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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Still no car, but I did talk to the mechanic yesterday. He's waiting on the part and he's going to fix it. Looks like he won't need to drop the fuel tank since he'll be using nylon tubing to replace the rusted out line, so if nothing changes it's going to be fixed for under a $100 when he's done.

I can live with that.

Don't know if I'll be getting it before Thanksgiving though.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Back from my walk and I would have had lunch at that little hot dog/hamburger place I like which is near the dentist and the pharmacy I use. But it was just too wet. It was even too wet to wait outside for the bus. I had to stay indoors of the mall till the bus came.

The rain is tapering off now and it is suppose to be dry tomorrow. So we shall see.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Back from my walk and I would have had lunch at that little hot dog/hamburger place I like which is near the dentist and the pharmacy I use. But it was just too wet. It was even too wet to wait outside for the bus. I had to stay indoors of the mall till the bus came.

The rain is tapering off now and it is suppose to be dry tomorrow. So we shall see.

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I hope tomorrow is drier than today!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WIVB) — This week’s snowstorm has set a state record for the amount of snowfall within a 24-hour period, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz confirmed on Sunday.
FEMA emergency declaration for NY approved
The historic snowstorm made landfall in Western New York on Thursday and dumped snow on the region until Saturday night. The record was for the most snowfall within a 24-hour period, the previous record having been set in the Tug Hill region of New York State in the 1960s.

Orchard Park had the most overall snowfall of the storm, with 77 inches. Hamburg had 73.7 inches, while Blasdell had 65 inches, rounded out by Elma’s 58.2 inches and West Seneca’s 49 inches for the top five towns and villages that had the most snow.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It sounds like you had an awesome Thanksgiving, SIX! Isn't it great when unexpected events turn out to be so nice??

Leather couch?? Recliner chair? Those would be so classy in your redone living room. It would highlight all work you've done.

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I had a really nice day, too. Except for picking up the dinners and taking the dog for a REALLY short walk, I did nothing. I rested bc I've been flogging myself the past few weeks, watched TV with the family, had a NICE long chat with one of my sisters. But mostly, I rested, and it was great!

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Off to get my laundry done then a walk.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Off to get my laundry done then a walk.

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I have a lot of cleanup at this end. One of these days, I'll get to that yardwork, but today I think it's all indoor work.

Well, another 1/2 cup coffee and then I'll get going.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like you had a good day SIX.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like you had a good day SIX.

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Yeah. It was.

Tomorrow is only 44 and raining though. Our last 50 degree day isn't until Tuesday I guess. We'll see if I'm feeling like working in the cold and the rain. I won't really have to be going in and out once I get out there, but I did have to take all my batteries and the liquid nails back inside because of the cold temps overnight. Hopefully it's not raining all day. No reason to get up early since it won't even be hitting 40 degrees until the 9 o'clock hour.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Sounds like you had a good day SIX.

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Yeah. It was.

Tomorrow is only 44 and raining though. Our last 50 degree day isn't until Tuesday I guess. We'll see if I'm feeling like working in the cold and the rain. I won't really have to be going in and out once I get out there, but I did have to take all my batteries and the liquid nails back inside because of the cold temps overnight. Hopefully it's not raining all day. No reason to get up early since it won't even be hitting 40 degrees until the 9 o'clock hour.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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That's good SIX.

My area is sitting at 40F now in the sun. But still calls for snow with rain. Just have to see. But I'm not doing anything today. Sunday the day I allow myself not to do anything.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You seem to have found balance.

I'm still struggling with it.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I hate how much more I pay attention to politics when the weather gets cold.

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I listen to geopolitics when I'm in the kitchen, which is almost every day. But when I can't get my rear in gear I spend way too much time posting, which feels like I'm following an elephant parade with a pooper scooper!

So let's focus on something else. You're a really bright guy, SIX, and unafraid of learning. And you learn really quickly.

How about teaching someone something. In person, or online? Or extending your knowledge into another field? Car repair?

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What I need to do is get this house finished and more efficiently heated so I can have a proper workspace in my basement for project work to keep my mind away from such things. TV and Movies hold no interest for me, my computer project gets kind of dangerous since I can lose days at a time in it and not be properly keeping up with anything else if I go too far down that rabbit hole, and these short days when the sun is down before 4:30PM really screws with my mood and sleep schedule.

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Well, there's that too!

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I didn't buy anything for Black Friday... yet. But I still have about a billion tabs open and a few carts full of stuff that I probably won't buy.

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That's what I do. I fill up my cart. Sometimes I put several choices of the same type... fittings, plants, plumbing supplies... let it sit for a few days to a week, then go back and weed it down. A lot.

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My goal today is to finish my brother's computer sleeve and to get that microwave taken apart so I can get the useful stuff out and put the rest on the curb Wednesday night. Then I'll spend the "warm" Wednesday cleaning the garage for the year and making sure I didn't forget to weatherize something. I should put starting my snow blower in the mix too. Don't want to find out there's a problem when I need it.

