Where is the Random Thread of Randomness stuff that doesn't belong in other threads thread?

Cassie said:

I can no longer pick up all the digital channels, I think a falling tree limb bent my antenna or something. I can't even pick up DABL now (or all the religious channels).

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Could it be that your area upgraded to ATSC 3.0 standard and your antenna is outdated now? It's the latest trick that broadcasters are trying to pull to make free TV less free...

Channels are still required to broadcast in ATSC 1.0 but most of the local channels do have ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, too. I stopped being able to pick up a whole bunch of channels last year. It is very annoying. ALSO, my coax is way too long, so I'm sure I lose signal.

I bought a couple of fancy digital antennae from Amazon this year, but I live on the ground floor of an apt building in a busy city that's sea level at best, so I get JACK SHITE in terms of channels on both my living room and bedroom TVs.

There is a sweet spot in promoting an event on social media. If you don't make enough posts hyping it, people won't be interested or have any reason to come. If you make too many posts, people will think you're desperate and trying too hard and get scared off.

This guy is my favorite ota antenna nerd. If you can pick up a signal he will tell you the best antenna and which ones are scammy. He also complains about ATSC3.0 all the time.

First observed while taking my family to...the Minnesota Renaissance Faire(?) but observed even more recently: If you're used to how a car handles, it handles significantly differently with 300-500 extra pounds in it. A 1990 Plymouth Horizon corners a lot differently on a freeway entrance ramp and a 2009 Ford Mustang does everything differently with five 5 gallon buckets of gravel loaded in it.

Cassie said:

https://www.youtube.com/c/AntennaMan

This guy is my favorite ota antenna nerd. If you can pick up a signal he will tell you the best antenna and which ones are scammy. He also complains about ATSC3.0 all the time.

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When I moved...OK, first, when I bought a house in Portland and the introductory deal on Spectrum ran out, I went down to...Lowe's? for an antenna. House already had a mast for it. I can't remember how I got the cable inside. Patch into existing cable TV wiring? Probably. When I moved to Louisville I bought another antenna. This house didn't have an external mount so I just used some cord to hang it in the attic. Brick house with gable vents so I ran the co-ax out the gable vent and...I think directly to the place I wanted my TV. I seem to remember there being a random co-ax sticking out of the wall at that point so I either pulled it out and pushed my antenna cable through before caulking it or I spliced in with a male to male connector. I left the antenna in that house because I foolishly thought renters would appreciate having free TV (they don't and it didn't take long before a cable installer snipped off the antenna cable). I couldn't find a good antenna for my current house so, while it was a pain to get the assembled antenna out of the old attic, I grabbed it in the 11th hour. It's going to be an even bigger pain to get it in the current attic so at present it sits in the basement until I get around to installing it. My go-to antenna tuning source is this:
I used to actually orient it with a compass, but lately I just do dead-reckoning. (I look at the compass heading and my house's orientation on a map and align the compass based on the map.) Mostly because my compass went wonky.

Cassie said:

(or all the religious channels).

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Phone up your local stations and tell them you need it fixed because you've got to get RIGHT WITH THE LORD and one of them will fix it for you.

The crazy thing is that the channels that I should have a strong signal for I can't get, and the ones that are just fair I can get (but not all of them). I really think I need a new antenna, mine is maybe 10yrs old. It's not even a very big antenna, maybe next time I should get the SUPER MEGA CHANNEL MASTER, and also brand new coax cable. It's been hanging out there in the rain for even longer than I had an antenna, it is the same one I used for directv.

I wish I understood lawnmower carburetors. I mean, I don't REALLY understand care carbs either, but I at least get the concept: There's a linkage to the fuel line and the throttle so when you step on the gas pedal, more fuel-air mix gets sprayed into the cylinders and the engine revs up. Push lawnmowers have one speed: on. But there's definitely a carb and a throttle. I guess it must be engineered in some way to give the cylinder more fuel-air when the engine is working harder, but who knows how that works. There's a linkage you can see if you take off the air filter. And a light spring that holds it in an open position but it's all very strange.

I mention this because the verdamnt engine is back to doing this low rpm thing. Lately I've gotten it back to normal rpms by tilting the front wheels all the way up in the air and holding it that way until the rpms pick up. No idea how or why, but it worked--until today. Added wrinkle is, it seems to run fine if I run it all the way out of gas--or if the engine dies from hitting a heavy patch of grass or something--but it I'm done mowing in one spot and let go of the deadman switch to kill the engine, when I restart it it does the weird low idle: Brrm....brrrm....brrrmmm...bbrrrmmm....putputputput....brrm...

