caffeineslug.com

Long time no post

I think this is a record for me, in terms of time without posting. The last one was on June 1st, and here it is July 23rd. Hooray for breaking records I suppose.

In those 50+ days a lot has certainly happened. We've moved into our house, and now we're dealing with all of the problems that nobody noticed before, or just coincidentally popped up shortly after we took the keys. Between those problems and new stuff we've had to buy/install, cash is flowing right out of our bank accounts like beer flowing out of Belgium.

First, the garage floor received an epoxy coating before we went and filled up the garage with stuff. That was the most painless part so far, and I think it turned out ok.

Shortly after that, one of the garage door springs broke (and of course, you have to replace both of them). The one part of the door not covered under the home warranty!

Appliance delivery was next. We needed a fridge, washer, and dryer (and of course, we only overshot our budget by about...100%). Even with a slightly wider-than-standard front door, the fridge couldn't make it in without removing the doors. :-P Yet another reason I prefer double front doors!

Next up, moving day! Fantastic, except three boxes were unaccounted for. We still don't know if they're really missing, or if it was just a number-calling error.

Next, water softener installation. I wouldn't have thought it was almost $300 to have a softener installed when the loop is already there, ouch.

Several days later, the a/c stopped working well. It was running constantly, and still not cooling the house really, so someone came out and recharged it. Home warranty use #1.

While the garage floor looked good, the walls were something else entirely. The previous owner (PO hereafter) decided that when he needed to run a cable somewhere, the best way to do it was by stapling it to the wall or ceiling every few inches. When he removed the cables, he somehow managed to do it while leaving the staples still in the wall or ceiling. Nice. Stuff was hanging on the wall everywhere, and no matter what it was holding, not a single drywall anchor was to be found (nor did he ever manage to find a stud). After yet another trip to Lowes, Dave helped me tape off the floor and fill all the holes, and Teresa helped paint the walls. It looks much better now.

Dishwasher stopped working! Was fine during the inspection of course. Home warranty use #2.

This past week has been extra fun, as we had our first case of water damage. It looks like the drain for the a/c plugged up, and as a result, condensation was going everywhere except out the drain. Like into the walls, and out from underneath the baseboards. A flood company came out and indicated evidence of water in the garage, laundry room, and office. So now we've had a couple big loud fans in the garage and an industrial-sized dehumidifier in the office for several days. We blew out the drain with the shop vac (best purchase we've made so far), and it looks like it is draining correctly now.

Finally, we thought it was time to get the spa up and running. It's a Dimension One spa, and there's just one dealer in Tucson for those (45 minutes away, of course). Fortunately the guy there was very friendly, explained to us how all of the features work, where all the parts are located, how to get it set up right, etc. Due to age and sun exposure, we needed new headrests and a new top...conveniently available for just under $500. :-P We still need a new filter for it, and the LCD screen is barely readable. While filters are relatively cheap, I know the screen won't be. :-\

As far as I can remember, that's everything we've had to deal with. Some problems worse than others, all costing more money than we'd hope. That doesn't count the numerous trip to Lowes/Home Depot for things we just didn't own before, like hoses.

At the very least, I think the house is almost to the point where it is clean enough to accept visitors. :-P

Emergency Post

The only real emergency is that here it is, afternoon of May 31, and I haven't had a post yet this month. :-P

This morning Teresa and I closed on our first house, which is obviously exciting. The process went fairly quickly, about 3 weeks from the time we looked at it until closing.

Here's an album with all of the photos we took while looking at houses - photos from the house we bought are right at the beginning, starting with the first picture and finishing with the picture of dogs in the backyard. The only visible change that will be made from the pictures is that the pink room will be painted white.

The now-previous owners needed to rent it back from us for about a week, so we should have keys a week from Sunday!

Ping pong madness

Who will reign supreme! Well, it wasn't me, unfortunately. But pretty close.

After much trash talk at the last autocross, Travis stepped up and bought a ping pong table. Finally, a forum where those who think they have a game can step up and show what they're made of!

To give myself the best possible odds, I ordered a Butterfly Kyoshi from megaspin.net, in the hopes that a superior paddle could potentially make up for a lack of skills. It showed up at my door just one day before competition, perfect! Opened it up and it still smelled like glue. It was fantastic.

Onward to the competition, and an introduction of the four players:
Travis: table owner, therefore the home court advantage was his.
Clint: talked the least smack, but showed up anyway.
Kevin: claimed his asian heritage would guarantee a victory.
Myself: bringer of the secret weapon paddle.

After some warmup, it became clear that the competition was very close. Official rules were brought up on several occasions, only to be shot down by "no way, that's stupid", and house rules ended up taking over for the most part. Literally house rules, as were we playing inside the house. Don't go looking for the high lob shot from 10 feet behind the table! Blinding light from both sides of the table also resulted in countless excuses from all parties.

Several mini-tournaments were held. Some single-elimination, some double-elimination. Overall, I'd say Travis and Kevin won more often than lost, and seemed to split games between each other. I lost more than won, but still won a decent amount, and the games I lost were usually close. Clint came in fourth, but he talked the least trash, so I suppose that's an acceptable finish.

With this day of ping pong complete, what does the future bring? Rumor has it that Kevin plans to pick up a table of his own, but for outdoor use. Will the extra space available outside be as good as we hoped, or will the North Valley winds make play impossible? General consensus was that I had the liveliest paddle of the group, but who will buy their own Paddle of Mass Destruction? And will it even matter? Will new competitors show up to stake their claims?

Stay tuned for round two.

The first of many

Costco trip count for February: 14

Lots of things to post about, because I obviously haven't in a while.

First up, I suppose, will be the Costco-related stuff.
1. The food court at the Tempe location will be undergoing a remodeling effort that's supposed to last 6-7 weeks, starting this coming Monday. Not all food items will be available. :-(
2. Maxfli Noodle golf balls. Honestly, these are pretty mediocre. What's interesting is the price, and the sheer quantity of golf balls available. Only $10/dozen (about half of retail price), and they must have a couple hundred boxes available. Enough to fill a full pallet, about as high as me!
3. Kirkland Signature polo shirts. I've never seen these with the KS label on them, and I have no idea who actually makes them, but at $15 each, I picked up a couple.
4. PGA Tour-brand golf shirts, these are also only $15, pretty cheap for a shirt made of a dri-fit-type material.
5. I understand they have a new type of cheddar cheese now, something that claims to be aged for 2 years. I'll hopefully be trying that soon. :-P

Waffle follow-up

To update, I'd say the waffle competition was a success. I was kind of surprised when my competitor showed up with an identical waffle iron! Though there was no formal voting, I believe I won both rounds. First round was my chocolate stout/chocolate chip against her bacon, cheese, and green onion waffles. Second round was my hefeweizen/butterscotch against her chocolate chip with caramelized bananas. The bananas were actually fantastic and really made the whole thing good, but both of her waffles were on the softer side, compared to my crispier waffles. Personal preference I suppose, but I think more people had the same preference as me. :-P

Waffle-a-thon

One of my friends has been hyping me up as some kind of waffle king (his logic was "anyone who has two waffle irons must be good at making waffles"). The result of this undeserved hype is that I've now been challenged to a Waffle-Off this Friday!

