(written on December 18th from notes taken previously)
Back to trading today! Just about right off the bat I was up $174. 🎉
Aaaaaaaand then–bang! I was down nearly $300. 😬 But I didn’t panic! I locked in and worked really hard and clawed my way from being down nearly $300 to being back up $180. The last $20 took me forever because I shifted down to really small share sizes, but I made it all the way back!
I need to learn to just take the quick victories when they come and not try to keep going.
I think a lot of my struggles come because I have ideas and plans for trading rules, but I’ve never sort of written them out and set them in stone, so to speak, so they’re sort of fluid in my mind and not solid.
Was grateful there was a bathroom across the road, as whatever I ate wanted to come out very very quickly. 😅
Of course, when I got there, it was occupied, but I managed not to blast off prior to the optimal lunch time. 💩🚀
Been feeling better with these small trading victories. I think that’s one of the things that I’m just longing for in my life right now is just… some sort of victory somewhere, some kind of sustained success, and the last handful of days, battling back from failure, feels like success.
I’m certainly hoping it continues.
Spent a little time just veging out before driving to Auckland, having made my choice between starlink and the local portable internet modem that amplifies cell signal but is its own thing (I chose to try the local company because I could start with the equipment immediately instead of having to wait for potentially a couple of weeks for a satellite dish to be sent to me, which would require my figuring out where to have it shipped to, which would in turn require that I needed to be in that part of New Zealand when it arrived. It would also require figuring out a battery setup like I have back in the States).
So I braved going back to the big city 🙃 (Auckland), found my way over to their headquarters, and got myself set up with Internet.
It was interesting that the place that I went to felt like a corporate office. It certainly wasn’t the storefront. I guess they are used to shipping out the hardware. It was the kind of place with glass doors where you had to be run in and the doors unlocked for you to even get in, and you could see the call center and whatnot inside.
But it worked just fine for me to get the stuff there the same day, so that’s what I did. 🙂
And now I have Internet!
My next stop was to try and set up a local bank account, so that I could get cash without having to pay the exchange fees. I find myself regularly looking on Facebook marketplace for stuff, but I can’t buy anything without cash, and all my cash is now pretty much used up from having bought the van.
Unfortunately, the bank I tried to go to was in a maze of one way streets with all of the parking taken up everywhere, so after driving around forever struggling to even find the place, once I realized where it was and that there were pretty much zero available parking spots anywhere nearby, I gave up and drove off to find a junkyard to try and get parts for the van.
I did find a junkyard, in sort of the northwest side of Auckland, that said they had vans of the make, model, and generation that I have, so I headed over that way.
I have lots of little tiny screws and bolts and fuses and whatnot in my toolbox, which I ended up having to go back to my van and remove everything that wasn’t a tool, because apparently this place cares about things as small as fuses and bolts. Normally, when I go to places, they don’t care about small things like that, but… different country, different norms and expectations.
Specifically, I was looking for a door handle assembly and a window switch. Having done that electrical testing before and concluded that the most likely cause of the issues was the window switch, that was the next step, and since I was already there, I figured I’d buy the door handle assembly.
Gratefully, removing the window switch went rather quickly, having already done it previously. Removing the door handle also went quickly, so gratefully, I was in and out of the self-pull junkyard rather quickly.
Oh, another difference between this junkyard and every other junkyard I’ve ever been to… no returns, no exceptions.
😶
Gratefully, I was pleasantly surprised at the price, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to not be able to return the parts if they didn’t work for me.
It was also interesting, another difference, that I had to say exactly which vehicle the parts were taken from. I’ve never seen that at a junkyard in the states before. They don’t bother with anything like that. But I guess maybe here, with a significantly smaller vehicle base to work from that they need to really get everything they can out of each vehicle?
That’s my guess. There are so many vehicles for junk yards to restock within the United States that I don’t think they really care. I think maybe they keep them for a certain amount of time and then just replace them with new ones? That would be my guess anyway.
Unfortunately, the window switch didn’t resolve the issue, and I realized the door handle trim that I bought was actually the wrong piece.
Double fail.
So back in I went. I figured the window switches were cheap enough that I would just go take off another one and check it out, and if it still didn’t work, then I would assume the issue was some weird electrical thing and not with the switch. It’s just so… weird 🙃 if it turns out to be something… weird. 🙃
That’s a funny word. Weird. A weird word.
😆
Aaaaaanyway… I headed back in, grabbed another switch, accidentally breaking the very brittle piece of weather stripping, and spending a whole lot of time carefully removing the entire door handle assembly, which is extremely complicated on these sliding doors.
Oh, and doing it all in the rain. 🙃
Eventually, rather wet, I headed back with a handful of fuses and relays, the second switch, the door handle assembly, and the broken weather stripping.
This time, I met with a couple of more surprises.
They wanted $5 for each fuse.
😶
And I’m pretty sure they charged me for the broken weather stripping. In other junk yards, I’ve never had them charge me for something they got broken in the process of trying to take something else off. Of course, I think it’s probably fairly uncommon for people to even report that they broke something trying to get something else off, but maybe that’s just an arrogant assumption.
This time, I think the price was something like four times what it was the first time, even though I declined to purchase the fuses and relays, because they were so expensive. Apparently, lost the receipt almost immediately, so I couldn’t check to see if I was charged for the broken weather stripping, but I’m guessing I was, given the price was so much different?
Anyway, I met with disappointment as the second switch didn’t resolve the issue either. 😕
So… whatever the issue is, it’s not normal, so it’s not gonna be simple.
Funny how the same thing happened last time I was in New Zealand when we had an electrical issue. Turned out to be something not normal at all. One of the least common issues I dealt with as a mechanic, voltage but no amps.
Might be the same thing this time?
There was that issue about getting voltage on a wire that was supposed to be grounded, though, so I think it’s going to turn out to be a short this time instead of bad wiring like it was last time when someone had done a poor job of splicing wires.
I drove away I think a little dejected, coming away from all that junkyard effort only to still have the issue. It’s likely going to require a lot more troubleshooting. 😕
Wanting to get out of the city as quickly as I possibly could, I pointed the nose of the van south, drove through the city and passed the city and all the way to the Hingaia Reserve for the night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 