Another Day, Another Kludge . . .
As I mentioned last week, after I got Jan’s Viking #1 sewing machine out of storage in one of our bays, I found an intermittent problem that I finally traced down to a broken wire in the connector where it plugs into the machine.
So my first thought was to find a replacement plug, but that proved harder than I thought.
The plug on the left is the power cord for the sewing machine and the one of the left is the one for the foot pedal. First off, the foot pedal plug pins are closer together than the standard power cord.and shaped differently.
I spent a couple of days trying to track down this connector with no luck, even though a couple came close. I guess it might be that these are custom made for Viking to prevent anyone from accidently plugging a power cord in and blowing it up.
So my kludge was to get a standard power cord and then use my Dremel tool to eat away all the plastic, leaving only the bare pins.
I then found that I could squeeze the pins together so that it plugged into the receptacle perfectly.
So, to finish it up, I put heat shrink tubing on the exposed pins and tried it out
A perfect fit, and a kludge well done. And before anyone comments, there is no power on this. It’s merely a varying resistance coming from the potentiometer in the foot pedal, that governs the speed of the machine.
Later, about 1pm, Jan and I headed up to Webster for an afternoon of fun and frolic . . . well, lunch and errands, anyway.
For lunch, it was once again our favorite King Food. We wanted something light so we each had a big bowl of Hot & Sour Soup,
and an order of their Honey Glazed Garlic Chicken Wings.
Really delicious and crunchy.
Out first local Costco is opening Oct. 19th and I had noticed yesterday that they had a kiosk set up on Bay Area Blvd. advertising memberships. So we stopped off for some info.
We did join back in 2010 while we were out in Tucson, but weren’t really impressed so we let our membership lapse at the end of the year. It didn’t help that there wasn’t a location anywhere near us in Houston.
Looking over the info, a basic membership is $60, so with one now nearby, we may give it a try again. We’ll see.
Then it was off to WalMart for a few things, and then a drive-by of our old house to see if anything had changed. There was work going on, but nothing stood out.
Then I dropped Jan off at the Friendswood SuperCuts while I doubled back to Estrella’s, nee Lou’s, Barbershop to get my hair cut. And I pretty much mean ‘hair’, as in singular.
Then we zigged over to Kemah so Jan could pick up an order of her Neuropathy mixture at Bodhi’s Essential Oils.
Finished there, we zagged back over to the HEB on FM646, mostly to pick up another bag of the Lola Savannah Texas Pecan coffee that we first tried about 3 weeks ago and wanted more. But they were out.
Bummer! But online says they have it in stock at the Friendswood HEB, so we’ll have to try there.
This is the only Texas Pecan coffee I’ve found that actually has pecans in it.
Really good and tastes great.
Thought for the Day:
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