Prepping for the 4th

I’ve been spending the weekend getting some minor projects around the house completed along with buying the groceries for our little July 4th party. There will only be eight of us for the day, but it should be a lot of fun. Along with food, we’ll likely play some board games, possibly watch a movie and play some video games. I’d guess there’ll be a lot of sitting around and talking too.

More DeLorean parts came in as well. I received Issues 156, 157, and 158 (which is the final issue). And there was also a surprise in the box: a movie poster for the documentary OUTATIME: Saving the DeLorean Time Machine.

Items Added to the Library

  • Movies:
  • Comics:
    • Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent Vol. 1 #4
    • The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #27 (Legacy Vol. 1 #921)
    • The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #28 (Legacy Vol. 1 #922)
    • The Avengers Vol. 9 (Legacy Vol. 1 #768)
    • Doctor Strange Vol. 6 #4 (Legacy Vol. 1 #430)
    • Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures Vol. 1 #4
    • Fantastic Four Vol. 7 #8 (Legacy: Vol. 1 #701)
    • Scarlet Witch Vol. 1 Annual 1
    • Silver Surfer: Ghost Light Vol. 1 #5
    • Star Wars Vol. 3 #35
    • Superman Vol. 5 #5
    • Superman: Lost Vol. 1 #4
    • Thor Vol. 6 #35 (Legacy Vol. 1 #761)
    • Warlock: Rebirth Vol. 1 #3

Rebuilding

A good friend of mine, Dale Lewis, has been going through a tough spell medically, so me and some friends are trying to raise some money to get him a mobility scooter through GoFundMe. Please take a moment to read Dale’s story and donate if you can. If you can’t donate, please help us spread the word. Thank you!

Over the past several months, I’ve gotten back into buying and reading comic books. One of the roadblocks that I had before was time. And that was two-fold as it takes time every week to get in the car, drive over to the local comic book store and pick up your subscriptions, then haul it all back home. As much as I want to support local businesses, I found that Midtown Comics in New York was able to ship out subscriptions monthly. So, I started getting my books through them and have had a great experience so far.

The other facet was having to find the time to read the books. I’m slowly getting better at this and hope to get caught up soon on all the books I’ve been buying over the past six months. I did get a chance to visit the local stores a bit in early May for the Free Comic Book Day event. While I did get several free books, I also took advantage of some sales that got me good discounts of trade paperbacks, back issues, and even a full set of 1990 Marvel Universe Series I cards, complete with holograms. Here’s a list of all of the cards in the set, and here’s a list of all of my comics.

Those of you who’ve been reading these blog entries over the past couple of years know that I’ve been building a model of the DeLorean from Back to the Future. The subscription service would allow you to build out the car with a new, weekly parts kit (that were actually delivered monthly, so you’d get four kits at a time). In total, there were 159 weekly parts kits (a.k.a. Issues) that, once complete, would not only give you the famous time machine model, but also a bunch of other great little extras.

Well, back in the summer of 2022, EagleMoss, the manufacturer and distributor of the kits, files for Administration in the UK, which is akin to filing for Bankruptcy in the US. The last kit/Issue I received was 154, leaving me five kits behind. Luckily, Fanhome (De Agostini Publishing) seems to have purchased EagleMoss since last year and recently they emailed me telling me I could complete my model. Today, kit/Issue 155 showed up. Can’t wait to finish everything off.

Issue No. 155 illustrates the parts needed to attach the 1885 time circuits to the hood of the DeLorean.
Issue No. 155 parts include straps, bands, and buckles to affix the 1885 time circuits to the hood of the DeLorean.

I’ve got a few minor projects to complete today, and afterward I’ll be working on getting my 3D printer up-and-running again.

It’s February Already?!?

Wow. I just looked and saw that it’s been about three months since I posted last. I guess a quick recap is in order of what transpired during that time.

Thanksgiving was great. I took off from December 18 through January 2 to relax and get some projects around the house done, however I was mostly bedridden that entire time as I threw out my back on the FIRST DAY off. As a result of that, and that the girls were out of state for Christmas, Cari and I did very little and postponed Christmas day for a couple of weeks. Last week I got a little bit of the flu. That’s about it.

I finally received my Bobcat Helium coin miner that I ordered in June of 2021. It’s up-and-running, but is mining slowly. I intend on replacing the stock 4 dBi antenna with an all-weather 8 dBi one that I’ll mount to the side of the house. I’m currently working on adding some movies to the library. I plan on also working on the DeLorean today, so there should be some updates on that coming soon.

A Needed Break

I took Thursday and Friday off this past week to have a long, four-day weekend. And for the first time in quite a while, I went into this break with very little planned. Resting, consuming entertainment, and generally clearing my mind were the top priorities. So as I write this in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, I feel like this was a successful break.

But, that doesn’t mean that I did nothing. As we slide into the cooler fall weather, I’ve had a hankerin’ for some goulash the last few weeks. It had been so long since I made it, I dug around the internet to find a recipe, and stumbled across this one (original link at the bottom of the page). I made a double batch and have been eating it every day.

I did a couple of small projects around the house too. I fixed a broken vertical blind blade and re-hung it, I also hung up two wrought iron art pieces in our bedroom. And this morning I trimmed the palm tree and the two oak trees in the front yard.

