I’ve had a fair amount of experience renting tools in my life.  Not huge, but enough to realize the in-and-outs of the business.

And here’s the deal, don’t rent anything from a place that isn’t a tool rental business.  That means, skip Home Depot, and such, if at all possible.   Their tools usually cause more anxiety than the accomplishment of your task.

It’s not like the Home Depots of the world don’t have good tools to rent.  It is that they have no ability to keep the tools working properly.  Every tool I’ve ever rented from them, I repair before I can use it.  Plus, if it has a blade of any kind, the blade is always duller than shit.  Case in point.

I had to rent a sewer auger a couple of nights ago, later in the evening.  All the “real rental” places were closed, so Kris and I drove out to Home Depot to rent a one.  It was around $60 bucks for 4 hours.  We loaded the auger into the car and were back home and were at it pretty quickly.

But, that is when the fun started.  The tool was a POS.  The belt was so loose that the auger wouldn’t spin.  There was a way to move the motor up and down, to adjust the belt, but someone had screwed with the bolt and it wasn’t there, just some threads and a nut on them.

We finally got the thing sort of working, but when it was out around 80 feet in the sewer, the resistance was too much and it bogged down.  Eventually, we were having to spin the thing with our hands, propelling it manually.

The ordeal kept going.  It took forever to get the thing out of the clean out.  It was spinning so slowly, I was pretty much just yanking it out of the drain.  I was wasted.

I’ve used sewer augers lots of times with no problems.  This was a tool issue.

When I returned the thing I told the lady at the rental counter the issue.  She told me that it wasn’t an automatic auger and “of course” you have to use it manually.  I asked her what the motor was for then.  She looked at me quizzically, not understanding what I was saying.  I told her someone should look the tool over before she rented it again.   She put it back into its slot, waiting for the next idiot.

I rented the 1 inch model on the left.  Just wait until a real tool rental store is open if you can.

Yesterday was a pretty productive day for me.  It didn’t seem like it at the time, but now looking back upon it, I got a fair amount done.

I was putting in the bathroom and am finally done just thinking and am actually constructing.  I build the shower walls, most of the shower pan, put cement board on the floor and a few other misc. things.  I had extra fortified topping mix, so I patched the back loading dock area of the building, which turned out to be the most rewarding part of the building day.

I got home and the World Series game had gone to hell.  The Royals were ahead, 4-1, then the Giants got a ton of hits and it was a blowout.  I watched to the end, the looked through the mail.

The new screen for  my iPhone came.  It only took one day after buying it on eBay.  Supposedly it was sent from Springfield Missouri, but it seemed the company was really from China.  The LCD screen with digitizer was $30 shipped, which seems amazing after holding it in my hand.

I went to Youtube and watched a short video showing how to do it.  It seemed pretty simple, watching it.  And it really was.

The main problem was my agility.  And eyesight.  The screws are so small that it was hard to tell what tool to use to remove them.  Apple uses a proprietary 5-point pentalobe screw which you can use other tools to remove also.  I used a knife blade, but you can use a small nail too.

It probably took me close to an hour to replace the screen, but I was going pretty slowly.  I have cheap tools that don’t really bite into the small phillips, etc.  It was close to 1 am before I was finished.  It is nice having a new, clear screen.

I couldn’t believe how wiped out I was this morning.  I am way more tired that the previous week.  I am thinking that it was the iPhone repair, not the physical work.  I’ve been doing the physical everyday for the past week.  If this is true, it is amazing that just concentrating, with just a tad of stress, can physical rack you.  Maybe it is just additive and Sunday needs to be a rest day.

I’m meeting Joseph Schmalz in an hour, on gravel.  He is riding over from Lawrence and I’m going to head back there with him.   I haven’t seen Joseph for awhile, so it will be fun catching up.  It is supposed to be in the mid-80’s, today.  Very unusual for Kansas in October.

I still have a back camera coming for my phone.  My camera has been jacked for the past month.  The camera looks way more complicated to replace than the screen.  Better rest up for that one.

Smashed screen piece.

New screen. You can see how jacked up my camera is.