Unfortunately the only place I was able to find them was Amazon.

https://a.co/d/c7XdyEn

I found a bulkhead fitting that would fit through the barrel bung on mine. There is a string trick to thread it into place; but I just kinda shook the barrel a bit and it fell into place.

Discovered a couple days ago that the rear brake on my nice road bike was dragging badly. Like, give the wheel a spin and it would stop in half a turn bad. No clue how I never noticed that in the not quite a year I’ve had the thing.

The insane part is that for a similar effort, my nice bike with a dragging brake still resulted in something like a 2 or 3 mph higher average speed than the still pretty nice gravel bike. I haven’t had a chance to ride it since fixing the brake so I’m curious how it does now.

Although, that also would explain some downhill coasting speed weirdness I noticed on group rides.

Just got the guy out who put the roof on my house out to see if he could find where a small leak had developed and reattach a piece of flashing. Flashing was easy, he popped a new nail in, I just dont have a ladder that would raeach that area. He couldn’t find anything obvious for the leak though so he just hit all the likely places.

Found that there is probably a small leak in my roof somewhere, so that’s fun. Not sure what else would be causing a wet spot on the exterior wall after last night’s rain.

On the bright side, the bit of rain over the weekend basically filled my 2 rain barrels so at least I know that works and collects a good amount of water. Somewhere around 80 to 90 gallons would be my guesstimate.

Edit: Rained a bit more, definitely some sort of leak, but also rain barrels are nearly full now (I’d guess north of 100 gallons, 100% full should be 110 gallons)

Also make sure you are well covered to avoid burns from weld spatter.

And sunburn. First time I played around with welding I didn’t get any weld splatter, but just about 30 seconds to a minute of welding in short sleeves was enough to sunburn (er, I guess weldburn?) my arms. That light’s intense.

Ordered dirt, company delivered landscaping rocks, they apologized, we laughed, they laughed, the rocks didn’t laugh. Our garden beds are now filled with a compost/topsoil blend, just need to plant stuff.

Whole family got together for mothers day up in Michigan and had a great time. We had an extra person to give gifts to which is exciting.

Well, this weekend went way better than the week started. My sister-in-law had an awesome time at her prom from what she told us. And my wife somehow found an MSR 4-person tent for $10 at Goodwill. We did a test set up yesterday and the thing looks like it’s unused.

Well, less good than it was. A deer got my sister in law’s car pretty good. Left headlight, bumper cover, washer fluid reservoir, left fender, and maybe the hood are toast.

No dash lights though and the car drives straight still, just hope insurance doesn’t decide to total it out.

Landscape fabric would probably work, although I have the litter bags on hand already. The soil under the beds is pretty decent (used to be farm land) so letting stuff shoot roots down should be fine. I’m just trying to do just enough to keep soil from spilling out between boards when it rains.

Also, turns out my city has a partnership with a place that sells compost from the yard waste the city collects so it isn’t completely insane to fill the beds with compost. I’ll probably do some more poking around to see if I can find anything else though.

Built some garden beds over the weekend at 0 cost by reusing old wood I had laying around using nothing but an electric chainsaw and an impact driver.

2 beds are something like 6’ x 2’ and the third is something like 10’ long. I have no clue what the exact dimensions are since I just eyeballed everything.

Kinda debating whether to cut up some old cat litter bags we have to make a liner just to keep dirt from slipping out through gaps.

Also managed to go on the first good bike ride of the season over the weekend. Just under 30 miles.

My little sister in law just got her letter saying she’s been accepted to Purdue!

Well, the SIM card died today. I had been using that thing since at least my Note 3 (maybe even the HTC Thunderbolt, cant remember which). Luckily the new phone has a eSIM so they could just activate that remotely.

After 7 years, finally decided to get a new cell phone. I’m hitting app compatibility issues.

Learned over the weekend that my sister-in-law is pregnant! Her and my brother have wanted kids for years now so it’s super exciting.

I replaced most of the lights in the basement, rewired stuff so it wasn’t switched on the neutral leg anymore too (seriously, who does that?). Pretty sure I had to deal with some sort of FNG today, I was getting all sorts of weird questions. (Note: These are all standards, if someone at the level this dude is supposed to be at is asking these kinds of questions…um…yeah.)

“Hey, what the hell kind of security screw is this?”
“Um…it’s a Phillips #2, although if you push hard enough a Phillips #1 might also work.”
Somehow, that wasn’t the mist bizarre question out of someone who really should not have been asking questions like that today.

I did get my full wellness reward at work, so my wife and I used part of it to get new heart rate chest straps so that’s kind of exciting.

It’s 0°F outside, feels like -18°F, but the dew point is -14°F so my Garmin watch is describing it as “pleasant.”

I feel like there’s some joke I’m missing.

My wife and I hosted Christmas this year. Least drama Christmas ever due to excluding a certain someone. Also, wife wanted to do a prime rib, first prime rib she tried and she absolutely knocked it out of the park. Perfectly seasoned, and so perfectly cooked that most people were cutting it with the side of their forks. Also, she did a couple amazing raspberry cheesecakes.

Telo MT1. Hopefully I get mine sometime in 2026.

Prerty good, I just got to update my EV preorder with color choice and drivetrain options. The top trim level is at the price the initial announcement I pre-ordered at said! They added less expensive options instead of pulling shenanigans with the advetised price being the most basic base model possible with no range and all the incentives ever stacked on top.