What I've Been Doing

[Korto]

Hi. Haven't posted here for a while, and I wanted to say hello and share some stuff that's been going on over the last few years. Anyway, I told Shark to look out for this thread, so I reckon I better make it.


Well, as that little story by that hack you yanks like to go on about says, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Yeah, it's been pretty stiff in places, but also some major accomplishments.


Some of you may remember that my son's severely autistic (Level 3) (The Three Levels of Autism) (although he talks closer to L2, really). Diagnosed around 3, now about 14, and puberty does not agree with severely autistic boys very well at all. Talk about fucking mood swings.
Anyway, about three years ago (or something), his sister, after some problems I won't go too deeply into here, got some free counselling and an autism test, and hey, guess what! She's Level 2!
And their mother also got some counselling, and an autism test, and hey, guess what! She's Level 2, too! All daddy's chillun have autism.


So, for the last few years, we've been dealing with that, and trying to fix everything back into some kind of stable, working, form.


But...I said there was good shit, too. It hasn't all been blood and broken glass (actually, there hasn't been any blood or broken glass, I just mean metaphorical blood and broken glass).


I've been working on a sidecar for years. How many years? Well, if you want to include the time when the project was just sitting around gathering dust for more than a decade, then for about 16 years. Well, now it is FUCKING DONE! Do you know what a bloody pain in the arse engineers are, trying to get them to approve something? Christ almighty... The bike I was originally going to put it on, the Dnepr? Wasn't strong enough, and I snapped the crankshaft trying, so I ended up getting a Suzuki VS1400. It's funny, because I don't really like the cruiser look--it's OK, but I prefer more the vintage BMW look (like the dnepr)--but the VS had the power I needed in a narrow package, and because the sidecar's wide, and there's a 2 metre legal width limit, it needed to be narrow.

(The sidecar must have been made interstate. We had to cut bits off to make it legal. There's NO WAY it was under 2m before).
But it's been approved, it runs good, and most importantly, I CAN NOW TAKE MY FAMILY PLACES! It's been approved to carry four people, two on the bike, two in the sidecar. WE ARE FUCKING MOBILE!

(Also, my son will get in the sidecar, and seems to like it. I couldn't take him anywhere before, because he wouldn't get on the back of the bike. He sat on there once, as it idled, and then got off and said he was never getting on again. And that was an FJ1300, I mean, quiet and smooth compared to the VS. But a bunch more powerful. I was going to use it to pull the sidecar, but the welder had one look and said "NO" Aluminium half-frame and the engine as a stressed member? The sidecar would rip the bike in half.)
It's a really big thing for us. I'll try to get some photos of the thing and post it here.


As for the dnepr, well, I had to replace the crankshaft, so I get a new crankshaft (expensive. Being an idiot and snapping a crankshaft is an expensive hobby. I recommend against it) from my guy in Estonia. When I get it, straight off the warehouse shelf, never been used, the journals are too small to fit the conrod big ends--measuring it up, and the never-been-used crankshaft had journals down at the smallest re-machining diametre allowed, which put it about 1.5mm smaller than it should have been new. I trust my Estonian guy (and anyway, the crankshaft was caked in that ancient preservative grease stuff, definetely looked like it had been on a shelf for most of fifty years), so what I figure happened was Ivan had been hitting the vodka pretty hard, screwed up, and then had to machine it down as far as it would go to fix it. Throw it out? Gotta make quota!
Anyway, I fix that with some thicker half-rings, and put it back together and after some trouble get it running again, but it lacked power and was blowing a lot of smoke. I at this stage was pretty emotionally done due to other things so I got in contact with a business called Classic Motorcycle Restorations.

He checked the pistons and cylinders, told me the rings were clapped out, measured the cylinders with a pair of calipers (twice), and told me to get some 73.2mm rings. Fortunately, all the cylinders would heed was a hone out, though, not a rebore. I also noticed the pistons were...wrong... They had had the bottom half of the skirt cut off for god knows what reason, so I decided I'd repace them, too.
But before I did so, I called the guy again to triple check that measurement. Yep. 73.2mm.

When I received the pistons and rings, things were still difficult elsewhere and I had no emotional capacity for more problems, so I paid a bloke to take the bike and all to CMR and let them deal with it.

