2016-08-30

Kaboom.

Silly Jimby strikes again, I didn't look close enough at the power supply I plugged in and the result of putting 24V into a socket designed for 12V meant the filter capacitor rated at 16V exploded, also it fried the 220 Ohm resistor in the left centre of this pic.
Happily I can report that replacing those two parts fixed this Karaoke mixer.

2016-08-27

A lovely morning.

We popped out to check on Grace this morning, the last flowers I placed have faded a bit so I'll replace them next visit. Olivia had a drive from here for a bit, here she puts up the Ls.
The purple flower bush that had lovely blooms when we buried Grace is still going strong.
A busy shot of Victoria Mill on a lovely morning, sadly for me the lovely smell of mills that used to fill the air disappeared many years ago although they still smoke a bit, if we had any more industry here this'd be shut down. The loco Homebush here was in the film Australia that had Hugh Jackman in it, it still gets used a couple of times a year for rides during some events.

2016-08-24

Blooming.

We had a lovely day today so I took a photo of our orchid that has now bloomed. I only managed to get a few shots because I upset the dog a few houses away and I had to stop and go back inside to restore some peace.

2016-08-23

A new computer chair.

This sharp unit arrived in the mail today, Olivia had been leaning on me for a while to replace the other now tatty one I'd been using and a reasonable deal cropped up recently.
Of course it had to arrive damaged, with a corresponding mark on the carton it was in, but the mark is too minor to cause a fuss over.

2016-08-19

A pretty good day out.

We went to a seniors event today and had a pretty good time and some pretty good food. After a bit of warm up food we joined their mini-Olympics with nice simple events, here Olivia has just thrown a thong, quite well too.
More games with us passing a lovely pink ball.
At the end of it everyone won a gold medal, here the girls test it with their teeth, Jimby didn't in case another snapped off.
Then Olivia played Hoy, which had the bonus of finally Jimby finding out what the game was after knowing of its existence for near 50 years. Very similar to Bingo.
Anna won a lucky door prize, she deserved it as her throng throw won the event for our green team.
Then onto some singing, first Coro Allegro with some Italian songs. Recently my mind has been changed about language teaching in school, I had thought it fairly useless for us native English speakers to learn a language which we'd likely never find a use for, as in learn French and the move to Philippines (my case) but now I realise that you can't sing Italian without knowing it, and a lot of good opera's are in Italian. So for any children who may by chance see this Italian is a very useful language, with French you can do Carmen, a very important opera, you can even become Wagnerian with German. Jimby of course would be happy having a chorus part in any Gilbert & Sullivan operetta but we need a general revival.
 Lastly with things being hurried up to clear the place we sang with Sing Australia, here Jimby looks like a thorn amongst roses but despite my ordinary voice they put up with me and I've even come to enjoy it since Olivia dragged me into it. Something behind the piano has grabbed our attention.

2016-08-18

An almost necessary evil.

Jimby needs to use his legs a bit more to prolong their life so until I relent about fixing the ride-on I'll be mowing the grass the hard way, well almost as this new mower is at least self-propelled. This was only a test first run, I'd expect wearing fancier footwear would be better in future.
Upon arrival I gave it a good inspection while assembling it, I suspected correctly the valve clearances would be awry, I think they were done by a Gorilla on a rattle gun so I backed them off a tad. I think tight valve clearances are a curse that's all too common now and would have given many an otherwise good engine a bad name. This is set by a double nut but to unlock them the first time at least required me to loosen the big 14 mm nut as the small 10 mm one was too tight to loosen. I just adjusted the valve clearances simply by finger tightening till it touched and then backing off a quarter of a turn.
My old workmate Ken Eagle will be impressed with this brand, it being the cheapest Chinese made mower I could find shouldn't worry him. While I had the valve cover off I painted it to give it a bit of customisation.
It's a lovely quiet mower but I'll need to find a fresh battery for my dB meter to measure it.
Even the wheels impress me by having proper sealed ball bearings, plus being chinese it's very doubtful they'd have bothered to make the some expensive propriety size.

2016-08-12

Ingham's lifeblood.

I shot this cane train while I was waiting for Olivia to hunt some bargains.
Ingham's a one industry town and sugar is it.

Kaput.

I took the deck off the mower this morning, truly rotten it is.
Now Jimby will have to hunt a 532192556 at an affordable price.

2016-08-11

Spring's approaching.

The orchid is about to bloom, we don't get much in the way of seasons here but this is very welcome.

Disaster.

The inevitable happened yesterday after hitting a tree root, the rusty cutting deck on the mower yielded a bit where the RH spindle is fitted thus scalping the grass shown here.
If I lived in the mainland USA then fixing it would be simple and economic but here in Ingham it's a bit like living on the moon.
I'm also concerned about other things failing so I plan on mowing the hard way for a while until I sort things out.

2016-08-09

A lovely surprise visit.

We just had a surprise visit by my Auntie Shirley and Uncle Ken this arvo, both looked very well which was very good.
They were in the tow of a friend so couldn't stay long but hopefully they'll drop in again before they leave.

2016-08-02

I found a Pokemon.

Somebody will be bound to capture this Pokemon I saw in the Townsville hospital.
It'll likely take a fair deal of money to catch it though, lack of money being the reason Jimby hasn't caught onto the new craze, it really seems a fantastic way for people to get out and use their legs a bit but our punitive cellphone data prices are too great a hurdle right now.

An amazing hospital experience.

Olivia had an appointment yesterday morning at Townsville hospital, something to do with checking her thyroid. Being a fairly long drive we have to allow a fair bit of buffer in the time we arrive so we were an hour ahead of the appointment time, that's when things became quite unexpected, they ushered Olivia in just a few minutes after she got there, just enough time for a comfort break and that was it. Jimby went outside and played some Sudoku that he'd printed before leaving, then after a mere two games were completed Olivia was finished so we wandered back to Daisy in an unhurried fashion until it dawned on me that if I knew the time then we may be lucky enough to exit the car park in under an hour and avoid their $5 parking fee.
Yes it was possible so Jimby moved his legs a bit quicker and we made it with a minute to spare, a real win and put me in a good mood until sometime after getting home I think I caught a bug and had to lie up for most of the day.