Repairing Hitachi Cleaner CV-WD 5
(Installed on 2022/12/31. No.341)

It's the twenty year-old cleaner dedicated to the upper floor, which suddenly died the other day while using. I replaced the carbon brushes and it revived. It will work for some more years I hope.
Please visit here for details.

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Thanks For Visiting Tomohiro AT His Grave
(Installed on 2022/12/31. No.340)

Taking the trouble in the year-end busy time under the difficult situation that more people have been infected with Covid19 for the eighth time Tomohiro's classmates came to visit him at his grave. We were grateful to them for coming.

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Very Slow but Fulfilling Achivement
(Installed on 2022/12/23. No.339)

Let me introduce my playing of Fur Elise at this moment>, which is the result of one and a half years practice. I still have a plan to practice the next piece.
The photo is the old one.

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Improving WiFi Receiving For iPhone 12
(Installed on 2022/12/19. No.338)

Whether the radio wave of our wifi router had become weak or the NTT carrier wave is stronger, the place where my wife sits at the dining table became a blind spot for iphone12 to receive wifi wave.
The advice we got from the Apple Call Center was that we buy a new router as it would be stable and more secure. Encouraged by the advice my wife became importunate for buying a new one. I was inclined to do so but I took the measure instead which I adopted to the full digital FM tuner before.
I cut out a small piece out of adhesive copper foil such as 30mm by 5mm in size and, as shown in the photo, put it on the inside of the protective cover of her smart phone. It worked (as an inductive relay piece=antenna)!! The fan-shaped wifi indicator came back never to disappear.

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Making Dried Persimmons
(Installed on 2022/11/27. No.337)

We peeled and hung persimmons, which has become our customary family event in the fall. We look forward to enjoy having sweet dried persimmons at the year-end. I have been enjoying raw persimmons now. My wife make dishes of raw persimmons, too. My life at this time of the year is lapped in persimmon luxury.

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Fixing Solar Tank Stop Valve
(Installed on 2022/11/23. No.336)

We have been using a solar water heating system the worranty period of which has expired more than 30 years ago. I have maintenanced it by myself.
Recently water began to leak from one of stop vulves(the vulve with a red hande in the left half of the photo). It had been in use fully open but after we found a slight leak from the tank recently we began to shut and open it daily and the leak started a few days ago.
I found the spindle of the vulve thickly covered with deposits. I cleaned them off with a wire brush(right half of the photo). It worked. The leak stopped. A new vulve is not so expensive but for the time beeing I will see how it goes.

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Repairing Panasonic Washing Seats
(Installed on 2022/11/19. No.335)

We use two Panasonic washer toilet seats at our house. One is made in 2015 and the other in 2017, all Panasonic. The newer one replaced our first troubleful washer seat. Strangely they got out of order almost at the same time. They stopped responding to the button. It worked sometimes by repeating pushing on and off switches a few times.
Having no surmise I opened the seat. The switch component was a beautifully made trouble free device.(Photo below)

The control board, which was installed in a plastic box inside the body at the back of the seat, showed no outlook defects. The parts on the board all looked new as if they were installed just yesterday. I suspected mal contact of the ribbon(flat) cable but to make sure of the improvement I cleaned(deoxidized) all the connector pins including the ribbon cable applying Caig. The treatment was right. Both seats revived. It was a luck that my conjecture made a hit. The connectors seemed to have suffered from the situation where they had been run with a minimized power in a small room with bad air.

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Making Provision For My Easier Pruning
(Installed on 2022/10/29. No.334)

My age having advanced I cut our taller trees shorter in order to make my future pruning easier. I had cut them shorter already before but I cut them shorter still more. I used a safty belt and rope after a long time. It made my several big cuttings easier.

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Dredging 2022 Fall
(Installed on 2022/10/24. No.333)

I finished dredging the waterway. It was the last of my three big labors in Autumn. Aomidoro(=spirogyra) had been thickly grew and the total sludge was about two times as much as that of last fall. I'm afraid it was too heavy work for my waist but I have finally done my self-assigned duty for this fall! I'm relieved.

