Tools and food make great presents, and really good tuna makes an even better present. When I talk about good tuna, I'm specifically referring to Pacific Fleet tuna.
Disclaimer:I'm friends with the owner, so take my shilling with a grain of salt, or you could take it sautéed in a skillet with some capers. Damn that is some good tuna.

Anyway, I was recently in need of a birthday gift and I thought that three cans should do the trick.

There are few ways to wrap cans of tuna so that the recipient of the tuna doesn't say "it's tuna". Fortunately, I have duct-tape,cardboard, scissors, and a somewhat active imagination. It should also be noted that I recently played a lot of Zelda.

A tri-force design will hide the fact that this is three cans of tuna.

It's that bridge again!

During the trip to San Francisco, where the gift would be delivered, I wrapped the gift in duct-tape. One can't use too much duct-tape, the excess just adds a bit of flair.

The triforce tuna fish present in all of it's chrome glory. Who wouldn't want that as a gift?

This is my brother Jason and his mustache 5 seconds after he received the triforce, and 1 second after he said "It's tuna!". Damn how did he know?

After five minutes of unwrapping the duct-tape and not really getting anywhere with it, Jason decided to open the triforce at a later time, hopefully with a knife.

Did I mention his stache?


Happy birthday Jason.

I know what you are thinking. "where the hell is bike trailer part 1?" Well... um.... I didn't take any pictures so I'll give you a quick run down of part one.

A friend gave me an old baby stroller that he no longer needed. With hacksaw in hand, I chopped up the aluminum frame into what I envisioned to be workable pieces. A few PVC pipe fittings and a few nuts and bolts later, I had a working frame. Sweet sweet duct tape made the platform of the trailer.
Done.

On to part 2:
As much as I love duct tape, a more firm trailer bed seemed to be in order so the duct tape was stripped off, leaving the frame in all of it's aluminium glory. ha, I said "aluminium". Previous to removing the duct tape, I had decided to use plywood slats for the bed of the trailer. Since I only needed about 2' by 2' piece of wood, I felt it would be best to ask the woodworkers that I know if they have any scrap wood that I could use. Being polite is the first step in asking a friend's father for some scrap plywood. In a show of pure awesomeness, my buddy's father not only gave me some scrap, but he cut and sanded the wood as well. A quick jaunt to my local Ace Hardware for some nuts,bolts, washers and brackets, and BOOYAH! One mighty fine trailer.

And here is the trailer attached to "The Green Squeaker" and ready for action.

crackety snap! The grip shifter housing in my bicycle cracked and I was less than impressed. Oh well, salvation from my dilemma is only an adhesives drawer away. To be honest, I keep most of my adhesives in the same drawer that I keep my tools. Except, of course, for the random roll of duct-tape and an errant tube of epoxy .... and some solder.

How oh how will I fix this damn thing?

It had dawned on me that since the housing was made of cheap plastic, it would be necessary to not just stick the pieces back together with some adhesive, but to also add some sort of structural support to keep the piece of crap from breaking again in the future. Standard epoxy would not be up to the task.

Thank you Caleb.
My late friend Caleb introduced me to JBweld in the mid-90s when I needed a way to fix a rather difficult problem: a cracked intake manifold on 68 Plymouth. Hot damn! JBweld is the stuff of legends. Caleb used to spin a yarn about repairing a cracked engine block with the gray goo of the gods. That sounds dirty.


A squeeze of tube 1, a squeeze of tube 2, a little mixing with a toothpick, and I was glopping the glorious gunk on the cracked plastic. Enter the duct-tape. Nothing says "hold that crap in place while the JBweld dries" like duct-tape. There is always a chance that I used too much JBweld and the shifter will end up being stuck in one gear forever, but at least it won't break again.

clickity clickity clickity when the keyboard as I was typing some code on my laptop. As I shifted my ass to get more comfortable on my lumpy futon, the laptop closed and went into "hibernation" mode; which, on my laptop, means a reboot is in order. Damn, I lost the code I was working on.

After going through the above mentioned scenario for the 15th or 16th time, I decided to fix the problem.

Tilting the screen back farther when I'm coding won't help because the hinge is so weak that the screen will flop back like a wet noodle. Life is a balancing act and my laptop needs some equilibrium. If only there were some magical mythical material that would solve my problem.

It has a light side, it has a dark side, and it binds the universe together: DUCT-TAPE.
A couple strips placed just so.....and BOOYAH!, the damn hinge stays at the perfect angle.

A Jedi may trust the force, but I prefer duct-tape. See you next time.