Sometimes I make things that actually work.

One of the problems I have in my life is that I am known to my friends as the Fix Anything Guy.  This is good, and bad.  The good is that friends come to me for help, and that's fine, because I like helping friends.  Occasionally a friend takes advantage, such as failing to pay for several months for work done.  But usually I'm doing the work as a favor, and because I enjoy the work.

Sometimes, though, the situation becomes bad.  It usually starts with "I have this motorcycle/car/ultralight/hovercraft/left handed goat wringer that needs to be fixed up.  Can you take a look at it?"

See my post from December 17 for my feelings on used/free equipment.

Invariably, this request leads to me meeting the person somewhere to stare at a dusty, leaky, broken pile of shit that might have at one point in time been a motorcycle/car/ultralight/hovercraft/left handed goat wringer.  Is I look at this pile of industrial waste, I sigh.  The breath from my lungs wafts over the object of my distress, causing its last load bearing structures to fail, and the whole thing suffers a complete integrity failure, its entropy becomes infinite, and it is reduced to a puddle of grey goo on the ground.

My friend turns to me and says,"I have $30 to spend.  Do you think we can fix it?"



So when schnookiemuffin  asked me to come look at some power tools that her father had passed on to her, I was naturally cautious.  I prepared myself for artifacts that should be consigned to the Museum of Discontinued Harbor Freight Tools.

Nope.  She actually had a treasure trove.  A Craftsman drill press.  A Craftsman vertical bandsaw.  And now new either.  Made in the 70's, when Craftsman was the best stuff out there.  Lifetime warranty on everything.
Also a nice Delta jig saw and a bench grinder and various hand tools.

All in beautiful condition.  I prepared myself to spend a few hours tuning these machines up and getting them working right.  Setting the tracking on the bandsaw, replacing missing nuts and bolts, replacing blades.

Nope.

I tensioned the drive belt on the bandsaw and recommended that it be replaced.
I put a blade in the jigsaw.
I recommended a new drive belt for the drill press.
End of list.

These tools are in wonderful shape.  The previous owner kept them in excellent condition.  He was clearly a skilled tool user.  It shows in the way he maintained his tools.

I got fresh eggs and ice cream out of the deal.  Also I got venison jerky and sausage for the work on the bicycle trainer.  So I like doing favors for her!



I've made no progress at all on the Turbo Bike.  I tried different configs.  I tried different firmware versions.  The developer has said he'll look into the issue.  I've asked other forum users to try and see if they can reproduce the problem.  I've heard nothing back.  It's quite frustrating really.  MegaSquirt is a popular system with many users.  The web forums years ago were full of helpful, friendly, enthusiastic people.  But now when I post a problem to the board, nobody can take ten minutes to load my config onto a MegaSquirt unit and reproduce the problem, or take one minute to take their known good config and send it to me in an email so I can try it on my system.

It feels like there's an attitude on the board of "I got all my questions answered.  My car works.  I don't care about anyone else's issue.  Seeya!"

Maybe it's just the holidays and everyone's away from home.  And there are some users who have tried to help me out with various things.  I still have faith in the developer and some other forum users.  And when the problem is solved, it'll probably be a mistake that I made and didn't see.  But at the moment I feel like I've invested my life savings in a loser like Enron.  I can't even motivate myself to finish the bike's seat or headlights.  Why bother when I can't get the damned thing to start?