Ah... my nodes are acting up again....
What's the deal with all the node issues since the hardfork? There have been a lot of "quirky" little randomizations on the interfaces ever since and I am not sure how useful it is for business. Hopefully, things will get smoothed out, but it has been a few months already, so perhaps I am just going to have to get used to them as behavioral peculiarities of Hive that must just be accepted - like the annoying habits of a pretty girlfriend.
Speaking of annoying, I tried to put up some lights tonight to try and make our "mid-construction era" home appear a little warmer and homely for a human, rather than in the suave style of a cave troll's dwellings in the mines of Moria. This hodgepodge of wires with the odd LED pictured is what I "artfully" hung in my daughter's room. It was a nightmare to even unravel them out of the box, let alone try to get them in some kind of order - I gave up, hence the final result - which she loved. My daughter is easily impressed by gifts, which is fortunate for us so far.
In a small turn of events, my wife's parents will now be joining us for the Christmas meal on the 23rd, providing no one gets sick in the meantime. They are elderly and rightfully cautious, yet at the same time a nd like many, don't behave over cautiously. It seems more to be "pick and choose" when it comes to what people do, and Corona caution is used like parents use their children as an excuse to get out of the events they don't want to go to.
But, it will be nice to have them here, as we have to make all the food anyway and the smallest on the bone ham available was over 6 kilos. I like ham, but since my wife is the size of a small bird, that is a lot of ham to down in a couple days with no one to share it with. Especially now there is no dog, who's favorite was oven-baked ham and he would spend many of the many hours it takes to cook it, staring through the glass impatiently. I am sure his love of ham will be brought up several times in the next few days.
So, now that it is going to be more than just us, we have to do some cleaning as well, since the lights have illuminated the corners where eight months of renovation dust has settled. In preparation for this, I cleaned the vacuum cleaner - like, really cleaned it.
When we moved into our apartment, my in-laws gave us a Dyson vacuum cleaner as a housewarming gift and it has been great, until it has been vacuuming fine dust from sanding work for months on end. My wife complains about it, but no matter how many times I have shown her how to empty the main catchment, she doesn't and leaves me to do it. So, I did a quick inspection and realized that not only was the washable filter clogged to hell, the entire internals were caked with a fine dust that had almost become cemented in place.
This meant opening up the unit completely, but since it was barely sucking anyway, I figured I can give it a go. I am not unhandy, but I am not great with electronics and machines like this, so I was unsure of the results. But I dove in and realized, it has star bolts holding it in place, which is great since I have a set - but who the hell has a tiny T8 size? So, it had to wait til the next day when I could go to the hardware store and buy one - and they only had two available - with one being in a set that was 80€ and just as I thought I would have to buy a new vacuum, I spotted one that only had three bits in it and was under 10€.
Back at home, I got to work and took it all apart and found that it was far easier than expected and had a lot fewer parts than I had assumed. Other than the 7 small bolts to hold the drum in place, everything else kind of clicked in and even better, was washable as it was just hard plastic with nothing moving. I was literally able to wash all the parts in the sink under the tap, wait for them to dry and put it back together. The washable filter took a day to dry, but that was okay. The funny thing was that once I was testing it, I put it on the strongest setting and my wife literally couldn't move it across the floor - it wouldn't even budge.
I have been really happy with the Dyson for the last 6 years we have had it and now that I have seen how it is put together with a little more detail, I am more impressed. I had always wanted one since I first saw them and they have won some design awards over the years, and it is well deserved. Good design is functional and robust, whist still satisfying the need for style and I think these qualify.
Well, I am guessing that most people weren't expecting to read about me cleaning a vacuum cleaner tonight, but with so many people forced to do the Christmas clean, it might inspire some others to get their hands dusty and give a new lease on life to their own. It is more fun and rewarding to repair and maintain random things than many seem to think, which is part of the problem with having a culture of disposable consumables where either they can't be repaired or aren't worth repairing due to the high cost for the work or, the low cost of buying new.
But the main value comes from the satisfaction of getting a little out of the comfort zone and actually doing something useful for once. Though, I will hold off on starting my own handyman business - for now.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]