Uncategorized | Bustednuckles

It’s not like I have a great deal of spare time lately as it is but in between work, trying to move a blog, fighting with brain dead people on the internet who are sending me missives of death and a few other things, life goes on and shit needs to be taken care of domestically.

Since my Wife’s Mother passed away a couple of months ago, she has been driving back and forth to her Dad’s place and taking care of him because he has Altzheimers.

It’s a 35 mile one way trip to get there and she has to get through the North East side of Portland and cut through half of Gresham to get there.

As we are all quite well aware of lately, the days are getting shorter and it is getting dark earlier.

Something that has bugged me for a couple of years now has been the sorry state of the headlights on her little Hoopty.

Actually it’s been more like five years.

You know, those newfangled plastic headlight assemblies that get sand blasted over time and get all fogged up looking.

I did that whole polish the scratches bullshit to them a long time ago and that is pretty much a joke.

Take my advice and don’t waste your time with that.

A week ago when I noticed that it was indeed starting to get dark early and I happened to be out in front of the garage I happened to look over and spot those nasty fucking headlights.

Right then and there I came in the house, got on Ebay and ordered a new set of headlamp assemblies for that POS.

Something like a hundred bucks for both of the damn things and the shipping was free.

Dirt fucking cheap for something like that.

Made in Taiwan even, of course.

The Wifely Unit complained and griped about it saying it was a waste of money and that she didn’t need them because she doesn’t drive at night much.

I love her dearly but sometimes I just have to ignore her, take the abuse and do shit anyway because I know it’s for her own damned good.

They got here yesterday and I went at it this morning.

Umm, yeah.

She decided to go to her sisters to have a yak session and watch a movie tonight. She left just as it was starting to get a little dark and when she pulled out of the driveway and pointed down the street I could see a HUGE difference just standing on the porch.

She will see the difference herself when she comes home but she is as stubborn as a Missouri Mule and I would bet she won’t admit that it made a huge difference.

That’s fine because I know and now I feel a whole lot better about her safety and being able to see out of that damn thing.

POS anyway.

She did say that they looked pretty. I’ll take that and put it in the win column.

While I was thrashing and cursing on her car, there is this guy that lives around the corner and down the street that comes by walking his Pit Bull once in a while and he stopped to chat.

Nice guy, about my age.

We have chatted a few times over the last year and the last couple times he was asking my advice about this gear box thing he can’t get apart that is for the out drive on some fucking boat he has that was built in 1962.

He says it’s got some seal leaking on it but he’s no mechanic and he can’t figure out how to get it apart.

Not being able to see what it is he keeps talking about, I told him to take it to any Heavy Truck repair shop and they will damn sure be able to get it apart.

Apparently that never happened.

I’d show you my shocked face but I don’t want to scar anyone permanently.

So he kinda asks me if I am going to be around later because he sees that I’m busy.

I said look, I’m here now, can you go get this thing and bring it over here?

I’ll take a look at it anyway.

OMG.

The guy almost ripped the poor dog’s head off getting turned around and hauling ass back home.

I went back to what I was doing and a few minutes later a car pulls up.

Out he comes, gets in the trunk and brings me this thing.

I’m like WTF is this?

The damn thing is almost exactly like a rear end pumpkin.

A drop out third member kinda thing with a Planetary gear set in it.

It took me a few minutes of studying it and then it took me fifteen minutes to dig out a gear puller, the right socket, do a Fonzi on the fucking air compressor that didn’t want to come on and drag out an air hose.

I wound up pushing all the shaft and bearing out of the thing and now he is going to have to take it somewhere and have the flange and bearing pressed out to get to the seal.

I told him to replace the bearings while he has this thing apart too. One of the big ones was a bit crunchy.

That one.

My little home made press isn’t near big enough for that job. I wouldn’t even be able to get it set up.

Happy?

The guy was beside himself that I got that thing apart.

Tried giving me money and shit.

I told him that it took me longer to dig out the tools than it did to get the thing apart and you are going to have to pay someone to finish this job now.

Oh he was excited though. I’m thinking this has been sitting around waiting to get done for a long time.

He kept wanting to pay me and I ain’t taking no damn money for it.

I told him that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

People helping other people , especially neighbors and shit.

I am definitely getting the Squeaky Liberal vibe from the guy but I ain’t talking politics with him.

Not everything is about politics, race, religion and that kind of shit. Sometimes it just about people that need a little help with something.

I have no problem helping someone out and he’s a nice guy.

I was glad to help him out, it didn’t take long and he appreciated the hell out of it.

Win Win in my book.

It ain’t everybody that has the kinds of tools and experience that I do.

The Snap On Puller I dug out has been sitting in my tool box for years.

It’s one of those things that you don’t need very often but you are damn glad you have when you do need one.

So yeah, Haters that actually help other people, whoda thunk it right?

I can even remember a time I helped a straight up Muslim once when he walked into the shop and needed a Pitman Arm taken off a steering gear box.

Head rag, broken English and all.

I didn’t charge him anything either.

Dude must have said Allah Bless You thirty times before I could get him back out the door.

The way I see it is that if you are OK to me, I’m OK to you. I don’t give a fuck what color you are.

I especially used to like helping the Mexicans down in San Jose.

It was Comedy Gold trying to communicate. God that shit was funny.

Fucking pointing and arm waving, gesticulating and mimicking strange noises and shit, me absolutely butchering the Spanish, them trying to find the words in English, it was almost a game sometimes to see who could get the other one to understand what the fuck we were trying to say first.

I gotta say, there weren’t very many times we had to go find someone who could translate though.

So yeah, what comes around goes around, right?

I’m still having issues with this new blog set up.

It kept wanting to load pictures sideways and I spent two fucking hours messing around to get this post ready to go.

I had to go through a bunch of old help forum posts and try a bunch of shit before I found one saying that unsupported browsers were causing the majority of the problems.

I had to actually use the (GASP) Microsoft Edge browser to finally get them to post straight and even then I can’t just pull them straight out of the download file like I used to be able to do.

I have to download the image, sit and watch the Spinning Wheel Of Death for a few seconds, delete the damn picture, go back in and select ‘Image” then go into the Media Library and select it from there to get it to load.

Pain in the fucking ass.

There is going to be a very steep learning curve to using this new set up I see but I am a stubborn sonofabitch and I WILL figure this thing out eventually.

I’m still having to fuck around with the moving of the blog to the new hosting company.

I’m not a techie and this is turning into a shit show.

Technical jargon I’m not familiar with, and procedures I am not familiar with.

I discovered that the domain that I have already paid for, Bustednuckles.com, can’t be transferred to the new place so I had to buy another fucking domain.

I dicked around with this after I got home last night until I fell asleep in the recliner again.

I get up this morning, half awake and start in again.

I kept getting some strange error message that about something about it was tied up and wouldn’t transfer and that’s about the time I nodded off.

I get up and start in again, spend ten minutes trying to figure this shit out again and get this,

The domain “bustednuckles.net” was recently purchased. You must wait 113 hour(s) before moving the domain to a new account. If you have further questions, please contact our Support department.

What the actual fuck?

113 hours.

What, they got some random number generator for this?

Ya hit enter and the hamster at their site starts spinning a number wheel?

That’s over four fucking days!

Fuck me, it never ends.