hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3199.txt

Episode: 3199
Title: HPR3199: Bad Audio Weed Eater Bugs Sprinkler and Bubbles !
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3199/hpr3199.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:42:14

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3199 for Thursday 5 November 2020. Today's show is entitled
Bad Audio Weedy to Bug Sprinkler and Bubbles. It is hosted by Operator
and is about 25 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
pushing the definition of audible to the limit. Join us for some home repair tips.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org. Support universal access
to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Music
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio. We're going to go stuff right here.
I'm recording on a Bluetooth little crappy Bluetooth flantronics $40.
It's a thing. So, apologize for the audio. Last time I tried to record with a wired device
and I kept knocking up against my chest, and so I figured this one would be a better
straight-up audio capture. I'm outside. Today we're going to be talking about before I get into that.
I got a few things out here. We have a broken sprinkler. I'm going to talk about weed eater fixing,
troubleshooting, carburetor stuff, my tie wrap fixing stuff, and maybe this balloon
or this bubble machine over here. I'm talking about some of the hose stuff,
that's kind of going to be an exploratory wildlife fix stuff episode.
So, anyways, I have an old Makita. It's probably 20 years old now.
Buying a new battery is probably my fourth battery I bought for it.
Over the past, I don't know how long, like I said, 20 years. I got it 99. So, yeah, 20 years.
So, I've had three or four batteries. It's not more in this thing.
The chargeable battery lasts you about three years depending three, four, or greater depending on.
But if it's starting to crap out on you and you've been charging it and keeping it
cycle properly if it's depending on what kind of battery it is.
This is a 300 milliamp, 12 volt Makita. I got a 300 milliamp, which is supposed to be 300 milliamp.
But with these batteries online, you never really know the sources are kind of reputable
and it's all really made in China anyways.
Anyways, you want two drills. If you can have two drills, don't ever give your other drill away
because when you're working, you need to drill and then you need to use a screw and a driver.
Having switched bits back and forth is quite obnoxious. So, if you can have a drill for drilling,
I use this old Makita for drilling and I use a nicer hammer drill for screwing and screws.
And those things are awesome. You can get a hammer drill. Go for that.
I think I did the 18 volt, if not the 12 volt. I think of the 14 volt.
I didn't want a big old heavy battery. One of my wife could be able to use it.
And I still struggle with it upside down or sideways. You still have to push the way the hammer drill works.
Because you still, it actually hammers in a screw for you while it's whatever.
But it's not idiot, you can't just throw the screw up there. You still have to push it in.
But where those times it's going to strip out the screw, it'll save you.
And if you put a fair enough amount, if you put all your force into it, it will literally screw the bit,
twist the bit right off of the head right off of the bit.
So you start to be careful in that regard too. It's pretty strong once you get the pressure behind it.
So anyways, I've got my drill drill bit here. I'm going to drill some holes in my sprinkler.
It's a sprinkler level crappy sprinkler, you know, back and forth sprinkler head.
These guys, you know, they're dime a dozen. This is a craftsman.
They're all the same. They're all kind of garbage plastic.
The mechanics, if you can, if you can keep the mechanics from crapping out and cracking and dry rotting,
you can actually have these things last the long time I've had this one for probably 20 or 10 years.
Since we moved into the house, so it's about 10 years.
When I first got it, of course it lasted about a season.
And then it started, there's a gear in here that keeps the mechanism spinning around.
And it, it, it's hard to explain. But essentially there's a gauge here that you can say center left full, right?
What happens is that this little thing spins around because the teeth on it are broken where it keeps it in motion.
So it's kind of sprays wherever the hell it wants to spray.
So at one point, I had glued this with what looks like some kind of glue I glued it in here.
And obviously that has not worked because over time, like anything glue will crap out and give you problems.
My newest solution for this type of stuff nowadays is a drill and a drill and holes and tie wraps.
So if you can imagine, whenever you have anything, for example, this plastic hinge I'm looking at here, where I keep some of my bits,
which none of these are going to work on.
So if you can imagine a hinge, plastic hinge, and the hinge cracks, or some kind of plastic on plastic, you are.
What I end up doing off the farms, kind of fixing kind of things.
So whenever you think you can use super glue to glue plastic together, try to use tie wraps for it.
And I probably said this on a quick tip.
I'm going to kind of go over it here.
You drill kind of the smallest hole you can drill without with allowing still a tie wrap to go through it.
So you need a good set of tie wraps.
And you get a tiny little drill.
And essentially you're drilling a hole in the two end doing a connect together.