Time passed. I heard nothing. Finally he tells me three different stories, one of which is that his mechanic quit so he can't do the job anymore (I can't rermember what the other two were), and he demanded I remove the bike from his premises or he'd start charging me rent (he actually scared my wife his his threats, fuck him). So about a week or so later (no rush. Again, fuck him) I get the bike back and start putting it back together myself, nicely honed cylinders, new pistons...and the pistons don't fit. They're too big. That stupid fucking arsehole had mis-measured the cylinders by measuring a place where it had been badly worn, which meant they actually needed to be rebored anyway. $300 for transport and honing that I may as well have just set fire too. For insult to injury, after the rebore, they of course needed to be rehoned.

Found someone else to do that. Some guy who'd been doing cylinders all his life, and had now retired and was only doing bikes and hobby jobs. He did a good job, too, as far as I can tell. Beautifully snug, but slides smoothly.

Sooo... put it all back together again (I am so sick of pulling that bloody thing apart), start it up, and, hmmm.... Not blowing any smoke anymore but very difficult to start, idles very fast (but if I turn the idle down, I can't start it), but riding it, it's absolutely gutless. Hmmm...

Still no capacity to deal, so I send it off to an old friend who I'd gotten back in contact with (we lost touch when his wife got breast cancer and he couldn't run or play games anymore. She's since died. By Samantha. I'll always remember your dwarf on a war-boar) who had opened up his own mechanic's shop. He's found that when it's running, if you take the oil cap off, it blows engine oil up into your face, so gas pressure is actually rushing past the pistons into the engine case. Which would explain why it's so gutless. But why is the questions. My friend knows and respects the old bloke who did the rebore, so maybe I put the rings in upside down or something stupid.

Whatever it is, we'll get to the bottom of it. That bike will run again.


But of course, neither of those are the really big news. We have acheived something that people like us (pensioners with disabled kids, no jobs) really shouldn't be able to, and we have worked so hard for it, and we hae actually made it a thing, and...


Oh, will you look at that time. It's well past midnight. I really should go to bed. Night, all.

[Soontir C'boath]

Good to hear from ya. You got any photos of that side car?

[Korto]

Kinda yes, but really no. I have some technical-style photos of different parts of the sidecar as I was trying to save myself a few hundred dollars by maybe saving the engineer a trip down. Unfortunately, photos were NOT sufficient, and the engineer made a housecall, which he obviously billed me for.

Actually, he WANTED me to ride the rig up to his place. I told him no, not a chance. I (at that point) had only a few hours TOTAL life-experience with a sidecar (and a sidecar handles unlike anything else on the bloody road, and I was NOT at that stage going to ride a hundred miles up the highway to a place I wasn't really sure where it was, in what had a damn high chance of being pissing down rain. Just not going to happen. He then tells me I'll have to ride it sometime, and I told him yeah, it's going to be on nice days, close to home, on roads I know like the back of my bloody hand until I'm used to it.

Anyway, meant to get my mum to take some photos on Christmas, you know, some action photos with everyone onboard, but I forgot. Totally going to get around to it soon, but. No worries.
Then I'll have to remember who I'm using for photo hosting.



But, where I left off, I had BIG NEWS.
This room I'm sitting in, this house I'm sitting in, within the next couple of months is going to be fucking gone.
We're doing it. We're knocking this goddamned house down, and building a new one in it's place.
A decent house. A good house. A house where the mortar in the foundations isn't mouldering, and there's no asbestos in the bathroom.

Believe me, it wasn't easy. Been saving for some years what I could, and we had a plan worked out with a couple of friends about us all going in together and building two small houses and splitting the property. However, that plan fell through over the Covid years, and so I decided to ask the bank how much the wife and I could borrow just ourselves, and it was actually amazing good (about 85% of the amount all four of us could borrow, but we're only building the one house, so result), but then we got told the puchline--we could only borrow that up until our eldest turned 15. (We were using government child support money as part of our income). After that, the amount we could borrow would cut by more than half.
And at that stage, she was turning 15 in about 4 months.
Panic stations. I'm chasing up builders, architects, trying desperately to get something rolling. The money was good, but our property is a flood zone so planning regulations required the house to be lifted 3 metres off the ground, and that added something like an extra 100k, and over the last couple of years our construction market has been insane after being pump-primed by the last government right when a materials and labour crunch hit. I searched, I gambled and got some plans drawn up to show to builders, but it couldn't be done. A day late and a (hundred thousand) dollar short.
Until I, pretty much resigned, walked into this new Hotondo office that had just opened up down the street, described our situation to the lady there, and she said "Yeah, we can do that."

