NOT a note from the @Curators, but a note of personal opinion from one of them...

We just lost two long-time members today amidst strong comments, hurt feelings and strong opinions. I'm not commenting on why they left or what went on - that's not my place.

BUT...both had folks that respected them here and were long-standing members many of us knew well. I get the 'I'm leaving' joke posts, but I think they're a bit in poor taste considering we just had two of our own long-time members leave us.

I mean no ill will to the people who made these joke 'I'm leaving' threads - I get it, but could we maybe refrain from doing them thanks out of respect to those folks that just left? Yes, there are always people who get along with and don't get along with any given fellow Opponaut on here, but it's not exactly a good look if either decided to come back and find they're decisions were - however harmless it is intended - being mocked by these 'theme' posts, even if they are moreso directed at one user or another

The goal is to try and be excellent here people....just my $0.02.

Hey all - little update from me.

Life has been busy...the sub teacher shortage here means I've been working every weekday, and then still doing my computer work side job on evenings and weekends, so been feeling pretty tired lately, but it's good to be wanted. One of the principals at the most local school to me actually stopped me in the hall and thanked me for the work I do and told me they are always glad to see my name on the list and for the extra I do when I'm in, so that was a really nice thing to have happen

Still VERY frustrated at the housing situation here....everything is so expensive now, but with so many people moving here this year (mostly from Ontario - no offense intended OppOntarians!), there's not much left in my area, so pretty bummed about that as I really like it here and want to stay. There was a house up the other day that was quite nice, ALL renovated inside, only 30 years old...only thing I've seen up in my price range for a LONG time (was up for $234,000). I got the email while I was teaching at work. By the time I got home from work, it was already pending....it's insane

Humdrum is still trucking along...we've only had one big snow event so far and I can saw the new Michelin X-Ice winters I picked up on rims for cheap not along ago are really great in the slippery stuff......in bad news though, I've been hearing a rattle coming from the front-left suspension. WAY back (like in 2014 just after I bought it), I'd heard a similar sound and it turned out that some of the strut-top bolts were loose, so I figured it was the same thing this time. Nope...the spring is broken on my front-left strut near the bottom.

Only a very small piece broke off, so essentially it's not quite sitting right in its resting place....so it's not going to fall out or anything and I can still drive on it, but it needs to be replaced (appointment for that booked for next week). Getting just the spring, it turns out, isn't much cheaper than getting a whole replacement strut assembly by the time they disassemble it and put in the new spring (labour costs are insane here)...so they are pricing up a used replacement strut for me (their suggestion), and also pricing up the cost of two new front struts too. I can't imagine that either will be super cheap, but at least struts should be pretty easy to replace on the Accent! On the plus side, I told them to look over all the other suspension and they said the rest all still looks fine....not bad for nearly 200,000kms living in the pothole and rust belt (though with annual undercoatings!) and being all the factory-original stuff - good on Hyundai for building a tough little car! Humdrum does have some creaks and rattles here and there due to the plastic-y interior, but she is a 10-year old bare-bones South Korean economy car, so I can forgive her for and deal with those!

Still no girlfriend which sucks....more because I haven't had much time to actually go out and DO anything towards finding somebody....COVID doesn't help with that either, so I just keep on moving forward there for the time being I guess. Maybe I can work towards this a bit on Christmas Break, but with us heading towards a lockdown here in Nova Scotia again due to a recent huge increase in COVID cases (mostly the new Omicron variant....yay!), I am doubting that's going to happen...

I took my antique Ansonia Andes clock from around 1906 in for a service to have it cleaned and oiled as you're supposed to do every 2-3 years. I had a different guy do it this time and he just called me back tonight to ask me to stop in tomorrow because.....apparently the shop that cleaned and oiled it last time DID clean and oil it, but neglected to mention that a LOT of the pivot points in the brass movement are VERY worn, so I've been running it for 2 years having it basically eat itself alive, not great... The new guy, who seems VERY trustworthy and a genuinely knowledgeable fellow tells me he counts at least 6 pivots that will need to be repaired with brass insert bushes to get it back in tip-top shape again. He hasn't done the work yet but wanted to show me in person before he did it, which I think was very good of him, in order to explain what and where repairs are needed. $120 for the cleaning/oiling and then another (at least) $160 for that....not cheap on top of my car repair, but the clock means a lot to me and I would miss its comfortable rhythmic ticking in the rec room, so needs must...I already keep instantly thinking 'why did the clock stop?' every time I walk into the rec room right now and don't hear the ticking before I remember it's not here...