So I want to connect this on to the hole.
So I'm going to find a place where the two holes kind of line up more or less.
Drill hole on one side.
Drill hole on the other side.
Now I have a hole on one side of the thing that I want to something to do.
And hole on the other side.
So you'll find yourself fixing a lot of things with tie wrap, where people would have thrown them away.
I'm going to cut the tie wrap.
I'm going to sit tight.
Is there any pliers?
Usually the planks tend to go quickly because you usually find them.
So if you're just doing work, it doesn't really matter.
I'm going to try to use up the white tie wrap and see if you're going to use the first one.
I've actually had to purchase a tiny black one before for a computer cable management stuff.
So I'm going to try to pull this through the hole.
It's pretty big.
Does it die? Something might not.
Might have to drill a bigger hole.
Guys, am I here at the cicadas?
I'm in Georgia, Roswell, Georgia.
And you know what it's like.
And, yep, it's tiny.
But we're going to make it work.
That's a mail truck coming by.
That birds soon.
Tomatoes.
Ready for our deer to eat.
So I don't have any advice on tomato eating deer.
We have some netting up, but they tend to just kind of go low and ignore the netting and eat whatever they want to eat.
I didn't do that a couple of years ago.
Pretty state.
But here recently, this year, man, they know exactly when to pick them and they come at 3 o'clock in the morning.
No, no.
Excuse me.
Because I have yellow object-corrected emission,
dirt net on my CCTV system.
And the deer appear as dogs.
That's good.
The deer appear as dogs on the system.
So, so now I've locked this in the more or less full position.
Now all the thing will fix.
I'll tell you about these little o-rings.
These plastic o-rings that come with a hose setup.
You want to buy you some silicon spray.
And you want to spray silicon spray down in there kind of every time you service it.
I actually should spray something down in here as being speak.
It's probably because of the service during the day.
So, let's pray.
And come back here.
So, we've got some of these blaster silicon spray.
Now, this has other, I want to say,
I want to say, I still spray the lubricates and protects.
You want to be careful of silicon spray with extra crap in it.
Designed as lubricate.
You want to get like 100% silicon spray.
This says non-staining lubricant limits squeaky existence of life.
There's no other lubricant.
Just tell me what's in here.
But it doesn't appear to be 100% silicon spray.
But the blaster stuff I haven't had any issues with.
The blaster also sells, you know, everything.
There's blaster stuff.
Well, like you put it on something rusty and you come back later and you just kind of take the drill tool to it with a brush head.
And it'll just eat all that stuff off the brush off and hopefully you'll have a bolt or whatever you can still.
Unscrew or figure out what's wrong with it to get it to good.
Mosquitoes, you're awful here, I spray with my own spray.
It's on the 5th of June, it's on the 6th of June.
It's on the 5th of June.
It's on the 5th of June.
It's on the 5th of June.
You can manage where it may be used.
Be killing stuff.
You guys will let your guy use it.
You guys will need it.
Keeper's ability to keeper.
Probably it's the best kill more beans, but it also kills.
Bees, they take it back to your eyes.
Sound for it.
It's been too much time dabbling here.
No, I'm still good.
It's early in the morning enough to wear.
A little bit of a little bit of a...
Open.
That'll give you a break.
So I ran off on my tangent.
I bought a water bottle.
It's like a systrinsa, too.
And a backpack blower.
I use Maverick.
It's a systrinsa, I see three.
I use 4.5.
It's a very small bottle of Maverick.
As opposed to the Vifton, I use indoors.
For the bugs, for indoor.
The Vifton 19, I think.
The Vifton I use for indoors.
Pills, bees, don't use it.
Maverick, outdoors.
0.5, I use on the whole.
Once a green half gallon, green half gallon, whatever.
And the systrinsa is like four.
It's like 12 ounces.
This stuff's not cheap.
I'm trying to buy it at bulk.
But I spray every 30 days.
I try to spray every 30 days.
I'm out in the yard.
No problems, nothing's like other days.
Just depending on the weather and the changing
and the life cycle of the mosquitoes.
We'll get eaten while I'm out here,
because we have these tiger, whatever they call it,
tiger mosquitoes that are not needed.
If you ever grew up around,
if you grew up around the 90s in Georgia,
at least you didn't have mosquitoes during the day.
You had mosquitoes at night.
And you went to your backyard at night.
You know, you didn't get that.
But these tiger ones are out during the day,
especially in well-established neighborhoods
and thoughts of IV,
and people not take care of them there.
