11/16/06

I entered that date almost three hours ago! Here’s what happened to screw up my whole morning. First off, the installer arrived to put in the last of the new projectors so I had to hold his hand for a while then I had to go across the street to set up a meeting. Now, the internot may be a vast wasteland of useless information, porn, and sundry items of geekery, but at least it allows blowhards like me a place to vent my opinions. Having said that, I'd like to say that Native American “music” grates on my ears worse than cRap, Tejano, and Country combined! That’s a silent “C” in front of that first type, in case you didn’t know. The meeting I had to set up was for the BNSF’s Council of Native Americans annual to do. Each diversity group has a hootenanny every year that somehow always involves me. Oh right, I'm the audio/visual guy. They need my “expertise” to set up pictures and sound. I almost forgot. Anyhoo, there were a bunch of folks dressed up in leather suits, with feathers and crap all over them, banging on this big-assed drum and chanting, “Hi yi YIIIIII!” over and over. I say chanting, they were screaming half of the time! Oh but it got under my skin. I was so glad when my pager went off to tell me about a meeting tomorrow. I used it as an excuse to get the hell out of there. During my trip back to the office, I noticed that my wallet was missing. I called mom and, sure enough, it is in the back pocket of the pants I was wearing last night. I'm going to have to mooch lunch today. Speaking of which, it is now noon so I think I'll go do that. And I'm back. So, John and I went to the shop last night. I arrived in plenty of time to take the speakers and head unit off the hood of his car and open it back up so he was none the wiser. Oops, just told him didn’t I? Oh well, there’s way more of that stereo stuff stacked on top of the Seven right now than ever was on his car so I'm not too concerned. While hanging out talking about stuff, Kevin called, or was that earlier in the day? It doesn’t matter, I talked to Kevin at some point and he suggested I use the 350 from his old truck in Barbecue Bob. I hesitated because I was afeared he’d want more than the two engines John was getting for me. I mentioned it to John and his eyes lit up. “If it is a truck 350,” he said, “ that is the engine we want because it is a four-bolt main block!” I paraphrased, but it was something like that. I called Kevin back as John and I were driving to Red Hot and Blue for some barbecue. It is a 1979 chassis with 1988 Suburban running gear. The slush-box might be a 700R4, but we’re not sure. Not that it matters; I'll NEVER build a car with an automatic and will try my damnedest to never buy another one either. Well, after I buy this one. I mean I'm not going to buy one that I intend to drive. You knew what I meant. Anyhoo, I asked him how much he wanted and he told me a number. I hope I didn’t hear the decimal place off one, because I'm willing to buy it but not at the higher number. When I told John the low figure he didn’t react like it was too high or too low. I think I probably did hear right. I'll be going to Kevin's this weekend to have a look-see at it and probably will drive it back to the shop. I asked the lady I know whose husband is a Chevy guy if he might be interested and she said if it is a 700R4 he might. I told her my other plan was to offer it up on e-Bay as an abandoned project or as a complete truck minus long block or something. The story John suggested was, “It threw a rod and I didn’t feel like replacing the engine so here’s a complete truck with 1988 throttle-body fuel injection and transmission. All you need to add is your late-model small-block.” If it will recoup the price of the engine I'd be happy. Hell, if it just makes the engine cost a hundred bucks or so out of my pocket I'll be happy. We’ll see. I did a little math and if a 350 has a bore and stroke of 4.0” and 3.48” respectively, like I think it does, a 0.120” overbore will bump the displacement to 372 cubic inches or 6.1 liters. Why is 6.1 liters important? Because then the car model and engine displacement will fit Nissan’s practice of “naming” cars after their displacement in centiliters, duh. Ok, so the naming thing holds true in foreign markets more often than here, but my point is still somewhat valid. Besides, this was a South American version of the 610 that came with a Japanese knock-off of a small-block Chevy. Go ahead; prove me wrong! Yeah, that’s what I thought. Well, I'm just about bored with this for the day. I think I'll shut up now and send it off to Spiderman. Toodles.