Well, I can't very well start my career in competitive waffling with just a standard mix and following the directions on the container. Last night was my first practice batch. The usual waffle mix, but replacing water with Rogue Chocolate Stout, and adding a couple handfuls of chocolate chips. The end result was fantastic. It was great even by itself (though butter and syrup didn't hurt it at all). I ate half of the first waffle before the second one was even complete.

Tonight I'm going to try a different beer, Paulaner Hefeweizen, with caramel chips instead of chocolate chips. I expect it to be pretty good, but hard to say if it can top last night's chocolate waffle. Either way, I think I'll make a good showing.

Lights are up

Costco trip count for December: 3

Saturday I had the task of hanging Christmas lights on our house for the first time. I'm not a big fan of ladders, or heights in general, to be honest. And my balance is often somewhere between acceptable and atrocious. But up I went anyway, with three 67-foot strings of multicolor LED lights from Costco. Staple staple climb, staple staple climb. So, LED lights still aren't quite there yet. The lights are a medium size, with a fairly thick plastic bulb. The four colors were blue, green, red, and yellow. Red and green seem ok, but the yellow is kind of weak, and the blue is pretty overpowering. Also, the blue lights look kind of purple from a distance. I think the thickness of the bulb wasn't helping the light output, as they're not as bright as they could be. Still, I'm attracted to the fact that they should last nearly forever, and the power consumption is relatively low.

Costco samples on Sunday afternoon were fantastic. Lots of dessert, cheese, meat, everything. They also started carrying egg nog puffs in the freezer section, which promptly made their way into my cart for a little more personal sampling.

Another interesting thing they had going was personalized Crown Royal bags. Someone from CR was there with a sewing machine putting whatever text you wanted on the bag. I think it could have been cool if I had a reason to spend $36 on a handle of alcohol I'll most likely not drink for a long time.

Four years old

Caffeineslug.com had its 4th birthday this past weekend, so here's to four more years of inconsistent updates and meaningless content.

The last post I made here was August 21st, that's fantastic. Over a month with nothing. I know I've done a fair amount of stuff in that month, but now that it's time to put it on paper, I can't remember what I did. :-P At least now I have one post for September.

Thanks Costco!

My cubemate and one of his friends were in my cube discussing the problems with said friend's tv. Apparently it was about 14 months old, just two months out of warranty, and it broke. For some reason, the repair shop he normally went to said they simply couldn't fix Chinese-made tvs, and he was out of luck. But I found out he bought it at Costco - "take it back," I said. "They'll refund you 100% of your money."

"But it's out of warranty, and broken."

"Doesn't matter, they'll take it."

"If that works, I'm buying you a steak!"

That was yesterday. I come in to work this morning, and there's a cooler with my steak in it. :-D Getting just a year out of a tv is pretty bad, especially a CRT. Even worse when a shop says it can't be fixed. Hooray for the Customer Satisfaction policy!

Related to Costco, I'm glad they realize that Costco-nerds like me exist. I knew you could order checks at a pretty good price through Costco.com, but I found out from their magazine that one of the patterns you can choose is actually a set of pictures of Costco warehouses from around the country! *click* Ordered! :-P

So much emptiness

The site has been blank for weeks now, great. Fortunately, I haven't done much:

- Went to New Jersey for vacation. Spent some time on the beach, ate unhealthy food, played enough miniature golf to get me through the year.

- Got my first-ever second place autox trophy. Thanks Clint! :-P

- Had probably my best ever Addams Family pinball game, at about 412 million points. The machine was almost fully-functional, which was pretty nice. I had at least a couple multiballs, getting the jackpot or double jackpot each time. Two or three extra balls helped out the score quite a bit as well. Towards the end I finally got the "Tour the Mansion" award, which is awarded after you've gone through all of the game modes. You get 50M points, in addition to a few other things. That was great.

- We have a cat now, and have had him for a couple weeks, but still no name. Current possibilities are Samba (after the monkey in Samba de Amigo, greatest Dreamcast game ever), Pi (after the greatest number ever), or Hobbes (after the tiger in the greatest comic strip ever).

- Had my first mountain bike crash just over a week ago, right over the handlebars. Knocked the wind out of me, scraped up my knee pretty good, and my right hand is still in pain. The urgent care doctor initially said it was broken, but I went to a hand doctor that said it wasn't, so that's good I suppose. Still, this isn't good for my golf game.

- 360voice.com lets your Xbox 360 tell everyone what you've been up to. Mine is like most others, in that it seems a lot like a dog - really happy when you play with it, sad and whiny when you ignore it. At least it posts every day, more than I can say about myself to be sure. It also seems to be good motivation to get some achievements, as I've increased my score a good amount lately.

Related to video games, I picked up Uno on Live Arcade last week, and it provided a level of fun commensurate with the price. Single player seems mostly worthless, but partner Uno can be pretty fun provided the other people in your game actually talk. You're paired up with the person sitting across from you, and if either of you goes out, you both get the win. Since Skip/Draw Two/Draw Four cards only punish the person next two you, you can get into good circles of making the other team constantly draw cards. If nothing else, having a teammate requires some amount of talking, and that prevents games where you just sit there with three other strangers and nobody talks (and if you're going to do that, you may as well just play against a non-human).

I also finished up the GRAW single player campaign at normal difficulty, that was pretty fun. After a few levels I realized I had to use the night vision goggles way too much, and that's when I discovered the brightness level in the game was set to zero. :-P Not so good on an LCD RPTV! Cranked that up to 5 out of 6 and I could finally see things. It was nice to get good use out of a $60 game. I might try to stretch it out a bit more and play some levels on hard for a few more achievements.

So speaking of $60 games, the 360 might be what gets me to try gamefly.com. More games are coming out that I want to try, but I don't feel like they're worth $60 to me yet, and prices haven't really come down at all in the eight months or so that the system has been out. Granted some have been less (PGR3, Table Tennis), but it's still feels like a big increase over the $40 and $50 games I was accustomed to with the PS2/Xbox. So for $15/month I could rent games as they become available, and not deal with Blockbuster (I'm doubting here that Blockbuster has changed at all in the last year or so since I dealt with them). That works out to 4 games a year - so what am I better off having? Four games that I can keep, or as many as I can go through in a year, but keeping none?

Honestly, I'd still have to buy some to keep. :-P Forza 2, Halo 3, maybe a couple others that I rent and really enjoy. But I'd really like to try stuff like MotoGP 06, the new LOTR game, Gears of War, etc. I think the stream of games due out is good enough to support using something like Gamefly, provided they have enough copies of the games to keep me playing something.

