In my rear view mirror…

…the sun is going down, sinking behind bridges in the road [1].

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I took a quick road trip up to Witbank to collect some shooting goodness about which I shall still blog. Left Bellville at half past four on Thursday morning, turned the xcarlink to 11, and 15 hours (14 hours driving, one hour spent filling up the car and self) and 1498 kilometers later, reached eMalahleni (AKA Witbank).

Found the guest house, where they had a very reasonable (R300 B&B) single room for me. Turned out to be noisy, with the other guests arriving late and leaving early and not being quiet about it. Breakfast was good, though, and I can’t complain about the price.

Went over to Classic Arms and picked up 12 firearms. Also checked out a rifle for a friend, and had a look at some items which will be on the next auction.

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Spanish copy of a Smith & Wesson safety hammerless. Mine. All mine. Yea, I’m crazy like that.

From there I shot through to Camdix in Krugersdorp, stopping only to collect a R 100 speed fine for doing 137 in a 120 zone, downhill, in the middle of bloody nowhere.

On Saturday, I discovered AFTA, a gunshop and training centre in Cresta. Told them I collect Spanish Handguns, they pointed me at a crate full of guns and said “knock yourself out”. I ended up unpacking two crates, found an Astra Regent, a 32 Largo Ruby Rubi (which is a Brazilian copy of a Spanish copy of a Smith & Wesson…), a couple of 32 Cadixen, and an Astra Police in 357 (no sign of the 9mm cylinder, sadly).

And that concluded my business, so I waited for my brother to conclude his, and at 14:00 we headed south.

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Almost midnight, in Beaufort West, and it’s over 30 degrees. Obviously Breda’s global warming migrates with the swallows.

Finally got home (where home is Pieter’s place in Bellville) at 04:22. 1367 km this time, 12 hours 45 driving, with a rather long stop for lunch in Bloemfontein, and an average trip speed of 107 km/h, same as the trip up.

Had coffee, went home (where home is the one this blog is mostly about), woke Tanya up and said hi, kipped a bit, and went to the range with some of my new toys. Shootty post to follow.

[1] Some of you would recognise the Pink Floyd lyrics.

2010-02-21 by Farting around Guns 1

The old Bezuidenhout place.

On the R42 just before you get to Heidelberg (26 31 22 S 28 19 27 E, says Google Earth).

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I saw this while driving past at a high rate of knots, hit the brakes, and went back to investigate.

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The gate was open, and I’m not scared of “Beware of the dog” signs, so I went in and started taking photographs (the dog turned out to be a sweetie anyway).

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Gorgeous front door.

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Around the back I met the owners. The old lady told me it’s a family home, built in 1905. Her maiden name is Bezuidenhout, and her son lives there now. They’re apparently going to restore it, I will have to go past there again sometime to check up on their progress.

2010-02-21 by Victorian 1

Boobs!

Made you look!

It’s just a cheap trick to generate traffic, I’m afraid, but it  seemed to work for Tammy and for Katie.

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As penance, I offer you this. Seen on the back of a truck in Kalk Bay.

2010-02-12 by Farting around 0

Bit of a clean up

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These are the invoices for most of the stuff I bought for the first year of renovating the house. Of course I don’t have invoices for the labour. I stuck it all in a spreadsheet and *gasp* threw the originals away (I *never* throw anything away).

It represents about R 230 000 I spent between April 2008  and April 2009. Amazing how a hundred here and a thousand there can add up to real money.

2010-02-11 by House 0

Computer network

With the cable in place, next up was the main switch, a Gigabit Ethernet switch in Tanya’s room.

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I made this panel with, from left to right — the alarm box, power supply for alarm, GE switch + power supply brick, and three RJ-45 boxes (feeding the two kids’ rooms and the man cave).

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I had to make a couple of short patch cables to run between the switch and the network boxes.

So now we’re rid of the patch cable that ran across the driveway, but I still have to install a power point and a network point in each of the kids’ rooms. And I have to install the rest of the alarm system, of course.