Cutters, vegan standing water everywhere.
These little tiger guys will do with the street.
That's a quick tangent on that.
We fix the sprinkler.
I'm going to kind of clean up later,
but as I'm cleaning up stuff, I'll tell you about it.
I've got a little bubble machine.
I'll be using fourth of July here.
I've had it for two or three years.
It's just a van.
It's kind of a hexagonal shape you see it on the Amazon.
What?
Hexagonal shape.
It's got a piece on it.
It's kind of cute.
And it's pretty good.
It goes clockwise and counterclockwise.
So you've got to turn it on in the right direction
to get it to go clockwise,
or clockwise.
But you can mix up some...
Your mix-years are good,
and I buy...
I use a little bit of the super bubble recipe
that has just water,
whatever soap,
whatever you can find.
If you happen to find a particular brand, like Joy,
that does just super joy,
whatever.
They don't have actual regular joy anymore,
or any of the regular soap,
sorrel, super power, or whatever.
But this stuff is called...
You mix in a powder with it called...
I want to say Gorgon.
Gorgon powder to help...
And it's like a habit...
teaspoon of Gorgon powder.
It helps the ability of the bubbles.
I think...
Or maybe something like that.
But it makes for a better,
better longer bubbles.
You can get together two sticks...
Stick a piece of yarn...
Orgon.
Maybe some awesome giant bubbles.
Three feet...
Ball?
At least...
No.
You want to pull it?
Are you good at it?
So that's that.
And I don't have any cleaning.
What else am I going to talk about?
Oh!
The weed eater.
I found a weed eater on the road.
That fixed...
Probably five or six small inches at this point.
It started when I got two free blowers
way back from the chicken house.
And I was using those to spray with
sold one through three-fifty.
We built the carburetor, sold it,
cleaned it, took parts out of it.
And then I had one kind of half jacked up one.
And I used it for about three years.
I bought a new carburetor for it
because I couldn't get it to start
and of course it was a carburetor.
So anyways...
There's a guy and it's like...
He talks about half a can of beers.
That's how long it's going to take.
I can't remember the guy's name.
He's Google like...
Tuning weed eater...
weed eater tuning or weed eater carburetor.
He's like the first hit.
It's orange, it's logo.
But he has really great tips on how to...
Get carburetors to work on weed eaters
and using, adjusting the carburetor.
You want to get a little carburetor.
They're like, you know, six bucks for a carburetor tool kit.
But anyways...
I'm just troubleshooting this thing.
I've never had any problems fixing stuff in general.
Usually I can clean a brush off the spark plug
or clean the carburetor out.
I clean the carburetor out.
It's found on the right side of the road, of course.
I clean the carburetor out.
Nothing.
I...
Let me clean up.
As I'm talking.
I clean out the carburetor.
Nothing.
You know, it's kind of...
Shiny looking carburetor.
But they all kind of look...
Used to take apart obviously.
And I cleaned, put you on it.
I cleaned the spark plug.
And I was able to kind of get it to the start,
but it wouldn't stay.
It started.
And it seemed like it wasn't getting fuel.
So I kept messing with it, kept messing with it.
Finally, I was able to get it to run and work for a few minutes.
And of course, it stopped working.
And I haven't touched it for a few years.
I said, well, I'll give it another shot.
And I start to notice that the...
The reason is not getting gas or fuel.
I actually swapped the part and went out.
And the tubing was all rotten, originally for it.
So I had to replace the tubing and the burping thing to get the fuel in there,
which is things, you know, they don't actually do anything to be honest with you.
The primer pumps seem to really matter either way.
Anyways, this thing was just being difficult.
And I just happened to notice when I had the fuel kept partially unscrewed,
it was running.
And I was like, huh.
And if you know anything about it,
there's like a little bit of a vacuum in there or the other wise.
A non vacuum pressure thing.
And that pressure forces gas into the carburetor, I guess.
So there's either a vacuum or pressure, something going on there to get gas into the unit.
So I tried to clean out the little thing, of course.
And of course it was all very, very limiting in the amount of air that's going to go in there.
So I just straight up poked a hole straight through the top of the gas cap to let it get air.
Now that might be another indicator that something besides something within the carburetor is broken,
but this was able to fix it.
Well, the problem with having a hole in the top of your gas tank is that pressure.
Excuse me.
I have a coffee like a week, a week and a half, two weeks.
The problem with having a hole in the top of your gas tank is that it's spears,
gas, all of this, makes a big mess.
I don't even know what this is.