And, of course I spent some time assembling the DeLorean. I was able to get caught up with Issues 111 thru 118, which all deal with the nuclear reactor on the back of the car. Here are some photos.

The nuclear reactor plate assembled with parts from Issues 111 thru 118.
A close-up of the reactor. Mr. Fusion will eventually sit on top of the clear disc.
A view from the opposite side showing the wiring, hoses, and miscellaneous reactor parts.
The reactor plate sitting on the car.
Another close-up of the reactor plate sitting on the car.

The rest of the day will be devoted to doing some testing on the 3D printer.

Storage and More

As noted before, I got the new boxes in for my nerd collectables et al. And today I’ve transferred everything into them. Behold.

The box.
The main collectibles box.
The second storage box has a bunch of lanyards, badges, and materials from cons.

This last image shows the new boxes in one of the cupboards (top right). I pulled everything out of here today and re-organized it all. I don’t have a “before” picture, but this is actually a lot better. Still not done, though. More organizing to come.

And, lastly, here’s a quick view of the state of the DeLorean.

Lots of DeLorean Work

I spent nearly six hours this weekend catching up on the DeLorean model as I was four months behind (Issues 79 – 94).

A lot of the work was done in the engine bay, the headliner of the cockpit, the electrical system, and the front and rear bumpers. The chassis and frame are now married as well. Here are some pics.

Happy Holidays

I think it’s starting to sound cliche to say that I’ve been very busy in my day job lately, which is why I have been posting regularly. But, I’m gonna say it anyway. Over the past couple of months I’ve been able to re-build how my department works. As a result, projects are getting completed quicker and the team is getting happier as they see see their efforts bear fruit. I think we’re on a great track for 2021.

I’ve been experimenting with creating a schedule for my free time. I have so many interests and things I need to complete that, if I don’t organize and strucutre, the time will get wasted. For me, the approach to this will be identifying the things I need to do (projects), scheduling them, and then fitting in things I want to do around that. I’ll post more on this as I get closer to figuring it all out.

I currently have a backlog of 28 issues (7 months) of the DeLorean model subscription. This stems from an offer I received from Eaglemoss where, if I bought six months at once, I’d get a 25% discount. Since I was going to be getting these months anyway, it made complete sense to save a little money and do this. Well, the downside is making the time to actually assemble the car now (see previous paragraph). Once that big box showed up and I opened it and inventoried the issues, I knew I had a task ahead of me. And since then another month arrived! I need to prioritize this, for sure.

The podcast Unsubscribe button has been utilized heavily today. This was the natural progression of the unsubscribing I did from YouTube channels back in July. I cleaned house of everything that I don’t really need to be listening to. Currently, this is what I’ve decided I want to hear (in no particular order):

That’s it? Yep, that’s it. I felt like there was way too much time being spent on listneing to podcasts. With both a 45-55 minute drive into the office and a 45-55 minute drive home, you’d be right in thinking that I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts. And I do. But, with all of the re-organizing I’ve been doing in Q4 of 2020, I’ve realized that I’m spending too much time consuming and not enough time making or creating. Part of creating and problem solving is having time to think and get your thoughts in order. Even after trimming down my list to these four, I still have a little over five hours of podcasts to listen to weekly, on average, which will fill about three days of commuting. Now I can spend the rest of my commute thinking.

To round out the news, I was able to (FINALLY!) get around to properly calibrating my 3D printer yesterday. I’ve had several small projects I want to bang out, but parts weren’t fitting properly. Now they are. So, I’m going to be firing that up now.

Added to the video library since last post:

Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays, my friends!

Interior

Got caught up on 12 issues of the DeLorean. Here’s some progress on issues 39-50.

Converted the Eaglemoss plate (mounted on car) to a magnetic plate from Mike Lane Mods. Also corrected the decals on that place. Also pictured are the two plates from Mike Lane Mods.
Dashboard and time circuits.
Drive circuits and high voltage box, both with corrected decals.
More and more wires are being introduced.
Driver’s seat and steering wheel installed. Also, tons of wiring installed, both functional and decorative.

Studio Organizing

Cleaning up and organizing the studio has been a high priority this weekend. It’s started with some smaller projects like going through the literally cleaning, week’s mail, going over finances, and ripping movies. It’s now progressed into making forward movement on some small projects and looking at the space here and organizing.

I heard Adam Savage recently reiterate a saying has: “drawers are where things go to die.” And I would agree. But he reminded me that there’s a particularly interesting way to organize drawers to prevent that, which is to build an insert with custom dividers out of foam-core.

With that in mind, I started looking at all the drawers in the studio and now have it on the docket to properly organize, and subsequently clean out, the drawers. This will include organizing some items, such as spare external and internal hard drives, into caddies, which I currently have printing on the Ender.

I also purchased an online course called Fusion 360 for Makers by the guys at I Like to Make Stuff. I spent a few hours yesterday plowing through the first six chapters and it’s great. I’m hoping to spend more time on it today.

Anyway, next up is working on the DeLorean.

#KetoDay011

Adding Car Parts

Tonight I cleaned up my desk and workbench area in the studio, and added the four most recent issues worth of parts to the DeLorean.