May 14, 20: A Painful Day, Garage Putzing, Splinterlands Season Ends, and Games

almost 4 years ago

Slept all the way to six today, but a good hour and a half short. Still not dragging in the afternoon, so it seems to be alright for now.

Usual morning routine was very usual. Bitcoin catching a bit of a surge here and pushing back toward ten thousand...in the meantime STEEM fell hard in relation, so another day of sitting on my hands.

I got my daily post done fairly early and then put together the Solairitas Weekly News Update. There wasn’t any PYPT, though. Seems that it’s on an indefinite leave. 😢

My right knee has been bugging me somewhat the last couple of days, but it wasn’t bad, so I just ignored it. Today it hurt like hell and so I broke my #AutomaticWin streak. 😭

I’m hoping that it will feel better tomorrow so I can get back out, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. It’s not the knee itself, but along the outside and down...like a tendon or something.

Between my knee hurting so bad and thunderstorms like crazy, I didn’t go out at all for a proper walk and so no maps or photos. 😢😢😢😭

Even though I think taking a day off was justified today, I wasn’t going to break my ten thousand steps per day streak, so I did some laps around the house. Luckily, Fitbit counted it as legit exercise! 😄

I really don’t know what to do with this motor. So disappointed that it’s basically adulterated aluminum...I can’t really melt it with copper or aluminum because it will contaminate them either way. I think my only option is to try and put it in with alloy and make brass with it (but it’s MOSTLY aluminum - so that kinda’ sucks too). We’ll see, might just call that a loss.

I pulled a shit-ton of old wiring out of the house and replaced it with new, safer wire. Trouble is multifold on this stuff, though.

Not only is it impossibly difficult to strip, but the copper is tinned. Trying to find a (cheap and safe) way to remove the tin coating and get at that yummy bare bright copper underneath. So, I tried a little chemistry experiment and left a piece overnight in Coke.

As you can see, it did have some effect, but not enough to go and buy a bunch of two liters. I think the proper route is hydrochloric acid (will dissolve tin but not copper), but I’m not exactly sure where to get it.

@wenchebakken doesn’t understand my fascination with putting so much time and effort into what is actually garbage. I thought that was a fair challenge, and after thinking about it, this is what I came up with:
-It’s turning waste into something of value (by means of infusion with my labor)
-It’s literally making money
-Its inputs are free and outputs are salable
-It’s neat to have pure anything...even though gold or silver would be neater
-AND, above all else, it’s shiny! 🤩

In the afternoon I did some chores and ran up to the store for a couple of items. Amazingly, though I turned it on and had it all ready to go, I didn’t play any Xbox at all!

I remember why I quit playing Wolfenstein now... I’ve gotten all the storyline achievements done, so I just have to keep going back and forth between levels trying to get enemies to spawn so I can gain weapon mastery levels...gets repetitive and boring really fast.

I stripped quite a bit more wire...in fact, I had a victory over the coaxial cable that I was just going to leave for garbage. When I tried to strip some before I couldn’t get the insulation to separate from the center conductor. This time when I tried, it popped right out! 🤗

In the evening we had French toast for dinner and watched some Stargate. I started getting together all the info for taxes (super late on that this year), and I need to get going on some planning for the summer semester...I’ll see if I can get some focus going here.

Now, this might be cheating a little, but it’s also kind of a meta/self-referential thing...I just got a milestone and published my first thousand word daily post!!! 🏆

Getting a little frustrated not making progress on my dCity, but at least I didn’t get robbed tonight and slowly, but surely, my SIM balance is growing. Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

I actually got my Holybread tasks all done today! 🤩🥳

Fallen slightly in the ranks, but at least that exposes me to some new opponents and at least have a chance.

Today was the end of the Splinterlands season. My quest for today was Life splinter, and I had one more chance at it, so I played for a while, lost below where I started, and then literally said “Fuck this” and rage quit for the rest of the day...didn’t want to risk getting reset lower.

Didn’t get very good cards, but at least I got some. I’m in that middle zone with these cards where it takes like sixty or more cards to reach the next level, so they just kind of get absorbed with no other effect.