In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments

[ShottleBop]

More likely to laugh if he buys the hammer pants to go along with it.

[Ensign Steve]

Did Jesus use a nail gun?

[SharonDee]

I finally got Mah Precious taken care of and can drive him again.

You remember Mah Precious, yes? Mr. Mid Life Crisis car?

In case you forgot, click the spoiler below.

Anyway, I had been remiss in letting the car see the light of day and so when I was ready to take him out in the spring, his battery had died. Oops?

Long story short, my dad (of all people) reminded me to read the owner's manual. Therein we found out how to shut off the car alarm that had prevented my recharging the battery. It now has battery, it will soon pass emissions testing, and I've been driving it to work the past two days. No cops yet on that expired tag!

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Mine's a fire engine red, not the sedately deep red shown here.

Top Up:



Top Down:

[Janet]

I was going to put this elsewhere, but it definitely counts as a minor accomplishment. Today something clicked in my head and I got an idea for a funny picture that I should have thought of months ago. I've done two different versions, the subtle and the obvious. Tell me which one you like best.

The subtle first


And the obvious

[ChristinaM]

I think that he was conveniently forgetting and was just too lazy to hunt for one because I found one this morning under a pile of scrap wood in his shop. It's mine now until he admits that he had one all along but he probably really has 10.

[Pan Narrans]

Janet, I like the first one better. As you say, it's more subtle, while the second one is a bit too in your face for me.

Mind you, this is coming from someone who regards the Guide as holy scripture.

[thedoc]

Years ago I worked with a man who refused to have a Hammer in his possession, He claimed that a Hammer was "An Implement of Distruction". I asked him what he would do if he needed to drive a nail into the wall to hang a picture, and he said he would drive it in with his clog. So he approved the act of Hammering, but condemned the proper tool for the job.

[ChristinaM]

I'm not even going to admit to some of the things that I've used for purposes other than what they were intended for. My husband will do anything that I ask him too but he works hard and then spends most of the weekend doing projects around here and I have fun trying to figure out how I would do unimportant things if I didn't have him to do it for me or cringe at my "whatever works" style of making stuff. I know that something around here is going to turn into a big hoop or something like that with a hole to jump through if I just look at it the right way.

[ceptimus]

I once had to spend a weekend making some tricky software alterations to a device in a factory. There were some engineers working above me, installing a new floor/walkway and the noise was tremendous.

When they went off for a lunch break I went to look at their handiwork and found out how they managed to be so noisy - they had several large tool kits, but consisting almost entirely of different hammers - for other tools they had like two screwdrivers and a pair of mole grips shared between all of them.

[ChristinaM]

He manages all of the trades guys like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, HVAC people and all of that sort of stuff for a huge complex of buildings spread out all over the county so he doesn't personally have to hang tools off of himself. Ever since he started the remodel he seems to have grown a tape measure appendage on his hip though. I have to admit that it was pretty cool to see him knocking out walls, building a new one, giving me an outlet every 2 feet along the counters, putting in all of the plumbing and getting cabinets all built and installed all for next to nothing. He got all of the materials from his contractor buddies for free as they finished up jobs and had leftovers.

I'm jealous that you only had to listen to hammers. I've been serenaded by shrieking saws, power drills and the occasional a sledgehammer every weekend for the last two months. I'm sure not going to complain though because I'm getting a kitchen out of the deal and all I have to do is scrub and sand things and haul debris out of the room when he's done for the weekend.

[Kael]

I made an absolutely amazing coffee cake (that's the petty accomplishment part, I've never made it myself before), and all it's brought me is oppression at the hands of my loved ones. Something about using "too much" streusel topping, as though that's even, like, physically possible...

ETA: Definitely the first one, Janet. Subtlety wins hands down.

[ChristinaM]

The good news is that I accomplished teaching my dog to go up the ramp for the treat in the Kong Ball but she didn't like walking up the metal so I'll cover it with some old carpet or something. She needs a platform at the top of the ramp too so that she has more room to wrestle with the ball on the bungee cord and we have plenty of wood around for this. I failed miserably at teaching her to go through the bucket tube. It rocked so she didn't want to go all the way in but it took her less than a minute to figure out that she could keep her back legs on the ground, stretch all the way out and use her nose and paws to poke it past the center point and then run around to the other side and use her paws to get the treat. She was very proud of herself but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping she would learn. I'm going to start over with making a longer fence wire semicircle tube and eventually cover it up with something so that she can't do the same thing and pull the treat out from the side.

