I found a little time for some Guitar Hero on Friday night. I finished a number of expert-level songs that I hadn't completed previously, then went back and got better scores on some of the easier expert songs. Finally, I finished up by beating Bark at the Moon on hard (just barely), thus beating the hard level. :-D Time to work on those bonus tracks!
Finally got the new azsolo2.com site up last night as well. My lack of creativity really came through with the text logo I decided to implement at the last minute. ;-) Hopefully I don't slack off too long in putting in those other features we wanted...
Replaced the other axle on Evan's car today, went much better than last time. He had all the parts and tools ready when we started, the bearing and seal came out in less than 15 minutes, and the whole job from start to cleanup took about 2.5 hours. Much better than a day and a half. ;-)
Playing Guitar Hero for a couple hours a night can't be good for my wrists at all. A couple nights ago I continued my work on the Hard level songs, and iirc I five-starred everything through tier 4. I went back to try Cowboys from Hell on Medium, and while I did better, still couldn't do any better than 4 stars. But I was definitely making progress, as shown by all the 5-star Hard songs.
Last night I started out by warming up with a couple Hard songs, then back to CfH. Passed it in about three tries. :-D Then I finished up the eight or so bonus tracks that I hadn't yet five-starred, and I now had "Guitar God" status on Medium difficulty. Done!
I was having trouble progressing on Hard, as I had completed up to the first song in the last tier, but couldn't make it any further. I decided to jump back in to the Expert songs, where I previously left off finishing four of them in Tier 1. Last night I finished Tier 1, all of Tier 2, and I think all but the last song in Tier 3. I four-starred at least half of the songs, which was nice to see. A couple I passed with the Rock Meter deep in the red, but passed nonetheless. ;-) Once I got to a point where I couldn't easily pass a song in a couple tries, I went back to Hard to try and clear more songs. I was able to finish the next three, but now I'm on the last song, Bark at the Moon, and in addition to being a ton of fast notes, I can't get the beat down at all. So now I'm one song away from "beating" the Hard difficulty, and it's looking impossible.
Of course, anything involving an orange key looked impossible at some point, so that gives me some hope.
I've been categorizing all of my posts for a while now, but it never occurred to me that there was no way to actual use those categories with my current setup. :-P
On the left now, note that the "Archives" heading has been broken into "by category" and "by month." So for example, any post I've made that is related to the Neon somehow would show up if you clicked "Neon." Fantastic.
Got stuck with Jury Duty on Friday, but it wasn't bad at all. It was for county court, there was only one trial, and the defendant didn't show up so we all got to go home after a few hours. :-P
That said, I "finished" up the work on my car Friday afternoon, with "finished" in quotes because I really didn't complete all the work I intended to complete. Three of the hoses were just not accessible with the intake manifold there, and I wasn't going to take it off to replace them. Not at the rate I work anyway, when I don't really know what I'm going to do. Besides, I always secretly hope that the first time the IM comes off, ITBs are going back on in its place, and I don't have those right now. :-D Anyway, at least I'm driving my car again instead of the Neon, and maybe I'll try to address the stalling problem in that car again.
Got some good time in on Guitar Hero this weekend, and scores are starting to improve. On medium difficulty, I have five stars on every regular song except Coyboys From Hell (I have five on most bonus tracks, but I've only played each of them once). On hard difficulty...well it's a little harder. :-P I've unlocked the final set of songs, but they're just too much for me at the moment, so I'm going back and replaying the earlier songs. I have five stars on the first 7 or 8 tracks, plus a couple others. I beat a few songs on expert, but that's still way beyond me in general.
The azsolo2.com update is closer to being done - I believe all of the pages are complete, now I just have to make some minor changes, update it for 2006, and review the whole thing.
Point of interest number one, the water hose diagram the dealer uses to look up parts is different from the one in the service manual.
That said, when I started taking out hoses Monday night to get ready for installation last night, I accidently took off one hose I hadn't intended to replace. As luck would have it, that hose was about 3x the cost of all the other hoses I was replacing. :-\ Even better, they gave me the wrong one, so that's going back today. Last night I got the three hoses back on that I could replace from the top side. The others I have can't really be accessed from the top side without taking the intake manifold off, but you can't easily get to them from the bottom without taking the oil filter off, either. I think I'm going to be changing my oil a few hundred miles early. :-P
Hopefully all goes well and I can be back on the road tonight. I'm getting tired of driving the Neon already (or more specifically, it's really cold outside in the morning, and the Neon isn't garaged).