Overall though....things could be worse! My trusty car is still working and the repairs won't be cheap, but won't be THAT expensive either! I'm getting a lot of work and still have a warm roof over my head and a cat is currently staring at me for snacks.

Hope things are all well for you folks Oppo

Morning Oppo!

School was cancelled this morning because we had a snow/wind/rain storm last night and it ALL flash froze this morning...the roads are an ICE RINK and our unpaved subdivision road is literally a sheet of gray/white ice the entire way out. The DOT hasn't been here to salt or sand it yet either, so I have no idea how I am going to get out our road to work tomorrow, but it's going to be interesting...even our paved driveway is a slick of black ice. Mom's car and bro's are trapped at the top as they'll just spin out if they try to go down. I (luckily) parked at the bottom of the hill as I knew this was going to happen...

In other news, I am banished to my spare HP Stream 13 'tinkering' laptop running MX Linux 21...a dual-core Intel Celeron CPU @ 2.16Ghz and all of 2GB of unupgradable RAM. I would use my vastly better laptop, but this happened and I don't have the heart to move her

I received my Secret Senna package last week, but didn't really have time to open and inspect it until tonight!

@Peter_Black did an EPIC job and sent me an unassuming little package of awesome! When I opened it, inside was a little white box with 'Schuco' written on it....I was excited! Schuco is VERY well known for making some epic die-casts and Peter knows my tastes well for putting up with me on Oppo all this time!

So, what did I find? My own little teeny tiny East-German DDR VolksPolizei Trabant 601 and Barkas B1000 van - 2-strokes ftw!!!

Apparently they are limited edition, so this is 1 of 500, and they are HILARIOUSLY heavy, lol....like SOLID die-cast metal, and the logos and details a pretty awesome for being so small!

I only took the Trabant out for now as I don't know where I am going to display them yet, but they are awesome!

Baby Trabant for your time:

Thanks @Peter_Black !

Welp, turns out I have COVID.

I feel fine! Slight sniffles/runny nose and a slight cough. My only clue something was off was that on Sunday I was suddenly REALLY exhausted feeling aside from said slight sniffles and cough...enough that I went to bed at 9:30pm rather than my usual 12am, which is unheard-of for me. The next day, the exhausted-ness was completely gone and has been gone since! I often get allergies this time of year in the spring, so I thought nothing of the cough and sniffles as that is common for me this time of year.

But, mom started feeling like crap at the same time I did, so she took a test tonight...positive. My brother and I both took tests tonight.....also positive. Joy!

As a sub teacher, this means I am now off work for 7 days, which means no income at all for me for a week as I am paid by the day as a substitute. This also means no computer work for my side computer repair gig either as I now can't travel to my client's homes either.

And, on top of my positive of getting my beloved Humdrum back last week all fixed from her hit-and-run from the body shop....what she decided to do on the 40km drive back home from work today in a terrible rainstorm....? Exhaust leak....ARGH!

I THINK the leak is right at a bolted together flange, so HOPEFULLY it just needs a tighten and it will be fine again, but I couldn't really check in the rainstorm today without getting absolutely drenched...here's hoping that's all it is!

Also, in negatives, when I got the car back from the body shop, there was a huge chip out of the paint on my driver's door sill that was never missing before and I can't prove it was the shop (though it had to be...), so I took it upon myself to get out my small file and my touch-up paint a few days ago and go to town on all the little rusting nicks on my driver's door sill including the big one that was never there before. It's not pretty and I have no idea how long they'll last but I sanded everything down to bare shiny metal, cleaned it all off and than dabbed some touch-up paint on in two coats to re-seal it to protect the metal from more rust.
Probably not the right way to do it, but it's better than it was and it's all I had on hand...you can see the spots I touched up looking a little darker in the pics above.

You'll be seeing me around a lot in the next week...what else am I going to do while I'm stuck at home with the 'Rona?

I have a laptop for sale on Kijiji and FB Marketplace....an older HP G60. Not going to set the world on fire, but for normal everyday stuff (word processing, email, web browsing, Youtube/Netflix) it's still OK. This one works fine, but is a little rough, so I have it up for only $140.

Guy messages me on FB Marketplace:

Guy: "Is this still available?"
Me: "Yes, it is."
Guy: "can you bring it to 78 york"

...er....I live in the middle of three towns....WHICH '78 York'...?

Me: "Where are you located?"
Guy: "lunenburg"

OK...that's about an 8 min drive for me, but I'm not a delivery service.