[Ensign Steve]

Kael, your loved ones are bad and they should feel bad. Too much streusel topping. As if.

Janet, another vote for subtle.

[Janet]

Thirded on no such thing as too much streusel. And thanks for the feedback.

[ChristinaM]

I made lots of progress on my dog playground this weekend. The only tools that I used were a hammer, 4 nails, a utility knife and a bunch of zip ties. I'm too lazy to resize them all so they're in spoiler tags.

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This is a picture of the whole thing.



I took some fence wire, bent it and stuck it in the ground for a tunnel. Then I hung some of their toys off of it and used the grape vines that I had and started to weave them in. I don't have many right now but after harvest I can let them grow long again and finish it in the spring.



This is 2 milk crates with a board nailed on top and a mat to make it less slippery. She has to go up the cinderblock step onto the platform and try to get the treat out of the kong ball hanging from a bungee cord.



This is a hoop made from some bent plastic tubing attached to some stakes with twist ties with a jumping bar to the right of it.



She doesn't have this one figured out yet but she's supposed to go up the ramp and stand on her hind legs to tip the cup with the treat in it so that she can knock it out. Eventually she'll get so tired of the cat eating the food that she'll figure out what the ramps are for.

[lisarea]

Oh, yeah? Well, I put that one cupboard door back on.

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Ha ha JK what do you think I'm Leonardo da Vinci or something? God! I found the screws for it like last week, though, so we're making progress.

[curses]

I learned to ride a motorcycle.

[ShottleBop]

Got some documents in today from a client, so I forwarded them to my assistant (who works about 110 miles away from where I do) for filing, and asked her to print the redlines (versions of the documents that are marked to show changes from a prior draft) for me. (Printing documents can take longer than you think it might.) Then I went to lunch.

About 10 minutes into lunch, my assistant sent me an email to tell me that (1) because we run Word 2003 (which uses *.doc files), and (2) the new documents were both (a) stored as Word 2010 documents (*.docx) and (b) password-protected, she was unable to open the documents. (I don't know why she can't do it on her machine--I can do it on mine--but our IT folks apparently confirmed that her setup was not up to the task.) I was able to whip out my Android phone and, using freebie app Kingsoft Office, open the offending files, resave them as Word 2003 documents, and then send them back to my assistant so that she could print them.

[Dingfod]

I'm now "working" on a new control console at "work". I'm watching all your fracking gas in fracking Pennsylvania now. Eat my fracking shorts, it's fracking paradise.

[BrotherMan]

[ceptimus]

I cleaned out a bookcase full of old VHS tapes and threw the vast majority in the trash. I kept a few that have videos made by my parents and I plus a couple of blank tapes and a cleaner tape (I do still have a VHS recorder player up in the loft so I suppose I may use those one day).

I threw over two hundred away - a mixture of pre-recorded bought ones and blanks onto which had been recorded movies from the TV. I wonder how many thousands of tons of these things have been thrown away in recent years and how many thousands of tons of them are still cluttering up people's houses?

Now I shall fill the bookcase with computer programming books, transferred from another over-full bookcase. I'll probably refer to a few of those over the next few years, but most will just sit there until they, in turn, get chucked out.

Anyway, the whole process has freed up some space to store some other newer junk, so that's good.

[curses]

Will your charity shops not take VHS? Ours will, I gave them all of my old movies earlier last year.

[ceptimus]

I wondered about that, but I'm pretty sure they already have more VHS tapes than they want. Very few homes in the UK bother with VHS anymore and those that do, plus the charity shops, are already submerged in tapes that other people have been trying to get rid of without feeling too guilty.

As an aside, I recommend not totaling up the amount of money you spent on old magazines, videos and books that you're throwing out; don't even try to work out a ball-park estimate - it's too depressing.

[Pan Narrans]

Yesterday I made 4 kilos of pickled zucchini

Also, last weekend we finished the Great Bedroom Switcharoo, where we converted the study to a new bedroom for Panini so that the new babby can have his old room.

It is glorious:

[wildernesse]

I went to Target and the grocery store with my toddler and managed to get everything on my list before he started screaming.

To balance this accomplishment out in my universe, I dropped a large container of chicken fried rice out of the fridge and onto the floor and all the groceries I was about to put in the fridge. The toddler used me getting the broom as an opportunity to open the freezer and get a popsicle out while walking through the middle of the fried rice mess.