Modern Vespa

Bah - the cold snap here has mandated the muffs going back on. I expect they won't come off until March or April.

I never like them when they first go on, but give it a week and I'll be quite happy with them again - I hope.

A week plus worth of cold rainy weather put's the kibosh on everything outside. Too wet to kill the weeds even. But sunny, cool days ahead, time to start spraying.

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

^^^^

Too political for MV, sorry, had to hide it.

Pissing me off: composing a long letter on the smart(?) phone, touching the wrong place, and losing it all.

Man, been there too often. Not just the phone. Seeing a blank space where you'd just been writing for some time is demoralizing.

Bit late now, but do you have an iPhone? If you swipe three fingers across screen, it puts back what you have deleted.

Waiting waiting waiting. Still need the grease i want to rebuild the swingarm so i can stick the engine back in.

Bloody gas line workmen right outside our flat starting work at 8am & blasting their radio...

A coworker (my lab partner) Had his 2012 Kia Sportage quit on him. It would start and sputter and quit. Fortunately, this was in the parking lot at work a mile from his apartment and not during the long trip he and his wife just took.

He had no idea where to take it, so knowing the can o' worms it might be, I suggested the dealership.

He had it towed there and it took them a literal month to get to it, even for diagnosis.

They quoted him $1600 to - get this - replace the intake manifold. I asked, "Gasket?" No, the manifold. Ok, I'm not a mechanic.

After said repair their response was, "Apparently that didn't fix the problem. Next step is $3500.

Did I mention it's a 2012 Kia?

I hate, Hate, HATE that mechanics have become nothing more than parts swappers. They don't diagnose, they just throw things at the wall to see what sticks.

Now he's out $1600 for a fix that wasn't and looking at taking it to another shop because the Kia dealership sucks.

I told him he has nothing to lose at this point and I'd rant until they cut the bill some. For Pete's sake, the manifold is only about $300 and they charged him $1200 for it.

I can't tell him what to do, but I know how I've handled these situations in the past.

Last week was an expensive one for me.

On Monday my wife's car was in the shop getting the oil pan and timing cover resealed. Total repairs cost $1700.

On Tuesday I had to take all four cats to the vet for their annual checkups. Four checkups, shots, and blood work on Walter came to $1400.

A week earlier we discovered a water leak coming from the floor in our living room. At first we thought it was due to the eaves needing to be cleaned, and that the rain had backed up behind the flashing and come down the wall. Turns out that was not the issue.

When the "plumber" who added the water lines to the extension connected the two pipes, instead of using a proper pipe connector, he used a T connector. He connected the lines to the ends of the top of the T, and crimped & soldered the base of the T. He probably figured that it would last 40 or 50 years, and that he'd be dead & buried before there was an issue. I got a plumber out on Wednesday, and he quickly found the leak. It was under the slab, but in an accessible part of the room, so no tunnelling was involved. The problem was that the excavation crew wasn't going to be able to stick around and do the backfill after the repair was complete, and we were leaving the next morning to visit my MIL until Sunday, so we had a pile of dirt in our living room all weekend. To be fair, we weren't home, so it didn't matter. They came on Monday and completed the backfill and concrete work.

Total cost of the plumbing repair: $4200.

Yuck!

When we discovered a weeping leak under our 1950 slab, I replaced the whole house plumbing with PEX through the attic. No mess.

No copper pipe should be in contact with concrete, so I hope the pipes were wrapped or run thru a sleeve.

I hope it wasn't done around 2006. One of the PEX manufacturing plants made a lot of sub-par material. There are subdivisions by me that had all the hot pipe leak after 5 to 10 years or so. It all had to come out and be re-plumbed. Big class action lawsuit.

2017. The earth moves quite a bit here, so I suspect it was that that strained a joint.

Manifolds:

From what I can see, the pipes that needed repair are completely encased in soil. There's at least 6" of soil between the pipe and the concrete.

That's not to say that there aren't copper pipes poking through the concrete in other parts of the house. Based on the other issues we've discovered over the last 12 years, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find others.

Added to which, they're cutting off our supply all day tomorrow = no hot water/heating.

I'll be glad when they have finished the work... Roll on December 10th (supposedly).

I hear you. I built my first house. It took 3 1/2 years, but being in construction (plasterer) helped tremendously. My second house was built in 1961, a solid house that went thru many hurricanes with little damage. My third and present home is lousy in comparison to both. I swear it was built by roving gypsies. I'm always fixing something.......

Did they at least leave the wheels on it?

If they had, I would had it towed off the lot and started over.

