twoprops.net

knee pain

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been having worsening knee pain for a few years now. Until the last year or two, it’s been more aversive than painful. If I’ve been sitting for a while, when I go to stand up I have an intense need to support myself. It just feels like something is going to tear or snap if I put my full getting-to-standing torque on the joint. If I’m in a chair with arms, I use them to help get to standing. If not, I have to position myself carefully to not overstress the joints when I stand.

Back in May, my right foot slipped out from under me when I was walking on lava rock. My left knee bent completely and I ended up sitting on my left heel. It was mildly painful, but it greatly increased the pain I experienced when walking downhill. Since I live on the slope of one of the world’s tallest mountains (Maunakea), I can’t really walk anywhere without going downhill either there or back, so it’s been a bit of a hindrance. I’ve tried wrapping it or wearing a brace, and that helps with the walking but often causes the joint to ache severely later in the day. Not a good trade-off.

I used to ride my ebike around the neighborhood all the time, but since it rained every day from April until September this year, I haven’t been able to ride at all.

When I was in Phoenix for my prostate artery embolization, I borrowed my brother’s bike (which, to be fair, wasn’t properly adjusted for my frame) and my knee screamed at me for the short ride to the grocery store. No problem; once I’d had the procedure I was forbidden to ride for a few weeks anyway. It was still raining every day when I got home, and I forgot about the cycling-associated knee pain.

The last few days have been really nice. The first summer days we’ve had, even though it’s now fall. I needed to visit someone in the neighborhood and I decided to ride.

My knee isn’t healed yet.

I made it, there and back, and the pain wasn’t excruciating but it wasn’t much fun, either. I’m probably going to want to ride again to a meeting on Thursday, and I’ll try horse tape or a brace and hope that it doesn’t lead to the aching I’ve had when walking with a brace. It was great to ride, but I’m hoping I’m not on a path to knee replacement.

—2p

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sick day

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Illustration by Round Icons on Unsplash

I woke up this morning with a slight headache. I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal.

As the morning wore on, the headache got a little worse and I became somewhat nauseated. My feet got really, really cold. I felt feverish, but had a normal temperature. It wasn’t awful, but I just couldn’t concentrate or think straight and it seemed to be getting worse. Food seemed out of the question (though I’ve had a few nibbles). I spent much of the day in bed, much of that sleeping.

At around 1:30pm it occurred to me that this might be a weird presentation of a migraine. Really, any time I have a headache and nausea I should just assume it’s migraine, but for some reason the part of my judgement that identifies migraine symptoms seems to be impaired by… migraine.

I took a low dose of sumatriptan, and — while I’m not 100% — I feel much better now than I have all day. Because of the mechanism of sumatriptan (it’s not a pain killer), it is unlikely to help unless I really did have migraine. On the other hand, the placebo effect can be powerful, indeed.

—2p

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tool repair

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fresh off my adventure with a wobbly wheelbarrow, I embarked on a short, simple string trimmer job. HA, with some help from L, has done a whole world of weed whacking particularly while Satan’s Own Mower has been out of commission. We have two weed trimmers: a lightweight suburban-focused Black and Decker LSTE525 and a somewhat beefier DeWalt trimmer. For this short, quick job I chose the B&D.

For the first forty seconds or so it worked fine. Then it started slowing down. I swapped the battery for one I knew to be fully charged, but it still worked for a few seconds then slowed to a stop. When I checked it out, the head was kind of loose and wobbly (apparently this week’s theme). I could push on it, and it snapped back in place. Then it again worked fine for 20 seconds or so, and again it slowed to a stop.

I need to be fair to Black and Decker here. I bought this trimmer in March of 2021. It’s had fairly hard use and extremely hard use the last few months. It seems just as though something had come loose, so I started disassembling it to find out where to tighten things.

Unlike most string trimmers, there is no way to remove the trimming head on this one. It is fully integrated into the shaft of the reduction gear. Getting at it involves removing 14 T-15 screws and one #2 Philips screw, slicing a label, and prying the halves apart with a spudger. Of course, everything was covered with grass clippings but two of the screws were in deep shafts that were filled with what looked like black plastic that had been melted and re-congealed. It was a task getting the plastic bits out to where I could get the Torx driver to the screw.