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One Touch Sweat Pants Strap
(Installed on 2022/10/23. No.332)

I wear sweat pants in my domestic life. As I don't like elastic cord I had used a non-elastic strap. However fastening it each time is troublesome. So, in order to get rid of the trouble I devised a one touch strap holder using a clothespin. It's simple and very handy!

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Repairing A Panasonic Washing Machine
(Installed on 2022/10/22. No.331)

Our washing machine had started to go on strike since some months before, each time repeating locking sound three times. We had forced it to work by repeating switching it on but it finally refused working the other day. The 'lid locked'sign disappeared and never came back. I replaced the broken lock unit with the new and it revived luckily. Please visit here for details.

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Pruning 2022
(Installed on 2022/10/13. No.330)

Judging it'd be fine for a few days I pruned the trees. It took two entire days. It was the second of my three customary big labors in fall. I felt as if a load had been taken off my shoulders. I had long convulsions on the legs during the second night. It seemed the hard labor caused them. The photo below shows the shade of the muku tree where we enjoyed having lunches and talkings during summer. There was a dove nest in the thicket. I saw a couple building the nest but it was abandoned on the way. Was it because we parked the car right below the nest?

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A Tintted Persimmon Leaf
(Installed on 2022/10/09. No.329)

It's time again when tinted persimmon leaves began to fall at our entrance. Here is a beautiful one.

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Pruning Of The Grave Hedge
(Installed on 2022/10/09. No.328)

On October 6 I pruned the grave hedge. The work was one of my three customary big labors in fall. As I got older I had started to spend two days for the work last year but blessed with the weather the work went on at a smart pace without becoming sweaty. I could finishe it in one day! There was no wind but it was cloudy and the temperature was less than 20 degrees centigrade.

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A Larger Grape Trellis
(Installed on 2022/10/03. No.327)

The grape vine strongly revived after five long years growing new vines. Expecting more growth next year I made a larger trellis. Please visit here for details.

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A Door Mirror Broke
(Installed on 2022/09/22. No.326)

The other day my wife came back home and told me the retractable mirror on the right door of our VERISA broke. We could hear the motor idling. I took off the decorative plate inside the door and pulled off the connector in order to silence it for the time being. As I wanted to know how it was beeing broken I dissembled the mirror. The boss of the wormwheel was broken as shown in the photo. How was it broken? Was it pushed back while it was moving? No way to know it. I bought a new one. It was very expensive.

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Harvest Of Grapes
(Installed on 2022/09/19. No.325)

We harvested a few clusters of grapes the other day. I planted a cutting when our late son Tomohiro had been hospitalized in 2015. He brought it home from a vineyard in Yamanashi perhaps in 2015. It grew and bore the first few clusters in 2017.
However, the vine was devastated by scarabs in the following years, The vine became weak. I didn't know how to cope with them. The traps I made didn't work. In 2021 I covered the vine with a net. It worked. The vine started to grow again.
The meshes of the larger net I covered the vine this year however were a little too big. Scarabs crawled into the net through the mesh. I gathered they start eating leaves early in the morning that I got up earlier and tried to exterminate them for about two months during June and July. The countermeasure wasn't perfect and about 10 to 20 percent of leaves were eaten but the vine kept growing with more new branchs and leaves. The grapes( for wine I hear) tasted strong.
I'm planning to let the vine grow bigger next year over a larger shelf installing new hormonic traps.

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Improving The Cleanerstick
(Installed on 2022/09/14. No.324)

I had been bothered frequently by the sudden fall of the cleanerstick off the handle. Usually the fall made a big irritating noise. I wanted to stop it with some refined measure. A few days ago I hit upon an idea. It was to make bridged slits on the cleanerstick as shown in the photo(the pier is in the green circle). I made two slits diagonally. The stick end now with these bridged slits is resilient against the outer pipe(handle) that once inserted rightly it stays tightly fitted to the handle until you pull it out.

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Replacement Of The HDD
(Installed on 2022/09/04. No.323)

My wife's desktop pc which she'd been using for storing and sorting out her photographs betrayed some suspicious behavior. In order to nip off a serious trouble I replaced the hard disk for the second time(with the third hdd). I built the pc some twenty years ago getting the subsidy for a group study of developing a learning software of English language. The OS then was WindowsXP, which I updated to Windows7 some ten years ago replacing the HDD, too. The cooling fan is noisy but we'd use it as long as we can.

