Mark Hayward Is My Hero

Making art with robots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j0_fi_tkL4

A few years ago I hauled my Atari 2600 out of the basement. Of course the games aren’t as involved as modern video games, but some of them are still really fun, and the nostalgia is great.

Like most original paddles, mine had so much jitter to them that they were unusable. Once again, the good ol’ internet saved me. I did a quick search and found this site with fantastic step-by-step instructions on how to clean and fix my paddles. It was surprisingly easy, and I could not have figured it out on my own. Thanks internet!

I just got a new hard drive and it didn’t come with a stand so that it could sit upright on my desk… fortunately I eat a lot of pizza.

Actually, I save these little pizza tripods for displaying my spin-top collection, and most of them I got, unused, from a friendly pizza shop.

The original video of my appearance on Late Night With David Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks segment was put up by someone else, and has been taken down. I actually have permission to use the footage, and I finally got it back up online.

Yup.  That’s right.  I made a new trophy for this year’s contest at MadFest:

Yup.  I think I finally have all the parts I need.  This photo actually has quite a few projects in it, including the machinery for the pumpkin laser vortex… but that’s another story.  And yes, that is a Barbie hair dryer.  This trophy will be for the 2009 Ultimate Battletop Championship: Wisconsin, and it’s gonna be awesome.  You can see it in person if you come to MadFest.

Lenore, Vader and I are in Wisconsin visiting family, and this morning when I woke up the digital thermometer read -0 dgrees.  When Lenore got up it had warmed up all the way to 0 degrees.  I’ll take any improvement I can get.

I spent the day today working on my Model A Ford at Keith Waltower’s garage down in West Newton PA.  I’m in the middle of a complete brake job, checking and fixing every single piece that is involved in braking.  I had a wonderful moment today when all of a sudden I realized how fortunate I was to be able to spend the day surrounded by so many amazing classic cars while working on my own, PLUS having an expert within earshot to ask about anything I needed to know.  Not to mention having access to any tool I might need.  What a great way to spend a day.

Hayward/Thomas Model A Covered Bridge Tour, October 12 2008

We couldn’t have asked for a better day for a drive.  The morning started off a little cool, but the sun warmed us up nicely by midday.  The fall colors had just come out, and we had plenty of opportunities to see them on the many tiny, winding roads we took to get to the covered bridges and the trolley museum.

Things started off at the McDonalds on Washington Ave. in Bridgeville.  On our earlier scouting runs Lenore and I had discovered that all the covered bridges that we knew of were identical, so for the tour we decided to just see a selection of them.  Since the bridges tend to be on very small roads, and not near towns, the tour group got to drive on some very narrow, winding roads through some gorgeous rural areas.  Several people wondered how Lenore and I were able to find these tiny, out-of-the-way roads after having only lived in the state for a year… it was all thanks to the internet.  Much of the planning was done with the help of the Google Maps website, followed by several scouting trips.  You can see our route here.

We drove right through the first covered bridge without stopping, and went on to the stone “S” bridge at the intersection of Hwy 40 and Hwy 221.  It’s an all stone bridge, completed in 1818, that was actually built for wagon and stage traffic headed toward the expanding West.  It was fun to see something designed for a time so long before our cars were around.

Next it was off to our last two bridges, in the vicinity of East Finley.  This was when we had the first break-down of the trip… and unfortunately it was my car that broke down.  On the upside, it was a quickly fixed sticky clutch pedal, and I got to see a “roadside seminar” up close and personal.

Keith Waltower gets us back on the road.  It was very funny that the men couldn’t wait to look under the hood, but most of the ladies stayed in the cars.  Lenore took this fantastic photo.

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This weekend the 3-River Region Model A Ford Restorers Club had a garage seminar about motor oil.  It was great.

The question of which oil to use in my Model A was a difficult one for me from the beginning.  It seemed like there was a lot of conflicting information out there, and I didn’t know what to believe.  This may not be the final word on the subject, but I feel like I now have the answers.

Our guest speaker for the seminar was Ken Pyle from PPC Lubricants.  He gave us some history on oil in general (I didn’t know that oil native to the Pennsylvania area was the best natural lubricant, and that crude oil from different regions was not all the same), and then we got into the info that we really needed for our cars. (more…)