This is Texas, where we have the heat come on in the morning and the AC in the afternoon

Yep, when I was going to bed last night the heat came on, and just before lunch this afternoon the AC came on, on the 17th of November. And before anyone says anything the heat comes on when it drops below 70°F inside, and the AC comes on above 76°F inside. We have relatively good insulation so to get the inside temperature to swing that much requires about a 40° swing in outdoor temperatures.

In other “news” that isn’t really news, my hips still hurt, my knees still hurt, and I still need a massage because my neck won’t turn very far. I’ll probably get the massage Thursday now that a few bucks have been freed up in the budget because the window replacement has been delayed until December 1st. That puts about $300 back in the budget for stuff that doesn’t go to keeping us fed and a roof over our heads. Usually this part of the budget gets robbed to pay for the other things, so actually having any money in it is rare.

Something I almost forgot to put here is I’ll be participating in another study starting Monday next Wednesday. I don’t know what I’ll be testing but it starts with a fasting blood draw. So maybe something related to cholesterol or blood sugar? IDK I’m just happy to be advancing science in some small way.

On the Sprint-T front, I have found that a hydraulic hand brake system for drift cars will also work as a hand clutch for a hydraulic throwout bearing. And to make it a push or pull release only requires deciding which way I set up the handle. This makes the hand clutch super easy to do because all the design and fabrication have already been done, all I have to do is buy and install. Now the hand clutch only takes care of starting and stopping, I’ll still have to buy a transmission that can be shifted without using the clutch. But there is a faced and plated gearset for the T5 that can do that and doesn’t add any weight, so we’re good, except for money.

Also on the Sprint-T, I’m working on the seat slider that adjusts the seat back and forth for people with longer legs than mine to drive the car. There aren’t many people with shorter legs who are old enough to be legal to drive, because I’m built like Fred Flintstone. Seriously I lost a full ride scholarship because my torso was too long to close the canopy on an F4 Phantom if I was in the RIO seat AKA “Back Seat Driver”. Long, sad story that I won’t relate here.

Anywho, I need to set the sliders far enough apart that the release lever works on both sliders but close enough together that the bracket is wider than the seat but not narrower than the sliders. This is another result of my having non-standard dimensions. I bought the adult-sized seat with the narrowest butt pocket and had to modify the seat to fit my chest and shoulders because of course it didn’t fit anything except my hips, kinda sorta. I will still need more padding to fill the space between my hips and the seat, but not as much as I would have if I bought a seat to fit my chest and shoulders. But back to the project at hand, I need to set up the sliders at the correct width, set the seat on them to see how much extra I have to work with and bend up some strap stock to bolt to the seat and sliders, then drill and bolt everything together. I know the seat will need to get holes for the bracket, the bracket needs holes for the seat and the sliders, and I need to buy a whole bunch of stainless steel bolts so things don’t get crusty.

And this feels like a good place to end this post.

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I’m still in a mood

I’m low-level angry, also same in pain, also same in need of hugs and kisses, and I think there is a correlation. I think the angry and lack of hugs and kisses are related, as well as the angry and in pain. Basically I’m angry and in pain because I’m not getting hugs and kisses on anything approaching regular and they are on a feedback loop making each other worse. The pains are making me more angry which prevents me from getting hugs and kisses because it turns off my partner, which makes me more angry because no hugs or kisses… Ad infinitum. They all basically make the other worse in a vicious cycle, and until I can figure out a way of breaking the chain I’m up the unsanitary tributary without visible means of locomotion. And everything still hurts.

Now it’s not severe pain, it’s just kinda achy and uncomfortable. On a scale of 1 to “you’re here and your leg is over there” out of 10 I’m about a 3, edging on 4. I know it hurts but I can still do stuff pretty well in spite of it hurting when I try to do stuff. Also I haven’t gotten violent yet, even though I want to because nothing has crossed over that threshold yet. My state of mind is I don’t want to hurt anybody I just want the pains to stop. Also I’m not violent because I don’t have anything to get violent against. All my pains have long outlived their causes. The guy who broke my hip, dead. The truck he used was scrapped in 2002. The train incident was a decade ago. The tumor was removed from my neck in 2015. Basically I don’t have anything left to punch over my medical issues, so I don’t.