So, there I was, up at the mother-in-law's place three days ago with Trixie, and I volunteered to carry a cardboard carton of surplus dishware down to the car and take it back to our house for storage....or disposal, don't recall exactly what the mission was. The carton was probably around 30-40 pounds and very awkward to hold and carry, but I managed it by holding it out in front of me.

That night, I noticed some discomfort way down in my lower back, mostly on the left side of the spine.

By the next morning, it was obvious that I had truly strained some parts down there, and the pain was....well, debilitating, and I've spent the past several days pretty much confined to, and sleeping in, a recliner with a dubiously effective heating pad, and watching YouTube videos between short trips to eat Tylenol and a muscle relaxer pill that my visit yesterday to one of those handy walk-in clinics yielded to get a more professional assessment of my situation.

I'm not quite an invalid, but it's depressingly close to that, if only temporarily.

The 'good' news?...it's not going to disrupt any motorbike riding due to the continuing shitty weather, and I won't have any driving jobs before the 19th.

I truly hope it is just a muscle strain or something temporary and you get better soon. Back problems are no fun.

Leaking coolant ...

Malossi cylinder + camshaft + forcemaster for GTS 300 HPE (Post 2762680)

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

The Arctic Blast.

Temps in the teens today, windchill into the single digits.

Ugh. This is the SOUTH, dammit.

yup not above 30F today

Wait until tonight

Low down to 14.

OFG

10 at my house this morning. But, it will warm up today and tonight "only" down to 26 and then nothing below 32 for a few days, at least.

take my credit card away from me please

I gave up. Might try again next week. (paypal)

I took to long vacuuming the beach and burning my hands on candles and it seemed to have timed out each time. (too long taking the screen shots and cropping and saving).

probably designed by AI. why else is the poodle mid air on a skateboard?

god forbid I didn't have my glasses on. can any one spell ableist?

Ordered AU$1183 from scooter-center.com plus $104 of fedex. Ok, I can live with that.

This morning get hit with AU$239 for tax + customs + handling.

so now it's AU$1526.67* for $1183.23 of hardware. Might as well've bought it locally (although locally they didn't sell the black).

* US$1,012.64 / €861.81

Wedding bands are an endangered species with me, this is what Trixie dug out of the kitchen sink garbage disposal this morning after turning it on and hearing a hellacious metal grinding sound.

The two cats, who were in the kitchen at the time, scattered in a blur of panic and streaked to the basement.

I had assumed that there was a spoon or something similar stuck down there, but she pulled a bunch of small metal fragments from the disposal and asked if I was missing my wedding band, which I was, but hadn't noticed.

I washed a sink full of dishes late yesterday afternoon and it had simply slipped off in the soapy water, unnoticed, which wouldn't be the first time as it was my fourth wedding band to either be lost or come to a bad ending, and probably won't be the last.

The disposal did a great job of it, too...

** NOTE : This is not a political post. ** I crunched the numbers and in order to break even next year I would have to drive my FIAT 17,300 miles. I am averaging less than half that.

The universe is sending you a message. It might be "Stop doing the dishes".
Or it might be something else.

In the UK they're going to introduce a per-mile usage tax on EVs of about 3p per mile. ICE cars average an equivalent of about 6p per mile from paying fuel taxes.

EVs will also have to start paying the London congestion charge.

I think one of the arguments for such a change is that most road funding currently comes from gas taxes. Since PHEVs use less gas, and EVs don't use any, they're putting wear and tear on the roads but are not contributing a "fair" amount to the upkeep.

I haven't developed a postion on Michigan's solution. I do think the environmental benefits of EVs and PHEVs are possibly enough to offset that loss of road funding. But I'd have to do a lot more research into it to be sure.

just got an Insta360 X4 and am looking into the SDK so I can control it from VespaSnoop like I can with my GoPro ...

Fuck this is an atrocious SDK - it's not even compatible with the requirements* to be able to upload to the play store. Maybe I'd be better off reverse engineering their code like I did for Piaggio's crap.


* for the coders: as of 1/nov/25 any native code in an app has to be compiled for 16kb pages to be allowed to upload to the store which you'd think would be trivial. but nope, they're working on with no eta.

Problem is, crunching the numbers, I would have to drive three times what I do each year to warrant that much in taxes. In a gas powered car, you pay tax based on miles driven and car efficiency, because it's based on how much gas you buy. I drive an EV, so I buy extra electric for my fuel. I get charged a flat rate no matter how much I drive which is significantly more than I'd pay if it were an ICE car.

80 mph winds last night did a job on our north fence, kinda pisses me off.