On to autocrossing, a proposal was made to move the 3-series BMWs and the IS300 out of DSP for 2007. As great as this initially looks to me on paper, it would be both a blessing and a curse. Obviously if this were to pass, I should have a car that's potentially a top competitor. Perhaps not the first year, but at least by 2008 the pax factor should be adjusted, so even if I didn't compete nationally I would still see a local benefit with no changes to the car. Still, if I have a car with potential to be competitive, I should really prep it a lot closer to the limit of the rules. And there's Part 1 of the curse. Just getting "closer" to the limit would mean an LSD, Hondata, exhaust, and dyno tuning. There's $2500 right off the bat if I want to use decent parts, and using cheap stuff doesn't save all that much. To go beyond that requires work that doesn't help the issue of street legality, like ITBs and a big header that eliminates the cat (figure $3k for the pair).

So I could have a car that's potentially competitive. I can take over $5k and get it a lot closer to fully prepared, or I can take that same $5k plus any money I'd get from selling the car, and buy something else. That's where Part 2 of the curse comes in - even for the $11k or so that we're talking about, I can't get a car that's as fast, as fun to drive, and as competitive in its class as my Integra. So I'm stuck with it (starting my 9th year with the car this month).

Of course, if the proposal gets turned down, my car remains uncompetitive, there's no reason to spend money on it, and getting a different car that's more competitive seems like a worthwhile venture. But whatever. I still think it should pass, I guess. :-P

Calibration madness

Finally got my Avia disc in the mail the other day, so I could try to do some kind of audio calibration with the sub. I'll try not to go into the long version, but the short version has two points:
- there's definite "weirdness" going on between my sub + right front, and sub + left rear speakers. SPL from sub + RF is probably 5dB below sub + LF, for example.
- there are weird tone issues between my fronts and center channel. Granted they're not the same speaker series, but they're at least the same brand, I thought thinks would be close, but a white noise (or is it pink? I don't know) that pans left to right is supposed to sound the same as it goes across the front of the room, and it takes a definite dip in my system when it gets to the center.

Yes, that's the short version. The long version involves complaints about not having a real crossover on my receiver, peaks/valleys in frequency response charts, variance in sub level with test tones of different sources, and limited sub placement options in the room. :-P

A Clean Slate

I think my site has been blank for something like a week now. As I've said before, missing a few items I want to post about just instigates this snowball of failure. "I keep meaning to write about such and such, but also these other things, and I don't have time to do it all now. I'll do it tomorrow," I say. Tomorrow comes, and I say the same thing, but the number of items has increased, so now it's going to take even more time. Thus, as time goes on, the less likely I am to have time to write about everything. Snowball of failure > me.

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When I left off, I just realized that pedals came in two different thread sizes, and I lost the coin toss. I remedied that by buying a new set, and they're infinitely better than what came on the bike. Bigger platform, and my feet stay in place much better.

I tried them out for the first time on a ride with Alan (a significantly better rider than myself) on a trail around South Mountain that would turn out to be well above my skill level. Between the fact that it was my first time seeing the trail, my general lack of mountain biking skill, and overall cautiousness, it was both mentally and physically draining. Mentally in that I was trying to process all of these obstacles on the trail that I didn't think I had the skill to overcome, so I was constantly doubting myself the entire time. No confidence. Physically in that there were just a lot of hills. :-P

While I think I could psyche myself up enough to hit that trail again, I'd want to at least see an improvement in skills elsewhere before trying it, I think. I spent a LOT of time walking the bike, and that's never as much fun. I scraped the new pedals up nicely as well. :-)

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We moved a couple weeks ago now, which was all sorts of fun. There's still a room full of junk, with no place for it to go. The garage needs work as well, which I almost look forward to. The bikes need to go up on the ceiling, and better use of shelving should help things out a bit.

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Now that we're in a house, of course, I could finally buy the subwoofer I've been wanting, the SVS PCi 20-39. :-D


I was a bit worried when I plugged things in, and didn't really get any sound from it at first. I eventually just had to turn the levels up on the amp and receiver a bit more than I thought to get anything, and now it's quite loud. I really need to get the whole thing calibrated though. Listening to music over media center, it didn't sound quite like I had hoped. My receiver being as old and partially feature-less as it is, I noticed that I have no idea what it's internal crossover is set to, so when it's on the "subwoofer" preout I'm not sure what frequencies it's getting. Hopefully with a dB meter and some calibration tools I can figure it out, I don't know.

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Finally, the issue of tires. After two autocrosses of hovering around the 900 point mark, I'll finally have a set of 710's on the car that should make me closer to competitive in my class. I really should have ordered them a couple months ago, but I'm cheap, obviously.

Stupidity

Well, last Saturday I was feeling pretty good, maybe 90% recovered from the back injury. I thought "I know, maybe I'll go to the driving range to test out the new driver." Bad idea. By the time I was done, I was feeling worse than I did after the initial injury! Had to basically start recovery over from scratch. Starting to feel a little better today though.

The good news is that the driver seems to be working out well. Trajectory is good (though a bit on the low side if I don't tee it up enough it seems), and at maximum height it seems to hang there for a second longer than my old driver. I figure it's good for at least another 20 yards, but I won't know for sure until I get out to Ken McDonald and play a round. I was hoping to get better accuracy with the big driver (and I think I did), but I'll take the added distance bonus any time!

A new day

A pi day, that is. Celebrate! I might try to search out a bit of pie this afternoon or something.

Also, Teresa gave me this cool camera for our anniversary yesterday, and I'm looking forward to using it. Looks to have all the specs that I'd like, and it's considerably smaller/lighter than my previous model.

2006 F1 season approaches

How appropriate I would have an F1-related dream the other night.

I was cruising along in my first car, the '85 Jetta, wondering why my tank was nearly empty and I had only driven 111 miles. As the road bends around I see a Ferrari F50, and think "wow, don't see those...ever." As my road is about to merge with another, I see another Ferrari on the other road, then another, then all of the sudden the entire street is filled with race cars. Then disaster! There's enough gravel on the road that all the cars come to a stop. So who's driving the three cars in front of me, but Sato, Trulli, and M Schumacher. :-P I tried to take a picture of Schumacher with my phone, but he got really mad at me, and I think he wanted me to pay him for taking his picture. Sato started talking to me, and he was just stupid, and as I was talking to him, I couldn't imagine how he got into racing. Trulli just kept smiling the whole time, that was kind of creepy.

Unfortunately, just as they were offering me the chance to drive their cars, my alarm went off. Worst timing ever.

The good news is that the season starts this weekend in Bahrain!

HD vs DVD comparison

Check them out here. The detail improvement in the full-size comparisons (click on the images, rather than just mouse over) is great. Now where's my blu-ray player?? (oh yeah, it's here)

Axle success

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. ;-)

Category archives

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.

