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general awesomeness
May. 8th, 2005 12:33 amDefinitely the most productive day on record; and one following a very fun night last night with barbecue, dancing, and luxing. Picked up Nina at the airport in the morning--she is visiting the Brain/CogSci dept. here from UC Davis. While she snoozed, recovering from the all-nighter from Sacramento via Atlanta, Brette, Ryan, Micah, Vijay, Jon and I took breakfast at South Wedge Diner.
Item the first: fix my car. Kris came over and we picked up Jon. Jon provided tools and practice, Kris some helping hands, and I the problem to be solved. ha! As you'll recall, the problem was that the belt driving the alternator (which charges the battery) broke--actually it shredded and I cut the remains out with a kitchen knife.
The air conditioning compressor is driven by the crankshaft via a belt, and a second pully on the compressor drives the belt going to the alternator. Unfortunately, to put a new alternator belt on, you have to take off the compressor belt first. All of the bolts are significantly corroded, so I feared the job would be unmanageable--but it went quite well. The compressor and alternator are on rack-and-pinion setups that allow you to develop tension in the belts. We lowered the alternator, lowered the air conditioning compressor, took off its V-belt, raised the compressor, fed the new alternator belt under it, lowered it again, tightened everything up. Presto!
Item the second: check up on the co-op. In the rejuvenated GTI, Jon and I drove over to South Plymouth Avenue to drop off some paperwork and with the hope of doing some exploratory surgery on the flooring. We met David and David and went out on a walk with some other people and some beagles down by the river. There's a crazy warehouse building down there that I'd just assumed was abandoned, but apparently it's (legally!) inhabited by two RIT professors who have renovated the interior. Crazy!
Back at the co-op house, we went in for the exploratory surgery. "Here goes nothing!" David grabbed the carpeting, and, with a knife, we pulled it up in strips. Sure enough: hardwood floor underneath! Scraped off the padding where it had stuck with a putty knife. Quite satisfyingly defenestrated the old carpeting. Tomorrow we're having a huge work party to polish up the house--and remove all the icky old carpet. It's going to be grand.
Item the third: delicious dinner at India Cafe with Jon and Heather. Afterwards we went shopping, buying up acrylic paint (burnt sienna), some kind of fabric binding agent (I suspect it is relabelled Elmer's Glue), a dozen t-shirts, a bucket, TSP, a collection of sponges, latex gloves, putty knives, oh, and some good and plenties. Admired tankless water heaters and other Bosch appliances. Back at Jon and Heather's place, we set about our "sweatshop operations," producing a dozen t-shirts printed with our newfound Ant Hill Co-op logo that Mike's friend came up with. Heather took up duties as our new data manager and gathered all our scattered references to people into a coherent spreadsheet, then went down the list calling everyone, "Hello, this is Heather from Ant Hill Cooperative..."
Co-op work party - 10:00 Sunday May 8
General meeting - 18:00
960 South Plymouth Avenue
Item the first: fix my car. Kris came over and we picked up Jon. Jon provided tools and practice, Kris some helping hands, and I the problem to be solved. ha! As you'll recall, the problem was that the belt driving the alternator (which charges the battery) broke--actually it shredded and I cut the remains out with a kitchen knife.
The air conditioning compressor is driven by the crankshaft via a belt, and a second pully on the compressor drives the belt going to the alternator. Unfortunately, to put a new alternator belt on, you have to take off the compressor belt first. All of the bolts are significantly corroded, so I feared the job would be unmanageable--but it went quite well. The compressor and alternator are on rack-and-pinion setups that allow you to develop tension in the belts. We lowered the alternator, lowered the air conditioning compressor, took off its V-belt, raised the compressor, fed the new alternator belt under it, lowered it again, tightened everything up. Presto!
Item the second: check up on the co-op. In the rejuvenated GTI, Jon and I drove over to South Plymouth Avenue to drop off some paperwork and with the hope of doing some exploratory surgery on the flooring. We met David and David and went out on a walk with some other people and some beagles down by the river. There's a crazy warehouse building down there that I'd just assumed was abandoned, but apparently it's (legally!) inhabited by two RIT professors who have renovated the interior. Crazy!
Back at the co-op house, we went in for the exploratory surgery. "Here goes nothing!" David grabbed the carpeting, and, with a knife, we pulled it up in strips. Sure enough: hardwood floor underneath! Scraped off the padding where it had stuck with a putty knife. Quite satisfyingly defenestrated the old carpeting. Tomorrow we're having a huge work party to polish up the house--and remove all the icky old carpet. It's going to be grand.
Item the third: delicious dinner at India Cafe with Jon and Heather. Afterwards we went shopping, buying up acrylic paint (burnt sienna), some kind of fabric binding agent (I suspect it is relabelled Elmer's Glue), a dozen t-shirts, a bucket, TSP, a collection of sponges, latex gloves, putty knives, oh, and some good and plenties. Admired tankless water heaters and other Bosch appliances. Back at Jon and Heather's place, we set about our "sweatshop operations," producing a dozen t-shirts printed with our newfound Ant Hill Co-op logo that Mike's friend came up with. Heather took up duties as our new data manager and gathered all our scattered references to people into a coherent spreadsheet, then went down the list calling everyone, "Hello, this is Heather from Ant Hill Cooperative..."
Co-op work party - 10:00 Sunday May 8
General meeting - 18:00
960 South Plymouth Avenue
