Somedays

Somedays are best forgotten, I've had a couple this week. Tuesday was so-so until amost the end of the day, I was installing a new clutch cable on a bike that I had put new bars and controls on to dress it up. I don't know excatly how many of these I've put on since starting at the shop, lets just say so many that I don't even think about how it's done anymore, I just do it out of habit. So anyway, I've gotten the cable run and snugged into the trap door, next I bolt the trap door back on the trans and tourqe it to 100in/lbs, next I pick up my wrench to give the cable it's final snug, as usual, then snap, the cable end breaks off. Yippie!?! The previous post explains thursday, so I wont go into that all over. Today, I finished wiping down the bagger and moved it and the trailer up to the third floor until the customer comes for it. Then I started reassembling a bike that I did some fab work on about a month ago. Part of the work I did previously on the bike was removing the tail/brake lights that were on it, the plan was to install a tail/brake light on the side mount, It ended up being a bit more of a project than it really should have been, the light that we wanted to use wasn't designed for the side mount that was on the bike, so instead of getting a new side mount the decision was made to make an adapter plate to mount the light to it, not really a hard job, just takes a bit of time to lay it out so that it loks good and then make it. That didn't take a real long time, but I need to rework the light itself some so that it would work. As it was, the light mounted with two 1/4-20 flathead bolts from the backside, well that wouldn't work with the adapter I had made so I subsitituted a couple of smaller bolts that would work just fine, except now I had to use nuts on the inside of the light housing. After getting everything mocked up, I realized that the nuts would contact the electronic board that the leds were mounted on, so I had to clearance things so I wouldn't have a short. Easy enough, I made up a quickie jig to hold the light housing in the drill press and chucked up an end mill in the drill to cut down the mounting spots inside the housing. The first one worked great, I eased the end mill into the housing and it easily cut the mounting spot down cleanly, then I shut the drill press off and repositioned the light housing so that I could do the same on the other end. I was just about finished when I noticed that I was off just a bit and it was leaving a bit of an edge on one side, what I should have done was finish the cut and then take my dremel and use a burr bit to clean the little bit out, but that wasn't what I did. I released the lock on the press table and nudged it a bit to the one side, BIG MISTAKE, the end mill caught the edge of the housing and yanked it to the left, chewing half the side out of the housing before I could slap the off switch. And there we have it, a sixty dollar tail light ruined. I was so pissed off at myself that I just cleaned up my tools and work area, showed the ruined housing to the boss, then told him I was done for the day and went home. The weather outside reflected my mood on the ride home, a cold dreary dampness, defently not an enjoyable end to the day. I just rode home dodging the cell phone chattering nitwits in their cars, parked the bike and went inside and made myself a pot of coffee and turned on the boob tube and vegged out. Hopefully tommorow will be a better day, I've got an appointment with the accountant to go over last years taxes. Yippie.