theater,,, What we ‘think’ we are seeing is likely exactly what those in power want us to think.
My cynicism runs deep,,,, It only takes 1% of the population to want to run things to make life for the remainder a misery. Those that want to control, and those that just wanna be left alone, and the useless eaters that want to be told how to live that like following the first group. Makes a body want to become the hermit on the mountain top,,,(hey, I sorta kinda resemble that remark.,,,,)
Live
Learn
LAUGH
LOAD.
Gotta walk that path in the middle, thats “The Way”,,,,
Took all day today. Not the clutch, but getting things running. And no, it wasn’t the clutch, It wasn’t the Slave Cylinder, nor the Master,,,,
It’s something between the two. Had it up’n’runnin’ and Dad took it out: did good for the test drive, but he was confuzzed about the 4wheel drive thing. (this one doesn’t have the same ‘shift’ pattern for the transfer case as his older model and it caught him funny.) So, When he came back, he asked me to check it and I did so by taking it for a spin myself. And made it about 1/2 mile before that clutch pedal was back on the floor. Looking, there is some ‘wet’ on one of the line fittings, and it could be attributed to a valve cover leak, but I am starting to think there is something else going on under that muck. It seems to be leaking just enough to keep it wet, but that means its sucking air as well Gasses compress, fluids do not: Hydraulics require that non-compression aspect.
too late to worry about it tonight, and Da is not overly worried about it.
I’m the one burning inside over this. Had I diag’ed properly, we would have already fixed the issue and saved him quite a bit of cash. I’m sorta kicking myself in the backside on this. “live and learn’ but dammit, this was a noob screw-up, and I ain’t a noob. (rusty as F! but not noob.)
ANyWhoozitsss, tomorrow is a back to the J.O.B. and (fingers crossed) regular working hours,,,, I plan, IF OTHERWISE AT THE J.O.B., to get back on fixing that line between cylinders and getting this SNAFU corrected. (some weekend, eh? long hours getting crusty grimy paws that don’t wanna come clean, and now I head back to the mines for a regular run of ‘not sure’,,,, LOL)
On the downhill slide now. Trans dropped, clutch replaced, gghetto reface on the flywheel (flapdisced with grinder, no grooves, just a light sanding.) and the gearbox is back in with two bolts holding it there with a jack under the transfer case side to keep it all in line until tomorrow.
I’m whooped.
I think I destroyed my shirt and pants with the junk that was falling off that truck onto the floor (that I was wallowing in for 7 hours) Not a whole lot of greasy stuff, but the truck was used extensively in mining operations: lots of dried muck that is mixed coal dust and clay/sand: LOTS of it.
Actually surprised that the gearbox slid in that smoothly (which isn’t saying it was smooth, just smoother than I expected)
And I started second guessing myself while tearing everything out. Namely, that slave cylinder is highly questionable in my eyes. AND, a faulty slave would have delivered similar failure. The old Friction disc looked rather good, and neither pressure plate nor flywheel looked heated up: no cracking or blued spots. BUT, as I said to dad, “We’re there, we have the parts, I ain’t doin’ this again in 3 months,,,,,” LOL. Even Da was saying, “I see now why you didn’t wanna do this,,,,”
(( What really burns my ass about the slave cylinder possibly being bad: the master cylinder is brand stinkin’ new. Why do you only replace one half of the system when those parts are (relatively) inexpensive??? Rhetorical question, I already know the answer.))
Showered, clean clothes, house is warm, and its dark out. Thinkin’ I’m gonna fall into bed like a felled tree,,,
Gonna be a long day/wknd potentially. Droppin’ the gearbox in Da’s truck (yeah, the new to him one) and doing a clutch replacement.
yay me
Slow season, needs cash, and Da made the offer. Normally don’wanna deal with heavy gearboxes while on me back, (don’t much like dealin’ with ’em on a danged lift, but so MUCH easier,,,) but,,,, needs the cash. (And Da doesn’t want to wait for the meh-kah-nik he found, to do the work,,, was told it would be a couple weeks before the guy could get him in.)
SO, Y’all gotta deal with the rest of the webz for entertainments,,,
Back when the digits ain’t covered in cargunk-n-goo.
My last post, I made some, what seemed to me, to be reasonable ASSUMPTIONS.
Well, then, Assume makes an ass out of you and me.
