May 18, 20: A Super Rainy Day Indoors, Putzing, Xbox, and Games

almost 4 years ago

Up at five this morning with two hours short on sleep. No crashing in the afternoon yet, but it might catch up to me soon here.

Did the usual morning routine and was pleasantly surprised when my STEEM sale went through...at the moment I’m all into BTC, hopefully the golden cross will do me right.

I’m still kinda’ hurting and it was seriously pouring with rain all day, so I didn’t get out for a walk. No maps or pics. 😭

I was short when I was looking to get ready for bedtime, so I did some laps around the house. Luckily, the Fitbit counted it as exercise, but weirdly didn’t register the steps. Ah, well, at least the ten thousand steps per day streak continues.

Since I’m teaching online this semester, and perhaps even the next, I bought some chalkboard paint to make a makeshift classroom (plus having a wall covered in math is just about the perfect level of nerdiness for me 🤓🧐).

Unfortunately, there’s two outlets right in the way. 😡 The previous owners put them there for like lighted plants or something stupid, but moving them and patching the holes would be some serious work and would likely end up in a bulge anyway. Hopefully there will be enough space to write around them.

I spent some more time out in the garage. The washer is nearly torn down, but I’m still stuck with getting that motor off.

I stripped the wires out of the washer and ended with a little bit of brass and another nice pile of the bare bright:

I started trying to go after the tinned copper and got one conductor out. Quite a bit of the coating just flaked off or scraped off, but some is still stuck on there.

I took the piece I got and let it sit in vinegar and salt for three or four hours and added some baking powder. All I succeeded in doing was coating it all with a black oxidation layer that rubbed off.

However, it seems that hydrochloric acid is a fairly common thing and I can get a gallon of it from the local hardware store for under five bucks. 😄 So that’s the next step, I think, go at it with some serious chemicals! The coating could also be zinc, but that will dissolve in HCL as well...could save me a lot of trouble. If I overheated that stuff it would put off toxic fumes.

My hands really started to hurt from all the stripping, so I quit and played some Wolfenstein on the Xbox.

I actually sat down and focused on work for a while as well. I gave everyone an override to enroll in the class above the limit and then emailed them to let them know. I figure that it’s all online, so it isn’t that much more work for me to have a few extra students.

In the evening we had leftover steaks and pizza for dinner and watched some more Stargate.

Frickin’ A! My dCity got robbed today, so no SIM for me. 😡😢

I did get all my Holybread tasks done today! Yay! 😁

It seems like a lot of people have quit playing now. I’m all the way up into the seventies, but so are the exact same guys I was up against when I was in the eighties.

My Splinterlands quest for today was Water splinter. I struggled with it more than I expected and lost my buffer into Diamond. I rage quit for the evening and had to finish it up in the morning.

I was able to fight my way back up and completed my quest in Diamond III with a potion. DEC rewards were pretty lame, as usual, but the card percentage seems to be slightly higher at the moment: