Day 363: Help to Play, Play to Help

Henry wanted to help me out in the garage today but then he spotted my old 3 wheeled scooter and wanted a go. It turns out that it's quite a good scooter for him because it doesn't really require much balance while he's learning about pushing himself along. It also turns out that this distraction was the best way that Henry could help me while I was tinkering in the garage.

Day 231: Confined Spaces

I can't wait to get into the new house with a far more spacious garage.

This afternoon I put the wheels back on the Husky, I got them back from the bike shop with fresh new tyres earlier in the week. The space you see is what I had to work in for the rear and the front was marginally larger at around a square meter. And this is with the Ginger Ninja off getting its forks seals replaced.

I really need to have a bit of a garage reorganisation session soon, but the priority for now is getting the Husky ready for Sunny Corner next weekend. While I was putting the rear back on I noticed the rear brake pads were looking a little worn, I think I'll be back at the bike shop on Monday for some more supplies.

Day 159: Home For Tools

I've been shopping again, but in an unusual twist for me I actually walked into a shop to make my purchase. I'd been looking for a better tool storage solution over the last few months and when I spotted these on special in the Repco catalogue I figured I might as well jump on them. According to the quoted RRP it was actually cheaper to by two on special than it would have been to buy one at full price.

While they're certainly not Snap-On quality, for my requirements I reckon they'll do just fine. Now all I need to do is get them out of their boxes and start filling them with my garage related paraphernalia.

Day 95: First Driving Lesson

Is 20 months old too early to start with driving lessons? I say not. When I got home from picking Henry up I left the car in the driveway because I had a few things to get out of the car and it's also easier to get Henry out before putting the car in the garage.

Once I had all the bits & pieces organised I enlisted Henry's help in putting Belinda's car away. You can see the intense look of concentration on his face as I was explaining the finer points of clutch control to him. I think much of that conversation was lost on him, mostly because his feet can't touch the pedals.

He did a great job helping me steer the car through the narrow garage entry, even though he couldn't see over the steering wheel. I think I'll continue to enlist Henry's help as often as I can, he's quite the natural.

Day 77: Not So Incy Wincy Spider

I've lived in Canberra my whole life, so Red Backs are a species of spider that I'm used to seeing in sheds and garages as well as occasionally indoors hiding under chests of drawers. Their presence has never really been that alarming to me because normally they're pretty small and are not particularly aggressive. This doesn't mean I like having them around and as we've noticed quite an influx of them in the garage lately it prompted me to take car of the matter with a 3 pack of bug bombs. I used all 3 in the garage, it had the desired effect: lots of dead bugs.

Wikipedia says the female Red Back typically has a body up to 10mm in length, while the Australian Museum says it's the size of a large pea.

This one was definitely on the larger side of the scale, in fact if I was ever served a pea this size, it would make me wonder whether it was genetically modified.

Day 63: Dale's Door

After the installation of the new garage door opener for Belinda's side of the garage, and the associated remote control that is nice and small, I was tempted to do a little covert rearrangement so Belinda's car would only fit on the old door side. Fortunately my laziness and eBay search skills combined to remove the need for all that rearranging.

I found a new remote to suit the old garage door opener for just under $25 delivered and it was in the mailbox when I got home last night. Today I spent 5 minutes following the instructions supplied with the remote programming the garage door opener to respond to the new remote and then reprogramming the old remote so it would also work... unfortunately the new code I was given for the old remote didn't work, so only the new remote would open the old door.

This is where the good news part of the story kicks in: I emailed the eBay seller requesting the correct code for the old remote and within 20 minutes I had a reply with a link to a video on how to reprogram the new remote to the old remote's frequency. So I followed the instruction again and this time both remotes worked perfectly. This is among the best service I've had from any eBay seller and I'm happy to recommend these guys to anyone who needs (or just wants) a replacement garage remote.

The seller is 'ozremotes', they seem to have a pretty good range of remotes for garage doors. If you're in the market check them out: http://myworld.ebay.com.au/ozremotes/&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2754

Day 58: Belinda's Button

I was late to work today... I had a good excuse though. The garage man came around at 8:30 this morning to install the Garage Door Opener on the roller door that hasn't had this wonderful technology since we moved in.

When we finally had space to fit both cars in the garage it just kind of worked out that the Commodore (what I'm currently driving until my new car is ready) would only fit on the side of the garage with the remote for the door. Of course this was viewed with a little suspicion at the time and I had to promise that we'd put an auto door opener on the other side for Belinda's car.

Now Belinda has the new button which is nice and neat and fits on a keyring nicely... while I have the old school black box that's bigger than most modern point and shoot cameras.

I might have to rearrange the garage again...

Day 50: Room To Move?

Today's project was reorganising the garage with the challenge being to fit both cars, the three remaining bikes and the box trailer in all at once. I set myself this task after offloading the old Daytona that I blew up riding at Phillip Island last year. It was the last of the superfluous toys remaining to clutter up the garage and was picked up on Saturday.

I got quite a bit done while Belinda was off at school getting some work done and Henry was asleep, it involved a lot of shuffling things about and also moving the Piano from one side to the other. From there I partook in some mental Tetris and a little pacing out of distances on the garage floor.

I wasn't able to finalise the shuffle until Belinda returned and took Henry out grocery shopping, she took the commodore instead of her 3 so she could drop a very full boot load of cardboard off for recycling on the way. The fruit of my labour is what you can see above with the Commodore sized space being just right.

It's nice to have both cars in the garage for a change, this is the first time since moving from our old place in Gilmore... I still miss the 4 car garaging we had there, but that's about all I miss of it.

Day 22: Bug Rescue / Moron x 3

I spent a fair bit of time in the garage this afternoon making room for the new race bike I bought last weekend, it's being delivered next week (more on that later). I made some serious headway and there is now a clear path from the front roller doors through to the back door, previously one had to step over and around various bits & pieces including the old race bike that needs an engine transplant (probably more on that later too).

During my cleaning, culling and general re-arranging of things I came across the subject of today's photo. He (she?) just fell from the ceiling and landed in front of the broom as I was about to sweep more dirt, dust and detritus out the door. I let him (her?) crawl up on my finger so I could release him (her?) into the wild that is our backyard, as I had my camera on me I thought I'd test the Macro setting out. It was quite a challenge. The auto focus just kept focusing on the foliage behind the subject, it was starting to bug me... so to speak. Eventually I managed to grab a couple of shots that were OK, the in focus strike rate was around 1 in 10.

In other news and in light of the trials I faced trying to capture today's image, I spent some more time researching camera upgrades... I think I've narrowed it down to the brand and even the model, it's just the variant I need to decide on (more on this later also).

Stay tuned, there are 3 lots of more (on) to come.