You probably all saw this (it’s from last December) but I didn’t The Personal, Political Art of Board-Game Design | The New Yorker (it was linked in the post to the latest spacebiff podcast)
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I hadn’t seen that. Thanks.
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It’s 20F outside. This time yesterday, it was almost 70, on the way to a mid afternoon high of 80F. We might see freezing again today. Maybe not.
Had a heck of a thunderstorm last evening when the cold front rolled through.
(those numbers are -7, 21, 26, 0 for those of you who use inferior temperature units.)
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Just saw this elsewhere, thought I would share.
Go to O’Reilly Auto Parts website and search for 121g
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Maybe it is a notice for the forthcoming year 2031?
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I initially thought it was an overly specific time range.
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So it turns out we (or rather, our renovation company) made some dumb decisions ~7 years ago.
I was removing the removable twist “bucket” into which our washing machine drains, to add some pipe cleaning agent. Unfortunately, that “bucket” was stuck, and the whole assembly twisted round and round and round until it detached from the piping underground, which immediately dropped a few centimetres down. Reattaching was a matter of lifting the underground piping back into perfect position and rotating the assembly back in the other direction a dozen times. Unfortunately, the only way to get at any of this in the tiny alcove the washing machine lives in, is to move the whole thing out of the alcove. This is not something one strong person can do with the total lack of leverage and space afforded by the alcove.
So I called a plumber, and with his assistance manhandled the heavy washing machine out, and I let him put the drain back together so he could justify the call out fee. Unfortunately, the two of us were together unable to get the washing machine back into the alcove - it’s such a tight fit, and the lip of the drainage tray on which the washing machine sits prevented us from getting the front feet back in as the back of the machine hit the rear wall when tilted too far. Finally resolved when I managed to wedge a mini yoga balance ball under the front of the machine with each of us lifting a different rear corner while rolling it back.
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Some years ago, my girlfriend wanted to move her laundry appliances off the floor on to a platform. We moved the dryer, but the washer was too heavy for us to lift with out any hand holds.
I came over a couple days later, and she’d done it herself. She’d used a blood pressure cuff as an inflatable jack, lifting the machine half an inch, putting it on blocks and resetting to do it again.
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Ooh, I want an inflatable jack for my car. Seen one in use. Put it in place, hook it up to the cylinder, open valve, close valve, done. Lovely.
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Back when we moved into our current flat, we had some Ikea furniture delivered here before we moved in. I spent the day assembling it by myself, only to realise that building the bed involved a step where you flip the entire frame over. Hence why the instructions state you need two people.
I was able to pile up the new sofa cushions to catch it and I’m tall enough that my arms just reach to either side of a king size bed.
I of course didn’t learn my lesson and had to do similar when putting together the 5x5 Kallax.
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An air bag jack? Or an air powered hydraulic jack? Airbags are used for recovery, like righting overturned trailers, and in crash rescue. Never seen one intended as a general purpose jack, which isn’t t say they aren’t.
Air over hydraulic is very common, and very useful. A shop I used to work at had an end jack, for picking up a medium sized truck (think delivery truck) by the front or rear frame. It was air over hydraulic, and I always used it that way. I had a Fuso box truck I needed to work on. The box was too tall for the door of the shop. So I was working on it outside. I realized it was too far away for the air hose to reach, so I was working the jack by hand. I quickly went to go find a longer hose…
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The one I saw looked something like this
and fit neatly under my car with a flat tyre. As far as I know, no hydraulics involved.
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You know, that - the foofly inflating bit, not the handles and sliding gubbins - would be an awesome design for a cake.
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Not the Handles and the Sliding Gubbins would be a great band name.
Debut album title: The Floofly Inflating Bit
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actually, the whole thing would be a great subject for one of those people I see videos making cakes that look just like something else.
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make the handles from candy cane stuff.
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After several failures to do so we finally booked our May vacation today. Which is notable mostly because we’re traveling with friends and not just any friends but friends that have already completed Ticket 2 Ride Legacy, who have probably played Ark Nova 50+ times and whose collection is just slightly smaller than my own…
The vacation has a working title: “boardgame camp”. We’re not exactly sure if we’re hoping for bad weather or not 
Most important for planning is to prevent us taking along 2 copies of games we all love
(the ones that come to mind are Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars, Mischwald, Wingspan or possibly Wyrmspan)
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A first world problem rant.
I ordered a thing. (A bench for Nordic curls, but it really doesn’t matter.). It was not in stock, and was supposed to ship in a month or six weeks.
Just a couple days after I ordered, I got an email fh Here’. the tracking numbers.” Those say “We will update when fedex has received the package. “. So, I don’t know if this means I’m still going to have to wait for the boat from Taiwan, or if they have actually sent it.
I was perfectly fine waiting a month and would have not complained if it just arrived at my doorstep one day. But now, I am annoyed by having meaningless tracking information.
This is not the first time I’ve had this happen. It annoys me more than I think it should. I am old enough that I used to order stuff from mail order catalogs, where I mailed a check and waited. Sometimes I totally forgot about it, and would be briefly confused when a parcel arrived. (Once, completely baffled, because someone had put the wrong shipping label on the box, and I got a shipment of, er, ‘marital aids’ from a company I had never heard about, that used the same fulfillment as the electronic components I’d ordered did. That caused some serious hilarity, because I opened the package at the lunch table in the college dining hall. 3/10, do not recommend. ). That never really bothered me, because that was just the way things worked. But tell me it’s coming, and give me useless tracking? Grr.
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I find it particularly perverse when “the shipment has been booked, but we don’t have the package” generates an alert but “we do now have the package” doesn’t.
One fraud back in the day: mail order sex toys offered at a big discount. Victim sends a cheque. Later they get a letter back saying “sorry, this was a popular offer and we ran out, here’s a refund”. So all they have to do is present a cheque from the Acme Sex Toy Company at their bank…
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