Jury duty and such

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.

Tennis frustration

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

Cheap tools

Harbor Freight just opened a store in the same shopping center as my gym. :-D

HD Tivo on the horizon, and cheap Integra parts

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

A lazy week off

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.

Camaro!Camaro!

I went to one of the few remaining Little Caesars around here after the first day of working on Evan's car. Not having been there in a while, I was surprised to see that their entire menu had been reduced to this:
- Large cheese or pepperoni pizza, $5
- Crazy bread, $1
- Hot wings, $5
And that was it. Do you really need to call it a "large" pizza when you only offer one size?

The plan was to replace the passenger-side axle and axle bearing, and check the driver's side axle as well. The first day working on his car didn't feel very productive, by any means. After stopping by Moe's, a trip to Checker was in order to pick up a slide hammer, and it seems to be the only store that carries Mobil 1 gear oil.

Armed with instructions from the internet, work begins. Wheels off, and I realize that the impact gun that came with my compressor is pretty weak. ;-) Calipers off, rotors...well, the passenger side came off. The driver's side rotor was stuck with the force of a thousand...sticky...things. The holes that go around the studs weren't anywhere near round, and they seemed to be jammed on the studs. Guess we weren't going to check that side after all.

Ok, so get the diff cover off, and now the garage is infused with the horrid stench of gear oil. Time to remove the retaining bolt, and we run into another problem. The directions I have say it's a 5/16ths head, so I grab a 5/16ths socket, but of course, it's just barely too long. The smallest open wrench I thought I had was 9mm, so I have Evan try that one. "I think it fits," followed by "uh oh." 9mm was a bit too large, but now the head is kind of stripped, on top of being oily. Sweet. I can't find my vise-grips anywhere, so we go out to get some from his parents' house. Those take care of the bolt, but there's more wasted time. Oh, and I did have an 8mm wrench in another set, but of course I didn't remember it until the damage was done. Now we need to find a new bolt as well, on a Saturday afternoon.

Axle comes out, and it's all pitted right where it contacts the bearing, so that's a good sign that we're at least fixing something that's broken. :-P Now time for the bearing and seal, and this is where the pain sets in. The slide hammer came with a generic 3-prong puller, and I have to say, it was not the best device in the world. Hammered away at it forever. Managed to get out the seal, and totally dismantled the bearing, but the outer race was still stuck. Looking around online, I see that specific axle bearing pullers look a little different than what we have. It's too late to get a new bolt anyway, so we already know the job is going to run into a second day. Slightly dejected, the sorrows are drowned in a melee of crazy bread and Guinness.

First step Sunday was to find a new diff retainer bolt and some additional tools. The Autozone near me had neither the bearing puller nor the bearing driver, but informed us that the next-closest Autozone had both, so off we went. The Napa we visited Saturday didn't have the bolt we were looking for, but they said to check the store on University. Make the drive up there, only to find out that they're closed on Sunday. Bah! Decide to stop at Amados before making the trek out to the next-closest Napa, a decent drive out of our way (the Arizona burrito was good). They had the bolt, and all is good.

Now with the correct tools and plenty of burrito, it's time to tackle that bearing again. It doesn't fit quite as well as I'd like...there's a disc that seems to fit right over the bearing, but I would think it would work better if it went over the whole housing, so you could put tension on the thing. It was too small for that though, and lacking scrap metal, we put a couple wrenches in there. After tightening it up quite a bit (and bending one of the wrenches in the process, one shot of the slide hammer pulled the bearing out. Woo. The worst was over.

Everything was pretty straightforward going back together, but unfortunately it hasn't totally solved the noise problem. The left one could be bad as well, or it could be a different bearing entirely that's causing some of the noise. Bleh. The good news is that we finished everything, cleaned up, and returned the tools while there was still some daylight remaining. :-P That, and just the fact that the car is back together, and I have my garage back.

Of all the...

Last month I was drawn for jury duty, federal court. Fine, I go down there, fill out the questionnaire, whatever. I'll know next month if I'm selected. What do I get in the mail yesterday? I'm drawn for jury duty again, this time for county court! Even better, the court date is a week after the first trial I was drawn for is scheduled to start.

Last week I went to a new Costco that opened up in Chandler, on opening day even. I understand many people were waiting in line early for 360's, but I wasn't one of them. Still, I can cross that Costco off my list of places to go. :-P It was nice being in one that was new and clean, and the alcohol selection was closer to that of the Scottsdale store than the Tempe store (that's a good thing). Odd though - I didn't see ice cream bars on the food court menu. Not a good sign.

Sunday's autocross was fun, but frustrating. I DNF'd what I believe to have been my best run, but even if it was clean, I still would have been way off Clint's time. I'm going to have to make some significant improvements if I want a chance next season. Hopefully more people can be dragged into the class by then as well...two is good, but three or four would be great (especially after a few years of one).

Finally, I was sick most of this week, which is always fun. Hooray for DayQuil.

Blankman

Not that Blankman (though I do have the soundtrack to that exceptionally fine film), but more like blank-site-man. Why bother with a website if I can't post something in two weeks, honestly. You'd think I hadn't done anything in the last two weeks.

Well, I haven't really.

I take that back, I got to play Guitar Hero, and that was cool. I definitely need that game.

Last week I tried to get the Xbox 360 on Tuesday, but I really didn't put forth much of an effort. I just showed up at Costco, and while they had games, there were no systems to be found. Unfortunate. :-( Now I'm left to wallow in the sorry muck of 480p sadness until I can find one (but I don't mind waiting until I can find a premium system, instead of the core).

On Friday I made it to my annual Black Friday shopping trip with the Millers, however this year I bought less than ever. We showed up at Best Buy at 2am to try to get the $379 laptop (I was trying to pick one up on behalf of my aunt), but there were already 200 people there. Fortunately it wasn't that cold, so we stayed there in line anyway, knowing full well that there were no laptops to be had at that spot in line.

In the end, all I bought for myself was a $5 video game and a $6 movie (Pinball Hall of Fame and Anchorman). Bought a router for my aunt, and a couple Christmas gifts for others that were sorta on sale. All in all I saved less than $20 myself, and sat outside the store for three hours to do it - I'm a genius! :-P

Went to Circuit City after that, where I bought...nothing. In terms of purchasing, this was pretty much the lamest Black Friday for me, but the day has been more about hanging out with friends that I don't get to see that often anymore, and that's good.

Of course, ASU played UA on Friday as well, with the result I was hoping for (though it was entirely too close).

I'm supposed to be playing golf around the end of December, so I decided to hit up the driving range this weekend, and it went surprisingly well. Drivers were going long and relatively straight. I was actually hitting irons into some of the nets placed out there, so that was good. Had a bit of a push/fade with the longer clubs, felt like it was from not turning my wrists over enough, but it wasn't a big deal. Shanked a few wedges, that was a big deal, as that should never happen. :-P

On a related note, I thought about joining the Men's Club at Ken McDonald the other day, as it might provide me with some motivation to actually play golf regularly. Tournaments twice a month all year long, plus I'd have a real handicap again. Not a bad deal at all.

