life on the wand

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Do people even still have blogs?
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I used to write text and put in pictures. Now I tell my stories on Snapchat, only this is my wife's story. I just happen to be in it.
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Oh, I should post a follow-up for 2014, because that was a good year as well! Later...
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I want to brag a little bit about how I did in 2013, but to post this on Facebook or Google+ or any of the other social sites would be too braggy I think. So, instead, I'll post right here on my blog that I am pretty sure no one reads. Well, why would they? I never post.

So, I formally set two, maybe three, goals for this year:

Read through the Bible:


Run 500 miles:

And third goal was to pray a set prayer every day. But, every day is pretty intense, and so there were certainly days I missed. But, I'd give myself a 90% or greater rating on that one.

So, what about 2014?
I'm thinking:
1. Read through Bible
2. Pray daily
3. Run 500 miles
4. Maintain weight and waist
5. Give away at least 10% of everything I earn

Those are good things, but are they important? Do they make the world a better place? I think I need to have some of those goals as well.
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Wow! Almost 10 years of this web log! (And, not much to show for it, either!) After all, I only managed one post in all of 2012, and 2013 is more than half over with no posts yet (except for this one).

Today is the first day of the last year I can claim to be in my 40's. I'm trying to decide whether I should have a midlife crisis or not. Could be kinda fun -- maybe go buy a crotch rocket motorcycle (oh, wait, already have one of those...). I know, I'll get my pilot's license! And a plane!
Or not.

So, there you go.

For future posts on this site, I would like to write about our recent visit to southeast Europe. For now, this picture of the view from the hotel balcony in Tirana, Albania, will have to do.



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Evidence that today is Monday:

• I got hit with a late fee on my corporate credit card because of long delay in getting expense report approved. (Do I ask my boss to pay the $39???)
• Microsoft LiveMeeting didn't work for 8AM meeting. Well, it did, at about 8:21!
• Gas pump at Chevron locked up in the middle of approving credit card. - Doctor office called to let us know our insurance was canceled 8/15! (My company changed us to another plan without notifying us).
• New insurance company doesn't show we have already met our deductibles for the year.
• Tire pressure indicator on truck came on while driving to work -- do I have a leak in a tire?

And so, I went home at lunch and had a 30 minute nap!
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My brother once told me that to properly estimate how long a job is going to take, multiply by two and use the next greater time unit. For example, a one-hour job (multiplied by two, then increased to next time unit -- hours to days) will take two days. I've found that is often a bit of an overestimation, but not by much. Sometimes just increasing to the next time unit is enough. My wife asked me this morning how long it would take to replace the faucet in the downstairs bathroom (forgot to take a before picture, but this is a close approximation).


I explained that in a perfect world it could take an hour, but it would probably take two days. She wondered why.
It all starts with an assumption that the valves that cut the water off to the faucet actually work. If they don't, then you have to replace them. (This picture is the replaced valves.)


And, of course, one wouldn't turn off all the way, and the other one, once turned off, wouldn't turn back on! Thus began the trip to Home Depot for two new 1/4 turn angle stop valves (the multi-turn valves aren't worth the money -- don't buy them). And, once you start to the store, other errands get tacked on, so an hour or two later we were back home. Getting the water turned off to the house wasn't hard (thankfully), and sweating the old valves off went fairly quickly. But, sweating the new fittings on... water kept weeping down the pipe into the hot water side as I was sweating it on, and so it ended up with a cold joint and a tiny leak. Turn the water back off, sweat the valve off, start over again. Second time and it worked! I'll call that victory. Then I learned that there isn't enough room in a pedestal sink to take the old drain out, so I had to remove the sink from the wall. I've learned by now that trying to remove the old drain by hand is a waste of time, so I just used a sawsall and whacked it off. Well, this could go on for a while, but after removing the sink, reinstalling sink, fixing a leak in the supply line, then removing the pedestal from under the sink to fix a leak at the base of the sink, etc., I finally finished up the job about six or eight hours after starting it. But, it is now done, and it looks much better.


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I don't know how long it has been, exactly, since we could get two cars into the garage. I think it's been less than a year, but I'm not completely sure. I set up a work table in there when we started to work on tiling the master bath, probably last spring sometime. However, today Joyce and I finally got all the stuff moved out of the way, the motorcycles all on their side



(thankfully Philip has the Rebel in Abilene or it would be impossible to get them all to fit), and both cars in the garage. Victory!


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We've had quite a few problems with the windows on the Passat. First the driver's window fell down. I learned it was a plastic part that isn't available for VW's, but there is a similar part for Audis that can be modified to work. So, I did this repair some time ago (I thought I did a blog post on it, but I don't see one now). A few months after the driver's side window failed, the passenger window failed as well, so I did the repair on it. My first thought when the driver's side window failed again recently is that my first repair had failed. However, that was not the problem.



My original repair is the pink sliders shown in the above picture, and up close below. The picture above is when I repaired the passenger door, the picture below shows that the sliders are still in fine shape.



This time the problem was another little plastic piece. In the picture below you can see that it is a semi-circular piece that the cable slides on that pulls the window up and down. This piece pulled out of the slot and let the cable come loose, thus the window could not go up or down very well. You can see where this fits in the overall design of the window in the bottom right corner of the top picture.



I realized I could easily drill a hole through the plastic piece and put a screw through it, thus solving the problem with a solution stronger than the original design. However, when I put the plastic piece back in the frame, I noticed that the two window cables were still very loose. So I took the motor off and looked where the cables attach. You can see in the picture below that when the cables got loose from the plastic bit breaking off, the cables came off the capstan and wrapped around the motor shaft, basically knotting and kinking the cables.



I tried to re-string the cables on the capstan, but quickly decided that this was at best a temporary solution if I could even get it to work, and instead headed to the dealer to buy a whole new regulator for $150. It is sad that a $0.25 part destroyed a $150 part, but in effect that is what happened. I wonder why VW used a different, cheaper design for that one component than they did for the other three corners of the regulator. The picture below shows what they use on the other corners of the regulator, and you can see that this part rolls (no sliding), and has a metal rivet that holds the part to the window guide.


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