So today was a bit of a mission. I’d iiiintended to be back by lunchtime from a quick errand – namely, getting my glasses, grabbing some more concentrated isopropyl alcohol and distilled water, and also getting a new seal for our bidet handle which, it turns out, leaks. It leaks because the silicone seal on the hose has given up the ghost, sadly.
However, thanks to the wonders of capitalism’s finest achievements, getting isopropyl alcohol took and distilled water took three stops, and thanks to me being a twonk and wearing a nice clean wool undershirt shirt when I left the house to grab my glasses, I had to come home in-between to get changed. Then thanks to the US’s decision to stick with imperial measurements because… I dunno, they feel nice? I can’t get a seal, nor something likely to work, because the seal is metric. I could just order stacks of random seals from China or Europe – but that seams like a road that will lead to frustration and annoyance.
So. Instead after visiting many shops I came back home feeling a little dispirited.
The alcohol and distilled water are required for my ongoing attempts to revive the Acorn A4, which needs to have a nice bath in some distilled water and then a second bath in isopropyl alcohol, then a nice dry. That means it needs, probably, a whole day of work. If not a morning, then a day to rest and dry out, then a morning for reassembly. So I wasn’t intending to do that today. But I did think that the little errand to just “grab some distilled water” would be quick. Turns out not so much.
But – having got back I contemplated going out to the garage to upgrade my Z88 to 512K / 512K flash with a new OS. The idea here is that then it should connect – more happily – to the Mac. And then I can transfer files. Which means I can actually more easily use said wildebeast. However, by the time I’d had lunch, had tea, wrapped Kathryn’s prezzies and grumbled at the universe because one of her best prezzies is currently, apparently, in London (it took 4 days for it to travel about 50 miles. WTF Royal Mail, WTF?) and finally found the answer to “how do I wire this thing up” (because the instructions on the ebay page are just some pictures, which confusingly include pictures of things that I suspect might contain cut tracks, but it’s not immediately obvious where those cut tracks are, or if they’re there at all, or if there’s some other modification that should be blindingly obvious to me but isn’t instantly apparent).
At any rate, there’s a fully reversible mod here.
Thankfully, I managed to resist the urge to run out and do that (which was tempting, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t going to happen in an hour). But I’m hoping to tackle at least one of these two projects next week. Once one (or both) of them is (are) off my “current projects” list, I’ll return to recapping the RP-119 (for which I now have the service manual!) and replacing the couple of caps I missed on the DA-1000 when I originally recapped it.
I’m also trying to build up courage to look at Rebecca again.
That’s helped by the fact that the *FANFARE PLEASE* garage and the studio now have functioning outlets. And lights. Granted, at the moment, there’s a wire draped down from the ceiling in the garage, and I need to go grab some more conduit to attach to the ceiling for all the LED lights in the garage, but…
….there’s light. I can just go in and switch on a light and *plink* lights come on.
Unfortunately, the light doesn’t come on in the studio because the bulb holder is faulty. So we need to get a new one of them, which I meant to grab today, but I’d forgot :-/