It's a discussion.
That why am I surprisingly left me to clean up, apparently.
This is all going inside.
This is all going inside.
So, you know, it works, but I'm trying to head to the yard.
I'm trying to trim the yard deal.
Yard trim, deal.
And of course, gas is spewing out all of the placement of the mess.
So that's kind of an interesting thing about, you know, you need spark, you need fuel,
you need carburetor working, you need good gas, mix, you need all those things.
But you also need the right pressure inside of the tank.
And like I said, I don't know if it's a vacuum.
But that's something to keep in mind.
There's troubleshooting this stuff.
Get you to use some carb cleaner.
That's always fun to help get this stuff started.
Safety first, we're safety goggles.
You know what it would be like being sprayed carburetor cleaner.
Technically, excuse me.
Any idle?
It's that, it's not fun.
That was all.
It didn't have to go to the hospital.
It got good.
You can actually burn your keraniac and quarrying it with that type of stuff.
And end up with a bad day.
And put the carburetor in that room.
Yes.
I was using it to prep work.
I was using it to prep work.
Is it going to be on the belt?
It's on the belt.
It's on the belt.
It's on the belt.
Yes.
And if you use the lemon toy, it's actually kind of hilarious.
Because your kids.
Kids of playing, end up singing all like,
when it's just kind of fun.
You just tell them, oh yeah, just take your kid.
It's hour and a half.
All you got to do is add water and they'll be clean.
It's because, you know, they get to top all of them.
Run it back and forth through it.
They don't really play in there as long as you would think.
Even with a couple of them.
It's kind of like a, eh, and then it's the fleeting moment.
Really interactive bubbles are the way to go.
You get the little bubble trays.
And then you get the big bubble things where they can spin around
and make big bets.
Those are the funnest ones.
Your standard vertical style bubble things are just a mess.
They've got come over and the bubble's over.
So you just pour it in a tray.
Let them do the tray.
If you've got to bring the fares and stuff, they'll actually fill up the.
They'll fill up the wheelbarrow full of juice.
In all kinds of elaborate ding-dangs and what nots and wands.
And they'll use those.
So my sprinkler is little, you know, there's one of the things.
What you have to do is backflush them every once in a while.
Because the little holes will get stuck up.
And there's a little pin at the end that you can use it to kind of backflush.
So you shove a paper put in there or whatever you want to shove inside the hole.
And that's it's backwashing.
Or as the little thing is open, it'll come out the tip.
It's kind of hard to explain.
But that's how you clean it.
There's a little release on the end of the sprinkler.
That's a little easy back and forth guy.
And that's how you clean them out.
Both we got a cat poop.
There's nothing super interesting there.
Working my cat feeder might do that one.
Oh, the irrigation stuff.
Problems, that problem.
It's all plastic garbage.
So I'm going to try to get a commercial irrigation system.
I don't know how much that's going to cost.
Your basic orbit brand is like 99 or 50 bucks, 60 bucks I think.
And it's plastic and you screw it on plastic on metal and things bad things happen in general.
I don't know why there's the threads are different or something.
I'm missing.
Maybe there's a step down way you're supposed to like plug plastic.
You know how it was, if you don't understand, sorry.
It's a very nice good boat.
You know how when you do pipe, you don't want to get the wrong shark pipe,
which is the automatic policy to improve flowing stuff.
So if you do like copper to pecs, get special kind.
Or if you do pecs to the pecs, you have to get a special kind.
If you're going from pecs to copper, you have to get it like a different kind or way.
The same thing with the, what the hell was talking about.
I think there might be some kind of step down where I'm supposed to like,
instead of screw it directly onto the faucet.
I've got a two way split, but it goes to the hose,
the old standard hose, and into the irrigation system,
which is only like four hoppers.
You can get a cat feeder.
The problem is that this is the little scheduling thing.
It cracked at the head.
Of course, there's no way to fix that.
And I've had it.
This is the first one I've had.
It's lasted me like three seasons.
There's no way to really fix water pressure issues,
especially if it's all plastic garbage.
So, I'm going to opt in to try to...
cleaning.
Virtual grade.
Whatever.
I think that's pretty much it is.
I talked about the weed eater.
Like I said, this is kind of an exploratory episode.
If you're bored here, probably not.
It's pretty much it.
There's a whole lot of other projects going on.
I might do one on the rebuild of my good thoughts.
I don't know if that's...
or how to see salt again.
Anyways.
Maybe this helps somebody, or at least will help myself
in three years when I forget.
Take it easy.
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