Finally, the new Chandler Costco opens up this Thursday. :-D

Woo compressed air

I finally bought the air compressor that Costco has been selling, since they got another batch of them in the other day. Fit in the Saab perfectly. ;-) Came with the following, from my memory:
- impact gun
- air hammer
- air rotary tool with a handful of attachments
- tire inflation tool (a lame one and a nice one)
- spray gun (HVLP I'd imagine)
- air brush
- 25' air hose
- a few impact sockets (only SAE though)
- um...some other stuff

What's missing from that list? Well, most obvious is the tool I'd probably use most, an air ratchet. I could use an extension cord as well, since my only stupid electrical outlet is in the ceiling in the middle of the garage, and the compressor is not going to sit in the middle of the garage. :-P

Oh no

Costco is carrying pecan pies once again. Must...resist...gigantic...pie...

The sky is falling! or, Costco let me down today

I go to the food court for lunch, and they have new cash registers. Registers which, for whatever reason, will not allow them to take the Costco Cash Card. It's my preferred form of payment, because it was the last lunch place I regularly went that didn't take credit cards, so the cash card meant I didn't need to carry cash any more. Now if I'm out of cash I'll need to go somewhere else. :-\

On the plus side today, I was happy to see 30mpg on my last tank, and gas prices at Costco dropped from $2.67 at the time of my last fillup to $2.52 today.

Update bonanza

This is exactly the problem with a website, the further behind I get, the less motivated I am to make a post, since each passing day means I have more to add. At some point my brain hits a limit though, and anything new I want to add means something else gets left behind. Or to paraphrase Homer, "Remember when we went to that wine tasting and I forgot how to drive?"

I think the last post I made was just before the Tucson autocross, where I planned to drive Dave's car. I had all sorts of problems with that. It was a really fast course, requiring a shift to third on two occasions. Rarely could I get the car from third into second gear cleanly, and on the last couple runs I even had trouble upshifting to third...I just couldn't find it. On top of that, a cone was called on my fastest run (I have no idea where), so I had to stand on a slow run. It really wasn't a good course to exhibit all of the car's abilities, which was unfortunate.

Car issues aside, the course design resulted in some..."event management" issues I guess. Due to the loop and crossover, launch intervals were in the neighborhood of 40 seconds, and even that often put two cars close to each other on course, where one car could easily spin out into another. On top of that we got 4 runs, and that made for a pretty long day.

This is where I totally forget everything that happened last week. I think I probably played some video games. A bit of GT4, some Halo 2. It's good to know that an entire week of my life can be boiled down to "I played video games."

Over this past weekend I noticed an odd noise on deceleration from around my front right wheel. When I finally went to check it out, I first noticed that I was missing a lugnut. Wait...that's not right. The other 3 were "fairly tight," in the same way that I was feeling "fairly stupid." As I'm mourning the loss of the poor lugnut, I notice something shiny on the back side of the wheel. Grease, and lots of it. That's rarely a good thing. Off comes the wheel, and the cv boot is torn all the way around the joint, tossing grease everywhere. Sweet.

My first trip to the dealer for the week, and I'm buying nothing but a lugnut, as I don't have any spares, and I'd rather not (knowingly) drive on three. The boot kit comes from BAP, and I drive up to Clint's place for yet another fine boot installation, which generally went well, except for some additional pain caused by my poly bushings in the LCA, and a broken cotter pin.

Second trip to the dealer for the week, this time to get some spare cotter pins. They don't have the exact one I'm looking for in saleable form, but the guy is nice enough to grab a handful of pins from some bins and just give them to me, saying "one of these should fit." Hooray.

I did in fact carve a pumpkin this year, and I finally tried using a stencil. I did The Cheat from homestarrunner.com, as it looked easy and recognizeable (well, if you know the site).

So that's about it, I think I'm caught up now.

Football camaro mount

Went to the ASU vs USC football game on Saturday, and despite ASU's loss, it was really a good game. Held them off until the very end of the fourth quarter, but that was it. Should be interesting to see where we fall in the rankings after the loss.

After the game, I went with Evan to pick up some lightly-used race tires for his Camaro, some meaty 265/45-16 V710s. We meet the guy to buy the tires, and for whatever reason Evan's car won't start. Fantastic. Somehow AAA takes two hours to arrive, and the car gets towed to the dealer. That's exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday night.

Sunday meant Camaro parts buying, with a trip up to Rippy's to buy some used shocks and look at a stack of ESP parts for sale. He just came away with the shocks, but we got some good advice when it comes to actually installing them.

Finally, I built the in-car camera mount that I bought parts for last week. It turned out...mostly ok, I guess. I didn't have a drill press, and I'd say it's near impossible to cut through box aluminum walls in a straight line, at least the way I was approaching it. So the holes for the post are kind of scraggly, and the whole thing has a bit of a tilt to it. Bah. Should still work at least, but it would have been nice to turn out a better-looking product. I still have enough aluminum left that I could make another one of the same dimensions and just re-use all of my hardware, so I might give it another shot when I can use a drill press.

Happy Birthday!

Caffeineslug.com is now three years old this week. :-D

SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU

That was me immediately after going to the Nine Inch Nails concert on Monday night. Actually, the impaired hearing lasted a much shorter time than some others I've attended, probably because I was sitting on the other end of the arena from the stage. That, or maybe I've already lost some of my hearing. ;-)

I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Didn't play that much new stuff, played all the popular old stuff. I've really only come to appreciate their music in the last few years so perhaps I wouldn't get the enjoyment out of it that a long-time fan might, but it was worth attending nonetheless.

My only regret is that we didn't buy floor tickets. If I had known for sure that I'd be standing the whole time, I would have pushed for the floor tickets. As it turns out, some of the lower sections stood for the whole show, some didn't. I could hear the music just fine either way. :-P

Too much sleep

Don't wake up at 1pm and think you'll get to bed at any kind of reasonable hour. It just doesn't happen. >:-O

I actually slept a lot over the long weekend, and as such, didn't get much done. I should have checked Autozone to see if they rent pressure testers for the Integra, but that didn't happen, so I might stop by after the gym today.

Played poker one night with a different group of friends than usual, that was interesting. We started with 6, and after 3 hours there were still 5 people left. I finally got one good hand, the guy next to me goes all in with about $3k, and I call him...except I can't cover about $75 of his. I win, but he's left with $75. That later comes back to get me, as he wins a few lucky hands, gets some money, and he eventually put me out of the game! Bleh.

I also spent some time this weekend trying to burn some tivo'd shows to dvd, to clear out some hard drive space. Victory by Design and Good Eats episodes were taking up about 70gb on a 160gb drive, and I only had 10gb free, so that was no good. I finished off the VBD, and 5 episodes of Good Eats. At 5 episodes per disc, I only have about...14 more discs to go. Awesome.

