Vincent The Dragon

This..is a self drilling sheet metal screw....There is a new dollar store being build on my work travel route and its one of those cheap metal clad steel frame buildings.

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William was going to have to travel for a work thing but it switched from mandatory to elective.
Instead we picked up a few cheap poles and got our fishing license.
Going to go out this evening and see what we can find and then again Sunday, perhaps a bit on Monday.

My Grandfather served WWII, my Dad is a Marine...many other of our family members have served and we thank them all for their sacrifices and service.

This is my fishing good luck charm, It belonged to my grandfather. Needs a new line break pad..thing..but its still mechanically sound.
Perhaps I'll locate the part to fix it.

Started working on the AV signal processor / AMP
This this is a real bugger to take apart, never seen JST connectors like this.
Also, the power connectors are not on connectors that remove, they are soldered to the boards.

The vacuum rework station I got worked GREAT. the inline amp chips just fell out with ease but...
oops, the second chip is different than the one you could plainly see si I'll have to amazon another chip before I can put it all back together.

Hopefully I'll remember where all these wires go...meep...

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I have not been coming up with much to say because I can't find anything good to say.
Life it seems is just bent on constantly trying to beat us into the ground.

Well...A good friend of mines AV amp / signal processor seems to have pooped its output amp chips.

It's a really nice amp, I have wanted to replace my 20+ year old amp for years.
As such he kindly gave the thing to me and if I fix, i can haz.

I have been tinkering at electronic repairs since I was little but have never had the right tools really.
It's been 'my turn' to buy something for myself for some time now and hoping that, due to some small breaks in our financial situation, me purchasing new output chips and a proper solder re-work station don't come bite us in the tail.

Perhaps even I can recoup some $ by offering some small equipment repair services.

Well..If i pay all the bills except the car registration that is due and don't pay the as yet unknown amount for the new Verizon bill..that leaves $23.30 in the bank to pay for gas back and forth to work and food to eat for the next 2 weeks.

We are boned.

It's been 8 years since I started...Every year we seem to go further in debt.
Something has to change.

So…this is our rebuilding year.

We cleared out all of our savings and retirement due to some heavy expenses that came up last year. Important things like final expenses for a family member, cars that gave out and having to pay for COBRA insurance.
Insurance this year is decently priced, William makes more money at his new job so we can rebuild and have a little breathing room perhaps replace some of our 10-15 year old computers and TV and take a small vacation getaway.
Then we got the flu and I tried to schedule my treatment...nope, the insurance is actually Minimal Elective Coverage which literally only pays for a handful of preventative screenings and zero actual medical things.
Okay, had to switch to the more expensive offering at my work which is an HSA type small little group plan of sorts. Should be good coverage but I am still waiting for my several weeks past due treatment to get approved; oh and we can’t yet afford the hundreds of dollars co-pay for Williams meds. The plan costs us $950 a month and $12750 out of pocket. That is a serious chunk out of our take home pay and prior we were living pay check to paycheck so I am not really sure how to absorb this. Also we owe $3000 in taxes which I will have to file an extension for. I have zero chance of paying for that right now. My company doesn’t take out state taxes and we can’t seem to scrape up the quarterly estimates. We make more than what is considered to be poverty so that means our taxes is high to pay for everyone else. Us liquidating a retirement plan hits hard in taxes and since we could not come up with that December COBRA payment of $1400 that also raised the taxes.

Shutting off the TV services, eating cheap unhealthy food, bypassing the dental work we both seriously need, zero entertainment funds, not putting anything back, not up keeping the house, not paying for rent or electricity or insurance.
My sign reads …Will do things for money…

and it just so happens to be the house's heat pump that is.

Hopefully the circulation fan motor that has locked up is not too expensive.
I'll dig it out of the unit tomorrow morning, depending on what it is, perhaps rig up something as i have some AC motors lying about.

Won't be until Tuesday though to find a replacement as things will be closed and also pay check will not be in the bank until Tuesday.

Right now we have the unit in EM heat mode so things are fine'ish and all.

Wuf got me some Dr Who stuff (^_^)
*insert Dr Who theme music*

I has always been a fan and i watched the original stuff when I was little.
Always loved it.

While I have not seen everything of the reboot, nor do I watch it on the telly; I have seen every surviving and reconstructed of the original series and all of its movies and specials.
I am currently working my way through binging on the reboot. (currently just started Season 2)

My present to Wuf was not all that. I got him a pricey coat he has been wanting as well as some nice outfits.

Just not been feeling it this year so I struggled.
I don't really care much for this holiday.
While not being a truly religious dragon, I am spiritual and the meanings behind this season have gotten lost.
Corrupted by commercialism and greed.

Don't get me wrong, i love not using windows and for the most part linux is great...unless there is a problem.

I use a program called Tellico to keep track of all our movies. It uses Amazon Web service API to look things up. It's great as all i have to do is scan the movies UPC code and it bring everything in.... well, it's decided to not work.

Tellicos' website has never been all that useful, the internet web searches return useless or way out of date information and its newest version refuses to compile with cryptic reasons given for which the above stated is not helping. I am not running the latest version of Mint so that's not helping...All i wanted to do was scan in the pile of movies we have acquired here in the past 6 months but it quickly spirals into a project that could take all day.

*sigh*

Seems I missed my chance to get Ho-oh, while the ticker says it's available until tomorrow I saw none today.
I have been raiding after work every day and have found people to raid with most nights but I have not been able to capture one.

Me and William went out and about Saturday to do some catching. He doesn't get the chance to play much but on his first ever raid that ended in success, he caught the damn thing on his second ball toss. Ah well, I also missed out on the first set of legendary's as well.

My 'Dex is pretty full, only missing the things I can't currently get due to them being region locked and the legendary's I can't seem to capture.
You would think there would be some kind of reward for being a higher level or a more avid player but it seems to be the opposite.

I would have spend Sunday out looking but I was busy trying to resurrect William's computer...it is dead and it's not in the budget to replace. I can't even scrap up the money to fix up mine nor get the parts needed for the server. I am working on putting together him a computer which is my secondary workstation I use. It's fairly descent and will work just fine for what he needs it to do.

Seems I missed my chance to get Ho-oh, while the ticker says it's available until tomorrow I saw none today.
I have been raiding after work every day and have found people to raid with most nights but I have not been able to capture one.

Me and William went out and about Saturday to do some catching. He doesn't get the chance to play much but on his first ever raid that ended in success, he caught the damn thing on his second ball toss. Ah well, I also missed out on the first set of legendary's as well.

My 'Dex is pretty full, only missing the things I can't currently get due to them being region locked and the legendary's I can't seem to capture.
You would think there would be some kind of reward for being a higher level or a more avid player but it seems to be the opposite.

I would have spend Sunday out looking but I was busy trying to resurrect William's computer...it is dead and it's not in the budget to replace. I can't even scrap up the money to fix up mine nor get the parts needed for the server. I am working on putting together him a computer which is my secondary workstation I use. It's fairly descent and will work just fine for what he needs it to do.

It's good...it's cheap...it's easy..also it's gooood!

Cold beer after a hard days work.

sill ton's of yard work and other upkeeps though....

So far - So good; We have managed to pay for Corbra so far.

We went to see the latest Thor movie.

*spoiler* It was good but i though there was a bit to much emphasis on comedy.