The plans I had got thrown out. Hotondo has their own plans, and they're a quite "off the shelf" builder. They have very limited options. It will be this tap or that tap. This floor or that floor. We were able to change the internal floorplan a bit. We have a separate toilet, because we have had it up to here with the toilet in the bathroom, and since the house is lifted (it'll be on stilts) the garage got converted into more house, making it more spacious. Still, it's not really quite the house we want, but it's the house we could afford, and I'm planning to put a workshop under the house and I've still got a few years left in me, so I'm thinking, we can do something with it. We can make it into the house we want.

We're still waiting on council approval, although they promised a decision before the end of the month, and once we have their approval the bank has to be notified so they can finalise the loan, but I'm feeling pretty good about it.

We're going to live in a decent house. For the first time in my adult life, I'm actually going to have hot water in the kitchen.

[Raw Shark]

Ay, Korto:

You understand that I have a little insight into one of your kids, but the other one is a little out of my experience. Also, chances are, they might've got it from you. This isn't a bad thing, real talk here. Might help you relate.

I just got a job interview from a serious company who said, "We want somebody who is INSANE dedicated to being meticulous. If that is you, we want you."

On the lighter side: Ron Funches, one of my favorite comedians, said when I last saw him live: "Now I have an autistic son. Real autistic. But he just graduated high school, and I couldn't be more proud. So when I saw that he had saved 164 episodes of The Price Is Right on our DVR, I asked him, "Son, why did you fill up the DVR with The Price is Right?" Thinking, "Is this some teenage boy shit like the girls are hot, or some autistic shit?" He told me, 'I'm compiling statistics for the last five years." "And I was like, 'Okay, this some autistic shit.'"

[Korto]

Aye, at least one psych has suggested I'm probably autistic myself, which is reasonable as there's evidence it is passed down, although neither of my parents strike me as autistic, or my siblings, so I might have been a sport. I've felt for a long time that there was something different about me. I've wondered if I was schizoid. The symptoms seemed a reasonable match, with kind of muted emotions (not that I can't get emotional, but it would take a lot, and subside reasonably quickly), while other people just seemed to get so angry about things. I've never really gotten the hang of being angry. Or ecstatic, either, to go to the other end of the line.
And that was the thing. Every autistic person I knew talked about powerful emotions. My wife has broken mugs and kitchen utensils lashing out, my daugter has talked about containing her rage because she knows it would be wrong to claw my eyes out (although her trying may be amusing. I'm double her weight and while she has good abs from long hours on the swing, when it comes to other muscles, she has to ask me to unscrew the lid from a milk bottle ). A friend who has ADHD (which he says is related to autism) talked about how when he lost computer games he would hurl the controller across the room and stay in a high rage for hours. I mean, I just can't relate. I don't think I've had a meltdown in my life (although my memory could be faulty in this).

Although I could also be falling prey to self-diagnosis.


I do feel I've got a reasonable handle on my boy. I don't think he understands the world. At all. And that scares him, so he needs to control everything, because if he controls everything then nothing can do anything he doesn't expect. Animals scare him (no matter how much bigger than them he is), because he doesn't know what they're going to do. He would (when he was younger) try to take over everything (opening doors to let people in, operating the microwave, answering the phone) becasue it gave him a feeling of being in control. And OK, I can see where he's coming from, but, other people do not appreciate being controlled like that. It caused problems. Fortunately, as he's gotten older, and possibly more secure within himself? he's lightened up on that.

I can also understand why he didn't like being the pillion on a bike. I mean, I hate it myself. It feels very insecure, which would really hit his button about control.

No, the real problem has been between him and his mother. He gets frustrated, he get angry, threatening. Never actually enough...(fucking possums are base-jumping off the roof again)...to be an actual direct danger. A lot of the time he just seems full of piss and wind, and it seems a pretty obvious attempt to manipulate. It's when he's disconsolate it seems a lot more authentic.
Now his mother really can't handle anger, aggression, loud noises or the suggestion of violence or people being hurt or upset (particularly her children). It's a BIG trigger. And that's not her fault, she has some very legitimate reasons for it. And it's not his fault. L3 autism. But that's like saying it's not nitro's fault, and it's not glycerin's fault.

