Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

fun social media stuff


Like asecular.com
(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   accidental sensor drenching
Thursday, June 4 2015
I've decided that it's best to mow the grass when Gretchen isn't around. That way she gets all the benefits of a mowed lawn without having to ever hear a lawnmower (well, at least not from the annoying proximity of our yard). I timed my work by the amount of podcast I listened to, and the whole job took me about an hour, though it didn't include any weed whacking. After that, I did a bunch of gardening, mostly weeding. I'm disappointed that only one of the dozens of edamame beans I'd planted weeks ago has made the transformation into a seedling in the main garden patch. So today I decided to expand lettuce cultivation in that patch, and for once I actually planted a proper row. I also planted some ever-reliable Provider Green Beans and, along the east edge of the new cabbage patch, a line of Northeaster Pole Beans, which like to climb. I have a section of fence between that patch and the main garden patch, so I can erect a line of poles for them to climb there.

Meanwhile, it seems my work yesterday with marijuana smoke and Seal-All failed to seal the leak in base of the downward-pointing sensor of my barometric windvane. So today I decided to use a less toxic sealant, which would permit me to suck and blow on the sensor while pushing sealant around with my fingers until I'd confirmed that the leak was sealed. The sealant I chose was acrylic caulk. It was messy, but before long I'd discovered that the problem was consisted of two different leaks through the bundles of wiring.
I should have just let the barometric windvane sit to dry overnight, but by this evening I was fucking with it again. It seemed that the caulk was still wet enough to be conductive and was shorting out some circuitry it had found its way onto. Once I fixed that, the device started working again, but then my testing of the newly-made seal managed to open it up again, so now I had to fix that.
All this testing meant that the sensor tube was in my mouth for an extended period, and eventually I had a different problem. My slobber ran down the tube, inundated the pressure sensor, and shorted it out. As I worked to dry out the inside of the tube, I feared I'd ruined the sensor. That would be bad, because it would be essentially impossible to replace. My attempt to dry out the sensor with toilet paper on a stick weren't sufficient, so then I tried blasting inside the tube with squeeze bulb, hoping the airflow would do the job. But wouldn't you know, that bulb had some water in it from some earlier project and I drenched the sensor a second time!
After daubing the inside of the tube again with toilet paper on a stick, I made a quick little device that scooped the air from a computer fan and funneled it through a little hose that I could run into the sensor tube. The airflow from that hose was tiny; I could only feel it on my lips (and not my cheek). But it was relentless, and after an hour the sensor was dry enough for the barometric windvane to work once more. I celebrated by taking a single 10mg dose of Ambien, though when I went to bed about an hour later, I didn't immediately fall to sleep.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?150604

feedback
previous | next