The good news is that as I use it more, the less I hate Nero for basic video editing. It's pretty easy to take commercials out, so on a normal tv show, it just takes a few minutes now. VBD has about twice as many commercials breaks as a usual show (though they're about half as long as usual), so it takes twice as long to take out the commercials. Thanks VBD.

A couple phone pics

First, I bought Super Scrabble a couple weeks ago, and the other night I was playing a game of it against Evan. About halfway through the game, I finally had my first turn ever where I used all of my letters in one shot - and with a Q on a triple word score, no less! I received 113 points for it, and thought it was deserving of a picture.

Second, I took a pic from my round yesterday on that really long par 3. It's kind of hard to make stuff out unless you've played there and know what to look for, I think. This is standing on the blue tee box (that I didn't even know existed). The very back of the regular tee box is in line with that bridge on the left, showing how much further back the tees were, and the green is way off in the distance. And it's a par 3!

HD golf and Tivo (unrelated)

I probably watched about 8 hours of the PGA Championship over the weekend, being on CBS in HD (well that, and I like golf). Not all of the cameras were HD, and it wasn't necessarily the best HD, but it still looked pretty nice. ;-)

Also, it looks like you can now send videos to your tivo! People always asked me if this was possible, and now that it is, I'm wondering what videos I'd want to watch. The best application I can imagine would be downloaded tv shows, but I don't do that, so I don't know. :-P

More poker income

Not much, but it's there. ;-) Played again a bit on Friday night with some friends. Started with seven people I think it was, I made it down to the last three, but I was low on cash. I was dealt two pairs in a row, couldn't really do anything with them though. Next hand I was dealt another pair, this time 4's. I don't remember how it happened, but I think I went all in trying to get blinds or something. :-P Mason called, had nothing, and I won with my 4's. The next hand, Mason immediately puts me all in again, and I gladly called, as I was dealt a pair of aces. :-D

Of course, I think I was out about two hands later, but I still won $16 on a $10 buy-in, and I think I'm in the black out of all the games I've played thus far (maybe 5 or 6).

I wish I could forget

...what sodas used to taste like. (see the end of this post for background) But no, I still see soda coming out of the fountain, remembering how good it should taste, then I take a sip, and...nothing. Worthless. Bah.

The weather also hasn't helped my laziness any. The Neon has coolant in it again, but I'm an intake away from driving it around the block and checking for leaks. It's bad enough that the afternoon sun makes it pretty hot in the garage, but the increased humidity lately really kills any motivation to work in there. Five minutes and you're soaked. Sweat drips on everything. I'd consider a portable evap cooler or a/c unit, but then I'd have to close my garage door, and that's my only source of light. ;-) Garages with one outlet and no lights are awesome.

Captain, where be the posts?

Yarrr, at the bottom of the sea, where the rest of ye shall be if ya keep asking!

But really, there's no excuse for not posting in what, almost 2 weeks now? Lame. I don't even remember what happened last week, and it obviously wasn't documented here, so I guess nothing happened. ;-) This week, however, I still remember stuff. :-P

My radiator puked a bit on Sunday, prompting an order from Radiator Barn, which showed up yesterday. The box had about a half dozen holes in it, including one nice big gash, but I called the company today, and they said install it anyway. There's no clear damage, so if it works, then great. I'd rather not wait around for another one, and they'll still send me a new one if it turns out that this was damaged in shipping.

Replaced the power window motor in Evan's car this weekend too, and my only comment is that my garage is HOT. As the afternoon sun creeps further and further into the garage (and you wish you had pulled the car in more), the motivation to finish gets that much greater.

Busted out the Dreamcast a couple days ago. Spent the first couple days with the disc of NES games, playing Castlevania and Super Dodge Ball. Last night, played some Chu Chu Rocket and Jet Grind Radio, both a lot of fun. That system was a bargain at $25. :-D

This might be what gets me a PSP...

Looks like Sony will be releasing firmware for the PSP that enables web browsing (including WPA support), among other things. I'll have to try it out to see what web browsing is like on a screen like that, but hey, if I can get to azsolo2.com from anywhere with an open wireless connection, it might just be worth it. ;-)

A Miata-related dream

Weird, right? Me, having a dream about Miatas? Well, sorta.

For most people that like cars, if they were to have a dream related to Miatas, it would probably involve driving one with the top down on some winding mountain road. Not me, it seems. Instead, I had was standing outside a building where some company made aftermarket Miata parts. There were two doors where you could enter - one for inquiries about parts or sales, and the other door was for people that wanted to complain about the fact that the company used child labor to build all of their parts. Wait, what? That was it.

Like I said, it was weird.

DDR-alicious

Decided to get out the DDR pad again, as I've been pretty bad about doing cardio for the last few months (and it shows), and I had a few free hours tonight. Played for about 90 minutes - no headaches, so that's good. Only tried one song on Heavy, one that I had AA'd in the past, and I didn't do too well. Definitely out of practice, but that's to be expected. Maybe if I keep playing more and talk it up a little, I can talk some of my friends into modifying their pads properly...you know who you are. ;-)

New parts, bad news, good news

Parts have arrived! Clutch showed up on Friday, flywheel on Saturday.
Exedy Organic:



Fidanza flywheel:

Hopefully they'll make their way onto the car shortly, to be broken in before the Fall series.

As mentioned previously, a side effect of my new medication is a change in how sodas taste, and I'm afraid that's definitely happened. Imagine a regular soda with about 85% less carbonation and 65% less sweetness - that's what it tastes like to me. Not so good.

But what's the good news, you ask? Beer tastes exactly the same! :-D

HD > *

Last night I was about to go to bed, was flipping through some of the HD channels, and I noticed that Universal HD was having a Battlestar Galactica marathon. I had seen bits and pieces of the show before, but this was the first time I had seen an episode from beginning to end. Not only was the show itself enjoyable, but between the HD video and 5.1 channel DD audio, it was quite the experience. :-D Unfortunately the marathon ends right as I get home from work today, and it probably wouldn't have been the best idea to stay up all night watching it. I'll definitely have to catch the show when it's on again though.

On the not-so-good side of HD, I found out that TNT has an HD station, and they're showing British Open coverage on it. Unfortunately, Cox doesn't give us TNT-HD. >:-O

Woo drugs! :-P I'm now taking Topamax for my headaches, which should be interesting. It was originally prescribed for people with epileptic seizures, but a 5-10x smaller dose is given out now for headaches. The side effects seem to be an odd combination of the good and the bad:
* Taste alteration - or as my doctor said, "carbonated drinks will probably start to taste kind of weird". I think I'm starting to notice this, but I'm not sure yet.
* Reduced appetite/weight loss - can't really go wrong with that.
* Tingling/loss of feeling in extremeties - uh...wha? Oddly enough, my doctor said that taking a vitamin c supplement fixes this, which I don't quite understand. But then, I'm no doctor. ;-)
* Confusion - this one should be particularly interesting. I guess the most common form of this is a slight inability to find the right word when you want it, while some say that it just makes them stupid. Time will tell!