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Weeding Under The Hedge
(Installed on 2022/09/04. No.322)

With a stool and a fan set I weeded under the hedge almost every day during some last 10 days in August. I used burner in the past but there are too many pots now. Weeding at this season was terribly sweating and exhausting work and so I worked only during the morning. Weather was changeable but luckily it rained mainly duing the night. I was favored with frequent shading clouds too. I found there were almot no weed at the places covered with corrugated cardboard. So I covered and planning to cover more places with cardboard.

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A Rack For Granddaughters'School Things
(Installed on 2022/09/03. No.321)

I made a movable rack for granddaughters. I hear they use it at the entrance hall for their school things. I was troubled with the coloring. I applied oak color vanish on the face. It was okay. However the other side of the plywood I used was very whity and the same vanish turns out to be almost yellow. I consulted with their mother and she proposed black color as the rack is to be placed on the floor of the black tiles.

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Bush Killer
(Installed on 2022/08/30, No.320)

I was impressed by the long and energetic root of bush killer that I thought I couldn't beat it. It is said it grows thickly at the poor, which I don't disagree. I traced a piece of root hoping to find where it came from. I had to stop where the root went under the root of a tree.

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A Childhood Friend Of Tomohiro Visited His Grave
(Installed on 2022/08/14, No.319)

I happened to meet with a childhood friend of Tomohiro at the grave. He was back to his parents'home at this O'bon season with his wife whom I met with for the first time. They offered incense sticks to Tomohiro like he was used to do when he was back home. We had a short but nice talk after some years.

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Tomohiro's Classmates Visited His Grave
(Installed on 2022/08/11, No.318)

Another O'bon season came and Tomohiro's classmates came to visit his grave. We were grateful to them for coming in the very hot weather. I thanked Tomohiro too for bringing them to our home.

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Attending My Handy Pruning Shears
(Installed on 2022/07/29, No.317)

I attended my handy pruning shears after 4 years. It took me time for devising a new rivet utilizing the old one. Please visit here for details.

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Repairing A Panasonic DC Fan
(Installed on 2022/07/07, No.316)

I was asked to repair a dc motor fan. Luckily I could repair it. The trouble was caused by corrosion of copper wires inside the cab tire cable(rubber-sheathed multi-core cable), which was unusual,exceptional, unbelievable, shameful, humiliating, prehistoric ...to my standard. Please visit here for details. My playing

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I Made My Piano Debut
(Installed on 2022/06/28, No.315)

I made my piano debut at my grand daughters house. My playing wasn't beautiful as I made a mistake on the way but I received their warm clapping.
Having been provoked by 'Airport Piano' by NHK I started practicing the piano about one and a half years ago. However I couldn't make progress in the basic practice. I changed the way and started practicing Fur Elise directly. Now I could see the light at the end of the tunnel I started preparing the next score, Chopin's Nocturne Op.9-2. My playing is here.

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BBQ In The Shade of The Muku Tree
(Installed on 2022/06/21, No.314)

Commemorating the birth month of our late son Tomohiro we had a small reunion visiting the grave.
After visiting the grave we had a BBQ under the big shade of the muku tree as we often had while he was fighting against his disease.
It was luckily a sunny day, often slightly cloudy, though in the midst of the rainy season. The temperature was high but we had breeze.

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I Made A Repair Manual For The Pump
(Installed on 2022/06/12, No.313)

The pressure pump seems to go wrong again soon. Each trouble had took me time to grasp the circuit and which part on the boards was which on the circuit when it went wrong. In order to make the coming repair simpler I made a one-page repair manual on which are the circuit chart and the photos of boards on which I numbered the test points with normal voltage. I never want it to go wrong but I'm now ready for the next trouble.

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Repair Of The Pressure Pump
(Installed on 2022/06/04, No.312)

Recently our pressure pump started not to stop. The cause was mal-connection of one lead onto the sensor board. Luckily I could repair it.
Please visit here for details.

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Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2022/06/01, No.311)

I found new flowers offered to our tomb. Supposedly some friend of our late son Tomohiro had offered them as June is his birth month. Thank you for visiting the grave and offering the flowers.