Not that I'm going to disregard anything you say, Shark. There is a lot I don't get about him.



Anyway, good news, people! The house has ben approved! The council made its decision today, and it's all go!
(Hotondo does have to negotiate with council what hours they're allowed to work and stuff like that, but as far as I can see that's the best kind of problem. Somebody elses.).


Next post I'll see if I can remember who I was using for image hosting, and see if I can stick my house plans up.

[madd0c0t0r2]

The plans I had got thrown out. Hotondo has their own plans, and they're a quite "off the shelf" builder. They have very limited options. It will be this tap or that tap. This floor or that floor. We were able to change the internal floorplan a bit. We have a separate toilet, because we have had it up to here with the toilet in the bathroom, and since the house is lifted (it'll be on stilts) the garage got converted into more house, making it more spacious. Still, it's not really quite the house we want

Yay! and tbh, with an off the shelf design you will hopefully be able to take advtantage of a builder familiar with minor issues in the design and fixing stuff that would'nt be spotted in a brand new design!

[Raw Shark]

I can also understand why he didn't like being the pillion on a bike. I mean, I hate it myself. It feels very insecure, which would really hit his button about control.

Not that I'm going to disregard anything you say, Shark. There is a lot I don't get about him.

Well, good luck on you. You're being a great dad. There's a lot most people don't get about me, which makes me feel very isolated.

[Korto]

Thanks Shark. First day back at school for him today (he's in yr 9), and it was apparently a great day, and we saw a bearded dragon lizard sitting on a wooden post on the walk up, which was pretty cool. For the next few weeks, until the 'Responsible Adult' his Assisted Transport van hired to keep an eye on him gets back, I'll be walking him to school, and taking him back in the sidecar (because it's too hot and neither of us feel like a long walk after a full day), so he going to be riding off in front of everyone for the next few weeks. I reckon that's going to give him a lot of street cred. Particularly since he has the "scary-looking dad".
Yeah, apparenty I'm scary looking.

Anyway, got a floorplan of the house here.

OK, now the front of the house is on the left. Bed 1 and the Study are where the garage was. Moving the main bedroom over there meant we could make everything else bigger--the kids bedrooms, the bathroom, laundry, everything.
(here's the original design)
https://hotondo.com.au/new-home-designs/jade-121/
Look at that laundry. I mean, you're joking, right?
Anyway, there's a couple of cunning features in my design. For instance, look at the way the front door is facing, and imagine where people at the door are standing. OK, I'm walking down the hallway to answer the door. Do you see that window? I will see you, and I will know who you are, well before I open that door.
And the front door opens into a vestibule. Because. And we can leave umbrellas and shit there.
The 'Study' is for the wife. It's really her retreat, her 'safe place'. There'll be sound insulation all through all the walls. I'm thinking I'll encourage her to set aside some time each day, half an hour, and hour, whatever, where she goes in there and no-ones allowed to disturb her. No phone calls, no texts, just quiet. I think that might be good. We'll see.
You'll notice there's a little private passageway joining the bathroom and toilet. That's so someone in the bathroom who suddenly needs to go doesn't have to walk out into the main public space.
Also, the boy goes in bedroom 3. He wants to jump around, yell, and make noise, fine. Do it in your room.

There's a lot of work I'll have to do after Hotondo finishes. Since I want underneath the house to be a garage/workshop, it'll have to be enclosed, and that'll have to be done pretty quickly since a lot of the other work depends upon me having a workshop to do it in.
The doors will be replaced with arched doors, and that hallway made arched in some way, or at least given some arched buttresses to create the impression.
I may be able to replace the windows with arched windows. We still have to decide if we want gothic or round.
The outer wall will be rendered, a kind of pinkish, orangish ochre colour. Like sandstone.
The roof is skillion, in large part for solar panels, but we want to put a facade stepped parapet around it.
At this point, my daughter asked "Why are you trying to build a castle?"

[madd0c0t0r2]

where is north?

[Korto]

Up left pretty much 45 degrees.

The roof isn't quite as it shows. It's only showing the front panel. It's actually two flat panels, one covering the front half of the house, the other the back. While the front faces the rising sun and there's no trees or other shading, the back (over the living room) faces back towards the setting sun, and there are trees and other shading, so not as good, but it's a raked ceiling in the living room, and so having it face that way puts the high part in the living room where we want it.
Solar will still be pretty good there for the bulk of the day I reckon, only turning a bit shit in the evening when it's a bit shit anyway.