Once I'm over this cough I'm going to try playing tennis again, see if the headaches come back. Autocrossing this weekend should be interesting as well, but I'm betting it'll be ok, and things are generally looking up. At the same time, it's a little discouraging to think that I may have to take these forever. :-\

MRI results and exhaust fumes

The two are completely unrelated, other than the timeline in which they occurred.

Fortunately the MRI said my brain was ok, which was quite the relief. I'm going to have to take some medication to keep the headaches away, but whatever works. I'm really looking forward to getting back to the things I used to do - going to the gym, tennis, DDR, just sports in general. I still have a couple races on my card for F1 Race Factory to use as well. Alas, I still lack the picture of my brain. I forgot to ask for it when I went in, but I'll have another chance when I go again in a couple weeks.

Got my header back on this past weekend, thanks to a good guy at Full Race that fixed it up for me (their Evo 8 manifold increases my Evo-lust significantly). Now I'm significantly less embarassed to drive my car, as it sounds pretty normal. ;-) I bought a small container of anti-seize for a couple of the bolts that backed out of the head (the ones that broke when the original exhaust manifold was removed), and now I have enough to last me until I'm 240 years old. Awesome.

After my last couple purchases being for maintenance, it felt good to order actual performance parts the other day. Ordered an Exedy Organic clutch kit and Fidanza flywheel, and they should be here either late this week or early next week. After looking at what Subaru parts cost (thanks to the 9-2X purchase), I have a greater appreciation for economies of scale and the cost of Honda parts. I was able to buy those parts for only $434 shipped. :-D

After being introduced to the idea of wearing latex gloves during car repair, I have to say that I like it. Hard to beat that combination of dexterity and cleanliness, provided you can keep them in one piece, and you're not working on anything hot. With that in mind, I picked up a box of nitrile gloves at Harbor Freight last week when they were running a sale on them (about 40% off or so). Supposed to be more puncture- and solvent-resistant than latex...and they're blue. As good as they are though, have you ever tried using them in a 120° garage? Within minutes you can hear the water moving around inside the gloves, as your hands do their best impression of a high school wrestler trying to make weight. :-P The gloves just hold in the heat, and your hands keep sweating. Makes it really interesting when you go to take off said gloves, and you spray this disgusting hand-glove-water everywhere that has been collecting for the last 20 minutes. Oh, and your hands look like you just got out of an hour-long bath. Sweet.

Checking my head

Due to the headaches I've been having for the past few weeks, my doctor recommended I have an MRI done to see if there was anything seriously wrong up there.

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. In fact, it was almost like I was in some sort of hallucinogenic dream state while the scan was being performed. The machine made lots of noise, and the whole process lasted about 20 minutes. The type of noise was what made it weird though. Despite having only seen 2001 once (and I fell asleep before the end), the sounds reminded me very much of that movie. Very mechanical, but electronic at the same time.

So anyway, I'd lay there with my eyes closed, listening to these sounds, and I would sort of start to fall asleep, but not really, like it was a very light sleep. I don't remember what I'd dream about, but it always included the sounds of the machine. Then the sound would pause, or change, and I couldn't always tell if the machine really changed, or if I was imagining it. Very strange indeed.

No instant results, so I'll have to go see my doctor again in a couple days to find out how it went. I'm really hoping to get an electronic copy of the scan of my brain though, and if I do, you can be sure I'll post it here. :-D

A few extras

First off, if you ever get a Scrabble rack worse than this, let me know.

Taco Bell's "Cheesy Fiesta Potatos", found at the Taco Bell in Holbrook. Potatos, nacho cheese, sour cream, and green onions. Everything's better with a little nacho cheese. ;-)

Also, I regret not using the phrase "speed holes" somewhere in my last post.

Events of Grandeur

Well, not so much.

I was invited to another poker night with some friends last week...turns out I only knew one person there, but whatever. Two of the people claimed to play regularly online, but whatever. My beginner's luck continued, and I won. :-D Unfortunately the rules for the night were that the top 3 positions were paid, so I only took home about half as much as I could have. That, and we weren't able to get 8 players, only 6. Had a good time though!

The joy that goes with working on cars didn't go unnoticed this weekend, oh no. Err, wait, perhaps it did. One thing went perfect, and that was replacing a trim piece on the passenger side grab handle in my car. :-P

First up, gasket between header and cat. Old one comes out ok, new one goes in, all is right with the world. Or not. When I eventually started up the car later that day, the exhaust sounded exactly as bad as it did before. So it seems that the gasket probably isn't the issue, but the header and cat are both enjoying the feel of a brand new $15+ gasket, I'm sure. Worse though, is my guess that the header has a crack in it somewhere near that flange, and if that's the case, then it has had a crack in it all this time! It always made a bit of noise, but it wasn't too bad until recently. I'll try to find a place that maybe can fix it, I don't know. I didn't really want to buy a shiny new SMSP header right now, but if I have to...

Next, clutch slave cylinder on the Integra. It wasn't too big a deal to replace this, but for some reason we (Evan had shown up by this point) must have been idiots when it came to bleeding the thing. It just wouldn't work for a while, then all of the sudden it worked. Fantastic. So that feels a little better, but I think the clutch really suffered hauling Teresa's stuff up the mountains to ABQ. :-\

Radiator hoses. Easy, right? Not when oem hoses seem WAY too small to actually fit. Woo. Oh, and I find out that my radiator cap is in about 6 pieces (which wasn't the case just a couple weeks earlier). Off to the dealership to see if they have another one. How about I drive the Neon over there? Sure! Add some coolant since I still hadn't replaced the slowly leaking coolant tank, and off we go. Driving, driving...temperature needle just goes up up up. Shut the car down right in front of the Acura dealer. Pop the hood, and coolant is bubbling out of the hose that goes to the heater core. Great. Keep in mind that the Acura dealer is less than a mile from my apartment. Evan has AAA, so he calls them up and they send out a tow truck to get it back to my place. Fortunately the Acura dealer was right there, and while the parts counter was closed, the refridgerator was not. :-D So it was a good place to hang out while waiting for the tow truck.

Back to the apartment. Push the Neon back in the garage, hop in the Camaro to pick up a cap from Autozone so that I at least have one working car. Replace that, then it's time to figure out what to do with the Neon. Out comes the airbox, as it's just in the way. I notice that the hose clamp for the line to the heater core really isn't all that tight. I knew the hose was too big (by a whopping 1mm), but I thought tightening it down sufficiently would be fine. Apparently it wasn't tight enough...of course, this is all assuming that the actual pipe into the heater core isn't cracked. Which would be wonderful, you know.