2010-02-08 by House 0

Tickling my funny bone

From IOL:

A Limpopo schoolteacher, who found another man in bed with his wife and
fired his gun at the lover, is facing a claim of more than R1 million in
damages.

Police Inspector Andrew Moshoana, 41, was shot through his neck as he was
running home. As a result of his injuries, the policeman can no longer use
his right arm and hand.

He is now blaming Andrew Mokoena, 38, for his ill fortune, stating that
Mokoena tried to take the law into his own hands.
Seeing as the law had Mr Mokoena’s wife in his hands at the time…
2010-02-05 by Farting around 0

Data cabling

A while ago, I got my Malawians to install a piece of gutter drain pipe from the roof of the main house, down the wall, under the path, and up into the (free standing) garage roof.

I finally got around to putting some cabling into this pipe.

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Three lengths of CAT-5, one 4-conductor telephone line, one eight conductor bundle for the alarm system, and a piece of five core trailer wire for one day when I want to put some of the lights in the house on a 12V UPS type system.

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I had to cut a hole halfway and pull the wire through in stages — too much friction around the corners. (Don’t mind Tanya’s pet plastic bag blowing in the wind).

Now to wire up the network points on both sides, so we can get rid of the patch cable going out the garage window, across the driveway, and into Tanya’s room.

2010-02-04 by Geek House 0

Ten miles beyond hell…

…where the Devil couldn’t get for stinging nettles (Whoever was responsible for developing the Opel Astra Classic rear brakes, that would be).

You see, Opel G cars come with rear brake calipers from either Bosch (I think) or Lucas. The former being much more common.

Of course the pads that fit the one caliper are almost but not quite entirely unlike the pads that fit the other.

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For your edification.  The pad on the left is what they’ll give you if you mosey on down to Goldwagen and say “brake pads, Opel Astra Classic”.

The one on the right is what you want if you have Lucas calipers. This will entail printing out above picture (because the sample has to go back in the car so that Tanya can get to work) and taking it to Masterparts, then waiting for half an hour while the fellow finds the right thing.

Don’t ask me how I know.

Another tip: don’t believe the manual when it tells you to line up some indent with some boss when compressing the piston back into the caliper. Apply force with a G-clamp and turn the pistol with a waterpomp tang.

2010-02-04 by Cars 0

3-phase redundancy

So there I was, pottering around home yesterday morning, and suddenly the lights go out. And the bleating of the UPS reaches my ear. Some inspection shows that the fridge is still working, Tamsyn is still happily playing on her computer, and all the trip switches including the big ones in the box outside are happy.

Further inspection shows that we have one phase of the three phase circuit, and even further inspection shows some very dodgy looking wiring on the pole side of the feed.

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So Tanya gets instructions to phone council and I bugger off to work.

Long story short, at 1800 it was starting to get dark inside the house, and we still had only the one phase.

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Battleshort!  I disconnected the two dead phases, and shorted all three phases together on “my” side of the mains breaker (which is the bottom of the bottom left switch in the first picture, but I did it at the input side of the breaker that feeds the garage, just because it was more convenient.

So around quarter past eight, just as I’ve put the bread in the oven [1], the crew pitches.

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Of course, they had to cut all power to fix the feed, and when they reconnected the power everything now hanging off the one phase was cold, so that tripped the outside breaker, which lead to the quickest removal of a kludge you can think of (figured I had to remove all evidence of my meddling before they came inside to look why the lights were not burning…)

[1] We had friends over, and I make Pioneer Woman‘s Marlboro Man’s Birthday Dinner (well, the pan fried steak with blue cheese sauce, crash hot potatoes, and buttered rosemary rolls part of it). With store-bought dough in my black pot, Porterhouse steaks from Constantia Pick & Pay, and lemme tellya, that blue cheese sauce is something else.

2010-01-27 by Foooooood Geek House 0

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