Once I got it open, I could appreciate the clever design but I also discovered where the molten and re-congealed ABS plastic had come from. The reduction gear has a bearing that pushes against the top of the casing, and that holds the trimming head in place. The plastic came from that bearing seat. Probably the bearing seized at some point (it’s quite free now) and melted the plastic. Now there’s nothing to keep the head from wandering away from the enclosure until the reduction gear slips off the driving gear and binds.

If my 3-D printer was working, and if I was willing to invest a few hours of engineering time, I might be able to fabricate a new enclosure.

Again, unlike Satan’s Own Mower, this is a consumer-grade product designed for lightweight jobs that gave five years of heavy service and then died. Clearly, it wasn’t designed for repairability and the fact that you cannot replace the housing, while regrettable, is understandable. The mower’s failure was of a part that is designed to fail and be regularly replaced, but the manufacturer made it virtually impossible to repair.

Now I have a perfectly good motor and two viable batteries. I’m considering spending the $120 to replace it and just keeping the parts, as case failure is apparently uncommon (don’t see it mentioned in any reviews) but motor and battery failures are the main complaints. As I said, I have a heavy-duty DeWalt trimmer that does most of the heavy work around the compound, but I like having a little, lightweight trimmer for the lawn edges around the house.

After a couple of hours disassembling the B&D trimmer, I realized that a repair was hopeless and finished the “ten minute” trimming job using the DeWalt.

—2p

addendum 2026-10-10T15:50-10:00

I wonder… if I flattened out a small sheet of aluminum from a beverage can (I suppose I’d have to drink the beer first) if I could cut it into a shim that I can slide in where the ABS melted and provide a much sturdier end plate for the bearing. It’s worth a try. Stay tuned!

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wobbly wheelbarrow

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Shortly after our old wheelbarrow broke, HA bought a new one. In fact, she bought two, as there is barrowing to be done both up by the house and several hundred feet away down at the studio, and at points between. She got them from two different stores.

We moved the twelve tons of volcanic cinder with the studio barrow, which has a metal bed. The other one, a polyethylene model, only got used for light duty up by the house until this past weekend, when I asked L to fill it up with sand (well, only about ⅓ full, but the sand is wet and heavy) so I could re-set some of the stepping stones I’d laid for the path to the pavilion. I had laid them in a contour going down to the steps, but they were slowly (then not-so-slowly) slipping down the hill. They needed to be laid in a stairstep pattern instead.

I picked up the barrow to wheel it to the back of the house, and it wobbled like crazy. I didn’t think I was going to make it.

As soon as it was emptied of sand, I turned it over and grabbed some wrenches. There are sixteen nuts involved, and not one was more than finger tight. It really is a wonder the thing didn’t just collapse once filled with sand.

Good thing we discovered this before we put a really big load in it. I think it will be stable now.

—2p

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Infrastructure Man

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Back in the early days of twoprops.net, I used the then-nascent “AI” programs to design an illustration of for my alter ego Infrastructure Man. I soon changed my mind about the role and viability of large models to simulate creative work.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
— George Bernard Shaw

It took a while. I was new to the idea of commissioning an artist and the process seemed remarkably difficult. I did get a human-drawn avatar for the site, but Infrastructure Man stayed solidly, miserably AI-generated.

Until today. This fine rendering of Infrastructure Man was created by Caroline Canty.

—2p

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Satan's Own Mower

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The riding lawnmower I have dubbed Satan’s Own Mower is actually running again.

You might remember the time back in January when the mower almost dumped me on the ground because both bolts holding the seat had come loose?

Or in mid-August when the deck belt broke which led to…

the manufacturer saying that they don’t sell parts, even consumables like belts
the manufacturer refusing to even give out the specifications of the belt
the manufacturer saying that I must get the belt from the “dealer”
the dealer, Home Depot, saying they don’t sell parts
when pointed out that they had that very mower for sale in front of the store, relented and sold me a belt — but that belt was 5” too short
when installing the too-short belt, I learned that the instructions and videos are wrong and completely overlook the removal of a tricky part (a cage around the drive pulley) that doesn’t even show up on their instructions or videos
found exactly one report on the internet saying that the official part is actually 5” too short, will not work, and that you need a 93” belt
ordered a 93” belt which got lost in shipping for a month
finally gave up and ordered another, much more expensive 93” belt — and the lost one showed up the day I ordered the new one, but Amazon wouldn’t cancel the order
installed the new belt, only to have it literally burn up in seconds

I decided that the mower deck must be seized. When the second new belt arrived (kind of glad they wouldn’t cancel), we again (third time’s the charm) dropped the deck, then turned it over, freed up the blades, cleaned off a buttload of grass clippings and grime, sprayed a lot of WD-40, and installed the new belt.

