2022-06-07 — Forward Progress

Well, the good news is that I didn’t spend my entire day in my room. In fact, I didn’t spend almost any of my day in my room today.

I got up a bit after 11:00 or so, and I took a shower, and at some point in time I went out and started mowing the lawn. We’ve got a few days of potential rain, so I wanted to get it done before it got wet and got longer than it already was.

In the process of mowing the lawn, at some point in time I realized that one of the blades had come off the lawn mower. The one on the driver’s side, so to speak.

I drove around trying to find it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I went and started digging through the bin that is full of spare parts out in the root cellar. Gratefully, I found an old blade that would work.

I pulled the deck off the lawn mower and discovered that it wasn’t just at the blade had fallen off, but the spindle bearing shaft assembly was damaged from being rounded off by the blade that had come loose, and the bolt that held the blade on was broken off inside the bearing shaft.

So I went back to the parts then and found an old spindle assembly that had broken off bolts where it mounts to the deck itself, but the bearing shaft assembly was still good. I didn’t know if you could remove the bearing shop assembly easily, but fortunately, just a few wax with the back end of a splitting ax, and it popped right out of the spindle assembly.

I also found an extra bolt to hold the blade on. So I tapped the new bearing shaft assembly into the spindle housing that was still on the spindle assembly, and a cleaned out the threads that were inside the bearing shaft, and I cleaned off the threads on the new bolt because they were Rusty, and I assembled it all back together and finished mowing the yard, including down by the mailboxes, on the other side of the fence by the mailboxes, and a nice little walking strip across the lower pasture to the deck.

If I didn’t already mention it, the other day I took my hatchet out there and cut a huge poison ivy vine that’s been growing on the tree right next to the deck that overhangs the creek. I checked it out today, and it’s amazing how much of the branches that were coming off the lower part of that tree are all just poison ivy branches. Lots and lots of droopy leaves. 😬

It will be interesting to decide what to do with the branches once they’re dead. I might just leave them there for a handful of years to let them dry out, so they are less likely to spread their poison ivy oils in unhappy places.

After mowing the yard and fixing the lawn mower and finishing mowing the yard, I drove to east of Springfield Missouri to pick up a new fountain for my mom. I accidentally broke her fountain last year or a couple years ago or whenever it was, and now that she’s back out working in the garden, I want to make sure she has a fountain there to help her enjoy her. Hopefully she likes it. I’m surprising her with it tonight when I get back. I’m actually dictating this as I drive back.

Apparently, it’s the week of Honda 3.5 alternators. I did the one last week, and then I had to redo it because of the bad alternator out of the box. Then I had another one on Monday but I was supposed to do, but they sent the wrong part, and then I had somebody call today with a 2009 Honda pilot that they’re replacing the alternator on, but they got stuck, which is probably a good thing since they had an O’Reilly’s alternator. So I’ll be putting an alternator in The Odyssey that’s in the AutoZone parking lot tomorrow, and also the alternator in the Honda pilot that’s in a fast food parking lot I believe.

In other news, things seem to be going forward at a quicker Pace with the phonetic stuff, since running into those people last week who were interested in participating. One of them has been in contact with several of her colleagues, and we will be organizing a zoom meeting during which I will give a presentation, ask questions, and take questions.

The professionals that I’ll be working with are in fields that are going to be much more helpful to getting the characters designed in such a way as to make them good for those with reading disabilities. It’s kind of exciting. If I can just get my emotional whatever back, then this might go places.

There are some interesting questions that will need to be answered and choices made with how this is all designed. Tentatively, I would like to base everything off of the general American/Broadcast English dialects, tailoring spelling to the lazy pronunciation that is most common.

My guess is that will generate quite a lot of pushback, but I think it’s important and makes spelling from hearing quite a bit easier.

I’m also hopeful that we’re within striking distance of the major testing phase of my transliteration engine. I think we’re down to the last little bit, if we’re not done already.

So I’m hoping I get to start pounding on that engine looking for bugs here shortly.

Anyway, I’m about 45 minutes from home, and I’m going to call it a rap on the journal entry for the evening.

Love to all.

Lift the World

~ stephen