After last weekend's moribund adventures, I was due for a full accomplishment reversal.
First up, the mower. After all this Troy-Bilt suffering, our next mower will be a Craftsman. Or maybe any man willing to come mow the lawn for me.
We went to Lowe's this morning, but of course I brought absolutely no critical mower information. I guess I just assumed there's one mower and all parts would fit. I've been through this before - during the three other times I've had to buy a new drive belt - so I don't know why I didn't prepare for this trip. The upshot is, we bought a 7 inch tire and an 8 inch tire, not knowing the proper inchage for our model. No matter; Lowe's will take anything on return. My mom once returned an unfinished door that sat in my basement for three years and had cat piss on it.
Turns out, BOTH tires were a no-go. I selected a brand with a wide, bulging center, too long for my mower's axle. So in the evening we went to a different Lowe's (less embarrassing that way), returned both tires and bought two 8 inch small centered ones. This time I remembered to bring the busted tire along as a muse. The new tires are metal, not plastic, so I expect them to last longer than the stock tires.
I also had to buy whatever they call the tool that removes the nut that holds the tires on, but I'm happy to say that I got that right the first time.
But now the awful, cursed mower has two new rear tires. We also bought another drive belt to restore the self-propelling functionality, but I can't bring myself to install it since I know it will just get chewed up again. It's like sending your son to the Russian front. At least tomorrow I'll be able to finish mowing the lawn. We've had a Two-Face lawn all week, with the left half nicely cropped and the right half stocked with three-foot-tall weeds.
Project number two, the in-car DVD player. Rhonda and I have been weighing this one for some time. In fact, having a TV in the car was Clark's number one request when we were shopping for a new vehicle, but sadly the CR-V did not come with such a thing. With the seven hour Origins trip upon us, this was the weekend to finally make the leap and buy one.
They're not particularly expensive, chiefly because the tech is old. I mean, it's a DVD player and a tiny cheap monitor, powered by a lighter adapter. We settled on a $150 Philips setup that hangs a 7 inch screen from each headrest. The DVD plays in one and is seen on both.
My big disappointment is that this model has no formal aux-in. The box showed an RCA adapter, so I figured that could be used for the iPod or games or whatever. But that RCA is intended for aux-OUT, which is just stupid. Why would you buy a DVD player with a built-in monitor (TWO of them!) and then run the signal out to another device?
But I did cobble together a trick... although the main screen has only that stupid aux-out, the secondary monitor does have an aux-in: the very aux-in that receives the signal from the DVD player. So it is possible to send the iPod signal to the second screen... of course this means that any iPod video will not be on both, however, which still kind of sucks.
I also found enough cabling in my supplies to run the iPod's audio to the car stereo, so we can get the video on the screens but the audio in the car... which is of much nicer quality than the speakers on the screens themselves.
Naturally, this makes quite a lot of spaghetti in the CR-V, and Rhonda is already kind of iffy on keeping this trinket, so the whole shootin' match may be returned to Target anyway. After the trip, of course.
My third project was the PS3 HD upgrade, which I'll get to shortly. Spoiler: it is finished.
Leave a comment