Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year.....I Hope!

Thought I'd get an early start to the well wishes.

Don't stay out too late tonight, and DON'T drink and drive!

My wife and I were joking about how late we'd be able to stay up tonight. The consensus was maybe 11pm.

I have some errands to do today, and some other running around, but I'll be back here before 6pm.

And the weight loss is coming along nicely since my Doctor told me I had to drop 30 pounds by July. My wife has some very good diabetic cookbooks, and I knocked off eating most of the junky stuff I'd been nibbling on during the day. I think this will be the first Christmas season that I didn't gain 5 pounds, but rather lost 5 pounds!

I probably won't make it to the rifle range over the holiday, as I have a new project coming up, but I did field strip my M1, clean it, and properly grease it with some moly-based wheel bearing grease that most of my Garand books recommend. A dab here, a dab there, and an 'extra' dab where the Operating Rod slide back and forth in the channel.

Took me about 45 minutes from start to finish, but the extra time was spent learning all the parts, and inspecting them in their "as new" condition so I can spot wear patterns as they develop, and catch any parts that start to go bad. One of the things I have to do is get some spares for it so I can keep it running if it ever breaks down, something that shouldn't happen if I take care of it, and maintain it correctly. Still, I'm big on having spares (usually double spares!) on hand to minimize downtime if a failure occurs. It's worked well before, and I always replenish my stock of parts asoon as I draw one out for repairs.

So, hope you all have a safe New Year's Eve, and here's hoping we can get things back on-the-rails for 2014!

11 comments:

  1. Good job on the weight loss; it's tough, but sounds like you're doing it right! Also thanks for the reminder to have spare parts for the M1 (now that I have one). Still grinning about that.

    Happy New Year to you & your wife.

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  2. As they say, 3 is 2. 2 is 1 and 1 is none. It drives my wife crazy but that is my default position on little British car parts and tools.

    Wishing you a very Happy New Year.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, she razzes me about having double and triple "spares" on things, but then when I go out in the garage, and dig out some parts to fix something, she gets quite and "understands" it!

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  3. I figure to be in bed by 10:30. Yep, real party animal. Hey, I got my j-pole up - j-pole - still a bit of work to do inside routing about 30 feet of lmr-195 over to my desk.

    Happy New Year, drjim. 73 and clear.

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    Replies
    1. Why LMR-195? I would have used LMR-240 as a minimum, if I used Times coax at all...

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    2. Because I didn't ask you first? ;-)

      Hey, there's all sorts of stuff I don't know. Low-loss 50 ohm RG58 type sounded good to me.

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    3. heh-heh!

      LMR-240 is "RG-58 Type", while LMR-195 is smaller.

      For a run of 30~40 feet you probably wont suffer too much loss, but any more than that and you should use larger coax.

      Delete
  4. And thanks to all.

    I just hope 2014 is better than 2013 was.

    I don't need another MRSA, or another "Cardiac Incident"!!

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    Replies
    1. 2014............... So far, so good!
      Happy New Year

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Keep it civil, please....

Annnnd.....We Got Zip.....

 Total snow was about 6~8", but half o0f it melted as soon as it hit, and we never had more than 3" on the ground at any one time....