While the airbox is out, it's a good time to replace that coolant tank. Need to remove two nuts to take it out. First one? Lost. Second one? Fell to a visible but inaccessible place in the engine bay, and I don't have a magnet on a stick. Great. It looked oddly damaged though, so I may just be buying a couple of those.

So that's it for the weekend. Still have to go get the exhaust issue fixed on the Integra, and address the Neon issues. All sorts of fun. :-P

Woo free stuff

Apparently I won a cd on the radio today without doing anything special - I didn't even know until someone told me! :-D Check the right side of the screen. Not the best prize in the world, but come on...free!

Money has changed hands

Much more than any previous transaction, at least. My first post in a week comes bearing news of a new vehicle in our garage...news that anyone who at least semi-regularly reads this probably knows already. ;-) We picked up a 2005 Saab 9-2X Aero, practically right off the truck. Manual transmission, Deep Blue Metallic with the cloth seats, and the non-optional cold weather package. We've put about 250 miles on it so far, with another 750 to go until break-in is complete. It's the first new vehicle for either of us, and the first time we've had car payments. With $7k in rebates, the dealer wasn't offering any kind of special financing, but fortunately we got a pretty decent rate through Costco.

So what happened to the Neon that is being replaced? Well, we're still going to hang on to it. It was giving a check engine light for the O2 sensor the day after we got it running, but the other day that stopped. Took it in for emissions testing today, and it thankfully passed (tags set to expire today). It still needs a new coolant overflow tank, but the part just arrived at the local dealer, so that should be taken care of soon. The a/c works now, so that's good. Once we're confident it's in good working order (or at least, close to it), the car should be back out for autocrossing, hopefully in time for the fall season.

Again with the unusually-large purchases, we bought a tv a couple weeks ago as well. Again, excellent deal through Costco (it's like I go there a lot or something). Panasonic 43" 16:9 LCD rear projection HDTV, 720p native res, lots of inputs. The day after we bought it I went to the Cox store to swap out cable box for the HD box, and now we're enjoying all that HDTV has to offer (and occasionally find it hard to go back to regular programming). Our dvd player does upconverting as well, so it's nice to take advantage of that, and get 480p/720p/1080i in the various video games that support those resolutions.

Now for some other random stuff that I just never posted earlier.

My grandparents in PA moved in January, and sent some of their stuff out to my parents. Of the truckload of stuff that was unloaded, we got two of the coolest things:
First, the largest pepper mill I have personally used. I think it's probably about 3 feet tall.

Second, this what we called a "smør bucket", where smør is Norwegian for butter. I believe it was last regularly used at the house my grandparents used to have in Norway. So now we have a place for butter.

Finally, pics of the free box I received to house all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movie. Come on, free! This came in the mail months ago, and I took pics, just never did anything with them.

Hybrids and "saving money"

So what's the deal with the hybrid bandwagon. Someone sends me a link to this article, where people are paying over new MSRP for a used Toyota Prius, because they want the good mileage. Why, to save money? I really hope not. I put together this spreadsheet (Excel file) to see how much or how long someone would have to drive a Prius for it to really be cost-effective, over something like a Civic. A Civic HX hatchback gets 36/44mpg, for 2/3rds the price of a Prius. Driving 12,000 miles per year and paying $2.40/gallon, the Prius pays for itself in a mere 35 years. :-P Such a deal!

"But I drive way more than 12,000 miles per year" says the whiny hippie. Fine, change it to 20,000 miles per year, and you still need to drive it for 21 years. "But...gas is going to be $3/gallon this summer, everyone says so!" continues said hippie. Fine, $3/gallon with 20k/year and it takes 17 years. $4/gallong? 13 years. $5/gallon? 10 years, and that's still at 20,000 miles per year.

Now all that said, I'm not against hybrids, believe it or not. If companies can build two cars that are otherwise identical, and one gets 15mpg better mileage, that's great. Just don't charge $5k more for it.

>:-O

Senor Bob, and Neon costs rise

A happy Cinco de Mayo to all. I celebrated by going to Macayo's and filling up Senor Bob a couple times, along with a a baja chimi and a good number of chips. Good stuff. Between being full of chimichanga and margarita, and not getting much sleep this week, I think I fell asleep around 9pm, then woke up at 12:15 so I could go to bed. Hooray for 9+ hours of sleep on a weeknight. :-D

The cost of the Neon repair goes up once again - I took the head to a machine shop, and they determined that I needed a new head. The one we had was significantly warped, and it couldn't be machined any more than it already was. The guy at the shop found a rebuildable head for me, and is moving everything over from the old head (well, the stuff that was on it when I gave it go him). So I think I'm looking at about a $600 bill from the machine shop. :-( The car better last forever when I'm done with it. :-P

Forza is just ok. I really don't see how so many sites are rating it higher than GT4, other than the fact that it does a few things GT4 doesn't, so I suppose it's considered "innovative". I still haven't had time for a lot of the career mode, but one thing I've noticed, as was pointed out by someone else, is that you get so many cars early on that I don't really feel like I've earned them. I'm winning easy races in cheap cars, and often getting pretty decent cars in return.

I started out in a Peugeot 206, and left it completely stock for the first two series I won. For the next one, against some faster cars, I added a few mods that wouldn't change my class - minor suspension upgrade, small weight reduction, and an LSD (may have done something else, don't remember). Any change in power or tires would have changed my class, so I didn't feel like doing those. The car now behaves pretty much like I would expect it to, with those mods. Suspension feels a bit tighter, and I'm not getting nearly as much wheelspin around the course. I haven't messed with tire pressure yet, but I suppose if I have nothing better to do one day I may try that. :-P

Great weekend

So...where to start. Friday night I went to the Guinness event again, same one I went to a couple weeks ago. It was fun, but a bit shorter than the other one I think. People were definitely lining up earlier for it, as Evan and I got there at 6:30 and there were maybe 40 people in line in front of us (last time we were maybe 10th or so in line). Still, plenty of beer, meatballs, and tortilla chips were had.

Saturday was my birthday, the big 2-5, and a good day at that. Any day that starts with a bowl of peanut butter captain crunch can't be all bad. ;-) Watched Goldfinger during breakfast - the best 007 movie to date, IMO. Went to Sub Culture Cafe for lunch (I've mentioned it before), also great. Stop by if you're in the area. They're never busy when I've been there, so I hope they stay around a while.

Teresa gave me a great bday present, the Audio Authority 1154A. It's a four-port component video and digital audio auto-sensing switch. It will accept coax or optical audio, and output the audio over coax, or optical, or both. In my particular case, I have three devices using optical audio inputs, and the 1154A sends it to the receiver through the coax audio output. It also let me buy component cables for my PS2 and Xbox - I couldn't do it before, as our tv only has one set of component inputs, and my receiver doesn't have component switching built in (it didn't even have s-video switching!).