[Korto]

Last Thursay we found something out.

Without telling me, to ease her own anxiety, my wife had been trying to reach Alicia at the bank to get personal confirmation that everything was good and done. I hadn't been worrying about it, because the bank had already told us all we needed was council approval, and that was in with weeks to spare before deadline, so all done. Just wait for the demo guys to tell us when to get out. But Susie's a bit anxious, so she spent a week or more trying to get in touch to get cofirmation.

When she does, it turns out it's NOT "all done", they realised they also needed a Building Certificate (not always needed apparently, but our house does), and our builders have been tearing their hair out trying to get the certificate arranged. Susie kinda lost it over the phone at the woman.
So, with 13 days remaining before final deadline, they've applied for a Builders Certificate with a private company, who are more expensive but say they can have it done in 5 to 7 days.
Of course, that's 5 to 7 working days, and the 13 aint.

In not unrelated news, I slept about 1 hour last night.

[Raw Shark]

You still have a shot, my guy. Hang in there.

Not like me. I'm starting to think about to best ways to handle my situation. Less mess, I'm thinking.

Like, I'm thinking if I did it way out in the swamp, where nobody knows, nobody'd have to find anything.

Mom used to make me play out in the swampland. I know it like my hand. Nobody'd find anything.

I don't have children.

[Raw Shark]

I do know the swamps like my hand, though. Some people find them beautiful. There is a certain peace, out there.

Sometimes I think that's where I belong. I love, I slay, and I know contenment.

[Raw Shark]

I do know the swamps like my hand, though. Some people find them beautiful. There is a certain peace, out there.

Sometimes I think that's where I belong. "I love, I slay, and I know contement." --Conan

[Korto]

Hey Shark, why don't you come with me over this way, and we'll talk a bit about how you're going. You know, if Broomstick or anyone else would like to stop by, that might be nice.

[Korto]

And an update on the house.

Back some months ago, engineers had to design the stilt system. They were contracted to take a maximum of two weeks. It took them closer to two months, and it's why everything since has been such a rush.

Well, it turns out that they did it wrong. Something or other (I don't know, do I look like an engineer to you?) was done wrong and needs to be corrected before the paperwork can be turned in to the bank. Bloody incompetent arseholes.

The good news is that our contact at the bank, Alicia, got intouch with someone multiple levels of authority above her and called in a favour, and our deadline has been extended out an extra 3 weeks, so we're still breathing.

[madd0c0t0r2]

And an update on the house.

Back some months ago, engineers had to design the stilt system. They were contracted to take a maximum of two weeks. It took them closer to two months, and it's why everything since has been such a rush.

Well, it turns out that they did it wrong. Something or other (I don't know, do I look like an engineer to you?) was done wrong and needs to be corrected before the paperwork can be turned in to the bank. Bloody incompetent arseholes.

The good news is that our contact at the bank, Alicia, got intouch with someone multiple levels of authority above her and called in a favour, and our deadline has been extended out an extra 3 weeks, so we're still breathing.

Three cheers for Alicia! Three boos for the enginners!

[Korto]

The goddamned house is FINALLY all approved, all the paperwork in and correct, and with an acknowledgment from the bank. The builders say they're ready to go as soon as we do.
So basically we've now got to wrap our heads around how to do that.

And today my starter relay fused closed, meaning the starter motor was buzzing away even after switching the bike off. Only managed to stop it by unplugging the battery (which fortunately was rather easy, since I'd installed a convenient plug to disconnect the battery for safer welding). It'll take about a week for a new one to arrive.

[Korto]

Well, tomorrow morning power gets disconnected and we move into the place we're renting; and on Monday the demolishers move in.
(That reminds me. I've got to make some space on my camera.)
Over the weekend, we'll move our furniture out and try to stash it.

There's some rather autistic people in the household who have been struggling with the changes (the look on my daughter's face when she came home from school today and saw the kitchen door had moved was priceless. And when we say "moved", we mean removed completely and leaning against the wall in the hallway after I'd cut it off at the hinges with an angle grinder. See, the fridge is just a little bit too wide, so I figured I could either take the doors off the fridge to get it out of the house, or take the doors off the house. And one of those I don't have to put back.)

Won't be on-line for the next few days as our phone company moves our service to the new house Monday.
Really not much to say.