biddie_fiddler

Twice the fun surely

What a week so far, and a story! Ordered two rolls of car builders stretch carpet so I can finish off my new and improved false floor in the boot. Supposed to have been delivered on Friday the 6th, which it did! Only one problem, it was delivered to the wrong address! Now, this has happened a lot, to the same house too. They are close to each other, the number is the same, and the street name is kinda similar. Get home after work on Friday, excited that I can finish the boot on the weekend after receiving the notification that the parcels were delivered. I get home and, nothing. Funny enough my first instinct was "lets go see the other house, maybe it went there again". I go there, and nothing 😞 Dammit, my parcel has been stolen, what a kick in the d1ck. Try calling Direct Freight, no answer, try on saturday and sunday, no answer. Try on Monday and finally I'm through. They proceed to tell that it was, in fact delivered to the house down the street. They sent me photos of proof too! So, we make a plan, I go after work and ask them if they maybe took it in by mistake so I can get it back, if that doesn't work they'd open an investigation. Awesome, no drama. I go to the house after work and knock on the door. I speak to an older lady explaining my situation and I show her the photos. She's shocked, she didn't hear the door ring on Friday about the delivery and swears she never saw it, she's now sad because someone's stolen from her house! Thing is, there were boxes through the window at the front door, odd! So, I tell the lady I'll be in contact with the courier and she closes the door. SHE THEN MOVES THE FKN BOXES NEAR THE WINDOW. Now I'm convinced they have it, and she's just lied. After all this isn't the first delivery that has gone to that house, and has disappeared without a trace. I have since tried contacting direct freight and I cannot get through, by phone or email. They replied to one email on Tuesday asking for the tracking # and that was it. So helpful. Yesterday after work, in my annoyed state, I go to the local police station for advice. I am helped by a very friendly cop who wants to help, she is honest, says that yes its illegal to take the parcel like they've done - if they have in fact taken it - and that without hard evidence there isn't much she can do. She says "lets try the first easy tactic, I'll give them a call and scare them!". She tries on the registered landline that is disconnected. Heartbreaking! I'm defeated, she says to try get a rego of any car in the driveway and call back on Friday with it, they can use that to try get more contact information. So, in the meantime I continue trying to contact direct freight, surprise surprise I can't get through. Instead I decide to contact car builders themselves and see if there is anything they can do. Now, none of this is on them at all, they didn't deliver it wrong, direct freight did! I get an email back after like 30 min from them, a bloke (a legend) called brad, explaining that they've managed to contact direct freight and have an investigation started within the company to find the package. All that happens though is they go to the house and ask where the package is. He then proceeds to tell me that he's organised two more rolls of carpet (with very specific delivery instructions lol) to be sent free of charge to me. What a legend! I still want my carpet back from those those thieving fks though! The fight isn't over! Gonna do a massive sh*t on their driveway

Sounds like a pretty accurate breakdown lol. Have you noticed the drug and/or homelessness issues on the streets much over there?

Initial thoughts on the land of the free? How is it compared to Aus?

How was the flight over?

@k31thwhereabouts are you heading?

Did the link still work then? I have moved some folders around my google drive since I posted that link

Awesome mate! If you haven't used the superpro diff bushes yet you'll be very happy with your purchase.

Been back for a bit now, but got the flu on the last day and I'm still suffering bad. I've been sick so much this year wtf. Anyway, this is the knife

We're at the general assembly, south wharf. Maybe it's just this side of the river 🤷‍♂️ Bloody nice area though. We've had an awesome arvo walking around, did 20k steps this arvo looking around!

Yo why are beers so expensive over here 🤯😂

Went to Tanto in Melbourne today, a Japanese knife shop. Small shop but some absolutely stunning, and very expensive, knives. I have no self control and couldn't leave empty handed. I'm now the proud new owner of a Suisin knife. I'd love to show you but I seem to be stupid and don't know how to get the image address of my Imgur photo on mobile 🙃

This is the one I got: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001758378766.html I chose the one that does both wired and wireless

I don't either, I've been using dedicated apps on the unit, but its really slow because its so old. Hoping this helps a bit, make it feel a bit more modern again. Good sales pitch saying it has android auto/ carplay 😉

Kayhan audio charge $150 for the wired android auto/ apple carplay dongle. Sourced the same one from aliexpres that also supports wireless for just under $80 that should arrive today. Keen to see if it can revive my old and slow V2 head unit! Theoretically it should be faster because the unit itself is doing less work

$2.21/L at my local BP for 98. Wtf is that sh*te!