My weekend started out entirely too cold and early, I think I had to leave by 6:45 to be in Casa Grande by 7:30. Still, it's far easier to wake up to play golf than it is to work. I was hitting golf balls on the driving range at about 40°, and every shot that wasn't solid stung a fair amount. Swinging a club in four layers of clothing is a bit restricting as well.
As I mentioned the other day, Francisco Grande is known for it's Black tees at over 7500 yards, fairly long by any standards (except ice golf, perhaps). The allure of those tees was too great, so that's what we played. Even better, the course suited my game perfectly by not having any out-of-bounds. When you went beyond the grass there was nothing but dirt, so an errant tee shot is not only easy to find, but often quite playable.
Somehow I managed to have more luck during that round than just about any round I can remember (because it sure didn't feel like skill, or at least it shouldn't be). My sand wedge around the green was on fire. First hole, pitched it to six inches. Several other holes I put it to 3-4 feet. One of the later holes I flopped it over a tree, over a bunker, and landed it on the green with minimal space to work with. The one place it let me down was out of the actual sand! I was only in one trap all day, and my shot out caught a little ball and I hit it across the green. As I usually consider my sand game to be a strong point, that was disappointing.
I had a couple other good shots as well. One par 4, from 210 out, I had a tree in front of me that I couldn't go over. I managed to slice a 2-iron, moving the ball about 30 yards left-to-right, and landed it on the green. Another hole I was particularly happy with was the longeset par 4 on the course, at 486 yards. I put my tee shot behind a tree, and tried hitting a 3 wood around it from 240 yards. I clocked the tree hard, and the ball went straight sideways into the fairway. Still 240 yards out, I landed a soft 3 wood on the green to about 10 feet and made my par putt. :-D
When all was said and done, I missed my putt on the 18th for a 79, and ended up with an 80. Not bad at all given the length of the course. It was nice to use longer clubs from the fairway as well. Looking at my stats, the fact that I only hit 4 greens in regulation and still shot an 80 shows how well I was playing around the green. I even lipped out 3 putts, so the potential for lower was definitely there.
One point of interest, Hexcel actually has a manufacturing facility in Casa Grande, on the same road as the golf course. Who knew? :-P
My luck either continued or ran out on the way home however, depending on how you look at it. Another coolant hose broke about a mile from home. I ended up pushing it home later in the day with help from Teresa and Evan, as I wasn't able to change the hose there in the Olive Garden parking lot. :-P Since this is the second time a stupid little hose has broken, it's time to replace all of them. I made it to the dealer just before the parts department closed, and while they didn't have most of the hoses in stock, they should be here on Tuesday. Hopefully tonight I can try to take most of the old ones off so they'll be ready to go on the car and I can start driving it again.
I've been putting off replacing this coolant temp sensor in the Neon for a while now because the manual indicated it was going to be a pain to replace. Located on the back of the head, have to drain coolant, blah blah whatever. I just didn't feel like it. Yesterday I was certainly more motivated, as I wanted a car to drive to work on Monday, and I didn't want to drive it in the "lean when cold" condition it was in anymore. I felt incredibly stupid when I look around and find that the temp sensor not on the back of the head, but it's on the intake manifold on the front of the car, very easily accessible! A 2-minute fix, and here I've been putting it off for weeks. Car started up the first time and didn't stall, fantastic. Took it over to Napa for a test drive, and it certainly felt like it was running better when cold, plus it wasn't stalling.
That was yesterday afternoon though. :-P This morning I start it up, and it stalls right away. In fact, it won't hold an idle at all until the engine is fully warm, and then it's fine. So I guess I still have the same problem, but at least it's running a little better.
So hooray, I have to fix my car now, and the Neon still isn't really fixed. That's just how I wanted to start the week.
I go out to my bike last night, and the rear tire is completely flat. First time riding offroad, and I already got one. Hooray. :-\ At least the tube had the decency to let me get back to the car before releasing its air.
Not so much frustrated with my game (though it was bad last night), but moreso what was required to play. Started at the court at my apartment complex as usual, around 7:10 or so. Maybe 10 minutes into the game, the lights go out! There's no switch on the lights anywere (removed in the last couple months, probably to keep people from playing too late), so we're out of luck only two games into the match.
