Day Four - The Widget

It was a beautiful day, a perfect day for swapping the widget.

The blower in the Acura stopped working a few weeks back, so off to the interweb for some research and various videos led me to an educated guess that the resistor unit had failed, there was a more expensive solution, but I like to try the cheap version first.

I ordered the widget from Amazon, it was quite cheap at $24.98 including taxes and shipping.

The HVAC blower is located under the glove compartment on the RSX, so I popped the cover off to access the component. The resistor unit is there in the upper left hand side of the photo, and as usual with this sort of thing, a bugger to get access to.

Just two screws held the unit in, but removing them was rather fiddly. I would rate this as an easy job but I found removing those two bloody screws to be a test of my sanity. I had no idea at that point that putting the things back in would be double the fun.

The old widget, hopefully bad widget, was then pulled out of it's mount and this gave me good access to test the new item before wrestling those two unwilling screws back in.

Original part on the left, generic replacement on the right.

There was a moment of apprehension as I plugged the replacement in, I turned the ignition and by golly, the blower was working again. the gamble to the try the cheapest solution worked.

Happy smiles all around.

This is the original widget with the cover removed. I was going to do some testing with my multi-meter, but I realised that would be time wasted, it was much better to find and test a beer.

One last thing, when I removed the cover below the glove compartment, all three plastic snap things shattered, well they were over seventeen years old and quite brittle. Anyway, I replaced all three of them with a familiar household item, white plastic drywall E-Z anchors that work very well.

The conclusion to all of this, I understand that Honda would charge five hundred bucks or more to troubleshoot and fix something like this and I get away with twenty-five bucks and a stiff back for a few days. It was an educated guess that the electronic part would have failed over seventeen years and not the motor, it was also, excuse the pun, the path of least resistance to buy the cheap part first and try it out.

Job done.

Day Three - Not in the House

It is day three, no outside contact regarding shops, bars or restaurants, so we took advantage of the incredible weather and did some time in the garden, weeding mostly, of course, when weeding you have to put them somewhere, so I dug a quarter of the compost heap out.

After gardening, we went on a neighbourhood walk in the glorious sunshine, said hello, at a distance to some neighbours, then arrived back home for happy hour.

Happy hour with house pants on, you cannot beat it.

Day Two

A little early morning shopping, minimal interaction with humans, then an afternoon walk down on Whiffin Spit.

Tide was out.

Day One

A neighbourhood walk today, beautiful weather, the sun came up this morning.

We have decided to take things more seriously regarding the coronavirus and we have decided to limit our exposure to other people as much as possible over the next 10 days. This is not because we are already sick, but we believe we should avoid contact with others, within reason, to ensure that we reduce our chances of contracting this thing.

We will call this day one of our own personal protection plan.

The main change in our behaviour will be to stop going to bars and restaurants until the 27th March, although we will review that decision in a weeks time. We will not change the way we shop for perishable items, milk, eggs etc, mainly as we live in a rural setting and we can limit our contact with people at the local store. We will not change our daily walking habits, because the health benefits of walking far outweigh any slight chance of catching the virus from passers by.

We will stay home more, do some gardening, play some games, drink some booze, Netflix and chill.

Canada is closing it's borders to anyone other than Canadian citizens, and for now, US Citizens. We would hope that will change in the weeks to come as we're not impressed with the US response to the pandemic, plus it is not in most US citizens financial interests to "own up" to having the virus, and because of that, things probably will get out of hand very rapidly across the border.

It is not the end of the world, the sky is not falling, but we should all do our best in reducing the rate that this virus is spreading, mainly to take the pressure off our medical facilities.

No One is Safe

Another two victims of the Gnomovirus 19 found in the garden this morning.

Be safe everyone, if you have any symptoms, be sure to stay at gnome.

One Potato, Four Potato

An experiment today, we followed a recipe for Hasselback Potatoes, cut them about 75% through and drizzled and basted with garlic olive oil, salt and pepper, and then topped with some cheeses at the end, it will definitely be something we will be cooking again!

2020 : January review of the Grab Bag

We created the grab bag about 18 months ago, it is a strong nylon backpack stuffed with things that would be useful in an emergency. As we have seen worldwide, emergencies appear to happen on a regular basis to normal people, and in a panic, it would be very good to have a lot of essentials in one place.

So this is the bag :

It is sensible to unload the bag and see what is relevant, and also to identify what could be added over the next months, so the following photo shows the current contents of our grab bag.

There are an impressive amount of things in there, but we have already identified additional items that can be added as there is still about 15% space available in the backpack, the following are a few items to be obtained or altered.

Small Tarp.
Mylar Survival blankets.
Additional Flashlight.
A new BIC lighter, plus firestarter kit.
Replace the aluminum pot with a stainless steel one
Add a stainless steel small pan (may be the same item as above)
Water purifying tablets.
Salt.
Replace the flight socks with good ones.

I may even consider a small (good) axe and saw and will do some research.

We're also going to investigate that first aid kit, off the shelf kits like that one could do with augmenting with additional items. There are no "real" tools in this grab bag, so a seperate tool kit is needed (one is already in the car) and in addition, absolutely essential clothing, hiking boots etc will be collected into an area close to the front door closet.