Easy as making toast.

Right. If you have a toaster. That works. Which I don’t.

According to Wikipedia, the first electric bread toaster was invented by Alan MacMasters in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1893. And (according to me) the last electric bread toaster that worked reliably was probably manufactured in the early 1900’s and looked like the one in this photo from Wikipedia:



Since then we have had to endure a steady stream of appliances that consume vast amounts of electricity, take forever to brown one side of a slice of bread and warm the other side to slightly above room temperature, and sometimes work for as long as a year before either the element burns out or the electronics flip a bozo switch and expire.

So what is it with toasters? I mean, what appliance could possibly be simpler to manufacture than a box with a heating element inside? Surely someone out there is smart enough to come up with a design that can make consistent toast (both sides) in less time than it takes to run a marathon, and can do so for years before crapping out. I’d shake that person’s hand – and pay almost any price for their toaster. But I’m not holding my breath.

I HATE TOASTERS!

Rant over.

Now I have to go and choose another piece of crap toaster (at well above piece-of-crap prices) to grace my kitchen counter and be the subject of my daily ire for a few months until the cycle repeats.

Sigh.

The most expensive hat I ever bought.

But this came with it, so I’m a pretty happy camper.

Finally!

Last week was winter and this week is full-on summer with highs in the upper 20’s (C). That means our road finally dried out enough for two wheels and I finally (!) got to ride. Not very far but it did give me a chance to test ride the little Kawasaki after all the work I put into it this past winter. And it runs great. The new exhaust is a bit noisy and is producing some backfiring on deceleration, but it pulls strong right up to 110+ kph, plenty fast enough for the country roads where it will get ridden. So I’m pleased.

What I’m not so pleased about though is that when I finally put gas in the tank I got a couple of bubbles under the paint. Turns out that either as a result of the original damage to the tank, or my repair work, a couple of pin holes were created that let some gas seep out. Many (expletive deleted)s followed. I have now sealed the inside and am working on repairing the exterior with judicious use of some JB Weld, to be followed by Bondo (again) and paint (again). In the meantime an old spare tank will serve as a temporary fix to keep me on the road. Ugly, but functional.

Been waiting a l-o-n-g time for this.

WTF Penn State?

Today’s paper had a number of articles on the murderous rampage of a madman in a rental truck in Toronto on Monday. 10 dead, 15 injured. Then there was an update on the bizarre Waffle House shooting last week in Nashville. 4 dead. And both articles, of course, remind us of the spate of mass murders, school shootings, cop shootings, etc. that seem to occur on a daily basis. Some days it seems the world has truly gone mad. Hell. Handbasket.

Now, amidst all this insanity and mayhem, Penn State has taken a bold stance to protect its students. More specifically those who are members of the Outing Club. Even more specifically, it has banned the Outing Club from going – you guessed it – outdoors, because wilderness activities are “too risky”.

Have the administrators at Penn State lost their collective (albeit small) minds? Where did I miss reading that 15 campers were mowed down by a suicidal maniac in a VW Microbus? Or of a misfit loser 5 pints short of a 6-pack who decided to go people hunting in the wild with an AR-15? Did it even occur to these simple-minded fools that outdoor activities can be a powerful antidote against that type of anti-social behaviour? Or that fresh air (unpolluted by the PC’ness of academia) and some physical activity might actually be healthy?

It boggles the mind. 

Perhaps showing the movie Deliverance in the Faculty Lounge wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Japanese Industrial Standard

The Phillips head screw (with the + shape) was first developed in the 1930s to be used on automobile assembly lines. Some time later the Japanese created a slight variation called the JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) or, more specifically, the JIS B 1012.

While they look like the standard ISO screw, trying to remove or tighten a JIS screw with the usual Phillips head screwdriver found in everyone’s toolbox can, and often does, result in damaged screw heads, skinned knuckles, and lots of cursing. In the worst case this results in the mechanic(?) eventually having to drill out the damaged screw. To this I can speak from experience.

Fortunately JIS screws are usually marked with a small dimple on the head itself. However this is not foolproof, so sometimes it’s just best to assume that when working on a Japanese motorcycle that any cruciform-head screws will be JIS. And that’s not such a bad idea as a JIS screwdriver will work better in an ISO screw than vice versa anyway.

The point of all this – and there is a point – is that many, many years ago I had a pretty good set of JIS screwdrivers that saw yeoman’s duty on the various Japanese motorcycles I owned at the time. Unfortunately, at some point during several intervening house moves, they disappeared, along with countless 10mm sockets and wrenches – another necessity of which one can never have too many. So I have been making do with Phillips screwdrivers, hence the above comment about experience.

But after stripping and having to replace the umpteenth small screw (brake master cylinder cover screws are the worst – my parts guy insists they are made out of soft cheese) I finally broke down and ordered a replacement set. They arrived today, direct from Japan, and I can’t wait to start scr… er, removing screws.



If you are interested, Web Bike World has a write-up that provides more detail on the specific differences between the types. https://www.webbikeworld.com/jis-screwdrivers/