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the interwebs rule

Listening to:	GTD
Reading:	GTD
Weather:	6, sunny

It's pretty groovy how you can buy just about anything with a few clicks. You don't have to drive around (which today would require significant snow removal from my driveway, among other hassles), and you don't have to know every detail. I just bought 2 round bits of machinery to repair stuff around the house, and it was quite painless and relatively inexpensive, especially considering I could just sit here in my toasty house and wait for them to be handed right to me in a few days.

The first one is a pulley for my garage door. A couple of weeks ago the cable that helps me raise and lower my garage door came off one of the pulleys. It's a pretty simple and cool use of physics, actually. A cable on each side of the door attaches to a spring and passes over a couple of pulleys, helping reduce the force required to lift the door once it's in motion. The pulleys are all the same size. I was able to stretch the spring to slacken the cable and slip it back over the pulley, and it's been working fine ever since. But I could see the reason for the slip was that the pulley is listing a bit, so I'm going to replace it. I just googled "garage door pulley," found several parts sites, had a few choices to make, matched up the photos, and badabing here it comes for about $12 including shipping.

Then my washing machine knob broke. It's plastic with metal threads. It's actually another cool bit of engineering, various slots and tabs and shit for the timing of cycles of your washer. Google up "washing machine parts," choose your brand, answer a few q's like is it all plastic? all metal? all one color? and then you get a few choices with nice front, back, and sideways photos over a measuring grid. What could be simpler? $15 including shipping, it just spins right on, ya don't even need a tool. And the new one is improved, the whole underbelly is metal so it can't break the same way the last one did. Though I got about 14 years out of the plastic one, so I'm not complaining.

Coming soon, photos and rundown of Liv's spectacular Rocky Horror bday party. Her actual birthday is this friday, so expect snow, it's tradition.

permalink posted by cat 8:55 AM

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