It finally seems to be working, but I think I prefer mowing with sheep.

—2p

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whole-house ozonation

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

HA, her son L, and his partner C went into town for various things (job interview, Zoomba, gym workout) and then to the beach. Luna the Big Dog™ and I went for a walk up the mountain, then I decided it was a good opportunity to run the ozone generator in the whole house while the weather was nice (really nice!) and nobody was around, as you have to leave the house sealed off for an hour, then let it aerate for a couple of hours before going back inside. About five minutes after I started the process, I got a text from HA saying they were going to be home and want dinner at 4:15pm, much earlier than I had expected.

I cut the ozonation time from an hour down to 30 minutes and am running all six ceiling fans in the house at high speed with most windows wide open. I’m trusting it will be cleared out enough that I can get the (already made) pizza dough rolled out and rising, and get the toppings prepared and applied and the pizza stone up to temperature in time to get a pizza in the oven by 3:45 or so. It will be close, but folks will get fed and, I hope, in bed in time to accommodate L’s 2am wake-up time for his East Coast remote job.

Whether the half-hour runtime will be enough to do much good remains to be seen, but I’m confident it will at least help a little.

—2p

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mongoose blocking

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The battle against the bad mongoose and its friends continues. Mongooses were brought to the island to control rats in the cane fields; they proliferated out of control and now they are the rats. Our egg yield has dropped to near zero and the chickens seem distressed. We have wire mesh buried 6-8” in the ground all around the coop, but where there are concrete piers at the corners of the structure there is no place to staple the mesh, and the mongooses push it away.

At one corner, they seem to have got down below the pier (which was laid many decades before we moved here) and tunneled under it into the henhouse. I think poured concrete is something of an environmental disaster, but stuffing the space with bricks and rocks and spraying structural foam hasn’t helped. We bit the bullet and bought a small bag of concrete mix. With C’s help, I explored with wire until we found the tunnel, dug it out a bit, put a little form around it, and then she scooped freshly-mixed concrete into the space and worked it into the tunnel.

That should stop the pesky critters once and for all. Again.

—2p

addendum 2026-10-07T14:59-10:00

That didn’t stop the mongoose(s). When I went back and looked at it, there was a pretty obvious gap between the concrete we added and the bottom of the pier block. I can even kind of see it in the photo. I added bunches more concrete today to fill it well beyond the bottom of the pier block, and I also poured a bunch of slurry under the block from the other side though it’s hard to know how effective that might be. I guess we’ll know tomorrow!

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pasture path

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

We didn’t ask people to RSVP for our party yesterday, so we really didn’t know how many folks might show up. We were worried about parking, as there’s only room for six vehicles or so at our front gate (at least with the lawn being as sodden as it is).

We created a parking area down by our makai gate, but that’s a 400 foot or so walk through the pasture to the main house. I wanted people to be reassured they were going the right way.

Once you enter the gate, you have to go by the studio…

…then behind the barn, through the cut in the tree, and up toward the middle gate.

As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. Several folks carpooled and the weather was nice enough that the neighbors walked. Some neighbors did come through the pasture, but I don’t think anyone actually parked down there and the neighbors already knew the way.

We had over thirty people. They initially all crowded under the deck canopy, but when that started to get too crowded they assorted themselves into the pavilion and the living room. Nobody left hungry, people liked meeting L and C, and I think we all enjoyed a good time.

—2p

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parking

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

We’re having a fete at the compound tomorrow morning. I’m preparing signage to direct people who haven’t been here before. I’m also recovering from a migraine, so my brain isn’t working at even its meagre baseline.

I had to ask HA to verify that I had spelled “parking” correctly. I’m that fuzzy. Then I justified it by pointing out that I’m from LA, where we never see the word “parking” unless it has a “NO” in front of it, or a dollar sign after.

—2p

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