The AC is running and other things that may (not) surprise you

We have the thermostat set at 76°F to turn on the AC, and this is the second day in a row that the AC has kicked on near sundown. The high was about 80° and the current temp just hit 77° on the way down. About the best thing I can say is we have escaped severe weather this year so far. No hail, no high speed straightline winds, no tornadoes. I like this kind of boring, this is the nice cheap kind of boring without property damage.

Other than that nothing much of interest is going down at or near Casa de El Poeta. We are very boring these days. I buy books either through Amazon Kindle, or direct from the authors. Then I read the books. Rinse, repeat. I did learn something interesting doing this, epic porn stories from the same author get boring after a few thousand pages. Much like any other kind of story repetition kills novelty. And it’s not like there is any way around it.

And what I mentioned in the previous paragraph is one of the things I dread when I’m writing about the Sprint-T. There are only so many ways to describe Tab A and Slot B no matter how different the tabs and slots are from one set to another. And unless I do something wild like the minivan engine and transmission in the back for a mid-engine bucket the tabs and slots don’t change much, just the size changes. And speaking of that configuration, even though there isn’t a need for it because that engine was never mated to a manual transaxle, putting the drivetrain behind the passenger compartment made tons of room for a clutch pedal because there was no part of the drivetrain competing for space with the driver’s feet. There was 26″ inside the body behind the firewall and the only thing connected to the engine was the gas pedal, and there was a brake pedal and a steering column behind the firewall meaning I had about 13″ of room if the passenger’s feet are allocated equal space to the driver’s, or 14″ or 15″ if the need for the driver’s movement is taken into account and the lack of same for the passenger. But that engine went bye-bye with the vehicle it was in several years ago.

That drivetrain was also the reason why I ordered the front axle wide enough to make the wheel surface of the front hubs 66½” to match the width of the rear hubs with the engine in the back so the car didn’t look funny from the front. I kept it because I had already spent the money and because as long as I didn’t hit an apex cone with the front tire I was pretty much guaranteed not to hit that cone with the back tire, because the front tire would track slightly closer to the inside than the rear tire as long as the car was driven in a no-slip condition, and as a yaw angle was taken the back tire would track further away from the front track, and the rear tire would have to track over 3″ over to the outside of the turn for the rear tire to hit a cone the front tire missed on the exit from a turn. On a car with 100″ wheelbase a 3″ yaw would be about 2° yaw. So maybe I go a little easy on corner exit.

And it is way too late and I should be sleeping.

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We had a high of seventy degrees today, TX weather is skitzo

An I know I didn’t spell it right, nor use it right. I used a colloquialism to express how insane the weather is in TX after enduring a Not In Recorded History cold spell we go right back to Warmer Than Normal For This Time Of Year. And I just tried to see exactly what that was and the almanac has been disabled on Weather dot com so I can’t tell you exactly. But as I understand the weather because of climate change we will continue to have warmer winters, except when the unstable Jet Stream dumps arctic air on us again when we all turn blue.

In other news I got the liner and curtain rings for the new shower, so we can pick up the towels we laid down to catch the back spray from using the shower without a way to contain what comes back off of us. Mrs. the Poet is especially happy that the liner holds the heat from the hot shower. And also that since the hole in the wall has been plugged with a new wall there is less cold air that needs to be kept out. So better than what we had before. Also the new faucet for the shower doesn’t leak, but it takes a long time to purge the cold water from the hot water feed line.

Still in other news but a repeating motif, my sleep schedule has slipped again to Mostly Vampire. I went to bed about 0515, and it was after 0600 that I finally shut down and went to sleep, and I finally woke for the final time today about 1630. And yes it takes me 11 hours± to get an adequate amount of sleep that most people get in 8 hours. And yes, that does annoy me.

Another thing that annoys me since we are on the subject, is I can’t find tools that let me miter the joints in the frame for the Mini Sprint-T. I mean I can use a triangular rat tail file to cut the rods to fit close enough, but what I really want is to have some kind of reamer that machines an exact fit that I can then dab a tiny amount of solvent cement over and it looks like a scale TIG weld. I know these tools exist but I keep coming up short of actually finding any for sale. I know that 0.060″ reamers exist that would allow me to use them as side mills to fish mouth the rods, or I could cheat a little and use a 0.0625″ (1/16th”) diameter of the same tool. I found some on the internets in the 0.0625″ size, but at $28 before tax, plus shipping. That’s too much for one bit to make a few cuts to do something I can almost do as well with hand tools. It just looks like I used a stick welder and made a bunch of cold booger welds instead of a more scale-like condition with better quality welding, which is why I’m still thinking about it.

While we are on the subject I’m having all kinds of difficulty bending the rods that make the hoop structures of the frame. It’s not that I can’t bend them, I can’t bend them right. The problem is I need to make 4 bends in exactly the right place that need to be exactly 90° and all in the same plane. What I keep coming up with is either too much or not enough bend, not in the same plane, or in the wrong place and frequently all of the above. I finally learned how to make the bends the right radius and stay the same diameter and not stretch the sprue into a smaller diameter. I need more practice doing all the other things to get it right, I just lack the patience and materials to practice on. I guess a few more dollars’ worth of raw stock would be a good investment if I want to make this model look IRL like I see it in my mind. And if I don’t make it look like I see it in my mind, why even bother to make it?

And this seems like a good place to end this rant, as there is little productive that can be gleaned from it.