It's so trippy, watching a documentary from the Plague Years:
VOICEOVER: Next we'll be going to Daimler's Dearborn facility to see how Freightliner trucks are made.
[factory floor]
HOST [with diaper covering bottom 2/3 of his face]: "Mmmph, mmph, mmmmph, mmmph mmmph."
FACTORY FOREMAN [with diaper covering bottom 2/3 of his face]: "Mmmph, mmph, mmmmph, mmmph mmmph."

Volpone said:

I wish I understood lawnmower carburetors. I mean, I don't REALLY understand care carbs either, but I at least get the concept: There's a linkage to the fuel line and the throttle so when you step on the gas pedal, more fuel-air mix gets sprayed into the cylinders and the engine revs up. Push lawnmowers have one speed: on. But there's definitely a carb and a throttle. I guess it must be engineered in some way to give the cylinder more fuel-air when the engine is working harder, but who knows how that works. There's a linkage you can see if you take off the air filter. And a light spring that holds it in an open position but it's all very strange.

I mention this because the verdamnt engine is back to doing this low rpm thing. Lately I've gotten it back to normal rpms by tilting the front wheels all the way up in the air and holding it that way until the rpms pick up. No idea how or why, but it worked--until today. Added wrinkle is, it seems to run fine if I run it all the way out of gas--or if the engine dies from hitting a heavy patch of grass or something--but it I'm done mowing in one spot and let go of the deadman switch to kill the engine, when I restart it it does the weird low idle: Brrm....brrrm....brrrmmm...bbrrrmmm....putputputput....brrm...

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I'm having the same issue and it's annoying as fuck. Probably need to spray the carb down with Gumout, externally and internally. And maybe check the gap on the ignition module and spark plug. Or it could be a governor thing, who the hell knows.

I've noticed that modern small engines don't even have carb adjustment screws, so it's kinda take it or leave it or something. Planned obsolescence strikes again.

Like I said, the old mower was the cheapest one Lowe's sold in 2011. When it died circa 2022 I got the next tier up at Home Depot and parts literally started falling off it immediately. Luckily I'd saved the motor and wheels because after the front wheels broke on the new one, the old wheels went on and after the motor died I stuck the old motor on it and the difference between a 2011 Briggs & Stratton motor and a 2022 one is night and day. The old one is 95% metal and bolted together, the new one was probably 65% plastic. The old motor was doing what it is doing now, back when I retired it but it worked great for a few months when I got it back out. It may have started acting up again when I hit that edging paver and knocked the blade out of alignment. (I've since decided the biggest thing that did was cause a sudden, heavy load on the engine and screw up the balance to the drive shaft.)

Oh! When I took it out of retirement there was a fair amount of plastic (grocery bag or something) wrapped around the drive shaft that I cut away. I may have to check for that again.

Yesterday, like I said, my trick of tilting it into a "wheelie" wasn't fixing the idle so I briefly tried just soldiering on before it died and wouldn't restart. Since I had literally no other option, I went in the house and got a pipecleaner, popped off the air filter and swabbed out any openings inside the carb. Again, I'd like to understand lawnmower carbs better. I want to say the carb is bolted right to the gas tank. There's a little brass nozzle in the bottom where the gasoline is sprayed in as a mist. White plastic interior. Looks kind of like milk jug plastic, only thicker (obviously). Across from the fuel is a, say 1/4" diameter, opening--molded into the carb body--that I assume leads to the cylinder head. Now here's the part that stumps me: I didn't even notice that opening at first--oh, and the throttle linkage is directly above that--because much more prominent is a black 1/2" elbow, leading into the engine body under the pull-starter flywheel. That had a lot of black crud and some fluid in it. The elbow turned out to be rubber and the part leading to the engine was metal like an auto fuel line and the elbow came off for easier access--pressure fitted.

As I type this, I wonder if some unburned/partially burned fuel from the cylinder gets shot back into the carb. That seems like unneccessary complexity for a lawnmower and a point of failure. Hmm. I might consider bypassing that and seeing what happens.

We need more weather reports like this.

It would have been better if it were a female.

Went on a train to Leeds yesterday to do the Otley run (think the world's end but less robot zombies)

Was knackered by the end and sat on the train waiting to go home suddenly they announced it was cancelled, and so we're all the others, the heat had done something to the track or the signals.

Ended up having to get a taxi back.

How far are you from Leeds?

I hear Leeds and I think of Heartstopper, where Nick goes to Leeds Uni, but his family and all the other characters live in Kent, 4-5 hours away by train...

64 miles, but that's as the crow flies. Taxi driver must have had his foot down because we did it in about 35 minutes.

The British Bulldog was announced as being from Leeds, but he was actually from Goldborne, which is near Wigan. I guess they thought Leeds sounded better? But looking at a map, Wigan is between Liverpool and Manchester, so why not announce him as from one of them? Cunts.

I used to have to go to Wigan for work, took ages.

I look after St Helens now, but I've never been yet, teams meetings all the way down.