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Fixing The Rake Shaft
(Installed on 2022/05/21, No.310)

I fixed the mounting end of the rake shaft which got almost crumbled inside the collar.
Please visit here for details.

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The Third Repair Of The Cleaner
(Installed on 2022/05/10, No.309)

I repaired the vacuum cleaner for the third time. This time I replaced the improper photo coupler with one that was of the original model type. The cleaner perfectly rivived with all the original function.
Please visit here for details.

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Thank You For Offering Flowers
(Installed on 2022/05/04, No.308)

I found new flowers offered to our tomb. Supposedly some friend of our late son Tomohiro had offered them on the occasion of visiting his parents'home during this long consecutive holidays. Thank you for visiting the grave and offering the flowers.

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Replacing Old Terminals With New Ones/Audio Selector
(Installed on 2022/04/23, No.307)

I replaced all the banana jacks of my audio selector. They were very low-priced and naturally were the products of poor quality causing mal connection. I found good ones very expensive now, which made me process hexagon studs into banana jacks by myself. The selector is now free from mal contact between the plugs and the jacks. Please visit here for details.

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My Cherry Blossoms Photo 2022
(Installed on 2022/04/01, No.306)

Cherry blossoms in the park along one of my walking routes were in full bloom.
I stopped for a while and enjoyed watching them. Unfortunagely it was cloudy. Coming back home I tried changing the back to blue skies (the photo below).
Cherry blossoms are best against blue skies. I wish I could enjoy watching them on a sunny cloudless day next year.

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Another Repair Of The Cleaner
(Installed on 2022/03/25, No.305)

The cleaner I repaired the other day stopped again. Luckily, it revived after replacing a photo-coupler with a new one with similar specifications. The device is pointed with a yellow arrow in the photo. At first from the probing result with a circuit tester suggested me the bidirectional zener diode, which is pointed with a green arrow in the photo below was broken. It wasn't.

The cleaner revived but the control buttons lost their original functions, perhaps because the specifications of the new coupler are not quite the same with the original one. I tried to mend the functions by exchanging the zener diodes. It didn't work. However, I can use the cleaner with the medium power anyway with which I mostly use it.The cleaner presently stopped again. Luckily, it revived after replacing a photo-coupler with a new one with similar specification. The device is pointed with a yellow arrow in the photo. The probing result I got at first with a circuit tester suggested me the bidirectional zener diode, which is pointed with a green arrow in the photo was broken. It wasn't.
Unfortunatly the revived cleaner lost the soft power operation, perhaps because the specifications of the new coupler are not quite the same with the original one. I tried to mend the functions by exchanging the zener diodes. It didn't work. However, I can use the cleaner with the medium and the high power anyway. I use it mostly with the medium power.

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Installation Of A Selective Switch
(Installed on 2022/03/05, No.304)

I installed a selective switch as shown in the yelleow circle in the photo above. This switch selects which way the power to be forwarded, either to the tuner only or to the tuner and the raspi. The tuner board is equipped with such two power inlets. I devised a green led pilot lamp and installed it too. It lights when the power is forwarded to the latter.
The lower part of the photo shows how the switch, the led and the terminal are fit inside the case. Thanks to this new switch you can save unnecessary booting up of the raspi, and thus you can save its shutdown procedure either.

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Thank You For The Offerings
(Installed on 2022/02/23, No.303)

In the eveing today we found a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes had been offered to our tomb. The visitor was a friend of Tomohiro, we suppoe, who offered the same offerings last year too. Thank you for visiting in the cold and offereing what he liked.

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Thank You For The Flowers
(Installed on 2022/02/18, No.302)

It is the sixth aniversary of Tomohiro's death tomorrow. We found beautiful flowers offered to the grave by someone. We heartily appreciate the person's visit on this day. Thank you for the visit and the beautiful flowers.

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Installation Of A Raspi
(Installed on 2022/02/14, No.301)

I installed a frisk sized computer into my full digital fm receiver in order to record NHK-FM programs by way of I2S recording. Please visit here for details.

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Repairing A Vacuum Cleaner.
(Installed on 2022/01/31, No.300)

I could luckily repair our vacuum cleaner replacing triacs. Please visit here for details.

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