Me: "I'm busy today, but could drop it off tomorrow, though I'd charge you $10 extra for the time and gas I have to use to bring it to you."

I felt that's fair....again....I'm not a delivery service....

Guy: "OK, I need to go the bank."

Ok, fine, makes sense.

Guy: "Can you take me there?"

Uh......no? I'm not a taxi...plus, the bank is within a LESS THAN 10 MINUTE WALK from where he lives!!! SO...while I'm writing up a response, less than 5 mins has passed since he asked me to take him to the bank. I've not replied yet as I am eating lunch. Guy is impatient...

Guy: "i take it thats a no..."
Guy: "lets forget it then..."

............
.......
...

TLDR - I'm not a delivery service, I'm not a taxi, and people are impatient lazy assholes.

Almost crashed into some water this morning, lol....

Was out and about on my way to my first computer appointment around 9am. It's been pretty dry here, but we had a lot of snowmelt/rain a few days ago and there's still runoff in some places.

It was around freezing this morning as I was leaving Mahone Bay on my way to Mader's Cove along the water. Was only going 40-45kph or so (the speed limit in town is only 50kph) and as I came out of the first slight bend outside of the town, the road looked wet but not frozen....boy was I wrong, haha!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10bvfdDwQhZzfmKb6__FWDGgZhrmce0f5/view?usp=share_link

Must've been runoff running over the road overnight that froze - roads hadn't been salted. The back slid out to the right and I caught it in time and held it for what seemed like an eternity, but what was really only a few seconds...if I had lost it, there's a very big chance I would've wound up in the drink as there are no guardrails along the water there (....or into a large immovable excavator or some equally immovable rocks)!

Glad luck and good reactions are on my side! First the universe tested me with dodging that rare piebald deer last May and now this!

I'm just glad Humdrum and I are both still here, haha!

I went FAR away from classic Italians this time to the other side of the world and a lot more modern!

With the new Nissan 'Z' on the way (and here's hoping it's a good one!), I wanted to honor the history of the 'Z' by doing another one of my 'Night Cruise' series designs of one of my favorite generations of the 'Z' to put up on my RedBubble shop...the 300ZX (specifically the 2+0 coupe with t-tops!)

I know a few Oppos have one, and I know many Oppos have classic 'Z' cars, but the 300ZX has always looked so modern and suave to me, even today.

Hopefully it's a worthy tribute to a very cool car from when Nissan was in their prime!

Hi all! Update on my COVID situation....well, I feel pretty much fine now to be honest! The worst I got was REALLY tired for a day last week, but otherwise it's been mostly a sore throat, runny nose, and coughs for me. My brother caught it too and had the same symptoms, although a bit worse. Mom got it the worst of the three of us though, although she's better now...but still not feeling great. For her it's been a LOT of exhaustion, and a really phlegmy deep cough, constantly runny nose and very sore throat. She's on the mend now, but she's feeling really out of it still.

I get out of isolation on Wednesday if I test negative and I can go back to work....here's hoping as I am scheduled to teach on Thursday and have several computer repair appointments on Friday and Saturday!

What have I been up to? A whole fat lot of nothing, to be honest. A lot of sitting around and catching up on some shows and Youtube channels I follow. Got a few computers I've had sitting around ready to sell...also finally got around to creating a new RedBubble design that @pip-bip had asked me to create for him awhile back!

It's a reproduction of this rare, period vintage mug from Yugo Cars back in the 80s and early 90s! He sent me the pic awhile back and asked if I could recreate it for him.

Voila, the recreation! Not perfect as I couldn't find the exact original fonts, but I think it's pretty accurate.
Makes me think of @The-Autopian and Jason with his Yugo

What else is up otherwise? Well, I'll be calling the garage tomorrow to hopefully get an appointment booked to get Humdrum's exhaust leak fixed. The leak is RIGHT where the rear pipe connects to the mid-pipe, so I am hoping it's just a missing or loose bolt on the flange and will be an easy fix...a few more little door sill chips with rust to touch up, swap the summer rims/tires back on and she'll be good to go.

Hope you're all doing OK peeps!

We didn't get it as bad here (our power didn't go out yet, though it's flickered MANY times). EVERYWHERE around us is out and there are almost 2200 active outages affecting 412,000 households across the province according to the NS Power Outage Map:

We're supposedly listed as being without power according to the map, but we do still have it....nobody around us seems to have theirs though...

Lots of small and large branches down everywhere and out deck and driveway are COVERED with leaves and pine needles. Rain wasn't as bad as the wind here, luckily. We've not had any issues at our house here except one the wind was coming from the Northwest against our upper door into the kitchen has been so strong (though wind STARTING to die off now) that it was forcing water past the door seal all night and we woke up to a pool of water that had run along that wall and into our pantry closet

Makes me worry for the floor and the walls there and if there's anywhere there we didn't manage to get the water up (which is likely as there's little access). We've wiped up what we could and my brother is currently using a hair dryer to try and dry along the wall edge in the pantry...the force of the hair dryer is pushing the water that was still there out so we can wipe that up and hopefully dry it off some. I went into the basement and looked up right where the closests would be from directly below and I see no evidence of water from underneath, so I don't think it's too bad....worries me for mold from anything we miss though...

Pics from Halifax (1hr east of here):

Prince Edward Island has it even worse than us in places...pics from there:

That second pic is terrible with that tree through somebody's roof...makes me wonder if the house would be a write-off by the time the storm was over and they'd lose a lot of their stuff inside

There was a story of a fire truck filled with responding firefighters who had a tree fall on their truck with live wires and they were all trapped in the truck until the power company came and turned the power off to get them out too...

Scary stuff! The storm is supposed to start dying off here around noon today, so in another 4hrs from this post.

@TheHondaBro I'm just used to my windows....no A/C means they are the only ventilation I get, lol....I'm used to it though and it doesn't really bother me!

Do have to get a door seal replaced on my car though...the driver's side door seal had two clips rip out of the rubber when the door froze shut a bit during an ice storm a few weeks ago

@TheHondaBro Crap like this is why I will never own a car with a sunroof if I can help it...vastly bigger risk of problems for barely any gain in my opinion. I have openable windows all around me, I don't NEED one above me that just makes my car MORE hot in the summer.

@MM54 Perfect, we're sorted then

@іди-на-хуй-Влад-formerly-known-as-Distraxi said in OPPO Maintenance tonight at 2000 PST:

@CarsOfFortLangley said in OPPO Maintenance tonight at 2000 PST:

@jminer said in OPPO Maintenance tonight at 2000 PST:

I'll be doing some general system maintenance as well as an upgrade to the underlying engine.

I don't want to panic anyone, but Oppo does run on a Kia Theta II engine and it's not holding up well.

It’s ok, tonight’s outage is to swap in a Renesis. Should be much more reliable after that.

I call dibs on not having to replace the apex seals!

I'm on the fence....they seem to be having a lot of issues and not be doing so well lately...

@awesomeaustinv Oh, that's awesome man! Congrats! Does this mean more repairs on the Thunderbird could be happening with your own skills in due time?

Hey mate - thanks for this check-in. We may be a 'all-things-vehicular' site, but this kindof thing is what makes Oppo, Oppo.

I'm doing OK...the same little voices at the back of my head as always stressing out about the same old stuff.

Still trying to afford a house, but there are none left to afford here in Nova Scotia after the real estate bubble burst awhile back and the prices went through the roof, so there is very little left to buy and those that are worth it are now mostly way out of my price range. Frustrating still living at home at 36....BUT....the market is SLOWLY coming down. Might even be a house up the road coming up for sale soon that I am hoping might work for me! Fingers crossed!

As for work....work is steady. I'm sub teaching pretty much everyday but had an interview for a non-sub position 2 weeks ago that they said 'I would hear back next week' and.....I've not been contacted at all, so yet another interview that amounted to nothing. I've been sub teaching for 11 years with still no permanent. A lot of other subs are in the same boat, but it's frustrating.

At least on the car front Humdrum is doing OK...her long-suffering front replacement strut problem finally gets solved on Friday, so that will be one more thing off my mind...only other big issue is replacing the very UV faded front passenger headlight, but that can wait!

Other than all that...things go OK. Almost done some digital art for @FourMalibus - was working on that a bit tonight. Currently about to go to bed soon and just sitting here browsing Oppo, sipping some root beer and listening to a recent Album by Marcus Warner who makes some amazing music....it's the soundtrack from his recent very good self-made film about his year living in and traveling the US from the UK in a 1970s Lincoln...highly recommended to all Oppos!

Thanks for taking the time to ask and kudos for the very well-written and thoughtful post

Checking in friend - any word on your young one?

@WhoIsTheLeader So would I, haha!

@WhoIsTheLeader Happy Birthday friend! Stop trying to make me feel even more old!

Have a Piaggio Ape in some Italian architecture

And a Trabant in front of some suitably depressing East-German architecture