Terminations, Muffalettas, And The 40% Solution

I was in a rut for a while. Last weekend I went out. I had a beer and a muffaletta and listened to some local music. Too many setbacks of late caused me to bog down spiritually and mentally. I currently am hampered by shooting lower back (upper butt) pains. real ones, not just the normal pain in the butt this build has been.

The honeymoon is over with my new cell phone. It works OK I guess, depending on how low your standards are. I open it and am confronted with an array of ambiguous glyphs as indecipherable to me as the stelae of Palenque,  an electronic miniature stela. All this requires learning and I want no more learning at this point. That's all I do right now.  I'll keep it around and try to keep from hating it or throwing it into the ocean. I already started the symptoms of phone anxiety. You have to carry it. What if grandma calls and has fallen and can't get up? Then you remember that 1.grandma can just call 911 herself and 2.grandma died years ago. The fear of missing something is interwoven in it's possession, a pact with the devil. There's always a price and it ain't money. You have contact with the world, but you miss out on your neighborhood. I walk every day and say "hello" to electronically isolated people that might notice me. I don't carry it around with me. It's in the car mostly. Another definition of freedom is not carrying it around. A better one is not having it at all.

I keep plodding along. Everything I'm doing is a cobbled together amalgam of  things that might maybe work. As Sherlock Holmes found respite in his 7% solution, I am only 40% satisfied with most of my solutions.  I guess that that's sailing. I never wanted to do things this way, but it seems that it is the only way: rigged. Now I want to launch. This boat building used to be a set of challenges to be dealt with and conquered. Then we'd pat ourselves on the back and move to the next thing. Now, challenges are impediments to be solved unsatisfactorily because there is no other way. It is against my nature to do things this way. That's why it's so frustrating. I didn't want to be that guy that says "Aw, hell get it done". 

So lets dispense with the illiterate alliterations and proceed to the blog, for what it's worth.

First, the motor stop cables to shut down the motors.  I had the two aluminum plates to hold the ends of the cable. I painted them and even wrote "Stop" on them with a paint pen. I bought some cable stops to terminate the ends. Was I happy? 40% happy. I stuck a bolt through the whole thing and tested it. The cables were stuck. No problem, just drill the cable holes a little larger. I put it back together and pulled the cables. The cables were stuck. I took the whole thing apart and pulled on the cables. The cables were jammed up. I had put ends on them and done a lot to it. This was a couple week's work. The 40% solution was a 0% solution. Maybe Sherlock had it right. I begin anew.........................

I decided to try to get the motors to lock in the tilt position. No problem! I had them wired back previously and I took the wires off and they locked in place when I raised them, All I then had to do was to figure out how to to release the locks. Problem! Back to what I know. I rejected several ideas concerning levers, and other devices and decided to do what I know. I wired on a couple split rings, ran line this way and that, sought advice from the boat store folks, bought some bullseye fairleads, cut, epoxied and painted some notches, and ran the lines to the cockpit. Waddaya know, it works! An almost simple solution. Was I happy? About 40% happy.

I made several sojourns in the quest of knowledge from wise experts on the motor controls. I drove miles and miles. I wandered the used boat junk store. I talked to tech guys. I meandered the nether regions of the interweb. I bought terminals, pivots, clamps and discovered that I needed more. I have more on order. Am I sure that this will solve the problems? Maybe 40% sure, I hope. I discovered the expert on this. It's me, dammit. I quit asking others. Lord, save us from ourselves.......................................

I guess it must be the same with all Wharramonians. I don't like other people messing with my boat. It looms large in my legend.

The Music♫: Kinky Freedman "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore"

What can I say? It's Kinky, a Texas legend.