Merry Christmas!

I'm 11 years old today!

Finally the last day of school wasn't on my birthday. This is my last year at a Montessori school as I'll be switching over to a public middle school. The days of no homework are over. I'm still doing gymnastics and swimming but I dropped chess this past year. I went mountain biking for the 1st time too. Hopefully I'll be able to go more when it cools down. No cell phone this year. One day. I am happy to report that we are going to Hawaii this year but it wasn't a birthday present. My grandparents are celebrating their 50th anniversary.

New garage door opener and wheels

My old genie screwdrive garage door opener finally died. I tried replacing the capacitor but that didn't fix the problem. The garage door opener was always so loud so I decided it was a good time to get a new, quieter one that was "smart".


Here's the model I bought from Sears (rebranded chamberlain). It's a DC motor belt drive system with a battery backup. It's also smart so I can control it from my phone.


Here's halfway through the installation process. Not too hard.


This is the new unit mounted. Unfortunately the old mounting brackets weren't long enough so I had to extend it a bit. Also the existing wires weren't long enough either so I had to extend those as well.


Here's the final product installed.


Even though our cars have homelink, it turns out that homelink changed their protocol so this garage door opener wouldn't work with our older homelink cars. So I had to buy a repeater that basically takes the old signal from our cars and then changes it to a signal the new opener recognizes. Added about $20 to the cost but so worth it.


In addition to changing the opener, I also changed out the wheels from metal to nylon ones. Here are the new nylon ones. You can buy a set of 10 on Amazon for like $12. Instead of unscrewing the mounting brackets holding the wheels, I found this video on Youtube that shows how to change them out fast. You always have to bend the track to change at least the bottom wheels because they are tied to the spring so this video basically uses the same method for all the wheels. He also shows how to use a standard hammer to bend the track out. It's a really good technique that makes the job super easy.


Here's the old wheel.


Here's the new one.

I'm 9 years old today!

Time sure does fly by. I'm finally 9 and yes my parents still have me sitting in a booster seat. I don't mind so much since I get to sit higher up in the car. I've lost a few more teeth and even had surgery to remove an extra tooth growing upside down. Crazy. I'm still playing chess and I've moved up to the champ section for tournaments. I've joined swim team level 2 that swims 2x a week now. I'm still playing YMCA soccer although I've topped out on their age range. I'm planning on being a mechanical engineer and want to drive a cool muscle car.