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...that lay in the house that Jack built.

on real life, Dear Diary, Augh

We need to bend wire to make the walkways to finish the kitty cat shelter. To do that, we need to make a Metal Bending Brake. To do that we need to learn some metalworking skillz like... welding.

To do THAT... oh boy.

  • Obtain some li'l extras that required the unpacking of an Aldi's brand MIG welder Beloved acquired five-ever ago
  • Return home and assemble everything according to instructions
  • Aldi's brand MIG welder has the motor going the wrong way. It's supposed to pull the wire out from the box, through a nozzle and into the business end of the welder. It pushes the wire back IN.
  • We fart around with the settings for like an hour before calling the service people

Them: Hi and thank you for giving money to Aldi
Us: Yeah we have one of your MIG welders and the motor for the wire is going backwards.
T: Lol your wire's in back-to-front.
U: ??? But? We followed the instructions like good customers?
T: No, your wire's in backwards.
U: Backwards how?
T: You're reading page [NUMBER] of the instructions, right?
U: Yeah, we have the spool on the thing and it says to have the wire coming off from the top...
T: Try it upside-down.
U: Uuuuhhh... how is that going to make the motor go clockwise instead of counter-clockwise?
T: ...
T: ...
T: Uh. Yeah. Maybe you should get a refund on that thing.

Sigh.

  • So now we need a working MIG welder because the refund/replacement process is a 20-week can of arseholes for sure
  • BACK to the tool ppl to get a decent MIG and a welding table because -hey- we're already spending $700 on a MIG, why not have the whole kit?
  • Home again, home again, to watch some tutorials (better late than never) on how to actually firkin MIG weld
  • Whoops, we need more shit
  • Go out and acquire more shit
  • Come back and realise time is running out (2PM) and also we don't have nearly enough of the right cable to reach the shed
  • Beloved goes out for cable, leaving me the task of welding table assembly
  • Welding table comes with mixed bag of screws, nuts and bolts and a complicated exploded diagram in lieu of instructions
  • I barely get the first set of screws out and first two pieces together before -whoops!- Bratrun O'clock
  • Wait for Chaos' bus
  • Realise where my wallet is (Beloved's car) and message them about needing that shit to fetch Mayhem
  • Beloved returns before Chaos and I get my shit together
  • Fetch Mayhem
  • FINALLY get all our stuff together and weld! But we practice on some scrap first because we're not total idiots
  • Something is heinously wrong because all we can make are blobs that don't do shit
  • Research and investigation reveals we were doing everything wrong

UGH

And that was our entire yesterday eaten up by random bullshit.