Hooray Hooray · 10:23am May 1st
Hooray hooray the first of May
The sun in shining, the birds are chirping, the weather is warm. I found my lawnmower and it still runs, so I got some of the yard mowed, too.
Which is more than I was expecting to have accomplished, honestly.
I had a couple of things I was hoping to post for y'all before my first con of the year, but that's very unlikely to actually happen. There's also a final blog post tying up all the March Music Monday blog posts (and the April bonuses); that should have been published by now but is currently also in an editing holding pattern.
Between the cons and some other stuff (especially work), I'm pretty much booked out until early June. I might be able to get something out between Seaquestriafest and Whinny City, it depends on how some other things go. Part of it depends if my trip to Seaquestria involves a contingency plan, the second contingency plan, or a third backup plan. I'll let you know how that turns out!
Speaking of cons, here's my current plan, for anyone who wants to stalk me: I intend to be at Seaquestriafest (Ocean City, MD), Whinny City (northern Chicago suburb); Trotcon (Dayton), Everfree Northwest (Seattle), and Ciderfest (Milwaukee). Some of them I'll only be there for a couple days, while I'll be at the whole con for others.
I've heard rumors that there's gonna be a bookstore again at EFNW (not confirmed), and also that they're doing a mini version of the app thing at Whinny City. Odds are that I won't have any stories for it, due to scheduling problems on my end.
Also if you like classic cars and/or hot rods, there's a concurrent car show in Ocean City, so you can satisfy your love of ponies and your love of cars on the same weekend.
Speaking of work, we're insanely backed up at the shop (again) and have a whole row of dead trucks that need expensive repairs.
Since I haven't given y'all a mechanic blog post in a while (there's like ten of them in the editing queue, sigh), here's a real short one:
Customer complains of a lack of power in a 2006(ish) Silverado with a Duramax diesel. It's got a code for the turbo not boosting enough or the vanes not moving like they should (don't remember exactly).
One of the first things I noticed is that the air intake snorkel has holes in it. That means that the Mass Airflow Sensor can't accurately measure how much air (mass) went into the engine, which means it gets its fuel trims wrong, and also means that it can't accurately calculate how much the turbo is doing.
The second thing that I noticed is that the sensor that monitors the turbo vanes is bad.
My manager decided we'd just replace the turbo, which is not a fun job. I've never done one, so I got out the instructions and set to work.
Six hours and two broken exhaust bolts in, my manager started griping about how I was doing it; my procedure wasn't the right one 'cause I used Mitchell On-Demand for my repair info rather than Identifix which has the Genuine GM Instructions. He informed me that the instructions said I was supposed to remove the EGR cooler and a bunch of other stuff from the top of the engine (which I hadn't done) and then it came right out. If I'd done it that way, he said, it would have been much faster.
Out of curiosity, I looked up those instructions after the fact. It's not typical for the instructions to be that different, after all.
Turns out he was right. Sort of.
If I looked it up for the vehicle I was actually working on, the instructions were exactly the same.
If, however, I looked it up for one model year newer, that had a different version of the same engine, and had the instructions he'd given me, as well as the one instruction he hadn't:
Step 1: Remove transmission.
Is it faster to remove the transmission when you don't have to? I don't know, but I expect it's not.
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Anyway, by the end of the day I had it all apart, and he started grumbling about how he had been expecting me to have it done in one day and now we'd have to push it out because he needed that hoist for a Ford truck that was also getting a turbo (this one was definitely bad).
That was a couple of weeks ago. That truck is still sitting outside, not only because we have a bunch of other work and apparently the customer isn't in a hurry to get his truck back, but also because it turns out we still don't have all the parts we need to reassemble it.
And then there was the long red truck. A 90s Chevy 3500 Crew Cab Long Box that had a blown-up engine, and another tech put the engine in it, took it for a drive, and everything was good. Our general services guy took it for a drive and it was good. The manager took it for a drive and it was good except that it had a loud wheel bearing, so I got to put that in.
I spun the wheels on the rack, and both front wheel bearings were loud. He said that there was no way I could tell by spinning the wheels on the rack with my hands; the spider gears in the four-wheel drive made too much noise to identify a wheel bearing and we needed to put it in four-wheel drive and run it on the rack.
Which was impossible, 'cause the four-wheel drive didn't work, so I got to spend hours figuring that out. It took longer than it should have, 'cause I used the wiring diagrams he printed off that were Genuine GM diagrams from Identifix.
They were also wrong.
Luckily, the inferior Pro Demand diagrams were correct, and I got it diagnosed. Besides the delay from trying the wrong diagrams, there was also a delay due to blowing a fuse when I accidentally grounded a power wire on the front axle actuator. The GM diagram said that was a ground wire.
The GM diagram also said that GM had designed an extra twenty feet in that wire for the lulz (spoiler, they didn't). That was what tipped me off to the diagram being wrong; this wire supposedly ran from the firewall back to the transmission and through a connector there . . . but it never came back again, not according to the diagram.
You'll never guess which front wheel bearing was bad. Both of them! But now the four-wheel drive works so that's good I guess.