BCE has a better run-down with more intelligence applied to the sitrep, to include things I did not know existed.
I eat my hat. Not proud, and won’t EVER claim I know it all. (maybe thirty years ago, when I was young-n-dumb: now I am older and wiser and KNOW I don’t know it all, and have no clue of the things I don’t even know I don’t know,,, BUT KNOW I DON”T KNOW THEM,,,,,LOL,,, whadda paradox, eh?)
What I do know,,, I had a pistolla that was set up for a can, and I was told by a gunsmith to check the spring loading to make sure it would cycle on lower powered sub-sonics. That particular pistol was a fixed barrel (Non-reciprocating) that didn’t move or twitch a bit in any direction, such as a Glock does (and many others,,,) And it was .22, so yah, subsonics in those probably wouldn’t cycle the slide.
That info is what I based my assessment on, and I happily will admit that I may have jumped the shark and inserted my own foot into my own rectum in public.
WP won’t let me embed the vid,,, (HT to Vlad Tepes for the actual footage and some observable points)
First shot, failure to feed or failure cycle? Seems to me that he is using ill-matched subsonics (suppressors don’t like +P loads) and hadn’t matched the slide spring for it. Will cycle, but won’t fully cycle, may even stove pipe in some cases.
Is this where the 3 ‘live’ rounds that were marked come from? IF TRUE, the dude KNEW which rounds would be found and loaded accordingly. If that doesn’t tell you there was a message involved, I suggest getting a room with a live in assistant to help you feed yourself.
And calm? Dude was an ice cube. Steady hands, quick recovery to cycle the action, totally ignored a fleeing witness,,,,
Leaving the scene: essentially jogged across the street. DID NOT RUN,,, Running in NYFC gets you noticed*, jogging across a street is normal and expected to survive against Traffic. Then he ‘fled’ on an ebike? Dude, thats damn near Central American ‘Hitman’ Protocol,,, simple, all around transport, QUIET, and can go places QUICKLY that a regular vehicle wouldn’t and much faster than being a jogger or runner (*and who the fuck runs in NYFC at night? Someone that just did a bad,,,, begs for instant karma.)
enough with my analysis of the shooting. Where I am getting bad vibes from is a local fox news report showing the ‘Suspect’ unmasked, then showing another picture (that looks more like the shooter from the vid) and its OBVIOUS the two are completely different people, different dress, no backpack (one that is kinda hard to hide at that) in the first pic, etc etc. Even in the commentary over there, only about every fourth comment is something other than “Not the same person, shame on FOX for trying to get some innocent tagged” Here’s the embed of that,,,,
Yeah, there is a chance the guy had multiple dress modes,,, shoe lifts to change his height, several layered jackets, but that backpack doesn’t just fade from sight Dunno,,,
as for the no gloves thing as some suggested: in the first vid, it looks as if he doesn’t have gloves on, but its also rather grainy footage. Kid gloves would appear as no gloves and with all the other aspects of this shooting, I would say, dude may not be ‘Pro’, but he sure as F! ain’t rank amateur! He had something between his digits and things he was touching. And I would bet with a high confidence that the phone they found ditched in the alley: stolen or a burner bought with cash. Those are VERY EASY TO FIND IN NYFC and I recall being offered several makes and models when I was in town (back when I was still touring), and that was back AFTER 9/11. I don’t expect things to have changed all that much since then.
Take notes people, I think we are going to see more of this in the future.
And remember those S’s,, Shoot, Shovel, AND SHUT THE F! UP!!! Even when the Just-us system works, a silent suspect drives the po-po nuts. (it means they actually have to do the job and INVESTIGATE/PROVIDE EVIDENCE. And you can’t get cornered with Perjury if you never say a thing.)
Live
LEARN
Laugh
LOAD (and match your springs to your rounds load. Unless you want to leave a message,,,)
It was the early part of the Tweens when the political divisions of the United States reached irreconcilable differences. Ted, a burnt out computer programmer, and Jim, a double amputee combat vet, reverse engineer the pentagons drone program and create a rebel air force. While traveling the country helping others defend what is left of the country, they run afoul a most evil woman intent on creating a serfdom within the country.
A beginner’s guide to going off grid. how to evaluate if you even want to make the attempt. written by the curmudgeonly author of this blog and his dog
Dio's Workshop 