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What useful stuff in a microwave??? Just curious.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You seem to have found balance.
I'm still struggling with it.

BRENDA: It is a struggle and it took me years to get to it. But I'm glad that I finally managed to do it.

You'll get there. It takes time.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I hate how much more I pay attention to politics when the weather gets cold.

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I listen to geopolitics when I'm in the kitchen, which is almost every day. But when I can't get my rear in gear I spend way too much time posting, which feels like I'm following an elephant parade with a pooper scooper!

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At the end of the day, isn't it almost just a big waste of time? My life changed a lot while Trump was President, but that didn't have anything to do with it. That was me getting sober and then finally getting around to getting my house in order. Literally. So many old skills brushed up on and improved. So many new things learned. So many new tools acquired, both literally and figuratively. Fixing relationships. Constant flow of compliments from neighbors who I'm sure hated having me as their neighbor when I was drunk 24/7 and let everything go to hell.

If it wasn't for Covid screwing with everybody's head for so long and the fallout from that, almost nothing has really changed in the real world as far as I'm concerned. Not while Trump was President. Not these last two years. The prices might be a little more now, but other than that everything is still copacetic.

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So let's focus on something else. You're a really bright guy, SIX, and unafraid of learning. And you learn really quickly.

How about teaching someone something. In person, or online? Or extending your knowledge into another field? Car repair?

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I don't know how I'd go about teaching stuff to people. Not that I couldn't do it, but I don't know how I'd find somebody to teach. Anybody in my circle either doesn't have any interest in what I know or already knows it. Although, I my friend's dad did some electrical work in my friend's garage a few weeks back and he told me that he took a cue from a couple of things I showed him that I did in both my garage and my shed and he did it like I did.

I thought that was pretty freakin' awesome since he's the guy who taught me how to do electric over 20 years ago in the first place.



As for doing something else, I think I'd like to start getting into woodworking and furniture making. I think I really have a knack for it. It would be a long time before I was able to make any profit off of it though. I'm too slow at things right now to make it viable, and I have a LOT of tools that I'd need to buy. That's part of my dilemma right now. Boy... if I could bring myself to buy that desktop planer for $360, that would be huge. There's a whole lot of furniture I could start building just using pallet wood if I had that tool to smooth it out for me.

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What I need to do is get this house finished and more efficiently heated so I can have a proper workspace in my basement for project work to keep my mind away from such things. TV and Movies hold no interest for me, my computer project gets kind of dangerous since I can lose days at a time in it and not be properly keeping up with anything else if I go too far down that rabbit hole, and these short days when the sun is down before 4:30PM really screws with my mood and sleep schedule.

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Well, there's that too!

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Yeah... I'll get there.

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I didn't buy anything for Black Friday... yet. But I still have about a billion tabs open and a few carts full of stuff that I probably won't buy.

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That's what I do. I fill up my cart. Sometimes I put several choices of the same type... fittings, plants, plumbing supplies... let it sit for a few days to a week, then go back and weed it down. A lot.

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Yeah. I don't have a week. Half of the deals end at midnight tonight, the other half are good until midnight on the 30th. Not even sure what timezone that is, so it's possible if I waited until midnight and decided to purchase some of them it might already be too late.

I've been doing the "several of the same type" thing too.

In my case right, it's tools, tool combo kits, hard drive enclosures and SD cards.

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My goal today is to finish my brother's computer sleeve and to get that microwave taken apart so I can get the useful stuff out and put the rest on the curb Wednesday night. Then I'll spend the "warm" Wednesday cleaning the garage for the year and making sure I didn't forget to weatherize something. I should put starting my snow blower in the mix too. Don't want to find out there's a problem when I need it.

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What useful stuff in a microwave??? Just curious.

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The transformers are gold. I've got four of them right now. With a vice, a hacksaw, a little extra heavy gauge wire and some other steps I can't pull up from memory right now, I can make my own arc welder with only two of them. And without any extra parts I can make an electromagnet out of just one of them.

There's also two very useful super powerful doughnut magnets inside of the magnetron. I've got 6 of those already, so this time I just took the unit out and didn't destroy it to get to the magnets. It appears that there might be some cool things I can do with an intact magnetron that I may want to try out before I'd have any need for another two of those magnets. You've also got the motor for the turntable which can be useful. And normally you have a very similar motor that comes with a fan that resembles a computer fan without the housing, but because this was a vented unit it didn't have that. But what it did have was a huge motor at the top with two cylindrical fans that remind me of large versions of the paint stirring attachment I have for my drill. I don't know what I'd do with that, but I've never seen one before. There's a capacitor in there as well, and quite a few resistors and other bits on the electrical board that can be de-soldered. Not sure what I'd do with all of that yet, but I have a tote for bits like this that I've removed from things, and if I ever wanted to build something all of these parts are pretty darn expensive if you buy them new. Dead or redundant microwaves are a great source for free electronic parts.