Ahh yes! will do 😄

Dinner date with wifey at a mexican place tonight, very keen

Bit more to it than that unfortunately 😋 She's never been a "fast car" person, I have. She loves camping though and so do I, so we can both be happy with a 4x4 and go on adventures together with it. Then it can be a tow car for IMPULSIV3 v2 I'm young with plenty of time to save for another fast car in the future. Selling it now and growing up a little is probably a good thing lol. Happy wife happy life as they say hahah. But in all seriousness, she's sacrificed a lot in the 5 or so years we've been together, and I feel like its time I make some sacrifices to make her happy. She really wants kids, and a bigger car, and we don't want another loan. We'd be lucky to get 10k for her car, so if we sell mine we can at least get the car she wants that's new, and will be with us for the foreseeable future. She also doesn't want me to sell the car just to buy hers, its a decision I made. She always joked about it, until I was serious about selling it lol

Yea I feel you 🥺

Been quiet on the forum lately and not for a happy reason! The time has come where I need to make adult decisions in my life, which means the fuel guzzling skid pig will need to go. Wifey and I have been talking about it a lot lately, she has never really been into the whole fast car stuff, and her reasoning's have always been logical whereas mine have been "if I save $x I can get y more power! More power more betterer!" We are building a house, and kids are on the horizon, so I need to make sacrifices. I will 10000% regret the decision to get rid of it, but for now it seems like it may be the best solution for us right now. I have the reassurance that if I do really regret selling it, I know I can get one again at a not so stupid price, but I have always dreamed of owning an rs3, so maybe in the next 5 years that dream would be reality! I'm finishing off some of the things I'd started on the car to get it ready to put on the market, cut out the new false floor on Tuesday, just need to clean it up and carpet it and it'll be sweet! Tempted still on getting my custom sub box made too, but that realistically won't add to the value of the car. Battery tray has been mounted in the boot and I nearly have all the parts I need to finish off the relocation, just waiting on the through stud to go through the firewall. I want it to be a top notch quality job! I'll keep developing the tail lights though! that's a project I can't not finish at this point, I'll just chuck them on my brothers rig instead of mine lol. Who knows, maybe an FG X is on the horizon instead of an rs3, for now. New car for the Mrs and a Ford Ranger for me! I want to get into the 4wd scene a bit more as we both love camping. Its been a ride! So much of the work done to the car I did myself, and this forum made it possible. For that I'll be forever grateful Car will be up hopefully by the end of October, we'll have a solid idea how much we will be paying at pre-start for the house by then so we know what budget we'll have her new car.

Wow got here late I do apologise hahaha Modern car tail lights, say 2000ish and above, are ultrasonic welded together. Its actually a pretty epic process! The housing and the lens are two separate pieces, a machine takes the two pieces, lines them up together and then vibrates the ever living fk out of the two pieces, the friction between the plastic causes so much heat that they are friction welded together, basically becoming one sealed unit. The only way to open tail lights like this is to cut them open. I use a dremel with a flex shaft, and a special cutting disk made for cutting wood I believe. The cutting blade has off centre holes cut out of its cutting surface as you can see above, is helps break up the plastic as you cut. Traditional disks just melt the plastic and makes a mess, with this blade it it really easy to clean. The most widely accepted method used by shops that do this kinda thing though is an ultrasonic cutter. Way easier to use and a way cleaner finish. They are quite expensive though, the best one to get that's not bank breaking is still $600 odd and will still overheat - https://www.micromark.com/Wondercutter You need to spend quite a bit to get a industrial type one that is built for long time use and will last.

@k31th you probably get a notification anyway, I've pm'd you

Big wins this week, got our finance approval yesterday for the house! Now the fun stuff begins 😎

I'm having a great morning so far! With the power of encoding and compression, I have reduced my save files for my LED controller software from nearly 500kB to just 4kB. Massive improvement! Added bonus, the file looks like absolute gibberish so it should deter people from trying to interpret the data, even though its not remotely bad at all if they do, its just brightness configurations 🤣