Oh and as a fun aside, there were circuit codes for both front ABS sensors (built into the wheel bearing on this model). You often get this with bad wheel bearings, 'cause the extra runout damages the sensor. As soon as I mentioned this, the manager started grilling our GS--"You drove it, didn't you notice the ABS light was on?"
To which I turned to him and said, "You drove it, didn't you notice the ABS light was on?"
Of course he didn't have an answer for that.
Lastly, I got to program hex codes into another Ford! This time my manager learned something, so he decided to print out all the hex codes for every module in the vehicle. It's an eighteen page list! I only needed about sixteen lines of that!
No, I'm not going to publish a blog post with all sixteen pages of hex codes.
Above, I said that I hadn't finished a few projects that I hoped to have done by Seaquestriafest. I did publish something to my half-finished stories collection (which I'd imagine some of you have no idea is a thing that exists). This is the most complete of all of them, and the only reason it never got published is because there is a major mistake in it, and a major re-write is needed in order to fix that.
I only mention it 'cause pegasi flying in storms are near and dear to my heart.
Hurricane (working title)
There's probably some stuff I forgot to mention here, and maybe I'll pick it up in another blog post, maybe I won't. Before I go, though, I'm gonna give you one teaser, and it's for a story that I finished the first draft of at Seaquestriafest last year, hence my interest in actually getting it published before Seaquestriafest this year.
Luther knew that a late start would delay them, and she started opening the throttle as soon as the brake pressure gauge crept past four. She reached up and gave two long blasts on the whistle.
âWeâre supposed to be over five before we get underway,â Kellet reminded her.
âJust stretching out the slack,â Luther said. âAnd weâll be over five before we hit the switch.â
âStretching out the slack, huh.â Willow looked over at the pressure gauge, then back out the front window. âClear on my side, points are set, keep it slow until we get in the alley.â
âWeâre going to feel that load of rail in the back. Company load, you know they didnât weigh it. Couple of years ago, I got a load that was nothing but rail, thirteen gons, and I stalled on the grade outside Two Buttes, had to split the train up to the top.
âEngine ought to have had enough tractive effort, but later on I was talking to another engineer and she said that sheâd heard from the king snipe that company loads were always overweight.â
âThey try that over Big Hill Summit and theyâre gonna get a train on the ground.â
âYeah.â Luther leaned her head out the window and watched as the locomotive crossed onto the alley trackâit was a notoriously bad switch. âWeâre lined for the main.â
âSix atmospheres.â
âBoiler pressureâs good . . . highballâs up. Time to rattle her stack.â
A proper train fic, set in Equestria, has been a long time in coming.
I read Asimov's autobiography (the 2 volume out of print one). In the early 1950s he was an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University of Medicine. They tried to fire him but couldn't because (it turns out) he had tenure.
So, they said "If we can't fire you, we will give you no classes -and no pay.".
Asimov said "That was enormously beneficial to my career as a writer & lecturer. Within a year, I was making far more money."
Sorry about your auto repair troubles.
)
(Hey, I actually read the whole thing for once!
Sometimes I wonder what the very rare few steam turbine trains were like. They came in at the tail end of steam's heyday and nearly immediately got replaced by diesel trains. Only a scant few grainy photos, and a single hobbyist low quality videotape (yes, actual tape digitized and then uploaded to YouTube) of them exists.
Which makes me wonder now what a steam turbo-electric train would be like.
If my lawn looked like the clearing in the first image, I wouldn't mow it.
Loosely related:
- MLP: FiM
- Comedy
- Slice of Life
Saturday was a day to unwind, a day to sleep late, to eat brunch instead of breakfast, go out to the lake, or to invite friends over for a barbeque. Unless the lawnmower was broken and Ms. Bundermann is on the prowl.Sadly itâs already getting past pleasantly warm for me. But gladly, this will be my last summer here.
Maybe I can actually make it to a con this year. Iâve been to a local non mlp con, but I havenât actually traveled for one.
Hey, I really love your blogs!
Looking forward to the train fic!
I just spent four hours fixing a manure spreader that had sheared a 3/8 key on the pto shaft.
And have a backlog of repairs and spring planting preparation to do.
Say, do you know a good place to learn DIY Ford pickup engine tuning from? The farm has one that runs rough and erratic.
Admiral, you've educated me to at least *one* truth of life: I will never purchase a big American truck with any kind of turbo or fancy add-ons. Never. (Unless I win the lottery, in which case I'm going to buy a whole lot of stupid stuff so...)
I just spent four hours fixing a manure spreader that had sheared a 3/8 key on the pto shaft.
And have a backlog of repairs and spring planting preparation to do.
Say, do you know a good place to learn DIY Ford pickup engine tuning from? The farm has one that runs rough and erratic.
Enjoying life ponies? Among humans? I hope you all know this month to be special for us. Memorial Day... I'd like to see if they ever considered seeing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Greatest place to see for this very occasion. đ¨đťââď¸đRIP
5778865
Ahh, tenure, the goal of anyone in Academia (not sure if my Mom ever got it).
