Build a DIY Truing Stand for less than $20

I have a few spokes that I need to replace on my old road bike and I wanted an accurate way to true up my wheel, so I whipped up a truing stand using some 1x4s that I had around the house and about $2 of hardware. It's cheap, simple and works really well.


I can use it on top of a table or workbench.


Boards screwed together as a T make it pretty stiff.


I used a couple of angle brackets for cabinets to mount the wheel. Just fully unscrew the quick release and slide the axle through the holes in the brackets and then screw the quick release back on to mount it.


This is the really cool part. I found this runout gauge at the thrift store a couple of years ago. It measures to a thousandth of an inch. If you don't have something like this, a stick could help you gauge the wobble or runout.


Using an angle bracket and screws, I can mount the gauge anywhere on the stand to measure different sized wheels.

My April Fool's Prank

Yesterday I got several of my coworkers pretty good with a prank. I made a Visual Basic script file that popped up a serious looking error message saying that they the virus that was supposed to be going around yesterday was detected on their computer. They needed to reinstall windows.



The error will keep popping up if they hit Abort or Retry. After they hit ignore, this message comes up after 2 seconds.



If you want to do this too, here's the code.

Dim d1
do while MsgBox("win32 error:"& vblf & vblf & "The trojan aim20.2 has been detected in your system files. Please insert your Windows XP installation disc and reboot your computer.",18,"win32 error: System Error") <> vbignore
loop

d1 = dateadd("s",2,now())
do while d1 > now()
loop
MsgBox "Ha ha!!!!!!",64,"April Fools!"

Open Notepad, paste the code there and save it as a file with an extension of .VBS. Now when you run it, you will get a serious looking error message.

While one of my coworkers was away from her desk, I ran the file so that the error would be on her screen when she returned. She flipped out! When she saw that it was a joke, she about kicked my butt. She promised that she would get me back sometime.

If you move the file into the Start>All Programs>Startup folder, then it will run when they log on.

Subaru suspension

Last Friday the Subaru broke the front stabilizer bar. Check out the link for more.
http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?p=625746&mode=threaded#post625746

Auto Increment ID numbers in Excel Templates

Today at work I needed to make an Excel template for a form that had an incrementing ID number on it. I needed the ID number to increase by 1 each time that the template was opened. After searching around awhile, I found this page that showed what event to use in the template so that the template would be modified before the new workbook that is a copy of it is created.

If you are using Excel 2007, you will have to save your template as a Macro-Enable Template (*.xltm) file or else this won't work.

I'm running 2007 and I tried modifying the template file and saving it before the new workbook is created, but Excel treated the template as a macro-disabled file when I tried to save even though the file was saved as xltm. As a result, I had to save the ID to a text file.

Place this code in the Workbook_Open() sub of ThisWorkbook:

On Error GoTo errh
'Read the file to get the current number
Dim FilePath As String
Dim MsgObj As Object, fs As Object
Dim rnum As String
Dim rnumnew As Integer

'Change this to your filepath
FilePath = "\\atgfps01\DATA\Accounting\Forms\currentid.txt"
Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set MsgObj = fs.OpenTextFile(FilePath, 1, 0) 'TristateFalse=0

rnum = MsgObj.ReadAll
rnumnew = CInt(rnum) + 1

'Change A1 to the cell holding your id number
ActiveSheet.Range("A1").Value = rnumnew

'Save over the file with the new number
Open FilePath For Output As #1
Print #1, rnumnew
Close #1

errh:
If Err.Number = 53 Then
MsgBox "The file that holds the current id is missing. It may have been renamed, moved, or deleted. It should be called " & FilePath, vbCritical, "Error"
End If