The battle of wounded knee.

Today my knee is still swollen and painful. I can bend from the waist but bending the knee is still uncomfortable. It really needs a day or two of absolute rest but it’s unlikely to get that so recovery is likely to be very slow.

I tested the battery again today and found it had settled at 12.69v. That’s not terrible. It’s not 12.8v but it’s not 12.6v either. It’s about what I’d expect from a year old lawnmower battery. They only last two years which is a darned sight longer than a Harbor Freight deep cycle battery. Actually I’ve begun to question the savings from Harbor Freight. The fact their prices rise and fall faster than a whores drawers complicates matters but I’ve found Walmart’s prices while not beating them tend to be so close that the ease of returns at Walmart beats the price of Harbor Freight after gas has been added into the mix.

Looking at the top of the lawnmower battery, it’s different from the top of the Harbor Freight battery. Thus I needed a new top bracket for the battery. I went outside and cut some steel. I decided for simplicity two pieces of angle iron - one to grip the battery and the other to raise a flat bar up to above the level of the battery vents. Cutting was quick enough with my Walmart angle grinder (remember my 3rd Harbor Freight grinder or was it the 4th, committed suicide immediately after the previous one). In fact I’ve not had a Harbor Freight grinder that didn’t die on me though the 2nd lasted me the longest. Needless to say I burned my fingers on a piece of steel I’d cut some moments before and thought would have cooled.

That was what the bracket would look like when completed. I looked toward welding but then the sky clouded over and thunder began to roll. It looked like we were in for a storm so I put aside my plans of welding for the day.

20 minutes later, the sun was shining as brightly as if it had never been overcast. Thunder still rolled in the distance so I made haste to get my welding done before the clouds and rain came back. The wending went fairly quickly though I think I used more welding rods than I would have expected. I tend to over-weld. I weld each and every surface where two pieces of metal join. In fact my welds are quietly likely well over specified. I could clean them up with an angle grinder to make them look pretty and professional but I don’t care all that much about how they look as long as they function. Quite frankly making them look pretty is just a waste of grinding disks and my time.

I sprayed it with anti-rust primer then after that had dried, in the failing light I sprayed the final coat of white paint. I like all the stuff I build to be primed with rust-killing primer then painted white to show up rust. I still have to drill two holes in the cross bar to attach it to the turnbuckles but that’s a job for another day.

I finished the last of the three wires into my 12v 50a connectors today. The other needs to be done under the bus. So far it’s looking pretty good. I’m quite happy with progress. As I’ve said, my knee is still poorly. I made the mistake of getting down on it one time today and immediately felt the pain. Needless to say I did not attempt to get on my knee again for the rest of the day.

I had a go at charging the old Nexus and found it wouldn’t even power up. As I’ve probably said before, second hand electronics aren’t worth buying at any price. I’d clearly bought somebody else’s problem and was lucky to get 14 months out of it before it died. That pretty much puts the tin hat on writing code using my old Nexus. As far as my old RCA tablet goes, the USB charging port is dead. The physical keyboard barely registers too. Sadly, those two are totally beyond redemption. I’ll have to seek out something different if I want to do any coding. I’m not buying an old secondhand anything though as that’s just money thrown away.

So, tomorrow I head to commence the paperwork to start a new job. That’s welcome. I’d imagine by about Christmas (assuming I stay that long) I should be able to afford a tidy laptop to code on. Meanwhile I’ll look at some C++ books to remind myself what it’s all about.