This week:some soldering, cars, and koi fish

At the start of the week, I tried something different with the soldering.

I remembered an art class I took where we made our own stamps/ block printing, using big blocks of faux linoleum. It looked like large sheets of rubber eraser.
I had a small set of tools to carve into the "linoleum."

I thought, what if I carved into the silicone molds and made my own shapes to pour?
The silicone was very elastic and not as easy to carve, but I made a few shapes.

I made a cross and a heart.
The back side of the solder was very blobby.
Solder doesn't conform to the sides of the molds, I noticed. It keeps its own shape.

The front side was kind of stamped with the lines that I carved in the rubber.
I made a sun shape, but making flat pieces of solder is hard.
Unless a big drop of solder lands in one piece.

The results were more satisfying than using the shapes that already came in the mold.
Still a little rough.

In the middle of the week, I found Don the mechanic. He fixed my headlight motor on the green car.
Apparently one of the small parts inside the motor, a spring, had come loose.
So basically all he had to do was put it back together again.

Don answered some questions I had about my car stereo.
The green car has its original stereo, with a cassette player that doesn't work.
I once had a stereo shop put a nice system in the other green car, and I was hoping swapping in a stereo would be something easy to do.
Don found some wiring parts from the old green car around his shop, but it looks like it doesn't match, will be something for a stereo shop to do.

Unfortunately Don and his son will be busy during the next few weekends, so I don't think they can help me to get the green car to pass smog...


My sister was due to visit this weekend for 10 days or so.
She will be at a conference and staying in Anaheim, but I still had to clean the house, and that took up most of Thursday and Friday.
It is nice to have her around because she can sit with Mom while I get other things done.


Today I tried very hard to take pictures of my koi fish again.

None of my fish have lasted more than 6 years due to tragedy, like raccoons, or the dogs.
Every year or two, I go outside to find half of the fish laid out in the yard.
So I am determined to capture a picture of my larger fish before they get massacred.

This time I took pictures at feeding time and didn't give them all their food at once.
They were excited and stirred up alot of scum, but they were less shy this time.

I used the Sports setting on my Samsung galaxy phone.

Also I noticed that I was leaning way over the pond in a menacing way, and when I leaned away they calmed down a little more.

I have 3 butterfly koi that I got at Petsmart. And a bunch of red and white goldfish.
Two of the Koi are about 5 years old and 15" and the darker one is a year younger and about 12"