Had to run a couple of errands this morning. Nothing big on the shopping list, so it's an occasion to exercise the Venerable Prius.
Oops. Battery is dead. As in, not even unlocking the doors. I don't feel like doing a jumpstart just now, so leave that for later (note to self: call the dealer about that new battery Real Soon Now).
Swap Prius key for truck key. Get in truck; start; shift to reverse...
BEEEEEEEEEP! Wot? Continuous beep, but only in reverse. Sounds like the Car Proximity Warning System, but I'm definitely not about to hit anything - not even tall grass.
Oh. That incident with the tractor, the tiller, and the garden hose? At one point, I was backing up, sufficiently preoccupied with what was behind me that I didn't keep track of where the edges of the loader bucket were. Scraped a little bit of paint off the corner of the rear bumper, which will call for a bit of touching up sometime soon (matching paint on order). Looks like I also scraped off the bezel of the plastic retainer that holds the parking sensor in place. I believe the sensor is still present, and connected, but is seeing the inside of the bumper and getting all frantic about an imminent collision.
Replacement retainers for parking sensors are cheap, but I went ahead and ordered an entire new sensor just in case; they're nowhere near as expensive as one might expect. Now there's just the fiddly detail of getting the sensor back where it belongs, a process which ordinarily seems to involve removing the bumper. (Why does a $20 part cost $500 if you have the dealership install it? Labor cost for removing & replacing the bumper!) I'll take a look with an endoscope sometime soon and see what things look like, and whether there might be some way to fix it without bumper removal.
Hm. Parking sensors, turning out to be fairly cheap, might make good robot bits. Gotta keep that in mind, for my copious free time.
Anyway, the Prius has now been jumpstarted and run for a while. I even got a little bit of gardening in, though at 80°F, 60% humidity, and winter-length hair, conditions are suboptimal for manual labor just now.
Update: I thought I'd make a Home Depot run, in search of some drip-irrigation bits, but it looks like there are thunderstorms on the way, and this is a very unlucky day to be hit by lightning. Maybe I should remain indoors for now, and go shopping in the morning. (Also, sometime soon, when we're not having thunderstorms, I need to refill several gas cans. Supply on hand is running low, and prices are rising again. That lawnmower is a thirsty beast, especially when I'm trying to keep somewhere around 4 or 5 acres mowed. No, I'm not observing No Mow May... except for the other 70% or so of the land, which gets mowed June-ish and October-ish.
Woop. Lightning within 4 miles. Sounds like staying home was the right decision.
Update 2: The rain which is now falling is doing so with 83% probability. For rain that's only 83% probable, it certainly is intense.
In other what-could-go-wrongery: I'm reminded that "V6 hotend" is not a particularly meaningful concept, and that trying to assemble a frankenhotend is unlikely to work. I'm trying to get a hotend with an all-metal heatbreak and a 3mm cartridge thermistor onto the machine with minimal other alterations; the Spider would suit me just fine, if only I could get the extended fan duct for it, or an STL file for same.
Yeesh! We were supposed to get a little rain overnight, maybe. Currently at 0.33" in the last... 20 minutes, maybe? Glad I fetched the mail earlier.
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