It's also nice to separate all of the metal from the plastic so I can leave the metal out for the light haulers and it doesn't end up in the trash.



Careful with the capacitor though if you ever take one apart yourself. You've got to make sure it's discharged before you fiddle with it or you could end up killing yourself. No joke.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You seem to have found balance.

I'm still struggling with it.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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It is a struggle and it took me years to get to it. But I'm glad that I finally managed to do it.

You'll get there. It takes time.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You seem to have found balance.
I'm still struggling with it.

BRENDA: It is a struggle and it took me years to get to it. But I'm glad that I finally managed to do it.

You'll get there. It takes time.

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I think what BRENDA has, that I don't quite have, is a consistent schedule - dauky, weekly, perhaps even monthly.

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I don't think you function that way, SIX. Someone I know very well seems to be like you: when he's "on" he's on 150%. Perhaps even more than you: hyperfocused on a project or process for days/weeks/ months at a time. When immersed in something entirely losing track of time. In between projects kind of torpid. You can at least switch up from day to day. Not sure he can.

Some people are more suited to chipping away at things. Putting in consistent but smaller effort on a variety of things, which can be scheduled more easily.

Some people, like one person I know, flit from one thing to anyone a random pattern. That, I think, is an attention problem. Neither the intense productivity with your kind of intense energy nor the consistent day to day effort.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You seem to have found balance.

I'm still struggling with it.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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It is a struggle and it took me years to get to it. But I'm glad that I finally managed to do it.

You'll get there. It takes time.

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Yeah. I envy you.

I'm better than before. Always a work in progress though.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well then, you've made a lot more progress on changing your work style than I have.
I'm only (very!) rarely an intensely -focused person, altho there are times it could be very useful.

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Oh... I'm still super intense and it nags at me in the back of my head when things are left unfinished. I've just had to switch from thing to thing this summer. The biggest reason was I had to drop everything I was doing when my friend's dad finally started making good on the work he owed me for over a year. (He did finally square up, BTW).

The other reason is cutting down on waste. Both wasted product and wasted time. If I know I'm going to be primering 8 different unrelated things, it makes sense to have all 8 things prepped for prime at one time rather than clean the brush and waste 1/3 of a gallon over time. Same with caulk and liquid nails and watertite too. Much less time wasted doing cleanup that way too... especially when I'm making a mess of my garage. Why clean up the garage once or twice a week when I can do a ton of stuff in there all at once and just clean it up once?

The trick is not to make it TOO MUCH at once though. I've still got 100 things I need to prime at some point, but if I spent all summer prepping everything I wouldn't have even started priming anything yet.

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Usually, the dog takes me for a walk every day, and the family doesn't appreciate late meals, so I'm kept somewhat on a schedule.

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I hear ya, although I can't relate. I'm never joking when I say I have zero obligations. That will change when my old man is no longer around to look after my brother, but for right now it's really all on me to keep myself motivated and working. It's why it's so easy for me to slip into a streak of depression and not get back up for a while. That happens less frequently these days than in the past, but winter is always hard. Last winter was almost a complete waste. I got hooked on a couple of PC games and there had to be about a 2.5 month stretch where nothing of value was done.

This time I did bury myself in my computer project for a week when it was really cold though, and after I got back from visting my brother I've been managing to keep busy with physical project work, and prepping most of the stuff I need in my basement for work I need to do during the winter that I can't do in the garage becasue of the temp. But when I was working on that computer project I had a few nights where I slowly started creeping from 12AM bedtimes to 4AM bedtimes. I can really get wrapped up in that and even though I know there's no reason to be staying up that late because there's always tomorrow, I get a bit OCD about it.

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It would be great if we could just switch on certain personality traits, wouldn't it?

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Well, with looking after my mom and then helping Blair before he died. I've had a lot of things to unlearn especially in regard to my mom. So, I'm trying to take it easier on myself now.

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For a long time on these boards my signature was "Do right, be right".

As long as you're doing that, no sense in being hard on yourself, right?

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You definitely are and you should be proud of what you have accomplished.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Well, with looking after my mom and then helping Blair before he died. I've had a lot of things to unlearn especially in regard to my mom. So, I'm trying to take it easier on myself now.

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For a long time on these boards my signature was "Do right, be right".

As long as you're doing that, no sense in being hard on yourself, right?

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You definitely are and you should be proud of what you have accomplished.

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I try not to be as hard on myself as I used to be. It's easier these days because even though I always fall back into a slump eventually, I know that I'm doing right with more of my time than not.

But it's still a long way for me before I find balance.



But it's a worthwhile goal.




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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
It was.

My thing was that I got into this routine with my mom especially where everything was a rush in the last few years of her life with doctors and hospitals. It can be very hard to get out of that mentality. I still every so often fall back into it.

True. But like they say old habits are hard to break. And that one keeps sneaking back up on me.

Balance is.

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