Closest good court that I know of is in a park by my parent's house, so we head over there - both courts are in use. Corona is close by so we try that next, and for some reason all eight courts were being used. How does that happen?
The last option was Marcos, all but one of the gates to their courts were locked, but fortunately that one was open, so we finished there. Then on top of that I played horribly. :-P
In other sporting news though, I'm playing golf at Francisco Grande on Saturday morning, and I'm hoping that'll go better. If my driver is working on the range, I think we may have to play from the 7500 yard black tees. :-D
Harbor Freight just opened a store in the same shopping center as my gym. :-D
Tivo showed their Series 3 at CES last week, and I'm really looking forward to it. HD support, 300gb internal storage with an external SATA port for expansion, and almost best of all, two cablecard slots. Goodbye evil cable box!
The A/C in the Integra has been out since the end of the summer, with the shop telling me that both the compressor and condenser need to be replaced. This weekend I found a compressor for sale on a local Integra board with 30k on it, picked it up for $50. I'm practically halfway there! :-P
So, a couple months ago, I started thinking about trying mountain biking. I know a number of people that do it, they seem to enjoy it, it sounds like fun. Due to some interesting circumstances, I ended up with a 2004 Haro XLS R3 for a great price a couple weeks ago. Now, up until I got the bike, I've ridden maybe half a dozen times since I got my drivers license, so I'm considerably out of practice. I used to be fairly confident in my abilities back when I was riding to school every day, but now, not so much. I spent a few days riding around on the streets just getting used to being on a bike again before venturing on to dirt.
Yesterday I stuffed the bike in my car (very happy it fit!) and went over to Evan's place, as he has some desert with a trail running through it that people regularly use for biking. Aside from a steep rocky section at the beginning, it was mostly pretty flat stuff. Overall, it did good things for my confidence levels. There are loads of skills that need improving, but I really need to get the confidence up. That said, I'm really not looking forward to my first fall, though I know it's inevitable.
Perhaps I'll get up the nerve to hit a real trail some day. :-P
You'd think with eleven consecutive days off or so, I'd find more time to post, but no. Probably spent far less time at the computer than ever, and much more time doing...other stuff.
I played golf a couple times over the break, that was one of my goals. First round was with Lee at the Biltmore Adobe course. It was the first round in a few months for both of us, so it should have been pretty even, and that's how it turned out. We both played poorly, but equally bad. I was hitting my driver great on the range, and totally lost it on the course. I hit maybe 3 good shots all day. I ended up winning 90 to 91, but that's not much of a win. ;-) Regardless, I really like the course, and it was in great condition.
A few days ago I played at Ken McDonald, with much better results. The front nine went well, but I think my luck kind of turned on the ninth hole when my drive ended up right against a tree and I had to waste a shot pitching out to the fairway. I think I had a 40 on that side. The back nine felt like a constant stream of bogeys, but wasn't quite that bad. I lost a couple shots when I put my tee shot on the wrong side of the canal on a par 5, then it all fell apart on the 18th. My tee shot hit a tree, leaving me a long shot to the green. The approach plugged in some mud, then I flubbed my next two chips. Ended up with a triple on that hole, to finish with a 44 on that side for an 84 total. Not too bad. Minus one for the tree, two for the canal, and two for the 18th, and that's practically a 79! :-D
Christmas! I got some good stuff. Video games, I got the super-awesome Guitar Hero, as well as We Love Katamari, both of which have occupied much of my time this week. DVDs, I received the Simpsons Season 7 set, which has many great episodes, including my favorite "Lisa the Vegetarian". It should keep me in front of the tv for quite a while, what with the commentary on every episode and all (as I'm watching right now). I also received the Drawn Together Season One set, a great show, and The World's Greatest Rally Cars dvd, which includes the great video of a really fast Peugeot up Pike's Peak.
Other stuff - I received the really cool Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, and I'm looking forward to reading them all again. I got a nice E30 M3 t-shirt, even has a rollbar in it. :-D All in all, good stuff. I think the only thing I'll try to pick up that I didn't get is the Battlestar Galactica season one set.
I worked on the new azsolo2.com site for a few hours over the break, and most of the pages are up now. Just a few more to go, and it'll pretty much be ready.
Finally, thanks to the beginning of the new year, going to the gym is going to be awful for about a month. Fantastic.