[elky] Re: A day when things went right (for a change)

  • From: Ray Buck <rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:12:15 -0600

Holy smokes! That's one hell of a list. Good luck with it. If I started to make a comprehensive Things To Do list, I'd still be here tomorrow morning working on it without having completed anything. :)


I woke up around 3 ayem and I've been answering email ever since. There's a big project on the horizon for Target 550 ( www.target550.com ) and a lot of it has to do with that.

Back to work on the photo editing...I got sidetracked by phone calls last nite and didn't make much progress.

r


On 10/25/2011 3:57 AM, John Christensen wrote:
Hell of a good day. I can only hope this one goes as well for me.

On my list:
CAD for work before 7:30 AM
Lions Club Board meeting at 8 AM (El Camino .... It's dry for now)
Come home to a contractor in my house installing can lights and finishing drywall on the new island.
Do the minutes for the board meeting (I'm the Secretary)
Try to rustle up enough help to lift the heater in to position while I attach it to the ceiling of the garage Shut the gas off in the laundry room to start re-routing the pipe in the garage to the new heater Hardware run for pipe and a thermostat (El Camino hopefully... looks like rain today)
Price out the Bamboo for the floor while I'm at the store
Gotta eat in there somewhere
Gotta walk about 3 miles before it rains too.

I'll only get half of it done. If I get more, I'm happy.
JC

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 8:44 PM, Ray Buck <rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    Boy, am I tired.  It's been a long day (14 hours so far) and it
    ain't over, but in what seems to be a change from the norm, things
    went right today.  Here's the list:

    I finally got Expedia to arrange for a refund of the 2 night's
    lodging in Wendover that I left early when World Finals was rained
    out:
    http://www.chevyasylum.com/lsr/bsf2011/05-wf/Welcome.html (there's
    a caption on every page to explain what went on as far as the
    racing and the Burb's distributor's untimely demise.)  I had to be
    tenacious about it before I got it...at first they didn't want to
    refund anything, then the hotel manager said it was their policy
    to refund only 1 out of 2 nights, but when I explained that my
    German friend checked out at exactly the same time I did and got a
    full cash refund, the motel owner finally ran out of excuses and
    authorized the full refund.  Btw...if you come to the salt flats,
    avoid the Motel 6 like the plague.  The Knight's Inn is much
    better.  Jim can explain about the cockroach he found in his room
    earlier in the year....ohh...and that was the place where the
owner doesn't turn the heat on for the rooms until November. Hell, I dunno if he's noticed, but Wendover is in the high desert
    and has the same climate as Salt Lake City...except for our
    Wasatch mountains directly to the east of the SL valley.  I
    started turning on my heater before I left for WF.  But then I'm
    kinda cold-blooded.

    Moving right along, I got Moon Equipment's refund of the deposit
    for the Moon Disc mounting hardware welding jig.

    I took the junkyard driveshaft in and had the people at GRS
    Drivelines replace the slip joint and rear u-joint.  That was done
    in about 6 hours.  It cost about half of what had been refunded to
    me, so that wasn't too bad.  It was pretty good, as a matter of fact.

    While I was waiting for that to be done, I was able to fix the
    Beater Camaro's horn button with the spring from a ball-point
    pen.  Seems that whoever installed the aftermarket wheel (looks
    sorta like a 60s-era Cal Custom job) neglected to put the spring
    in the electrical contact do-dad that has the wire that connects
    to the grounding plate the center cap snaps onto.  Confused?  Me,
    too...but it was a no-cost repair of something that was a case of
(as Jim H likes to say) "the dreadin was worse than the doin." Now I just need to get Safety and Emissions Inspection and I can
    get a real live license plate for it.  That one may not be so easy.

    Finally (and this is rather ponderous) I took the "flexible flyer"
    trailer ramps back to the place I got 'em and although it also
    took some rather tenacious discussion with the parts counter
    people (the first guy was Mexican and we definitely had a "failure
to communicate") I got a result that I'm very satisfied with. Here's what happened. When the folks at Henderson Wheel (a very
    well-established place for just about anything to do with wheels,
    spindles, bearings, trailers and a whole buncha other stuff) told
    me that they had a pair of 4400 pound-rated ramps, but they'd have
    to be brought in from one of their other stores (in Orem, Ut...the
    joke about that goes, "what's the difference between Orem and
    yogurt?"  Answer: "Yogurt has culture." <G>) they did just exactly
    that.  They had a pair of ramps brought north by their courier and
    I picked 'em up the next day.  But what they gave me isn't what I
    paid for, nor was it what they'd told me I was buying.  Seems the
    counter guy (experienced, knowledgeable and ok in my book) was off
    by a single digit in the part number and the ones he gave
    me...well, all the labeling was in French and when I unlimbered my
    high school (and Moroccan) French skills, I saw that it said, "Do
    not exceed 500kg on ramps."  That's 1100 pounds, exactly 1/4 of
    the 4400 pound-rated ramps I supposedly bought.  They were
    intended for use with garden tractors or maybe ATVs or
    snowmobiles.  Fail.  Big time fail.

    In an almost spooky way, the ramps that I'd paid for and they'd
    had brought in by courier were right by the door behind the
    counter.  They apologized for handing me the wrong ramps and
    handed me the right ones.  Here's a shot of 'em still in their
    packing along with the installation-ready driveshaft:



    Seeing what I should have had in the first place, there's no way
    that the first set could have done the job of what I picked up
    today.  These are about twice as wide and twice as thick.  Now I
    know why the others bent.

    Finally, I got in touch with a guy who wants a CD of photos (a new
    customer) and he tells me he'll be making a contribution to my
    website as payment for 'em.

    I can't remember a day in the recent past (hell, I can't remember
    breakfast) where so many things have gone right.  Yanno, I think I
    prolly otta go to bed before I screw something up.  :)  No...I
    have another 120 files to edit from the car show I shot last
    Saturday.  But I can handle that.

    r



Other related posts: