Amy was worried about leaving me home alone, but it has been a very educational experience. I have learnt some valuable lessons this evening.
1. Don’t eat cold meat that smells funny.
2. Pick up the junk mail I dropped (and probably asked to).
3. Don’t glue broken propellers together
4. Don’t play with my toys inside- holes appear in the bathroom wall.
Asus battery tear down A41-X550A
I got a free laptop that has a stuffed battery so I thought I would tear it down.

Using AA cells in place of C
I 3D printed some AA to C battery adapters to use in my sons Nerf gun (which currently doesn’t work- I can forsee a post on this repair soon) as we have a supply of these because we use rechargeable batteries. I was asked the question “Do those really work in practice? Do you get any appreciable run time from AA’s in something that expects C’s?” to which the short answer is YES, and the long answer is below.

Oculus Rift S PCIe USB 3.0 card
For Christmas my lovely wife got me an Oculus Rift S VR headset which I think is awesome. My kids also think it is awesome and as such I haven’t been able to get much time on it with them hogging it, so I got another second hand one hoping to simply plug it into an older computer with a leftover mining card. There was nothing simple about it.
Powering car fridge in a pinch
I couldn’t find the 12v 10A ac adaptor so I tried powering the car fridge from an ATX PSU. I thought it was a good idea, the PSU did not agree with me.

Playing Minecraft over RDP
I had been trying to get Minecraft to work over a RDP remote session without success because Minecraft is incompatible with the RDP mouse input. After trying several things I have given up on the mouse and have a Xbox controller working thanks to a Microsoft employee.
https://github.com/microsoft/RdpGamepad
Microwave panel beating
During our trip back from Winton the microwave couldn’t be talked down and jumped from its shelf, but luckily the plug pulled out/broke so it couldn’t complete the hanging.

Losing caravan wheel
120km into our trip a woman behind us was beeping and flashing her high beams so slightly annoyed with her impatience I pulled over thinking she wanted to overtake. Her intentions were very different and I was very thankful.

BT-50 head swap
The BT-50 we purchased at auction was blowing coolant out and not reclaiming it. The cooling system was also staying pressured after the engine had cooled down.

Stavic EGR valve
The Ssangyong Stavic had a check engine light and lost power. A quick probe of it said it had an EGR issue which started a couple of month saga.