I went out and paid bills again yesterday

And suffered mightily in the heat and humidity, heat index flopping around between 106° and 101° as a popup T-storm moved through. Mrs. the Poet suspects that I might need to buy shoes because I could barely walk because the soles of my feet hurt so much and it has been a while since I bought shoes. Anywho, my bill went down again as they are no longer charging a “convenience fee” for me to go to their store to pay my bill. My total payment was only $15 this month taxes included. So my bill has gone from $33/month to $15/month since April. Color me happy!😌

Also on the agenda I bought a steering wheel and pedals for my PS3 and laptop, should I find a driving game that will run on this laptop. But it will work for GT5 and GT6 on the PS3, so I should be pretty good. It’s a 180° rotation wheel with a shift lever and two pedals, meaning it’s perfect for simulating the Sprint-T except the steering is a little (by orders of magnitude) quicker than the Sprint-T. The real thing will have either 2.5 turns lock to lock with the store-bought steering quickener, or 1 turn lock to lock with the home-made quickener, which is either 3 binary or 1 binary order of magnitude quicker than the game controller, but the 270° controller was like three times as much as the 180° controller and nobody makes a 2.5 turn controller. I suppose I could install a reduction drive between the controller and another steering wheel (I have 3 from various project cars over the years that I put the OE steering wheels back on before I sold them), but TBH I don’t feel like it and it would be massive overkill for this project. Now I need to go to Gamestop and find either of the two games to buy. I have GT4 for my PS2 which is how I know that I need to get a wheel to use GT5 or GT6 on my PS3.

On the Sprint-T progress has been slowed because I’m either out doing stuff, physically recovering from being out doing stuff, or working on my computer like I’m doing right now. But I have a plan for when time and being able to do stuff coincide. I need to drill the pilot holes in the 2 by 4s so they don’t split when I drive the lag bolts in. I need to screw the sides of the nose to the radiator mockup between the two pieces I’m using to simulate the radiator end tanks on either side. And it looks like I’m going to need to cut a 6″ by 8″ hole for the steering box to hang out 5″ from, or figure out some way of denting the sides to allow the tires to turn at full steering lock. Easier is letting the steering box hang out the side, more trick and smoother appearing is forming a recess for the tires to still turn. Another factor is the side panels can be replaced with HDPE which is easily heat formed for such things as tire clearance. A third consideration is this nose was designed to make downforce and force air through the radiator, and the wider I make it the more of both it will make, and the center panel will allow for a 45″ wide nose if I don’t trim it, which will make it the same width as the body, or I can make it 39″ which will make it as wide as the windshield and have the side panels up underneath the nose to smooth the flow to the body somewhat.

Speaking of the steering box, the one I ordered will ship 2020-08-10 or sooner. The ‘Rona has messed up restocking stuff as it gets sold, so I’m waiting on a literal slow boat from China for my steering box. Everything else is Made in USA, but the big part is wending its way to some West Coast port, probably Long Beach or Portland if freight volume from China is anything to go by, or Portland if closest direct truck route to Nebraska is a factor. But I won’t get to see it for another month or so. Also on a (different) slow boat is the steering wheel controller that may be here by my birthday if I’m unlucky, the last delivery date is 9/21. The first one is beginning of August so they haven’t even picked the slow or the quick boat yet…

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Nothing much exciting today, just paid for the phone

I didn’t do much interesting today, beyond catching up on sleep after Mrs the Poet found out what had been waking me up early in the morning. Turns out we had ants biting me while I slept, that would go away when it got light out. My back is just covered in little ant bite welts. Apparently I’m quite tasty. Anywho, after I finally woke up I made the trek to the phone store and paid the bill for my mobile phone, and on the way back paid way too much for a Coke Zero Sugar because there were no prices posted in the cooler. I bought it anyway because while the temperature may have dropped, the humidity has really plummeted and the 0.8 mile walk to the phone store left me with a serious case of cottonmouth. The 16 oz. bottle ended up $1.94 after taxes, which annoyed me as I had some $1 2-liters in the refrigerator at the house. But having something you need not with you doesn’t do you any good. Add that the water in the drinking fountains in the park was like coffee hot and I really didn’t have much choice about buying the Coke product. Tomorrow I go for a walk to find out when I get paid from the thing in the trust I was supposed to be taking money from every month but nobody thought to tell me about. It’s either the first/last of the month, or the 15th of the month, and if it’s not the 15th there will be money in the account, if it is the 15th I’ll still be broke for a few more days.

Aaannnnnd if you would like for me to be not broke might I direct your attention to the Ko-fi button in the sidebar to send the price of a cup of coffee in my direction. Actually having money that isn’t already spent before I even see it would be like heaven for me.

Now I have to go wade through the email and sign some petitions and ignore people asking for money I don’t have to give away. And hope I don’t melt tomorrow.