When wives appreciate our hobbies.

[shardian]

First off, I would like to mention something I told my wife when we first got our house and I got the DIY hobby bug in the diy projector hobby. I told her "These hobbies are ways for me to learn new trades and skills that I can apply to household tasks. Would you rather me learn on a hobby, or on expensive goods we actually need?" Needless to say, she didn't buy it at the time.

The other day, her electric breast pump quit working. Any of you with kids and a breast feeding wife know how expensive these things are. Anyways, I said I'll take a look at it. I got it apart, desoldered the AC adapter plug and found it had a broken ground pin due to a very bad design flaw - all of the force of inserting and removing the AC adapter plug was directly applied to the solder pins!! Well after deciding the plug was not salvageable, I went to radio shack to browse the parts bins (I LOVE doing this! ) I decided to go with a panel mount 1/8" phono jack and matching solderable phono plug. After getting it home, the phono jack fits perfectly and will be a drastic improvement in durability. So with newfound confidence forged by my "stupid hobbies, I did my electrical mapping with the multimeter, cut up my wires, then tinned and soldered everything. For good measure, I cleaned and adjusted the control contacts,and readjusted everything inside to make sure all was running smooth. I put it back together, plugged it in and Voila! Everything worked better than it did before we got it. Needless to say, the wife was quite impressed and I made sure to remind her of where my newfound skills and confidence came from.

[patrickl]

Lol, yeah I also keep claiming this hobby costing thousands of dollars (or euros) is one day gonna save us money. So far it's almost got me a birdhouse 

[shardian]

Heh, well I don't spend thousands of dollars. I'm a cheap mo-fo.

[Dexter]

The girlfriend was delighted to see me get rid of the two upright 19" monitor cabs to just get a single unit. Imagine how popular I was when she came home from work to find a showcase style 33" monitor cab in the dining room 

In her defense though, she does love playing Shinobi and doesn't bust my chops about the hobby as a whole..........

[ChadTower]

Yeah, I fix all kinds of crap like that now.  It's a good skill to have since I'm always picking up older stuff off places like Freecycle that isn't quite as reliable as new stuff but hell it was free.

[patrickl]

It depends on what skill one had before though. I have been fixing electronics since I was 13. Mainly because I got my first computer then (Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and it kept breaking down. Back then you needed to built everyting you wanted to add to it yourself (floppy drive interface, scanner, software dump interface).

The Arcade building hobby thing has helped me to learn woodworking though.

[shardian]

The Arcade building hobby thing has helped me to learn woodworking though.

Woodworking? Check.
My "other" appreciative project:

[shorthair]

Nice.

[patrickl]

Yeah, nice.

[knave]

My story is not nearly so impressive but my wife did like it.  This whole Arcade thing had gotten me to pick up a soldering iron and I was practicing on old motherboards I had lying around.

Her cell phone car charger had shorted at the base of the plug, so I took it apart, found the short, cliped about a half inch off the wire (the short) and re-soldered it back onto the board.  I thin used a few pieces of heat shrink tubing to stiffen up the joint so it won't break again.

Plugged it in and it worked great. I might have tossed it before...

Funny thing is that it was my wife who took electronics in high school not me.  So she could have probably done it too...(but it was husbandly for me to fix it for her.)

[geomartin]

Nice phone fix, my wife would have been upset that I cheated her out of upgrading to a newer model .  My carpentry skills did come in handy though.  When we moved to our new house I lost my game room.  She let me build a room in the garage (12' x 22') for my new game room.  Or so I thought!  Shortly after I started building the game room, she announced that after 15 years since my last child, she was pregnant again.  My 17 year old son now lives in my gameroom

[Zebidee]

Mine is simply impressed that I have the skills to do the things we need - like building a house!

She says that there will always be enough room in our house for my arcade habit.  God I love this woman.  She also knows that while I have my arcade hobby I don't have enough time to look at anyone else!  Did I mention that she is also smart?

Boys will be boys, and boys like their toys.

Are there any women out there indulging in this hobby or is it all fellas?

[Dervacumen]

What kind of wood did you use for the shelf unit?  Is it painted or laminated?

[shardian]

What kind of wood did you use for the shelf unit?  Is it painted or laminated?

MDF painted with semi gloss paint.

[saint]

Thread back on track!

[Zebidee]

Ooooooo!  Neat job!  Can't see the seams ....  

[shorthair]

Well, almost. Your response to mine wasn't wiped. It's a borderliner, plus it apparently comes from nowhere. How honest intention can enable subterfuge. Heheh. I'm curious, is someone narcing or does saint have some kind of program that ferrets this stuff out?

[CheffoJeffo]

I think I know ... don't know why I never made the connection before ...

[shardian]

Well, almost. Your response to mine wasn't wiped. It's a borderliner, plus it apparently comes from nowhere. How honest intention can enable subterfuge. Heheh. I'm curious, is someone narcing or does saint have some kind of program that ferrets this stuff out?

You like making Saint do work don't you?

[shorthair]

jeff: spill it, man.

shardian: I'm a young babe testing the boundaries of my environment. Heheheh. Actually, I just say whatever and depending on the day saint may or may not decide to intervene.

[CheffoJeffo]

jeff: spill it, man.

No.

[saint]

I read all your posts and delete the ones that irritate me. My moderator finger is getting tired. Hint hint. Make that HINT HINT.

Well, almost. Your response to mine wasn't wiped. It's a borderliner, plus it apparently comes from nowhere. How honest intention can enable subterfuge. Heheh. I'm curious, is someone narcing or does saint have some kind of program that ferrets this stuff out?

[DrewKaree]

I read all your posts and delete the ones that irritate me.

This doesn't make sense.  Does the post still show up in his post count when you do that, because it seems like he'd be in the negatives

[JoyMonkey]

All of a sudden I'm reminded of Subzero.

[shorthair]

I read all your posts and delete the ones that irritate me. My moderator finger is getting tired. Hint hint. Make that HINT HINT.

So, like, some of them are really interesting to you, then.

[ChadTower]

Saint is gonna Boonga this guy. 

[pointdablame]

All of a sudden I'm reminded of Subzero.

*shudder*

It really does remind me of him too.   

[Zebidee]

I read all your posts and delete the ones that irritate me. My moderator finger is getting tired. Hint hint. Make that HINT HINT.

So, like, some of them are really interesting to you, then.

No, Saint merely said that some posts IRRITATE him.  He doesn't really care about the boring ones.  That's why he left mine 

BOONGA   BOONGA    BOONGA

[shorthair]

No, you missed it. He left the first one, but he went back and took your response to mine. No boonga.

[Zebidee]

I just like the sound of it, especially in threes.  Good war cry or sumpthin'.

You can also put some expression into it, eg:  BoooooonGA!

 

[shorthair]

We better leave it at that, else we'll be getting clipped, again.