I suppose that for Asimov it would have been a great boon. Man sure was prolific. I wonder if he ever dedicated a story to the university that made it all possible?
5778876
Heh, it's kind of the nature of the job. And if things didn't go sideways sometimes, I'd have nothing to write about
Huzzah!
5778877
I don't know. I do know that turbine trains never had the economy that they were hoping for and were hellishly complex, I have to imagine that steam turbine was too complicated to be practical, but I don't know what the downfalls might have been. I'd guess weight and water supply would be the big ones, and there being a better solution existing in diesel locomotives.
Not quite the same, but due to comments here on FimFiction I learned that the Swiss had a few electric steam engines during WWII. They had trouble sourcing coal but had plenty of electricity, so they had two switchers that they fitted with pantographs and electric heating elements.
They converted them back after the war, but apparently not until the 50s, so it worked well enough that there was no impetus to immediately take off the electric heaters after the war ended. I'd guess (but don't actually know) that they kept them electric until something in that system broke, and then they converted them.
5778879
I aspire to my lawn looking like that some day. Right now it doesn't; it just looks shaggy. And also as a bit of an update my lawnmower decided to stop running today, so I've got that to deal with.
5778880
Moreso than you think; I went to mow more of the lawn today and my lawnmower worked for a while and then gave up. Not sure why just yet, I haven't had time to poke at it. Maybe I should just put on a mixtape of musicals and hope the ponies arrive.
5778885
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you live in the 'it's a dry heat' part of the South?
Ooh, hopefully you can, they're lots of fun! You can spend way too much on pony plushies, don't ask me how I know.
5778897
Thank you!
5778899
It's gonna be a while yet, 'cause I'm just now hitting the beginning of con season, but hopefully things will slow down enough I can get edits done. If I plan well, I might be able to do them during the calm bits of Seaquestriafest. My roomies are not morning people.
5778904
Oh boy, there's nothing more fun than broken bolt extraction. A key you might get lucky if it didn't mess up the shaft or the gear. I've got a video of a sad Woodruff key on a Ford engine; luckily, we found it before the damage became catastrophic. Also it was a lesson in when they tell you not to reuse the torque to yield bolt, you should listen.
I'm just now hitting that, and I don't have a farm. My yard's starting to go crazy and if I don't want vines and opportunity trees to conquer all, I have to start dealing with yard work.
Not off the top of my head; some of it really depends on how deep you want to go and what you've got in the way of diagnostic tools. And what you're working on; if it's a newer truck with OBD-II that's a very different skillset than something old with a carb or EEC-IV. There probably is stuff out there, but it's not the kind of thing I generally look for since for anything newer ('10 and up), we've got lots of professional subscriptions and rarely need to reach out to other stuff.
Shoot me a PM with some more specifics and I'll see what I can come up with, at least pointing you in the right direction maybe
5778918
You win the lottery and you can pay some poor bastard to fix the thing.
One of my co-workers just bought a lifted Chevy diesel for about half the purchase price of my home; another just bought a lifted Jeep. I just bought a ten year old minivan.
Keep it simple, and it'll be reliable, that's always been my motto.
5779001
I think that there are some ponies who would appreciate the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and what it represented. I don't know if the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or the Vietnam Wall is the more visceral of the two.
I've never seen either, but I have visited the Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle, and the silent grandeur of the room with its high stained glass windows and books on plinths listing all the war dead is something I can't really put into words.
5779670
He was (posthumously) diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.
He never directly referenced his time at Boston University. Did write some short stories about things that happened to him there . "Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" (& several sequels) were based on his doctoral dissertation.
5779675
I do not sadly. I live in a 90 degrees 90% humidity part with night not much cooler. I grew up in an "it's a dry heat" part of the country, but not the south
I know how easily cons can turn into retail therapy, i've been to a few furcons. I hope I can, it's just cost and PTO. Plus i've only done local cons before.
5779680
I bet. It's very reverent. I just wish there was story about them reacting how we would to this. In our world. đ
5779769
I don't know if they would see it the same way, but maybe they would. It's a theme I've touched on with pegasi at least; not necessarily deaths in war, but deaths in service of the Crown (i.e., weather patrols).
5779683
Oh, that's really unfortunate. We have a week of that in Michigan some years, and it really sucks.
Yeah, transportation and time are the big factors. That influences the ones I can go to; luckily, there are three significant cons within five hours drive for me (give or take). so those always work out.
5779783
Possibly. And you have? Which fic? đ¤
5779790
Well, it's kind of overtly hinted at in Stained Glass (inspired by Edinburgh Castle, especially the final scene), as well as being a theme in Sky Sweeper, Flight Medic, Lost at Sea, the various tornado pony fics, Silver Glow's Journal and possibly others I can't remember at the moment.
The whole vibe of serving the nation at large, even if it means your own life. Maybe not in war, but in keeping the worst of the storms away from civilization. Sky Sweeper mentions the unofficial motto of the Coast Guard: "You have to go out, you don't have to come back."
5779794
Understandable. They may find some relation between us.